We explore this convergence by identifying four main tendencies here. 47 podcast. For the next few years, her life was a whirlwind of activity. There were rumors that during World War II her embassy in Stockholm could have potentially been a channel for German-Soviet negotiations, although they never came to pass. Students will be exposed to the manner in which the questions of politics have been posed in terms that have implications for larger questions of thought and existence. She was blamed for neglecting her public duties because of the love affair and threatened with expulsion from the party. Her "winged Eros" theory denounced marriage and the family unit and argued for free love. She bore a son in 1894 and at first she stayed home to care for her child. A year later she joined with Leon Trotsky in pressing for a more positive attitude toward the newly-emerged Soviets (councils of workers’ deputies) and unity of the party factions. The trauma of World War I led Kollontai to play down her emphasis on breaking up families and also radicalized her political outlook. No more inequality within the family.”. Ed. An argument with Vladimir and her political notions all fell into place. Aleksandra Kollontai was born in St. Petersburg into the family of a Russian general and aristocrat, Mikhail Domontovich (a general in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 and the head of the chancellery of the Russian administration in Bulgaria from 1878-1879) and Aleksandra Masalina-Mravinskaya, the daughter of a wealthy Finnish timber merchant. Aleksandra Mikhaylovna Kollontai was a Russian revolutionary, feminist and the first Soviet female diplomat. “In place of the old relationship between men and women, a new one is developing,” Kollontai wrote in “Communism and the Family” (1920), “a union of affection and comradeship, a union of two equal members of communist society, both of them free, both of them independent and both of them workers. We use your LinkedIn profile and activity data to personalize ads and to show you more relevant ads. She was a primary organizer of the Zimmerwald Conference of socialist parties against the war in 1915, and her pamphlet “Who Needs War?” directed to front-line soldiers, was translated into several languages, while the author was jailed for antiwar propaganda. In her text Make Way for Winged Eros, Kollontai contrasts two different concepts of love. Alexandra Mikhailovna Kollontai (Russian: Алекса ндра Миха йловна Коллонта й, née Domontovich, Домонто вич; 31 March [O.S. Kollontai was largely brought up by servants and tutored at home. Kollontai was extremely popular among men. In 1904, she joined the Bolsheviks. For the rest of 1917, Kollontai was a constant agitator for revolution as a speaker, leaflet writer and editor at Rabotnitsa. 68 POL HC 6016 Modern Political Philosophy Course objective: Philosophy and politics are closely intertwined. Kollontai elaborated on this phenomenon by discussing the difference between the bourgeois "wingless eros," the unadorned sexual drive, and a more desirable "winged eros." Domontovich’s ideas were more liberal than those of most people of his standing, but as a government serviceman he had little possibility to develop them. Alexandra Kollontai Judith Friedlander Alexandra Kollontai Make Way for Winged Eros: A Letter to Working Youth Slideshare uses cookies to improve functionality and performance, and to provide you with relevant advertising. Upon her return to St. Petersburg in 1899, she began dissident work for the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP). Through this activity she was drawn into both public and clandestine work with the Political Red Cross, an organization set up to help political prisoners. The book appeared in 1903 in St. Petersburg and attracted much attention among revolutionary circles. Kollontai's father, Mikhail Domontovich, was a general in the Imperial Russian Army. Later she said, ‘Women, their fate, occupied me all my life; women's lot pushed me to socialism.” Later that year she became active in leafleting and fundraising in support of the mass textile strike that rocked the St. Petersb  urg area. In October 1917, Kollontai actively supported the Bolshevik decision to launch an armed uprising against the government and participated in the revolt itself. Alexandra Kollontai 1923 Make way for Winged Eros: A Letter to Working Youth First published: in Molodoya Gvardiya (Young Guard) magazine #3 in 1923, by Komsomol (All-Union Leninist Young Communist League). She was raised to the rank of ambassador in 1943 and was instrumental in conducting the Soviet-Finnish armistice negotiations of 1944. At the end of 1908, after three months spent evading arrest for advocating the right of Finland to armed revolt against the Russian Empire, Aleksandra Kollontai was forced to flee to Germany. 