The Russian Church and its money (1948)

From the January 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

Unlike workers and peasants who lost nine-tenths of their cash at the recent calling-in of the old rouble currency “Reuter” reports (Sunday Express, 21/12/47) that the Church received preferential treatment:

“The Russian Church has, for purposes of the recent rouble exchange, been treated as a ‘State organisation,’ and has had all its money exchanged at one new rouble for one old – Reuter.”

Halo, Halo! (2025)

The Halo Halo Column from the April 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, now hopefully coming to an end, the Russian Orthodox Church had 300 military clergy there with the Russian armed forces.

A metropolitan high-ranking bishop was concerned that this number was far too low. 1,500 priests controlling the ‘sinful spirit of revenge’ that apparently soldiers are heir to having seen their comrades killed and mutilated in front of their eyes is a moral and spiritual challenge that the priests are there to rectify. As Thomas Hobbes said in another context, the life of a combatant in any conflict can be short, brutish and nasty.

Apparently ‘neo-paganism’ is viewed by the Church as a serious issue because this stimulates ‘animalistic qualities’. In other words, they commit atrocities, we commit atrocities. Anyone who condemns war would agree that horrible things shouldn’t happen but conflicts don’t occur using Queensbury rules.

The Orthodox church is more concerned that such actions put those committing them into a state of ‘sin’. Here’s the cruncher: ‘A believer finds it easier to face the line of fire and defy death’ (Kommersant).

Monty Python famously lampooned religious fanaticism in their film, Life of Brian, as well as their sketch in which ‘nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition’. The Inquisition, established by Catholic Pope Gregory IX in 1231 initially authorised Dominican and Franciscan friars to investigate and suppress heresy. From 1252 torture was used to extract confessions, This was licenced by Pope Innocent IV. A misnomer as innocents who chose to have different beliefs were tormented into accepting the status quo.

The Roman Inquisition formed in 1542 is said to have been less violent, concentrating on suppressing ideas which the Church did not like. In 1633 Galileo was forced to retract his work which disproved the orthodoxy that the Earth was the centre of the universe. The Spanish Inquisition, founded in 1478 by Ferdinand and Isabella, is well known historically for its extreme violence toward those who came under its influence.

Protestantism had its own unhealthy obsession – witches. The 1968 film, Witchfinder General, based upon the activities of Matthew Hopkins, offers none of the light relief of Monty Python. It is a horror film which depicts the fearfulness that arises when power, allied to religious zealotry, impacts the lives of those who just want to be left in peace. It is believed that over a three-year period Hopkins was responsible for the deaths of around 300 people. These were mainly women. It’s estimated that perhaps eighty percent of witch-trial victims were women. Misogyny looms large in religions.

In Africa, the senseless behaviour of centuries ago is still being enacted. Once, so-called witches were dunked under water and if they survived were presumed guilty, but innocent if they drowned. In Angola, in 2024, people were forced to drink poison in order to prove their innocence of witchcraft accusations made against them. 50 people died.

Who says that religion is about love and peace?

DC

Halo Halo! (2024)

The Halo Halo! column from the October 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Russian priests have joined a long list of various clergymen of various nations in their channelling Bob Dylan’s With God On Our Side. Giving a blessing to a nuclear weapon is possible even though such arms ‘have tremendous destructive power’, Konstantin Tatarintsev, an archpriest of the Russian Orthodox Church, and first deputy head of the Synodal Department for the Armed Forces and Law Enforcement Services, told RIA Novosti (August). Sanctifying something that ‘sows death’ might normally be considered ‘unacceptable,’ [not normally, always], he said. Nuclear arms are also ‘the weapons of containment’, he explained. Their purpose is to ensure that no other nations that possess such weapons could use them against Russia, adding that ‘it is a guarantee of peace’. Mutually Assured Destruction.

According to Tatarintsev, the prayer used to bless a weapon goes back to the Middle Ages. It places a personal spiritual responsibility on its wielder not to misuse it for evil ends. He also said that pretty much any weapon, including the nuclear triad, can be considered ‘sacred’ when it is used to protect ‘our fatherland and the holy sites located on its territory’.

