“This is Not a Legal Requirement, but an Established Tradition”, or Why There was Only One Candidate on the Soviet Ballot Paper

The peculiarity of the late Soviet period lies in the transformation of the relationship between the institutions of power and various groups of the population.The institution of elections was one of the mechanisms of this "feedback", which served to strengthen trust between the authorities and society.One of the hidden functions of the electoral process in the USSR was to maintain or strengthen trust in the existing system through repetitive rituals.The potential use of elections as a mechanism to "purge" the nomenklatura by relying on the vox populi may explain one aspect of the Soviet electoral process that perplexed Soviet citizens as well.There is a view in historiography that the potential possibility of holding alternative elections was already laid down by the Stalinist leadership for use in the course of mass political repression, but was not actually used.But the very wording with the requirement to leave one candidate on the ballot paper was retained.The Soviet leadership did not endeavour not only to correct this wording, but also to give a clear and precise explanation for the divergence of words and practice.Documents from the archives show that citizens regarded letters to the authorities as an effective way to communicate with them and an opportunity to solve their problems.The majority of the population actively participated in the ideological campaign, which called for the defence of Soviet norms and values.At the same time, their ideas about morality were often stricter than the official ones.