Page:The Marriage Laws of Soviet Russia (1921).pdf/12

 in his preface quoted above, remarks, "the registration of vital statistics, particularly of birth and death, and especially the central bureau engaged in the constant registration of the whole living population, on the basis of information collected by the local bureaus, would seem to be indispensable even in the perfect socialist society, in which the constant computation of the population, with scientific study of the causes of death, of migration, of under or over population, and the adjustment or correction of these conditions, would appear to be even more essential than in the past." It is true, of course, that the collection of vital statistics is not in itself an innovation of the proletarian revolution. It has been practiced in varying degrees of thoroughness and sincerity in bourgeois states. How far these states have been able or willing to draw useful or honest conclusions from such statistics as they have gathered is an interesting subject for study. And how far they have been able or willing to act, and in what direction they have acted, upon such conclusions as have been drawn, is an even more significant question upon which we cannot dwell here. There will be discerned at first glance, however, in this code, as well as in other codes formulated by the proletarian power, a wholly new attitude towards this statistical function, a new appreciation and elevation of its dignity, as though here were something most important, something that mattered. In this tentative form we see the beginning of an important function in the computation and appraisement of social statistics which will survive and achieve its highest