Bolsheviks and opposition parties at the Council elections: means of formation of the single-party political system

Abstract

The subject of this research is the mechanism of formation of the single-party political system in Soviet Russia, and dislodgement by the Bolsheviks of opposition parties from the political and electoral process. The article reconstructs the methods of struggle of Bolsheviks against opposition in the course of elections and between election periods, as well as reviews statistical data on the participation of parties in Council elections and different levels of the Congresses of Soviets. The author reveals the role of agitation-propagandistic, repressive, and administrative means of struggle between Bolsheviks and opposition parties, and results of implementation of such methods. The scientific novelty consists in comprehensive examination and classification of the means of struggle of Bolsheviks against opposition parties during the first Council electoral campaigns. The first methods have formed at the elections of 1918, and later undergone extensions and amendments. The range of means of struggle against opposition includes the agitation-propagandistic, repressive, and administrative pressuring. The key role in liquidation of multi-party system was carried out by the repressive and agitation-propagandistic methods, which were not the method used in elections specifically, but produced most significant effect upon the electoral process. Diverse methods of administrative pressuring , such as restriction of pre-election agitation, ban on the speeches of opposition parties representatives, prohibitions on publicizing the lists of opposition candidate (prohibition on participation in the elections), compulsory re-voting, were applied directly at the elections and served as supplements to the more coarse measures of repressive character.