New Constitution

Although it rolled off Soviet Government presses nearly a month ago, the new Russian Constitution was still last week being kept the darkest of Bolshevik secrets. Curiosity is a major Russian trait and inquisitive tension throughout the Soviet Union was becoming terrific. With everyone fairly panting for news a few leaks oozed at last from the Commissariat of Justice. Comrade Andrei Philipov, Public Prosecutor of Moscow District, emitted the most startling hint. In 1930 was celebrated with great Bolshevik fanfare throughout Russia "The Decennial Anniversary of the Legalization of Abortion in the Soviet Union"--this always having been described by Communists as a boon conferred by the late great Nikolai Lenin. In Russia last week it was like the exploding of a bombshell when Prosecutor Philipov strongly intimated that under the new Bolshevik legal structure there will be "Prohibition of Abortion." Higher in the Communist hierarchy than Moscow Prosecutor .Philipov is the Public Prosecutor for the whole Soviet Union, smart Comrade Andrei Januari Yishinsky, who recently obtained a sentence condemning to death the brutal Governor of Wrangel Island (TIME, June 1). Last week the Chief Prosecutor declared in Moscow that the new Constitution will seek to correct "the basic defect of the criminal code."

Even a few weeks ago it would have been a shooting offense for any Russian to say openly that his country's Communist criminal code had basic defects. These are, declared Comrade Vishinsky, the present code's "unwieldiness, its lack of clarity and its insufficiency of attention to defense of the rights and interests of individual working people."

Thus last week, 19 years after the Russian working people hopefully staged their Revolution, they were promised for adoption, at a date not yet announced, a new Constitution to defend their personal rights and interests. According to All Union Chief Prosecutor Vishinsky a special object of the new Constitution will be "to provide maximum precautions against unwarranted indictments and unjust convictions" and to protect the individual "even against wrongful prosecution by the State."

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