Premier’s Westfield Modern History Scholarship
In Search of Alexandra Kollontai
Kate Cameron
Chifley College, Mount Druitt Campus
Sponsored by
What was achieved
The 2004 Premier’s Westfield Scholarship for Modern History undertaken in October
2004 enabled me to fulfil the following goals that were outlined in my application:

read works written by Alexandra Kollontai;

read accessible secondary sources about Kollontai;

survey online material by and about Kollontai;

read transcripts of interviews conducted with people who knew Kollontai;

visit sites associated with Kollontai’s activities in Russia, Finland and Sweden;

interview Russian academics interested in Kollontai and the role of women in
Russian revolutionary history;

interview Russian history teachers about Kollontai’s place in their curriculum;

interview diplomats in Finland and Sweden about Kollontai’s role as diplomat;

conduct research in libraries and museums in Russia and Finland;

locate and obtain Russian made video programs about Kollontai; and

locate and have translated recent Russian journal articles about Kollontai.
These activities have contributed enormously to my understanding of Alexandra
Kollontai and her role in Russian history and have made me confident to address the
new areas required in the Modern History Syllabus. I have also become fascinated by the
historiography of Kollontai, how much of her role was ‘written out’ of history by Soviet
critics, then revived by feminist historians of the 1970s, and is now being sensationalised
in some of the recent popular reconstructions of Soviet history.
Dissemination of research
My research has been synthesised into a series of 3000-word articles, each addressing an
aspect of the study of Kollontai required by the revised NSW Stage 6 Modern History
Syllabus. The first was published in Teaching History, the journal of the History Teachers’
Association of NSW, in March 2005; the second will be published in the June edition.
I have also developed a bibliography of works on Kollontai. This has been included on
the NSW Board of Studies web site in the Support Material for Stage 6 Modern History.
I conducted a workshop for teachers teaching Kollontai and provided an overview of my
research at the Stage 6 HTA Professional Development Conference at the University of
Sydney on 28 May 2005. At that workshop copies of the latest Russian language
documentary on Kollontai (Between Duty and Feelings) were made available for free,
together with an English language synopsis of the documentary. (It proved too difficult
to obtain copyright clearance for dubbing.)
On 16 June I delivered a lecture on Kollontai to HSC students at the HTA Modern
History Study Days at the University of Sydney. At this lecture I distributed to students
primary source material on Kollontai which I located during my research.
Finally, the knowledge and understanding that I have gained will inform and inspire my
teaching and the professional development I provide for my colleagues. Hopefully all
students undertaking the study of Alexandra Kollontai will benefit from the results of my
scholarship.
Attached is the second of my published articles on Kollontai, which I trust will suffice as
my scholarship report.
Alexandra Kollontai’s relationship with Lenin
In the Museum of the Revolution in St Petersburg there is a group photograph of an
early meeting of the Council of Commissars showing Kollontai seated next to Lenin.
Dybenko, her partner at the time, stands behind her. At least three other photographs of
this meeting have been published, each taken from a slightly different angle. In this
particular photograph, Lenin and Kollontai are sitting very close together but have leant
away from each other to pose for the camera. If they resumed their position after the
shot was taken, they would have been literally shoulder to shoulder, reflecting one of the
closest points in their relationship.
This article traces the complex and shifting relationship between Kollontai and Lenin by
offering eight virtual ‘snapshots’ of their interaction between 1914 and 1921.
Kollontai’s early contact with Lenin
The first snapshot of the relationship between Kollontai and Lenin would be a splitscreen shot, showing each sitting at a desk, writing to the other about the revolution and
how it was to be achieved.
Alexandra Mikhailovna Kollontai was put into contact with Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, then
in Switzerland, late in 1914 through his close comrade Alexander Grigory Shliapnikov.
Lenin, the leader in exile of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic
Workers’ Party, was two years older than Kollontai, a fellow Marxist and Party member
with her own reputation as a revolutionary particularly interested in the emancipation of
women and in attracting working class women to socialism.
