Military Industrial Commission of the USSR. The history of the creation of the military-industrial complex of Russia. The governing body of the "defense industry"

The question is legitimate: how the USSR, which began industrialization only in the 30s, and was also ruined in World War II, was able to make a breakthrough in the formation and development of the military-industrial complex, despite the limited time and secondary resources (personnel, equipment, technologies, etc.) .)?

Oleg Dmitrievich Baklanov, Oleg Konstantinovich Rogozin

In the 1950s, the leadership of the USSR tried in various ways to solve the problem of coordinating extensive work on revolutionary areas of development of weapons, primarily nuclear weapons and rocket technology. On March 16, 1953, the Decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR "On the management of special work" was issued, which created a Special Committee to manage work on the nuclear industry and rocket technology.

However, already on June 26, 1953, the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU at its meeting decides “On the formation of the Ministry of Medium Machine Building of the USSR”, with the inclusion of the 1st and 3rd Main Directorates in its composition, in connection with which the Special Committee created three months earlier is liquidated under Council of Ministers of the USSR. This decision is formalized on the same day by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. The enterprises of the Ministry were engaged in the development and manufacture of nuclear weapons, the design and construction of vehicles with nuclear propulsion systems: icebreakers, submarines, military ships, space rockets and aircraft, as well as the production of radioisotope instruments and equipment, and the construction of nuclear power plants.

Meanwhile, the task of coordinating work on the entire subject of military production was never solved, although the new stage of the scientific and technological revolution required a significant increase in the efficiency of managing the development and production of equipment and weapons.

December 6, 1957 issued a resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR on the establishment of the Commission on military-industrial issues under the Presidium of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. In 1957, in addition to the Ministry of Defense of the USSR and the Ministry of Defense Industry of the USSR, the Ministry of Aviation Industry of the USSR, the Ministry of the Shipbuilding Industry of the USSR, the Ministry of the Radio Engineering Industry of the USSR, the Ministry of Medium Machine Building of the USSR, the KGB under the Council of Ministers of the USSR, the State Committee for the use of atomic energy, the Main Directorate of State Material Reserves, the Main Engineering Directorate of the State Committee for Foreign Economic Relations, Glavspetsstroy at Gosmontazhspetsstroy, the organization of mailbox No. 10, -DOSAAF, the Central Committee "Dynamo" and the All-Army Military Hunting Society.

Largely thanks to the activities of the Military-Industrial Commission, the Soviet Union after the Second World War managed to create a number of advanced models of weapons and military equipment in the most high-tech areas of weapons systems.

Decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR No. 697-355ss / op
"On the management of special works"

Moscow, Kremlin

The Council of Ministers of the USSR DECIDES:

I. About the Special Committee

1. To form a special committee under the Council of Ministers of the USSR consisting of comrades:

Beria L.P. - Chairman
Vannikov B.L. - First Deputy Chairman
Klochkov I.M. - vice-chairman
Vladimirsky S.M. — - "-
Bulganin N.A. - committee member
Zavenyagin A.P. — - "-
Ryabikov V.M. — - "-
Makhnev V.A. — - "-

2. Assign to the Special Committee under the Council of Ministers of the USSR the management of all special work (on the nuclear industry, the Berkut and Kometa systems, long-range missiles (...)) carried out by the First and Third Main Directorates under the Council of Ministers of the USSR and others ministries and departments.

Determine that the Special Committee:

- determines plans for the development of special works, the amount of financial allocations and material and technical resources required for the implementation of these plans, and submits them for approval by the Government;

— monitors the progress of special works and takes measures to ensure the implementation of established plans;

- makes operational decisions concerning special work, binding on ministries and departments, and in cases requiring the approval of the Government, submits its proposals to the Council of Ministers of the USSR.

To carry out the tasks assigned to it, the Special Committee has its own apparatus.

II. On the First and Second Main Directorates under the Council of Ministers of the USSR

1. To merge the First and Second Main Directorates under the Council of Ministers of the USSR into one Main Directorate - the First Main Directorate under the Council of Ministers of the USSR.

2. To release Comrade B.L. Vannikov. from the duties of the head of the First Main Directorate under the Council of Ministers of the USSR in connection with his transfer to work in the Special Committee.

3. Appoint Comrade Zavenyagin A.P. Head of the First Main Directorate under the Council of Ministers of the USSR.

4. Assign:

Comrade Slavsky E.P. - First Deputy Head of the Main Directorate

Comrade Pavlova N.I. - Deputy Head of the Headquarters

Comrade Antropova P.Ya. — - " - - " -

Comrade Emelyanova V.S. - Member of the Board of Directors

Comrade Kandaritsky V.S. — - " - - " -

Comrade Komarovsky A.N. — - " - - " -

Comrade Polyakova V.P. — - " - - " -

Comrade Petrosyants A.M. — - " - - " -

Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR G. Malenkov
Manager of Affairs of the Council of Ministers of the USSR M. Pomaznev

AP RF. F. 93, collection of resolutions and orders of the Council of Ministers of the USSR for 1953. Certified copy.

Background of the military industry authorities

The Russian historical traditions of managing the military industry from a single center date back to the beginning of the 20th century, when, under the conditions of the First World War, special bodies were created to manage the military economy - special meetings. The main one - "Special Meeting to Discuss Measures for the Defense of the State" - was headed by the Minister of War, it was attended by representatives of state bodies (the State Duma, the State Council, etc.), industrialists and entrepreneurs. The tasks of the Special Meeting included the distribution of military orders and control over their implementation at enterprises that produced military products, issues of supplying the army. Public control bodies, the military-industrial committees, became a kind of intermediary between the state and private industry in the distribution of military orders and the issuance of advances. At the end of May 1915, at the 9th All-Russian Congress of Representatives of Trade and Industry, the Central Military-Industrial Committee was elected, headed by the leader of the Octobrist party A. Guchkov and the progressive A. Konovalov.

After the total mobilization of the country's military resources during the First World War, the revolution of 1917 and the Civil War, under the NEP, there was a sharp, almost landslide reduction in military spending, the number of armed forces and the defense potential of the country as a whole.

As a result, at the turn of the 20-30s of the twentieth century, the USSR had a limited system of "personnel" military enterprises, assembled into trusts and associations under the general leadership of the Supreme Council of the National Economy (VSNKh).

After the liquidation of the Supreme Council of National Economy from January 1932, defense enterprises were transferred to the system of the People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry (NKTP). Since the end of 1936, the period of creation of a specialized defense industry within the framework of the People's Commissariat of the Defense Industry (NKOP) began. In connection with the outbreak of World War II on September 1, 1939, in the face of a direct military threat, the USSR began accelerated preparations for war, the growth of the armed forces and the increase in the production of weapons. The sign of the new period was such facts as the adoption of an emergency mobilization plan - MP-1 for the "special" IV quarter of 1939, the reorganization of management carried out in the same year - the division of the NKOP into specialized people's commissariats: aviation industry, weapons, ammunition, shipbuilding industry.

