Alexandra Kollontai

Alexandra Kollontai (1872–1952) was a Russian Marxist revolutionary, feminist theorist, and diplomat. She became the Soviet Union’s first woman ambassador, serving in Norway.

Vladimir Lenin: A Russian revolutionary who led the Bolsheviks and the Soviet government after the October Revolution. Kollontai worked within Lenin’s party but challenged its leadership over workers’ control.
Marxism: A political and economic tradition that analyzes class conflict and seeks to replace capitalism with collective ownership. Kollontai grounded her revolutionary program in Marxist analysis of class and production.
Zhenotdel: The Communist Party’s women’s department, established in 1919 to organize women and promote their legal and social emancipation. Kollontai supported the department’s effort to bring women into Soviet political and economic life.
Communist morality: A political ethic that evaluates conduct in relation to collective life and the goals of communism. Kollontai used revolutionary ethics to argue for new forms of intimacy and social responsibility.
The Social Basis of the Woman Question: Kollontai’s essay arguing that women’s emancipation depends on changing class relations and economic life. This early work states her case against treating women’s oppression as separate from class.
Nadezhda Krupskaya: A Russian revolutionary and educator who helped build the Bolshevik movement and Soviet educational institutions. Krupskaya and Kollontai both linked revolutionary politics with women’s emancipation.
Bolsheviks: The revolutionary faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party that seized power in 1917. Kollontai joined the Bolsheviks and helped organize their work among women.
Women’s emancipation in Soviet Russia: Early Soviet policies and campaigns that sought to expand women’s legal equality, education, work, and public participation. Kollontai advocated reforms that made emancipation a state and social project.
Free love: A social ideal favoring intimate relationships chosen without coercion by law, economic dependence, or convention. She connected women’s sexual freedom to their material independence and changing social relations.
Make Way for Winged Eros: Kollontai’s 1923 essay on love, sexuality, and the ethical demands of a changing communist society. It develops her account of how intimate relationships might change after revolution.

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Marxist feminismRelated: Her proposals tied women’s freedom to transforming domestic life and social provision.