The construction of a people’s power to use
Elections in Poland and the GDR (1947-1958)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18042/hp.49.12Abstract
Studies on electoral processes in the former socialist states are still scarce. There is a certain consensus on the functions of these elections, which were far from being a method of democratic election of public representatives, but played a more relevant role than that of mere fiction, since they served to legitimize the socialist regimes and structured the mobilization of the population around economic and social objectives. But there are not many detailed studies on the evolution of these systems, the concreteness of their mechanisms and the temporal development of these functions assumed by historiography. Using documentary, legislative, newspaper and bibliographical sources, the birth of the electoral systems in the People’s Republic of Poland and the German Democratic Republic and the changes they underwent in their first years, in a foundational context of the new regimes, in a framework of stability and in a situation of crisis, are compared. The conclusions analyse the similarities of the electoral systems under the different circumstances, which were a basic differentiating factor in the chronology and the different degree to which the Sovietization of Eastern Europe was found.
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Copyright (c) 2023 Xavier María Ramos Diez-Astrain
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