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Worshippers in Ohio have been left stunned after a 75 year-old statue of the Virgin appeared to blink as they gazed upon her – with photos capturing the mysterious moment. The International Pilgrim Virgin Statue of Our Lady of Fatima was making its way across the region as part of a tour when it allegedly shut and open its eyes on 2 August while on display at the Basilica of St. John the Baptist. [Allegedly being the operative word.] The statue has visited more than 100 countries, including Russia and China, and is believed to be the closest likeness of a documented apparition of Mary in 1917 said to be ‘worthy of belief’ by the Catholic Church. Many who have visited the statue have since claimed they’ve witnessed medical miracles, including a young boy some believe was cured of malaria (Daily Mail, 10 August 2024).

This recalls a piece in the September 2023 Halo column which bears repeating:

Does anyone remember the Only Fools and Horses episode, The Miracle of Peckham, where Del Boy scams money from exploiting a weeping statue of Mary in the local church? The ‘miracle’ occurs because the lead of the church roof has been nicked and when it rains the water drips down and off the face of the statue. Has the Pope seen this episode and is it one of his favourites?

Miracles don’t happen! The pontiff has been berating his flock for believing in ‘miracles’ and weeping Madonnas in particular. ‘Apparitions of the Virgin Mary are “not always real”, he said, in what appears to be an indirect reference to a woman who drew thousands of pilgrims to pray before a statue that she claimed shed tears of blood.’ ‘The Madonna has never drawn [attention] to herself,’ he said (Guardian, 4 June 2023).

Who are the biggest charlatans? The Catholic church or those preying upon unthinking believers?

DC

Communism, Religion and the USSR (1976)

From the August 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lord Donald Soper, the Methodist leader, has acquired the reputation of being a great orator. Those of us who have heard him speaking at Tower Hill and Hyde Park are always impressed by the flow of fine phrases, but on closer examination these turn out to mean precisely nothing. There is no doubt whatever as to his great entertainment value. However his virtues else, be they as pure as grace, when it comes to making a contribution to political thought Lord Donald has been decidedly unsuccessful. Good Labourite that he is, he has been a regular contributor to Tribune, the left-wing journal of utopian reformers who want to retain capitalism on working-class terms. Consequently his writings, tailored as they must be to the needs of this clearing house for malcontents, have little to offer by way of a solution to the problems of the real world of capitalism. How could they, when the ultimate authority which lies behind all Lord Soper’s prognostications on the state of the world is God and religion?

It is this type of religious rubbish which gives the name “Christian Socialist” to religious critics of capitalism, and encourages them to make the nonsensical claim that Socialism and religion are quite compatible, and that Jesus Christ was a Socialist. The Labour Party and the Trade Union movement is full of these “Christian Socialists”, Baptists, Methodists, lay preachers, Salvationists, lesson-readers, and all the other dreary joyless characters who provide religion on the cheap for the godless industrial masses. As long as there are votes to be had from those workers who hold religious ideas no capitalist party, and here we include the Communist Party, will repudiate religion, the churches and other forms of religious organization. Most workers are easy-going on the subject of religion and its social importance has receded but has not yet vanished. The capitalist class can still find a role for religion to play in support of the system when the occasion arises.

True to form, Lord Soper has just made a fresh statement which is as stupid as it is incorrect. Addressing the Annual Methodist Conference at Preston during a discussion on religious education in schools, he claimed that Communism is a religion:

It is unquestionably a religious faith. We shall get into trouble if we try and distinguish between what we call religion and ideology.

(Daily Telegraph, 1st July 1976)

We certainly shall if we don’t. Religion deals with fiction and Communism, or Socialism, deals with facts. All religions are united on the principle of supernatural phenomena and life after death in a spiritual world — Hell or Heaven, as the case merits. Socialism, or Communism, is based on materialism, which means that we can know nothing outside of the senses, and that all natural and social phenomena must be interpreted through the human agency without divine intervention. Materialism also means that men are in command of society and science, and “acts of God” are nothing more than a term used on insurance policies for material reasons.

Perhaps Lord Soper was getting a bit confused over the term “Communism”. He obviously meant the system prevailing in the Soviet Union, but which bears no resemblance to communism. There, undoubtedly, religious attitudes are indoctrinated but with the difference that the state and the leadership replace the God and saints of the old Russian Orthodox Church — but not quite. There is certainly very little to choose between the religion of the old world and its uncritical adulation of God, and the claim of infallibility of the Communist Party leadership, based as it is on the exploitation of superstition and ignorance of the Russian masses. That type of communist superstition, coupled with the myth that common ownership exists and the worship of the god of productivity, is certainly taught in the Russian schools, but this is the worship of capital, albeit state capital. The Soviet Union has proved that you can have religion with or without God — a belief in the supernatural has various applications. It is not subject to any laws of logic, reason or science — the world of fantasy is a great place for those who can live on dreams for the future which never arrives, or has not arrived after sixty years.