Like others in the revolutionary movement, Kollontai had shifted her support from the
Menshiviks to the Bolsheviks, largely because of the Bolsheviks’ opposition to the war.
The correspondence between them reveals a relationship of mutual respect which could
accommodate differences of opinion.1 In his letters, Lenin frequently asks Kollontai for
her views on important issues and asks her to critique articles and strategies he has
authored. His letters also show how much he trusted Kollontai to disseminate his
revolutionary ideas in Russia and in other countries. In A Giant Mind, a Giant Will,
Kollontai records the nature of their early relationship:
In October 1914 I wrote my first letter to Vladimir Ilyich. In the reply which I
received through a Russian comrade I was ordered to start work immediately and
to get in touch with those socialists in Scandinavia who would assist in carrying out
Lenin’s policy on the continuing struggle of the working class. From that moment
onwards I worked under the direct guidance of Vladimir Ilyich.
The correspondence also reveals that, while both Lenin and Kollontai opposed the war
and shared the vision of an international socialist revolution, they differed on how this
would be achieved. After the German Socialists voted to approve war credits to support
the war against Russia, Lenin had less faith than Kollontai in the likelihood of an
international revolution. He advocated that the imperialist war should be turned into civil
war against the capitalists in Russia and that the proletariat should be armed to conduct
this war. As an anti-militarist, Kollontai believed the priority was to end the war, rather
than turn it into a civil war. Later, however, she came to accept Lenin’s view on the need
for civil war.
Despite their disagreements, Lenin trusted Kollontai and she became an important part
of the northern communication network which kept Lenin and the Central Committee in
Switzerland in touch with Russia. Her talents as a polemicist were put to work in her first
pamphlet written for the Bolsheviks, Who needs war? In this publication Kollontai
described the suffering of the victims of war, explained how the war benefited capitalists
and urged soldiers not to fire on their brothers in the enemy armies but to turn instead
against the capitalists, to seize the land, factories and banks and turn the imperialist war
into a civil war. The pamphlet, edited by Lenin, was praised by the Central Committee
and widely distributed throughout Europe.
Kollontai as Lenin’s emissary in the United States
The second snapshot could be of Kollontai at a rostrum somewhere in the United States
late in 1915, speaking against the war and for revolutionary solidarity and the reestablishment of the Workers’ International.
In September 1915 the German Socialist Federation of America invited Kollontai to the
United States to speak against the war. Lenin obviously trusted Kollontai to represent his
position and tried to keep contact with her wherever she was speaking. He instructed her
to arrange the publication of the Bolshevik pamphlet Socialism and War, to raise funds for
the Bolsheviks and to make contact with left-wing internationalists with a view to
planning the Third International. Lenin expected Kollontai to accomplish all this—on
top of the 123 lectures which she gave in her gruelling 18-week tour. In a letter to
Grigory Zinoviev, Lenin acknowledged that ‘Kollontaisha is a very capable woman’, and
to Inessa Armand he wrote ‘Kollontai writes good stuff from America’.
By 1916 Kollontai had established herself as someone on whom Lenin could rely as a
translator of his work and as a propagandist for the Left; however, they disagreed over
the appeal to nationalism in the cause of the revolution. Lenin, out of expediency
dictated by the circumstances of the war, departed from his original view of international
socialism, believing that nationalism in the form of national self-determination would
help attract people to the revolution. Kollontai stayed true to her internationalist views
and considered nationalism an irrelevant concept in relation to the wider socialist
revolution. A debate over nationalism was carried on by the main protagonists in the
journal Kommunist—until Lenin halted its publication.
Kollontai, lone supporter of Lenin’s April Theses
The third snapshot might be taken at the stormy meeting in Petrograd in April 1917
when Kollontai alone spoke in support of Lenin’s April Theses.
When Lenin heard of the revolution in Russia in March 1917, he entrusted Kollontai
with the task of getting his messages, including Letters from Afar, to Petrograd and to
disseminate his ideas more widely in Russia through the pages of Pravda. On 17 March he
wrote:
Our immediate task is to … prepare the seizure of power by the Soviets of
Workers’ Deputies. Only this power can give bread, peace and freedom.
