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"I am a Commissar. I am empowered to deliver justice wherever I see it lacking. I am empowered to punish cowardice. I am granted the gift of total authority to judge in the name of the Emperor on the field of combat."
Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt, Gaunt's Ghosts

The Political Officer is an officer attached to a unit, usually outside the regular chain of command, who ensures that the regular soldiers and officers obey orders and conform to the government's ideology. Theoretically this is a means of 'civilian' control over the military, but in practice, the focus is on keeping the military loyal to the government and its principles — even at the people's expense.

Such posts usually exist because the Government or the State Sec want a way of curbing the military's power and promoting their own agenda. If the former, it is because the military is a threat to the legitimate government and so the political officers are "good guys" for keeping them in line. However, the latter depiction is far more common. In this portrayal, the Government and/or the State Sec view the military as a threat to their own power and so (team up to) use the Political Officers to keep it in line, just as in the Real Life three-way power struggle between the Party/Government, State Sec, and Military in the USSR and the two-way struggle between the Party/Government and the Military in the PRC.

In day-to-day affairs the Political Officer roots out dissenters and has them re-educated or executed, perhaps doubling as a member of the Secret Police or Culture Police. For them to survive in their line of work the collective penalties for fragging them have to be so severe that no matter how callous, unpopular, or evil the officer is when this trope is played negatively, no-one ever dares to make them have an "accident".

This type of fictional character is overwhelmingly based on the Real Life example of Political Officers in the Soviet Union, although it also tends to draw on the SS and the Nazis as well. More often than not they are amalgams of real Political Officers and NKVD (counterintelligence) officers.

The actual Soviet Political Officer is a stock character in fictional portrayals of the Soviet-German War and Cold War era. His job was to ensure that the regular soldiers and officers followed the orders of the Party leadership in Moscow, basically a tool for the Communist Party to limit the military's independence (the NKVD having similar oversight of the Party and Military). Stereotypically this character is unconcerned with the difficulties the unit faces in actual combat, and will insist on slavish adherence to orders no matter the impracticality, pointlessness, or cost of doing so.

In Real Life, junior party leaders conscripted as Commissars and Officers (people often applied for re-assignment between the two) played a crucial role in the first months of World War II. With virtually the entire peacetime Army wiped out in the first three months, they became the backbone of the new Army. Commissars were often observer officers with veto power over decisions made by their attached units, although they did on occasion get into frontline combat. On the frontline, Commissars were meant to inspire troops through bravery and heroism- and many did. Even before the War's outbreak, the German Army passed regulations mandating Communist party leaders' execution upon capture, this consequently covering many officers and all Commissars.

The famous notion of commissars being empowered to shoot cowards stems from Stalin's 28/7/1942 'No Retreat' Order issued in response to the German 1942 Summer Blau Offensive to take the Caucusus, which forbade any military unit from retreating without orders (which in that operation were subsequently given by Operational-level commanders acting against Moscow's impractical orders to launch counter-offensives instead, to the Germans' dismay). Though neutered in effectiveness through losses note  and official nerfing by the end of the warnote .

Civilian women in Germany were advised to yell 'Commissar' when facing rape by Soviet soldiers because commissars would arrive and either stop the soldier or (in some cases) execute them. There is little doubt that Stalin's February 1945 orders mandating decent treatment of civilians stemmed from concerns about national prestige and foreign relations, not altruism, but it helped codify the notion that commissars were given to shooting their own soldiers.

Note that this is the Western depiction. In Soviet fiction, the political officers often were stern but just, inspiring and actually caring, and performed death-defying feats of heroism to inspire similar acts of bravery in soldiers, based on the fact that the Political Officers as an institution were abolished in 1943, and had to continue as common line officers. An alternative Soviet depiction from much later years is a lazy useless paper-pusher who never does anything useful and torments other officers with filling out countless forms and boring lectures about "political situation".

Often wears a Commissar Cap. See also The Inquisitor General.


Examples:

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    Anime and Manga 
  • Muruta Azrael from Mobile Suit Gundam SEED serves this role on the Dominion. While officially just an "observer" from some committee, he's in fact the head of the Blue Cosmos terrorist group. He's really there to make sure his plans go right, even undermining the ship's Captain, who eventually turns on him.
    • In Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny Rey Za Burrel plays a similar, though more subdued role on the Minerva, keeping the crew — and particularly Shinn — on the track that Chairman Durandal wants them on. By the end, Rey, and not Captain Talia Gladys, is the one really making decisions on the Minerva.
  • In Cross Ange, Emma Bronson is in charge of monitoring the attitudes of the Normas on the Arsenal island so they don't get any funny ideas about turning their attention to the other lands. In fact, she is the only non-Norma permanently stationed on the island. She also proves utterly incompetent at her job, failing to spot and report a massive conspiracy to rebel festering right under her nose. After being left to die when Arzenal is set to be exterminated, she is saved by that very rebellion and taken aboard the submarine, which leads to an immediate about face.
  • In Heavy Object, the Black Uniforms are Legitimacy Kingdom's internal police. They ensure units conform to regulations, prisoners are being treated well, and conduct contraband searches.
  • In the manga version of Venus Wars, Aphrodia gets them after the MESADA coup. Empowered to punish troops for any perceived cowardice or deviating from the party line, they impose repeated frontal assault against Ishtar's troops and their overwhelmingly powerful Octopus tanks, wasting a large part of their state's military force until the actual officers manage to wrestle back control of the troops. As the Battle of Route 1 almost resulted in the annihilation of Ishtar's 2nd Army Corps, it's heavily implied they were directly responsible for Aphrodia's defeat.

