SIX IN ONE DAY.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 52, 2 March 1929, Page 3 (Supplement)

SIX IN ONE DAY.

<& COMMUNIST'S WIVES. COMMERCIALISED MATRIMONY. After having married several hundred women within eighteen months, a wellknown Communist, named'Schwartz, is appearing before the Moscow High Court. He is accused of "having abused his position as a member of the Communist party and therefore brought the iSoviet Government into contempt." Up to the present 150 of his "wives" promise to give evidence against him. Schwartz, a member of the Bolshe.ik group in Switzerland, returned to Russia in April 1917. He is said tq have helped both Lenin and Trotsky in their fust attempts to overthrow the Kerensky Government, and was eventually given a post under the Soviets. From the very first days of the Bolshevist regime Schwartz made use of his position in a peculiar manner. Through a friend of his in the dreaded Cheka, the secret terrorist police, he obtained the names of young women aristocrats and daughters of big business men wiio were to be arrested. He then approached them through an intermediary and offered to marry them for a stated amount, either in money or jewels. The marriage was to protect them from the Cheka, since a wife of Schwartz would never be arrested. The marriages were registered in different towns of Russia and the "wives" were in most cases placed in jobs as secretaries of prominent officials. A day or two after the marriage Schwartz registered a divorce in another town in order to protect himself legally for the next marriage. ' The public prosecutor has evidence to show that in one day Schwartz married six different women at places four miles from each other. In addition to his price he always managed to obtain other valuables or knowledge of the place where valuables were hidden. All this is known because he actually kept • ledger of all his transactions, and the sum total of his earnings is given as one million roubles. The wives never knew that they were divorced. Sixty-four wives are claiming alimony and an allowance for the maintenance of the children of the marriages in the matrimony courts.