FOREIGN RELATIONS, 1946, VOLUME VI



such importance to electoral campaign and surrounds it with such
unparalleled pomp and circumstance. Even in Soviet mind this ques-
tion looms so large that party has had to supply an answer. Officially,
election is to be a demonstration of confidence in the leadership which
has carried country along since last elections in '37 and in policies
followed by this leadership. For this reason herculean efforts are
being made to get every last voter to polls and to register as nearly
as possible a 100% vote. This is official explanation but it is not all.
Among other motives are probably the following:
  A. In drawing up lists of those entitled to vote party is in fact
taking an informal but very thorough census of population. There
is vital need of such a census after profound upheavals of war and
invasion.
  B. Elections provide convenient occasion for vigorous and wide
scale advancement of current party line. By mobilizing this tre-
mendous army of election officials and agitators party hopes to combat
wave of weariness, discouragement and apathy which USSR shares
with other war worn countries and to whip up enthusiasm for accom-
plishment of economic tasks of immediate future. Under present
Soviet system there can be no stimulus to increased economic effort
but discipline from above and enthusiasm from below and for obvious
reasons regime tries to maintain at least a respectable balance between
the two.
  C. A marked characteristic of Soviet thought is conviction that you
can eat your cake and have it too. Kremlin is determined that with-
out relaxing one iota of its real totalitarian power it can make Soviet
people go through motions of democracy with such impeccable fidelity
and enthusiasm as to establish, both with them and with outside world,
the thesis now put forward daily by Moscow press that Soviet system
is most democratic on the earth. This is designed among other things
to combat any lingering backward glances at western institutions
among populace of areas recently taken under Soviet power and any
similar tendencies on part of those older Soviet citizens to whom the
war brought new contacts and vistas.
                                                         KENNAN
861.00/2-1246: Telegram
The Charge in the Soviet Union (Kennan) to the Secretary of State

CONFIDENTIAL                   Moscow, February 12, 1946-3 p. m.
                                            [Received 4: 58 p. m.]
  408. Pre-election speeches of Stalin and his Politburo associates
have re-affirmed correctness and historical necessity of earlier policies
implemented by Communist Party in USSR and have set forth party
line on internal program of Soviet State in years to come.



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