SOVIET STUDIES, vol. XXX, no. 3, July 1978, pp.

362-371

THFEFUNCTIONS OF ELECTIONS IN THE USSR

By VICTOR ZASLAVSKY and ROBERT J. BRYM

I
WESTERNscholars, faced with the apparently obvious, have not found
it difficult to arrive at a solid consensus of opinion regarding the
principal function of Soviet elections. They serve (so the accepted
argument goes) mainly to legitimize and thereby buttress the operation
of the regime. Typically, Merle Fainsod' writes that Soviet elections
'offer a dramatic occasion for a campaign of agitation and propaganda
on behalf of the Soviet system'. Leonard Schapiro2 submits that they
represent 'a public demonstration of the legitimacy of the regime ... an
invaluable educational and propaganda exercise . . .' and 'proof that
the system of control is unimpaired'. And Frederick Barghoorn3
suggests that elections reinforce 'the psychological dominance of the
regime over the citizenry'. Similar arguments could easily be multiplied.4
In fact, after removing the ideological veneer, pronouncements by
Soviet writers appear often to make precisely the same point.5
Functions other than legitimation are, to be sure, sometimes
mentioned in the literatures-but usually as an afterthought. Yet
emphasis on legitimation is, we submit, warranted only for discussions
of the Stalin era. It explains well the otherwise paradoxical fact that
'the Great Purge occurred immediately after (and to some extent
simultaneously with) the introduction of the [1936] Soviet Constitution
1 Merle Fainsod, How Russia is Ruled (Cambridge, Mass., 1953), p. 323.
2 Leonard Schapiro, The Government and Politics of the Soviet Union (London,
1965), p. II7-
3 Frederick C. Barghoorn, Politics in the USSR (2nd edn., Boston, 1972), p. 247.
4
See, for example, John A. Armstrong, Ideology, Politics, and Government in the
Soviet Union: An Introduction (3rd edn., London, I974), pp. 158, I60; Robert
Conquest, The Soviet Political System (London, 1968), p. 46; Jerome M. Gilison,
'Soviet Elections as a Measure of Dissent: The Missing One Percent', The American
Political Science Review, vol. LXII (I968), p. 814; John N. Hazard, The Soviet System
of Government (Chicago, 1957), p. 45; Max E. Mote, Soviet Local and Republic
Elections (Stanford, 1965), pp. 45, SI, 64, 75, 76, 86; Howard R. Swearer, 'The
Functions of Soviet Local Elections, Midwest Journal of Political Science, vol. VI
(I96I), pp. 145-9; Robert C. Wesson, The Soviet State: An Aging Revolution (New
York, 1972), p. I25.
5 'Velikii smysl' sotsialisticheskoi denlokratii', Kommunist,
1974, no. io, pp. 8-17;
B. Topornin (ed.), Sotsializm i demokratiya (M., 1976), p. 52.
6 These will be noted where
appropriate.

