The Gosbank (Госбанк, ГосударственныйбанкСССР, Gosudarstvenny Bank SSSR-Bank of State of the Soviet Union) was the central bank of the Soviet Union and the only bank of the Thirties until 1987.

Gosbank was one of the three economic authorities in Russia, the others being the Gosplan (Committee of State of planning) and the Gossnab (Committee of State for the technical supplies of Material).

Gosbank did not have the role of a commercial bank to the direction where one usually hears it in Occident. In theory, it was about an instrument for the policy of the government. Instead of judging solvency of the borrower, Gosbank provided funds to " industries, groups and individuals favorisés" , according to the instructions of the central government.

The Central state used also Gosbank as tool to impose a central control on industry, by using the assessments and the registers of transactions to supervise the activity of industries and their adequacy with the plans and the directives.

With the approach of the collapse of the USSR, one of the mesues of the program of Perestroika of Mikhail Gorbatchev was the formation of other banks such as Promstroybank (Bank of Industrial premises of the USSR), Zhilstoybank (Bank of Residential Construction of the USSR), Agrobank (Agricultural bank of the USSR), Vneshekonombank (Bank of Foreign trade of the USSR), and Sberbank (Bank of Saving of the USSR). Sberbank remains still one of the more Russian large banks .

See too

Related articles

• Soviet Union
• Andrei Kozlov

External references

• Gosbank, the Soviet central bank