100% Victory

Over 1,000,000 citizens of Moscow left their homes one sub-zero day last week, turned out in a driving snowstorm to march across the Red Square shouting "Hurrah for Stalin!" They carried heavy wood & canvas floats and tall banners which they struggled to keep Moscow's wintry blasts from whipping from their hands. It was a magnificent show of Russian stamina, celebrating the election with which Russia has "come of age" (TIME, Dec. 20). Stalin, who is a native of the semitropical Tiflis region, did not himself turn out in the blizzard but sent 62-year-old Russian President Kalinin to stand snow-buffeted atop the tomb of Lenin in the Red Square, to receive officially "on behalf of Comrade Stalin" the shouts of acclaim.

Meanwhile, the tremendous work of tabulating returns from 130,000 voting districts, of which 40,000 have no telegraphic or even rail connection with Moscow, went ahead with feverish activity. It was belatedly announced that 94,138,000 Russians registered to vote and that at least 96.5% had voted. All votes counted for the Stalin regime, since only Stalinist candidates ran, and Soviet officials boasted that not a single ballot had come to light which seemed to have been scratched. On the contrary, millions of ballot envelopes when opened were found to contain not only the voter's name signed or printed but also such expressions as "I would give my life for Stalin, let alone my vote!" Also thousands had brought with them to the polls little notes of praise addressed to Dictator Stalin and to Secret Police Chief Yezhov and had slipped them into the envelopes in which they cast their ballots.

According to Pravda, official newsorgan of the Communist Party, the counting of ballots cast in the Stalin District on the outskirts of Moscow, where the candidate was Stalin himself, was an occasion tense with emotion. "The first envelope is slit!" exclaimed Pravda. "All eyes are directed to it. The chairman takes out two slips-- and reads loudly and distinctly 'COMRADE STALIN!'

"Instantly the solemnity is broken. Everybody in the room jumps up and applauds joyously and stormily for the first ballot of the first general secret election under the Stalinist Constitution--a ballot with the name of the Constitution's creator!"

There was no other name printed on the ballots which the chairman, could have read, but according to Pravda each time he read out "COMRADE STALIN!" all present went wild in a fresh ovation.

"The result is 100 per cent--100 per cent!" exulted Pravda. "What election in what country for what candidate has given a 100-per cent response?" Soviet officials explained that in Russia, under Stalin's new "Most Democratic Constitution in the World," the urge to vote is so strong that at thousands of polling places crowds of voters waited through much of the previous night for the polls to open. These earliest comers were reported in most cases to be elderly men and women. Vigorous young Russians, confident of being able to shove through the crowds, mostly arrived "late"--that is not until early morning. Many an old woman was reported to have exclaimed after casting her ballot, "I had a terrible headache before--but now it is gone. I feel so much better since I have been able to vote for Stalin!"

No speech against any candidate was reported made anywhere in the Soviet Union. However, the official Soviet press said last week that at Leningrad a citizen named Golubev was given seven years for "swearing at candidates." He only swore and so was let off easily. An opposition speech would have been "Trotskyism" or "wrecking," for which the legal penalty is death.

Of the 1,143 Deputies elected to Russia's new parliament, the Supreme Soviet, official figures listed 855 as enrolled members of the Communist Party, 184 as women. All 1,143 are Stalinist Deputies, but the fact that 288 are not enrolled Communists was heavily emphasized by the official Russian press last week, hailed as "The Victory of the Bloc of Party and Non-Party Bolsheviki!"

Several days afterward, when the world press had ceased front-paging the Soviet election, Moscow officials unobtrusively announced that 1,334,124 votes were "scratched"-- that is, the name of the Stalinist candidate was struck out by voters. The further official admission was made that "more than 2,000,000 votes were also invalidated in other ways."

Since each ballot was printed with two names (the name of a candidate for the lower house and the name of a candidate for the upper house of the Supreme Soviet), the Government newsorgan Izvestia claimed that two scratched votes equaled only one scratched ballot--that is, one voter who balked at voting for the candidates put up by Mr. Stalin's friends.

If one makes the rather likely assumption that the votes "invalidated in other ways" were spoiled by other recusant voters and divides the total by two, the result is 1,667,000 Russians who still have the courage to oppose Mr. Stalin. Among more than 90,000,000 voters this is a small number. Also small is the number of Mr. Stalin's chief supporters, the 2,000,000 (estimated) enrolled members of the Communist Party.

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