Jessen & Richter (Eds.) (85 page)

19 Vybary u viarkhouny savet SSSR [Elections to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR]. In: MP

3, 4.1.1958, 1; Navstrechu vyboram v Verkhovnyi Sovet SSSR [Before the Elections to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR]. In: SB 4, 5.1.1958, 1.

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T H O M A S M . B O H N

cedure. The Supreme Soviet consisted of two chambers: the Soviet of the

Union, directly elected by the people, and the Soviet of Nationalities,

which was partly elected and partly appointed by the autonomous admin-

istrative units. This was the reason why in Minsk, a city of about half a

million people, two electoral districts for the Soviet of the Union were set

up and one district for the Soviet of Nationalities.20 Next, 311,000 persons

were entered in the electoral rolls.21 Besides 2,100 volunteer members of

electoral committees, more than 15,000 volunteer agitators pledged their

help to the election campaign.22

According to official statements, candidates were nominated in the

works’ pre-election meetings, with the lorry and tractor works setting the

tone. On February 3 and 4 one local and, for appearance’s sake, some

Moscow Party leaders were proposed as candidates for the three Minsk

electoral districts. Candidates received an official confirmation of their

nomination at the electoral district conferences on February 10.23 After

that, their election to the Supreme Soviet was a foregone conclusion. The

press announced the nomination for the Soviet of Nationalities of Ivan N.

Stets, a car mechanic who worked in the lorry works, and for the Soviet of

the Union those of Aleksandr M. Tarasov, the director of the tractor

works, as well as Kirill T. Mazurov, the Secretary of the Council of Minis-

——————

20 The two electoral districts for the election to the Supreme Soviet bore the numbers 588

und 589. The first electoral district encompassed the Lenin, Stalin and October raions of the city of Minsk while the second electoral district comprised besides the Voroshilov and Frunze raions of the city also the Minsk rural raion. For the elections to the Soviet of Nationalities of the Supreme Soviet the electoral district containing the city region of Minsk was given the number 51. Iz ukazov Prezidiuma Verkhovnogo Soveta SSSR

[From the Ukases of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR]. In: SB 4,

5.1.1958, 1.

21 Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Minskoi oblasti [State Archive of the Minsk Oblast; henceforward: GAMO], fond 1, op. 5, d. 110, ll. 31–41.

22 GAMO, fond 1, op. 5, d. 110, ll. 16–19.

23 According to a report by the Party’s organization section of February 11, 850 delegates from all factories and organizations of the city took part in the event at the Gorky Theater. One member each of the automobile and the tractor factory presented the proposals of their works meetings. GAMO, f. 1, op. 5, d. 110, ll. 24–30. On February 20, 1958 the organization section of the Municipal Committee of the Belarusian Communists reported that 2,150 persons (out of a total of 2,500 elected) had taken part in the two election conferences of February 10. The registration of candidates by the Electoral District Committee was carried out on February 11. GAMO, fond 1, op. 5, d. 110, ll.

31–41.

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ters of the Belarusian Socialist Soviet Republic (BSSR) and First Secretary

of the Central Committee of the Belarusian Communists.24

Instead of discussing the real problems,
Sovetskaia Belorussiia
took the occasion of the election Sunday of March 16, 1958 to call for a campaign,

under the slogan of “Love Minsk, the Capital of Your Republic”, for the

improvement of its built environment. For this, the paper relied on the

First Secretary of the Central Committee, Nikita S. Khrushchev, who had

at a rally in Moscow two days before described his impressions of the

BSSR in this way: “When you drive along the main street of Minsk, you

feel as if you were on Nevskii Pospect.”25 What is striking about this com-

ment is less the fact that Khrushchev compared the Belarusian capital with

Leningrad than that he had, only a few years before, declared war on neo-

classicist decor. Apart from this, the heart of the city center of Minsk,

Central Square, was still only a torso where only the larger-than-life Stalin

monument stood out. And yet, the main thoroughfare and the adjacent

Socialist Culture and Recreation Park invited the electorate to a stroll. As

the organization unit of the Minsk Party Committee was able to report,

voting in roughly half the electoral district was complete already by 3 pm,

due to the fact that polling stations were provided with relaxation rooms,

buffets and play corners, and there had also been theater performances,

concerts and film showings. In addition, dance events were scheduled in

the evening before polling stations closed at 10 pm.26 Overall, the elections

had taken place to the Party’s complete satisfaction and it tried to make

people believe that they were evidence of the normalization of life, which

Stalin had demanded in the immediate after-war period (Fitzpatrick 1985).