19 March] 1872 – 9 March 1952) was a Russian revolutionary, politician, diplomat and Marxist theoretician.. capital (Kollontai 1977: 284). Cathy Porter (London: Virago 1988). Her parents sought to arrange a marriage for her when she was 16, but young Aleksandra vehemently opposed the idea, using her mother’s failed arranged marriage as an argument. Kollontai began working in politics in 1894, when she was a new mother, by teaching evening classes for workers in St. Petersburg. She was the youngest and the most pampered in the family. nobility, Alexandra Kollontai emerged as a fervent revolutionary in the turning point of Russia’s historical epoch. Aleksandr Menshikov rose from a simple stable boy to become the de-facto ruler of the Russian Empire, splitting opinion all along the way. The concept of illegitimacy was banished. New York: Dial, 1980. Pushed out of the male-dominated Soviet power elite that was increasingly uncomfortable with her insistent advocacy of feminist issues, she was sent in 1922 to Oslo as a member of a Soviet trade delegation. (Alexandra Kollontai, Make Way for Winged Eros, 1923) The division of labour and property relations have evolved significantly over the millennia, through the Asiatic, ancient, feudal, and capitalist modes of production. She helped write many of the early Soviet laws legalizing abortion, divorce, birth control and homosexuality (unheard of in 1917). Her theory of non-possessive love, presented in the essay “Make Way for the Winged Eros” 1923), was disapproved of by Lenin. In January 1940, during the Russo-Finnish War of 1939-40 (the Winter War), the Finnish left-wing playwright Hella Wuolijoki asked her old friend, Kollontai, to act as an intermediary of peace between the two countries. In 1923, Alexandra went on to write the essay Make Way for Winged Eros. Lenin's unorthodox New Economic Policy (NEP) of the early 1920s that permitted private activity in agriculture, trade and light industry reversed many of Kollontai's reforms. 17552729 week 14, Error Checking and Correction (Parity Bit, Majority Voting, Check Digit), No public clipboards found for this slide. Alexandra (Masalin As John Reed in “10 Days that Shook the World” wrote, “With tears streaming down her face, Kollontai arrested the strikers and confiscated their keys to the office and the safe; when she got the keys, however, it was discovered that the former Minister of Provisional government, Countess Panina, had gone off with all the funds.”. However, she eventually fell in love with a young Captain of Engineers named Vladimir Kollontai. Kollontai associates it with a reproductive urge but also describes it as brief, simple, couplings (we might say hooking up). She began referring to Vladimir as her “tyrant,” and longing for “revolt against love’s tyranny.” Love at this time seemed like a cage. For the rest of her political career, Kollontai retained her connections with the women textile workers of St. Petersburg. As chronicled by her biographers it has the flickering intensity of a melodramatic silent film. Alexandra Mikhailovna Kollontai was born into an aristocratic family on March 31 [March 19, old style], 1872, in St. Petersburg. A brilliant speaker fluent in several languages, she became an internationally known agitator for the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), traveling to England, Denmark, Sweden, Belgium and Switzerland in the period before World War I. © Autonomous Nonprofit Organization “TV-Novosti”, 2005–2021. Her "winged Eros" theory denounced marriage and the family unit and argued for free love. Kollontai spent her last years in Moscow, writing memoirs, keeping a diary and serving as an adviser to the USSR Foreign Ministry. The hostilities ended in March 1940 with the Treaty of Moscow. After appointments to Norway and Mexico (as trade representative) she became an envoy to Sweden in 1930 and remained there until 1945. Due to her political writings and her hatred of war and violence, she was later forced to move to Norway. men seemed obvious to Kollontai. Now customize the name of a clipboard to store your clips. Alexandra was arrested and deported to Sweden during the beginning of World War I. Kollontai's first article, dealing with the relationship between the development of children and their surroundings, was published in the Marxist journal Obrazovanie (Education) in 1898. However, being a natural-born polemicist Kollontai spent much of her time at the Zurich University contesting her teacher’s views. Zhenotdel was eventually closed by Stalin in 1930 on the excuse that its goal has been fully achieved. Her parents disapproved of the match at first but when Aleksandra threatened to leave home they acquiesced to her demands and the marriage took place in 1893. As Kollontai argues in her text Make Way for the Winged Eros, in “all stages of historical development, society has established norms defining when and under what conditions love is ‘legal (i.e. On March 8, 1983, in his speech to the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida, US President Ronald Reagan introduced the term “evil empire” to describe the Soviet Union.