Right To Vote
According to communist ideologists, the Soviet political system was a true democracy, where workers' councils ("soviets") represented the will of the working class. In particular, the Soviet Constitution of 1936 guaranteed direct universal suffrage with the secret ballot. However, before the June 1987 elections, all candidates had been selected by Communist Party organizations. Historian Robert Conquest described this system as "a set of phantom institutions and arrangements which put a human face on the hideous realities: a model constitution adopted in a worst period of terror and guaranteeing human rights, elections in which there was only one candidate, and in which 99 percent voted; a parliament at which no hand was ever raised in opposition or abstention."
Read more about this topic: Human Rights In The Soviet Union
Famous quotes containing the words right to and/or vote:
“What does it matter whether I am shown to be right! I am right too much!—And he who laughs best today will also laugh last.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“I find that the respectable man, so called, has immediately drifted from his position, and despairs of his country, when his country has more reason to despair of him. He forthwith adopts one of the candidates ... as the only available one, thus proving that he is himself available for any purposes of the demagogue. His vote is of no more worth than that of any unprincipled foreigner or hireling native, who may have been bought.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)