Soviet Official Suggests Voters Have a Choice

A leading Communist Party theoretician suggested Sunday that elections with two or more competing candidates would help the Soviet people learn how to exercise their rights.

Georgi K. Shakhnazarov, an official in the International Department of the party’s Central Committee who is considered close to the thinking of Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, expressed the view in an interview with the weekly Moscow News.

In remarkably candid language, Shakhnazarov implied that single-candidate elections and the practice of administrative rule from the top down have eroded public interest in selecting leaders.

“If violations of the democratic order take place for 10 to 15 years and the democratic system is not applied in full, then it gradually begins to rust,” he said without explaining what 10- or 15-year period he meant.

“A whole generation of people appears which does not know how to use its rights,” he added. “These may be educated people--they may read Shakespeare and are fond of Bach--but they are not citizens because they cannot defend their own rights and do not even understand very well what these rights are.

“That is why the cardinal problem has become to foster in people the feeling of being the masters of life, to make them understand again (and maybe even to explain for the first time) that they are the masters,” he concluded.

Shakhnazarov, who has traveled often in the West and once was editor of a Communist theoretical journal with offices in Prague, Czechoslovakia, is the author of a book entitled “Socialist Democracy” that was published in 1975.

His interview--in a publication that is printed in French, Spanish, Arabic and English as well as Russian--seemed designed to stimulate discussion of Gorbachev’s frequent calls for greater democratization.

Workers in the Soviet Union, he said, have been timid and reluctant about using rights granted to them by newly passed legislation.

“Administrative methods of government have seemingly alleviated life not only for those who govern but also for those who are governed,” he said.

Waiting for Orders

“It is so much easier to relax and wait until the order arrives than to think independently, justifying one’s own actions and making responsible decisions collectively.

“The saying ‘the bosses know better’ is a sad proof of this,” he added.

Reading between the lines, Soviet citizens might regard his comments as a criticism of Josef Stalin, who was criticized for fostering a “cult of personality,” but the criticism actually applies to the way all past Soviet leaders have ruled the country.

Shakhnazarov, however, exempted the Communist Party from his criticism, saying that its leadership was the motivating force of the socialist society in the Soviet Union.

But he contended that Soviet citizens must take a renewed interest in political affairs.

“Democracy must develop in all directions,” he said in the interview.

Specific About Changes

On the subject of elections, Shakhnazarov was quite specific about changes he wanted from the present system of slating only one party-approved candidate for each office.

“For a long time the candidate deputies (for Soviet legislative bodies) were selected from within a narrow circle and then put before the electorate,” he said.

“There was no really lively and open discussion of their personal qualities or election program, the element of political competition was absent and, as the result of that, the interest in elections as such waned. The need to reconstruct the electoral system is obvious.”

This was Shakhnazarov’s way of saying that Soviet elections resulted in the party’s candidate getting 99% or more of the vote and that there was no incentive for anyone to go to the polls.

“The possibility of nominating two or more candidates does not, by the way, contradict our laws,” he said.

Speaking only of elections to regional legislative bodies, he said political contests would be healthy.

Candidates on Television

“I would propose that all the major enterprises located in the territory of the electoral area nominate their own candidates and then organize the deputies’ speeches before collectives, joint meetings and public discussions, including on television,” he said.

“As a result of this, people would be able to make a conscious choice regarding which of the nominees is more knowledgeable or more energetic, and which of them has the needs of people and of the community nearer to his or her heart.

“I am sure this would be more interesting than the most popular TV programs,” Shakhnazarov said. “And, of course, it would be a good school of political culture.”

Some Communist countries--notably Hungary--have experimented with elections with two or more candidates. The Soviet Union, however, has stuck by its single-candidate system for elections to its legislative bodies.