    Comic Books 
  • Star Wars: Legacy: In a manner of speaking, the Sith Lords fill this overall role. While not part of the Imperial Military hierarchy, they oversee military units to ensure they serve the will of the Big Bad and Evil Overlord Darth Krayt. Complete with an "Oops, sorry sir" fragging of Darth Maleval by disgruntled stormtroopers.
  • A rare Western-style version appears in the second volume of DC Comics's Star Trek series (set immediately after Star Trek V: The Final Frontier): Starfleet finally has enough of Kirk's out of control cowboy antics after several rather high-profile interstellar incidents in quick succession, and assigns him a civilian protocol officer to keep him under control and ensure Starfleet protocol is being adhered to. Unfortunately, Starfleet makes the mistake of assigning him a female officer, the quite attractive R. J. Blaise. Kirk being Kirk, it didn't take long before Blaise eventually decided their mutual attraction was detrimental to the mission, and eventually resigns.
  • Utterly mocked in Sturmtruppen: set during World War II with a German battalion, a recurring character is Galeazzo Musolesi, an Italian political officer of immense high ranknote ... But being Italian he's a guest with no real authority, and being a coward and Legally Dead]] reduces his prestige and privileges and forces him to start some ridiculous antics he doesn't starve again (as it happened when he was declared dead) and put together some money.

     Fan Fiction 
  • Tarkin's Fist:
    • One of the official jobs of the Imperial Security Bureau. That the four fleets of Tarkin's Fist have their official ISB contingents purged is the first sign to deep cover ISB agent Eritech that something is seriously wrong.

    • In an attempt to assert more control over the Imperial military to pave the way for his coming coup, Moff Seco appoints Imperial Commissars to army units to ensure their loyalty. Their incompetence leads many of the clones serving in the Imperial military to desert.

    Films — Animated 
  • Mulan has Chi Fu, an Imperial bureaucrat attached to Shang's unit. He's extremely annoying, has little faith in Shang because he thinks Shang got his promotion through nepotism, and suggests killing Mulan for being a woman after she just saved everyone's lives.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • True to the book, The Hunt for Red October has a political officer accompanying Captain Ramius, who is actually trying to defect. To keep him from endangering his plan, Ramius causes him to fall into a sharp corner and tragically break his neck. Also Hilarious in Hindsight, also the political officer's last name is Putin.

    However, unlike the book (detailed in the Literature folder below), Putin (even in the brief screen-time he gets in the film) thoroughly leaves the impression of being a smarmy weasel and the director tried (but claims to have failed) to portray Ramius as being reluctant to kill Putin.
  • Several political officers are seen shooting anyone attempting to retreat in the movie Enemy at the Gates. The deuteragonist Danilov was a reasonably nice person, though.
  • Star Wars:
    • Darth Vader is essentially a Political Officer on steroids. As the highest agent of Emperor Palpatine, an order from him compels as much obedience as one from Palpatine.
    • The Force Awakens: Captain Phasma seems to be one of these for the First Order. When she notices Stormtrooper FN-2187, who almost immediately afterwards defects to the good guys with the new name "Finn", hesitating and failing to assist in the execution of civilians, she orders him to report to her "division" for an assessment. She later states that her division had psychologically examined him and ordered "re-conditioning". She also commands troops in the field as well, and her silver chrome armor with a cape lets you know she's no ordinary soldier.
  • SS Corporal Gunther in Hornets' Nest, who has been assigned to keep an eye on the outspoken and unpredictable Captain von Hecht. Nobody cares when he gets his neck broken by the hero.
  • One is, naturally, present aboard the flagship of the Soviet fleet in X-Men: First Class (he's the guy the captain calls "zampolit", which is short for "zamestitel' komandira po politicheskoy chasti" — "commander's deputy for political matters"). He ends up being mind-controlled by Charles to fire a missile at the Soviet transport ship to prevent the Americans from starting World War III. The captain commends him for his actions and immediately has him arrested, which the sailors do gladly.
  • The Chinese film Assembly, which takes place during and after the Chinese civil war of 1946-49, has two political officers, both on the Communist side. The first one dies in combat after effectively leading an attack on a Nationalist-held town, and this so enrages the protagonist Captain Gu Zidi that he tries to have the Nationalist prisoners executed (his soldiers refuse to shoot, likely because they could simply recruit the poorly led and demoralized Nationalists into the Communist army instead). In the aftermath, he is posted to a more dangerous battlefield and requests a new political officer to stop him making that sort of mistake again. The new man is a former teacher, whose main qualification is being able to read and write, rather than any sort of ideological rigour, and while is unused to the rigor of combat, is still enormously popular with Gu's men mostly due to being literate.
  • The 1991 Czech comedy Tankový prapor (Tank Battalion) has The Neidermeyer version. After the soldiers get drunk and sing a subversive song, he threatens to have them all arrested, but 'accidentally' falls into a sewer and drowns. The next day the commanding officer reveals that before his death the political officer had written a report on the protagonist that would have ended his chance of university, but the commander tears it up instead.
  • Guess who's the protagonist of Kommissar ? Klavdia is a female commissar with a cavalry regiment in the Russian Civil War, who has to go on leave when she becomes pregnant.
  • K-19: The Widowmaker, being set aboard the Soviet Union's first nuclear submarine, has a political officer whose function is not only to monitor the officers and crew but to assist in the launch of the boat's nuclear weapons and to provide periodic "lessons" in the evils of capitalism, reminding the crew "Why We Fight".
  • 71: Into the Fire has one of these on the North Korean side, the Commissar who spends most of the film berating the film's main villain, North Korean General Pak. Near the end of the film, the Commissar finally outsteps his boundary and earns a magazine of lead into his guts from Pak.
  • Panfilov's 28 Men: This is a Russian film and so has a different attitude towards the political officer. Capt. Klochkov, the political officer who winds up leading the 28 men in a desperate defense against the Germans in front of Moscow in November 1941, is shown to be a brave and inspiring leader.

