Jessen & Richter (Eds.) (76 page)

not to vote in the event that his housing conditions were not going to be

improved, and suggesting that he do the same, risked arrest and ten years

in the camps. If the voter, however, simply addressed his agitator, local or

central authorities or the Central Election Commission in Moscow, he

stuck to the rules and had good chances of having his housing conditions

improved by election day (Kozlov and Mironenko 2005, 188). Every hori-

zontal attempt to organize one’s interests outside the officially controlled

and policed pre-election meetings at one’s workplace was judged as

——————

17 See Wolters and Wolters (1977) for single cases. Cf. Roggemann (1973, 295–304) on the law to discharge deputies from office, from October 30, 1959.

18 Cf. Zaslavsky and Brym (1978, 364–66). The agitators were responsible for getting out the vote. They had to check the voter’s registrations compiled by the police in cooperation with the housing superintendents. For a special study on the agitators cf. Yekelchyk (2010).

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counter-revolutionary and could lead to severe punishments. Although the

voters constantly risked being repressed, it is evident from their behavior

that at least some of them understood the tools of the trade, as it were, and

estimated the risk correctly.

At the election rallies, candidates who had served as deputies before

had to report to the voters. Once nominated, however, the candidate was

hard to get rid of. Even in the event of substantial criticism on the part of

the voters in pre-election meetings, agitators and officials were obliged to

defend the candidate at any cost. The local Party committees would blame

them if any problems occurred in these meetings. In general, especially

males were strongly discouraged if they had to vote for a young lady who

would typically work in an inferior position having no political experience

whatsoever. This can also be extracted from personal remarks directed at

the deputies on the ballots.19 Only severely compromising himself during

the campaign or death could prevent the candidate from being elected. For

example, during the campaign promoting the election of the Supreme

Soviet of the RSFSR in 1959 in Yaroslavl’, the voters expressed open dis-

satisfaction about a young woman lacking any experience in political af-

fairs. After this event, the agitators were reprimanded by the Party. During

the campaign, the voters expressed strong dissatisfaction with 87 candi-

dates in total, though only seven of them were changed by the local elec-

tion commissions.20 The reports on these meetings to the district Party

organization usually stated in detail all critical comments made by the vot-

ers concerning insufficient work of the enterprise, or regarding the local

authorities of the voting district, revealing the name of the person criti-

cized.21

The voters used the pre-election meetings and the report of their dep-

uty to criticize and discuss local welfare. The meetings formulated voter

instructions relating to concrete demands to improve local infrastructure:

to build a hospital, a school, and shops, to supply water up to the fifth

floor in the buildings, to provide bus connections, street lighting, and elec-

——————

19 TsDNiY, Fond 272, opis’ 227, delo 355 (1958), ll. 158–59; delo 489 (1959), ll. 214–16; opis’ 229, delo 301, ll. 22–23; delo 319, ll. 106–9.

20 TsDNIY, Fond 272, opis’ 227, delo 405 (1959), ll. 13–14, 28–31. Cf. also the case of an engine driver who caused great damage on the eve of the election. The other engine drivers demanded the removal of this candidate. Also in this case, the local Party secretary was reprimanded for lack of political responsibility (TsDNIY, Fond 7386, opis’ 5, delo 4, l. 202).

21 TsDNIY, Fond 272, opis’ 227, delo 464 (1959), ll. 29–41

288

S T E P H A N M E R L

tricity. Other instructions demanded the improvement of the services and

the supply of meat, sausage and butter in the state shops. In the mid-1960s,

environmental protection became a new topic in voters’ demands, as they

challenged the state to close down polluting enterprises or to clean river

waters, for instance. Such instructions could also demand to fight against

excessive drinking, as well as teaching the youth to keep moral standards

high and to work. Some of these demands could be met directly by the

local authorities; others were taken up on a list as obligations to fulfill dur-

ing the forthcoming election cycle.22

The pre-election meetings did not really have the function of propa-

gating any special political platform, as building socialism under the guid-

ance of the Communist Party to achieve a bright future for all could not be

disputed. Besides acquainting the voters with their candidates, the meetings

served to produce self-obligations regarding the special tasks the voters

could take over themselves in building socialism. They had to agree to

fulfill the production plans ahead of time and to sign eulogies to the Party.