The military-industrial complex as an organ for the mobilization of industry

Mobilization work related to preparations for war was a "bottleneck" in the system of Soviet defense construction in the 1930s. The leaders of the military and industrial departments advocated the creation of a single "mobilization" body that would concentrate the functions of preparing industry and the economy as a whole for war. Such a governing body was the Permanent Mobilization Commission under the Defense Committee of the Council of People's Commissars. At its first meeting, on May 4, 1938, K. E. Voroshilov, N. I. Yezhov, L. M. Kaganovich, P. I. Smirnov, N. A. Voznesensky (Chairman of the State Planning Commission), B. M. Shaposhnikov, M. I. Kulik, I. F. Tevosyan and others. Thus, the commission included representatives of the military leadership, industry leaders, and security agencies.

On June 14, 1938, a meeting of the commission took place under its new name - the Military Industrial Commission. At the meeting, among other issues, it was decided to adopt the draft proposed by L. M. Kaganovich "On the tasks of the Military-Industrial Commission under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and on the construction of its apparatus."

Construction of the artillery railway transporter TM-1-14 with a 356-mm gun at the Leningrad Metal Plant (1932)

According to this document, the Military-Industrial Commission was the working body of the Defense Committee under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR. The military-industrial complex had the main task of "mobilizing and preparing the industry, both defense and non-defense, to fully ensure the implementation of the plans and tasks of the Defense Committee for the production and supply of weapons to the Red Army and the Navy."

The functions of the VPK included:

consideration of mobilization applications;
verification of calculations of needs and norms of consumption according to mob orders;
distribution of mobilization tasks among the people's commissariats of the Union and union republics and verification of the correctness of the distribution of orders between enterprises;
drawing up a consolidated mobilization plan for industry in all its sections;
coordination of the mobilization-industrial plan with the national economic plan (together with the Mobsector of the State Planning Committee of the USSR);
inspection of the production capacities of enterprises, determination of their mobilization purpose, development of measures to increase new production capacities, assimilate civilian industries and their correct implementation;
verification of the fulfillment of the mobilization plan and the program of current military orders by enterprises and people's commissariats;
development of plans for logistics, mobilization tasks for all major types of supply (equipment, raw materials, tools, semi-finished products, etc.);
establishment of a production zoning system to reduce transportation and achieve completeness of production;
development of measures to increase output by the main enterprises through their cooperation with allied enterprises;
development of a plan and measures to provide the mobilized industry with manpower and engineering and technical personnel in wartime;
development of norms for the accumulation of industrial mobile stocks, checking their availability and quality, establishing rules for the storage and refreshment of mobile stocks;
conducting, by special decision of the CO, experimental mobilizations of individual industrial enterprises or entire industrial sectors;
development of questions of application in the military industry of any technical inventions, in particular the replacement of acutely scarce materials in the production of weapons;
development of instructions on military mobilization work in people's commissariats, main departments, trusts and enterprises; control over the work of military departments in the above bodies, setting up the selection and training of personnel of moborgans and maintaining military-industrial secrets.

The military-industrial complex consisted of the chairman of the commission with the rank of deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR (L. M. Kaganovich became the chairman), two of his deputies and a secretary, as well as seventeen permanent members of the commission. The latter included representatives of the Armed Forces of the USSR and the NKVD (as the main customers of military products) - People's Commissar of Defense, People's Commissar of the Navy, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, chiefs of: the General Staff of the Red Army, the Main Naval Headquarters, the Red Army Air Force, the Red Army Artillery Directorate, the Red Army Armored Directorate; leaders of the defense and heavy industries: people's commissars for the aviation industry, shipbuilding, ammunition, armaments, the chemical industry, heavy engineering, medium engineering, general engineering; as well as the chairman of the State Planning Committee of the USSR.

The decisions of the Military-Industrial Commission needed the approval of the chairman of the Defense Committee and only after that were they binding. To carry out daily work within the military-industrial complex, a secretariat was allocated, consisting of an organizational and planning sector, industry sectors and the general part of the secretariat.

The organizational and planning sector of the military-industrial complex was responsible for "studying the historical and modern foreign experience of industrial mobilization and finding on this basis the most rational organizational forms of mobilization training for industry, developing instructions and regulations for mob work, developing the structure and staff of moborgans, ensuring the preservation of military industrial secrets, conclusion according to the mobile applications of the military people's commissariats, the distribution of the mobile applications by industry sectors, the generalization of summary data on the mobilization plan, the issuance of mobile tasks to the people's commissariats and other organizations and applications for raw materials and semi-finished products, the identification of production capacities, the supply of "labor technical power", etc.

The secretariat of the military-industrial complex also included sectoral sectors responsible for the mobilization training of the relevant sectors: 1) weapons, with groups of small arms, artillery materiel, military devices; 2) ammunition, as part of groups of cases, tubes, fuses, shells, gunpowder, explosives, equipment and closures; 3) aviation; 4) armored vehicle; 5) military chemical; 6) shipbuilding; 7) engineering property and communications.

The functions of the sectoral sectors included the development of the entire range of issues related to the mobilization preparation of a given branch of production, and in particular:

taking into account and identifying the existing production capacities of the relevant industry and comparing them with the volume of the mob application for this type of weapon;
preparation of conclusions on a mob application for a given type of weapon;
finding additional production capacities and developing measures to increase new capacities;
development of issues of production cooperation of enterprises;
placing a mob application and checking the mob readiness of enterprises;
generalization of the summary need for equipment, raw materials, tools, labor, etc.;
introduction of new technical improvements and highly profitable technological processes into production, as well as the development of issues related to the replacement of acutely scarce and imported materials;
determination of the norms for the accumulation of mobile reserves and control over their creation and refreshment;
preparation of decisions on the given branch of production and control over the timeliness and quality of their execution;
monitoring and ensuring the implementation of the program of current military orders in the given branch of production;
monitoring the development of issues of unloading and evacuation of industrial enterprises stationed in threatened zones.

The procedure for developing a mobilization plan was also established. Within the deadlines set by the Defense Committee, the military people's commissariats (NPO, NKVMF, NKVD) were to submit to the military-industrial complex mob applications for the war year for "weapons and military equipment." The consolidated mobilization plan for industry was developed in stages by the military-industrial complex in one copy and consisted of the following sections: supply plan, production cooperation plan, logistics plan, capacity increase plan, plan for providing manpower and engineering and technical personnel, plan for the accumulation of mobile stocks, financial plan, transportation plan.

The sectors of the military-industrial complex were obliged to monitor the readiness of enterprises and people's commissariats and, in accordance with the changes taking place, make the necessary adjustments to the mobile plan.

