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Russia, Elections, Democracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Stephen White
Stephen White*
Affiliation:
Professor of Politics at the University of Glasgow
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Extract

It was one of the defining features of the soviet system that it allowed no legal challenge to party dominance. Elections took place at regular intervals; but from an early stage they were based upon a single slate of candidates, the ‘bloc of Communists and nonparty people’. Voting was not compulsory, but it was difficult to avoid – canvassers went from house to house, ballot boxes were set up in hospitals, long-distance trains and polar observatories, and constituency officials competed with each other for the highest turnout. In theory it was possible to vote against, but this meant using the screened-off booth in the polling station, since a vote in favour, with a single candidate system, could be cast without marking the ballot paper or even looking at it. Some called these ‘Elections Paradise-style: as God said to Adam, “Here is Eve, the woman of your choice”’. Bertolt Brecht, commenting on the leaf lets that had been distributed in East Berlin after the rising of 1953 which announced that the people had forfeited the government's confidence and could ‘only win it back by redoubled labour’, put it more directly. ‘Wouldn't it be simpler,’ he asked, ‘if the government dissolved the people and elected another?’

Type
Original Article
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 35 , Issue 3 , July 2000 , pp. 302 - 324
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 2000

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References

1 The development of Russian electoral politics is most fully considered in Stephen White, Richard Rose and Ian McAllister, How Russia Votes, Chatham NJ, Chatham House, 1997. More up-to-date statistics may be consulted on the website maintained by the Centre for the Study of Public Policy at the University of Strathclyde: www.russiavotes.org. The preparation of this article has been supported by an ESRC grant for ‘Consolidating Russian Democracy? The Third-Round Elections’ to Richard Rose of Strathclyde University and Stephen White, and by the opportunity to act as an international observer on behalf of the European Institute of the Media at both the Duma and presidential elections.

2 Bold, Alan (ed.), The Penguin Book of Socialist Verse, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, Penguin, 1970, p. 240.Google Scholar

3 For these distinctions see particularly Diamond, Larry, Developing Democracy: Towards Consolidation, Baltimore, MD, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999.Google Scholar

4 Rossiiskaya gazeta, 18 January 2000, p. 1; Monitoring obshchestvennogo mneniya, 2(2000), p. 56.

5 Rossiiskaya gazeta, 10 August 1999, p. 1; and for the Stepashin interview, Komsomol’skaya pravda, 13 August 1999, p. 6.

6 Monitoring obshchestvennogo mneniya, 1 (2000), pp. 58, 66.

7 Izvestiya, 19 November 1999, p. 1.

8 Programma Soyuza pravykh sil (election flyer, issued 29 November 1999).

9 19 dekabrya - vse na vybory! (election flyer, issued 10 December 1999).

10 Izvestiya, 29 October 1999, p. 4; Komsomol’skaya pravda, 1 October 1999, p. 4.

11 Chem my otlichaemsya ot drugikh (election flyer, issued 28 October 1999).

12 Putem sozidaniya. Osnovnye napravleniya ekonomicheskoi programmy narodno-patrioticheskikh sil, Moscow, CPRF, 1999, pp. 3, 5.

13 Izvestiya, 5 November 1999, p. 1.

14 Vestnik Tsentral’noi izbiratel’noi komissii Rossiiskoi Federatsü, 23 (1999), pp. 96–9. These and other results may also be found on the Central Electoral Commission’s website: www.fci.ru.

15 Izvestiya, 21 January 2000, p. 2.

16 Putin’s New Year statement appeared in Rossiiskaya gazeta, 31 December 1999, pp. 4–5; his ‘Open letter’ was in Kommersant, Izvestiya and Trud, 25 February 2000, p. 3. For his campaign biography see Ot pervogo litsa. Razgovory s Vladimirom Putinym, Moscow, Vagrius, 2000.

17 Krasnaya zvezda, 1 March 2000, p. 3; the programme also appeared in Dialog, 3 (2000), pp. 15–19. A fuller version appeared as Obrashchenie k narodu, Moscow, ITRK, 2000.

18 Based upon Komsomol’skaya pravda, 7 March 2000, p. 26, and Izvestiya, 18 March 2000, p. 3.

19 Vestnik Tsentral’noi izbiratel’noi komissii Rossiiskoi Federatsii, No. 13, 2000, pp. 63–6.

20 KFE/RL Newsline, Part I, 22 December 1999; Financial Times, 29 March 2000, p. 10.

21 Ivestiya, 11 January 2000, p. 7.

22 Carothers, Thomas, Aiding Democracy Abroad, Washington DC, Carnegie Endowment, 1999, pp. 131–4.Google Scholar

23 Monitoring the Media Coverage of the December 1999 Parliamentary Elections in Russia: Final Report, Düsseldorf, EIM, March 2000. EIM publications may also be consulted on their website: www.eim.org.

24 Preliminary Report on Monitoring of Media Coverage during the Presidential Elections in the Russian Federation in March 2000, Düsseldorf, EIM, March 2000.

25 Nezavisimaya gazeta, 28 March 2000, p. 4.

26 Segodnya, 11 September 1999, p. 1.

27 Monitoring obshchestvennogo mneniya, 1 (2000), p. 67.

28 Journal of Democracy, 11:1 (January 2000), pp. 187–200, and for earlier years www.freedomhouse.org.

29 These criteria are drawn largely from Weir, Stuart and Beetham, David, Political Power and Democratic Control in Britain, London, Routledge, 1998, p. 10;Google Scholar see also Diamond, Developing Democracy, and Rose, Richard, Mishler, William and Haerpfer, Christian, Democracy and its Alternatives: Understanding Post-Communist Societies, Cambridge, Polity, 1998,Google Scholar ch. 2.

30 Nezavisimaya gazeta, 24 March 2000, p. 3.

31 Preliminary Report, p. 11.