    Jokes 

    Literature 
  • In Blindsight, protagonist Siri Keeton is a synthesist sent into a First Contact situation. His job is to translate jargon and create a framework between several specialists in very different disciplines and is also responsible for 'dumbing it down' and reporting on the crew's progress for the baseline humans in charge back on Earth. The crew's biologist refers to him as 'Commissar' because of it and is only partway joking.
  • In the Boojumverse story "Mongoose", Izrael Irizarry has an Oh, Crap! moment when the political officer for the Space Station he's clearing of Eldritch Abominations turns up and starts asking awkward questions. Subverted when Colonel Sadhi Sanderson turns out to be a Reasonable Authority Figure who doesn't ask about his Mysterious Past but is more interested in helping Izrael do his job.
  • Breakfast at Twilight by Philip K. Dick is about an American family who accidentally time-travel to World War III. They're accosted by American troops who call in their 'polic' who is responsible for monitoring the soldiers for communist subversion. Fortunately, he's a Reasonable Authority Figure who, realising they won't adapt well to this Crapsack World, gives them a choice of going to the Underground City where the family will be safe but split up to serve the war effort, or stay and face the next wave of nukes in the hope the same accident takes them back in time. He also confiscates some of their books, but only because he has nothing to read himself.
  • Ciaphas Cain: Commissar Ciaphas Cainnote  is actually an aversion. While a great many commissars are the shoot-the-men-if-they-get-rowdy type who happily pull rank (they technically outrank anyone who's not a senior commissar, Inquisitor, or Space Marine) to ensure regulations are followed, he carefully cultivates bonds of camaraderie with the troops under him so he's less likely to suffer an "unfortunate accident" (see Catachans below). His position of trust and ability to act outside the chain of command has been what enabled him to save the day several times.
  • The Dark Forest includes a rare example of a heroic political officer who actually accomplishes things by being good at being a political officer.
  • Darkness Series: The Russia-parallel nation has a line of these people stationed half a mile behind the front with sticks (magic guns) and orders to blaze (shoot) anyone passing by them.
  • Once the Second Russian Civil War kicks off in The Death of Russia, the communist faction is quickly taken over by the Stalin idolizing Viktor Anpilov. One of his many decrees meant to recreate Stalin's heyday is bringing back Commissars to accompany troops in the field to maintain discipline, with the only Commissar the timeline focuses on being all but stated to be a certain someone modern readers would know very well.
  • In Dorsai!, the Friendlies have "Conscience Guardians" who seek out heresy among their troops. Interestingly enough, the Guardians' authority is only over their Church members and not foreign mercenaries. In addition, they keep their forces from bickering with each other over issues of religious doctrine, preventing tensions within their army.
  • In Falkenberg's Legion, the Soviet-backed International Brigades sent to the Santiago Civil War are controlled by Political Officers. Very much in the Soviet zampolit style, the one featured takes on the Western stereotype.
  • The Fallen Empire novella "Discovery and Flight" features a political officer who both functions as a morale officer and loyalty inspector and (possibly) a spy on his superiors. To his credit, he spends the battle comprising most of the novella encouraging the gunnery crews at great risk to his own life.
  • Grunts!: Having spent a lot of time reading over the political philosophy texts in Dagurashibanipal's hoard, Marine Razitshakra turns into Marine Commissar Razitshakra, complete with Commissar Cap and Russian Army greatcoat, monitoring her fellow orcs for "ideological instability".
  • Honor Harrington: The People's Commissioners of Haven's second regime fit this to a tee. Their dampening effect on the competence of "elitist, recidivist" officers (who were liable to get shot, along with their entire extended families, for the slightest imagined disloyalty or failure in battle-based on the French Revolution) was half the reason Manticore won that war. Most of the political officers that have significant time on screen, however, tend to work with their assigned personnel instead of against them, as generally Reasonable Authority Figures. Some even go beyond that, actively concealing outright treasonous activities and planning, including ultimately overthrowing the Committee for Public Safety and restoring the original Republic of Haven. Even further beyond that, some of the commissioners not only become friends of the officers they are supposed to oversee but, in the most famous case, become lovers — and one of the most touching love stories of the whole series, to boot.
  • The Hunt for Red October:
    • Putin, who is murdered by Ramius at the beginning. Oddly enough, it is implied that he was actually a decent man. The reason Ramius killed him was that he couldn't be trusted. Cold-hearted, yes. But rational under the circumstances.
    • A sub sent to catch the Red October is running flat out when its reactor develops a small fault. The technician wants to fix it, but the political officer won't allow any time to be wasted when in service of the Motherland. As a result of such patriotic zeal the problem escalates, the reactor melts down and the whole sub sinks with all hands but one.
  • Cordwainer Smith presents an imaginative variant of this trope in one story set in his Instrumentality of Mankind 'Verse. Monitors are criminals modified to simply do nothing but watch and record events in their memories. Secretly, if a military commander attempts to defect or run away during a war, the Monitor will act and destroy the captain.
  • In The Machineries of Empire, every Hexarchate moth has a Doctrine officer (or at least had in Jedao's times) to make sure there's no heresy brewing among the crew.
