Council of Labor and Defense

The Council of Labor and Defense (Russian: Совет труда и обороны (СТО) Sovet truda i oborony, Latin acronym: STO), first established as the Council of Workers' and Peasants' Defense in November 1918, was an agency responsible for the central management of the economy and production of military materiel in the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and later in the Soviet Union. During the Russian Civil War of 1917-1922 the council served as an emergency "national economic cabinet", issuing emergency decrees in an effort to sustain industrial production for the Red Army amidst economic collapse. In 1920–23 it existed on the rights of the commission of the Russian Sovnarkom and after 1923 of the Soviet Council of People's Commissariats.^[1] The Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union abolished the council on 28 April 1937.^[1] Its functions were split between the Economic Council of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union [ru] and the Defense Committee (Russian: Комитет обороны, romanized: Komitet oborony) of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union.

The chairperson of the Council ex officio was a chairperson of the Council of People's Commissars.^[1] The STO, a commission of the Council of People's Commissars, included among its executive body such top-ranking Bolshevik leaders as V. I. Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and Joseph Stalin, who oversaw a burgeoning professional apparatus. In March 1920 the Council of Workers' and Peasants' Defense became the Council of Labour and Defense. Following the formation of the USSR in 1922 the council was renamed in 1923 as the Council of Labour and Defense of the USSR (Russian: Совет труда и обороны СССР, romanized: Sovyet truda i oborony SSSR); its economic planning and regulatory roles expanded to encompass the entire country. As the first central economic-planning authority in Soviet Russia, the Council of Labor and Defense served as the institutional precursor to the better-known Soviet planning-authority of later years, Gosplan, launched in August 1923 as a subcommittee of STO.