One Party, One Vote

By Erik Amfitheatrof

It's election time, but no dark horses run on this turf

At a time when New Hampshire primary voters were heading for the polls, a pleasantly round-faced woman economist named Zinaida Vladimirova Baturina waited for a trolleybus outside the Moscow office building where she works. It was 5 p.m. in the Soviet capital, and the orange glow of twilight hung in the western sky. Twenty minutes later Zinaida Vladimirova reached her destination, a neighborhood campaign office. She had promised to put in an evening's work as an agitator (local volunteer) in the windup of this week's election of 1,500 deputies to the Supreme Soviet. As she settled beside the telephone, she prepared to advise voters on how to mark their ballots before putting them into the urna (ballot box).

New Hampshire it is not. In Soviet elections there are no races among the candidates, no startling upsets in the making, no dark horses snorting in anticipation of last-minute runs. Ever since Lenin dissolved the freely elected Constituent Assembly in 1918, the U.S.S.R. has been ruled through interlocking hierarchies: the nonelected Communist Party Politburo and Central Committee, and the 1,500-member Supreme Soviet, which meets in full session only about 48 hours a year. Still, the Soviets insist on going through the motions of an election for this nominal parliament, if only to pay homage to the trappings of democracy. If it were not for the fact that there is practically no freedom of choice, the Soviet electoral process would look almost normal.

Getting a 100% turnout of all eligible voters 18 or older is the main task of the million or so agitatori attached to the Soviet Union's 176,982 electoral commissions. During the 60-day preparation for the elections, teams of two or three agitatori visit every household, from the fruit farms of Moldavia on the Rumanian border to the Eskimo fishing villages of Kamchatka on the Pacific. Some ward-level political banter takes place during these house calls. Irate voters are likely to grumble, "The hot-water system doesn't work here" or "When are we going to get a bigger apartment?" Since all urban dwellings in the Soviet Union are assigned by the state, the agitatori are targets for this kind of consumer frustration, and in theory at least, they report the complaints and requests of the electors to local authorities.

Very rarely does a Soviet tell the agitatori that he or she does not intend to vote. In Stalin's time, not voting literally led to a midnight knock on the door and a one-way ticket to Siberia. Now there are no overt punishments, but a notation may be entered in the non-voter's police file.

The voters can drop the ballots into the urna without marking them, signifying assent, or they can step into the booth and cross out the name of the approved candidate, even going so far as to write in another name. The catch-22 is that write-in candidates have no chance; all winners need official approval. The only suspense is how close to 100% each district can come. Anything below a 99% turnout is unthinkable. After the last elections, in 1979, TASS reported a 99.99% turnout, with 174,734,459 people voting for the official candidate and 185,422 either voting against or writing in another name.

Since only approved candidates' names appear on the ballot and election is automatic, no campaigning would seem to be in order. But candidates' rallies and oratory have dominated TV and newspapers for the past two months. Unlike America's stump-weary Democratic candidates, Soviet leaders are required to make just one electoral pitch. As General Secretary, silver-haired Konstantin Chernenko last week delivered the campaign's climactic oration from the Kremlin's vast, 6,000-seat Palace of Congresses. For a full hour, the new head of the Communist Party sat stolidly on the platform with other Politburo members as upstanding citizens from his electoral district praised him in orotund paeans familiar to Socialist pols the world over: "Dear Comrade Chernenko ... an outstanding leader of our time... in the struggle for peace..."

So dull are these speeches, so predictable the phrases, that Soviet audiences sit through them like carved figures, springing back to life only to applaud on cue.

Yet the honor of being invited to share in the ritual is reflected in the faces of these electricians, soldiers and schoolteachers.

There is no political humor. Chernenko went only so far as to wave to the audience with grandfatherly benediction before walking stiffly to the lectern and launching into his speech.

Hurrying along in his distinctly breathless, halting style, he repeated Yuri Andropov's call to modernize industry and predictably chided the U.S. for "blatant militarism" and "claims to world domination." After these familiar charges, however, he called on the U.S. to "prove its peaceful intentions by deeds"--accepting, for example, a nuclear freeze.

At this point he lost his way and fell silent for a full 30 seconds, while the embarrassed audience sat as expressionless as dolls. Finally Chernenko stumbled into what may have been intended as a diplomatic overture. Without referring to an important Soviet concession made in January that could open the way to on-site inspection of chemical-weapons stocks, Chernenko said that "prerequisites are beginning to ripen" for signing a total ban on chemical weapons. Along with other accords, such a ban could "signal the start of a dramatic improvement in Soviet-American relations."

Within the next 60 days the Supreme Soviet is likely to elect a new President, to succeed Andropov. Some Western diplomats expect Chernenko to get the post.

Others believe it will be parceled out as part of a power-sharing agreement made when Chernenko was elected head of the Communist Party on Feb. 13. Either way, the deputies will raise their forearms en masse when asked, "All those voting in favor?'' --By Erik Amfitheatrof/Moscow