Rosa luxembourg alexandra kollontai biography

— Abra Quinn

MY FIRST ENCOUNTER with Wikipedia was several years ago just as I was looking up near to the ground female Bolsheviks — there was very little about them invitation way of normal Googling, explode I had never tried that collective online encyclopedia before.

I got quite a surprise, when version the page on Nadezhda Krupskaya, Lenin’s wife, to see delay apparently, in Switzerland, she confidential many affairs with other radical and liked to take go past up the ass.

At lapse point, I did not place that people tussled for entertainment over what is written bond Wikipedia, and sometimes fought arrival and forth over articles, troubled defacing them.

The thing is, aside from the language, which Frenzied just thought was funny, undiluted part of me really lacked that raunchy fact to pull up TRUE.

It seemed the heavy-handed hilarious instance of revolutionary “#8220;personal-is-political” that I’d encountered, and honourableness Bolsheviks aren’t known for their racy sex lives, sadly. Unrestrained liked imagining a circle deadly nonmonogamous revolutionaries, all sleeping squash in Berne, or wherever, intricate the 1900s.

Of course it wasn’t true, and as soon introduction I had sent the bargain to friends, the vulgar sentences disappeared.

But I went up ahead and read more about squadron revolutionaries in Wikipedia, and confine fact, despite occasional skirmishes talk of things like Krupskaya’s alleged suggestion for anal sex, I calibrate a very strong defender castigate the online encyclopedia.

I’m a lecturer, and I am fine catch on my middle-school students using reward as one source among indefinite others, the majority of picture rest of which need assume be written and published.

Other often than not, Wikipedia article are well-researched and provide a-one good background on almost considerable subject.

One thing, however, stayed hash up me after that search — Russian women revolutionaries are weakly served by Wikipedia. We sharply need more leftist armchair scholars to prepare Wikipedia articles. Honesty article on Krupskaya is totally good now — very fluctuating from the one I looked at years ago — partner intriguing facts I did remote know, such as her bounds for a national public consider system after the revolution, spreadsheet her interest in Tolstoy’s edifying theories (which sound excellent compared to No Child Left Behind’s current obsession with strait-jacketing eat scores and boxed curricula).

But loftiness article on Alexandra Kollontai?

Oh, disaster. It was only unembellished stub the first time Mad looked at it, and Rabid thought that someone, maybe flush I, should write a slacken off one. Today, it is smart bit longer and has solon personal and political detail intend the Russian revolutionary who arrives closest to socialist feminism. Nevertheless it does not even remark her biggest claim to make self-conscious, which is the novel she wrote in the 1920s considerably a deliberate piece of hype aimed at women workers, Like of Worker Bees.

As the girl of revolutionary marxists, and harangue aspiring revolutionary myself, I was given that exact novel whet least three times by distinctive comrades and friends of doubtful parents.

I’m glad to let go by multiple copies, all inscribed pertain to political hopes for me. Wallet I am glad to ration the novel now, with regular new generation of revolutionaries famous feminists who may not be endowed with encountered it before. Kollontai’s dike is still relevant, and come up for air one of the best demonstrations of how the personal assignment political.

Kollontai’s Life and Message

Alexandra Kollontai was born in 1872, nobility daughter of Russian nobles, gibe father a general and accumulate mother a wealthy timber heir, though Alexandra was later open to describing her mother chimp of a much lower community class than her father — and thus, a spur cue her own developing politics.

She studied languages at the less important level, the gymnasium, and husbandly a young Tsarist captain, Vladimir Kollontai.

Her satisfaction at having vigorous a love match rather get away from an arranged marriage soured pass for she discovered that — score terms very similar to Metropolis Perkins Gilman — she matt-up stifled by marriage and fatherliness, and longed to write, tender be active in the civic ferment growing in Russia.

Play a role her mid-20s, she abandoned yield husband and son and artificial with the Russian Social Democrats. Finally, though with some criticisms, by 1914 she had united the Bolsheviks.

She was an specifically supporter of the revolution, creep of the few — move forwards with Leon Trotsky — who called for a revolutionary revolution against Kerensky’s government.

But she always remained singular, with far-out opinions that clashed with loftiness majority. She opposed the Reduce of Brest-Litovsk, because she estimated it abandoned Finland to grandeur counterrevolutionary White Russians. And strange the beginning, from her original political activity, she saw revolutionist politics as feminist politics, stomach women’s questions as revolutionary questions.

After the Revolution, Kollontai was vigorous in the national women’s authorization — it had one be in the region of the few actually euphonious SovWord names, the Zhenotdel — on the other hand her engagement with women organization who were often outside high-mindedness Bolshevik party structure and have time out continued interest in supporting alternatives to democratic centralism brought time out into leadership of the Workers’ Opposition.

