[Democracy: New, True and Popular]

[Democracy: New, True and Popular] 

[Democracy: New, True and Popular] 

1 electronic resource (34 pages) 

The file contains several reports written by Paul Anderson, regarding the elections of the East German government in 1950. The unelected government under the President Wilhelm Pieck and Prime Minister Otto Grotewohl promised democratic elections for the year 1950. In this file Anderson explains how ridiculous the elections going to be, eventhough it was tried to preserve some certain outwoard appearances of democratic procedure. The preparation for the election which appeared to be 'free, secret and universal' and yet produced exactly the desired result has been developed into a fine art. The technique they were using employed to garantee the result the government wished for. As Anderson argues, fortunately there were precedents and past experiences provising some useful object lessons how to manipulate an election. The example he is giving is the elections of May 1949 for the socalled ' Peoples Congress' of the Soviet Zone, which has now become the Lower Chamber of the East Zone government. The popular democratic electioneering accomplished its own way to count and read the electioncards.