“Election Integrity” in a One-Party Dictatorship: A Vote-Rigging Scandal at the Leningrad Party Organization’s December 1948 Conference

Abstract In 1949, Stalin and his comrades-in-arms were rocked by allegations of voter fraud at a recent Leningrad party conference. Investigations soon revealed the conference’s electoral commission to have zeroed-out all the votes cast against the leaders of the Leningrad party organization. Outrage within the all-union party leadership in Moscow quickly transformed this scandal into one of the major catalysts for the last major political purge of the Stalin era, the Leningrad Affair. Aside from informing the start of this purge, the scandal also sheds light on the role that elections played in Stalin-era governance.