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 363
and a most voluminous discussion of the democratic processes and
protection of individual rights supposedly guaranteed by it'.7 Some
means of demonstrating that a better future was at hand became a dire
necessity during the period when millions of persons were systematically
nurdered and the economy proved to be manifestly incapable of
providing the population with the necessities of life. Broadening the
franchise and introducing the 'most democratic constitution in the
world' were important aspects of the regime's efforts to stabilize the
system. Staging a mass propaganda campaign, mobilizing 99% of the
electorate and making public the 'fact' that hardly anyone opposed the
system inhibited dissent.
But in the last two decades 'calls for "discipline" lack the paranoid
insistence of compulsive displays of political conformity that charac-
terized the Stalin era'.8 The era of mass murder is over; the economy
has improved its performance; recovery from the war years is complete;
and institutions designed specifically to legitimize the regime are
correspondingly less vital to the operation of the system.
It should also be recognized that it has never been demonstrated
empirically that the Soviet citizen's belief in the validity of the regime
is in fact reinforced by election campaigns. In our estimation such a
demonstration would not be possible, if only because the Soviet citizen
of today is more complex than many9 make him out to be. As we point
out in greater detail below, disillusionment with the election system is
widespread and non-voting increasingly common. Suffice it to mention
at this point that one official sociological investigation conducted in the
early 19708 indicates that i8?/ of workers in the huge Likhachev
automobile plant in Moscow declared outright dissatisfaction with the
existing election system.10 Taking into account the fact that people in
the USSR are not inclined to answer such politically sensitive questions
frankly, the figure must significantly underestimate the actual
percentage. The typical Soviet citizen recognizes as well as the Western
commentator that Soviet elections are not elections at all, a fact which
hardly lends weight to our conventional assumptions about their
legitimizing function.
In the last two decades Soviet elections have taken on additional
functions which deserve attention, and it is the purpose of this article
7 Jerry F. Hough, 'Political Participation in the Soviet Union', Soviet Studies, vol.
XXVIII, no. I (January 1976), p. 6.
8 George W. Breslauer, 'Khrushchev Reconsidered', Problems of Communism, vol.
XXV, September-October I976, p. 33.
9 For example, George Barson Carr, Jr., Electoral Practices in the USSR (London,
1956), p. Ioo.
10 I. Zemtsov, IKSI: The MlloscowInstitute of Applied Social Research. A Note on
theDevelopment of Sociology in the USSR, Soviet Institutions Series, No. 6 (Jerusalem,
1976), p. 52.

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364 ELECTIONS
briefly to outline them. We have employed two methods of collecting
relevant data. One is that of participant-observation. The senior author
served for i8 years as a member of local electoral commissions, as an
'agitator' and as a senior 'agitator'll in the city of Leningrad, in
Leningrad oblast, in Murmansk oblast (Kola region) and in Sverdlovsk
oblast (Ural region). He therefore had special access to information and
was able to learn about Soviet elections from the inside. His experience
will thus serve as one of the data bases for what follows.
We have also interviewed a sample of 43 recent Soviet emigres
concerning election procedures in the USSR. The interviews were
informal, lasted from one to three hours each, and were conducted in
the summers of I976 and I977 in the cities of Toronto, Rome and New
York. The respondents had left the Soviet Union between I974 and
1977. Thirteen were key informants in the sense that they had served
as members of district electoral commissions, agitatory or senior
agitatory. They had lived in the cities of Moscow, Leningrad, Tashkent,
Lugansk and Riga. Eleven had been employed as academics, engineers,
musicians and lawyers; two were university students before they left
the USSR. The remaining 30 respondents, selected in such a way as to
maximize the geographical dispersion of their places of residence in the
USSR, had lived in Moscow, Leningrad, Odessa, Vilnius, Lvov,
Bukhara, Sverdlovsk, Sukhumi and Kiev. They had been skilled
workers, tradesmen, housewives, engineers and students.'2
Before discussing the data collected from these sources it will prove
useful briefly to discuss the organization of Soviet elections.

II
For our present purposes we need not consider the process by which
deputies are elected to soviets, the role of deputies in policy formula-
tion, or other such matters. Rather, we must focus our attention on the
election campaign itself. At the centre of all election campaigns in
Soviet society-local, republic, judicial and Supreme Soviet-stands
the agitkollektiv, the organization which conducts all electoral work at
the 'grass roots' level by coordinating propaganda and related activities.
It is a permanent institution which is revived in all industrial enterprises
and educational establishments soon after elections are announced (i.e.
about two or three months before election day). At the bottom of the
agitkollektiv's hierarchical structure is the agitator, or canvasser. His
"IFor descriptions of these roles, see below.
12 Such
respondents may display a systematic bias. It should, however, be noted
that the respondents were not deviant politically until 1973 or so, when emigration
became a real possibility; and that our questions concerned their behaviour over the
past 20 years. Moreover, almost all the respondents were Jews, who were particularly
constrained to adhere to typical political practice during most of this period.