…. She died of cardiac arrest in Moscow on 9 March 1952. Meanwhile, Aleksandra started promoting the idea of a specific working women’s movement. See our Privacy Policy and User Agreement for details. In 1923 she was appointed Soviet representative to Oslo, becoming the world's second female ambassador (after Rosika Schwimmer who was Hungary’s envoy to Switzerland in 1918 - 1919). In “Make way for Winged Eros: A Letter to Working Class Youth” from 1923, Kollontai theorizes sex in terms of energy, wingless Eros and winged Eros. She had already read Marx and Lenin, but in Zurich she familiarized herself with the views of Karl Kautsky and Rosa Luxemburg. Her father secretly financed her Marxist studies and later helped her hide illegal revolutionary brochures from the police while her husband complacently agreed to terminate their brief marriage and to raise their son, Misha, when she decided to be a fulltime revolutionary and devote herself to destroying the privileges of the class into which she was born. If you continue browsing the site, you agree to the use of cookies on this website. At a tumultuous meeting of social democrats on 4 April she was the only speaker other than Lenin to support the demand for “All Power to the Soviets.” She was elected a member of the executive committee of the Petrograd Soviet (in 1914, St. Petersburg was renamed Petrograd because it was believed that St. Petersburg sounded "too German" in the time of war with Germany), to which she had been elected as a delegate from an army unit after gaining a reputation as an excellent orator. Kollontai returned to the Soviet Union in 1945. During her diplomatic career she continually scandalized high society not just through being an outspoken woman in such an important and high profile role, but also through her polyamorous lifestyle and a reputation for bluntness. Mikhail Kasyanov is one of Russia’s most controversial opposition leaders. It was one of her most famous feminist pieces of literature. Her most well-known love affair was probably with the leader of the Baltic Fleet, 28-year-old Pavel Dybenko, a handsome giant of Ukrainian peasant origin, 17 years her junior, who later became the Commissar for the Navy. After the split of the RSDLP into the moderate Mensheviks under Julius Martov and the radical Bolsheviks under Vladimir Lenin in 1903, Kollontai, along with many Russian socialists, did not side with either faction. corresponds to the interests of the Undeterred after her release, she crisscrossed Europe, Scandinavia, and the US, lecturing in four languages against the looming carnage of World War I and for support for the left. She responded enthusiastically and in 1915, Kollontai rejoined the Bolsheviks believing that Vladimir Lenin was the only Russian leader who was resolute in his opposition to World War I. Aleksandra Kollontai would help the workers and, more importantly, the women, to emancipate themselves from social chains. They finally separated in 1922. This collection of personal and political letters is the single work which made me as much a feminist as a marxist in my early 20s, completing the job begun by Alexandra Kollontai. In the summer, her family moved to her grandfather's estate in Kuusa, at the Isthmus of Karelia in Finland. The group demanded that the economy be run directly by the workers rather than by the increasingly powerful bureaucracy, argued for greater democracy and wanted to transfer more power to trade-union organizations, not to the State. No more domestic bondage for women. She was among the few “Old Bolsheviks” who were neither purged nor executed by the Stalinist regime. Her writings of the early 1920s, reflecting her own unconventional sex life rather than the Soviet reality, were discredited in a press campaign allegedly orchestrated by Nadezhda Krupskaya (probably because of Kollontai's novella “A Great Love” which was read as a roman à clef of the triangle drama of Lenin, his wife and Inessa Armand in Paris - the relationship was kept secret in the Soviet Union). The former, based as it is SEMESTER PAPER NAME TEACHER TOPIC/ CHAPTER LINK OF E-RESOURCES Sem. Kolontai on communisim and family detailed, Politics, Power and Resistance Assessment. The