Rensselaer Republican, Volume 14, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 June 1882 — Women in Russia. [ARTICLE]

Women in Russia.

In Russia, where in the middle classes the seclusion of women was even a few years ago nearly as great as in a harem, the advocate of women’s rights wO'ild today find little in demand for any class ot females above the level of the peasantry. The moujik still administers corporal chastisement to his wife as he would to his child, and his right to do so, though denied by the written law, is tacitly acknowledged in practice. The girl however, whose brother has described as going to the Lycee and subsequently to the university, is nearly as independent as her male relations. Likener brother, and from similar causes, she too often becomes disgusted with her home and determines to seek what she imagines to ,be the delights of the independent life led by the numerous female students who follow various university courses, and particularly that or medicine. Sometimes, when her parents .refuse her permission to leave home, she simply runs away, and having no passport, her permission at once becomes illegal, and she naturally finds her companions among those who, like herself, have got into some trouble with the authorites. In some cases enthusiastics like Solovieff, who fired at the late Czar in April, 1879, marry girls with whom they liave scarcely any acquaintance, and for whom they have no feeling of aflection merely to free them the obligation of obtaining a passport from their parents, and their consent to leave home. The young husband and wife proceed together to the university town, and there, having no particular taste for each others society, they often separate immediately, and even where they would desire to maintain their nmuial connection, the pressure of poverty and the difficulties of their position frequently oblige them to part company. Even without the specially demoralizing effect of such circumstances as I have just mentioned, the general influences of life at the universities are mast injurious to the majority oi the young women who frequent them. The ideas of family ties and of the obligations of married life which prevails in the homes of the students are probably lax enough, but even t hese are cast to the winds by the young men and women who adopt a code of morals of their own in the Bohemian society of which they have become members. Parental authority, which a few years ago was such a marked feature in domestic life in Russia, has become a thiug of the past as far as regards the majority of the students, and University and Government officials are equally condemned. The mystic reverence for the Czar appears absurd to the young philosophers, and the church itself is despised by those who have learnen to recognize the ignorance of its ministers, and the superstition with which its rites are practiced by the ignorant masses.—[Fortnightly Review.