The decree on education, drawn by Lunarcharsky, a writer and scholar, set forth the Soviet’s ideas of instruction. Since the first Revolution, an educational committee had been at work investigating Russia’s needs and formulating a legislative program. Contrary to the spirit of most of the ministries, this committee reached an agreement with the People’s Commissaries, and continued its work in conjunction with them. Local self-government in education was the fundamental principle of the program. Each locality had the right to determine for itself what it would learn, and when and where and how. The business of the governmental commission created by the decree was “to serve as a junction and helper, to organize sources of material, ideas, and moral support of the local bodies.” [Illustration: Marie Leon Trotzky Alexandria Spiridonova Kolontai Nikolai Lenin Lunarcharsky Krylenko Kamineff] [Illustration: Yesterday and today on the Marsovaya Pola--Priests with lifted ikons and gorgeous robes and Red Guards with bayonets and crimson banners] The Soviet declared that, whatever other governmental activities were curtailed, “the expenditure on public instruction must stay high. A generous budget for public instruction is the honor and glory of every people. Every truly democratic power in the domain of instruction of the country where ignorance and illiteracy are reigning, must take as its first aim the struggle against darkness. It must obtain in the shortest time a popular literation by means of an organization of a system of schools answering the first principles of contemporary pedagogy, and it must introduce a general, obligatory, and gratuitous education.” All decrees regulating the individual lives of people inclined toward wide freedom. The night the marriage and divorce decree was passed, there was a long discussion as to whether there should be any limit to the number of divorces that any individual should be granted. The decree, as it was finally passed, declared church marriages to be personal and private matters, and prescribed that the government recognize only civil marriages. Marriage consisted merely in the registration of intention made by two people, with a department provided for that purpose. Men were prohibited from marrying under the age of eighteen, and girls under sixteen, except in the trans-Caucasian district, where child marriages are the established custom. Here the age was fixed at sixteen for men and thirteen for girls. Polygamy was prohibited, as was marriage between half brothers and sisters, and between the insane. The contracting parties were given the right to choose the name of either husband or wife, or a combination of both names.