The Pittsburgh Press (February 11, 1946)
100 million votes counted at Soviet polls
No choice given but to endorse Stalin
By Henry Shapiro, United Press staff writer
MOSCOW (UP) – In carnival spirits Russia today counted more than 100 million ballots cast Sunday in a national election which was certain to yield an overwhelming endorsement for Josef Stalin and the Communist Party.
Voters from one-sixth of the world’s surface – nine million square miles – cast their votes yesterday in the first national election since 1937 for Stalin and approximately 1,400 other members of Russia’s “who’s who” for membership in the Supreme Soviet.
Radio Moscow said election results will be announced Tuesday. It said that at least 96 percent of the eligible voters cast ballots in an atmosphere of “tremendous political enthusiasm.”
Stalin speaks
Stalin in an eve-of-the-polls speech called the balloting “a verdict on the rule of the Communist Party.”
Voters had no choice of candidates, as only one person had been nominated for every seat in the two chambers of the Supreme Soviet, or national parliament. They could, however, voice opposition by turning in blank ballots. Thus the number of affirmative votes cast showed the degree of support for the slate.
The ballots were expected to show results substantially similar to those of the 1937 election, when the single list of “Communists and non-party Bolsheviks” polled 98.6 percent of the 50,319,346 votes cast.
500,000 against last time
In that election about 500,000 Russians voted against the slate by scratching out the names of the candidates.
Stalin led the people to the polls yesterday by casting his ballot for Sergei Vavilov, president of the Academy of Sciences, in the Kremlin precinct of the Lenin electoral district.
Radio Moscow announced that Premier Stalin was re-elected unanimously to a seat in the Supreme Soviet by his Moscow district. “This is the first 100 percent poll attendance recorded,” the broadcast said. “Many ballot papers had written expressions of love and admiration for the Generalissimo.”
By noon it was estimated that more than 50,000,000 votes had been cast. Reindeer and dogsled teams carried voters in the Arctic regions. Voting facilities were arranged on trains, aboard ships, and in army garrisons on duty outside the homeland.
Two ballots marked
I visited several Moscow electoral precincts and watched lines of voters move through the polling places. Each voter identified himself by showing his passport and received a ballot containing the name of one candidate for the Nationalities Council and one candidate for the Union Council – the two houses of the Supreme Soviet.
The voter then entered a screened booth, where in secret he either checked the candidates’ names, indicating approval, or scratched out the name, expressing opposition. His folded ballot was dropped into a sealed urn.