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Alexandra Kollontai, the Russian Revolution and Women's Liberation

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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 sub- sequent 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 mil- lions, 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 be- come 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.
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