Chapter 7.3.1 addresses the soviet model of democracy, and the push for what you describe in the 1936 constitution:

Due to a number of factors, the Soviet Union came to place the greatest emphasis on consultative democracy rather than electoral democracy. To understand why, we need to address the background to this relative lack of emphasis on electoral democracy, especially in light of the campaign of the 1930s to promote multi-candidate, universal elections with secret ballots.

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It was only after all these hard-won achievements that some stability was at last felt, and electoral democracy could be reconsidered.4 The initial signal came at the Party’s Seventeenth Congress in 1934, which noted not merely the achievements of the last few years, but also directed attention to the political tasks ahead (Stalin 1934a, 347–379, 1934b, 353–388). Proposals concerning socialist democracy were initially debated within the Politburo in January 1935, and articles began appearing in leading journals, addressing directly the topic of Soviet democracy (Zhukov 2003, 116–121; Kokosalakis 2020, 83–84). By June 1935, a constitutional drafting committee was established. The committee produced five drafts—all of them painstakingly checked by Stalin—before a final draft was made available for public discussion in June 1936. The final constitution would stipulate in its eleventh chapter that all levels of soviets, from the supreme to the district, city, and rural, would be “chosen by the electors on the basis of universal, direct and equal suffrage by secret ballot” (Supreme Soviet 1936a, article 134, 1936b, stat’ia 134). The subsequent articles in this chapter spell out what each of these terms meant in practice, including the process of nominating candidates, who would come from “public organisations and societies of the working people: Communist Party organisations, trade unions, cooperatives, youth organisations and cultural societies” (Supreme Soviet 1936a, article 141, 1936b, stat’ia 141).

The idea of direct and multi-candidate elections to all bodies was initially made public in the first months of 1936, especially by Stalin in an interview with Roy Howard in March (see more below) of that year, and was then pressed further at a Central Committee Plenum in June of 1936, where it met with little overt support (Zhukov 2003, 232–236; Kokosalakis 2020, 86). Even more, the public debate around specifically this measure before its final adoption was immense.5 Multiple articles in leading magazines and newspapers were published, and there were countless public meetings around the country. This effort was not a smokescreen for the increasing campaign for Party discipline, which would explode with the purges and trials of 1937–1938; instead, all of the evidence points to the fact that Stalin and those close to him were resiliently dedicated to the electoral reforms (Getty 1991). Stiff resistance there was, especially within the Party from those who stood most to lose (Zhukov 2003, 211), and this was one significant factor that led to restricting non-Party candidates to 20–25% and eventually the practice of having single Party-endorsed candidates for elections. The other major factor was Hitler’s invasion in 1941 and the Soviet Union’s entry into the European theatre of war. Many were the vectors that came together at this time. As the careful study by Kokosalakis (2022, 168–210) shows, there were tensions in the workplace, with PPOs putting increasing pressure on managers in light of drives to greater efficiency and productivity (Stakhanovism); the effort to tighten Party discipline had revealed shocking laxness, especially in regional areas; the campaign for electoral democracy had emboldened anti-communist elements to cause trouble for Soviet power through the elections; the international situation was worsening in light of Hitler’s effort to construct an anti-communist coalition; and the violent storm of trials and purges of 1937–1938 was about to be unleashed against internal and externally-sponsored “wreckers.”

