Ministries of the Ukrainian SSR

Ministries of the Ukrainian SSR. The central administrative organs of Soviet Ukraine. Until March 1946 ministries were called people's commissariats of the Ukrainian SSR. Central agencies within the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR, such as the State Planning Committee of the Ukrainian SSR, the Committee for Party-State Control of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, the KGB, and the Central Statistical Administration of the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR, had nonadministrative (development, co-ordinating, and planning) functions. The ministers and heads of state committees and commissions made up the central government, the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR.

Until the 1991 Ukraine’s Declaration of Independence there were two types of ministries in Ukraine, Union-republican and republican. The Union-republican ministries were subordinated to both the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR and the corresponding USSR Union-republican ministry in Moscow. The republican ministries were constitutionally subordinated directly to the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR, although in practice USSR ministries and USSR Union-republican ministries in Moscow interfered in the work of the republican ministries, and the division of responsibilities was unclear. In the 1960s the number of republican ministries was reduced, and some became Union-republican ministries. In 1981 Soviet Ukraine had Union-republican ministries of the construction of heavy-industry enterprises; higher education and specialized secondary education; internal affairs; the coal industry; geology; energy and electrification; state purchases (of agricultural products); foreign affairs; communications; culture; light industry; forest management; the lumber, paper, and woodworking industry; melioration and water management; assembled and special building works; the meat and dairy industry; education; health protection; fruit and vegetable farming; industrial construction; the building-materials industry; state farms; rural construction; the rural economy; trade; finances; the food industry; ferrous metallurgy; and justice. It had only six republican ministries: automobile transportation; auto-route construction and utilization; communal-housing management; local industry; public services; and social security.

Ministries were created, reorganized, and abolished, and their ministers appointed and removed, by the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR or, between its sessions, by the Supreme Soviet’s Presidium on the recommendation of the chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR subject to subsequent approval by the Supreme Soviet. Ministers were answerable to the Supreme Soviet, its Presidium, and the Council of Ministers; they had to be members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and perform their duties on the basis of the principle of ‘one-man management.’ A ministry’s responsibilities and tasks were defined by the Council of Ministers, and a minister’s instructions and decrees could be annulled by the Council of Ministers and, in the case of Union-republican ministries, by corresponding USSR ministers.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]