Page:Through Bolshevik Russia - Snowden - 1920.djvu/177

 their remote objects a state of society in which men and women would dispense with marriage in their relationships with one another. It was unscrupulous propaganda to place this upon the Bolshevik Government.

It is true that marriage laws have been altered. Marriage is very cheap now, since only a State ceremony is needed. Divorce is very easy, but equal for all classes and both sexes. The children are the first concern of the State, and illegitimate children are not penalised. But there is nothing relative to marriage in Russia which is not true of some Western state; and it is believed that with the reorganisation of life on a sound economic basis, prostitution will entirely disappear, as it has certainly been considerably reduced. The women of Russia are not very happy, but their misery is not due to any sex-tyranny or Government brutality. It is due to the lack of food and clothing for themselves and their families, and to the bitter cold which makes their work in the home so hard.

For during last winter almost everybody lived in his house in a temperature of five degrees of frost. Tender children and old people died like flies, of simple cold. Frost-bitten hands and feet and the consequent loss of fingers and toes was a common occurrence. Pipes were frozen, and when the thaw came, broke, everything in the house