Tag #115417 - Interview #83163 (Anatoli Kraemer )

In general, the Soviet system was built on deception and hypocrisy. The bright example of that are the elections to local council and up to Supreme Council of Estonia and the USSR. For a number of years I was the chairman of the electoral board. It’s hard to call that procedure election – there was only one possible candidate that people were supposed to elect. The only choice was pro or contra his name. The votes were counted in a peculiar way. I received a call from the party committee and was told: today we were supposed to have 98%. That was the issue. It was all false, we were not supposed to do that. I never made that approach, but those things took place nevertheless.