Alexandra Kollontai

A rare, graphic portrait of Russian life in 1917 immediately after the October Revolution. The heroine struggles with her passion for her husband, and the demands of the new world in which she lives.

Love of Worker Bees

Red Love

the fight for workers democracy in the Soviet Union

The workers opposition in the Russian Communist Party

This novel is neither a study in "morals," nor a picture of the standard of life in Soviet Russia. It is a purely psychological study of sex-relations in the post-war period. I have chosen the environment of my own country and made my own people protagonists, for I know them better and could give a more vivid picture of their inner life and characters. Many of the problems presented are not exclusively Soviet-Russian; they are world-wide facts, which can be noted in all countries. These silent psychological dramas, born of the change in the sexual relations; this evolution, especially, in the feelings of women, are well known to the younger generation of Europe.

Sexual Relations and Class Struggle

Revisiting the ideas of a Russian revolutionary and feminist on such topics as sexual politics, free love, and motherhood. Alexandra Kollontai was a prominent Russian revolutionary, a commissar of Social Welfare after the October revolution in 1917, and a long-term Soviet ambassador to Sweden. As a cofounder of the Zhenotdel, the “Women's Department” in the communist party, she introduced abortion rights, secularized marriage, and provided paid maternity leave. Kollontai considered “comradely love” to be an important political force, elemental in shaping social bonds beyond the limitations of property relations. Red Love stems from a yearlong research by CuratorLab at Konstfack University together with Tensta konsthall, that led up to Dora García's exhibition Red Love and its related public programing. A number of artists and thinkers revisit Kollontai's ideas on the politics of love and their relation to current political, social, and feminist struggles. The publication also includes the biographical play Kollontai from 1977 by distinguished Swedish writer Agneta Pleijel. Part critical analysis and part artist book Red Love seeks to address the ongoing relevance of Kollontai's thought, and the increasingly complex sphere of love relations in advanced capitalism. Is there a place for Kollontai's vision of comradely love today and how could it be formed?

A Reader on Alexandra Kollontai

Alexandra Mikhailovna "Shura" Kollontai (March 31 1872 - March 9, 1952) was a Russian Communist revolutionary, first as a member of the Mensheviks, then from 1914 on as a Bolshevik. In 1919 she became the first female government minister in Europe. In 1923, she was appointed Soviet Ambassador to Norway, becoming the world's first female ambassador.

A Great Love

Parvathi Menon

The revolutionary legacy of Alexandra Kollontai (1872-1952) has slipped into relative obscurity. This is somewhat surprising, because she was a voluminous writer - on politics, Marxist theory, country-specific economic studies, and the women's question. She left letters, diaries, memoirs and pamphlets, theoretical tracts, articles, and creative literature. She authored two novels, The Love of Worker Bees and Red Love, which explored issues of love and socialist morality. Kollontai was resolutely opposed to bourgeois feminism, the term used to demarcate a form of feminism that was anti-Marxist and that drove an agenda of free love. She was, however, perhaps the only one amongst a small group of women and men communists in her time who engaged intellectually with issues of sexual morality in the context of women's liberation. She envisioned the many possibilities for women's freedom that lay locked in a socialist future, and set out the mechanisms by which women's subordination - political and economic of course, but equally in terms of ideas and attitudes - could and must be undone under socialism. This volume brings together some of her most important writings on gender, sexuality and women's liberation.

The Soviet Woman

"The worker-mother must learn not to differentiate between yours and mine; she must remember that there are only our children." "Sexuality is a human instinct as natural as hunger or thirst." -- Alexandra Kollontai Alexandra Kollontai was a Russian revolutionary, politician, diplomat and Marxist theoretician. Serving as the People's Commissar for Welfare in Vladimir Lenin's government in 1917-1918, she was the leading advocate for women's rights and free love within the Bolshevik party and the first woman in history to become an official member of a governing cabinet. Comrade Kollontai is a concise, sparkling collection of Kollontai's views on sex, women and the family. Richly illustrated, the book is edited by the highly-regarded socialist feminist writer Liza Featherstone. She shows how Kollontai's work has a new relevance with the revival of socialist feminism and in light of contemporary global struggles over abortion rights and government support for families and children.

Writings on Sex, Family and Women's Rights

Comrade Kollontai

Virginie Despentes

Simone de Beauvoir

Angela Y. Davis

Kimberlé Crenshaw

Olympe de Gouges

Mariarosa Dalla Costa

Selma James

Clara Zetkin

Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen

Julieta Paredes

EZLN

Zohra Drif

Maria Galindo

belle hooks

Madeleine Vernet

Ungleiche Geschlechterverhältnisse sind noch immer tief in unsere Gesellschaft eingeschrieben. Der Kampf für die Befreiung der Frau von patriarchaler Unterdrückung, wirtschaftlicher Abhängigkeit und Sexismus sowie für soziale Gleichheit steht nach wie vor auf der Tagesordnung jeder wahrhaften emanzipativen und progressiven Bewegung. Die Wiener Forscherin Julia Harnoncourt versammelt in ihrem Band "Für die Befreiung der Frau" Schriften und Analysen von Aktivistinnen und Theoretikerinnen aus zwei Jahrhunderten des Kampfes. Von den Kämpferinnen der ArbeiterInnenbewegung bis zu den Feministinnen nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, von der afroamerikanischen Frauenbewegung bis zu den Vertreterinnen des Globalen Südens, von Clara Zetkin und Simone de Beauvoir bis zur Zweiten Frauenbewegung der 1970er Jahre wird versucht, möglichst viele verschiedene Analyse- und Lösungsansätze zu Wort kommen zu lassen. So zum Beispiel die Frage nach biologischem und sozialem Geschlecht oder nach gerechter Verteilung. Ein weiteres wichtiges Thema ist das Verhältnis von Frauen zur Arbeit, wobei Haus- und Pflegearbeit besonders kontrovers diskutiert wird. Der Slogan "Das Private ist politisch" betrifft nicht nur die Hausarbeit, sondern auch den weiblichen Körper, Liebe und Sexualität. Im Kampf gegen die Ungleichheit stellt sich schließlich auch die Frage, mit wem überhaupt zusammen gekämpft werden kann. Können Männer die Interessen von Frauen vertreten? Und können von Rassismus oder globaler Ungleichheit betroffene Frauen mit weißen Frauen aus dem Norden gemeinsam um ihre Rechte kämpfen, wenn alle unterschiedliche Erfahrungen machen? Das Buch "Befreiung der Frau" versammelt verschiedene Perspektiven und Antworten aus unterschiedlichen feministischen Kämpfen und Regionen der Welt.

Texte zur Geschichte eines weltweiten Kampfes

Befreiung der Frau

This is the first time that the complete autobiography which Alexandra Kollontai wrote in 1926 has been published. "For it is not her specific feminine virtue that gives her a place of honor in human society, but the worth of the useful mission accomplished by her, the worth of her personality as human being, as citizen, as thinker, as fighter. Subconsciously this motive was the leading force of my whole life and activity. To go my way, to work, to struggle, to create side by side with men, and to strive for the attainment of a universal human goal (for nearly thirty years, indeed, I have belonged to the Communists) but, at the same time, to shape my personal, intimate life as a woman according to my own will and according to the given laws of my nature. It was this that conditioned my line of vision."

The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman

Sheila Rowbotham

Cathy Porter

Alexandra Kollontai

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