Sovnarkhoz

Sovnarkhoz, (sovet narodnogo hozyaistva, "council of people's economy), usually translated as Regional Economic Council, is an organization of the Soviet Union to manage separate economic regions.

Sovnarkhozes were introduced by Nikita Khrushchev in July 1957 in an attempt to struggle the centralization and departmentalism of ministries. The USSR was initiall divide inot 105 economic regions with sovharknozes as planning and operational management. Simultaneously, a big number of ministries were shut down.

In practice, the ministerial compantmentalism was replaced by territoriality (mestnichestvo, in Russian economic slang), miscoordination and duplication of efforts, despite making the failure to fulfil obligations before onther sovnarknozes a criminal offence.

Despite several attempts to patch this new organizational structure, it failed in its purpose to increase the productivity of the planned economy.