——————

24 Vgl. Tkachuk, R.: Chelovek bol’shogo serdca [A Person with a Big Heart]. In: SB 37, 13.2.1958, 2; Nashy kandidaty. Slesar’ Ivan Stets [Our Candidates: car mechanic Ivan Stets]. In: MP 36, 19.2.1958, 1; Kandidaty [The Candidates]. In: MP 38, 22.2.1958, 2; Klimashevskaia, I.: Poslanets traktorozavodets [The Workers’ Deputy from the Lorry Works]. In: SB 62, 14.3.1958, 1.

25 Ljubi Minsk, stolitsu svoei respubliki [Love Minsk, the Capital of Your Republic]. In: SB

64, 16.3.1958, 4.

26 GAMO, fond 1, op. 5, d. 110, ll. 42–46.

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T H O M A S M . B O H N

Comments on Minsk Ballot Papers

Over and above noting the fulfillment of the plan, the Party could not but

record irregularities that had occurred in the polling booths. Many voters

felt called upon to add comments to their voting papers, whose content

was recorded by the Minsk Party Committee. Thus, there is a list in the

municipal archive in which the comments in the Stets and Tarasov elec-

toral districts were written down. Whether the comments on the ballots

from the Mazurov electoral district were passed on directly to the office of

the Belarusian state and Party leader does not appear from the report of

the organization unit, which latter took it for granted that the comments

reflected a broad measure of approval of the political regime by the elec-

torate. A part of the comments, however, were classed as “negative, impo-

lite, malicious and even anti-Soviet”, but the question of the (in)validity of

the ballots was not raised. The list was roughly systematized with a division

according to the city’s districts as well as an arrangement according to

semantic content. There are 695 entries in all, i.e. five in a thousand voters

conceived of the ballot paper as a means of communication; 259 entries

were classified by the Party as anti-Soviet polemic, 238 were viewed as

general statements and 198 as petitions to the candidates. Indeed, all liter-

ary genres are found, from a simple proclamation, to poetry and anecdotes,

to letters and even denunciations. Besides professions of approval, major

topics were the legitimacy of the election regulations, the popularity of

Khrushchev’s political opponents, the credibility of candidates, the miser-

able housing conditions, as well as infrastructural and supply deficits.27

Voters were apparently less well informed about the consequences of

Khrushchev’s agricultural policy, as shown by the lack of comments on

this problem, although Minsk’s rapid growth was fed by rural migrants

moving to the city. Strikingly, almost all comments were in Russian with

only a handful of writers using the Belarusian language. This allows the

——————

27 GAMO, f. 1, op. 5, d. 110, ll. 47–118. The quotes in the text that follow are taken from this document.—Comments on ballot papers from the Moscow region for the elections of 1957 to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR can be found in Tarnov (2001). Cf. also the publications of sources on the elections by Kozlov and Mironenko (2005). A short report about the ballot paper comments of the Belarusian town of Borisov on the occasion of the elections to the Congress of the People’s Delegates of the USSR of 26 March 1989 is provided by Leizerov (1990). There were no legal regulations whatsoever on the treatment of ballot papers that had been written on (Shabanov 1969, 53).

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conclusion that the mass of the population, doubtless of peasant back-

ground, was not interested in putting up resistance to Sovietization.

In what follows, five revealing examples will be discussed to show how

the general political situation of the Soviet Union and the social problems

in the Belarusian capital affected voter preferences. First, however, it may

be useful to provide some details on what a Soviet ballot paper looked

like.28 This is what was printed on the form used until the end of the

1960s: “Keep the name of the candidate who you want to give your vote

to, and delete the names of the remaining candidates.” In the left-hand

column were entered the candidate’s given name, patronymic and family

name, while the right-hand column contained the name of the agency re-

sponsible for the nomination. In reality, it was only one name that was

entered on the ballot. Although the paper, due to lack of alternatives, could

be dropped unchanged into the ballot box, many voters made use of the