1989 Soviet Union legislative election

Background

In January 1987 Communist Party (CPSU) General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev announced the new policy of demokratizatsiya (democratization). Under this concept the electorate would have a choice between multiple candidates per constituency, although CPSU would effectively remain the ruling party (in the absence of other parties). The concept was introduced by Gorbachev to enable him to circumvent the CPSU hardliners who resisted his perestroika and glasnost reform campaigns, while still maintaining the Soviet Union as a one-party communist state.

Electoral system

In December 1988 the 1977 Soviet Constitution was amended to create a new legislative body, the Congress of People's Deputies, which replaced the old Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union as the highest organ of state power. The Congress of People's Deputies consisted of 2,250 deputies, who would elect a 542-member Supreme Soviet from among its members to serve as the "working" parliament.

The 2,250 members of the CPD consisted of:

• 1,500 directly elected from single-member constituencies by the two-round system.
• 750 reserved for public bodies.

The 1,500 members directly elected consisted of:

• 750 were elected by "Territorial Districts" of equal population.
• 750 were elected by "National Territorial Districts" based on republics and autonomous regions irrelevant of population (32 from each Soviet Socialist Republic, 11 from each Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, 5 from each Autonomous Oblast and 1 from each Autonomous Okrug). Voters had two ballots, one for their Territorial District and one for their National Territorial District.

The 750 members reserved for public bodies consisted of:

• 100 were elected by the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions.
• 100 were elected by the CPSU.
• 75 were elected by the Committee of Soviet Women.
• 75 were elected by Komsomol.
• 75 were elected by the Academy of Sciences, the All-Union Voluntary Temperance Society, artistic unions and collective farm associations.
• 325 were elected by other bodies.

Campaign

Candidates were required to be nominated by organisations and had to be supported at a meeting of at least 500 voters.

A total of 7,531 candidates nominated themselves for the directly elected seats, of which 5,074 were registered to contest the elections, around 90% of which were CPSU members. Amongst those blocked from standing were Boris Nemtsov, who had attempted to run in Nizhegorodsky District 158 in Gorky. 399 constituencies had only one candidate. Around 85% of candidates were CPSU members.

The 750 reserved seats were contested by 880 candidates.

Results

]] Of the 1,500 directly elected seats, 1,226 were won in the first round. Voter turnout was 89.8% overall, with around 172,840,130 voters voting from the 192,575,165 registered. Turnout ranged from 71.9% in the Armenian SSR to 98.5% in the Azerbaijan SSR.

Although the CPSU candidates won 87% of the seats, 38 CPSU regional secretaries lost in their constitutencies. In the Lithuanian SSR the nationalist popular front won around three-quarters of the seats, while in the Estonian SSR the Popular Front won around half the seats and in Latvian SSR Popular Front of Latvia won 40 of the 56 seats.

Among the dissidents elected were Boris Yeltsin, who won over the CPSU-endorsed candidate to represent Moscow's district with 89% of the vote. It was Yeltsin's first return to political power after resigning from the Politburo in 1987. On a union republic level Yeltsin was also later elected to the RSFSR's Congress and then, indirectly, to its Supreme Soviet. Anti-corruption prosecutor Telman Gdlyan, trapeze artist Valentin Dikul, ethnographer Galina Starovoytova, lawyer Anatoly Sobchak, physicist Andrei Sakharov, weightlifter Yury Vlasov, and hockey player Anatoli Firsov were among the other non-endorsed candidates who were elected to the CPD.

All in all, while the majority of seats were won by endorsed candidates, one Politburo member, five Central Committee members lost re-election to non-endorsed candidates. Gorbachev hailed the elections as a victory for perestroika and the election was praised in state media such as TASS and Izvestia, despite the strong opposition of hardliners within the Politburo and Central Committee.

Aftermath

The first session of the new Congress of People's Deputies opened on 25 May 1989. Although hardliners retained control of the chamber, the reformers used the legislature as a platform to debate and criticize the Soviet system, with the state media broadcasting their comments live and uncensored on television. Yeltsin managed to secure a seat on the working Supreme Soviet, which was elected in the first session on 25 May and met for the first time on 3 June. and in the summer formed the first opposition, the Inter-Regional Deputies Group, formed of Russian nationalists and liberals. As it was the final legislative group in the Soviet Union, those elected in 1989 played a vital part in continuing reforms and the eventual fall of the Soviet Union two years later.

References

References

1. "Elections held in 1989".
2. (26 March 1989). "THE WORLD: The Soviet Vote; A Guide to the Election Process".
3. (28 March 2019). "The Soviet Union had a competitive election 30 years ago. Russians are still fighting for one". The Washington Post.
4. Toshihiko Ueno. (1990). "Electoral Reform and the 1st Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR". Acta Slavica Iaponica.
5. [[Dieter Nohlen]] & Philip Stöver. (2010). "Elections in Europe: A data handbook". Nomos.
6. "Soviet Union: A country study".
7. Nasim Rizvi. (1989). "Elections in the Soviet Union". Strategic Studies.
8. (27 March 1989). "1989: Millions of Russians go to the polls".