In addition, the military-industrial complex as a whole was supposed to act as an "arbitrator" in resolving disputes between departments. In the decision of the military-industrial complex of September 27 on the issue of "On the complete set of artillery rounds", in particular, it was stated: "If there are disagreements on the supply issues between the people's commissar of the defense industry and the people's commissars of other supplying people's commissariats, disputes are resolved by the military-industrial complex."

Thus, the military-industrial complex did a great job of preparing the national economy for a future war. All issues of adopting new models of weapons and military equipment, their development in mass production were under the personal control of I.V. Stalin, who headed the USSR Defense Committee for the last two pre-war years. According to the memoirs of the People's Commissar of Armaments of the USSR B.L. Vannikov, “Stalin studied daily reports on the production of aircraft and aircraft engines, demanding explanations and measures in each case of deviation from the schedule ... The same can be said about his participation in the consideration of issues of the tank industry and military shipbuilding.

Stalin also demanded daily attention to the development of the defense industry from his inner circle. According to the resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR of September 10, 1939, the Economic Council (chairman A. I. Mikoyan, deputy N. A. Bulganin, members: S. M. Budyonny, E. A. Shchadenko, L. Z Mehlis) and the Defense Committee (chairman I. V. Stalin, first deputies V. M. Molotov and N. A. Voznesensky, members: N. G. Kuznetsov, A. A. Zhdanov, A. I. Mikoyan, L. P. Beria, B. M. Shaposhnikov, G. I. Kulik, F. I. Golikov) were obliged to “meet daily”.

At the same time, according to the experts of the First Department of the State Planning Committee of the USSR, who in the late 1950s were engaged in summarizing the experience of deploying the military-industrial base of the USSR on the eve of the Great Patriotic War: “... we started military mobilization training of our industry too late. Our country essentially did not have a comprehensive mobilization plan for preparing the entire national economy for the needs of the war, which was, of course, a major shortcoming and was largely due to the untimely organization of mobilization planning.

During the war years, all the functions of managing the defense industry were transferred to the State Defense Committee (GKO), formed on June 30, 1941 by a joint resolution of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. The need to create a State Defense Committee as the highest governing body was motivated by the difficult situation at the front, which required that the leadership of the country be centralized to the maximum extent. The aforementioned resolution states that all orders of the State Defense Committee must be unquestioningly carried out by citizens and any authorities.

On December 8, 1942, an Operations Bureau was created under the State Defense Committee, consisting of: V. M. Molotov, L. P. Beria, G. M. Malenkov and A. I. Mikoyan, to control and monitor the work of the people's commissariats of the military industry, development and submission for consideration by the Chairman of the State Defense Committee of draft decisions on certain issues of the development of industry and transport. On the basis of applications from NGOs, the NKVMF, the NKVD and the NKGB, the Operational Bureau of the State Defense Committee, with the participation of departments of the State Planning Committee of the USSR, compiled monthly and quarterly plans for the production of "military" and "civilian" industrial products and material and technical supply of the most important sectors of the national economy. On May 18, 1944, the Operational Bureau was approved in a new composition: L.P. Beria (chairman), G.M. Malenkov, A.I. Mikoyan, N.A. Voznesensky and K.E. Voroshilov.

During the 50 months of its existence, the State Defense Committee adopted 9,971 resolutions, of which about two-thirds dealt with the problems of the military economy and the organization of the production of military-industrial products. In the localities, local Party and Soviet bodies were responsible for the implementation of the GKO resolutions. Particularly responsible tasks were under the control of authorized GKOs.

Military Industry Coordination Center

In the first post-war years, there was no single body for managing military-industrial affairs. By a resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of Ministers of the USSR in February 1947, branch bureaus for industry and agriculture were created under the Council of Ministers of the USSR. Nine industry bureaus, including those for mechanical engineering and shipbuilding, headed by V. A. Malyshev, were engaged in defense industries. Supervision of the Ministry of the Armed Forces was carried out directly by the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, and from April 1949 this work was entrusted to N. A. Bulganin, including responsibility for the work of the ministries of the aviation industry and weapons, removed from the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Mechanical Engineering and Shipbuilding.

In May 1948, the leaders of the defense industry, D. F. Ustinov and M. Z. Saburov, took the initiative to create a single center for military and military-industrial affairs in the government. The authority of this body was to include the current issues of the military industry, the development and maintenance of mobilization plans, the creation of new types of weapons, and the coordination of the work of the defense industries. According to the leaders of the defense industry, the need to create such a body is long overdue.

These actions were a sign of the formation of a community of interests among the leaders of the military-industrial complex. In practice, this resulted in the creation in 1951 under the Presidium of the Council of Ministers of the USSR of the Bureau for Military and Military-Industrial Issues, chaired by N.A. Bulganin, which operated from February 1951 to October 1952. The members of the bureau were A.M. Vasilevsky - Minister of the Armed Forces of the USSR, D.F. Ustinov - Minister of Armaments of the USSR, M.V. Khrunichev - Minister of the Aviation Industry of the USSR, I.S. Yumashev - Naval Minister of the USSR.

Assembly of T-34 tanks at the Chelyabinsk Kirov Plant, 1943

The Bureau dealt with the consideration of plans for military orders, research work on military equipment, the adoption of new models and the decommissioning of obsolete ones and other issues related to providing the army and navy with weapons and military equipment. Fundamental questions on military equipment were considered and approved by the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of Ministers of the USSR. The bureau did not have a special apparatus (with the exception of a small secretariat), the functions of the apparatus were performed by sectoral groups of the Administrative Department of the USSR Council of Ministers.

In 1953, the branch bureaus under the Council of Ministers of the USSR were abolished. In 1953-56. N. A. Bulganin, V. A. Malyshev, M. Z. Saburov, and M. V. Khrunichev, Deputy Chairmen of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, were in charge of coordinating the activities of the defense industries. The Bureau of the USSR Council of Ministers carried out general supervision and resolution of fundamental and intersectoral issues of the defense industries and the Ministry of Defense.

In December 1956, the functions of managing the defense industries were transferred to the State Economic Commission. She prepared proposals on issues of military equipment, carried out operational management of the defense industries. The Commission was given the right to issue orders and resolutions in the field of industry, binding. In December 1957, the State Economic Commission was liquidated. On December 6, 1957, the Commission on Military-Industrial Issues was established under the Presidium of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. The role of the commission as a coordinator was especially high under the conditions of N. S. Khrushchev's reform of 1957-1958. on the decentralization of economic management through the system of "sovnarkhozes". However, even after the restoration of the ministries in 1965, the commission retained its functions and became the most stable organizational form for coordinating the multifaceted activities of the country's military-industrial complex, right up to the end of the Soviet period.

