a committee has been organized which maintains a
continuous communication with the Duma.

The best established center of the Russian woman's rights movement is the
Woman's Club in St. Petersburg. Through the tenacious efforts of the
leading women of the club,--Mrs. v. Philosophow, (Mrs.) _Dr. med._
Schabanoff, and others,--the government granted them, in the latter part
of December, 1908, the right to hold the first national congress of women.
(The stipulation was made that foreign women should not participate, and
that a federation of women's clubs should not be formed.) The discussions
concerned education, labor problems, and politics. Publicity was much
restricted; police surveillance was rigid; addresses on the foreign
woman's suffrage movement were prohibited. Nevertheless, this progressive
declaration was made: Only the right to vote can secure for the Russian
women a thorough education and the right to work. Moreover, the Congress
favored: better marriage laws (a wife cannot secure a passport without the
consent of her husband), the abolition of the official regulation of
prostitution, the abolition of the death penalty, the struggle against
drunkenness, etc. The Congress was opened by the Lord Mayor of St.
Petersburg and was held in the St. Petersburg town hall. This was done in
a sense of obligation to the women school teachers of St. Petersburg and
to those women who had endeared themselves to the people through their
activity in hospitals and asylums. The Lord Mayor stated that these
activities were appreciated by the municipal officers and by all municipal
institutions.

Although the Congress was opened with praise for the women, it ended with
an intentional insult to the highly talented and deserving leader, Mrs. v.
Philosophow. Mr. Purischkewitch, the reactionary deputy of the Duma, wrote
a letter in which he expressed his pleasure at the adjournment of her
"congress of prostitutes" (_Bordellkongress_). Mrs. v. Philosophow
surrendered this letter and another to the courts, which sentenced the
offender to a month's imprisonment, against which he appealed. After this
Congress has worked over the whole field of the woman's rights movement, a
special congress on the education of women will be held in the autumn of
1909.[103]

Since the Revolution of 1905 the women of the provinces have been astir.
It has been reported that the Mohammedan women of the Caucasus are
discarding their veils, that the Russian wome