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IN THE USSR 365
role is well defined by Max E. Mote as 'the person who makes face to
face contact with each individual voter, enumerates policies and plans,
and solicits a personal commitment to participate in the [election]
process by voting'.13 Each canvasser is responsible for ensuring that
about I5-20 electors register and vote. Every five canvassers are
supervised by a senior; the senior canvassers are supervised by the head
of the local agitkollektiv; and the various heads in a district (raion) are
supervised by officials in the raion party apparatus (raikom). Thus,
about 6-8% of all electors are members of agitkollektivy. An equal
proportion are employed in district electoral commissions (which are
responsible for the formal registration of voters and for counting the
vote), so that a full 15% of electors take part in the campaign.14
Well before election day the canvasser must check up on his list of
electors, which is compiled by the police in cooperation with housing
superintendents. After ensuring that 'his' electors reside where they are
supposed to, he visits them in order to persuade them formally to
register at the office of the district electoral commission. Because of
genuine support for the regime; out of fear or custom; or simply in
order to procure some of the scarce commodities which are distributed
to electors at polling stations on election day, the elector may agree to
register. He has, however, two other alternatives. First, he may refuse,
either on the grounds of some specific local grievance to which the
authorities have not attended (e.g., his apartment's state of disrepair)
or, less commonly, as an indication of opposition to the regime. Second,
a person may claim that he expects to be absent from his voting district
on election day and obtain a certificate enabling him to vote elsewhere
(a so-called otkrepitel'nyi talon or, in the official wording, an udosto-
verenie na pravo golosovaniya15) from the district electoral commission
office. Although it is impossible to obtain precise figures it seems that
in urban areas perhaps a quarter of electors have obtained such certifi-
cates for elections in the past decade or so.16 These certificates are in
13
Mote, op. cit., p. 64.
14 These percentages cannot, however, be aggregated in order to arrive at some
overall index of political participation (cf. Jerry F. Hough, 'The Brezhnev Era',
Problems of Communism, vol. XXV, March-April 1976, and id., 'Political Participation
in the Soviet Union'). Such a procedure fails to distinguish among the various degrees
of involvement bound up with different political activities. To cite only one example,
members of electoral commissions do very little real work and are sometimes members
on paper only, while all canvassers are very active participants in the political process.
15 See V. K. Grigoriev, Poryadok provedeniya vyborov v Verkhovnyi Sovet SSSR
(M., 1970), p. 56.
16 The senior author recalls that, in his
housing complex in Leningrad in the summer
of 1974, 631 of the 1,456 electors (or over 43%) received absentee certificates. One
key informant in our sample recalled that in his Moscow housing complex that summer
38% of electors received such certificates. Other key informants were not able to
recall precise figures, but their estimates ranged from 15-40%. The percentage varied
according to the season of the year in which the election was held, the class of electors
being considered, and whether the electors lived in rural or urban settings (see text

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366 ELECTIONS
almost all cases disposed of, as is evidenced by the fact that, although
the vast majority of persons in our sample had on occasion received an
otkrepitel'nyitalon, only one had ever used the certificate for its intended
purpose. And when election day comes the recipient of an absentee
certificate normally does not vote. Of course, members of the district
electoral commissions know perfectly well why most people request such
certificates: as most of our respondents indicated, many electors do not
wish to waste time taking part in a senseless activity on election day,
particularly if the election is being held in the summer when the weather
is fine; while a minority view their request for a certificate as a means of
expressing dissatisfaction with the regime, or at least with the electoral
system. Nevertheless, absentee certificates are now freely granted, if
only because this inhibits overt displays of dissent.17
The claim, frequently made by both Western and Soviet writers, that
over 99% of the Soviet electorate turn out to vote, must therefore be
interpreted as follows: actually, 99% of those who a) register and b) do
not receive absentee certificates, turn out on election day. A much closer
approximation to reality is that about three-quarters of Soviet electors
vote. It is also incorrect to regard the 'missing one percent' as a realistic
measure of political dissent18 for, if we include the significant number
of those who procure absentee certificates in order to demonstrate their
political dissatisfaction, the percentage of dissenters is much higher.
In any event, the work of the canvasser comes to an end on election
day. His final task is to ensure that everyone on his list who has
registered and has not received an absentee certificate actually votes.

