Aleksandra Kollontai: 'New Woman'

Aleksandra Mikhailovna Kollontai (1872–1952) was a prominent European socialist, Russian revolutionary and stateswoman, and a working women’s rights champion. Upon serving as the minister of social welfare in the post-October 1917 government in Russia and having headed the Party’s Women’s Departments until her removal in 1922 in reaction to her opposition to Lenin, Kollontai went on to make a distinguished diplomatic career. As the USSR’s envoy and ambassadress to Norway, Mexico, and Sweden (1922–1945), she played a key role in the European affairs during the interbellum, represented the country in the League of Nations, and was directly involved in negotiating Soviet–Finnish peace agreements in 1940 and 1944. Peering beyond the ‘first and only woman ever’ trope often applied to her, this portrait is an invitation to rediscover Kollontai’s silenced and forgotten voice as the pioneering Marxist-feminist intellectual and a bold advocate of gender equality under socialism. The sketch also tells a more personal story of Kollontai as defined by her unequal struggles with the patriarchal system, aborted women’s emancipatory politics, and her miraculous survival in the era of Stalinist terror.