Soviet Union legislative election, 1989
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2250 seats to the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union |
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In 1989, elections were held for the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union. The main elections were held on 26 March and a second round on 9 April. They were the first relatively free nationwide elections held in the Soviet Union, and would prove to be the final national elections held before that country dissolved in 1991. The elections were followed by regional elections in 1990, the last legislative elections to take place in the country.
In January 1987, Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), announced the new policy of demokratizatsiya (democratization). Under this concept the electorate would have a choice between multiple candidates per constituency, although all candidates would still have to be members of the CPSU. The concept was introduced by Gorbachev to enable him to circumvent the CPSU hardliners who resisted his perestroika and glasnost reform campaigns, while still maintaining the Soviet Union as a one-party communist state.
In December 1988, the 1977 Soviet Constitution was amended to create a new legislative body, the Congress of People's Deputies (CPD), to replace the old Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. The Congress of People's Deputies consisted of 2,250 deputies. 750 deputies (one third) were reserved for the CPSU and its affiliated organizations, however, the remaining two-thirds would be elected under the principles of demokratizatsiya, with 750 under the system of the old Soviet of the Union (one deputy per 300,000 citizens) and 750 under the system of the old Soviet of Nationalities (an equal number of deputies for each of the fifteen Union Republics). Elections for the new legislature were set for March, 1989.
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