Officially the Soviet Union is godless, but millions of people still have religious views and take part in the ceremonies and ritual of the Russian Orthodox Church. The main religious festival is Easter; Good Friday and Saturday being the big market days. “At Moscow Yelokhovsky Cathedral, Pimen, Patriarch of all the Russians, officiated . . . the packed congregation included a sizeable number of foreign diplomats admitted through a side door to avoid the crush. Others drove 40 miles to the Sergei Trinity Abbey, one of Russia’s holiest places. All day there were long lines, mostly of women, outside churches each with Easter cake slung in a napkin waiting to have it blessed”. (The Times, 26th April 1976.)

Lenin and the old Bolsheviks denounced religious institutions because the Russian Orthodox Church was a pillar of the Czarist regime. They claimed they would abolish religious influences by separating the church and the state, and making religious societies and institutions dependent on those who adhered to the faith. However, Lenin was astute enough to realize that you cannot abolish religion by decree, as was attempted in the French Revolution. He knew that he was dealing with masses of superstitious and ignorant peasants, and he wanted their support. Consequently, the “socialist atheism” of the Bolsheviks was played down in favour of “religious freedom”. “Everyone must be absolutely free to profess whatever religion he likes, or to profess no religion; i.e. be an atheist as every socialist usually is.” (p. 12, Lenin on Religion, Martin Lawrence.) This was not opposition to religion but pandering to it.

One thing is certain and that is that Socialism is not compatible with religious ideas. The Communist Parties of Europe, including the British party, have faithfully taken up a high-sounding attitude of religious freedom. Consider how much support the Communist parties in Italy and France would get were they to attack religion. In any case, the Soviet Union are no longer interested in abolishing religion, particularly as the church is now under the thumb of the Communist Party. When it suits them they will use religion in its customary rôle to maintain their position by befuddling the workers.

The Sunday Times of 27th April 1975 reported that Russia was using priests as emissaries to Israel to discuss certain property questions. “Two Moscow churchmen visited Israel at the end of last month officially for talks on a legal dispute over Russian Church property . . . Further talks are expected in May when Metropolitan Nicodemus, foreign relations secretary of the Moscow Patriarchate visits Jerusalem as a pilgrim to the Orthodox Churches Easter ceremonies. The Patriarch of Soviet Armenia is also due . . .”. No doubt the Russian capitalist class wants the priests and bishops to work for their keep, and for that very reason they will keep the religious institutions going by recognizing their use value. The fact that Church property still exists contradicts the claim made repeatedly that the communists would confiscate the property.

The Communist Party in Russia is a capitalist party and has the responsibility of running capitalism in that country. Fundamentally there is little difference between Russian capitalism and Western capitalism. The dominant relations of production are wage-labour and capital, and the prevailing ideology is one of support for the institution of private property, with all the trimmings of religion, mock-morality and hypocrisy. A Communist society cannot exist where one section of the population is exploited by another, and the term “Russian Communism” is the ignorant man’s way of describing state capitalism.

Jim D'Arcy

Tiny Tips (2023)

The Tiny Tips column from the December 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Cost of living crisis, what cost of living crisis? A new breed of uber-luxury hotels in London is breaking records with rooms costing more than £1,000 a night as wealthy visitors flock to the capital for ‘experiences’ only (a lot of) money can buy. In the Peninsula on Hyde Park Corner, a short walk from Buckingham Palace, rooms start at a kingly £1,300. Despite the startling price tag, the hotel is said to be running at full capacity (Link).

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Pfizer recently announced it would increase the U.S. list price of its patented Covid treatment nirmatrelvir-ritonavir (Paxlovid) to $1,390 for a five-day treatment course. Experts at Harvard University have estimated that the cost of producing a five-day course of nirmatrelvir-ritonavir is $1 (Link).

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‘[Scientists] created weapons under the protection of St. Seraphim of Sarov because, by the ineffable providence of God, these weapons were created in the monastery of St. Seraphim… Thanks to this power, Russia has remained independent and free, and, of course, we must all cherish this remarkable feat of our scientists, who practically saved the country, in our hearts and memories,’, Russian Orthodox Church Head Patriarch Kirill saying that Russia’s nuclear weapons saved the nation (Link).

