Page:The Marriage Laws of Soviet Russia (1921).pdf/13

 place in the society which sincerely appreciates and can freely utilize such knowledge.

The interested student will discover for himself many other provisions in the code which are essentially conditioned upon the new order, provisions constructively socialist as distinguished from those less permanent hut no less important measures which are purely militant blows in the class struggle, or that other class of transitional features bridging the gap from the old to the new. The intermingling of the three strata in this code will leave an instructive record for the historian, who will learn from them, as the geologist learns from the overlapping rock formations, the various stages of the revolutionary struggle.

The code is a superb rebuke to those psychopathically afflicted persons who spread the sickly tattle about "nationalization of women." The laws are perhaps distinguished above all else by their recognition of the rightful social function and economic status of women. They may be searched from beginning to end without disclosing any trace of the old economic, political and legal discriminations between the sexes. The slate is wiped clean. Nothing remains of the ancient slavery or the old taboos. This in itself, to be sure, is no complete solution of the "woman question". No law can annihilate custom and prejudice. That must be left to other processes. But this code opens the way. "It establishes," says Hoichbarg, "absolute equality of men and women before the law. So far as it is possible to free women in the period of transition before the complete establishment of socialism, this law frees her and enables her the