The main tasks of the Military Industrial Commission were:

organization and coordination of work on the creation of modern types of weapons and military equipment;
coordinating the work of the defense industries and other ministries and departments of the USSR involved in the creation and production of weapons and military equipment;
ensuring, jointly with the State Planning Committee of the USSR, the integrated development of defense industries;
raising the technical level of production, quality and reliability of weapons and military equipment;
operational management and control over the activities of defense industries, including in terms of the creation, production and supply of weapons and military equipment, the production of consumer goods and other civilian products in volumes equal in value to the wage fund of enterprises in the industry, as well as control over the activities other industries on these issues;
preparation, together with the USSR State Planning Committee and the USSR Ministry of Defense, of armament programs, five-year and annual plans for the creation, production and production of weapons and military equipment and their submission for consideration and approval;
preparation and submission, together with the State Planning Committee of the USSR, the Ministries of Defense and Finance, for consideration by the USSR Defense Council and the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, proposals on the target figures for the country's expenditures on the creation and production of weapons, military and other special defense equipment in the corresponding planning periods;
coordination of foreign economic relations of defense industries for military-technical cooperation.

Due to the reduction in military spending in the 1980s. The military-industrial complex was entrusted with the task of coordinating and implementing work in the field of military production conversion. In this regard, the military-industrial complex was entrusted with a number of important operational tasks for the development of the civilian sector of the national economy:

organization of development and production of equipment for the processing industries of the agro-industrial complex, light industry and trade;
organization of development and production of non-food consumer goods; organization of technical means and works in the field of communications; coordination of work on the creation of nuclear power facilities;
management of the implementation of programs for the electronization of the national economy; coordination of work in the field of air, cargo and passenger transportation and other tasks.

In different periods of the work of the military-industrial complex, as a rule, it included the deputy chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers - chairman of the military-industrial complex, first deputy chairman of the military-industrial complex - in the rank of minister of the USSR, deputy chairmen of the military-industrial complex, first deputy chairman of the State Planning Committee of the USSR, in charge of defense industry, ministers of defense industries industry, First Deputy Minister of Defense of the USSR - Chief of the General Staff of the USSR Armed Forces, Deputy Minister of Defense of the USSR for armaments, as well as well-known and authoritative scientists and organizers of industry.

Ustinov D.F. - First Chairman of the Military-Industrial Commission under the Council of Ministers of the USSR

Since the formation of the Military-Industrial Commission in 1957, during the Soviet period, it was successively headed by Dmitry Fedorovich Ustinov (1957-1963), Leonid Vasilyevich Smirnov (1963-1985), Yuri Dmitrievich Maslyukov (1985-1988), Igor Sergeevich Belousov (1988-1991).

By the mid 1980s. the military-industrial complex had 15 departments involved in the creation of weapons and military equipment, analysis of the production activities of ministries and the economic efficiency of the military-industrial complex, the introduction into production of the achievements of scientific and technological progress, advanced technologies, military-technical cooperation with foreign countries.

The employees of the military-industrial complex apparatus included representatives of the main branches of the complex: 50% came from ministries from senior positions, 10% from the USSR State Planning Committee, 6% from the USSR Ministry of Defense, 34% from research institutes, design bureaus and factories. The most numerous were the leaders of the defense industry and the scientific and technical elite, the smallest percentage came from people from the military department. Scientific and technical personnel, including prominent scientists, participated in the work of the Scientific and Technical Council, which operated under the military-industrial complex.

The procedure for making decisions on military-industrial issues, largely established since the 1960s, demonstrated the unity and joint work of all the main divisions of the Soviet military-industrial complex. The final decisions usually came out in the form of joint resolutions of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR, which carried various classifications of secrecy and were secretly sent to the interested departments. The same special decisions of the highest authorities formalized any changes in policy related to the activities of the military-industrial complex. However, this was preceded by a long work of a number of departments.

Draft decisions were developed at the initial stage by those scientific and production units that were engaged in the development of a particular weapon system (some technical orders were also developed by scientific and technical organizations of the military department). Then all interested ministries submitted their proposals for the project to the Military Industrial Commission, which was the main coordinating body of the entire complex. The Commission made a lot of efforts, trying to harmonize the provisions of the document with the interests and capabilities of all interested departments, scientific and technical and scientific and production organizations. The final version of the project prepared by the commission was then sent to the Defense Industry Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU, where it was subjected to additions and adjustments and issued in the form of a joint directive of the main organs of the party and state leadership. Such was the general pattern of decision-making in this area during the period of the “developed military-industrial complex”, when the latter occupied a leading position in the economy of the USSR.

Reusable rocket and space system "Energia-Buran" at the Baikonur Cosmodrome (1988)

The Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted a very important decision for the work on endowing the military-industrial complex from the moment it was formed with the powers of a government body. The authorized functions of the military-industrial complex manifested themselves in cases of disagreement between the ministries of defense industries (MOOP) and the State Planning Committee of the USSR; MOOP and the Ministry of Defense of the USSR, the State Planning Committee of the USSR and the Ministry of Defense of the USSR when considering the current annual plans for the production and supply of weapons and military equipment, plans and programs for weapons, research and development work on weapons and military equipment, the creation of mobilization capacities, and also in the development of these plans, taking into account their implementation. The decision of the military-industrial complex in the event of disagreement was, as a rule, final. Sometimes the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU made the final decision on fundamental issues of a financial and material-resource nature.

Many large and important state events took place with the participation and under the control of the Military Industrial Commission over the long years of its existence.

Thus, a network of institutes, design bureaus and factories has been formed, covering all areas of rocket science (design bureaus and institutes: B. V. Gidaspova, V. P. Glushko, B. P. Zhukov, S. P. Korolev, V. P. Makeeva, A. D. Nadiradze, M. F. Reshetneva, V. N. Chelomeya, M. K. Yangelya and others), the largest enterprises and production associations: the plant named after. Khrunichev, Yuzhmashzavod, Krasnoyarsk Machine-Building Plant, Leninets, Omsk Aviation Plant, Fazotron, Zlatoust Machine-Building Plant, Votkinsk Machine-Building Plant, Orenburg Aircraft Plant, Biysk Chemical Plant and many others.

Manned and unmanned space systems for various purposes have been created. Combat missile systems of the Strategic Missile Forces, the basis of the country's nuclear missile shield, have been deployed. A missile-carrying submarine fleet and long-range aviation equipped with cruise missiles have been created and have become a formidable force.

During the same period, strategic nuclear-missile parity with the United States and NATO countries was achieved, ensuring long-term strategic stability, and simply a world without nuclear wars. This world has been conquered by the enormous work of the workers of the defense industry, which has created strategic nuclear forces.

Today it has become clear to everyone that only the strategic nuclear-missile parity achieved through the efforts of our entire country made possible the transition to a policy of reducing and limiting nuclear weapons, only this parity put world politicians at the negotiating table.

The formation of a systemic organization for the development of weapons also belongs to the same period. In order to emphasize the breadth and responsibility of the tasks solved under the auspices and with the participation of the military-industrial complex, it is enough to recall the comprehensive programs created on the basis of deep scientific research of the most important types of rocket and space, aviation, anti-missile and other weapons systems.

