Commissar

A commissar is an official charged with political oversight and education within a state that uses party discipline to control the military or civil apparatus. The term is most associated with the Soviet Union, where political officers were embedded in military units as political commissars and in civil organs as party functionaries.

In the military, a political commissar or politruk served alongside line officers, with duties including maintaining political loyalty, supervising the party cell within a unit, disseminating party propaganda, organizing ideological training, and reporting on morale and reliability to the commander and the Communist Party organization. The arrangement, often described as dual command, varied by era and army.

In the Soviet system, commissars came under the authority of the Communist Party, especially the Central Committee and regional committees, rather than strictly the military hierarchy. During the early Soviet period and the Great Patriotic War, they played central roles in political education and discipline. After the war, reforms altered some formal powers, but political officers remained a standard element of the military structure in many periods, and similar roles appeared in other socialist states.

Historically, the term also referred to civil "commissariats," government bodies responsible for state functions and party oversight, such as the people's commissariats of the early Soviet era. In modern usage, the term is often historical or used in analysis of Soviet governance and in cultural depictions.