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.

[6] Kosygin, the Premier of the Council of Ministers, was in charge of economic administration while Brezhnev, the General Secretary, cared for other domestic matters.

[7] During the later part of the Brezhnev era the job of Premier of the Council of Ministers lost its rank as the second-most powerful in the USSR to the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet.

[10] After five-years service, by the rules established by Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, Tikhonov was compelled to retire by Mikhail Gorbachev on 27 September 1985.

[22] Nikita Khrushchev's attempt during the late 1950s to decentralise decision-making by reforming the chain of command that was in use since the early times of the Council of People's Commissars to manage local industries and enterprises resulted in major reorganisation of the USSR ministries.

A large number of ministries were eliminated and replaced by a network of regional and local sovnarkhoz supervised by the Supreme Soviet of the National Economy.

Churchward noted in his 1975 book that it was impossible to determine the importance of the Presidium in comparison with other organs of the Council of Ministers.

[28] British historian Leonard Schapiro, writes in his book The Government and Politics of the Soviet Union, that the Presidium worked somewhat as an "Inner Cabinet" for policy-making.

Historians Hough and Fainsod believed there to be a "great overlap" between the responsibilities and functions of the Central Committee, Secretariat and the Presidium of the Council of Ministers.

[31] During his visit to the USSR, political scientist Robert C. Tucker asked Mansur Mirza-Akhmedov, the Premier of the Council of Ministers of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic, if the Presidium still functioned as an inner policy-making body.

The 1977 Soviet Constitution referred to the Presidium as a "permanent" organ of the Council of Ministers, which was established to secure good economic leadership and assume other administrative responsibilities.

The few documents published provide evidence that the Presidium emphasised economic planning and decision-making as well as making important decisions lesser than those of the Communist Party's Politburo.