ABSTRACT
In addition to martial expertise, political supervision and control were fundamental building blocks of the Red Army. The Red Army was to be an army of a new type, a revolutionary peoples’ army which would become a school of socialism only with the direct participation of the party on a daily basis in every unit. The practical manifestation of this thinking was first the commissar and then the Political Administration of the Red Army (commonly referred to as PUR). The Bolsheviks assigned commissars at all levels down to the most important front-line unit, the regiment.
