“I recently read Evgenia Ginzburg’s book “Steep Route.” I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in reading an eyewitness account of Stalin’s repressions...

“I recently read Evgenia Ginzburg’s book “Steep Route.” I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in reading an eyewitness account of Stalin’s repressions. The book is beautifully written and overall very uplifting. I can’t ignore one episode of the book where the Soviet elections are mentioned. This is extremely interesting evidence. Evgenia Ginzburg, the author of the book, was repressed in 1937, receiving 10 years in prison, later replaced by a camp, and five years of loss of rights. Thus, the total fifteen-year sentence expired in 1952, when Ginzburg, after the camp, lived in Magadan as an eternal exile. In Soviet political practice, there were so-called agitators who went around voters before elections and talked about the merits of the nominated candidates. Actually, there could be many candidates if several bodies were elected at the same time, but only one candidate was nominated for each specific position, for whom they campaigned. Deprived of voting rights, Ginzburg was accustomed to answering the agitators who sometimes came that “there are no voters here, only defeatists.” But in 1952, another agitator announced to her that the period of her loss of rights had ended and her right to vote had been returned to her. Ginzburg provides the following remarkable dialogue.

Agitator: So you understand me? Exiled settlers enjoy the right to elect...
Ginsburg: And to be elected?
A: So how is it?
G: Well... What if, for example, at a pre-election meeting someone names my candidacy for the local Council. Can I run for office?
A: It’s clear how long you have been cut off from life. What do you think, everyone shouts whatever they want at a pre-election meeting? The lists have already been prepared in advance by the party bodies. (“Steep Route”, part three chapter 13).
It should be noted that according to the first Soviet constitution of 1924, there was a whole class of disenfranchised people, including those deprived of voting rights. The Stalinist Constitution of 1936 abolished the status of disenfranchised and introduced general direct secret elections, but subsequent repressions actually created new deprived people, and in a much more cruel and hypocritical manner. Uncontested elections with campaigners for a single candidate existed until 1989. And the deputies chosen in such a sterile way did not really decide anything until 1989, because the system of councils - from the Supreme Council to the village council - was only a function of the all-powerful party vertical.
Your Vasya N., pre-trial detention center-1, St. Petersburg"