SOVIET AND MARRIAGE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19488, 18 November 1926, Page 13

SOVIET AND MARRIAGE.

ABOLISHING REGISTRATION. PROPOSAL MAY BECOME LA\sf A. and N.Z. LONDON. Nov. 16 The Moscow correspondent of the Daily Express says there is every prospect of a proposal to abolish the registration of marriages becoming law at the instance of the Commissar of Justice. A stormy debate occurred on the subject at a session of the Central Executive of Soviet Republics.. The strongest opposition came from delegates who .represented the peasantry. One of these said it was simply a measure to legalise polygamy. He asked the Government what machinery it intended to establish to decide when conjugal relations had taken place. There were, he said. 100,000 unregistered marriages last year. What about illegitimate children?

Another delegate angrily interjected: There are no illegitimate children. Russia will order all children to be protected. Marriage must be merely a matter of consent and of desire on the part of two people, nothing more. M. Krylenko, State Prosecutor, opposed the laxity of the proposed legislation. He urged that when two people lived in a state of polygamy the woman was invari ably the sufferer.. • ;