Alexandra Kollontai
From Freepedia
Alexandra Mikhailovna Kollontai (Алекса́ндра Миха́йловна Коллонта́й — born Domontovich, Домонто́вич) (March 31 (March 19, O.S.), 1872 - March 9, 1952) was a Russian Communist revolutionary, first as a member of the Mensheviks, then from 1914 on as a Bolshevik. She was effectively exiled by Stalin, who sent her abroad as a diplomat, and she was thus one of the very few "Old Bolsheviks" to escape death during the Great Purges of the 1930s.
Born in St. Petersburg to Mikhail Domontovich a general in the Russo-Turkish War, 1877-1878 and the head of the chancellery of the Russian administration in Bulgaria 1878-1879, and Alexandra Masalin-Mravinsky, the daughter of a wealthy Finnish timber merchant.
Revolutionary career
At the time of the split in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party into the Mensheviks under Julius Martov and the Bolsheviks under Vladimir Lenin in 1903, Kollontai did not side with either faction. However, she came to dislike aspects of Bolshevism and opted to join the Mensheviks.
In 1914, Kollontai joined the Bolsheviks and returned to Russia, after a period of exile for her earlier political activities. After the Bolshevik revolution in October 1917, she became People's Commissar for Social Welfare. She was the most prominent woman in the Soviet administration and was best known for founding the Zhenotdel or "Women's Department" in 1919. This organization worked to improve the conditions of women's lives in the Soviet Union, fighting illiteracy and educating women about the new marriage, education, and working laws put in place by the Revolution. She was well recognized later for socialist feminism. The Zhenotdel was eventually closed in 1930.
In the government, Kollontai increasingly became an internal critic of the Communist Party and joined with her friend, Alexander Shlyapnikov, to form a left-wing faction of the party that became known as the Workers' Opposition. However, Lenin managed to dissolve the Workers' Opposition, after which Kollontai was more or less totally politically sidelined.
Kollontai lacked political influence and was appointed by the Party to various diplomatic positions from the early 1920s, keeping her from playing a guiding role in the politics of women's policy in the USSR. In 1923, she was appointed Soviet Ambassador to Norway, becoming the world's first female Ambassador. She later served as Ambassador to Mexico and Sweden. During World War II, there were some Nazi discussions that her embassy in Stockholm could potentially be a channel for German-Soviet negotiations, although they never came to pass. She was also a member of the Soviet delegation to the League of Nations. She died in 1952.
Alexandra Kollontai is an unusual figure in the history of the Soviet Union, as she was an "Old Bolshevik" and a major public critic of the Communist Party who was neither purged nor executed by the Stalin regime, though as a diplomat serving abroad, she had little or no influence in government policy or operations and so was effectively exiled.
Kollontai also raised eyebrows with her strong promotion of free love and her 'glass-of-water' theory, which held that the satisfaction of one's sexual desires should be as simple as getting a glass of water. She herself engaged in numerous sexual affairs over the course of her life.
Films
Kollontai was the subject of the 1994 TV film, A Wave of Passion: The Life of Alexandra Kollontai, with Glenda Jackson as the voice of Kollontai.
A female Soviet diplomat in the 1930s with unconventional views on sexuality, played by Greta Garbo, appeared in the movie Ninotchka.
External links
Categories: Old Bolsheviks | 1872 births | 1952 deaths | Soviet politicians | Russian diplomats | Marxist theorists