Lenin planned to compress the traditional Marxist pattern of revolution by cutting short
the phase of middle class democracy and going immediately to the proletarian phase. As
Lenin had requested, Kollontai took to Pravda his letters outlining his new policy of noncooperation with the Provisional Government and plans to arm the proletariat to seize
power. The editors, one of whom was Stalin, refused to publish some of the letters and
published edited versions of others, so it came as a shock when Lenin addressed his first
meeting of socialists after returning to Russia and put forward his April Theses. At the
meeting Lenin demanded an end to cooperation with the Provisional Government and
called for the Soviets to seize power. Kollontai was the only one to speak in favour of his
proposition. The others thought his call for immediate socialist revolution was crazy and
an indication of how out of touch Lenin had become during his exile. Kollontai, who
had great faith in the power of the Soviets, was jeered for supporting him and was
mocked in the press as the ‘Valkyrie of the revolution’.
By this time Kollontai had accepted the logic of Lenin’s view on civil war, although she
still believed that revolutionary internationalism would ultimately deliver socialism.
Despite his stated policy of ‘all power to the Soviets’, Lenin ultimately saw the Bolshevik
Party as the core of the revolution, while for Kollontai the Soviets were the critical force.
This disagreement was to assume greater significance in the future.
During April, May and June of 1917 Kollontai worked tirelessly as a Bolshevik agitator
for the establishment of a Soviet government. She wrote articles for Pravda and addressed
dozens of meetings, including several to sailors of the Baltic Sea Fleet. She became one
of the party’s most prominent and effective speakers. Early in July Kollontai was arrested
by the Provisional Government for being a German spy. While in prison she was elected
to the Bolshevik Central Committee. Her value as a revolutionary theorist at this time is
indicated by her inclusion in the Party Committee along with Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin
and others who were nominated to develop a Draft Party Program. Events overtook the
plan, however, and the group had not met by the time the Bolsheviks took power.
Historian Beatrice Farnsworth lists Kollontai’s revolutionary credentials at this time:
… she had been an underground worker, one of Lenin’s closest agents, an
internationalist, a pamphleteer, an outstanding orator and a committed
revolutionary.2
Being arrested for her activities in Germany, Sweden and Russia only enhanced her
revolutionary credentials.
Kollontai as Commissar of Social Welfare
The fourth snapshot is the one described in the introduction, with Kollontai seated next
to Lenin among the Council of Commissars, early in 1918.
On 10 October 1917 Kollontai was among the majority at the all-night Central
Committee meeting which supported Lenin’s proposal to seize power. On 26 October
she sat in the Presidium of 14 at the Second Congress of Soviets which ratified the new
Bolshevik government and she was appointed Commissar of Social Welfare, the only
woman in the government. The task was enormous, but Lenin and Kollontai were
determined that the new government would shape a new society.
As Commissar for Social Welfare, Kollontai was responsible for everyone dependent on
government support, including elderly and invalid pensioners, inmates in mental
institutions, orphans, lepers, the destitute, those in TB sanitoria and an ever-increasing
number of war veterans. She had great difficulty establishing control over such a diverse
department and the situation was made worse by the displaced staff of the Provisional
Government who would neither cooperate nor hand over departmental funds.
Despite the overwhelming difficulties and the shortage of finance, Kollontai made
progress toward reforming her department and the way it was run by trying to replace
hierarchy with collective decision-making. She was also able to introduce social reforms
which reflected her goal of making the state take greater responsibility for maternity
services and child welfare; for example, in her Decree on Child Welfare in which she
addressed women as the ‘bold builders of a new social life’ she said:
From the date of the publication of this decree, all large and small institutions
under the commissariat of social welfare that serve the child, from the children’s
home in the capital to the modest village crèche, shall be merged into one
government organization and placed under the department for the protection of
maternity and childhood. As an integral part of the total number of institutions
connected with pregnancy and maternity, they shall continue to fulfil the single
common task of creating citizens who are strong both mentally and physically.3
In her autobiography Kollontai lists some of the other achievements of her time as
commissar, among them the establishment of new homes for war orphans, the creation
of committees of doctors to reorganise the various sanitoria, protection of female and
child labour and the abolition of the classification of children as legitimate or illegitimate.
