SOCIETY OF DRUNKARDS

Evening Star, Issue 20140, 3 April 1929, Page 6

SOCIETY OF DRUNKARDS

RULES AND RECREATIONS OF THE KABUKi MOSCOW. March iM. The Moscow Provincial Court has been unravelling the curious case of a secret society called “Jvabuki,” which grew up among the officials and employees of the Building Yorkers’ Union for the solo purpose of promoting drunkenness and other forms of debauchery. A Japanese theatre of this name gave some performances in Moscow last summer, but the society, it seems, derived its appellation from the first letters of the names of its ringleaders; Karmanov, Budnn, Kasperovitch, and Ivanov. Cases of drunkenness and its frequent accompaniment, embezzlement, are not unusual in the lower ranks of the Soviet and trade union officialdom ; but the eleven accused members seem to have been endowed with a perverted sense of humour. They drew up a formal “ ustav,” or constitution, apparently as a on the rules which govern such organisation as the Communist Party and the trade unions. It included such points as the following:—

The society is created on a plat form of drunkenness. As members must be registered, only persons who have a good militant record in the cause of drunkenness and dissipation. The strictest discipline ami rules of conspiracy must be observed.

The regular practice of the members was to go to a restaurant, drink heavily till 2 in the morning, and then adjourn to the headquarters of the Building Workers’ Union, where further debaucheries would bo arranged. Drinking does not go very well with conspiracy, and the facts about the society soon leaked out. The ill-starred wit which made the organisers ot tire group draw up a set of rules will probably operate to their disadvantage when the court , gives its verdict, because Soviet judicial authorities have no sense of humour where secret societies are concerned.