People's Commissariat in the context of "Ministry of Internal Affairs (Soviet Union)"

The Council of People's Commissars of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic was the government of Soviet Russia from November 1917 to March 1946. It was established by the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers', Soldiers', and Peasants' Deputies on November 9, 1917 "as an interim workers' and peasants' government" under the name of the Council of People's Commissars, which was used before the adoption of the Constitution of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic of 1918.

Since 1918, the formation of the Council of People's Commissars of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic was the prerogative of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, and since 1937, the Supreme Council of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. The Council of People's Commissars of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic was formed from the people's commissars – the leaders of the People's Commissariats of Soviet Russia – headed by the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Similar Councils of People's Commissars were created in other Soviet republics.

The Ministries of the Soviet Union (Russian: Министерства СССР) were the government ministries of the Soviet Union.

After the Russian Revolution of 1917 the previous bureaucratic apparatus of bourgeois ministers was replaced by People's Commissariats (Russian: народных комиссариатов; Narkom), staffed by new employees drawn from workers and peasants. On 15 March 1946 the people's commissariats were transformed into ministries. The name change had no practical effects, other than restoring a designation previously considered a leftover of the bourgeois era. The collapse of the ministry system was one of the main causes behind the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

The Council of Ministers of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Russian: Совет министров СССР, romanized: Sovet Ministrov SSSR, IPA: [sɐˈvʲet mʲɪˈnʲistrəf ˌɛsˌɛsˌɛsˈɛr]) was the highest executive and administrative organ of state authority of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) from 1946 until 1991.

During 1946 the Council of People's Commissars was reorganized as the Council of Ministers. Accordingly, the People's Commissariats were renamed as Ministries. The council issued declarations and instructions based on and in accordance with applicable laws, which had obligatory jurisdictional power in all republics of the Union. However, the most important decisions were made by joint declarations with the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Soviet Union (CPSU), which was de facto more powerful than the Council of Ministers. During 1991 the Council of Ministers was dissolved, and replaced by the newly established "Cabinet of Ministers", which itself disappeared only months later when the USSR was disbanded.

The Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union was the highest executive and administrative organ of state authority of the Soviet Union from 1923 to 1946.

As the government of the Soviet Union, the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union and the People's Commissariats led by it played a key role in such significant events for the country and society as the economic recovery after the Civil War, the New Economic Policy, agricultural collectivization, electrification, industrialization, five-year plans for the development of national economy, censorship, the fight against religion, repression and political persecution, the Gulag, the deportation of peoples, the annexation of the Baltic States and other territories by the Soviet Union, the organization of the partisan movement, the organization of industrial production in the rear during the Great Patriotic War.

Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich (Russian: Лазарь Моисеевич Каганович; 22 November [O.S. 10 November] 1893 – July 25, 1991) was a Soviet politician and one of Joseph Stalin's closest associates.

Born to a Jewish family in Ukraine, Kaganovich worked as a shoemaker and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1911. During and after the 1917 October Revolution, he held leading positions in Bolshevik organizations in Belarus and Russia, and helped consolidate Soviet rule in Turkestan. In 1922, Stalin placed Kaganovich in charge of an organizational department of the Communist Party, assisting the former in consolidating his grip on the party. Kaganovich was appointed First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine in 1925, and a full member of the Politburo and Stalin's deputy party secretary in 1930. In 1932–33, he helped enforce grain quotas in Ukraine which contributed to the Holodomor famine. From the mid-1930s on, Kaganovich variously served as the People's Commissar for Railways, Heavy Industry and Oil Industry. Following the outbreak of the Second World War, he was appointed a member of the State Defence Committee.