  • George MacDonald Fraser explains, in McAuslan, in a vivid and memorable way, exactly why the British Army doesn't have political officers and why if it did they would prove utterly ineffectual. "Orientation" of soldiers tends to be insisted on by out of touch senior officers who express shock and consternation at the lack of political acumen of the Other Ranks. And who consequently demands the troops be steered with at least some awareness of why they are in uniform, and of the social and cultural values that they are defending. "Orientation", in practice, tended to be led by dogsbody junior officers who were not especially good at it. It also tended to happen as the last scheduled duty of the week on a Friday, when most men's thoughts turn to weekend leave. And as Fraser's alter ego Lieutenant Dand McNeill discovered, trying to explain the history of the Reformation and religious dissent (upon which Scottish liberty is based) to an audience drawn equally from Glasgow Protestants and Glasgow Catholics led to a massive pitched brawl. McNeill also observed that no soldier on earth has a bullshit detector more acutely tuned than the British, as well as a strong aversion to being told what to think.
  • Charles Stross's story "Missile Gap" has Misha Gorodin as the zampolit assigned to Yuri Gagarin's ship on the "five-year mission" to explore the disk-shaped world where human civilization has been transplanted.
  • Corporal Strappi from Monstrous Regiment is a particularly loathsome example. He takes cruel delight in bullying his soldiers (to the point that one of them throws up whenever he starts yelling), talks big about patriotism, and when it looks like he's actually going to get sent to the front, wets himself and deserts. Oddly, the identities of Borogravian political officers seem to be a secret — Strappi's status is just rumoured at first, until The Reveal. As such they're probably more of a cross between this trope and Stasi-esque informants, presumably to avert the inherent risk of fragging that comes with the role (and indeed, the squad were fairly openly planning to do this at the first opportunity before he deserted). The finale reveals he was actually there to investigate the paperwork irregularities around the Sergeant in a relatively mundane Internal Affairs operation, and when his actions come to light (not just the desertion but his general conduct) he's put up on official charges himself.
  • In The Quantum Thief, the chen copy clan has served this function since the Dragon Wars, acting as observers on all Sobornost ships so that inter-Founder conflicts don't get in the way of larger Sobornost goals.
  • Naturally, all over the place in Fyodor Berezin's Red Stars books in the parallel USSR. One of them is introduced debating another political officer about the wording of a warship's news bulletin (whether it's appropriate to call their not-far-off descendants "glorious" since they haven't earned the glory yet; he goes with it anyway to avoid the alternative "not-far-off", which can be interpreted as "dimwitted"; his superior then claims that a Soviet sailor will not think the alternative if he's ordered not to). Later, when said warship is being sunk by the American fleet, he goes on the horn and broadcasts a message about the crew putting up a fierce fight before going down. He survives but is later charged with treason for revealing a state secret (namely, the fact of the ship's destruction).
  • In Red Storm Rising, we see a few political officers. They are almost invariably incompetent — when the Soviet forces in Iceland are about to be mauled by an Anglo-American task force and need to surrender, General Andreyev gets rid of his political officer by seizing on a throwaway remark the zampolit made about "true courage" by giving him a rifle and ordering him to the front, to inspire the men to some more "true courage".
  • Tom Sharpe's apartheid-era South African satires Riotous Assembly and Indecent Exposure feature Lieutenant Verkramp, who is much feared and distrusted because he is believed to be an agent of BOSS (although whether this is actually true, is open to question given that Konstabel Els, in particular, is believed to be of mixed race and well known for his enthusiasm for inter-racial intercourse, consensual or otherwise).
  • Inquisitors serve this purpose in the Safehold series when the Church begins active military operations in their war with Charis. They have about as much or more power than the actual military commanders of the various Army of God forces in deciding what needs to be done.
  • The Star Carrier series has a democratic variant with the Senate assigning their "political liaisons" to fleet carriers in order to make sure their orders are carried out. In the first book, Admiral Alexander Koenig ends up at odds with John Quintanilla, the Senate's liaison to the America, who keeps criticizing Koenig's orders and the overall battleplan, even though Koenig's wasn't the one who came up with it. Koenig ends up kicking Quintanilla out of the CIC, which later has political repercussions. For someone who's supposed to "liaise" with the military, Quintanilla doesn't even know how this 'verse's method of FTL works. Naturally, the author only does this for an As You Know exposition.
  • Star Wars Legends has the Political Reliability Observer, and in the new Star Wars Expanded Universe, the Empire has loyalty officers commissioned by Darth Vader.
  • Takeshi Kovacs: In Broken Angels, the Wedge are kept under the surveillance of a political officer, so to avoid any problems with him they forcefully addict him to "the wire", threatening to withhold it if he causes trouble. The political officer gets his revenge when his surveillance reveals the protagonist is planning to kill his former colleagues — he 'forgets' to inform the Wedge commander of this.
  • Barrayar has political officers in the early parts of the Vorkosigan Saga. Admiral Aral Vorkosigan notoriously murdered his own particularly scheming one with his bare hands on his flag bridge during the invasion of Komarr, and only dodged serious consequences (other than a demotion to Captain) due to his bloodline. Later, another political officer tries to murder him in return. It is implied that while the outcry was intentionally high, he was demoted only to keep the official face on the thing, political officers being a rather new institution and just another tool in the Ezar's box.
  • Worldwar: A minor recurring character is a Soviet NKVD officer who spends much of his time explaining why certain actions are necessary to preserve communism, justifying them by using the Marxist dialectic.

