The Auckland Star. WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. MONDAY. MAY 28, 1928. WOMEN IN SOVIET RUSSIA.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 124, 28 May 1928, Page 6

The Auckland Star. WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

MONDAY. MAY 28, 1928. WOMEN IN SOVIET RUSSIA.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistano9 t For the future in the distance, And the good that tee can do.

A plea for a return to a attitude towards women has been made by Mr. Soltz, a member of the Presidium of the Central Control Commission of the Soviet. Coining from such a source, this plea is an official admission of the failure of the Soviet attempt to bring about by law the complete equality of men and Avomen. Mr. Soltz u says the position of women and children to-day is worse than before the revolution, and that hundreds of thousands of women are clamouring in the So viet Courts for maintenance allowances. Russian marital laws <rive ] 1() right to the man which is not granted to the woman. The change of residence of one of the parties to a marriage does not impose any obligation upon the other party to follow the former. Divorce is easy. There are thousands of homeless children, Avho constitute a serious problem for the Soviet State. The boys move in migratory waves across different sections of the country, and live by begging, stealing, and occasional turning to work for immediate food The Communists are said to be making efforts to deal with these children from a fear that when they are matured into men and women they will turn into counter-revolutionists. The Soviet Government aims at destroying all that side of life which is founded on religion and culture. It has aimed at constructing society upon a new plane.

It has failed. Complete equality between men and women is impossible. Nature has decreed otherwise. When the Young Turks believed that they could accomplish anything; by legislation, and that if they passed a decree they would obliterate all religious differences, Miss Durham replied to one of their leaders, who was expounding this doctrine, by saying that they might pass a law that all cats should be dogs and all dogs cats, but they would remain cats and dogs all the same. The Soviet Government cannot do away with the essential dependence of man upon woman and of woman upon man. It is the function of the woman to look after the home, and of the man to make and provide for the home. In Russia the new idea of absolute equality between the sexes has not improved the position of women; it has made it very much worse, so that women are now oppressed by professional hooliganism, and even some of the most prominent of the Soviet leaders are "impossible" in their attitude towards their womenfolk. Having laid aside all claim to protection and consideration, and having asserted their absolute equality with men, both in the factory and the home, Russian women are now discovering that they have lost that knightly chivalry which men used to extend them before. It is significant that Mr. Soltz should look upon this knightly attitude as something that is still there, and to which he can successfully appeal. It is an instinct planted in the heart of man. It is the instinct of the strong to defend and protect the weak, and it is equally the instinct of woman to care for and look after her husband, her home, and her children. The Soviets would probably look upon Horace as essentially bourgeois, but they might read with advantage his remarks about the impossibility of uprooting nature with a pitchfork.