The New Morality

Moscow gagsters had a good time with the Soviet Union's new marriage-and-maternity regulations (TIME, July 17). At the Metropole Hotel, an actor pointed at a well-known ladies' man and cracked:

"He thinks there should be an Order of the Heroic Father." A Komsomol girl suggested a new slogan: "More children, fewer careers."

But the new laws were taken with Soviet seriousness by most citizens, as befitted the new Soviet morality. Casual divorce, free love had long since gone into the Communist limbo. Now the state was seriously interested in more & bigger families.

Another aspect of the new Communism, long evident, is the worship of old national heroes. From the Soviet film capital at Alma Ata, beyond the Urals, came word that Hollywood-wise, English-speaking Cinema Director Sergei Eisenstein has shot two-thirds of a new picture about Tsar Ivan (1530-1584). In Tsarist days, Russian school children learned that Ivan was called the Terrible because as a boy he enjoyed squashing little kittens to death, as a ruler he delighted in hacking off the heads of subjects.

Eisenstein's 16th century Tsar Ivan is portrayed differently. He is called "Ivan the Good."

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