Love on the Party Line

Never had Moscow's shabby, musty Great Lecture Hall in Polytechnic Plaza been more tightly packed. People who could not find seats sat in each other's laps or in the aisles. The occasion was a lecture entitled: "Love, Marriage and Family in Socialist Society."*

Behind the turnout there was more than vernal interest in a vernal theme; there was also the Muscovites' incessant quest for the latest twist of the Communist Party's line.

The lecturer, sleek-haired, glib Philosophy Professor V. N. Kolbanovsky, said: "Ugly psychological leftovers of bourgeois ideology concerning marriage and love still exist here. . . . Bourgeois marriages are business marriages where love gets dirtied and trampled. ... In bourgeois countries the working girl, in order to get and hold a job, often has to pass through the boss's bed. ... In the bourgeois state children are not wanted in great numbers."

As the ultimate in horrible examples, he picked Chattanooga, Tenn., where, he asserted, there are five divorces to every marriage. This, he added, would soon reult in every woman having been married to every man.*

The days of Soviet divorce at a pen-scratch had been ended by 1944 decrees. New laws further restricting divorce are under consideration. Said Kolbanovsky: "The time will never come when parents are reduced to the function of producing children and handing their babies over to the state. . . . Love under Communism will become even more beautiful."

*In the 100 years since Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto espoused "an open, legalized community of women," few subjects have been more frequently disputed by Marxists. Lenin, in one of his sharpest departures from Marxism, vehemently rejected "free love" on the ground that "love is more than drinking a glass of water." But Alexandra Kollontay, who instituted the Soviet system of easy divorce in 1917, was called "Russia's only real Communist" because of her advocacy of free love

*The facts: in twelve months ending April 1, Chattanooga had 720 marriages, 1,563 divorces. At this rate it would take 3,271,152 years for each of Chattanooga's 51,503 nubile females to marry all of its 45,750 nubile males.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.