At the same time, government reforms reduced the power of the church: religious
instruction in schools was made voluntary, government funding for church maintenance
was stopped, priests were reduced to the status of civil servants on the state payroll,
church marriage was replaced with civil marriage and divorce by mutual consent was
introduced.
Dispute over Alexander Nevsky Monastery
The fifth snapshot would show Lenin reprimanding Kollontai over her ‘autonomous
action’ in requisitioning the Alexander Nevsky Monastery as a home for wounded war
veterans.
As Commissar of Social Welfare, Kollontai was faced with enormous demands, especially
from war veterans, and insufficient funds to provide solutions. In these desperate
circumstances Kollontai decided to requisition the spacious Alexander Nevsky
Monastery, one of the holiest shrines of the Russian Orthodox Church, as a home for
wounded veterans. The priests did not agree with Kollontai’s plan, refused to admit the
members of the Soviet who came to collect the keys and rang the bells to summon
believers to their aid. Kollontai called on Dybenko for help and a confrontation
developed between the priests and their supporters and the armed sailors. Shots were
fired and a priest was killed, but the monastery was not occupied.
Kollontai was called to explain her actions to Lenin who reprimanded her for breaching
Party discipline in acting without consulting the Council of People’s Commissars and for
forcing a confrontation with the Church earlier than he had planned. In Petrograd a large
demonstration against the Bolshevik government’s policies toward the Church showed
that the time had not been right for such a radical move. When Kollontai was
excommunicated, Lenin quipped to her that she would be in good company, including
that of the Russian novelist Lev Tolstoy.
Although their relationship remained cordial, Lenin did not forget Kollontai’s wayward
action and reminded her of it months later when he addressed the First All Russia
Congress of Working Women which she co-chaired. While he condemned the evil of the
influence of priests he nevertheless warned:
We must be careful in fighting religious prejudices; some people cause a lot of
harm in this struggle by offending religious feelings. We must use propaganda and
education. By lending too sharp an edge to the struggle we may only arouse
popular resentment …’ 4
Disagreement over the Treaty of Brest Litovsk
The sixth snapshot shows Kollontai condemning Lenin for his support of the Treaty of
Brest Litovsk—marking the end of their friendship.
Lenin and Kollontai took opposite positions on the Treaty of Brest Litovsk, the treaty
offered by Germany which took almost half of Russia’s European territory, containing
around 75 per cent of its heavy industry, in return for peace on the Eastern Front. Lenin,
who wanted ‘peace at any price’, saw the treaty as necessary in order to consolidate the
gains made by the revolution. Kollontai, who had always been appalled by war,
nevertheless saw the treaty as a betrayal of the proletariat, a compromise with
imperialism, and argued that instead of surrendering, the Bolsheviks should turn the war
into a revolutionary war. She spoke against the treaty at the meeting of the Petrograd
Soviet Executive Committee and again at the Seventh Party Congress, where she aligned
herself with the Left Opposition. When the vote on the treaty was put to the Congress of
Soviets for final ratification, the Left Oppositionists who opposed the treaty abstained
from voting to prevent a Party split.
Immediately after her dispute with Lenin over Brest Litovsk, he introduced another
policy she opposed. In an effort to reconstruct industry, Lenin proposed hiring managers
and other bourgeois specialists who had been expelled from the factories during the
revolution. Anticipating opposition, Lenin argued that this was a temporary arrangement
until the workers had learnt how to manage industry themselves. He advised that the
Bolsheviks needed to temper their revolutionary idealism with practicality. Kollontai,
who was strongly opposed to such ideas, was preoccupied with events surrounding her
husband, Pavel Dybenko.