The military-industrial complex and the ministries of defense industries have fulfilled the main task set by the state to ensure a high scientific and technical level of weapons and military equipment - so that the armament of the army and navy in terms of its tactical and technical parameters is not inferior or exceeds the level of military equipment of foreign countries. With the constant control of the Military-Industrial Commission, the army and navy were promptly equipped with the latest weapons in the shortest possible time and in the required quantity.

Military-industrial complex workers have always highly appreciated the contribution of the command and personnel of the USSR Ministry of Defense to the development of new equipment that enters service with the Soviet army and navy.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991, the centralized management of industry, including its military-industrial complex, was abolished, the State Commission of the Council of Ministers of the USSR on military-industrial issues and the ministries of defense industries of the USSR were liquidated, enterprises of the defense industries entered the phase deep crisis, the military power of the country and its defense capability decreased from year to year.

Today, all Russian citizens should remember that thanks to the centralized management of the defense and other sectors of the national economy, which made it possible to concentrate production, material and intellectual resources on providing the front with everything necessary, the Soviet Union won the Great Patriotic War, and in the period 1957-1991 created a strategic nuclear-missile parity with the United States and NATO countries, which prevented a new war with global destruction, and ensured 60 years of peace on our soil.

The re-establishment of the Military-Industrial Commission in the Russian Federation in 2006, along with other steps in the field of ensuring the country's military security, testifies to the revival of the attention of the Russian state and society to military-industrial issues and serves as a necessary prerequisite for the development of the domestic military-industrial complex.

The question of which event should be considered a symbol of the emergence of a central government body coordinating the tasks of building the armed forces and the work of the military industry is still open and requires further historical research. The historical process of the development of Russian statehood is in fact not determined, and therefore the events of 1938, 1953, and 1957 can serve as equally symbolic for the issue under consideration.

State Commission of the Council of Ministers of the USSR on military-industrial issues (VPK) - was formed by the Decree of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR in December 1957. In November 1985, by a decree of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR, the military-industrial complex was transformed into the State Commission of the Council of Ministers of the USSR on military-industrial issues. In 1991, the State Commission of the Council of Ministers of the USSR on military-industrial issues was reorganized into the Commission of the Cabinet of Ministers of the USSR on military-industrial issues, and then was liquidated - at that time, the financing of the defense industry was actually carried out "according to the residual principle."

The main tasks of the military-industrial complex were:

organization and coordination of work on the creation of modern types of weapons and military equipment;

coordinating the work of the defense industries and other ministries and departments of the USSR involved in the creation and production of weapons and military equipment;

ensuring, jointly with the State Planning Committee of the USSR, the integrated development of defense industries;

raising the technical level of production, quality and reliability of weapons and military equipment;

operational control over the production activities of the defense industries, including in terms of the production of consumer goods and other civilian products;

preparation, jointly with the State Planning Committee of the USSR and the USSR Ministry of Defense, of Arms Programs, five-year and annual plans for the development, production and production of weapons and military equipment and submitting them for consideration and approval;

preparation and submission, together with the State Planning Committee of the USSR, the Ministries of Defense and Finance, for consideration by the USSR Defense Council and the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, proposals on the target figures for the country's expenditures on the creation and production of weapons, military and other special defense equipment in the corresponding planning periods;

coordination of foreign economic relations of defense industries for military-technical cooperation.

In connection with the reduction of military spending in the 1980s, the military-industrial complex was entrusted with the task of coordinating and implementing work in the field of military production conversion. In this regard, the military-industrial complex was entrusted with a number of important operational tasks for the development of the civilian sector of the national economy:

organization of development and production of equipment for the processing industries of the agro-industrial complex, light industry and trade;

organization of development and production of non-food consumer goods;

organization of technical means and works in the field of communications; coordination of work on the creation of nuclear power facilities;

management of the implementation of programs for the electronization of the national economy; coordination of work in the field of air, cargo and passenger transportation and other tasks.

The authorized functions of the military-industrial complex manifested themselves in cases of disagreement between the ministries of defense industries (MOOP) and the State Planning Committee of the USSR; MOOP and the Ministry of Defense of the USSR, the State Planning Committee of the USSR and the Ministry of Defense of the USSR when considering the current annual plans for the development, production and supply of weapons and military equipment, the creation of mobilization capacities by the military-industrial complex. The decision of the military-industrial complex on controversial issues was, as a rule, final. In some cases, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU made decisions on fundamental issues of a financial and material-resource nature.

The Chairman of the Military-Industrial Complex, as Deputy Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers, had at his disposal the Secretariat, deputies, the Scientific and Technical Council, as well as a well-thematically and functionally balanced apparatus, consisting at different times of 10-15 branch departments.

Since the formation of the military-industrial complex in 1957, it has been successively headed by D.F. Ustinov (1957–1963), L.V. Smirnov (1963–1985), Yu.D. .S. Belousov (1988–1991).

For reference: By the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation in 1999, the Commission on Military-Industrial Issues of the Government of the Russian Federation was formed. In 2006 it was renamed into the Military-Industrial Commission (Chairman - Deputy Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation), whose tasks, in particular, include the formation of the draft State Defense Order.

BACKGROUND TO THE CREATION OF THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMMISSION

Russian historical traditions of managing the military industry from a single center date back to the beginning of the 20th century, when, under the conditions of the First World War, special bodies were created to manage the military economy - special meetings. The main one - "A special meeting to discuss measures for the defense of the state" - was headed by the Minister of War, it was attended by representatives of state bodies (the State Duma, the State Council, etc.), industrialists and entrepreneurs. The tasks of the Special Meeting included the distribution of military orders and control over their implementation at enterprises that produced military products, issues of supplying the army. Bodies of social control - the military-industrial committees - became a kind of intermediary between the state and private industry in the distribution of military orders and the issuance of advances. At the end of May 1915, at the 9th All-Russian Congress of Representatives of Trade and Industry, the Central Military-Industrial Committee was elected, headed by the leader of the Octobrist party A. Guchkov and the progressive A. Konovalov.

After the liquidation of the Supreme Council of National Economy from January 1932, defense enterprises were transferred to the system of the People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry (NKTP). Since the end of 1936, the period of creation of a specialized defense industry within the framework of the People's Commissariat of the Defense Industry (NKOP) began. At the same time, at that time there were mass repressions and a change in the personnel of the heads of the defense industry and the military department. In connection with the outbreak of World War II on September 1, 1939, in the face of a direct military threat, the USSR began accelerated preparations for war, the growth of the armed forces and the increase in the production of weapons. The sign of the new period was such facts as the adoption of an emergency mobilization plan - MP-1 for the "special" IV quarter of 1939, the reorganization of management carried out in the same year - the division of the NKOP into specialized people's commissariats: aviation industry, weapons, ammunition, shipbuilding industry.

