“HALF COMIC, HALF PITIFUL”

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 72, 18 December 1937, Page 9

“HALF COMIC, HALF PITIFUL”

The Soviet Elections PRESS COMMENT ON RESULT “Vast Volume Of Pure Gush’’ By Telegraph.—Press. Assn.—Copyright. (Received December 17, 9.25 p.m.) London, December 17. “The Times,” in a leading article, says: “The Russians have proved, apparently to their own satisfaction, their ability to hold elections in which nobody has power to elect, and they are now wordily celebrating a victory which they have not won. They are unlikely, in the circumstances, to experience difficulty in setting up a Parliamentary Government in which Parliament will be unable to govern, and the energies of the new deputies are unlikely .to be taxed by anything more arduous than attendance at periodic meetings of a mutual admiration society. “Yet it is doubtful whether more than a small, impotent minority of Russians are yet capable of realising the manner and extent to which they have been hoaxed. Outside Russia the election has been an obvious failure. Their machinery was so childishly engineered to obtain pre-arranged results and acclaimed with so vast a volume of pure gush that Russia’s prestige, which firing squads have been busily destroying, has been still further impaired.

“All dictatorships a -e liable to seem droll sometimes, but Russia’s widelyadvertised attempt to pass off herself on democracy provided a spectacle half comic, half pitiful.”