Kremlin to police ‘emotions’ of ministry staff in echoes of Stalin
THE Kremlin has started planting Soviet-style political commissars into Russian government ministries and state-owned companies to report back to the president’s office on the “emotional state and mood” of staff.
In a plan that harks back to the paranoia of Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union in the 1930s, these “political officers” will also push Vladimir Putin’s agenda and ensure official support for his war in Ukraine stays on track.
“This idea was born last year and now it has become especially relevant.
“Similar work has already been carried out, but now it will be coordinated by the Kremlin’s domestic political bloc,” reported Russia’s Kommersant newspaper.
“Through this system, employees at all levels will be explained both their goals and objectives and the national policies and, at the right time, ‘signals’ will be sent to the Kremlin from this network,” Kommersant wrote.
These political officers, who in government ministries will hold the rank of a deputy minister, will report directly to the Presidential Administration at the heart of Putin’s Kremlin.
Officially the so-called “special operation” is widely supported by the Russian government, but the Kremlin is still worried about dissent. Open criticism of the war is banned and talk of casualties is suppressed.
The Kremlin has tightened up its messaging, pushing the Z logo of the main battle group in Ukraine on prowar posters and T-shirts and broadcasting wall-to-wall support for the invasion on state-run TV.
But this would represent a significant escalation of Russian state control and has parallels with Stalin’s use of a network of informers and political commissars in the military and government ministries to get people on side and inform on dissenters.
which quoted three people who work in the Russian Presidential Administration or close to it, reported that the idea of “political officers” had been floated at a meeting last year because “problems with loyalty to the current power axis” had been identified and that the war had increased urgency to implement the plan.
And the newspaper also quoted a source at a state-owned company explaining how it was being rolled out.
“Each of its divisions has recently appointed a person responsible for informing employees about activities in support of the Russian army, and installations for the placement of various visual content are descending from the head office for this,” the source said.
In another sign of the ways in which the official narrative is starting to leak into different parts of Russian society, textbook publishers have reportedly been told to delete any references to Ukraine. Kremlin officials have increasingly said that they want to wipe Ukraine off the map.
“You can mention how we saved Kyiv, but it is no longer possible to talk about any independence of Ukraine as a country,” one publishing source told the pro-opposition zona.media website, which is run from outside of Russia.
Another source said that his company had had to rewrite 15 per cent of its textbooks because of the order to delete references to Ukraine.