The Dominion SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1926. RUSSIA’S DEGRADATION OF WEDLOCK

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 48, 20 November 1926, Page 8

The Dominion SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1926. RUSSIA’S DEGRADATION OF WEDLOCK

For most of the revolutionary changes in Soviet Russia the reasons were fairly obvious. It was a proletariat revolution, the social profits from which were to be distributed amongst its special beneficiaries. That the dividends were not of the glittering quality prophesied for the credulous masses was less surprising to foreign witnesses of the spectacle than to the expectant recipients. It is less easy to discover the reason for the extraordinary degradation of marriage to which the Soviet Government, not without considerable opposition, has given its sanction. Ihe institution of marriage has varying degrees of sanctity and much variety of form throughout the world. Oriental peoples, generally speaking, regard it with very deep respect. Taking the Russian in the mass, there is more than a trace of the Oriental in Jiis character. Yet here we have him deliberately exposing himself to the execration of the civilised nations by an act of violation which strikes at the most vital of the few remaining supports of his social stability. The Russian revolution was more than a revolt against class privilege and an effete autocracy. It might have been that in its origins, but as the power of the proletariat developed there became apparent a movement to effect a complete break with social traditions respected for centuries by the Christian nations. fins development is in line with human nature, the primitive impulse of which is to make license of liberty when the social forces which control its tendencies are suddenly removed. . . . . Russian Communism’s attack on religion is a matter ot. histoiy. It was not only an offence to the sentiment of Christian nations, but also a grievous hurt to the Russian people. More than that, it demonstrated the significant fact that the Soviet leaders, obsessed with their experiments in Communism, were out of touch with Russian national sentiment, which reacted . strongly against this official trespass upon an ancient private privilege. The attack on marriage is in some respects . a more serious matter from the standpoint of the safety and cohesion of the State. Marriage has been a much criticised institution, but all discussions as to the possibility of changing its form and modifying its responsibilities have ultimately and inevitably reverted to its fundamental justification, the rights of the family. , The public attitude towards divorce has experienced a substantial modification with the growth of a larger spirit of tolerance, but the strongest objection—apart from the religious one—to any extension of the facilities lor divorce has always been the interest of the children. . But the Soviet Government’s latest affront to Christian sentiment cannot by any stretch of the imagination be described as even an easv system of divorce. If the language of the announcement correctly represents the new situation in which Russian society finds itself, it is as nearly as possible a State dispensation for an orgy of free love. It is certainly an official discharge from all the responsibilities which the institution of marriage was designed to safeguard. The contact between parents and family, one imagines, will be severed completely, except in individual cases where the perpetuation of the marriage tie between two people is a matter of personal volition. If, as most people are agreed, the family is the unit of the State and the mainspring of its social and economic activities, one wonders how the Russian nation is going to adjust itself to the new degradation. So far as. one can see. under it the adult population would become mere propagators, and their offspring wards of the State. A more callous and material degradation of an institution which in its perfect’ state expresses the loftiest ideals ot human nature would be hard to imagine.