[Matt Wiser]

Officially, the Zampolits were removed from any kind of command influence. The "Dual Command" had been reinstated in 1941 and dropped in late '42. If you read David Isby's books on the Soviet military, he interviewed a number of Soviet defectors who had served in the Red Army, and many had good things to say about their political officers. Sure, they were the eyes and ears of the Party, but they also had to be trained in the specialty of whatever unit they were assigned: Motor-Rifle, airborne, armor, artillery, etc. And many saw that when their unit went into the field, the Zampolit was willing to get his hands dirty just like the others.

Though for every good Zampolit, there were the bad ones: Viktor Belenko loathed the party hack in his MiG-25 Regiment, and if you read the book Hostile Waters, which is the story of the missile sub K-219, everyone on the boat loathed the Zampolit, even the KGB Security Officer! The crew respected the latter because he'd gone to sub school and qualified as a watch officer-taking his turn as Officer of the Watch. And when the abandon-ship order was finally given? The skipper ordered the officers to be the last to leave the boat. The Zampolit showed he was a coward, by being one of the first into a raft! And it's obvious that Suvorov had no use for political officers. Neither did Marshal Zhukov: supposedly the real reason he was sacked as Defense Minister was that he wasn't just satisfied with having the Zampolits out of the way of unit commanders, he wanted to get rid of them entirely.

How would the Zampolits have done in a war in the '80s? We'll never know.