Politburo
By Stephen Sherman, Dec. 2008. Updated July 21, 2011.
The central governing board of a Communist Party, in particular that of the old Soviet Union and present-day China.
Originally, it was merely the "Political Bureau" of the Party's Central Committee, a broader group that held the real power, and the Politburo was to make decisions in between meetings of the Central Committee. In 1917, the first five members were V.I. Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Joseph Stalin, Lev Kamenev and Nikolai Krestinsky. Over time, the Politburo became the real power, and under Stalin, the General Secretary (i.e. Stalin himself) became the sole authority.
In the Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies, when the inner workings of the Soviet Union were highly secretive, one of the few public indications of influence was the annual May Day celebration in Red Square. Which Politburo members appeared at the Kremlin and where they stood gave Western analysts some hint as to who was in and who was out.
Commissar
A political officer assigned to an army unit, to enforce its loyalty and political correctness. During the Russian Civil War, the head of the Red Army, Leon Trotsky, began the system, largely to ensure the reliability of former Czarist officers, whose military skills he needed.
The famous photographs on the lower left show the manipulation of news in Stalinist Russia. The man to the right of Stalin is Commissar Nikolai Yezhov, who fell out of favor, and was liquidated, and his image erased from the photograph. The photo was featured in David King's 1997 book about how totalitarian governments manipulate news.
Diktat
An authoritative pronouncement, a directive, typically put forth by a totalitarian government or other strict authority.
I had to move the PolitburoDiktat blog.
From late 2003 to late 2008, I ran a blog, mostly about politics, originally with a faux-Communist satirical theme, under the pseudonym The Commissar.
A few of the "greatest hits," have been saved:
Blog High School Yearbook
Empire of the Blogs Map
Passing of Ronald Reagan
Arab League Recognizes Iraq
Blog Revolution - Beyond Instalanche
Heh. We sure had some fun in those days!
It became too much of a headache to stay ahead of the hackers and spammers on my own hosted site, so I moved it to Blogspot.