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@CraigMurrayOrg. To be entirely plain. I have always viscerally opposed war. I have dedicated my life to conflict resolution and reconciliation. But in the coming Gaza genocide, every act of armed resistance by Hamas and Hezbollah will have my support. If that is a crime, send me back to jail (Link).

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Hamas — being a reactionary, exclusivist outfit — has a ‘post-Israel’ vision that will produce an ethnically cleansed theocratic dictatorship, in other words ‘building up yet another system of exploitation’. More, their pogromist violence against Jewish civilians is not “cathartic”, or restoring Palestinian self-respect, but instead full-on racist sadism (Link).

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More than one million children experienced the ‘most extreme form of poverty’ last year, said Sky News, according to a new report that slams such ‘horrifying levels of destitution’ as a political choice. The report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that the number of people experiencing these levels of poverty in the UK has ‘increased by 61%’ between 2019 and 2022, with 3.8 million people experiencing destitution. More than half of destitute households have a ‘weekly income of less than £85’ (Link).

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Coca-Cola has quietly scrubbed references to Hamas-supporting BLM from its website (Link).

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The founder of a Black Lives Matter (BLM) organization is voicing his support of Jan. 6 prisoners and not shying away from endorsing former President Donald Trump as ‘the best candidate we have’ (Link).

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When Shevek asks the socialists of Nio Esseia what Anarres, which they see as their ‘moon,’, means to them, they respond that every time they look up at the night sky, they are reminded that a society with no government, no police, and no economic exploitation exists and cannot be dismissed as merely a utopian fantasy (Link).

Religion and Reaction in Russia (1943)

From the November 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

The news that Stalin has approved the election of a Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church in Russia and the formation of a Holy Synod is not the least surprising to Socialists, especially after the information published in the Daily Worker (see August Socialist Standard) about the increasing numbers of rouble millionaires. 

Perhaps one of the best comments is that of General de Gaulle's paper, La France. It compares the present developments in Russia to the end of the Robespierre regime in France in 1798, and further points out that the old official Greek Orthodox Catholic Church in Russia has energetically supported the war against Germany, openly threatening denunciation as a traitor and ex-communication for any priest guilty of failing to lead the people against the enemy. According to the Moscow correspondent of the Daily Herald (September 6, 1943), "Since the war there has been an upsurge of religions feeling by no means confined to the older generation." This is simply one further aspect of the profound truth of the contention of the Socialist Standard 23 years ago that the people of Russia were not Socialists—but largely illiterate peasants. They still are— and are therefore priest-ridden.

  It is the development of industrial forces, and mankind's consequent growing control over nature, and increasing knowledge of her working, that provides a wider and firmer basis for science, and leaves less room for superstition in the minds of working men. (Socialism and Religion, S.P.G.B., p. 15-16.)

The position of the hapless British Communists becomes ever more ridiculous. One-time sponsors of the "League of the Godless" they are now forced to whitewash what is the most reactionary Church in Europe—the Russian Church— former organiser of pogroms against the Jews, spiritual managers of the Czar's public brothels, and breakers of strikes. Meantime, the British Archbishops and Deans of Canterbury, York, etc., have proved how astute they are and how well they understood that the backward conditions of Russia would serve religion.

According to the Daily Worker (September 16), the Dean of Canterbury welcomes the visit of the Archbishop of York to the Soviet Union. In an article in the same issue he states that "the Russian Church of to-day differs widely from the Russian Church of Tsarist days, proving itself by a whole series of acts, especially in war time, a loyal ally of the Soviet Regime." The Dean considers that this recognition of the Holy Synod in Russia makes it "the first great union of peoples to practise things which for 1,800 years the Church has been preaching."

