WEDLOCK IN RUSSIA.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19952, 20 November 1926, Page 12

WEDLOCK IN RUSSIA.

lx Russia marriage a la mode promises to provide the world with fresh sources of edification. The Communists like neither religion, which they affect to regard as a spent force in Russia, nor the marriage bond. In our own Dominion they have been defended by champions who have repudiated with indignation the idea that the comrades m Moscow hold anything but high and enlightened views respecting the matrimonial state. But the evidence now presented cannot be explained away. Russia, Mr Arthur Ransome has explained, has now a dual Constitution, the formal Constitution of the Union and the Constitution of the Communist Party. The formal Constitution is one of administration. The party Constitution provides an organised body of opinion which is able o use the formal Constitution as a means of putting its ideas into practice. The Communist, idea of marriage has now received endorsement from the Soviet Legislature. This means that marriage as it is understood in the civilised world is to be done away wi.lh in Russia. Wedlock is to be simplified to th<| last degree. Entrance into that blissful state and exit from it will be equally easy. Couples can secire the full blessing of the Soviet upon their union merely by calling upon the Commissary of Marital Relations and paying a few pence for an identity card. There will be no questions, no marriage vows, apparently no obligations. Exactly what useful purpose the visit to the Commissary is to serve is not very clear, for the details furnished from Moscow are a trifle vague. The State will apparently figure under the new arrangement principally as a sort of fairy god-parent to the children born of these casual unions. It is stated that under the new code “there will be no illegitimacy unless cohabitation is accidental or merely temporary.” But as the whole trend of the legislation seems to be to loosen all restrictions m respect of the marriage tie it seems useless to attempt to reconcile some apparent contradictions in the new code. Bigamy and divorce, we take it, will disappear, and polygamy will be cloaked in respectability. In fact, the laxity of the new law is evidently such that it will in reality lend every encouragement to promiscuity in the relations between the sexes. And this reign of license, with its sorry outlook, all things considered, for the weaker sex, is to be introduced in accordance with those blessed principles which form the basis of that Communism that finds : ts admirers even in British communities. Yet it is the professed desire of the Soviet leaders to foster in Russia a culture that shall exalt her among the nations. In their endeavour to push lv. .ward they appear to be doing their best to thrust her back to the level of barbaric races.