Alexandra Kollontai, the Russian Revolution and Women's Liberation

Alexandra Kollontai, The Russian Revolution and Women’s Liberation

Madeleine Johansson

looking to make their way into professions and gain employment with the economic freedom that would follow. Working class women, on the other hand, were already in employment, many as domestic servants but also in factories in the big cities like Petrograd. The problems faced by women workers, in addition to the questions of suf- frage and moral standards, were those of low wages, poverty and destitution. On top of this, World War 1 and the subsequent war years added further hardship to the women of Russia. Their husbands, brothers and sons were drafted into the army and sent away to the front to die in their millions, while at home the women had to make do with what little rations they got- which were not enough to feed their families. It was under these conditions that women in Petro- grad on International Women’s Day Febru- ary 1917 marched under the slogan of ‘Land, Bread and Peace’ and kicked oﬀ a revolution Alexandra Kollontai which would change the course of history.

Kollontai Introduction One of the many women rebelling against To understand the role of women in the Bol- oppression was Alexandra Kollontai. As a shevik revolution one must understand the young woman her refusal of the marriage ar- conditions in which women lived in Tsarist ranged by her parents was the beginning of a Russia. Women, after their marriage (many life filled with rebellion and revolution. Al- of which were arranged), were regarded as though not well known today, Kollontai was the property of the husband, there was no di- a pioneer in terms of women in politics. She vorce and no abortion. Women didn’t have was one of the first female elected represen- the right to vote in the limited Duma elec- tatives, the first female Minister and mem- tions and there were no women elected rep- ber of Cabinet in a Western government and resentatives. There was virtually no social subsequently the first female Ambassador. welfare system and any woman who hap- Her journey in politics is not one marked by pened to have a child out of wedlock was personal ambition but rather one insepara- likely to end up in the dreaded workhouses. ble from the journey of the Bolshevik party The choices that existed for women were and the movement of the working class. extremely limited; marrying into a decent Kollontai was born in to a family of old family and to a husband who treated you Russian nobility. She was the youngest child well would be regarded as a ‘success’. But and in her own words ‘the most spoiled, the many women were rebelling against their most coddled member of the family’. She lack of freedoms compared to their male was never sent to school but home taught counterparts. Middle class women were by a female private tutor. At the age of six-

29 teen a young woman was expected to begin in order to win liberation from oppression the life of a ‘young society woman’. Kollon- women must join with the worker’s move- tai’s parents expected her to marry well to ment in the fight against a system of produc- someone arranged by them, just like her sis- tion from which women’s oppression stems. ter had done at the age of nineteen - marry- She says: ing a man who was nearly seventy. But she refused and decided to marry her cousin, a The women’s world is divided, young love that lasted about three years. just as is the world of men, into Kollontai began to attend illegal Marx- two camps; the interests and as- ist circles, and began reading any Marxist pirations of one group of women literature that she could get her hands on. bring it close to the bourgeois She decided to leave her husband and child class, while the other group has and left Russia for Zurich to study politi- close connections with the pro- cal economy, she joined the Russian Social letariat, and its claims for liber- Democratic Party in 1899. By the revolu- ation encompass a full solution tion of 1905 Kollontai had become a pop- to the woman question. Thus ular speaker at meetings and rallies. She although both camps follow the was a supporter of the Mensheviks, however, general slogan of the ‘liberation she later joined the revolutionary Bolshe- of women’, their aims and in- viks. The defeat of the 1905 revolution led terests are different. Each of to the exile of many of the most well-known the groups unconsciously takes socialists, including Lenin and Trotsky but its starting point from the inter- also Kollontai. In 1908 she was forced to ests of its own class, which gives leave Russia and lived in exile in Scandinavia a specific class colouring to the and the USA until 1917. targets and tasks it sets itself.1