Dybenko, also an opponent of the Treaty of Brest Litovsk, was arrested and charged
with insubordination for his actions on the battlefield at Narva. Kollontai strongly
protested against Dybenko’s imprisonment, which she saw as retribution for their
opposition. She resigned as Commissar. Dybenko was tried by a military court but
acquitted. He was sacked as Commissar of the Navy and expelled from the Party.
Kollontai was dropped from the Central Committee and relieved of other Party
responsibilities. She wrote, ‘Little by little I was freed also of all other work.’ Her spirited
defence of her husband generated sexist ridicule from some conservative Party members
who did not approve the relationship between Kollontai and the much younger
Dybenko.
Kollontai challenges the Soviets on women’s issues
The next snapshot would show Kollontai and Lenin at the Eighth All Russian Congress
of Soviets in December 1920. She is reprimanding the delegates for not having done
enough for women and insisting that they increase their efforts.
Kollontai temporarily withdrew from political activity after resigning as Commissar, but
returned to the cause once the civil war began. Faced with threats from White Russian
and foreign forces, members of the Left Opposition closed ranks with the Party,
Dybenko’s expulsion was revoked and Kollontai was welcomed back as a revolutionary
agitator. Lenin wrote to her, ‘I welcome your return to more active party work.’ The civil
war and the introduction of war communism provided Kollontai with the impetus to
push for long-awaited reforms for women’s role in the family and society. She saw in
compulsory war work the potential to free women from their traditional roles through
government provision of social facilities such as nurseries, laundries and canteens which
would enable women to contribute to the war effort and the new society.
The two years before the Eighth Congress of Soviets had seen Kollontai and her
colleagues working tirelessly to raise the political consciousness of worker and peasant
women to engage them in the revolutionary activity of transforming their own lives
through the varied activities of the Zhenotdel. Under Kollontai’s directorship the
Zhenotdel continued the work begun by Inessa Armand, writing and circulating
pamphlets and other literature, holding meetings and conferences for women, providing
literacy classes and training workshops in politics, and assisting women to set up crèches
and canteens in their local communities to free them for work and political activity. By
1921 there were 6000 Zhenotdel delegates representing around 3 million women. The
increased political activity of women was reflected in the increased numbers of women
joining the Party and becoming delegates to the Soviets.
Lenin expressed his views on the importance of the emancipation of women in his
writing and in speeches to women’s conferences. In his address to the First All-Russia
Congress of Working Women in November 1918, he spoke of the importance of
engaging women in the revolution:
There can be no socialist revolution unless very many working women take a big
part in
it ... One of the primary tasks of the Soviet Republic is to abolish all restrictions on
women’s rights …
In 1919 he wrote:
We cannot exercise the dictatorship of the proletariat without having millions of
women on our side. Nor can we engage in communist construction without them.
In a sense, Lenin represented the most liberal view within the ranks of the Bolsheviks on
the emancipation of women, but he was in the minority—the attitude of others ranged
from apathy to open hostility. Few men in government or the Party hierarchy were
willing to encourage or accommodate women in their political activities.
At the Eighth Party Congress Kollontai was determined to push for measures which
would do more than just free women to work; she wanted them to have access to all
levels of political and economic power. She reminded her predominantly male audience
that without the full participation of women they would not be able to build the national
economy. She deplored the petty-bourgeois attitudes evident in the Party and insisted
that ‘the whole conscious, revolutionary section of the congress, all conscious comrades,
support our demands and translate them into reality’. The resolution was passed but
Kollontai would never see her demands put into practice.
On public platforms Lenin agreed with the emancipation of women. In practice,
however, he did very little to advance their participation in the Party or in government.
On matters of sexual emancipation he was very conservative. He did not agree with
Kollontai’s views on sexual liberation and in an interview with Clara Zetkin he described
them as destructive. He was to use Kollontai’s views on sexual freedom against her in an
unworthy attack over her role in the Workers’ Opposition.
Kollontai and the Workers’ Opposition
The last snapshot of the relationship would show Lenin and Kollontai engaged in a bitter
debate at the Tenth Party Congress in March 1921.
