RUSSIA: Basis of Marriage

Defying God, if He exists, to strike one dead, is all very well for the smalltime, itinerant atheist. But hamfisted, leather-lunged Emelyan Yaroslavsky is the biggest shot in world atheism. As the walloping chairman of the Soviet League of Militant Godless, Comrade Yaroslavsky pulls the levers of a Juggernaut that rumbles on night and day, crunching Russian churches, chasing priests from their holes, destroying icons and uprooting holy matrimony—but not fecund wedlock.

This fine distinction put Comrade Yaroslavsky on his mettle last week. On the one hand he was moving like an Attila through the Province of Moldavia, taking Red vengeance on still pious citizens who were found to have raised the standard of religion. On the other hand, Godless Yaroslavsky was keeping up a keen fight in the Moscow Press with organized young Red zealots who claim that shock brigadiers like themselves have no time for the bliss of placid wedlock. The rumpus started when Komsomolskaya Pravda, newsorgan of the 5,000,000 Communist Youths, printed a symposium of letters from its readers.

Typical excerpts: “… I am a girl mobilized for social work. … I have no time for love. . . .” “. . . My name has been engraved on the roll of honor of our factory. My wife Lida says ‘Your success has been built upon my misfortunes.’ I bought Lida a coat and a silk dress. Lida said ‘I can’t use your silk dress. I have nowhere to go.’ And she threw it in my face. . . .” “. . . While I was busy with posters, flowers and parades … I entirely forgot the existence of the man I love. . . .”Summing up all this Komsomolskaya Pravda recorded an evident conviction among Communist Youth that the tempo of their life blights marriage and makes proper child rearing well-nigh impossible. To this Godless Yaroslavsky made truculent retort: “It is entirely up to our Young Communists themselves! They must so organize their work and social activities that they will find time for bestowing upon each other that deep and sincere love that makes life worth living. … By all means get married! . . . Not only should Young Communists marry and have children but so should all workers.”

Comrade Yaroslavsky deplored “the temporary unions” which his smiting of holy matrimony and all things holy in Russia has done so much to encourage. Their effect, he declared, is “often vulgarizing.” In a final effort to show that somehow or other marriage is on a higher plane in Soviet Russia today than anywhere else, Godless Yaroslavsky wound up: “Our Communist family differs very notably from the petty bourgeois family. Our family is based on the unity of political striving and ideological interests.”