1. Adultery.
2. Illicit intercourse with a third party after betrothal.
3. Malicious desertion for one year.
By petition to the Department of Justice of the Imperial Senate a Finn can obtain, for sufficient cause, a divorce on other grounds.
Rights of Married Women.—When we come to consider the rights, or rather, the lack of rights, of married women in the Muscovite Empire we must remember that Russia is only geographically in Europe, and only nominally a Christian State. It is a country standing alone on the map of the world, five centuries behind in civilization what is really Europe.
Although among the so-called higher classes woman is often treated socially—not legally—as the equal of her husband, among the great bulk of the population she has little more status than that of a domestic animal.
There is no other country on earth pretending to be civilized where a woman, single or married, has so few rights recognized by the State or the national church.
A married woman in Russia owns nothing. It is all her husband’s. She is, however, allowed the privilege of saving up a little hoard of her own on the flax or wool out of which she makes the clothing for her husband and children. This little hoard is called her korobka, and upon her death it goes to her children. If she dies childless it goes to her mother, and if her mother is also dead it goes to her single sisters.
Such a korobka, when accumulated by a single woman from her earnings, is considered as a dowry upon marriage, and it is generally applied by the bridegroom to pay the wedding expenses.
Count Mouravieff could not have been thinking of woman’s place in his native land when he said: “We Russians bear upon our shoulders the New Age; we come to relieve the tired men.” It is our opinion that the nation which is most likely to bear upon the shoulders of its people the New Age is the country which treats its womankind the best.