Banks under Socialism, state institutions which systematically serve the circulation of money, and exercise accounting and supervisory control over the economic activity of enterprises by means of credit, accounting and cash operations. As the instruments of the reverse redistribution of monetary means, the banks accumulate the temporarily free monetary resources of the economy and, in accordance with credit plans, accomplish the direct, specific and reverse short-term and long-term credit provision to the economy, and also provide loans to the people for their consumer needs. From the state budget and special funds, the banks finance capital construction without return. Through its banks the socialist state provides credit to other countries, above all the socialist and developing countries. The interest rate charged for credit finances the running costs of the banks and comprises their profit which is a source of credit. In their capacity as the accounting centres of the socialist economy, the banks organise and draw up the clearing operations between enterprises for material wealth and services, enterprises’ accounts with the financial and banking system, and the accounts for trade and other economic relations with other countries. The banks fulfil the issue and cash operations for the economy and the population, as well as the systematic regulation of money circulation on the basis of the cash plan of the issue bank, and concentrate and use the funds of foreign currency. In Lenin’s definition, the banks under socialism are the machinery for the public "accounting and regulation of the socialistically organised economic life of the country as a whole" (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 223). In systematically carrying out credit, accounting and issue and cash operations for the economy the banks conduct economic supervision over 26 the production, distribution and use of the social product, and facilitate the raising of the efficiency of social production in the interests of building communism and of greater public well-being. The organisational principles of the socialist banking system are: state monopoly of banking activities and a uniform state credit policy for the entire country; democratic centralism in bank management; concentration of the country’s money circulation in the all-state central bank with the extensive development of clearings. The organisational structure of the banking system and methods of crediting and accounting of the different socialist countries have their own distinctive features. The Soviet banking system comprises the USSR State Bank ( Cosbank), the Bank for Financing Capital Investments (Stroibank) and the Bank for Foreign Trade (Vneshtorgbank). The USSR State Bank is the country’s sole issue, credit, accounting and cashing centre. The credit investments of Gosbank account for about 90 per cent of the credit investments of the entire Soviet banking system into the country’s economy.