State Defense Committee

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STATE DEFENSE COMMITTEE

With the intent of more effectively coordinating decision-making for the war effort, on June 30, 1941, Josef Stalin created the State Defense Council (also known as State Defense Committee or GKO). According to his speech in which he announced this body "all the power and authority of the state are vested in it." Its decisions and resolutions had the force of law. The initial membership was composed of Stalin as Chairman, Vyacheslav Molotov as Deputy Chairman, Kliment Voroshilov, Georgy Malenkov, and Lavrenti Beria. Stalin added Nikolai Voznesensky, Lazar Kaganovich, and Anastas Mikoyan in February, 1942.

The GKO met frequently, but informally, sometimes on short notice and often without a prepared agenda but acted on issues that were foremost on Stalin's mind. Meetings always included people additional to the GKO, usually some Politburo members, members of the Central Committee, officers of the High Command, and various others with special knowledge requested to help address specific issues. The GKO did not develop its own administrative apparatus, but primarily implemented its decisions through the existing government bureaucracy, especially the Council of Peoples' Commissars (Sovnarkom), the individual commissariats, and the State Planning Commission (Gosplan). Emulating Vladimir Lenin and his use of the Defense Council during the crisis years of the civil war, Stalin and the GKO often relied on plenipotentiaries endowed with broad powers to handle critical tasks. Decision-making bodies of the Communist Party and government were no longer asked for input and were seldom called upon to ratify the GKO's decisions.

Each GKO member had specific areas of responsibility to supervise and obtain results. Molotov was to oversee tank production; Malenkov aircraft engine production and the forming of aviation regiments; Beria armaments, ammunition, and mortars, Voznesensky heavy and light metals, oil, and chemicals; Mikoyan supplying the Red Army with food, gasoline, pay, and artillery. Rather less specific was the requirement that each member of the GKO assist in inspecting fulfillment of decisions of Peoples' Commissars in the course of their work.

The chief strengths of the GKO were that it provided for quick decision-making on critical issues and speedily disseminated vital information to those at the top who needed to use it. The weaknesses of the GKO were that a few men were burdened with a multitude of tasks without a supporting administrative structure to distribute authority rationally and evenly, or to allow initiative. By relying on the existing Party and government structures, which had proven inefficient and prone to parochialism in defending their bureaucratic turf, the GKO was unable to capitalize fully on the unity at the top. Furthermore, the commissariats other government offices through which the GKO implemented its decisions had been evacuated to the interior of the USSR while the GKO remained in Moscow. The physical distance between the GKO and the commissariats hindered communication and efficient supervision. The government apparatus did not begin returning to the capital until 1943. With the end of the war, the GKO was formally dissolved on September 4,1945.

See also: communist party of the soviet union; stalin, joseph vissarionovich; world war ii