ON THE EVE OF THE WAR: THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMMISSION IS A MOBILIZATION BODY

Mobilization work related to preparations for war was a "bottleneck" in the system of Soviet defense development in the 1930s. The leaders of the military and industrial departments advocated the creation of a single "mobilization" body that would concentrate the functions of preparing industry and the economy as a whole for war. The Military-Industrial Commission established in 1938 under the Defense Committee under the Council of People's Commissars (KO under the Council of People's Commissars) became such a body.

The original name of this body is the Permanent Mobilization Commission under the CO SNK. At its first meeting, on May 4, 1938, K.E. Voroshilov, N.I. Ezhov, M.M. Kaganovich, P.I. Smirnov, N.A. Voznesensky (Chairman of the State Planning Commission), B.M. Shaposhnikov, M.I. Kulik, I.F. Tevosyan and others. Thus, the commission included representatives of the military leadership, industry leaders, and security agencies.

On June 14, 1938, a meeting of the commission took place under its new name - the Military Industrial Commission. At the meeting, among other issues, it was decided to accept the proposed L.M. Kaganovich project "On the tasks of the Military-Industrial Commission under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and on the construction of its apparatus".

According to this document, the Military-Industrial Commission was the working body of the Defense Committee under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR. The main task of the military-industrial complex was "the mobilization and preparation of industry, both defense and non-defense, to fully ensure the fulfillment of the plans and tasks of the Defense Committee for the production and supply of weapons to the Red Army and the Navy."

The functions of the VPK included:

Consideration of mobilization applications;

Checking the calculations of needs and consumption rates for mob applications;

Distribution of mobilization tasks between the people's commissariats of the Union and Union republics and verification of the correctness of the distribution of orders between enterprises;

Drawing up a consolidated mobilization plan for industry in all its sections;

Coordination of the mobilization-industrial plan with the national economic plan (together with the Mobsector of the State Planning Committee of the USSR);

Inspection of the production capacities of enterprises, determination of their mobilization purpose, development of measures to increase new production capacities, assimilate civilian industries and their correct implementation;

Verification of the implementation of the mobilization plan and the program of current military orders by enterprises and people's commissariats;

Development of plans for logistics, mobilization tasks for all major types of supply (equipment, raw materials, tools, semi-finished products, etc.);

Establishment of a production zoning system to reduce transportation and achieve completeness of production;

Development of measures to increase the output of the main enterprises by cooperating with allied enterprises;

Development of a plan and measures to provide the mobilized industry with labor force and engineering and technical personnel in wartime;

Development of norms for the accumulation of industrial mobile stocks, checking their availability and quality, establishing rules for the storage and refreshment of mobile stocks;

Carrying out, by special decision of the CO, experimental mobilizations of individual industrial enterprises or entire industrial sectors;

Development of questions of application in the military industry of any technical inventions, in particular, the replacement of acutely scarce materials in the production of weapons;

Development of instructions on military mobilization work in people's commissariats, main departments, trusts and enterprises; control over the work of military departments in the above bodies, setting up the selection and training of personnel of moborgans and maintaining military-industrial secrets.

The military-industrial complex consisted of the chairman of the commission in the rank of deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR (L.M. Kaganovich became the chairman), two of his deputies and a secretary, as well as seventeen permanent members of the commission. The latter included representatives of the Armed Forces of the USSR and the NKVD (as the main customers of military products) - People's Commissar of Defense, People's Commissar of the Navy, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, chiefs of: the General Staff of the Red Army, the Main Naval Headquarters, the Red Army Air Force, the Red Army Artillery Directorate, the Red Army Armored Directorate; leaders of the defense and heavy industries: people's commissars for the aviation industry, shipbuilding, ammunition, armaments, the chemical industry, heavy engineering, medium engineering, general engineering; as well as the chairman of the State Planning Committee of the USSR.

According to paragraph "6" of the said document, the decisions of the Military-Industrial Commission needed the approval of the Chairman of the Defense Committee and only after that were they binding.

To carry out daily work within the military-industrial complex, a secretariat was allocated, consisting of an organizational and planning sector, industry sectors and the general part of the secretariat.

The functions of the sectoral sectors included the development of the entire range of issues related to the mobilization preparation of a given branch of production, and in particular:

"- taking into account and identifying the existing production capacities of the relevant industry and comparing them with the volume of the mob application for this type of weapon;

Preparation of conclusions on the mob application for this type of weapon;

Finding additional production capacities and developing measures to increase new capacities;

Development of issues of production cooperation of enterprises;

Placing a mob application and checking the mob readiness of enterprises;

Generalization of the summary need for equipment, raw materials, tools, labor, etc.;

Introduction into production of new technical improvements and highly profitable technological processes, as well as the development of issues related to the replacement of severely scarce and imported materials;

Determination of the norms for the accumulation of mobile reserves and control over their creation and refreshment;

Preparation of decisions on the given branch of production and control over the timeliness and quality of their execution;

Monitoring and ensuring the implementation of the program of current military orders in this industry;

Monitoring the development of issues of unloading and evacuation of industrial enterprises stationed in threatened zones.

In addition, the military-industrial complex as a whole was supposed to act as an "arbiter" in resolving disputes between departments. In the decision of the military-industrial complex of September 27 on the issue of "Assembling an artillery round", in particular, it was stated: "If there are disagreements on the supply issues between the people's commissar of the defense industry and the people's commissars of other supplying people's commissariats, disputed issues are resolved by the military-industrial complex."

The ideas of military mobilization enjoyed well-organized support "from the field" - from factories, from grass-roots mobilization bodies. A striking example is the letter of V.M. Molotov, head of the motorized department of the road engineering plant in Rybinsk (People's Commissariat for Mechanical Engineering), dated December 1, 1938. The very tone of the letter and the phraseology of the author were characteristic of the era: “It is enough to read newspapers to see and understand the alarming and ominous nature of the current international situation. While maintaining the current capitalist under a capitalist encirclement, a lasting, lasting peace is impossible - each of us understands this, and therefore we hear everywhere that war is inevitable, that we must all build, create and strengthen the defense capability of our country. really.

The complete stagnation of mobilization work at our plant gives us the right to believe that there was a similar stagnation at other plants, the Main Offices and the People's Commissariats: Appeals from our plant to the Main Office on this issue received almost no answers. During business trips to Moscow, both in the special department of your Glavka and in the Military Department of NKMash, you hear that new mobplans are being drawn up and nothing more. Such conversations have been dragging on for almost a year, and things are still there. It doesn't work that way.

: For all seven years of my work in the special department of this plant, only once was a survey of the state of the mobilization work of the plant and this survey was carried out in 1935, i.e. during the work of the wrecking organization headed by Pyatakov.

