The article examines the regulatory and legal framework for the organization and conduct of political and educational work in the NKVD troops of the USSR under the extreme conditions of the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945). The work is a comprehensive historical and legal analysis of the sources of Soviet law that regulated the ideological support of the service-combat activities of the NKVD troops personnel during the war period. The methodological basis includes dialectical, historical-legal, formal-legal and systemic-structural methods. It is established that political and educational work in the NKVD troops during the war years was regulated by a set of normative acts of various legal force — from resolutions of the highest party-state bodies to departmental orders of the NKVD of the USSR. A comprehensive analysis of the genesis of the political bodies of the NKVD troops, covering the stages of the functioning of the institution of military commissars and its subsequent reorganization into the institution of deputy commanders for political and educational work, allows us to conclude that the legal regulation of ideological work was a fundamental component of personnel reforms. It has been established that all stages of the restructuring of this institution were aimed at strengthening discipline, increasing mobilization potential, and maintaining an appropriate moral and psychological climate among the personnel while performing combat duties. The obtained results are of importance for improving the modern system of military-political work in the troops of the National Guard of the Russian Federation.