From munitions to material supply, the technocrat who managed the arteries of the planned economy
When Khrushchev's 1957 Sovnarkhoz reform displaced dozens of union deputy ministers to the provinces, Martynov was no exception. Sent to Tashkent, he said: 'It wasn't an assignment I sought, but you go where the work is.'
A Soviet economic administrator who managed munitions supply as Deputy People's Commissar of Ammunition during World War II, then spent twenty years at Gossnab, the State Committee for Material-Technical Supply, making the planned economy's distribution of industrial goods actually work. A worker's son who rose from director of the Tula Arms Plant to Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers and Chairman of Gossnab (1976–1985), he was a hands-on technocrat who underpinned the material base of Soviet industry across five decades.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1925–1929Assistant machinist → electrician
- 1929–1933Electromechanic, foreman, head of energy dept, aircraft plant, Moscow
- 1933–1934Cadet, Yeysk Naval Aviation School
- 1934–1939Energy dept head → chief engineer → deputy director, arms plant, Tatar ASSR
- 1939–1941Director, Tula Arms Plant
- 1941–1946Deputy People's Commissar of Ammunition, USSR
- 1946–1953Deputy → First Deputy Minister of Agricultural Machine Building
- 1953–1955Collegium member → Mobilization Dept head, automotive & farm machinery ministry
- 1955–1957Deputy Minister of Tractor and Agricultural Machine Building
- 1957–1960Deputy Chairman → Chairman, Tashkent Sovnarkhoz
- 1960–1962Chairman, Sovnarkhoz of the Uzbek SSR
- 1962–1964Secretary, CC CP Uzbekistan; Chairman, Bureau for Industry & Construction
- 1964–1965Deputy Chairman, SNKh USSR — Minister of the USSR
- 1965–1976First Deputy Chairman, Gossnab USSR
- 1976–1985Deputy Chairman, USSR Council of Ministers & Chairman, Gossnab
Related historical events
Gossnab: Running the Planned Economy's Material Distribution for Twenty Years
Martynov's lasting place in Soviet economic history rests on his twenty years, from 1965 to 1985, at the State Committee for Material-Technical Supply, the Gossnab. Gossnab was the institution that stood in for the market inside the planned economy, allocating tens of thousands of industrial products among enterprises. When Khrushchev's sovnarkhoz reform had severed supply chains through regional decentralization, the 1965 Kosygin reform abolished the sovnarkhozes and restored the branch ministries, recreating Gossnab as a separate material-supply sector. Martynov entered as first deputy chairman under its first chairman, Dymshits, and ran the apparatus's practical work, then in 1976 rose to chairman with a concurrent post as deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers, overseeing the whole flow of goods. The essence of his job was 'rationing within the plan.' Without prices and profits as signals, he had to allocate steel, cement, grain, and machinery to enterprises according to the material-balance tables drawn up by Gosplan, and Gossnab was the executive organ of that allocation. While the Kosygin reform tried to plant market principles through enterprise autonomy and profit indicators, Martynov ran the opposite direction, centralized material distribution, and it was a vindication for the man displaced by Khrushchev's decentralization experiment, returning to grasp the central logistics arteries once more. The Hero of Socialist Labor title he received in 1980, on his seventieth birthday, rewarded the steady operation of this rationing apparatus.