ABSTRACT
In its franker days, bolshevism openly avowed its contempt for democracy and democratic process. As "hypocrisy is the tribute which vice pays to virtue," so mock elections and mock processes are the tribute which dictatorship pays to democracy. The quest for legitimacy and the outward show of legality explains alike the rubber stamp Soviet, the plebiscites in which one may only say yes, the elections in which there is no choice of whom to elect, the publicly staged trials and confessions of those whom it is intended to destroy. On March 14, 1954, as on so many other occasions, the Soviet Union went through one of these typical ritual election campaigns. A totalitarian dictatorship is deeply aware of its perpetual illegitimacy. Its minority seizure of power by force represents a rupture of the fabric of legitimacy.
