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Since only approved candidates' names appear on the ballot and election is automatic, no campaigning would seem to be in order. But candidates' rallies and oratory have dominated TV and newspapers for the past two months. Unlike America's stump-weary Democratic candidates, Soviet leaders are required to make just one electoral pitch. As General Secretary, silver-haired Konstantin Chernenko last week delivered the campaign's climactic oration from the Kremlin's vast, 6,000-seat Palace of Congresses. For a full hour, the new head of the Communist Party sat stolidly on the platform with other Politburo members as upstanding citizens from his electoral district praised him in orotund paeans familiar to Socialist pols the world over: "Dear Comrade Chernenko ... an outstanding leader of our time... in the struggle for peace..."
So dull are these speeches, so predictable the phrases, that Soviet audiences sit through them like carved figures, springing back to life only to applaud on cue.
Yet the honor of being invited to share in the ritual is reflected in the faces of these electricians, soldiers and schoolteachers.
There is no political humor. Chernenko went only so far as to wave to the audience with grandfatherly benediction before walking stiffly to the lectern and launching into his speech.
Hurrying along in his distinctly breathless, halting style, he repeated Yuri Andropov's call to modernize industry and predictably chided the U.S. for "blatant militarism" and "claims to world domination." After these familiar charges, however, he called on the U.S. to "prove its peaceful intentions by deeds"—accepting, for example, a nuclear freeze.
At this point he lost his way and fell silent for a full 30 seconds, while the embarrassed audience sat as expressionless as dolls. Finally Chernenko stumbled into what may have been intended as a diplomatic overture. Without referring to an important Soviet concession made in January that could open the way to on-site inspection of chemical-weapons stocks, Chernenko said that "prerequisites are beginning to ripen" for signing a total ban on chemical weapons. Along with other accords, such a ban could "signal the start of a dramatic improvement in Soviet-American relations."
Within the next 60 days the Supreme Soviet is likely to elect a new President, to succeed Andropov. Some Western diplomats expect Chernenko to get the post.
Others believe it will be parceled out as part of a power-sharing agreement made when Chernenko was elected head of the Communist Party on Feb. 13. Either way, the deputies will raise their forearms en masse when asked, "All those voting in favor?'' —By Erik Amfitheatrof/Moscow