commissar
/ˌkɒmɪˈsɑː
/noun
1An official of the Communist Party, especially in the former Soviet Union or present-day China, responsible for political education and organization: films that are passed by the political commissar...
- There are no aging commissars clinging on to party rule.
- In time of war the political imperatives of the commissar might become subordinated to the professional needs of the field commander, but the concession was only temporary.
- The code officer served as secretary and the commissar as prosecutor.
1.1A head of a government department in the former Soviet Union before 1946.Again, people's commissars, like tsarist ministers, were heads of departments and belonged more to the bureaucracy than to politics....
- Under the able leadership of the old Bolshevik A.P. Smirnov, the commissar of agriculture, expertise and science were privileged over politics.
- He gave his commissar of enlightenment, Anatoly V. Lunarcharsky, two weeks to work out the details.
1.2A strict or prescriptive figure of authority: our academic commissars...
- Again, there is no sense of writing to please commissars or to follow a set political agenda; this music unmistakably comes from the heart.
- The reason we are opposed to this law is that it is an extension of a very bad principle that turns police officers into commissars.
- They still have an irrational fear of the newspaper accusing them of being socialist commissars, but we are living in a different century.
Origin
Early 20th century (Russian Revolution): from Russian komissar, from French commissaire, from medieval Latin commissarius (see commissary).