Throughout their relationship Kollontai had debated issues with Lenin, sometimes
coming around to his way of thinking but often disagreeing with him. She disagreed with
him over when and how women should gain true emancipation; she spoke out against
the Treaty of Brest Litovsk; she objected to the employment of ‘bourgeois specialists’ in
industry and government and she protested about the Party’s treatment of her husband.
She used her eulogy at John Reed’s funeral to criticise ‘dangerous tendencies’ [toward
bureaucracy and against criticism] within the Party, and at the Ninth Party Congress she
condemned the Party for refusing to allow criticism to be aired. She argued that Party
members should be able to criticise abuses they saw within the bureaucracy without the
risk of being ‘sent off to a nice sunny place to eat peaches …’ 5
As the Tenth Party Congress approached, Kollontai aligned herself with the Workers
Opposition, a trade union-based faction led by Shliapnikov, head of the Metalworkers’
Union and her lover before the revolution. Kollontai agreed with the Workers’
Opposition’s criticism of the increasing bureaucracy within the Party and the failure of
the Party and the government to honour the promise of ‘worker control’ made by Lenin
in 1917 and embodied in the Party program which stated that ‘trade unions should
concentrate under their control the administration of the entire national economy’. The
Workers Opposition was not alone in its criticism; other minority factions such as the
Democratic Centralists had opposed Party policies which they believed went against
Bolshevik ideals.
The Central Committee gave permission for a full debate at the Tenth Party Congress.
Kollontai had published an article in Pravda prior to the Congress accusing the Party
leadership of betraying the proletariat through its policy of using capitalist-trained
managers and by taking so long to implement worker control of industry. She had also
written a clear and persuasive document, The Workers’ Opposition, which outlined the
reasons for discontent within the Party, and contrasted the democratic proletarian
Workers’ Opposition with its solid trade union origins with what the Bolsheviks had
become: authoritarian, bureaucratic, corrupted by power and alienated from the
proletariat. She warned:
… bureaucracy is our enemy, our scourge and the greatest danger to the future
existence of the communist party itself.
She called for greater democracy in unions and the Party, for the participation of workers
in all levels of the Party hierarchy and for genuine worker control of industry.6
Lenin was incensed by the criticism of the Workers’ Opposition, but instead of debating
the issues raised and analysing the impractical measures proposed, he resorted to
misrepresentation, sarcasm and personal insult. He wrongly and deliberately hinted at
links between the Workers’ Opposition and the recent Kronstadt uprising, and he
accused the members of Workers Opposition of being syndicalists, petty-bourgeois and
influenced by Mensheviks and anarchists. He sneered at the relationship between
Kollontai and Schliapnikov. He played on delegates’ fears that factionalism would
weaken Party control. Lenin pointed to the very real social and economic crisis
confronting the country and used his usual ploy when faced with opposition within the
Party and called for unity. Kollontai responded by suggesting that, more than unity, the
Bolsheviks needed a democratic party based on proletariat support and this would only
come through proper proletariat participation.
Lenin saw the way forward through rapid industrial reconstruction controlled by a
disciplined and unified Party. Democracy would follow, he claimed, once a sound
economic base had been established. By contrast, Kollontai distrusted authority and
coercion and held to her belief that the workers themselves should be involved in the
economic and political decision-making which would create the new society.
By the end of the Congress Lenin’s position had been accepted, the Workers’ Opposition
had been condemned and a ‘Resolution on Party Unity’ had established the legal right to
expel members for ‘factionalism’. This marked the end of organised dissent within the
Party, but it did not silence Kollontai. The Workers’ Opposition did not disperse as it
was ordered and Kollontai joined with Shliapnikov to repeat the criticism of Party policy
at the Third Comintern Congress in the summer of 1921. A copy of her manifesto, The
Workers’ Opposition, was circulated from Berlin, taking her criticism of the Bolshevik Party
to an international audience. The publicity this generated, her continued contact with
Shliapnikov and her outspoken demands for reforms for women led to Kollontai being
sacked from the Zhenotdel early in 1922. She made one last plea for democratisation of
the Party at the Eleventh Party Congress. It was unsuccessful and it was her last
appearance as an opponent of Lenin’s policies.
