ABSTRACT

The Soviet authorities encouraged the "proletarian" section of the population in every way to make intimations and denunciations. In order to aid in the successful combating of certain undesirable phenomena at present occurring amongst people, all workers (male and female) must give notice of secret food-stores, of illicit traders, and, in general, of all persons who are fighting against the Soviet Government and the working-people by means of sabotage. Grounds for denunciations existed, of course, in abundance, for in reality everything in the slightest degree resembling bourgeois ways of living and domestic organization was prohibited. The decrees which the Muscovites had issued already provided them with ample opportunity for interference in the minutest details of the private life of each individual. Nothing was more indifferent to them than the sanctity which all civilized people attach to the home. The inviolability of the domestic hearth and the freedom of the individual were ideas completely unknown to them.