    Live-Action TV 
  • One major sign of EarthGov's slide into dictatorship was the assignment of a political officer to Babylon 5. A very hot female political officer. Who can go from fully clothed to stark naked in the time it takes someone to turn around (neat trick).
    Ivanova: I think you're about to go where everyone has gone before.
  • Star Trek:
  • Stargate SG-1: Major Davis is introduced as the official liaison between Washington and the SGC and later with other nations on Earth. Despite the main element of his role being a Bearer of Bad News who shows up when a crisis threatens the entire planet he is treated sympathetically by the main characters and shows himself to be a capable, reasonable and heroic officer when required.
  • An episode of Seven Days involves a Russian submarine testing out a new sonar. The crew is surprised when a political officer is assigned to the boat, considering that a democratic government shouldn't need them. The guy is especially critical of a young sonar technician for the latter's preference of "American rock music" (apparently, no one told the guy the Cold War was over). He later forces the captain to keep the sonar focused on a foreign ship instead of using it to map the ocean floor, resulting in the sub hitting a reef and causing a reactor breach. As per protocol, the captain wishes to scuttle the boat, sacrificing the crew. However, the political officer and several of his men get guns and force the captain to surface, shooting the young sonar technician for questioning the legality of their actions. This causes massive irradiation of the surrounding area, and the political officer claims it was the captain who chose to surface, and that he tried to object. When the captain tries to claim his innocence, he is brutally beaten and taken away. Naturally, when Parker goes back to fix the situation, his main problem is this Jerkass.
  • A rare non-military and democratic variation is the eternally intimidating Chief Whip (a party official tasked with upholding the agenda and whipping renegade members back into line) in Yes, Minister, who is regularly utilised by Sir Humphrey to scare Jim Hacker into not pursuing his idealistic dreams in office.
  • Late in Battlestar Galactica (1978), the Council of Twelve decides to lift the state of emergency the fleet has been operating under ever since the destruction of the Twelve Colonies. They also appoint one of their number, Siress Tinia, to serve as Adama's "aide" to ensure he complies with Council policy. She spends her time countermanding any military action she deems too aggressive.
  • Life and Fate: Commissar Roushkin, a minor character in the first episode set at the battle of Stalingrad. He is introduced wearing a flower in a buttonhole of his uniform. And he's drunk.
  • The Outer Limits (1995): In "Abaddon", Gordon Knight is assigned to the interplanetary hauling vehicle Pequod as the North American Corporation's representative, serving the same function as a political officer.
  • Raumpatrouille had Lieutenant Tamara Jagellovsk, who started out as a non-political equivalent of this trope as she was assigned as a watchdog to the crew of Military Maverick McLane after said crew gets reassigned to "space patrol duty" after pulling one crazy stunt too many. However, she mellowed out over the course of the series until she was accepted by the crew as one of them.

    Tabletop Games 
  • In the Axis & Allies spin-off Axis & Allies Miniatures, the Commissar was a Soviet commander with the ability to execute a Soviet infantry squad to give all other Soviet infantry under its command a bonus for one round. As the Soviets were the faction that had lots of cheap infantry, this turned out to be incredibly broken and it was quickly changed to instead have the ability to allow nearby infantry to ignore the effects of being Disrupted (which normally meant they couldn't act for one round).
  • Warhammer 40,000: Commissars are longcoat-wearing, conspicuously-hatted political officers attached to Imperial Guard armies and Imperial Navy ships. Interestingly, they feature elements of both the "eastern" and "western" stereotypes in that they are inspirational badasses who are calm under fire and lead by example, but can and will mercilessly shoot soldiers who fail to meet their stringent standards. One or the other angle can be emphasised Depending on the Writer — minor character commissars are more likely to be the memetically-stereotypical trigger-happy Bad Bosses; while Ibram Gaunt fits the "benevolent commissar" mold, and Ciaphas Cainnote  is a pure pragmatist who has caught on to the fact that overzealous commissars tend to die in combat suspiciously far from the front line... maybe.