The Dream Imagined She argued that regardless of the inten- tions of bourgeois feminists their aims and Kollontai began her political life with a re- interests are different from working class volt against the societal norms which re- women, because they belong to a class whose stricted the lives of women and many of her interests lie in maintaining the status quo. writings are related to the fight for women’s At times, the struggle of both groups may liberation and the relationship between that coincide but in the long term the women fight and the workers’ movement. of the ruling class will be satisfied with the In the years following the 1905 revolu- equality of their own class. In practice this tion she wrote significant contributions on becomes an equal opportunity for women the question of the oppression of women and and men of the ruling class to engage in the the fight for liberation. Her writings were exploitation of workers in the process of pro- not divorced from activity. She spent her duction. As we know today, a female Minis- time organising women workers into Work- ter of the ruling class is just as likely to im- ing Women’s Clubs, and she organised inter- pose austerity measures that disproportion- ventions by women party members to con- ately affect women as her male counterparts. ferences organised by the suffragette move- Does this mean that women’s questions ment. Many young women workers who should be ignored by socialists? On the con- joined at that time became leading members trary, Kollontai argued clearly that there of the Bolshevik Party throughout the years must be specific agitation by the Party of the revolution. amongst women workers on the question In 1909 Kollontai wrote the short but in- of women’s rights. She also took inspira- fluential pamphlet The Social Basis of the tion from the socialist movements in Eu- Women’s Question. She argues clearly that rope, specifically Clara Zetkin in Germany, 1Alexandra Kollontai The Social Basis of the Woman Question 1909 https://www.marxists.org/ archive/kollonta/1909/social-basis.htm

30 and organised clubs for socialist education need for ‘special tactics’- especially if they of women. lead to separatism. Whilst understanding the necessity of It is natural that even the psy- drawing in women workers through the chology of a woman, under the Women’s Clubs she argued strongly against influence of century-long slavery, the separation of women in to ‘women only’ is different from that of a work- parties and trade unions. She said: ing class man. The man worker Trade union organisations have a is more independent, more deci- definite task- to struggle for the sive, and has more feeling of sol- economic interests of the mem- idarity; his horizon is wider be- bers of the working class; more- cause he is not confined within over, it is precisely these, that is the framework of narrow fam- the economic interests, which for ily relationships; it is easier for the representatives of the prole- him to become aware of his tariat of both sexes are the same interests and to connect these and inseparable. On this point to class problems. But for a any separation on the basis of woman worker to reach the ma- sex is artificial; it runs abso- turity of the views of an aver- lutely counter to the interests of age male worker – that means the worker and can only damage a complete break with the tra- the immediate aims of the trade dition, the concepts, the morals, union struggle.3 the customs, which have become part of her since the cra- Her arguments surrounding the woman’s dle. These traditions and cus- question were built on the writings of Marx toms, attempting to retain and and Engels on the role of the family under hold onto a type of woman pro- capitalism. Both wrote extensively on the duced by past stages of economic family and the role of women, Marx in The development, turn into almost Holy Family and Engels in The Origin of the insuperable obstacles in the path Family, Private Property and the State. En- of the class-consciousness of the gels tracked the development of class society woman worker. From this the from tribal ‘primitive communism’ to capi- conclusion is clear, that one can talism and argued that the role of women arouse woman’s sleeping brain, was dramatically transformed by the emer- and bring to life her will, only gence of class society. by means of a special approach The transition from hunting and gath- to her, only by using specialised ering to agriculture over a long period of methods of work among women.2 time led to the gradual removal of women from public life through increased childbear- In this passage Kollontai argues that ing and the subsequent reduction women’s women in the early 1900’s had been so indoc- participation in productive labour. Engels trinated with Victorian values and morals described this period as ‘the world histor- that it would require a specific tactical ical defeat of the female sex’. This placed approach to engage women in the social- the oppression of women in a historical con- ist struggle. In the hundred years that text, in opposition to the common biologi- have passed since, women have moved from cal determinism which argued that women’s homes into workplaces and though there are oppression was caused by the biological dif- still issues that mainly affect women, such ferences between men and women. The con- as reproductive rights, there is not the same sequence of the Marxist position was that 2Alexandra Kollontai Women Workers Struggle For Their Rights 1919 https://www.marxists.org/ archive/kollonta/1919/women-workers/ch01.htm 3Alexandra Kollontai Women Workers Struggle For Their Rights 1919 https://www.marxists.org/ archive/kollonta/1919/women-workers/ch02.htm

