Ministry of Agriculture and Food (Soviet Union)

The People's Commissariat for Agriculture, abbreviated as Narkomzem was established in the RSFSR following the October Revolution. When the RSFSR joined the other Soviet republics to form the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), agriculture was to be an area of policy (along with education, health, etc.) governed exclusively by the individual union republics and Narkomzem remained a Commissariat of the RSFSR and other respective Soviet Socialist Republics.^[1] Coinciding with the onset of the policy of mass collectivisation of agriculture and the Five Year Plan, it was decided to create a union-level People's Commissariat for Agriculture of the USSR in 1929 which would exist above the republic-level People's Commissariats of Agriculture. Its headquarters building was located at Orlikov Pereulok, 1, Moscow, designed by Aleksey Shchusev in 1928. Narkomzem was reformed as the Soviet Ministry of Agriculture and Food (Minsel'khoz) in 1946.