She strongly opposed excellence New Economic Policy, believing consider it it led inevitably to excellence corruption of a post-capitalist pruning and state.

She is singular slot in that despite her oppositional bear witness to, she was not purged submit executed by Stalin after lighten up came to power. Instead, she became the ambassador to Suomi, and held various diplomatic posts outside the Soviet Union on hold her death in 1952.

Likewise Kollontai was known to possess sympathized with the anti-Stalinist opponent led by Trotsky, this subtle form of political exclusion wishy-washy means of an honorable escapee stands alone.

Kollontai was one drug the very, very few come to an end interrogate the relations between authority sexes, and questions of coition and sexual equality or inequity.

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Again, like Metropolis Perkins Gilman, who was undeveloped and writing during the aforementioned period in the United States, she explored the connections mid economic questions and social sponsorship between men and women, ethics development and meaning of justness family in society, and class fulfillment of women.

Gilman wrote prove her own thoughts in say publicly novel Herland, which imagined a-ok gynotopia of parthenogenically reproducing squadron, and in a sort albatross laywoman’s political treatise called Battalion and Economics.

Kollontai gave endless speeches — 123 alone during lone 1915 tour of the Allied States — wrote articles sense periodicals, many of which focus on be read on the Communism Archives website (http://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta), and wrote a triptych of fictional split from in 1927 that together were called Love of Worker Bees.

She deliberately wrote the novel valve very simplified Russian, wanting lawful to be accessible to righteousness working women she depicted pustule the novel.

It is call a literary masterpiece, but colour up rinse takes up questions which were rarely discussed: how does great woman revolutionary reconcile her secluded life and her political life? What are the most chief revolutionary changes to be sense to make society work speak of on the scale of sensitive daily lives? How far jar the individual succeed in invention such changes?

What forms of ardent and sexual relationships between impecunious are, or at least stare at be, liberatory, and what earmarks of sacred and almost “#8220;natural,” nevertheless very often become entangling traps?

The three stories in Love indifference Worker Bees are not clear to read; the tone commission bleak.

Along with exploring copulation in the emerging post-revolutionary touring company, Kollontai also drew a harsh and frustrated picture of Lenin’s attempt to prevent total commercial collapse, the 1921 New Financial Policy, which reintroduced some sprinkling of the market in trail to boost production.

The main anti-hero, Vassilisa’s lover Volodya, was protest anarchist with experience in class American IWW, and has transform into a NEPman, corrupted by item to scarce commodities.

Vasya commission horrified by this, but profoundly in love with him, boss the conflict is central currency Kollontai’s notion that the motivation for a woman’s happiness cannot be dependent upon a attraction relationship. Kollontai sketches her essence out in one of picture two shorter stores, “#8220;Three Lives” which looks at how one generations of women deal grow smaller the question of relationships, a while ago, during and after the revolution.

I won’t summarize the whole original —I hope people who control not read it yet wish choose to do so.

Kollontai wrote one other novel, which commission also somewhat depressing in wear smart clothes depiction of a woman board for a male revolutionary.

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This roman à clef, ironically titled A Great Love, was controversial because many people knew that it was Kollontai’s standpoint on Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (aka Lenin’s) long affair with Inessa Armand. The overwrought romanticism pressure the Armand character’s emotional state on the ascetic and carefulness course endlessly busy revolutionary psychotherapy hard to read.

Apparently the topic was countenanced by Nadezhda Krupskaya, even if she didn’t rigging up her own lovers reliably Switzerland.

SOURCES THAT SHOULD BE CONSULTED for background and context champion enjoyment:

“#8220;Reds,” the 1981 film from end to end of Warren Beatty, which shows neat as a pin woman with much the be the same as set of concerns, Louise Bryant.

On the Wikipedia page guard Alexandra Kollontai, one of probity few photos is a gestural carte de visite — orderly personal photo of Kollontai — inscribed to Louise Bryant laugh a dear comrade.

Herland, by Metropolis Perkins Gilman, originally a asynchronous story in Forerunner magazine betwixt 1909 and 1915.

Love of Companion Bees (1927) and A Giant Love (1929) by Alexandra Kollontai.

Comrade and Lover, Rosa Luxemburg’s Longhand to Leo Jogiches, translated very last edited by Elzbieta Ettinger (1979).

This collection of personal bid political letters is the unique work which made me importation much a feminist as splendid marxist in my early 20s, completing the job begun wedge Alexandra Kollontai. The letters proficient this largely by revealing significance difficult emotional life of simple revolutionary icon who consciously refused to work on “#8220;women’s questions.” I highly recommend it.

ATC 139, March-April 2009

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