31 the oppression of women was historical and ers International into being.’ The majority could therefore be not only fought against of Socialist parties in Europe had taken an but eliminated, through revolution and the active or passive position in favour of the destruction of class society. War, leading to splits to the left in most parties around this time. Kollontai has been described as hugely influential in encouraging The Dream Realised left split in the Swedish Social Democratic 4 Kollontai had begun her political journey party. In June 1915 she officially joined by revolting against the lack of rights and the Bolshevik Party because of their anti- choices for women and had quickly come to war position and following extensive corre- the conclusion that the only solution was a spondence with Lenin. revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist sys- The moment Kollontai received news of tem by the working class. Like many of her the outbreak of the February revolution she comrades, she dreamed of a different kind travelled from Norway to Russia through of society where men and women could live Northern Sweden. At the border she was as equals. In 1917 for the first time in his- greeted with joy by the young soldiers. Dur- tory, there was an opportunity to realise that ing the months of the revolution Kollontai dream. worked tirelessly as an orator, a writer and In February 1917 the women of Petro- an agitator. She was elected to the So- grad lived in hardship under the yoke of viet executive in April, she helped publish Tsarist dictatorship, war rations and ex- the weekly newspaper The Women Workers treme poverty. On International Women’s in May and took part in strikes by women day women workers poured onto the streets laundry workers. The Women Workers ac- to protest with demands for ‘Land, Bread tively encouraged women to take part in the and Peace’. They marched to the factories revolutionary activity, as seen in this arti- where the men were working, threw snow- cle by Kollontai: ‘We, the women workers, balls on the windows and called on their hus- were the first to raise the Red Banner in bands, fathers, brothers and friends to join the days of the Russian revolution, the first them. These events unleashed a strike wave to go out onto the streets on Women’s Day. which forced the Tsar to abdicate from the Let us now hasten to join the leading ranks throne and began the winding road to Oc- of the fighters for the workers’ cause, let tober. (The events of the revolution will be us join trade unions, the Social-Democratic discussed in detail in other articles in this Party, the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ journal so I will not deal with them here) Deputies!’ 5 During her years in exile Kollontai had The work carried out by the women become a celebrated orator. She travelled members of the Bolshevik party was cer- extensively throughout Europe to various tainly not in vain. Russian women were congresses and conferences. With the out- for the first time drawn into civic and po- break of World War 1 Kollontai immedi- litical life in their masses. Women workers ately took a strong position against the attended the meetings of the Soviet in the war. Living in ‘neutral’ Sweden, she worked cities while peasant women took part in the closely with the left Social Democrats Zeth movement against the landlords in the coun- ‘Zäta’ Höglund and Frederick Ström agitat- tryside. We can only imagine the energy ing against the war. and enthusiasm that must have been flowing As she explains: ‘So long as the war con- from the masses of women who were trans- tinued, the problem of women’s liberation forming from mothers and wives to activists, obviously had to recede into the background fighters and decision makers. Women were since my only concern, my highest aim, was throwing off the yoke of slavery and becom- to fight against the war and call a new Work- ing independent members of society. 4 Alexander Kan Hemmabolsjevikerna, p. 79 5Alexandra Kollontai ‘Our Tasks’ Woman Worker 1917 https://www.marxists.org/archive/ kollonta/1917/tasks.htm

