Korelsky, V. F. Fish, fishermen and fish industry in Russia / V. F. Korelsky. - Bremen : Krebs, [1993?]-.

If we make a short excursus into the history of the making and development of our fish industry, the documents and facts will testify that during the last century the government saw the existence of the fish industry as a single industrial organism irrespective of the location of fishing grounds. Thus, from the beginning of the 20th century, the general management of fishing and sea animal hunting in the Russian Empire was carried out by the Ministry of Agriculture and State Property, the Department of Agriculture. The Department of Agriculture had fishing, animal hunting subdivisions, which directed (as concerns the legislative and technological parts) fishing, sea animal hunting, and the extraction of other sea products, worked out laws and issued instructions on fishing and explained the resolutions concerning fisheries, the study of fishing and sea animal hunting, fish-breeding and lake economy. By the Decision of the People's Commissariate of Agriculture and of the People's Commissariate of Foodstuffs of December 9,1918, for the management of fishing, the organization of fisheries and the direction of activity of fish industry, the Chief Administration of Fishery and Fish Industry, Glavryba, was established affiliated to the People’s Commissariate of Foodstuffs. Except for the periods of existence of Councils of National Economy, the Fish Industry of our country developed as a single whole and was managed via some state structure—the Department, People’s Commissariate, State Committee, the Ministry—and this explained a rapid development of the industry and its being an equal partner of other states in the field of fishery. In the last decade, the Fishing Ministry of the USSR was transformed from the state-republican administrative organ into a state administrative organ, and, consequently, the republican organs of management of the fish industry in the system of the USSR Ministry of Fish Industry were liquidated and the subdivisions constituting it became subject to the republican agro-industrial committees. The republican organs of administration and the constituent enterprises aimed at fishing and fish-breeding in inland waters, and this meant the use of mainly local fish supplies by the fish processing enterprises. However, this state of affairs was later essentially altered, since with time, these enterprises began using ocean fish supplies to a large degree. The administration of the republican fish economy organs tried to get access to the sea and ocean fish grounds, or to increase the quotas for fishing in these regions. Especially persistent was the administration of the former Ministry of the Fish Industry of the Russian Federation. At the same time, the USSR Ministry of Fish Industry, which was responsible for the development and the results of economic activity of enterprises and organizations of the fish industry in the other Soviet republics, had practically no real levers of control on their development and the economic activity since their many important functions were in the competence of the Councils of Ministers of the republics of the USSR, which not infrequently used the “principle of remainder” relative to the solution of problems connected with the development of the commercial fishing and fish-breeding in inland waters. Under these conditions, it was quite logical to liquidate the republican organs of management of the fish economy and the submission of the majority of their constituent subdivisions to the republican agro-industrial complexes. 4 2