THE FAMILY IN RUSSIA

Northern Advocate, 13 June 1936, Page 4

THE FAMILY IN RUSSIA

A cable message printed during the week emphasised Russia’s realisation that she needs more population, and, at the same time, must place greater value upon the prestige of the family. This bears out the contention that nothing has been more significant in the recent evolution of Soviet Russia’s social order thqn the growing prestige of the family as the basic unit of Soviet society. For almost nineteen years Communist leaders have debated whether the family should be abolished altogether, substantially weakened, or retained. The dictatorship held aloof from the debate, as this question had not been finally settled by Karl Marx or Lenin. Now the Kremlin has intervened and called upon all its supporters to “help in strengthening the family. ’ ’ Young Communists, assembled in Moscow, have been told that they must cherish the “Soviet family,” must show proper respect for their parents and other older people, must understand the importance of the love of parents for children, of children for parents, of husbands and wives for each other. The new conception of | the Soviet family, now being re-1 inforced by the full strength ofj the Communist educational machine, is not, as the “Christian Science Monitor” points out, unlike that of other modern industrial countries. The father’s j authority naturally is not so great when wives land children have their own jobs and are not dependent upon him for support, j Parents cannot abuse children with impunity, any more than in j other modern countries. Soviet young people may make their own choice in marriage or vocation, as young people do in most other advanced countries. The State undertakes to provide education for all children. By a process of trial and error the Russian Communists have made the discovery, astonishing only to themselves, that families are bound together by deeper ties than

j material possessions and formal | religion, that relationships bei tween parents and children, heItween husbands and wives, are i based upon values which, even j Marxian materialists cannot afford to abandon.