Making the world a better place, one dead commissar at a time

“Perhaps the most damning verdict on Soviet morale came from an anecdote, widely repeated around Helsinki, in which ‘three Russians, taken prisoner, ask for a last meal before they are shot. The Finns say: We’re not going to shoot you. So two of the prisoners said, ‘Well at least you are going to shoot this one’ pointing to the third, ‘he’s a commissar [i.e., a politruk].’ When the Finns said no, they said, ‘Well for heaven’s sake let us shoot him then.’”

https://quillette.com/2021/04/20/stopped-cold-remembering-russias-catastrophic-1939-campaign-against-finland/