The conclusion of the author of the letter also sounded in the spirit of the times: “The above chaotic state in the mobilization work of industry, the absence of a definite system and directives, causes serious concern and makes us turn to you for help, since you must always be on the alert, you must always be ready to meet the enemy, the enemy strong and not sleeping - this is how our Party teaches us, and this is how Comrade STALIN and our Government teach us.

During the war years, all the functions of managing the defense industry were transferred to the State Defense Committee (GKO).

AFTER THE WAR: THE WAY TO UNITY

In the first post-war years, there was no single body for managing military-industrial affairs. By a resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of Ministers of the USSR in February 1947, branch bureaus for industry and agriculture were created under the Council of Ministers of the USSR. Nine industry bureaus, including those for mechanical engineering and shipbuilding headed by V.A. Malyshev, were engaged in defense industries. The supervision of the Ministry of the Armed Forces was carried out directly by the chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, and from April 1949 this work was entrusted to N.A. Bulganin, including responsibility for the work of the ministries of the aviation industry and armaments, removed from the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Mechanical Engineering and Shipbuilding.

In May 1948, the leaders of the defense industry D.F. Ustinov and M.Z. Saburov took the initiative to create in the government a single center for military and military-industrial affairs. The authority of this body was to include the current issues of the military industry, the development and maintenance of mobilization plans, the creation of new types of weapons, and the coordination of the work of the defense industries. According to the defense industry leaders, the need to create such a body is long overdue.

These actions were a sign of the formation of a community of interests among the leaders of the military-industrial complex. In practice, this resulted in the creation in 1951 of the Bureau for Military and Military-Industrial Issues under the Presidium of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, chaired by N.A. Bulganin, which operated from February 1951 to October 1952. A.M. Vasilevsky - Minister of the Armed Forces of the USSR, D.F. Ustinov - Minister of Armaments of the USSR, M.V. Khrunichev - Minister of the Aviation Industry of the USSR, I.S. Yumashev - Naval Minister of the USSR.

After the death of I.V. Stalin, in the conditions of the struggle for power, there were a series of reorganizations and the search for forms of economic management, including the military sectors. In 1953, the branch bureaus under the Council of Ministers of the USSR were abolished. In 1953 - 1956 the issues of coordination of the activities of the defense industries were dealt with by the deputy chairmen of the Council of Ministers of the USSR - N.A. Bulganin, V.A. Malyshev, M.Z. Saburov, M.V. Khrunichev. The Bureau of the USSR Council of Ministers carried out general supervision and resolution of fundamental and intersectoral issues of the defense industries and the Ministry of Defense.

In December 1956, the functions of managing the defense industries were transferred to the State Economic Commission. This body can be called the predecessor of the Military Industrial Commission. The State Economic Commission prepared proposals on issues of military equipment, carried out operational management of the defense industries. The Commission was given the right to issue orders and resolutions in the field of industry, binding. In December 1957, the State Economic Commission was liquidated. On December 6, 1957, the Commission on Military-Industrial Issues was established under the Presidium of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. The role of the commission as a coordinator was especially high under the conditions of N.S. Khrushchev on the decentralization of economic management - through the system of "sovnarkhozes" - in 1957-1958. However, even after the restoration of the ministries in 1965, the commission retained its functions and became the most stable organizational form for coordinating the multifaceted activities of the country's military-industrial complex, right up to the end of the Soviet period.

This is how the main tasks and functions of the commission were described in the book "Domestic military-industrial complex" published in 2005, written by the "defensemen" themselves:

"The main tasks of the military-industrial complex were:

Organization and coordination of work on the creation of modern types of weapons and military equipment;

Coordination of the work of the defense industries, other ministries and departments of the USSR involved in the creation and production of weapons and military equipment;

Ensuring, together with the State Planning Committee of the USSR, the integrated development of defense industries;

Raising the technical level of production, quality and reliability of weapons and military equipment;

Operational management and control over the activities of the defense industries, including in terms of the creation, production and supply of weapons and military equipment, the production of consumer goods and other civilian products in volumes equal in value to the wage fund of enterprises in the industry, as well as control over activities other industries on these issues;

Preparation, together with the USSR State Planning Committee and the USSR Ministry of Defense, of armament programs, five-year and annual plans for the creation, production and production of weapons and military equipment and their submission for consideration and approval;

Preparation and submission, jointly with the State Planning Committee of the USSR, the Ministries of Defense and Finance, for consideration by the USSR Defense Council and the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, proposals on the target figures for the country's expenditures on the creation and production of weapons, military and other special defense equipment in the corresponding planning periods;

Coordination of foreign economic relations of defense industries for military-technical cooperation".

In cases of disagreement between the ministries of defense industries, the State Planning Committee of the USSR and the Ministry of Defense of the USSR "when considering the military-industrial complex of current annual plans for the production and supply of weapons and military equipment, plans and programs for weapons, research and development work on weapons and military equipment, the creation mobilization capacities, as well as in the development of these plans, taking into account their implementation," the military-industrial complex had to make the final decision. Sometimes the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU made the final decision on fundamental issues of a financial and material-resource nature.

In different periods of the work of the military-industrial complex, as a rule, it included the deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR - chairman of the military-industrial complex, first deputy chairman of the military-industrial complex - in the rank of minister of the USSR, deputy chairmen of the military-industrial complex, first deputy chairman of the State Planning Committee of the USSR, in charge of defense industry, ministers of defense industries industry, First Deputy Minister of Defense of the USSR - Chief of the General Staff of the USSR Armed Forces, Deputy Minister of Defense of the USSR for armaments, as well as well-known and authoritative scientists and industrial organizers.

Meetings of the military-industrial complex for the entire post-war period were always held in the Oval Hall of the Kremlin once a week.

"By the mid-80s, the military-industrial complex had 15 departments involved in the creation of weapons and military equipment, analysis of the production activities of ministries and the economic efficiency of the military-industrial complex, the introduction into production of the achievements of scientific and technological progress, advanced technologies, military-technical cooperation with foreign states."

The staff of the military-industrial complex apparatus included representatives of the main branches of the complex: "50% came from ministries from senior positions, 10% from the USSR State Planning Committee, 6% from the USSR Ministry of Defense, 34% from research institutes, design bureaus and factories." The most numerous were the leaders of the defense industry and the scientific and technical elite, the smallest percentage came from people from the military department. Scientific and technical personnel, including prominent scientists, participated in the work of the Scientific and Technical Council, which operated under the military-industrial complex.

Since the formation of the military-industrial complex in 1957, it has been successively headed by Dmitry Fedorovich Ustinov (1957-1963), Leonid Vasilievich Smirnov (1963-1985), Yuri Dmitrievich Maslyukov (1985-1988), Igor Sergeevich Belousov (1988- 1991).

D.F. USTINOV - THE MAIN LEADER OF THE SOVIET MIC

On the eve of the "sovnarkhoz" reform, N.S. Khrushchev, in 1957, Minister of Defense Industry D.F. Ustinov, together with a group of military-industrial leaders of the USSR, turned to Khrushchev with a note in which an attempt was made to justify the inexpediency of dispersing the main core of the ministries of the defense industry among the economic councils.

