BRAVE NEW WORLD

Evening Star, Issue 22194, 23 November 1935, Page 2

BRAVE NEW WORLD

[Written by Mary Scott, for the ‘Evening Star.’]

Tire eyes of the whole world, some in fear, others in hope, all in breathless ■interest, have long been fixed upon the Russian experiment. To enthusiasts it lias meant the dawn of a new world, to doubters an extraordinarily daring risk to the conservative mind the upheaval of law and order the triumph of evil * to one and all at least it should stand for a great experiment that stirs the imagination. Impossible to deny, however, that everything held sacred by the average man, religion morals, property, the established social order has been thrown into the melting pot. How much is going to surVl ln no respect has the experiment been more interesting than where it touched and transformed the lives of women, so that it has become the custom for the more advanced feminists to hail the position of women in the Soviet States as a triumph of reason over sentiment, of freedom over hereditary bondage. The right of woman to work side by side with man, the social liberty accorded to her, the free divorce which made marriage no handicap upon her activities, have all been lauded as the greatest advance the cause has seen in any country. And now various disturbing notes have crept into this harmony of praise. . A recent issue of 1 Izvestia,’ the organ of the Soviet Government, criticises strongly the high divorce rate- in Moscow, and alleges that light-mindedness in family life is nothing short of a crime * moreover, it is a dire insult to the Soviet regime. It appears that an analysis of the position reveals the fact that it is the lower middle-classes who are the most to blame, and that the greater, number of divorces occur amongst the non-workers. _ _ A curious point is that it is not the youngest couples who are the most to blame; the highest average of divorces occurs between people over 30 years of age. The causes are various, not least among them being the fact that, owing to acute housing shortage in Russia, only married .couples have a hope of being able to obtain a house. Therefore w hasty marriage is arranged, a house secured, and the marriage dissolved as carelessly as it was made. Unfortunately, despite the medical clinics of which Russia boasts, such marriages leave their consequences, and the children of these unions are becoming a heavy burden to the btate, since, as will be easily understood, people willing to enter upon such temporary alliances are not to make permanent provision for their ■ unfoitunate children. So much, then, for this much-vaunted free love and easy divorce. The Soviet is finding already that it is reaping the harvest of- tares to be expected from such seed. And what of the position of women resulting from all this? It has been claimed that where marriage is so light a thing, divorce so easy, woman has released herself at lust from the shackles of centuries; she is free to compete with man, to work as he works, live as he lives, love as he loves. Assuming., for the moment the very doubtful promise that such competition is desirable ultimately, we have still to admit that it can last only for a few years. What then? What of the middle-aged and the elderly, no longer protected within the haven of the family, no longer economically independent or physically desirable? It is a bleak prospect for old age and childhood alike. Another interesting change manifests itself in the Press of the U.S.S.R. ‘ Pravda,’ the Moscow organ of Communism, is urging upon its readers a struggle for “ Communistic self-re-straint and morality.” Lately it has strongly upheld the sacredness of family ties and of motherhood, and has , condemned immorality and _ carelessness. More amazing still is it to read in the paper of the Young Communist League these words: ‘‘Our fathers are not abstract characters, but live people with whom we live and work hand in. hand. Therefore respect and consideration for old age and care for our parents is essential to the true Communist.” Such words, as the ‘Manchester Guardian ’ jioints out, read almost like a return to the Fifth Commandment. The extent of this “ volte face” can only be appreciated when we remember that for years it has been the fashion amongst the youth of Russia to repudiate all connection with their parents unless the older generation has shown an enthusiasm equal to their own for the Soviet regime. More that this, there have been many cases where young people have received high honours for ‘‘ the pure and disinterested passion ” with which they have betrayed their parents for disloyalty to the Soviet rule. “ The State must come first, last, and all the time,” has ahvays been the cry, and even now the young people have shed no scrap of their burning loyalty, so that it is expressly stated that honour is duo only to such parents as have shown devotion to the Soviet. Nevertheless young people are urged to recognise the family ties which not long ago they were encouraged to fling wantonly away. . . , Another curious fact is revealed by a study of tbo official figures in the 1 Izvestia.’' During the first live mouths of 1935 there were 22,300 marriages in Moscow, and of these only 78 were celebrated in a church. Strange though that may seem, it is entirely logical and essentially right. If marriage is going to bo regarded merely as an experiment, a civil contract to bo broken at any time, the contracting parties are very right not to ask a divine blessing upon it or to take any sacred vows. This is the ’logic you would expect of young Soviet Russia ; but what we would not expect is to road is that 20 per cent, of the children born of Russian marriages are christened in a church, and that religious funerals show a somewhat higher percentage still. Surely this is a strange compromise. Obviously marriages are not made in Heaven, yet children arc given their chance of it and the dying still turn thither for consolation. Perhaps old beliefs die hard, perhaps, as some old Anglo-Saxon writer said, man feels that he needs wise counsel at the beginning and the end of his life.

The people of this bravo new world will take no risks with their children or with their own hereafter; in life’s hey-day they may turn their backs lightly enough upon the faith of their ancestors, but in sickness some of them creep back to it and like to thrust their children within its protecting folds. This seems enviously inconsistent in a people who cast aside with a certain arrogance all their former beliefs and vaunted their freedom from old superstitions. Almost the contemplation of it suggests certain dangerously subversive ideas. Is it possible that this brave new world is not quite so iconoclastic as wo thought? Is the swing of the pendulum bringing them back to much of the best they once cherished ? Can it bo that family ties and old-fashioned morals have a place in their hearts after all? Are parents really coming into their own again and the Fifth Commandment regaining its old prestige? Wo elders like to protend that we arc down-trodden to-day; aro we to lift our eyes to the Soviet States and find help there ? Is the holy state of matrimony not merely an unholy deadlock after all? But no; sv.ch new and startling ideas woi(ld give the very youngest of us p^jsc.