Commissars with keyboards: the lingering relevance of the military-political origins of Chinese and Russian psychological warfare

From disinformation to cyberattacks, Chinese and Russian military units’ digital operations have gained increasing international attention over roughly the past decade. Less studied are some of these units’ historical antecedents, the military-political directorates of the Soviet military and Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of the 20th century. The political officers, or commissars, who staffed these directorates played a large role in shaping the development of psychological warfare beyond the Cold War and into the information age. This article summarizes this history and demonstrates its relevance to modern PLA and Russian military psychological warfare.