Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Soviet Union)
foreign affairs ministry of the Soviet Union
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Russian: Министерство иностранных дел СССР) was founded on 6 July 1923. It had three names during its existence: People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs (1923–1946), Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1946–1991) and Ministry of External Relations (1991). It was one of the most important government offices in the Soviet Union. The Ministry was led by the Minister of Foreign Affairs prior to 1991, and a Minister of External Relations in 1991. Every leader of the Ministry was nominated by the Chairman of the Council of Ministers and confirmed by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, and was a member of the Council of Ministers.
The Ministry of External Relations negotiated diplomatic treaties, handled Soviet foreign affairs along with the International Department of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and aided in the guidance of world communism and anti-imperialism, both strong themes of Soviet policy. Before Mikhail Gorbachev became CPSU General Secretary, the organisational structure of the MER mostly stayed the same. As many other Soviet agencies, the MER had an inner-policy group known as the Collegium, made up of the minister, the two first deputy ministers and nine deputy ministers, among others. Each deputy minister usually headed his own department.
Duties and responsibilities
The primary duty of the foreign ministry was directing the general line of Soviet foreign policy.
The public source identifies “Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Soviet Union)” as foreign affairs ministry of the Soviet Union. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Ministry, Foreign and Affairs.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1959942. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1923, 1946 and 1991.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Soviet Union)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.