OUTCRY IN RUSSIA.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14936, 14 June 1919, Page 7

OUTCRY IN RUSSIA.

PARTIAL SUSPENSE OF LAW THAT NATIONALISES WOMEN. LONDON, April 22.— The law providing for the nafcionalisationiof women m Northeast Russia has been suspended m one province as the result of popular outcry, according to information reaching London from Stockholm. The commissary of Vladimir has by decree appointed 1 a committee of women who are to enquire into the operations of the law and make a report with the least possible delay. This action has been approved by the local soviet. The Krasnaya Gazeta -publishes an, account of the results of nationalisation. | This system, pi'oy ides that every girl, on reaching the age of 18, must register her name m /the bureau of free love, after which she is compelled to select a partner from among men between 19 and 50 years old. The law led to lamentable confusion, says the Gazeta, m "judicial notions as to personal inviolability." A few days after the Soviet's decree, which women very generally ignored, two men, known to nobody, arrived hi; the town and seized two daughters of a "well-known non-bourgeoisie comrade," declaring they had choseni them as wives and that thegirls, without further ceremony, must submit, asv they had riot observed the registration rule. Comrades Rablonvsky and Guriakin, who sat as judges on the claim, decided that the men were right/and tlio girls were c.irried off. They- have not since been heard of by, tlib village folk. This, says the Gazeta, was done m the name of the nationalisation of Vomen, Many other instances oi tlie fantastic operation of the' law, not .to speak of its inhumanities, are cited by the Gazeta. Enthusiasts for nationalisation, naturally all males, raid whole villages, seize young girls and demand proof that they are not over 18. As this proof is difficult to give, many of the girls are carried off and there have been suicides and murders as a result. In thfe town of Kovrov a campaign without par aifi el since the Trojan .war was lyaged betAveen, the vengeful relatives of. an abducted nationalised girl and hoi* persecutors. > ;. . .' , ; :..■;". In this town a "register of. nationaJised t vFomen" was opened December .1, but up to February ,1. only t^yo; w<j>meny bpth^ over 40 and . neither of whom had ever been • married,, registered, themselves as willing to accept the: first husband the State' sent along.' . • :,- " On the committee to revise the nationalisation : decree, or to -recommend its complete, abrogation, is'Mriio.' Vera Ar-^ vkadieff, a .JBolishevist who cdminanded a detachment o£ women soldiers during the recent Operations against Admiral Kolchak's. army at Perm. Slip has been twice wounded.