Written: December 1/14, 1917
First Published: Sobranie Uzakonenii i Rasporiazhenii Rabochego i Krestianskogo Pravitelstva, 1917, No. 5, pp. 73-74.
Source: James Bunyan and H.H. Fisher, The Bolshevik revolution, 1917-1918: Documents and materials, Stanford University Press; London: H. Milford, Oxford University Press, 1934, pp. 314-315.
Translated: Emanuel Aronsberg
Transcription/Markup: Zdravko Saveski
Online Version: marxists.org 2017
1. The Supreme Council of National Economy is established [as an organ] attached to the Soviet of People's Commissars.
2. The work of the Supreme Council of National Economy is to organize the national economy and state finances. With that in view the Supreme Council of National Economy will draw up general standards and plans for the regulation of the economic life of the country, coordinating and unifying the activities of the local and central regulating organs (committees on fuel, metals, transport, food-supply committee, and others) that are attached to the People's Commissariats (trade and industry, food, agriculture, finance, war-navy, etc.), the All-Russian Soviet of Workers' Control, the factory-shop committees, and the trade unions.
3. The Supreme Council of National Economy has the right to confiscate, requisition, sequester, and consolidate various branches of industry, commerce, and other enterprises in the field of production, distribution, and state finance.
4. The Supreme Council of National Economy is to take charge of all existing institutions for the regulation of the economic life and has the right to reorganize them.
5. The Supreme Council of National Economy is to include [representatives of] (a) the All-Russian Soviet of Workers' Control, .... (b) the Commissariats, and (c) experts invited in an advisory capacity.
6. The Supreme Council of National Economy is divided into sections and departments (fuel, metal, demobilization [of industry], finance, etc.). The number of the sections and departments and their respective functions are determined at a general meeting of the Supreme Council of National Economy.
7. The different departments of the Supreme Council of National Economy occupy themselves with the regulation of specific branches of the national economy, and prepare measures for the respective commissariats.
8. The Supreme Council of National Economy selects from its own body a bureau of fifteen members to co-ordinate the work of the different sections and departments and to carry out the tasks that need immediate attention.
9. All legislative measures and important undertakings having to do with the regulation of the economic life as a whole are brought before the Sovnarkom through the Supreme Council of National Economy.
10. The Supreme Council of National Economy co-ordinates and directs the activities of the local economic departments of the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers', and Peasants' Deputies, including the local organs of Workers' Control, as well as local agencies of the Commissariats of Labor, Trades and Industry, Food, etc.
In the absence of local agencies referred to above, the Supreme Council of National Economy organizes those of its own.
All the rulings of the Supreme Council of National Economy are binding on the economic departments of the local Soviets as the agents of the Supreme Council of National Economy.
YA. SVERDLOV, Chairman of the Central Executive Committee
V. ULIANOV (LENIN), President of the Sovnarkom
L. TROTSKY, I. STALIN, AVILOV (GLEBOV), People's Commissars