32 By October 1917 Kollontai had been good of society. In addition, there was an elected to the Central Committee of the Bol- enormous effort made to educate working shevik Party and she states proudly in her and peasant women, many of whom were il- autobiography that she voted for the policy literate. of an armed uprising. With the formation of By 1919 abortion had been legalised and the Soviet government following the success- several world conferences of women commu- ful insurrection in October Kollontai was ap- nists had been organised including working pointed People’s Commissar of Social Wel- with the Muslim women of the Eastern re- fare, the first woman in history to occupy a gions of Russia. This extensive work was un- Ministerial post. Now there was a real op- dertaken despite the extremely difficult pe- portunity to put into practice the ideas of riod of civil war, hunger and poverty. In equality and fairness promoted in her writ- 1920 Kollontai wrote an article on ‘Commu- ings and speeches. However, there was sig- nism and the Family’ where she discussed nificant resistance by the officials with open the role of the family under feudalism, the sabotage against the new government forc- changing role of the family under capital- ing Kollontai to set up an auxiliary council ism and the possibilities of a new family un- of workers with experts such as physicians der Communism. She argued that the patri- and teachers represented. New officials were archal family under feudalism was a sphere employed, without experience but with ex- of production where women produced cloth, traordinary enthusiasm. leather, wool and preserved foods in the The diverse work of the Department is home. This division of labour meant that evident in the first act by Kollontai as Peo- women were excluded from production out- ple’s Commissar, which was to compensate side of the home and subsequently civic life. a small peasant for his requisitioned horse. Capitalism, however, changed the role of the There was an enormous amount of work to family from a productive unit to one of con- be done in order to transform Russia in to sumption: a socialist country. There were decrees to The housework that remains improve care for disabled soldiers, abolish consists of cleaning..., cooking..., religious instruction in girl’s schools, set up washing and the care of the homeless hostels, bring in maternity and in- linen and clothing of the fam- fant care and introduce a free public health ily... These are difficult and ex- care system. hausting tasks and they absorb However, Kollontai understood that ‘To all the spare time and energy of attain legal rights is insufficient; women the working woman who must, in must be emancipated in practice. The addition, put in her hours at a emancipation of women means giving them factory. But this work is differ- the opportunity to bring up their children, ent in one important way from combining motherhood with work for soci- the work our grandmothers did: ety.’ 6 the four tasks enumerated above, In November 1918 she helped organise which still serve to keep the fam- the first Congress of Women Workers and ily together, are of no value to Women Peasants which was the beginning of the state and the national econ- a programme of education and involvement omy, for they do not create any of women into societal tasks. They included new values or make any contri- bution to the prosperity of the the establishment of communal kitchens, 7 communal laundries and children’s day care country. with the aim of drawing women out of the What Kollontai argued is not that house- home and into working collectively for the work is not necessary or important for soci- 6Alexandra Kollontai V.I. Lenin and the First Congress of Women Workers https://www.marxists. org/archive/kollonta/1918/congress.htm 7Alexandra Kollontai Communism and the Family 1920 https://www.marxists.org/archive/ kollonta/1920/communism-family.htm