III
From the foregoing account, and from other recent first-hand reports
on the Soviet political system,19it appears that elections are losing their
effectiveness as instruments for legitimizing the regime. One might
venture to speculate that the authorities themselves have realized this
and footnote 17 below). It should also be noted that several of our respondents claimed
that on occasion they had had one member of their family vote for all members-
formally an illegal practice, and further evidence of the permitted evasion of voting.
17
Proportionately more persons request absentee certificates in cities than in
villages since in a small community to procure a certificate and not vote expresses
dissent openly: the city dweller may be 'lost in the crowd', but the villager is known
to all in his community. It is also significant that the likelihood of requesting absentee
certificates varies with social class. According to our key informants, very few peasants
make such a request. Workers, especially if they are single and live in large cities, are
rather more likely to do so. And large numbers of students and intellectuals in large
cities, unless they occupy positions which are deemed to be politically sensitive, request
absentee certificates.
18 Gilison, op. cit.; Everett M. Jacobs, 'Soviet Local Elections: What They Are,
and What They Are Not', Soviet Studies, vol. XXII, no. I (July I970), pp. 61-76.
19 Roy Medvedev, On Socialist Democracy, transl. Ellen de Kadt (New York, 1975),
p. 143.

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IN THE USSR 367
and have considered the possibility of reorganizing election procedures
(as in Poland and Hungary), or even of not holding elections at all. Such
innovations have not, however, been made for at least two reasons.
First, any change in the political order is perceived by contemporary
Soviet leaders, who seek to maintain the status quo at all costs, as a threat.
Even so innocuous a change as the introduction of a new constitution,
preparations for which were widely publicized in the mid-g60os, took
over a decade to realize. Second, elections are not done away with
because they perform definite functions, in the sense that they serve the
interests of particular groups in Soviet society-either non-ruling
groups or ruling cadres:
a) Some functions of Soviet elections, mentioned only in passing by
Western political scientists have, according to our respondents, grown
considerably in importance over the past two decades. Foremost among
these is the degree to which elections permit the population to bargain
with the authorities over minor matters.20 Various municipal repair
services are, during election campaigns, at the disposal of raikoms-the
local party committees which, as noted above, supervise the activities
of agitkollektivy. Increasingly, electors refuse to register whien visited
by a canvasser in the hope of having him report to his superiors
dissatisfaction with unpaved roads, leaky roofs and the like. These
reports are usually acted upon by the raikom, which instructs the
appropriate repair services to take care of the problems. Electors may
in this manner utilize their vote-or at least the threat of withholding
it-to extract minor concessions from the regime, Tammany Hall
fashion.
That such bargaining procedures are widespread was confirmed by
the respondents' reactions to a short story on elections published in a
Russian-language Western journal, which they were all asked to read.
The story-'Elections' by Soviet dissident author I. Zinoviev21-deals
in part with the refusal of a group of villagers to vote because the
authorities had closed a local church. All respondents agreed that this
was a perfectly plausible incident; many gave examples of election
bargaining from their own experience and assured us that such actions
have become increasingly common in recent years, particularly on the
part of workers.
b) It appears from our interviews that the extent to which elections
enable authorities to screen candidates for the party and reward them for
faithful state service has also been underestimated.22 These functions
are most clearly operative in the universities, one of the major reservoirs
20
See Armstrong, op. cit., p. I65; Fainsod, op. cit., p. 324; Mote, op. cit., pp. 6o, 67.
21
I. Zinoviev, 'Vybory', Grani, no. 102 (1976), pp. 97-103.
22 See
Carr, op. cit., pp. o0, 12, 52; Conquest, op. cit., p. 41; Swearer, op. cit., ppe
134, I42.

