Commissar (sometimes Kommissar) is an English transliteration of the Russian: комисса́р, which means commissary. In English, the transliteration "commissar" is used to refer specifically to Communist political officers, while administrative officers are translated to "commissary". In English, "Commissar" also refers to similar Communist officers in other countries, for example during the Spanish Civil War.
The same word комисса́р is used in Russian for both political and administrative officials. The title has been used in the Soviet Union and Russia from the time of Peter the Great.
Commissaries were used during the Provisional Government for regional heads of administration, but the term commissar is associated with a number of Cheka and military functions in Bolshevik and Soviet government military forces during the Russian Civil War (the White Army widely used the collective term "bolsheviks and commissars" for their opponents) and with the later terms People's Commissar (or narkom) for government ministers and political commissar in the military.
Commissar (Russian: Комиссар, translit. Komissar) is a 1967 Soviet film based on one of Vasily Grossman's first short stories, "In the Town of Berdichev" (В городе Бердичеве). The main characters were played by two People's Artists of the USSR, Rolan Bykov and Nonna Mordyukova. Made at Gorky Film Studio.
Maxim Gorky considered this brief story one of the best about the Russian Civil War and encouraged the young writer to dedicate himself to literature. It also drew favorable attention from Mikhail Bulgakov, Boris Pilnyak, and Isaac Babel.
It was shot in the political climate of the post-Khrushchev Thaw. From the outset of the production, Goskino censors forced the film director Aleksandr Askoldov to make major changes; 1967 was the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution and the events were to be presented in the Communist Party-mandated style of heroic realism.
After making the film, Askoldov lost his job, was expelled from the Communist Party, charged with social parasitism, exiled from Moscow, and banned from working on feature films for life. He was told that the single copy of the film had been destroyed. Mordyukova and Bykov, major Soviet movie stars, had to plead with the authorities to spare him of even bigger charges. The film was shelved by the KGB for twenty years.
Poets and Madmen is the eleventh studio album by the heavy metal band Savatage, released in 2001. It was their last album before their 12-year hiatus, which lasted from 2002 to 2014. The album has a loose concept inspired by the career and death of journalist Kevin Carter, but has much less narrative in the lyrics than the previous two rock operas (Dead Winter Dead and The Wake of Magellan) penned by Paul O'Neill. Everything said in the album is fiction, except with regards to what is sung about Carter. The album is also noted as it is the only Savatage album to not feature a title song from the album, although the title was taken from lyrics to the track "Symmetry" from the band's 1994 album, Handful of Rain.
The album was the first since Streets: A Rock Opera in 1991 to feature the band's original vocalist Jon Oliva on lead vocals for all songs after the amicable departure of Zachary Stevens. It is also the first Savatage album to have guitarist Chris Caffery playing the majority of the guitar solos. This is partly due to the departure of Al Pitrelli, who left to join Megadeth prior to the album's release. However, Pitrelli was credited with the outro of "Stay With Me Awhile," the main solo of "Morphine Child," the main solo of "The Rumor," and the first part of the main solo and the outro of "Commissar". The United States bonus track "Shotgun Innocence" was originally a bonus track on the Japanese release of Edge of Thorns in 1993 and features Zachary Stevens on lead vocals, and the late Criss Oliva on guitar.
Do you see commissar
The night is darker
Do you think commissar
Their dreams are starker
Do you hear commissar
The night is breathing
Could it be commissar
We should be leaving
Now before the curtain
Does comes crashing down
Do you hear commissar
The night is silent
Do you think commissar
It is defiance
Do you see commissar
The mob has faces
Could it be commissar
The dark embraces
All as darkness will
And in that dark we'll drown
Cities, towns
We've torn them down
And all we've found
Are relics in a cemetery
But never fear
I will stay near
And to the dark
I will be your emissary
Knights on horseback
Bishops pacing
All are losing ground
The pawn is now a queen
He's moved across the board unseen
The move is down
I believe
That we've intrigued for far too long
But now I think the plot has ended
A quick retreat
Into the street
Admit defeat
And hope our moves will be defended
Across their throats
The blade does wander
They die without a sound
Who'd have thought we'd meet
As bones beneath the dragons feet
The wall is down