Soviet Minister of Foriegn Affairs, who shortly after the collapse of the USSR became the second president of the Republic of Georgia, serving two terms until he was ousted during the Rose Revolution in 2003. To the very end, Kollontai remained faithful to Marxism-Leninism and loyal to Stalin. To record the contradictionswithinthe life and writings of Alexandra Kollontai's to reclaim a largely unidentifiedpart of Marxist feminist history that attempted to extend Engel's and Bebel's analysis of … On the one hand, within bourgeois society we learn to associate love with an … However, her Soviet biographers and the editors of the censored reissues of her memoirs and books minimized her Menshevik past, her disagreements with Lenin and her interest in sexual liberation stressing instead her loyalty to the Bolshevik cause and her diplomatic career. The family appeared in this theory as a remnant of capitalist society. To fully understand the transnational dimension of Kollontai"s writings it is important to look at her essay written in 1923 "Make Way for The Winged Eros," which … Make Way for Winged Eros: A Letter to “The sexual act must be seen not as something shameful and sinful but as something which is as natural as the other needs of a healthy organism, such as hunger and thirst,” ‘Kollontai wrote in the political pamphlet “Theses on Communist Morality in the Sphere of Marital Relations” (1921). The prize, however, went to the American religious leader J.R. Mott and Emily Greene Balch, an economist and social reformist. New York: Dial Press, 1980. Alexandra Kollontai, A Great Love, trans, and introd. For those of you interested in the works of Alexandra Kollontai and her views on sexuality, I finally finished reading the final part of her 1923 essay, "Make Way for Winged Eros: A Letter to Working Youth" for my A.K. These As Commissar, Kollontai was a primary organizer of childcare, job training, collective kitchens, free maternity and infant healthcare. Women's sexual liberation as propagated by Kollontai roused the disapproval of most Russian working-class women, who felt that they already had enough troubles without weakening family ties. 2 Sec.A Political Theory: Concepts and Debates Dr Mithila Bagai Rights online lectures have been scheduled as per the time table on Insta Alexandra Kollontai. In 1914 she arranged a campaign in Germany and Austria against the coming war, resulting in her arrest and imprisonment after it broke out. Kollontai, Alexandra 1872–1952 Alexandra Kollontai, née Domontovich, Bolshevik feminist and diplomat, was born in St. Petersburg on March 31 (March 19, old style), 1872, the daughter of a Russian general and a half-Finnish mother. Alexandra Kollontai 1872-1952 Biography Image Gallery Intro to Alexandra Kollontai To the Woman Worker, MP3 Audio of Kollontai speaking. Aleksandra Kollontai, 2010. The next year she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. All rights reserved. Young Aleksandra xandra thought she had escaped her mother’s fate by marrying for love, but this very marriage would stir within her an intellectual and philosophical fire. 1. You can change your ad preferences anytime. Still the seed for Kollontai’s future ideas was planted by her parents. Since the 1970s her theoretical writings have been brought out in new translations in Germany, the UK and the US. Kollontai combined Marxism with an ultra-Bolshevist sexual morality. Kollontai began writing fiction in 1922 after she had been effectively excluded from active participation in the new Soviet government. Zhenotdel worked to improve the conditions of womens’ lives, fighting illiteracy and educating women about the new marriage, education and working laws put in place by the Revolution. If you continue browsing the site, you agree to the use of cookies on this website. All rights reserved. This example Aleksandra Mikhaylovna Kollontay Essay is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you continue browsing the site, you agree to the use of cookies on this website. Almost forgotten soon after her death, Kollontai later became the object of a revival in the Soviet Union. When Kollontai saw the horrid living and labor conditions of the mostly female textile workers she grew enraged. In Finland, then part of the Russian Empire, Kollontai became acquainted with the life of farmers and farm laborers. Feedback In the Ministry for Social Welfare she was welcomed with a strike, along with the other Commissars. ‘Winged Eros’ of Soviet oppression Already in the first half of 1920s, when sexual liberation was still in full swing, the Soviets had set about promoting traditional values… again. She also served as a member of the Soviet delegation to the League of Nations. Peter