Of most interest here are two principles of electoral democracy that emerged from the maelstrom of events: merit and democratic supervision. These were most clearly expressed in two pieces by Stalin, one in the interview with Roy Howard in March 1936, and the other in his reply to debates at the Central Committee Plenum of February–March 1937. The contexts of these two texts are distinct, one an interview with an international correspondent and the other in reply to the sceptics in the Central Committee concerning elections. But the points are consistent. First, merit, which has two dimensions: the “political principle,” asking whether those workers chosen are “worthy of political confidence”; and the “business principle,” in the sense the people elected should be “fit for such and such a job” (Stalin 1937c, 279, 1937d, 176). In the address to the Central Committee Plenum, Stalin points out that elections based on competence or merit would be a way to break up the corrupt fiefdoms of local Party officials. However, there is a far deeper issue: if elections are based on merit, they are no longer politicised. This measure harks back to Marx’s observation (see Sect. 2.5.2) concerning the need for non-politicised elections in a socialist system. To recall the logic: since a socialist system is not characterised by class struggle and thus antagonistic political parties, elections would not have the antagonistic nature found in capitalist democracy. This is precisely the point Stalin makes in his reply to Howard: “We have no contending parties any more than we have a capitalist class contending against a working class which is exploited by the capitalists.” How then can one have an election contest? To begin with, “candidates will be put forward not only by the Communist Party, but by all sorts of public, non-Party organisations,” of which there hundreds (Stalin 1936a, 111, 1936b, 145). We may add here that elections would be competitive due to the relative merit of the candidates. This is a clearly step further than Marx’s initial suggestions. For Stalin, in competitive elections, the candidate most qualified—in terms of political and administrative merit—should be elected. This is the first major step in defining the nature of elections in a socialist system.

The second concerns democratic supervision. As Stalin observes to Howard, there would be “very lively elections campaigns.” Why? Not a few institutions “work badly,” where a local governing body has failed to provide for the “multifarious and growing requirements of the toilers of town and country.” Stalin looks forward to the types of questions that will be asked: “Have you built a good school or not … improved housing conditions … helped to make our labour more effective and our lives more cultured?” Focused on numerous, acute, and practical problems, elections would “tighten up” the many institutions and organisations so that they would improve their work (Stalin 1936a, 112, 1936b, 146–147). This is not merely seen as an effective anti-corruption mechanism, but is also the democratic role of criticism and self-criticism at work. In his reply to the Central Committee Plenum, Stalin frames the question of democratic supervision in terms of testing workers in responsible positions by assessing and verifying the concrete results of their work. It is one thing for such testing and verification to be undertaken “from above,” by higher levels in the Party. But this is by no means sufficient. What is needed is the “test from below.” When the masses assess the achievements and failures of their leaders, then the masses “draw attention to their mistakes and indicate the way in which these mistakes may be rectified.” For Stalin, this “sort of testing is one of the most effective methods of testing people” (Stalin 1937c, 282, 1937d, 179; see also Zhukov 2003, 211). He compares this process to the practice of democratic centralism in the Party, where the right to nominate candidates and object to them is practised, where secret ballots and the freedom to criticise and indeed self-criticise are the reality. So also with the masses, who have the opportunity at meetings and conferences to hear reports from their leaders in the workplace, trade unions, and other bodies, and openly criticise the work of these leaders and propose ways for improvement. The Party may have the task of teaching the masses, but it must also learn from the masses.

The importance of these two principles should not be under-estimated: the practice of non-politicised elections based on merit, which develops the initial principle proposed by Marx and Engels; and the crucial role of democratic supervision through elections. We should also note here an initial effort to extend the Party’s internal mechanism of democratic centralism to country-wide governance. Stalin speaks of multiple candidates, secret ballots, and public criticism—these too should be practised country-wide in elections to the government bodies through “universal, equal, direct and secret suffrage” (Stalin 1937c, 282, 1937d, 179). It would take far more practice and theoretical elaboration well beyond the time of Soviet Union to find a solution to country-wide democratic centralism, but the two principles of merit as the basis for election to office and democratic supervision would become mainstays of socialist governance.

The drive for electoral democracy did not long live up to its lofty aims, with the most embarrassing retreat being from multi-candidate contested elections to single-candidate elections. At the same time, there was an even greater effort to ensure democratic accountability through elections internal to the Party. These long-lasting moves are reflected in the comprehensive revisions to the Party rules proposed by Zhdanov at the eighteenth congress in 1939.

It’s useful, critical, pro-socialist analysis.