However, the transformations of 1957-1958. nevertheless, they also affected the "defense industry". At the same time, D.F. Ustinov was appointed chairman of the Commission on military-industrial issues, which significantly strengthened his status. His leadership of the commission contributed to the transformation of the latter into the most influential body for coordinating the efforts of the military and defense-industrial departments, which it remained until the mid-80s. Symbolic was the coincidence of the abbreviated name of the Military-Industrial Commission - VPK - with the acronym of the military-industrial complex, a reflection of the influence of the power of which it was. For three decades, not a single important decision on "defense" issues was taken without the knowledge of the commission.

In 1963, Ustinov became chairman of the restored Supreme Council of the National Economy (VSNKh). This appointment caused a stir in the West: observers decided that now the USSR would only produce missiles.

After Khrushchev's removal, Ustinov continued to move up the corporate ladder. In September 1965, at the Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU, the issue of "improving the management of industry, improving planning and strengthening economic incentives for industrial production" was considered, and Ustinov was elected Secretary of the Central Committee for coordinating the activities of scientific institutions, design bureaus, industrial enterprises of the defense industry.

According to the Soviet "defencemen", it was under Dmitry Fedorovich Ustinov that the foundations of the business style of work of the Defense Industry Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU were formed: "For D.F. Ustinov, there were no secondary issues, he used the expression:" finalize the issue until the ringing ". Of course, the direct management of the department was carried out by its head, but D.F. Ustinov carefully and in detail discussed the state of affairs in certain areas with the deputy heads of the department, heads of sectors. all places where military equipment was created and tested.

In general, Ustinov's exceptional status as the first leader of the military-industrial complex was associated not only with his character and efficiency, but also with his unique position in the defense industry, which allowed him to thoroughly study the entire system of the USSR military-industrial complex. Within this system, despite its corporate integrity, a dualism persisted between the two main branches - the military and the "civilian." From this point of view, the appointment of Ustinov to the post of Minister of Defense in 1976 can be viewed as a victory for the unity of the military-industrial complex, a partial overcoming of this dualism in favor of common corporate interests. Interestingly, one of the arguments of L.I. Brezhnev, it was precisely the civil status of the latter that turned out to be in favor of Ustinov's nomination to this post: it was "good, from the point of view of the West," since it confirmed the peace-loving foreign policy of the USSR.

More important is another series of arguments put forward by both Brezhnev and other members of the Politburo - Yu.V. Andropov, M.A. Suslov, V.V. Grishin: Ustinov was closely associated with all branches of the military-industrial complex: as a member of the Politburo, he was well acquainted with the work of the Ministry of Defense, with military personnel; he also knew design bureaus, leading designers, and defense enterprises. For his part, "everyone in the military and everyone in the Party" knew him well, and he enjoyed authority in various parts of the military-industrial complex.

* * *

The procedure for making decisions on military-industrial issues, largely established since the 1960s, demonstrated the unity and joint work of all the main divisions of the Soviet military-industrial complex. The final decisions usually came out in the form of joint resolutions of the Central Committee of the Party and the Council of Ministers of the USSR, which carried various classifications of secrecy and were secretly sent to the interested departments. The same special decisions of the highest authorities formalized any changes in policy related to the activities of the military-industrial complex. However, this was preceded by a long work of a number of departments.

Draft decisions were developed at the initial stage by those scientific and production units that were engaged in the development of a particular weapon system (some technical orders were also developed by scientific and technical organizations of the military department). Then all interested ministries submitted their proposals for the project to the Military Industrial Commission, which was the main coordinating body of the entire complex. The Commission made a lot of efforts, trying to harmonize the provisions of the document with the interests and capabilities of all interested departments, scientific and technical and scientific and production organizations. The final version of the project prepared by the commission was then sent to the Defense Industry Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU, where it was subjected to additions and adjustments and issued in the form of a joint directive of the main organs of the party and state leadership. Such was the general pattern of decision-making in this area during the period of the "developed military-industrial complex," when the latter occupied a leading position in the economy of the USSR. The re-establishment of the Military-Industrial Commission in 2006, along with other steps in the field of defense, testifies to the gradual revival of the interest of the Russian leadership in military-industrial issues and promises new prospects for the revival of the domestic defense industry.

The entire history of Soviet power can be conditionally, but quite accurately, divided into four periods: war, preparation for war, again war, and again preparation for war. It is clear that with such a history, the military-industrial complex (MIC) had to play a special role in the USSR - the role of the core of the entire economy, its system-forming principle. As a result, according to many economists and historians, it was the military-industrial complex that ruined the Soviet Union, becoming an unbearable burden for the national economy. At the same time, the military-industrial complex of the USSR is something more than military production, since it covered not only the defense industries proper for the production of weapons, but also a significant part of the civilian industries that produced dual-use products. As a result, the Soviet military-industrial complex included, in particular, all high-tech, innovative enterprises that simultaneously produced a large range of civilian products. Therefore, the history of the Soviet military-industrial complex can be viewed as the history of the entire Soviet economy. This is what the book of Nikolai Simonov, a leading researcher at the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, is about.

The revolution of 1917 was largely predetermined by the defeats that tsarist Russia suffered on the fields of the First World War. The country approached it unprepared, primarily in military-technical terms. And although by 1917 the military-industrial complex of Russia had grown significantly, it was already too late: the tired army was extremely demoralized and preferred the revolution to the continuation of the war. The Bolsheviks took advantage of the possibilities of the military-industrial complex that had been formed during the war, and in many respects, it was thanks to the fact that it was in their hands that they won. However, the destruction during the two wars was so great that after the civil war, Soviet Russia did not have the opportunity to maintain a full-fledged military-industrial complex, and it was significantly reduced. Only by 1927, after the NEP restoration of the Soviet economy, did the country's leadership turn to the problems of the military-industrial complex in full measure. It was confident that the capitalist encirclement would not put up with the existence of a proletarian state. Although the blow was expected not at all from those countries with which they had to fight in the future, but from Poland, France, and Great Britain. And there were reasons for that. On May 27, 1927, the British Conservative government announced the severance of diplomatic and trade relations between Great Britain and the USSR, and on June 1, 1927, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks issued an appeal calling on the Soviet people to be ready to repel imperialist aggression. And the comparison of the Soviet military-industrial complex with the military-industrial complex of Western countries made a depressing impression. As the author notes, compared with France alone, “the military industry for the production of combat aircraft was seven times smaller. For tanks - 20 times less ... for artillery - three times less. And in 1929, called "the year of the great turning point", the Politburo of the Central Committee sets the task for the armed forces: "In terms of numbers - not to be inferior to our potential opponents ..., in terms of technology - to be stronger ...".

Adopted in 1928