Le Figaro
- The Cartel of Last Resort
- Natural Feelings
- Sobering-up rooms..
Le Figaro's front page of 2 November 1926 opened with Henri Vonoven's editorial on the Radical party's congress in Bordeaux. There the Radicals said they were ready to work with any left-wing party willing to unite with them "sincerely", and the headline called the result a cartel of last resort. Abel Hermant used his signed column to mock Soviet justice, claiming that a son could stop his mother being his mother simply by saying so before a magistrate. In the Échos, an item signed "Le Masque de Fer" reported under a headline about sobering-up rooms that alcoholism had spread alarmingly in the USSR since the state vodka monopoly was set up.
Translation
The Cartel of Last Resort
At the Bordeaux Congress, a fortnight ago, the Radical party declared itself "ready to collaborate with the parties of the left that would sincerely unite with it for common action."
Natural Feelings
People used to believe, for example, that a mother must inevitably and forever remain the mother of her son, even if she has ceased to please him. Soviet justice has changed all that. We are not told whether mothers may legally rid themselves of their sons; but it is enough for the son to say to his mother, in the presence of a magistrate appointed for the purpose, "You are no longer my mother," for her indeed to be so no longer.
Sobering-up rooms..
Since the Soviet government established the vodka monopoly, alcoholism has developed at a frightening rate in the U.S.S.R.
Context
Why the Radicals were courting the left in autumn 1926
The Bordeaux declaration that Vonoven quotes came only months after the first Cartel des gauches had fallen apart. That alliance of the Radical-Socialists and the socialist SFIO won the elections of 11 May 1924 and governed under Édouard Herriot. Its majority broke up in 1926, when the SFIO went into opposition. Raymond Poincaré then formed a government of the National Bloc parties plus the Radical-Socialists, and the monetary crisis that had sunk the Cartel governments came to an end. In the autumn of 1926, then, Radical ministers sat in a cabinet with the right while their party congress invited the left to "sincere" common action. Vonoven's headline, "the cartel of last resort," calls that offer a fallback rather than a conviction. That reading is the newspaper's own judgment. The break-up of the 1924 majority and the Poincaré coalition are established history. The selected lines do not say which elections or parliamentary votes the Radicals had in mind.
What Soviet family law was doing when Hermant wrote
Hermant's column appeared while Soviet family law was being rewritten. The RSFSR's new Code of Laws on Marriage, Family and Guardianship was brought into force by a resolution of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee dated 19 November 1926, a little over two weeks after this issue. Historians describe the 1926 code as a retreat from many of the 1918 policies that had weakened the family. Among other changes, it extended maintenance obligations to cover children, parents, siblings and grandparents. In other words, the reform under way strengthened legal duties among relatives, including duties towards parents. The sources consulted here contain no procedure by which a son could renounce his mother before a magistrate. Hermant's story is therefore best read as a satirical sketch based on reports that the excerpt does not identify, and not as a description of a known legal provision.
How the vodka monopoly returned
The Échos item blames the rise in drinking on the Soviet vodka monopoly, which was then still a recent measure. Prohibition had come to Russia in 1914, when Nicholas II banned the sale of hard liquor at the outbreak of the First World War. According to the account consulted here, Stalin repealed prohibition in 1925 and restored the state vodka monopoly to raise government revenue. The sale of 40-percent grain alcohol was authorized by law on 4 October 1925. When this item appeared, legal vodka had therefore been back on sale in the USSR for about a year, and the monopoly existed to raise state revenue. The phrase "frightening" growth is the paper's own assessment. The selected sentence gives no figures to support it.
Sobering-up stations in Russian and Soviet history
The item's headline refers to sobering-up rooms, an institution that existed in Russia before the revolution. In 1902 the physician Fyodor Sergeyevich Arkhangelsky opened Russia's first sobering-up station, known as a "shelter for the intoxicated." A Russian historical calendar gives 14 November 1931 as the opening date of the first Soviet sobering-up station, on Marata Street in Leningrad. That is five years after this issue. The selected sentence stops before it describes the rooms named in the headline. The 1926 item therefore reads as an early foreign report on Soviet measures against drunkenness, and its details cannot be matched to the 1931 Leningrad station that this chronology records.
Original
LE CARTEL DU PIS ALLER
Au Congrès de Bordeaux, il y a quinze jours, le parti radical se déclarait «prêt à collaborer avec les partis de gauche qui voudraient s'unir sincèrement avec lui pour une action commune.»
LES SENTIMENTS NATURELS
. On croyait, par exemple, qu'une mère doit fatalement et à tout jamais rester la mère de son fils, même si elle a cessé de lui plaire. La justice soviétique a changé tout cela. On ne nous dit pas si les mères peuvent légalement se débarrasser de leur fils; mais il suffit qu'en présence d'un magistrat ad hoc le fils dise à sa mère: «Tu n'es plus ma mère», pour qu'en effet elle ne le soit plus.
Des salles de desenivrement..
Depuis que le gouvernement des Soviets a établi le monopole de la vodka, l'alcoolisme a pris dans l'U. R. S. S. un développement effrayant.