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368 ELECTIONS
from which ruling cadres are recruited. It is not widely known that one
of the most important causes of expulsion from university is the refusal
of students to register for elections.23 Young persons are more likely
than others to refuse paying even lip service to the regime, partly
because they are in a critical period of the socialization process, partly
because they are relatively free of those responsibilities-family, job
and so forth-which may act as constraints on political radicalism.24
Labelling such potentially disruptive elements as deviants, and blocking
their entry into positions of influence, enables the regime to avoid
problems which might otherwise emerge at later (and therefore more
sensitive) stages in their careers. At the same time, authorities can spot
the future party faithful in the student who diligently serves as a
canvasser or in some other capacity related to the election campaign.
c) Our review of the Western literature indicates that most scholars
have not noted the way in which elections serve the interests of the
canvassers themselves. Virtually all canvassers are 'activists'-a group
which includes young party members (for whom such work is obliga-
tory), party candidates, those who wish to become party candidates, and
some persons who consider themselves to be in politically sensitive
positions. The work of the canvasser is much more often dull than
pleasant. But there are at least two advantages which accrue to those
who perform this role. First, since some form of 'public service'
.(obshchestvennayarabota) must be undertaken by those who wish to
enter and rise in the ranks of the party or the upper reaches of the
occupational hierarchy; and since many other forms of public service
are particularly odious, e.g., working in the 'civil militia' (narodnaya
druzhina), working in an agitkollektiv is one of the most widely traversed
avenues leading to upward social mobility. As nearly all of our key
informants pointed out, it was almost impossible to keep a university
position or to be promoted to a high-status job without having done
public service work of some sort.25 Second, canvassers have access to
confidential information in the form of special lectures and abstracts
of the foreign press.26
d) The fact that elections perform important social control functions
23
Although statistics on this subject are secret and inaccessible, this assertion may
be supported by information gleaned from the students and academics among our
respondents. For example, in conversation with us, Yu. Luryi, a former Soviet lawyer,
now Professor of Law at the University of Manitoba, who acted as the defence in
many political trials, pointed out that for many active political dissidents first clashes
with the regime occurred when they expressed open dissatisfaction with the election
.system while attending university. As a result, they were usually expelled and kept
under close surveillance.
24 Cf. Robert J. Brym, The Jewish Intelligentsia and Russian Marxism: A Sociological

Study
25
of Intellectual Radicalism and Ideological Divergence (London, I978).
Among other records, documentation attesting to public service work is required
for changing jobs, travelling abroad, obtaining better housing, and so forth.
26
The latter appears in the form of the journal Atlas.

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IN THE USSR 369
for the authorities has received scant (if any) attention. The efficiency
of the internal passport system may, for example, be regularly assessed
by means of election procedures. First, the police and housing
superintendents provide canvassers with the addresses of 'their' voters
so that the latter may be visited and persuaded to come to the
district electoral commission for registration. According to descriptions
provided by our key informants, if, after the canvasser pays the voter's
address several visits, he finds that the voter does not reside where his
passport says he does, a report to this effect is submitted to the senior
canvasser and eventually finds its way to the party department respon-
sible for supervising the police. This serves as an additional check on
the entire population, and also on the efficiency of the police in their
checking.
The raikom's effectiveness in supervising the mobilization of the
electorate may also be gauged through the electoral system. Keeping the
population involved in regime-directed activities helps to prevent
regrouping along anti-regime lines.27 Ruling groups in the USSR have
in fact found it necessary to construct quantitative measures of the
raikom's ability to involve the population in elections.28
Elections are also used as a means of discovering overt opponents of
the regime. In this connection it is interesting to note that the secret
police apparatus which was available during the Stalin era for purposes
of observing the actual voting and finding out who voted against
nominated candidates is now weaker and smaller.29 It is now therefore
extremely difficult if at all possible for the authorities to know the
identities of those who vote against nominated candidates. Moreover, if
we can generalize from our sample to the population at large, no one
believes that voting against nominated candidates now has much of an
impact on the authorities because the practice of partially falsifying
election returns has become so widespread and well known. (Thus, in
response to a section of Zinoviev's short story on elections which deals
with the falsification of election returns on the part of some local
authorities, all respondents agreed that the incident was perfectly
plausible.30)Today, the only way in which voters can demonstrate their
27
Fainsod, op. cit., p. 325; Hough, 'Political Participation in the Soviet Union', p. I4.
28 As far as we know, during the Stalin era efficiency was measured as the percentage
of electors who voted against nominated candidates. From the mid-I950s to the mid-
I96os a ratio was calculated, the numerator of which consisted of the number of
persons i) who voted against nominated candidates, plus ii) those who registered but
,did not vote, and the denominator of which was the total number of voters. And
since the mid-x960s the efficiency measure has been changed to a ratio in which the
numerator is the number of persons who register but do not vote and the denominator
is the total number of eligible voters.
29 Roy Medvedev and Zhores A. Medvedev, Khrushchev: The Years in Power
,(New York, 1976).
90 One respondent, formerly a member of a district electoral commission, related
the following incident. Just after the prices of staple goods were raised in the early

