Commissars
Outside the military educational institutions in the Russian army until 1917, there was no system of educational work in its modern form, nor special structures for the organization and conduct of such work. The upbringing and training of personnel involved commanders of all levels. At the same time, in 1766 Empress Catherine II approved the charter of the Imperial land gentry cadet corps, which for the first time introduced the position of officer-educators.
In addition to officers, the clergymen historically participated in the upbringing of personnel. So, in the XVII century priests took part in the military campaigns of the Strelets regiments. In 1890, the decree of Emperor Alexander III established the Office of the Churches and clergy of the military department, headed by the protopresbyter of the military and naval departments. Military priests were equated with military ranks and enjoyed appropriate privileges. The first normative document on the organization of educational work with the lower ranks of the army and navy was a special supplement to the Internal Service Charter approved in 1910.
After the February revolution in March 1917, the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers 'and Soldiers' Deputies ruled "with all military units and under military authorities" to have commissioners - representatives of the political leadership of the state, who were supposed to carry out political monitoring of personnel. In August of the same year, the Political Administration of the Military Department was formed in the system of central bodies of military administration, responsible for combating discontent and ferment in the troops.
On January 16, 1918, the order of the People's Commissariat for Military Affairs of the RSFSR abolished the institution of military priests. Soon the Political Administration of the War Ministry was disbanded and on April 8, 1918, the political organs of the army were created-the All-Russian Bureau of Military Commissioners, which was entrusted with leading the political work of the front and rear.
The Bureau acted on the directives of the highest organ of the Bolshevik Party - the Central Committee of the RCP (B.). Subsequently, the political bodies of the armed forces were repeatedly subjected to reorganization and renaming (Political Department of the RVSR, Political Administration of the RVSR, Political Directorates of the Red Army and the RKKF, Main Directorates of Political Propaganda of the Red Army and the Navy, Main Political Administration of the Armed Forces of the USSR, etc.), but until 1990 they directly submitted the supreme governing bodies of the Communist Party.
In different years the military political workers occupied the posts of commissars (battalion, regimental, divisional, etc.), political instructors (political leaders), pompolitov (assistants to the political commander), deputy political officers (deputy commanders for political education and upbringing work), members of the Military Council and others. Their duties included political control over the organization and life of the army, monitoring the political trustworthiness of the command staff.
When the Red Army was first organized, it had to rely on commanding personnel recruited primarily from the former Tsarist Army. To insure their loyalty, the regime established a hierarchy of military commissars who shared military command with the professionals. All military orders had to be countersigned by the commissars, who were also empowered to arrest military commanders for counter-revolutionary activity.
During the Civil War of 1917-1922, the commander and the commissar exercised leadership of the unit and the unit, and no orders of the commander could be executed without the commissar's approval. The political commissars, when they were first instituted in the early days of the Revolution, represented an essential compromise between the early political needs of the revolutionary army and the urgent demand for military commanders who had had command and battle experience during the Imperial regime. The political commissar in the early days of 1917 answered the need for an ideological control existing alongside and within the command structure of the Revolutionary Army.
In 1924-1925, the Red Army carried out a transition to the principle of one-man commanders of combat commanders, military commissars were replaced by political assistant commanders. In the reorganization of the Red Army that took place in 1924 under Frunze, who replaced Trotsky, and which was continued under Voroshilov in 1925, the role of the commissars was reduced to one of political education. The revolutionary army of the Bolsheviks felt it could breathe a little more easy.
In 1931-1940 the institute of commissars in the USSR Armed Forces was restored, in connection with the transition from the mixed to the personnel recruitment system of the army. In 1937, in connection with the purge of Marshal Tukhachevsky and the Red Army high command, edinonachalie was abolished and the commissars were made coequal with the commanders in military as well as political affairs. After the military purges of 1937, the political commissar came into his own more and ranked equal with the military commanders. Military orders were once again signed by both.
One of the most interesting consequences of the disastrous Finnish campaign of 1940 was the temporary disappearance of the political commissar from the Red Army. The chaos that had ensued in that campaign was seen as directly caused by the duplication of command between the commander and the political commissar. The military inefficiency of this arrangement became so evident during the early stages of the Soviet-Finnish war that another reversal was effected, and in August 1940 the Red Army reverted to edinonachalie. Political commissars were abolished and replaced by assistant commanders for political affairs (zampolits), whose sphere of action was limited largely to political propaganda and education.
In July 1941, shortly after the German invasion of the USSR, the institution of political commissars was reinstituted in the face of stunning military setbacks and large-scale surrenders. With the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War, the Institute of Military Commissars was again revived. In July-September 1941, the posts of military commissars and political instructors were established in the Navy, battalions, divisions, headquarters of the Red Army divisions, as well as in partisan formations.
Unknown to the Russians, the Germans in May of 1941 before the invasion of Russia issued a Fuehrer Order to the effect that all political commissars who fell into the hands of the Germans should be ruthlessly exterminated. There is clear evidence from the captured German documents held in the Pentagon that this order was thoroughly and effectively carried out.
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