    • Catachans, being fiercely independent badass jungle fighter Ramboes, used to have a special rule ("Oops, sorry sir!") in which if a commissar is attached to them, you must roll before the game starts to find out whether or not he suffered an "unfortunate accident". Being based off of Vietnam War soldiers, such incident were commonplace. If you're an American officer and your soldiers don't like you, you ought to be prepared to get fragged. Considering that most of them were drafted, they had low morale and didn't like their authority, i.e. you.
    • Most badass of them all is Commissar Sebastian J. Yarrick. He lost an arm in battle with an Ork Warboss and retorted by decapitating the Warboss, only "allowing himself the luxury of passing out" after the battle was won. He then had the Warboss's Power Klaw converted into a prosthetic for his own missing arm, powered (presumably) by the sheer badass he radiates. The Orks have immortalized him in fearful legends, believing that he cannot be killed and that a single glance from him brings death. On hearing the latter part of this legend, Yarrick decided that if the Orks believed he had an evil eye, then by the Emperor, he would HAVE an evil eye. He then proceeded to pluck out his own eye and replace it with a laser-shooting eye. The short version? This man makes Orks wet themselves. There's also something of a self-reinforcing cycle thanks to Orks possessing magical Clap Your Hands If You Believe abilities.
    • The Ultramarines novel series features a commissar that was actually terrified of his regiment colonel. This is rather strange, though not impossible, given that commissars stand outside of command structure and officially outrank anyone in their regiment and have legal right to shoot you if they feel like it after filling in some minor amount of paperwork.
    • A reversal of the roles occurs when Commissars serve alongside the Death Korps of Krieg. The Kriegers are a Martyrdom Culture fixated on atoning for the misdeeds against the Imperium committed by their ancestors in their planet's civil warnote . Commissars assigned to the Korps are said to have never executed any of them, and instead have to rein in their tendency to perform senseless or stupid sacrifices. When the Commissars actually tell you to stay alive, you know your priorities are... interesting.
    • A non-Imperium example are T'au Ethereals. The official story is that they're spiritual leaders who keep the peace internally and only set foot on the battlefield to inspire the troops to greatness... but the Ethereals are the unquestioned ruling caste, and an orthodox T'au force is only allowed a single Fire-caste Commander but as much Ethereal oversight as they care to send. They've also been known to use a Compelling Voice to ensure the other castes follow orders, and get around their strict Ape Shall Never Kill Ape by ordering individuals that displease them to perform a horrific ritual suicide. Even some of the T'au themselves are starting to question the official stories, with the breakaway Farsight Enclaves declaring the Etherals Persona Non Grata.
  • Commissar Dottski from Up Front. He adds +1 morale to everyone in his group ("in the Red Army, advance is less dangerous than retreat") but if any man in the group becomes pinned, draw a card to see who the commissar is watching. If he's watching the pinned soldier, BAM! Dottski takes out his pistol and executes the man. Germans score victory points for KIA.
    • The name Dottski was a reference to the Dotts, the owners of the game publisher. (Many of the other soldier names in the game were also references to the game designers and playtesters.)
  • Advanced Squad Leader allows the Russians (and a few other countries by scenario special rule) to have commissars until late in 1942. Said leaders raise the morale and improve rallying for any troops they are stacked with. But any squad that does NOT rally is lowered in quality.
  • The Loyalty Officer in Paranoia. Their loyalty is directly to Friend Computer, not the Team Leader. (Although the nature of Paranoia is such that neither of them are likely to be all that loyal.) Things get particularly entertaining if they're secretly a member of a particularly treasonous secret society, or Friend Computer reassigns the Mandatory Bonus Duties in the middle of the mission.
  • The Southern Republic of Heavy Gear has them, in addition to an entire deep cover State Sec that serves some of the same duties.
  • Revell's WW2 Red Army Infantry contains 50 figures representing Russian WW2 infantry in summer uniforms. Among an impressive range of figures is an unarmed officer wearing a different-styled uniform in commanding pose who, when you study the mode of dress closely, turns out to be an NKVD political commissar.
  • The Lock N' Load Tactical game system has commissars or political officers as units that can rally units that are shaken. They allow you to make a second rallying roll with a bonus on units if the first one fails, but the second one failing will cause casualties to the targetted unit. Rolling a 12 on the rallying role will kill the commissar on top of the unit casualties.