Carl Faberge was a world famous master jeweler and head of the ‘House of Faberge’ in Imperial Russia in the waning days of the Russian Empire. Love of Worker Bees (1927) and A Great Love (1929) by Alexandra Kollontai. From the moment of her arrival, she joined the fight for a clear policy of no support to the Provisional Government, the short-lived administrative body that sought to govern Russia after the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II in March 1917. ^ Faure, Christine, “The Utopia of the New Woman in the Woric of Alexandra Kollontai and its Impact on the French Feminist and Communist Press”. In 1906, she left the Bolsheviks over the question of boycotting elections to the Duma, an undemocratically-elected parliament of limited power in which she felt it was nevertheless possible for leftist deputies to raise demands and expose the government's machinations, and joined the Mensheviks staying with the faction until 1915. Alexandra Kollontai is not much celebrated or even remembered, although she was the rare woman with important roles before, during, and after the October Revolution. Alexandra Kollontai: The Lonely Struggle of the Woman Who Defied Lenin. The girl spent a lot of time mastering German, English and French and reading books in her father’s library. She saw now what her purpose was. In the book, the philosophy of the Radicals is discussed through Karl Marx and his theory of Alienation, difference with other kinds of materialism and class struggle; Alexandra Kollontai her theory of Winged and Wingless Eros Women lost jobs and many crèches were closed down, driving women out of the workforce and back into the home. Looks like you’ve clipped this slide to already. She served as a delegate to the First Congress of the Communist International, President of the Political Department of the Crimean Republic, Commissar of Propaganda and Agitation for the Ukraine, and an activist in the newly-formed Women's Section of the Central Committee Communist Party (Zhenotdel for short), in which she, Inessa Armand and Nadezhda Krupskaya played important roles. Released, she moved to Scandinavia and established contact with V. I. Lenin, then in exile in Switzerland. Alexandra Kollontai was one of those invited to write her autobiography. 47 On the advice of my professor and armed with introductions from him, I set off for England in 1899 to study the English labour movement, which was supposed to convince me of the truth was … In 1896, Kollontai saw the open face of capitalist exploitation for the first time when she visited a large textile factory where her husband was installing a ventilation system. The 1896 strikes established the primacy of working-class revolution in Kollontai's mind. Known as a shy but defiant child, … For those of you interested in the works of Alexandra Kollontai and her views on sexuality, I finally finished reading the final part of her 1923 essay, "Make Way for Winged Eros: A Letter to Working Youth" for my A.K. Comrade and Lover, Rosa Luxemburg’s Letters to Leo Jogiches, translated and edited by Elzbieta Ettinger (1979). And Soviet Russia was among the first countries to grant women voting rights. Kollontai's “Life of Finnish Laborers,” which took three years to write, was an investigation of the living and working conditions of the Finnish proletariat. By the time of the liberal-democratic revolution of February 1917, Kollontai was Lenin's devoted disciple. Meanwhile, as her marriage with Vladimir deteriorated, she looked to Marxism for guidance and support. By Cathy Porter. Kollontai educated herself through reading. The Soviet revolutionary and politician, Felix Dzerzhinsky was the founder and head of the first Soviet secret police, notorious for its use of torture and mass killings. For the next 20 years, she was generally recognized as the RSDLP's foremost expert on the “Finnish question” serving as advisor to RSDLP members in the Tsarist Duma and liaison with Finnish revolutionaries. "Make Way for Winged Eros (1923)", The Russia Reader: History, Culture, Politics, Adele Marie Barker, Bruce Grant Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley In 1918 she led a delegation to Sweden, England and France to raise support for the new government. Most of Kollontai's writing of the time focused on her life before the October Revolution, avoiding topics of her opposition activities of the early 20s . In her last days she had to use a wheelchair and, according to some witnesses, looked depressed and worried over her ration card. Elvira Nabuillia is the Minister of Economic Development and Trade. The trauma of World War I led Kollontai to play down her emphasis on breaking up …
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