Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/804

788 HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE majority for a clause that any future Parliament might do this by a two-thirds vote without a revision of the constitution. LUXEMBURG. Under the Treaty of Peace after the war Luxemburg became an independent government with its own Parliament. There was a temporary Constituent Assembly and on May 8, 1919, without even an effort by women, this body adopted universal suffrage, without distinction of sex, by a vote of 39 to n. All inhabitants 21 years of age are electors and after 25 are eligible for the Parlia- ment and Communal Councils. On September 28 men and women voted on the country's future form of government and decided by a four-fifths vote to have an independent monarchy with an elected Parliament. A month later the elections for it took place. One of the two women candidates was elected. RUSSIA. It would be difficult to relate the story of woman suffrage in Russia. In the villages and among the peasants women had long voted at the local elections either as proxies of the husband or by right of owning property, and among the nobility and wealthy classes they could vote through male proxies. There was little national suffrage even among men and the Revolution after the Russo-Japanese war was a struggle for representation. In March, 1905, a Russian Union of Defenders of Women's Rights was started in Moscow and spread among different classes throughout Russia. It became a part of the general movement for liberty, was well organized and its demands were many but the first one was for a Constituent Assembly elected by universal, secret ballot. It united with the great political Union of Unions, which officially recognized the equal rights of women in all respects in July, 1905, and before the end of the year this had been done by many municipalities. Everything was stopped by the Revolution and that was fol- lowed by the establishment of the Douma. All that women hoped for from it was wrecked when it was dissolved. Their Union at this time had 79 branches and 10,000 members and had collected