Opinion One candidate,many votes

Nazarbayev said he was too busy governing to campaign,which would have been a powerful gesture if,after 20 years in office,his image was not already plastered to the sides of buildings all over. An original slate of 21 opposition candidates was winnowed down to three,in part thanks to a Kazakh-language test so stringent that five ethnic Kazakhs failed it. The three who remained on the ballot were unabashed in their admiration for Nazarbayev. One admitted that he had voted for the incumbent.

But documents published a few days before the election suggested that official pressure had pumped up the results. They laid out something called “Operation Snowball.” In language befitting a military operation,workers were asked to provide officials with lists of their contacts — family members,neighbours,subordinates — and make sure each one voted. This evidently went beyond neighbourly encouragement,since,according to the document,the government was to be provided with “a full list of the enterprise’s workers,with family coefficient,and time of vote (100 per cent vote to be completed at 11 am.).”

It all struck me as a little surreal,but my colleague Viktor Klimenko felt right at home. In the Soviet Union,Viktor was recruited to work as an “agitator,” assigned several housing blocks in which he was to ensure 100 per cent turnout.

Though it may sound strange to those born after the breakup of the USSR,Soviet leaders were all elected. Party officials selected candidates who campaigned for a few weeks and then ran unopposed,typically receiving 99 per cent. Election Day,with sausage on sale and oompah music,was less a political choice than a ritual expression of loyalty. Withholding that expression was a meaningful step. Viktor remembered the scandal that erupted when a crafty babushka threatened to stay home on voting day unless the municipal authorities fixed her roof. Needless to say,the roof got fixed.

This system has been reconstituting itself across the post-Soviet space,whose leaders are trying to secure control without alienating the West or the public. Nazarbayev is probably the most successful; he enjoys genuine popularity,credited with shaping Kazakhstan into an island of wealth and stability. Indeed,if his government has drifted toward a Soviet model,that may also reflect the people’s will. In 1991,when all the republics voted on the USSR’s future,Kazakhs were overwhelmingly in favour of preserving it. The great paradox,both here and in Russia,is that the titular leader is in fact popular enough to win a free election. But when votes are treated as a measurement of loyalty,officials up and down the bureaucratic structure try to outperform each other. This could happen even if Nazarbayev gave orders against it,said Aleksei V. Vlasov,a Russian political scientist. “You go home,and you think: ‘I have 60 per cent voting for him,and the governor over there has 68 per cent,’ “ said Vlasov,a deputy dean of history at Moscow State University. “Which of you is a better governor? The one with 68 per cent. They have a happy population,the salaries are being paid,roads are being built,and people come to vote. Why do you have 60 per cent? Are you doing something wrong? The outcome is the personal fate of the official. The system is built that way.”

Nazarbayev now begins his fourth term,testament to the system’s durability. But history suggests that leaders who forgo real elections can miss critical signals about what is going on in the population. Are today’s regional leaders at any risk? It depends on how popular they really are. And the worst disadvantage of a Soviet-style political system is that they have no idea.