    Toys 
  • Beast Wars: Uprising: On the rare occasion a Cybertronian ship goes off-planet, they have a political officer to "keep an eye" on the Maximal and Predacon crews. As a show of just how much The Builders trust their successors, said officers are either Autobot or Decepticon. The only one seen, Synapse, manages to be the worst kind, murdering two members of the crew on the possibility they might side with a resistance movement they didn't even know about, then trying to murder them all over the objections of his superior.

    Video Games 
  • Among character classes in Allods Online, there is both Commissar (Imperial paladin) and Political Officer (Imperial healer). The Empire fuses the imagery of USSR and 19th century Russian Empire.
  • According to Battalion Wars II's unit dossiers, a Tundran battleship's political officer is also its head cook. Naturally, his having control over the quality of the food means the sailors never step out of line.
  • Lord Madeira from BattleTech (2018) is a nobleman attached to your mercenary company during the main campaign whose job it is to oversee your company and make sure you go where your employer wants you to go. Officially, his role is 'political advisor', but both he and his employer are open about the fact that he's there to remind you where your loyalties lie. Since the campaign does not offer you the opportunity to backstab your employer and you are under no time limit to complete it, his role as a political officer never comes into play and he leaves the Argo after the campaign ends.
  • Call of Duty has Soviet Commissars in its titles set in World War II:
    • The first Soviet mission in the original Call of Duty had you covering a sniper while he put down a commissar that was machine-gunning fleeing Soviet soldiers. In the next mission, your orders are to charge at a Nazi machine gun emplacement, with commissars behind you to punish you if you try to go anywhere but forward - including trying to collect ammo from dead friendlies.
    • Commissar Letlev at the beginning of the Soviet campaign in Call of Duty 2 is portrayed more as a gently chiding, often hilarious, but still tough training officer, and the only threats of being shot for cowardice came not from him but from regular officers... unless you mess around instead of shooting a teddy bear for target practice like he ordered.
    • World at War features Commissar Markhov, who mostly yells patriotic/bloodthirsty encouragement through a megaphone, but can occasionally be seen joining the front lines with a submachine gun in hand.
    • Call of Duty: Finest Hour's Commissar Viktor Durasov.
  • Command & Conquer:
    • Confessors of Command & Conquer: Tiberium Wars serves as these for the Brotherhood of Nod. They serve both as intelligence and religious officers, guiding and educating Militants in the field. In-game, Confessors are an upgrade: they increase the Milita squad's effectiveness.
    • Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 features the Twinblade helicopters, each one co-piloted by a Soviet commissar. While they don't serve this function in-game, the fluff mentions that their original purpose was to patrol the edges of battlefields and shoot any Soviet deserters.
  • In Disco Elysium, the Deserter was originally a Commissar in the Revolutionary Army, and he's still bitterly holding onto his ideals even decades after he broke and ran.
  • Mass Effect: Andromeda: The Primus, The Dragon to the Archon seems to be one of these, for the kett, apparently sent to keep an eye on the Archon and make sure he and his troops are keeping to kett doctrine, and complaining about how the Archon's not doing what he's told. Three-quarters of the way through the game, she starts a miniature insurrection to make sure the kett forces in the Heleus Cluster follow the party line. Depending on the player's choices, it's possible to find several Archon loyalists have suffered a bad outbreak of execution.
  • In NieR: Automata, not many members of the android armies know it, but some YoRHa units are designated as Executioner-models, and are tasked with silencing Scanner-models if they learn too much, or going after AWOL combat androids. Completing two sidequests over routes A and B adds some dark subtext to the tutorial mission: one of protagonist 2B's squadmates was planning on deserting during the operation, and sure enough, revisiting the sequence reveals that another member of the taskforce was designated 7E, presumably sent to try to prevent that. A bigger twist is that 2B herself is actually 2E, and has gone through several iterations of having to kill her partner 9S, only to be re-assigned as his minder after his memory is reset. The two keep developing feelings for each other, and 9S is starting to suspect the truth despite his memory resets.
  • Warhammer 40,000 video games:
    • The Dawn of War: Winter Assault tutorial specifically mentions that the Guardsmen are simple humans fighting against the worst monstrosities of the universe, hence why they break so easily. Attaching a commissar to a squad however makes that squad near-immune to morale: not even a flamethrower will make them run. If they do break anyway, the commissar has the ability of executing a random soldier to instantly restore squad morale and increase firing rate for all nearby squads. And they happen to be awesome melee fighters to boot... but only three can be deployed at a time. Two commissars in the last two expansions are specifically mentioned to be watching the Governor-General for signs of weakening resolve.
      • Taken to ridiculous extremes in the second game. At max experience level, shooting one soldier will make your entire army do twice as much damage, run faster than a land speeder, and be completely invulnerable to all forms of damage. And there is a trait that makes execute cool down less than its duration.
    • Commissar Holt from the Final Liberation game. Bitchslaps planetary governors when they forget certain details like who's in charge, what gubernatorial duties entail, or rank.
    • One of the backgrounds available in Rogue Trader is an Imperial Commissar, and this colors your interactions with people to an extent: Commissar-exclusive dialogue options indicate a willingness to get the job done no matter the cost, for example. The Commissar's exclusive skills, however, are about leading from the front and inspiring troops by example rather than killing underperforming soldiers.
  • Major Lebedjev from World in Conflict: Soviet Assault is depicted as a shrewd pragmatist who is more concerned with the overall success of the Soviet invasion of the US mainland than with the troops' blind obedience to the party line. Once it becomes obvious that the invasion has failed, he backs Colonel Orlovsky in his decision to retreat to the coast and evacuate. Ironically, one of the Orlovsky's overzealous subordinates, Captain Malashenko, then shoots him for treachery. While Lebedjev publicly praises him to save face (and his own life, as Malashenko pointed his pistol at him right after shooting Orlovsky), he covertly arranges for the most radicalized units to be put under Malashenko's command and sent on a suicide raid on Seattle, while the main remnant of the Soviet force makes its way to the evac point, where he uses his political connections to make sure the evacuation happens.

    Web Original 
  • While not Games Workshop canon, Commissar Fuklaw epitomizes the "Trigger-Happy commissar" character, to the point where he automatically shoots four members of any squad he joins, for the crime of suspected-HERESY! *BLAM!*
    Gentlemen, there are two things I will kill a man for: Heresy...
    But, sir, we were only-
    * BLAM*
    ... and interrupting me while I'm speaking.
    Yes, soldier?
    Does raising your hand count as interrupting?
    * BLAM*
    Yes.

