Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/67

 Bohemian legislature, the Landtag, and the same is true of women municipal voters except in the city of Prague, where no woman suffrage of any sort exists.

Of all the Slavonic countries, the enormous empire of the Czars is perhaps the one in which Europe takes the liveliest interest. The struggles and sufferings of the revolutionaries against despotism and bureaucracy have marked Russia for universal interest. In these struggles the women have proved themselves as devoted and courageous as the men, and have suffered horrors even greater than those endured by the men. Russia now has a professedly constitutional government; but those who know best about this unhappy country's affairs say that constitutionalism in Russia is of the letter only and not of the spirit. The hangings and imprisonments go on as ever, and the great white road to Siberia has its sad processions as of yore.

The men and women of Russia are united in sympathy and understanding, because of sufferings borne in common, in a way in which they could not be bound in countries whose men have accepted freedom for themselves and left the women out. That is why the demand was made by Russia's best men, when the Duma was formed, for the equal enfranchisement of women and men. This has not been conceded. But women and men