When we recall the books written by these people, The Socialist Sixth of the World (extensively debunked in the Socialist Standard) and hear the statement of the Archbishop of Canterbury on the radio that they (the Church of England) have long been on the most friendly terms with the Greek Orthodox Church in Russia, and are now exchanging delegates, it becomes clear that the clergy are up to their age-old game, consistently played throughout the ages, of repainting their theological scenery to suit the political policy of the ruling clique of the day. In the same way that Ancient Rome and the Incas of Peru took the idols of conquered tribes and placed them in the Pantheon, so the Patriarch of the Holy Synod is quite willing to send greetings to Joseph Stalin so long as Stalin recognises the Church, or vice versa. Once Churchill "recognised" Stalin, the Church of England follows suit. Stalin has done this, as the Times indicates, because the Greek Church is the most suitable machinery for influencing Russian and Balkan peasants, not the Communist International, which it has superseded. Eleven years ago they said: —

   In all the Catholic Churches in the Liverpool diocese a pastoral letter from the Archbishop was read during the High Mass last Sunday. After stating that the abolition of religion is a fundamental tenet of Russian Communism, the Archbishop asserts, "Almost from the outset the price which the workers paid for the somewhat fictitious benefits of Communism was very real slavery; and slavery not merely of body but of mind, for the serfs of the soil in their misery soon discovered that the only free-thinkers in Russia were the despots who ruled them.
   Even at this late hour the world's ports should be closed to the commercial fleets of Russia and the plague of Bolshevism isolated within the Soviet State." (Daily Worker, November 29, 1932.) 

The official Church of England, through the Dean of Canterbury and others, will try to pass this off as "Socialism," and surely, if Hitler and Stalin can call themselves "Socialists," so can the Dean of Canterbury and the Russian Church. Yelping at his heels, the Daily Worker and Russia Today announce that the modern Russian Church, like the new Soviet millionaires, is " quite different."

Unfortunately for them, information is not lacking to the contrary. In the Daily Mirror for September 17 is a report from Moscow by Marion Sinclair entitled "An exhausting time was had by all," on the reception of the Patriarch by Stalin and his enthronement in Moscow Cathedral.

  "Never in the history of Soviet Russia has there been such a blaze of colour, jewels, candles, velvets, brocades—or such a concourse of people in an ecstasy of religious fervour."

The Cathedral Dean was fussing about like the stage-manager before the opening performance.

   "Don't forget those candles, line up the beggars at the door—they're blocking the entrance. Where are the people who are to line the path to keep back crowds? "
   Sergei (the Patriarch) put on the golden mitre blazing with rubies, sapphires, amethysts and pearls. One girl whispered "they can't all be real." But they were, for canonical law forbids the wearing of false jewels. (Italics ours.)

So we see. It is almost the same old superstitious Russia in spite of everything. Great wealth for priests—based on crowds of beggars at the door as they always were, with "modern" rouble millionaires and masses of pauper-workers added. And yet not quite the same, for somewhere in the back streets of Moscow there are working men and women who recall the words of one of Russia's outstanding sons : —

   Religion is one of the forms of spiritual oppression which everywhere weigh upon the masses who are crushed by continuous toil for others, by poverty and deprivation. The helplessness of all the exploited in their struggle against the exploiters inevitably generates a belief in a better life after death, even as the helplessness of the savage in his struggle with nature gives rise to a belief in gods, devils, miracles, etc.
  Religion teaches those who toil in poverty all their lives to be resigned and patient in this world, and consoles them with the hope of reward in heaven. As for those who live upon the labour of others, religion teaches them to be "charitable"—thus providing a justification for exploitation and, as it were, also a cheap ticket to heaven likewise."Religion is the opium of the people." Religion is a kind of spiritual intoxicant, in which the slaves of capital drown their humanity, and blunt their desire for a decent human existence.
  But a slave who has become conscious of his slavery, and who has risen to the height of fighting for his emancipation, has half-ceased to be a slave. The class-conscious worker of to-day, brought up in the environment of a big factory, and enlightened by town life, rejects religious prejudices with contempt. He leaves heaven to the priests and bourgeois hypocrites. He fights for a better life for himself, here on earth. The modern proletariat ranges itself on the side of Socialism, which, with the help of science, is dispersing the fog of religion and is liberating the workers from their faith in a life after death, by rallying them to the present-day struggle for a better life here upon earth.

The same Russian writer went on :—

  Marx said : "Religion is the opium of the people"—and this postulate is the corner-stone of the whole philosophy of Marxism with regard to religion. Marxism always regarded all modern religions and churches, and every kind of religious organisation as instruments of that bourgeois reaction whose aim is to defend exploitation by stupefying the working-class.

And finally perhaps Josef Stalin ponders these words written to Maxim Gorky : —

   By redecorating the idea of God you actually repaired the chains by which the ignorant workers and peasants are bound. "There!"—Messrs. Parson & Co. will say—"see what a fine and wise idea (idea of God) this is ! Even ' your ' democrats, your leaders, admit it; and we (Messrs. Parson & Co.) are the ministers of this idea." . . . Now in Europe, just as in Russia, every defence or justification of the idea of God, even the most refined and well intentioned, is a justification of reaction.