    Real Life 
  • The Ur-Example: The French Revolution had the Représentants du peuple ("Representatives of the People"), or représentants en mission ("Representatives on Mission"), who were sent to control the generals' conduct starting in April 1793 after the defection of the senior general Charles Dumouriez earlier that month.note  More often than not, they proved a dangerous nuisance, having little understanding of military reality and setting unrealistic objectives for the generals, who were labelled as traitors and guillotined when they failed to reach them. However, some representatives were incredibly brilliant in their tasks, especially Lazare Carnot and Saint-Just, the latter disciplined and rebuilt the defeated and humiliated Army of the Rhine into a fighting force that won the decisive Battle of Fleurus.
    "Soldiers, we have come to avenge you, and to give you leaders who will marshal you to victory. We have resolved to seek out, to reward, and to promote the deserving; and to track down all the guilty, whoever they may be... All commanders, officers, and agents of the government are hereby ordered to satisfy within three days the just grievances of the soldiers. After that interval we will ourselves hear any complaints, and we will offer such examples of justice and severity as the Army has not yet witnessed."
    Louis Antoine de Saint-Just, an actual bulletin from The French Revolution.
  • The Civil War-era Red Army is the Trope Codifier for these guys. They also played a large role early during WWII, only to be deactivated in 1942 when a reliable structure of regular commanding officers was finally established. Later the guys were renamed "zampolits" (political assistants) or "politruks" (political guides) and became little more than advisors to commanding officers and lectors on Communism among soldiers. After the Soviet collapse, they were further nerfed and now are known as "educator officers", completely depoliticized and acting more like army psychologists than anything else.
    • The "shoot the cowards" function got handed over to the "barrier troops", specially created for the purposenote .
    • Nikolai Popel, who served as the political officer in Mikhail Katukov's First Guards Tank Army was an example of a commissar who represented a personality little known in the West due to a trusting bond with his commanding officer and his competence in battle.
    • By the time of the Battle of Stalingrad, political officers were much weaker, but remained influential enough to have meaningful impact. Nikita Khrushchev, the chief political commissar during the Battle of Stalingrad comes halfway between Popel and the stereotype of incompetent commissars. While not militarily skilled and not particularly involved in the military aspects of the battle, his political skills contributed substantially to keeping up the morale of both soldiers and civilians. It certainly contributed to his rise as the leader of Soviet Union after the war.
    • Particularly by the end of the war, the NKVD (the Soviet political police, and predecessor to the post-war KGB) had entire military-style divisions under its specific jurisdiction. Unlike their German counterparts, the Waffen SS, NKVD units retained their original political function: to suppress or otherwise neutralize political resistors in the countries the Red Army liberated or conquered.
  • Dmitri Furmanov, the commissar attached to Chapaev's troops, became the epitome of the benevolent commissar after the release of The Movie about Chapaev. Later, he experienced Memetic Mutation (along with Chapaev and Petka) and became a recurring character in Russian Humour.
    • It should be noted that Furmanov wrote the book that made Chapaev famous in the first place.
  • Valery Sablin, who led a mutiny in 1975 on board the Soviet frigate Storozhevoy (a "Krivak"), aiming to sail it from Riga to Leningrad and incite a revolution against a regime that he felt was failing and straying from communist ideology. A crew member escaped, alerted the authorities and the ship was stopped in international waters with the aid of Yak-28 "Brewer" bombers (they considered using Tu-16 "Badgers" but realised that launching anti-shipping missiles into a crowded shipping line was a dumb idea). The captain regained control of the ship just before the Yaks actually did some serious damage and Sablin was arrested. He was convicted of treason and shot. To avoid bad publicity, the Soviet government covered the incident by saying Sablin was trying to defect to the West. This was one of the incidents that inspired The Hunt for Red October.
  • Modern ideological dictatorships tend to have these guys in no small number. Communist regimes are perhaps the most obvious, but Chiang Kai-shek's anti-communist Kuomintang had them, due to Soviet assistance to the Kuomintang prior to 1927, and Chiang's son being trained as a secret policeman in the USSR. This is also Older than You Think, with their introduction early in The French Revolution by the Revolutionary government. Any general that failed in battle could expect to meet La Veuve (the Widow, i.e. the Guillotine). By the time of The Napoleonic Wars, they had far less influence.
    • Even to this day, the Republic of China Armed Forces retains political officers. Basically their job, like in the old days, is to instill discipline and root out pro-CCP sentiment, counter CCP propaganda and send their own, and also help deal with individual soldiers' problems (similar to what the 'educator-officers' in Russia are doing today). A television show on Thursdays about current Taiwanese military events and trends, named "Chukuang Garden" and produced by the Bureau, is compulsory watching for the rank-and-file and enforced by the PWB.
    • Even earlier than that: the "agitators" (also known as "adjutators", apparently due to a perceived link with "adjutant") during the English Civil War. They were political officers, elected from the ranks, and put forth increasingly radical demands to Oliver Cromwell's government. Many were Levelers, insisting on universal male suffrage.
  • In what may be a confusing aversion, some countries' police forces have a rank that is referred to as Commissar, but is essentially the equivalent of a police captain with no relation to the trope.
    • The terminology, unsurprisingly, is less confusing in Russian than English (seeing how that was the actual language of the USSR): a (People's) Commissariat was originally an organizational level of government, the same as "Ministry" which it replaced (due the popular connection with the ministries of the failed Russian Imperial government), or "Departments" in America. Since English speakers can live with multiple meanings for both words ("Ministry" also means "Church" in many English-speaking locales), so too can Eurasians: a Military Commissariat was a Military Department charged with local recruitment. What the English world calls "Commissars" are field officers; actual "Commissars" who used the title were the likes of Leon Trotsky, People's Commissar for War (War Minister). After the war, People's Commissariats became Ministries, and their heads became Ministers — since high-level bureaucrats aren't as interesting, in English, the ancillary meaning of the term has stuck.
    • Another famous example would be the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del, thus better known as NKVD), the umbrella organization of both regular civilian and militarized Secret Police. After the war, it was split apart, and the remaining Internal Affairs department was rebranded as a Ministry, MVD. Accordingly, its head went from a People's Commissar to a Minister.
  • While the Soviet Union is the most obvious example, it was not the only modern dictatorship (communist or otherwise) to use political officers. Ironically enough, the Nazis established their own variant, the Nationalsozialistischer Führungsoffiziere, as the war went on and gave them increasing amounts of power over time, although they still never became as common or as powerful as their Soviet counterparts sometimes did. Maoist China, North Vietnam, Republican Spain during the Spanish Civil War, and, Saddam's Iraq also had their own variants, as did many others.
    • North Korea for example uses their Political Officer corps, besides their typical job in a Communist army, as an efficient way to get the sons of high-ranking officials into prestigious and cushy but ultimately harmless positions so that the actual command is left for people with talent.
  • There is a story about a shipwrecked Soviet sailor who was rescued by an American ship. When he saw an officer with a cross on his lapel, he asked why. When told that this was the Chaplain, he asked, "What's a Chaplain?" When he heard the explanation he said, "Interesting. Does he also act as Political Officer?" He was shocked to learn that the US Armed Forces didn't have political officers — their Two Party State may have been united by a bipartisan ideology, but couldn't possibly have created a workable power-sharing arrangement for appointing party members to promote American Values in the military (under conscription the military's loyalties were more evenly split, but the all-volunteer military leaned Republican).


*BLAM!*


 
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Alternative Title(s): Commissar, Political Officer, The Commissar

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Twinblade

Combat helicopters armed to the teeth with guns and rockets. Can haul troops or vehicles.

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