Zags Jammed

Among endless whispered Soviet quips at Josef Stalin is the one about Lenin's spunky, seamy-faced widow. "Tell that old woman," Dictator Stalin is supposed to have once roared, "that if she doesn't shut up, I'll appoint a new widow of Lenin!"

In Moscow last week the Widow Lenin put in her 2-c- worth against Josef Stalin's current drive to reduce the Russian divorce rate and inculcate a few bourgeois virtues among Soviet mates. Russians had heard rumors, and foreign correspondents had obtained confirmation, that the Dictator will soon drastically tighten up proverbially loose Bolshevik divorce laws. In a panic to get in under the wire, every Moscow mate who has recently thought of divorce was last week jamming the official bureaus, called "Zags," and they had the entire sympathy of the Widow Lenin.

Too smart to challenge Stalin openly, she hobbled out to the All Union Congress of Young Communist Women and slipped in her covert protest. "The mother instinct is noble, and we consider it a great force, but we do not want our women to devote their lives to rearing children only!" cried Widow Lenin, herself childless and a typical Old Bolshevik, with scorn for the bourgeois virtues. "We do not want child bearing or any other aspect of married life to separate our women from public work!"

Since nothing leaves a woman quite so free for public work as loose marriage laws, the Widow Lenin's drift was clear. She wound up her speech by naming over girls she had taught who have "emerged from the ranks of housewives" to hold high posts in the State.

Meanwhile the official Press strove last week to slow down Russia's present race for divorces. Thundering against Bolshevik fathers and mothers who were jamming the Zags, the Government news-organ Izvestia cried: "Soviet children must be protected from despicable and foul people!"

At one Zags office a handsome youth who had called the day before to register his marriage with a frumpy old woman turned up excitedly to ask for his freedom.

"But Comrade, this sort of thing is now frowned upon," warned the Zags official. "You were married only yesterday and in the afternoon at that!"

"Comrade, I can explain everything! With the room shortage what it is in Moscow, I found the woman you saw yesterday. She has an extra bed and agreed to rent it to me, but she said that to satisfy the authorities we must go through the form of marriage--only the form! Last night to my amazement, Comrade, this old woman showed that she does not intend to let our marriage remain a legal form, and I escaped with difficulty. This morning I simply must get divorced!"

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