The Russian writer from whose work the above quotations are taken is N. Lenin (Lenin on Religion, Lawrence & Wishart, 1943, 1s.), and Mr. Harry Pollitt has been so busy at the back of the Second Front lately that he hasn't got round to suppressing it yet.

Horatio.

Editorial: Unholy Deadlock in Soviet Russia (1944)

Editorial from the August 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

A few years ago a campaign for the relaxation of the British divorce laws resulted in some changes which made divorce easier. Mr. A. P. Herbert, M.P., who led the campaign, coined the phrase “Holy Deadlock” to describe the position of those who wanted to dissolve their unsuccessful marriage, but were prevented by the existing law. The modifications of the law would have been greater but for the opposition of the Churches. The attitude of the Orthodox Church in Russia is not different from that of the Church of England and the Roman Catholics, and it is interesting to observe that the official recognition of the Orthodox Church by Stalin’s Government has been quickly followed by a tightening up of the divorce laws in Russia. Divorce in Russia used to be easy and costless, and Communist and other admirers of all things done by the Bolshevists made much of that fact. Mr. Pat Sloan, in his “Soviet Democracy” (Victor Gollancz, 1937, p. 124), wrote that “the holding of people unwillingly together, by force of law or by economic compulsion, has always been opposed. Divorce has been made easy . . ."

The Webbs, in their “Soviet Communism," describing the earliest official attitude, said that on the “principle of freedom in personal relations, divorce, at the option of either party, was as optional as a registered marriage. . . .” (p. 1054).

The Dean of Canterbury, Dr Hewlett Johnson, writing of the recent position, likewise states that “a woman is free to divorce her husband, though strongly discouraged from doing so. Divorce is granted readily at the request of either party. . . .” (“Socialist Sixth of the World,” Gollancz, 1944, p. 268).

Now all this is changed, at least for the low-paid masses. Divorce is to be both difficult and costly. Miss Marion Sinclair, Moscow correspondent of the Daily Mirror (July 13, 1944), gives interesting details. “By the new laws, divorce has been made a long, complicated and expensive process.” She continues: —

   One must apply to the People’s Court, paying 100 roubles, giving reasons and particulars about the partner, who is then called to court. This means that no one who is at the front, or doing war work in distant parts, of the Soviet Union, can be divorced. An announcement of the forthcoming action must be inserted in the local newspaper, the fee payable by the person seeking the divorce. The hearing must be public unless the court, for good reasons, rules otherwise, and so unpleasant publicity is now added to the troubles of the divorce-seeker. The duty of the People’s Court is to reconcile parties. If it fails, witnesses will be produced and the Court will decide whether there are sufficient grounds for divorce. It cannot, however, grant the divorce, but passes on the parties to the District Court, where the whole proceedings are gone through again. The costs are from 500 to 2,000 roubles, not including the fees of the lawyers who—for the first time—will be engaged in divorce actions, if the petitioner does not succeed with the District Court, he works his way up through the Regional, Provincial and City Courts to the Supreme Court of the Republic—a process which may take years, and which will certainly cost a great deal of money.

The Economist (July 15, 1944) points out what this means : “ . . . the fees to be paid on obtaining a divorce have been fixed so high as to be entirely prohibitive for the working classes. Divorce has become a privilege open only to the high income classes.”

One obvious reason for the change is to be found in the Russian Government's policy of increasing the population to make up for war deaths, which is being energetically fostered by the recently announced increase of children’s allowances and the institution of medals for mothers of large numbers of children. The mother of ten children is entitled to be called a “Mother Heroine,” and is awarded a large medal.

In spite of statements that the change is approved, it needs no special insight to know that the low-paid Russian workers who are barred from divorce will resent the new arrangement, which make divorce a privilege confined to the wealthier sections of the population.

Doubtless the British Communists who praised the former easy divorce will be just as slavishly enthusiastic about the reversal of policy, which puts State capitalist Russia well behind capitalist Britain. It would, however, be interesting to know what Communists have to say about Lenin's statement, quoted in The Economist (July J5, 1944): 

   The example of divorce shows that it is impossible to be a Democrat and a Socialist without at once demanding the full freedom of divorce, because the absence of that freedom is an additional vexation to the oppressed sex, to the women.