Alexandra Kollontai - Revolutionary Pioneer of Marxist Feminism

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Alexandra Kollontai broke the glass ceiling before most women were allowed into the building – she became the first woman in history to serve in a governing cabinet, that of People’s Commissar for Welfare under Lenin. Kollontai was an intellectual, a revolutionary and a champion of women’s liberation. Kollontai is rightfully regarded as one of the doyens of Marxist Feminism.

Kollontai, the daughter of a Russian cavalry officer, was born in Saint Petersburg in 1872. She entered politics as a young woman in her twenties, was exiled from Russia in 1908, and toured Europe to advocate against the first World War.

After the 1917 February Revolution, she returned to Russia and became a member of the Central Committee. Kollontai played a prominent role in the Russian revolution, voting for the policy of armed uprising.

Kollontai and the Zhenotdel – the praxis of revolutionary Marxist Feminism

The daily lived experience of women in the Russian Empire before the Revolution was one of hardship, limitations, and poverty, particularly for peasants. It was a patriarchal society that functioned in part on the marginalization of women and the exploitation of their labour. Women were not allowed to vote or hold public office until 1917.

Society was staunchly patriarchal and women of all backgrounds were not allowed to vote or hold public office until 1917. Kollontai rejected the idea of “liberal feminism”, labeling it a bourgeoisie construct. Instead, Kollontai helped to develop Marxist feminism as the analog to the weaknesses in the exclusionary and cosmetic iteration of feminism that had been contemporaneously championed by the suffrage movements in the US and Europe.

With Inessa Armand, Alexandra Kollontai established the Zhenotdel, the women’s department of the Central Committee. Its aims were to improve the conditions of women’s lives throughout the Soviet Union, by improving access to education for women, eradicating illiteracy, and educating women about the rights afforded to them by the legislation put into place by the Communist Party in the Soviet Union.

It is because of the work of the Zhenotdel that abortion was legalized in Russia in 1920. It was the first time in history that women were afforded the right to free abortions in public hospitals.

The Zhenotdel was closed in 1930 in her absence because of the theory among its members that all women’s issues in the Soviet Union had been solved by the eradication of private property and the nationalization of the means of production.

Alexandra Kollontai – Fearless dissenter

Kollontai’s internal criticism of the Communist Party almost resulted in her expulsion. She made common cause with the Worker’s Opposition, a left-wing faction of the Communist Party. In the run up to the Tenth Party Congress she published a pamphlet that expounded on her views in support of the ideas promulgated by the Worker’s Opposition – control of unionized workers over factories, and over the management of the national economy. It was a mutual analysis that she shared with the Workers Opposition that a communist society could only be built by the industrial proletariat. Kollontai was particularly scathing of the bureaucratization of post-revolution society, the petit-bourgeoisie influences on Soviet institutions and the Communist Party.

Some within the Communist Party were disturbed by the manner of her critique, and mistakenly viewed the Kollontai’s dissent as a platform for a new party.

At the Eleventh Party Congress, Kollontai and two others were charged with having insisted on factional work. The recommendation was that they be purged from the party. In a speech in her defence, Kollontai asserted her full observance of the previous decree on party unity, and concluded:

"If there is no place for this in our party, then exclude me. But even outside the ranks of our party, I will live, work and fight for the Communist party."

It was resolved that Kollontai and her cohorts be allowed to remain in the Communist Party.

Alexandra Kollontai the peacemaker

After being branded as a political outcast after the Eleventh Congress, Alexandra Kollontai faced the prospect of her biggest fear – that of being excluded from the revolution and its people. She wrote a personal letter to Stalin asking to be deployed as a diplomat. This request was granted, with her role being as attache to the Soviet mission in Norway.

In 1924, She was promoted to being charge d’affaires, and then Minister Plenipotentiary. Kollontai later served in Soviet diplomatic missions in Mexico, and Sweden, where she became ambassador in 1943.

During her time in Sweden the Winter War broke out between Russia and Sweden. Her influence as a diplomat in Sweden contributed to ensuring Swedish neutrality.

Kollontai retired from international diplomacy in 1945. In the two years following her retirement, she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by future Finnish President and former ambassador to Russia Joho Kusti Paasikivi due to “her diplomatic efforts to end war and hostilities between the Soviet Union and Finland during the negotiations in 1940-44.”

Early in her diplomatic career, Kollontai had hoped that her diplomatic posting was just a transient phase of her political life. Her wish was to return to political work in the Zhenotdel and other initiatives that would contribute to the upliftment of women, but eventually she had to accept the realization that her diplomatic assignments was an exile of sorts.

Alexandra Kollontai’s death and legacy

Alexandra Kollontai passed away at the age of 79 on the 9th of March 1952. Her towering legacy is that of cardinal contributions to Marxist feminism and a body of intellectual work that has resonated among social movements at various times all around the world. She would criticise the bourgeoisie-led strand of liberal feminism that prioritized political outcomes over the radical improvements of the lives of working class women.

There are many intentional and unintentional misrepresentations of Kollontai’s views on sexuality. It is a myth that Kollontai advocated for “free love”, and this is a result of the sea change in approach to human sexuality in the 60’s (where her work in radical feminism experienced a resurgence within the mainstream), as well as having her views on sexuality weaponized by her political and cultural rivals. She did not advocate the practice of casual sexual encounters, because she noted that the power disparity between men and women in particular would further the sexual exploitation of women. Kollintai did, however, hold it as a truism that “sexuality is a human instinct as natural as huger or thirst”.

Kollontai wrote exhaustively on the patriarchal ties that bind women to oppression. She advocated for the dynamics of the traditional family to undergo a revolution. In the liberation of men and women from the traditional hierarchical roles, Communism would free marriage (and in particular women in marriages), from what she termed “conjugal slavery”, freeing both parties to abide in egalitarian partnerships. Kollontai wrote in Communism and the Family in 1920:

The workers’ state needs new relations between the sexes, just as the narrow and exclusive affection of the mother for her own children must expand until it extends to all the children of the great, proletarian family, the indissoluble marriage based on the servitude of women is replaced by a free union of two equal members of the workers’ state who are united by love and mutual respect. In place of the individual and egoistic family, a great universal family of workers will develop, in which all the workers, men and women, will above all be comrades.

She also viewed domestic labour, and inparticular the household tasks and roles that had been fulfilled by women as an impediment to industrialization and modernization. Kollontai was of the view that a full communist society replete with industrial mechanization would replace what had hitherto been “women’s work”.

All that was formerly produced in the bosom of the family is now being manufactured on a mass scale in workshops and factories. The machine has superseded the wife. What house- keeper would now bother to make candles, spin wool or weave cloth? All these products can be bought in the shop next door. Formerly every girl would learn to knit stockings. Nowa- days, what working woman would think of making her own? In the first place she doesn’t have the time. Time is money, and no one wants to waste time in an unproductive and useless manner. Few working women would start to pickle cucumbers or make other preserves when all these things can be bought in the shop.

And also:

What kind of “family life” can there be if the wife and mother is out at work for at least eight hours and, counting the travelling, is away from home for ten hours a day? Her home is neglected; the children grow up without any maternal care, spending most of the time out on the streets, exposed to all the dangers of this environment. The woman who is wife, mother and worker has to expend every ounce of energy to fulfil these roles. She has to work the same hours as her husband in some factory, printing-house or commercial establishment and then on top of that she has to find the time to attend to her household and look after her children. Capitalism has placed a crushing burden on woman’s shoulders: it has made her a wage-worker without having reduced her cares as housekeeper or mother.