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370 ELEClIONS

opposition to the regime and the only way in which the authorities can
note this opposition is for voters not to vote. This is, of course,
discouraged by the regime, and oppositional sentiments are canalized
by encouraging the use of the absentee certificate. Thus, from the mid-
I95os to the mid-196os it was necessary to procure confirmation from
one's place of employment, attesting to a service leave or a vacation on
election day, in order to receive an absentee certificate. But since the
mid-I960s absentee certificates may be procured without such confirma-
tion-evidence that liberalization of a sort has occurred.
e) Elections also provide training grounds for the implementation of
Soviet development policy. Alec Nove31 has convincingly argued that
'campaignology' is a necessary feature of economies which require the
large-scale mobilization of persons to carry out assigned development
tasks. Officials must be trained to mobilize the population around
slogans and the population must be trained to react properly if, say, a
decision to treble chemical production in seven years is to bear fruit.
Elections provide the necessary training for the process of actually
implementing these larger economic and political goals. As was noted
in a I969 article in Partiinaya zhizn', during the election campaign 'the
basic substance of agitation-propaganda work consists both of a
thorough explanation of the domestic and foreign policy of the
Communist Party, and the Soviet Government, and of the mobilization
of the workers in the struggle for the successful fulfilment of the plans
for comm:nist construction'.32
f) Finally, let us mention the function of Soviet elections which,
more than any other, belies discussion of their legitimizing effect. It
has often been remarked that the dominant ideology in the USSR-
Marxism-Leninism-cannot, without considerable distortion, serve to
legitimize the existing regime. Professed belief in the tenets of Marxism-
Leninism is actively encouraged; action in terms of these principles is
negatively sanctioned because such action would undermine the power
of the state. Stated otherwise, the stability of the regime is assured to
the extent that the dominant ideology is viewed by the population as
invalid, fictitious or-to come right out and say it-illegitimate. What
S. V. Utechin said of Stalin remains true of Soviet leaders today:

I960s relatively large numbers of electors were expected to (and did in fact) vote
against nominated candidates. This expectation prompted the authorities to circulate
a directive to district electoral commissions. introducing a regulation which specifies
that one cain vote against a nominated candidate only by drawing a 'solid straight line'
through the candidate's name on the ballot: all ballots which were marked with lines
that were not perfectly solid and straight were counted as being for the nominated
candidate.
31 Alec Nove, The Soviet Economy: An Introduction (2nd edn., New York, 1968),

pp. 326-30.
3a Qucted in Jacobs, op. cit., p. 61.

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IN TIIE USSR 371
Stalin intended people to be aware of the fictitious nature of the
theory, for an attempt on the part of the people to treat it as truthful
(e.g., to believe that they enjoyed freedom of the press) would under-
mine the whole of his system of rule. Therefore any action based on
belief (genuine or pretended) in the truthfulness of the official theory
was treated as a most serious political offence.33
From this point of view, Soviet leaders are faced with an exceedingly
difficult task which requires special mechanisms to adjust the population
to the system's irrationality, to resolve for them the blatant contra-
diction between official ideology and proscribed political practice. The
set of procedures by which persons are elected to office ranks (along with
trade unions, the so-called 'counter-propaganda' machine and the
judicial system with respect to its treatment of persons convicted of
political crimes) as one of the most important of these mechanisms. For
elections encourage citizens to demonstrate that they have adjusted to
the fiction of democracy in the Soviet Union. Elections buttress the
regime-not by legitimizing it, but by prompting the population to
show that the illegitimacy of its 'democratic' practice has been accepted
and that no action to undermine it will be forthcoming.

Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's

33 S. V. Utechin, Russian Political Thought: A Concise History (New York, 1963),

p. 242.

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