These obligations as well as production successes held a prominent place

in the pre-election reports to higher Party organs.23

Making the voters think they had a say in local affairs and putting pres-

sure on local authorities was one of the most important functions of the

elections in the political process (Hough and Fainsod 1979, 315–19). One

may ask what the actual role of the deputy was in this respect, as the ful-

fillment of the demands depended only on state and Party authorities. He

had to play a rather symbolic role to personify the political process ac-

cording to the paternalistic self-definition of the state: representing the

voters in front of the local and the higher authorities and taking the blame

for failure. In general, at the end of the election period, a quite significant

percentage of the instructions was claimed to have been fulfilled. The

——————

22 TsDNIY, Fond 272, opis’ 227, delo 221 (1957), l. 248; delo 489 (1959), ll. 212–216; 232–242; opis’ 229, delo 167 (1966), ll. 64–69, 102–3 (“many requests of the voters, uttered during the campaign and in need of a quick decision, were checked and satisfied by the local soviet organs.” 103); delo 184, ll. 72–74, 161–63. On June 5, 1973 the Party committee of Irkutsk
oblast’
reported to the Central Committee that the deputies of the
oblast’
soviet satisfied 316 out of 491 voters’ requests during the two year election cycle.

The Party committee of Irkutsk
oblast’
reported that the local soviets satisfied 3,229 out of a total of 4,295 (RGANI, Fond 5, opis’ 66 (1973), delo 124, l. 170). Ibid., opis’ 77

(1980), delo 102, l. 56 gives the number of 13,400 voter instructions for the
oblast’

Gor’kii.

23 RGANI, Fond 5, opis’ 67 (1974), delo 97. TsDNIY, Fond 272, opis’ 227, delo 489

(1959), ll. 328–32; (see also Zaslavsky and Brym 1978, 367–71).

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meetings thus took place not only for propagandistic purposes, but showed

some concrete results such as taking over obligations on both sides under-

lining the character of bargaining: while the voters subjugated themselves

to self-obligations particularly regarding production, the authorities ac-

cepted concrete obligations to fulfill the special voter demands in the field

of public welfare. In any case, the election campaign rendered visible pres-

sure on the local authorities and contributed to the overall satisfaction of

the voters, strengthening the paternalistic model. The rules put the full

responsibility on the local authorities in direct contact with the voters,

although neither the deputy nor the local authorities were able to fulfill

many of these demands, given the significance of central decisions in the

command economy. The rules prescribed that the local authorities and the

deputy had to act as scapegoats and, in any case, accept the blame for not

fulfilling voters instructions, regardless of whether it was their fault or not.

The image of the wise ruler needed to stay untouched. In Russia today

such a campaign of popular control is missing, depriving the voters of an

important measure they had before.

Apart from the official voters’ meetings, there was a second element of

vertical communication accepted by the state. The voters made widespread

use of writing about their personal needs to the regime (Merl 2007; 2010b).

Personal requests directed at the local or central authorities or the newspa-

pers during the election campaign had a better chance of being granted if

they were obviously justified with respect to promises made by the regime.

This was a clear form of bargaining, based on the regime’s declared aim of

a 100 per cent voter turnout in the election. The formulation of the request

on the ballots reveals to what extent the voter understood his demand as a

bargain (see below). Sometimes the request was connected to open threats

not to vote if the request was not going to be fulfilled until election day.

Even if not expressly threatening to refuse the vote, addressing such a

request during the election campaign gave its fulfillment higher priority.

Although it could be dangerous to menace the regime, these tactics

were increasingly used during all election campaigns. The regime avoided

repressing people who only complained that promises made by the state

were not fulfilled at the local level. Open announcements of refusing the

vote already happened under Stalin, especially in connection with the mis-

erable housing conditions found at that time. It happened not only in sin-

gle cases that such a request was successfully accepted before the polls

opened. While there are no quantitative data on the overall percentage of