Page:The Marriage Laws of Soviet Russia (1921).pdf/8

 of the proletariat, is so made that each day of its application, shattering the resistance and organization of the classes of the former oppressors and uniting the formerly oppressed, thus lessens the necessity for this form of constitution, for this forced political supremacy, and for compulsory political supremacy in general. … The proletarian power frankly acknowledges that its laws should not be lasting, that they are made to meet the needs of a period of transition, the duration of which it fervently desires to shorten. This period of transition is unavoidable; we may adopt measures to shorten its duration, but we cannot leap across it."

So in this code of laws relating to civil status and domestic relations there may be discerned three strains which mark them as the characteristic expression of the proletarian power in its struggle to bridge the transition from the old order to the new. There are, first, those aggressively revolutionary provisions aimed at the destruction of the old order; secondly, there are the temporary expedients which, while recognizing the stubborn survival of old conditions within the new order, operate to accelerate their disappearance; and, finally, there are here also truly socialistic forms, the constructive foundations of the new organization. In the first category, among the aggressively revolutionary features of this code, are the sharp blows struck against old oppressions, against ancient class privileges and barbaric taboos. Such are the clauses aimed against the domination of human relations by the temporal power of a corrupt clergy, the provisions for the abolishment of inheritance, the