age standard mentioned herein.

Note 2: Non-citizens mentioned in Paragraph 20 (Article 2, Chapter
Five) have the right to vote.

65. The following persons enjoy neither the right to vote nor the
right to be voted for, even though they belong to one of the
categories enumerated above, namely:

a. Persons who employ hired labor in order to obtain from it an
increase in profits.

b. Persons who have an income without doing any work, such as
interest from capital, receipts from property, etc.

c. Private merchants, trade, and commercial brokers.

d. Monks and clergy of all denominations.

e. Employees and agents of the former police, the gendarme corps,
and the Okhrana (Czar's secret service), also members of the
former reigning dynasty.

f. Persons who have in legal form been declared demented or
mentally deficient, and also persons under guardianship.

g. Persons who have been deprived by a Soviet of their rights of
citizenship because of selfish or dishonorable offenses, for the
period fixed by the sentence.

Apparently the Constitution does not provide any standard for determining
what labor is "useful and productive to society," and leaves the way open
for a degree of arbitrariness on the part of some authority or other that
is wholly incompatible with any generally accepted ideal of freedom and
democracy. It is apparent from the text of paragraph 64, subdivision "a" of
the foregoing chapter that housekeeping as such is not included in the
category of "labor that is productive and useful to society," for a
separate category is made of it. The language used is that "The right to
vote and to be elected to the Soviets is enjoyed by.... All who have
acquired the means of living through labor that is productive and useful to
society, _and also_ persons engaged in housekeeping, which enables the
former to do productive work--_i.e._, laborers and employees of all classes
who are employed in industry, trade, agriculture, etc."

This _seems_ to mean that persons engaged in housekeeping can only vote if
and when they are so engaged in order to enable other persons than
themselves to do "productive work." It appears that housekeeping for
persons not engaged in such productive work--for children, for
example--would not confer the right to vote. It is not possible to tell
with certainty what it _does_ mean, however, for there is probably not a