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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32256 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

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I don't think any Baltic countries ran referendums of elections in 1945.

Looking at the election in Estonia in 1940, electing the parliament that rushed through the annexation:

Parliamentary elections were held in Estonia on 14 and 15 July 1940 alongside simultaneous elections in Latvia and Lithuania. The elections followed the Soviet occupation of the three countries. As was the case in Latvia and Lithuania, the elections in Estonia were blatantly rigged.[1][2] They were also unconstitutional, since only seats for the lower chamber of the Riigikogu, the Chamber of Deputies, were contested; the upper chamber, the National Council, had been dissolved and was never reconvened. According to August Rei, one of independent Estonia's last envoys to Moscow, under the Estonian constitution, the Chamber of Deputies had "no legislative power" apart from the National Council.[3]

The Estonian Working People's Union, a Communist front group, was the only party allowed to run and won all 80 seats, allegedly with 92.8% of the votes cast and the remaining 7.2% having been declared invalid. The newly elected "People's Riigikogu" declared the Estonian SSR on 21 July and requested admission to the Soviet Union the following day. The request was approved by the Soviet government on 6 August.[4]

The elections followed the Soviet occupation of Estonia in June. The Communist Party established the Estonian Working People's Union to run in the elections, whilst despite having only three days to organise, the opposition put forward 78 candidates in 66 of the 80 Riigikogu constituencies.[2] However, Prime Minister Johannes Vares was ordered by Soviet politician Andrei Zhdanov to remove opposition candidates from the ballot.[5] Opposition candidates were required to present a manifesto within a few hours, which most of them did.[2] However, almost all were subsequently removed by a mixture of threats, violence and invalidations.[2] Only one opposition candidate remained; Jüri Rajur-Liivak, who was later arrested along with the other removed candidates.[5]

I don't think any Baltic countries ran referendums of elections in 1945.

Well, that is a good way to make impossible to provide evidence that "Baltic referenda in '45 on joining the USSR were rigged" :)

And for 1940 ones I will just requote:

was the only party allowed to run

Seriously, anyone that is hearing about USSR-run elections and is not wondering "how they falsified them" is poorly informed.

Especially annexation "referenda" in just conquered areas, the same goes for what Russia run recently in occupied Ukraine.

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