33 ety, but that it does not produce any new Communist society has this to value and can’t be sold as commodities on say to the working woman and a market. This means that under capital- working man: ‘You are young, ism women are left with the double burden you love each other. Every- of working outside and inside the home. In one has the right to happiness. addition to the family serving as a unit of Therefore live your life. Do not consumption under capitalism it also plays flee happiness. Do not fear mar- an ideological role. Kollontai says: riage, even though under capitalism marriage was truly a chain of For the capitalists are well aware sorrow. Do not be afraid of hav- that the old type of family, where ing children. Society needs more the woman is a slave and where workers and rejoices at the birth the husband is responsible for of every child. You do not have the well-being of his wife and to worry about the future of your children, constitutes the best child; your child will know nei- weapon in the struggle to stifle ther hunger nor cold.’10 the desire of the working class for freedom and to weaken the rev- The short article clearly spells out what olutionary spirit of the working plans Kollontai and the Bolsheviks had to man and working woman. The create a new type of family for the new so- worker is weighed down by his cialist society. It includes descriptions of family cares and is obliged to already attained demands- many of which compromise with capital.8 we still have not won today- such as ‘free school meals for children’, ‘free textbooks’, For Kollontai this meant that the new ‘free shoes and clothing for children’ and of communist Russia had to take steps towards course the communal laundries and restau- eradicating the old family and creating a rants. This new family would not be a unit new type of family based on equality be- of production or consumption but rather a tween the sexes and the responsibility of the unit formed by love and equality between state for the wellbeing of children, the el- two partners. The achievements in the first derly and housework. She says: few years following the revolution are ab- solutely extraordinary, especially when you In Soviet Russia the working take into account the hardships of the civil woman should be surrounded by war period. the same ease and light, hygiene and beauty that previously only The dream crushed the very rich could afford. In- stead of the working woman hav- By the end of the civil war Soviet Russia ing to struggle with the cooking was all but destroyed. Millions of workers and spend her last free hours in had perished in the fighting or from disease, the kitchen preparing dinner and factories had been closed down, large sec- supper, communist society will tions of the most fertile grain-producing land organise public restaurants and had been lost and productivity had plum- communal kitchens.9 meted. Many of the leading Bolsheviks had died fighting against the White Army. In an Kollontai also takes on the arguments article written by Kollontai in 1927 her de- propagated by the opponents of the Bolshe- scription of the many leading women mem- viks that they were breaking up the family bers of the Bolshevik Party during the Octo- and tearing children away from their par- ber Revolution, and the number of them who ents. died ‘performing their revolutionary duties’ 8Ibid. 9Ibid. 10Ibid.

34 was heart-breaking. By the death of Lenin under the boot of Stalinism shouldn’t dis- in 1923 the party was growing into a bureau- courage us from taking inspiration from cracy. Kollontai had earlier raised concerns what they accomplished in those short years of lack of democracy as part of the Work- following the October Revolution. Never ers Opposition, however the grouping offered in history had women achieved so much in no way forward or realistic alternative to such a short space of time, not only by le- the existing strategy. In 1922 Kollontai ac- gal decrees but through the actions taken cepted the appointment of Soviet Ambas- by women revolutionaries. These changes sador in Norway. She was the first woman came through the struggle of working men ever to hold this position and she found her- and women united through their own actions self overwhelmed by work on treaties and and guided by the Bolshevik Party. trade agreements. By the late 1920’s Stalin The notion, prevalent in some liberal and and his loyal supporters had secured control feminist circles, that the ruling class will of the Soviet government and in 1928 Trot- grant us gradual progressive change is made sky was exiled. There was a distinct lack redundant when you study the October Rev- of writings by Kollontai from 1929 onwards. olution and its effect on the lives of women in It’s unfortunate and tragic that she never Russia. A revolution of working class women criticised the Stalinist regime, even writing and men was able to win rights we still a terrible endorsement of Stalinist policies in haven’t won today in the 21st Century. It the 1940’s - which included giving medals to pays to rebel. Revolutionaries should work women who had many children! in broad campaigns and with people fight- By that time many of the laws and de- ing for any change that benefits women, but crees enacted by Kollontai herself were being in those campaigns we should point out that eroded by the Stalinist regime. One can cer- only a revolution can fully liberate women. tainly be disgusted by the (at the very least) As James Connolly wrote: passive support of Kollontai to the dictatorship, however one must also consider the ‘Be moderate,’ the trimmers cry, enormous pressures on her and many others Who dread the tyrants’ thunder. to surrender. Those who had opposed Stalin ‘You ask too much and people By had ended up exiled or murdered in show tri- From you aghast in wonder.’ als, while their families often suffered similar ’Tis passing strange, for I declare Such statements give me mirth, fates. For our demands most moderate are, The fact that the dreams of Kollontai We only want the earth.11 and the Bolsheviks were ultimately crushed

11James Connolly ‘We Only Want the Earth’ Songs of Freedom 1907 https://www.marxists.org/ archive/connolly/1907/xx/wewnerth.htm