Aleksandra Mikhaylovna Kollontay Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Aleksandra Mikhaylovna Kollontay (1872–1952) was a major figure in the Russian Socialist movement from the late nineteenth century to the Bolshevik Revolution (1917). Born in St. Petersburg in the noble Domontovich family of Ukrainian, Russian, and Finnish background, at age twenty-two she married her cousin Vladimir Kollontay, but after the birth of a son in 1894 became increasingly dissatisfied with domestic life. In 1899, after a year of study in Switzerland, she embarked on a career as a revolutionary journalist, joining the then-illegal Russian Social Democratic Party. At first, Kollontay was neutral in the Bolshevik-Menshevik split but in 1904 she joined Leon Trotsky’s Bolshevik faction, only to leave two years later over the issue of boycotting elections to the Duma.

Kollontay’s first publications were studies of the Finnish economy. By 1905, she became an ardent feminist and had found the issue that would engage her for the rest of her life: the emancipation of women. Her first major work was The Social Basis of the Woman Question, published in 1908. That same year, Kollontay fled Russia to avoid arrest and remained in Western Europe until 1917, lecturing and writing. She worked for the German Social Democratic Party and taught at Russian dramatist Maxim Gorky’s school in Italy.

In 1914, Kollontay established contact with Vladimir I. Lenin and was a principal organizer of the Zimmerwald Conference against World War I (1914–1918). She returned to Russia in 1917 after the February Revolution. When the Bolsheviks seized power in November of that year Kollontay was appointed commissar of social welfare. As commissar, she promoted funding for maternity care, drafted protective legislation for women workers, and revamped divorce and civil marriage laws. Kollontay resigned in 1919 in protest against the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which ended the war with Germany.

Also in 1919, Kollontay was named to head the Zhenotdel, an official agency devoted to women’s issues. Over the next two years Kollontay developed the organization’s program of setting up nurseries, day care centers, and maternity hospitals. Her vision of Zhenotdel as an advocate for women did not sit well with the male-dominated Bolshevik leadership. Further, Kollontay’s involvement in the 1921 Workers’ Opposition Party, a group critical of Lenin, led to her downfall. In 1922, she was dismissed from Zhenotdel and demoted as a member of the diplomatic service. After two decades as a Soviet diplomat, Kollontay retired in 1945 and died in 1952.

The leading Marxist feminist of her era, Kollontay, through her work with Zhenotdel, was a trailblazer for both socialist and nonsocialist governments in the twentieth century. The emancipation of women from subordination within marriage was the central issue of her agenda. Viewing the traditional family as an outgrowth of feudal social structures rooted in the concept of private property, Kollontay believed that society, rather than the family, should be the source of support for both men and women.

Between 1918 and 1923, Kollontay wrote extensively, calling for the abolition of existing family structures and their replacement with what she called “winged Eros,” a form of free love without formal or legal imprimatur. Winged Eros would be free of economic considerations or child-bearing responsibilities, for children would be reared communally, as wards of the state. Even the radical Bolsheviks found the idea abhorrent. Rediscovered by Western feminists in the 1970s, Kollontay became once again an icon in the history of feminist thought.

Kollontay’s works include The Love of Worker Bees (1923), The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Woman (1927), and Selected Writings (1978).

Bibliography:

Clements, Barbara Evans. Bolshevik Feminist:The Life of Alexandra Kollontai. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979.
Farnsworth, Beatrice. Alexandra Kollontai. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1980.
Porter, Cathy. Alexandra Kollontai. New York: Dial, 1980.

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