The exact role and function of the political commissar, often called zampolit, during the Cold War was a one that many Western commentators have misunderstood. In the technothrillers of the 1980s, as exemplified by Tom Clancy or Dale Brown, these political officers served as the ears and strong arm of the Communist Party. This fictional portrayal of the zampolit cast them as totalitarian enforcers who frequently butt into military operations and were a source of terror for their own officers. The reality of the zampolit was much more prosaic.

In short, the zampolit was a deputy to the military commander of a military formation or ship who was to assist the officer to maintain socialist discipline and ensure the political loyalty of the troops. For outsider observers like Clancy, it appeared that these semi-autonomous officers were a omnipresent shadow of the Party for military commanders, but the reality is that senior officers from division upwards often got to choose their own zampolit. The zampolit themselves often had very little bearing upon military affairs. The zampolit's official duties tended to be limited to ideological training and indoctrination, assist the commander in maintaining discipline, and to maintain morale. The Cold War era zampolits were recruited from the the Main Political Directorate (MPA), which was part of the CPSU and the Ministry of Defense. Far from an instrument of totalitarian terror, the existence of the large networks of zampolits tended to exacerbate the tendencies of the Soviet military to be officer-heavy and zampolit would often collude with their military counterparts to cover up evidence of wrong doing. The presence of these semi-autonomous officers did create some friction with their military counterparts, especially since a zampolit's endorsement was crucial for promotion, but in practice the system was relatively benign.

The same could not be said of the various systems of political commissars that preceded the zampolits prior to the Second World War. Under the auspices of Trotsky, the Red Army expanded the system of political commissars that the Provisional Government had set up in 1917 to shore up morale in the Russian Army. The enlarged system, the Political Administration of the Red Army (PUR), had a broad portfolio of responsibilities. PUR officers played a command function in Red Army formations during the Russian Civil War, with Red Army formations often having dual-command in which the military specialist and the PUR commissar would act in unison. PUR officers were also tasked with supervising the military specialists and ensuring their loyalty to the Revolution. This ingrained mistrust of of the state over the loyalty of Red Army officers continued after the Civil War. Although the military officers pushed for the right of edinonachalie (unified command) in which the opinion of a military officer was superior, the Stalinist state retained its vast network of political commissars. Although the Frunze reforms of the 1920s strengthened edinonachalie, this system was reversed in August 1937 simultaneously with the launching of the Great Purges of the Red Army. Up through August 1940, all military orders had to be countersigned by the PUR commissar and the PUR expanded its organization. PUR officers were just as likely to be victims as their military counterparts during the Purges and the system of dual command was unwieldy for a military establishment that suffered not only from the burden of losing so many officers, but also expanded considerably. The August 1940 directives reestablishing edinonachalie restored some level of sanity and the PUR officers (now renamed zampolit) and their military counterparts largely had a functional relationship during the Second World War.

As for the Germans, when the war turned against Germany, the military in 1943 instituted Nationalsozialistischer Führungsoffizier (NSFO) to inculcate ideological mentality among the troops. The NSFOs were a formalization of a loose process of ideological instruction and indoctrination that had been present inside the Wehrmacht. Although officers could not hold NSDAP membership, many officer candidates were screened for the correct national socialist virtues prior to promotion. Similarly, the Wehrmacht maintained a system of educational officers, often reservists, who would provide ideological instruction. The Lothar-Gunther Buchheim's novel Das Boot and its subsequent adaptation dramatized this educational indoctrination with the u-boat's first watch officer periodically writing and reading political tracts, to the annoyance of his fellow officers. The NSFO system formalized this process but also were an arm of the increasingly draconian self-discipline of the German military, especially after the failed 20 July plot.

Sources

Bartov, Omer. Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Reese, Roger R. The Soviet Military Experience A History of the Soviet Army, 1917-1991. London: New York, 2000.

Whitewood, Peter. The Red Army and the Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Soviet Military. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2015.