Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union

The appointment of Vladimir Lenin to the post of the first chair of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union on 6 July 1923, was of purely symbolic significance, since Lenin's poor state of health did not allow him to actively engage in public affairs and since May 1923 he had been left without a break in the Gorky residence near Moscow under the supervision of doctors.

Before the death of Lenin in 1924, the actual leadership of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union was carried out by Alexei Rykov.

Having replaced Lenin as head of government, Alexei Rykov actively pursued a New Economic Policy and in the late 1920s opposed its curtailment.

[1] According to Polish historian, Marian Kamil Dziewanowski, Rykov was placed in the position of Chairman of the Soviet Union due to support from Stalin as part of a wider effort to build an alliance in the Politburo.

The new deputy chairmen of the Council of People's Commissars (Mikoyan, Bulganin, Kaganovich, Voznesensky) were Stalin's loyal associates.

[4] According to some historians, the real reasons for the removal of Molotov from the leadership of the government were Joseph Stalin's personal dislike and the latter's decision to take the post of chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union to concentrate the party and executive state power in a difficult international situation on the eve of Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union.