In the Yalta Tradition

Yalta, Feb. 12, This Polish Provisional Government of National Unity shall be pledged to the holding of free and unfettered elections as soon as possible on the basis of universal suffrage and secret ballot. In these elections all democratic and anti-Nazi parties shall have the right to take part and to put forward candidates.

Winston S. Churchill Franklin D. Roosevelt J. Stalin

In the schoolhouse at Lomianki, a village twelve miles from Warsaw, the desks had been pushed to the wall to make a waiting room for the peasants who had come to vote for the first time since 1935. Each was handed a ballot marked "3" (the number of the Communist-dominated Government bloc) by the election chairman. When asked if he had ballots for all parties, the chairman apologized, saying that he had just run out of "5," in that district the number of Stanislaw Mikolajczyk's opposition Polish Peasant Party. He added that 70% of the people had voted openly for No. 3, but he didn't attempt to explain who used all the opposition ballots he said he had distributed.

"Manifest & Open." In the Warsaw suburb of Praga, another election chairman told reporters, while the ballot box was still sealed, that 75% of the votes favored the Government bloc. He was not guessing; a neat variation on the secret ballot is to cast a vote "manifestly and openly" within clear sight of everyone at the polls. The P.P.R. (Communists) had formed its zealous members into trojki (trios) who had covered the country "inducing" voters to sign a pledge stating: "I commit myself to go to the elections and give my vote to the list of the [Government] bloc parties. I am a real democrat and I am seeking a real democratic Poland. I will vote openly."

In some cities, Government organizers in groups of three had gone from house to house at daybreak to round up voters, then marched them to the polls under the watchful eyes of armed soldiers, militia men and security police, who were guarding towns and roads as well as the polls.

Communist Party posters dotted the countryside, some showing a frontier post and proclaiming "Best assurance of the Oder-Neisse border [Poland's provisional western boundary] is a vote for the Democratic Bloc."

All but a handful of opposition party election observers had been barred from their posts in Warsaw. Opposition party candidates had been banned from the election lists in ten districts, others had been imprisoned, 24 had been killed (TIME, Jan. 13). Mikolajczyk himself, though he was a Vice Premier of the Government, waited two and a half hours amidst a booing and jeering crowd to cast his vote. Provisional President Boleslaw Bierut and other Government members were whisked in & out of the same polling place by a phalanx of police.

"True & Cruel." It was all over at 7 p.m. Although the results would not be announced until next week, no one doubted that the Government had won an overwhelming victory. Said one voter, recalling the "dead elections" of 1935 under the rightist government of "The Colonels": "That was faked too, but compared to this it was harmless. ... In 1935 the Government did not care whether the people voted or not so long as it retained power. Now the Government has adopted the Russian attitude that everyone must vote for the Government."

Despairing Stanislaw Mikolajczyk announced at week's end that he would ask the Supreme Court to nullify the elections because of widespread violations of law, and would possibly forward a protest to the Big Three, who had guaranteed free elections. But Mikolajczyk himself could only look forward to being kicked out of the Government and waiting to see how far the Government would go to smash his party and end his opposition for good. Said he, mulling over a TIME report (Dec. 9) that had said he had "the highest popularity and the lowest life-expectancy" in Poland: "Lowest life-expectancy. It's true, it's true. But still, it's cruel to read."

A TIME correspondent who had been followed from polling place to polling place by police was greeted by a police colonel in the cheeriest Yalta tradition: "Well, I guess you see for yourself and you will be able to write favorable reports."

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