Those who had attacked Kollontai at the Tenth and Eleventh Party Congresses and after
the Third Comintern led a campaign to slander her personally and politically. Alexandra
Kollontai, one of the leaders of the international communist women’s movement, the
militant revolutionary Lenin had once addressed as ‘Dear esteemed comrade’, was now
cast as an ‘un-Marxist petty bourgeois philistine’. She was not expelled and she did not
resign from the Party, but she was ostracised by the Party and she could not bear it.
When Kollontai eventually asked for some kind of Party work she was offered a
diplomatic post in Norway and she took it. Around the same time Lenin suffered a
stroke and he too was removed from the centre of political life. The remnants of the
Workers’ Opposition later joined the Left Opposition led by Trotsky, who took up the
struggle against the lack of democracy in the Party and growing Soviet bureaucracy.
Endnotes
1. More than 50 letters were written between them. Lenin’s letters to Kollontai may be
found in volumes 35 & 36 of VI Lenin, Collected Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow
1974. Kollontai’s letters to Lenin are held in the Central Party Archives of the Institute of
Marxism–Leninism in Moscow.
2. B Farnsworth, Aleksandra Kollonta: Socialism, Feminism and the Bolshevik Revolution,
Stanford University Press, Stanford, California,1980, p.82
3. Document no. 1247, 31 January 1918, in Alix Holt (ed), Selected Writings of Alexandra
Kollontai, Allison & Busby, London, 1977, pp 140–141.
4. Lenin’s speech to the First All-Russian Congress of Working Women, November,
1918,
VI Lenin, Collected Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1974, vol. 28, pp. 180–182.
5. Quoted in Clements, Barbara Evans, Bolshevik Feminist: The Life of Aleksandra Kollontai,
Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1979 p. 183.
6. Alexandra Kollontai, ‘The Workers’ Opposition’, in Alix Holt (ed), Selected Writings of
Alexandra Kollontai, Allison & Busby, London, 1977, pp. 159–200.
Accessible references on Kollontai
Books
Clements, Barbara Evans, Bolshevik feminist: The life of Aleksandra Kollontai, Indiana
University Press, 1979.
Clements, Barbara Evans, Bolshevik women, Cambridge University Press, 1997
Farnsworth, Beatrice. Aleksandra Kollontai: Socialism, feminism and the Bolshevik Revolution,
Stanford University Press, 1980.
Porter, Cathy. Alexandra Kollontai, The Dial Press, 1980.
Pipes, Richard. Russia under the Bolshevik regime 1919–1924, Harvill, 1994.
Stites, Richard. The women’s liberation movement in Russia: feminism, nihilism and bolshevism
1860–1930, Princeton University Press, 1978.
Works by Kollontai
Selected writings of Alexandra Kollontai, translated with commentary by Alix Holt, Allison &
Busby, London, 1977.
Articles and chapters—print
Buckley, Mary. ‘Soviet interpretations of the woman question’, in Barbara Holland, ed,
Soviet sisterhood, Fourth Estate, 1985.
Cameron, Kate, ‘Alexandra Kollontai and the Zhenotdel’, Teaching History, vol. 39, no. 1,
March 2005.
Clements, Barbara Evans, ‘Kollontai, Aleksandra Mikhailovna’, Dictionary of the Russian
Revolution, G Jackson, ed., Greenwood Press, 1989.
Stites, Richard, ‘Women and the revolutionary process in Russia’, in Renate Bridenthal,
Claudia Koonz and Susan M Stuard, eds, Becoming visible: women in European history, 2nd
edn, Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
Marchetto, Albert. ‘Alexandra Kollontai: Exam question outline’, Teaching History. vol. 35,
no. 4, December 2001.
Mullaney, Marie. ‘Alexandra Kollontai: the Female Revolutionary as Visionary’,
Revolutionary women: Gender and the socialist revolutionary role, Praeger Publishers, 1983.
Scrine, Clare. ‘Alexandra Kollontai’, Teaching History, vol. 34, no 3, September 2000.
Williams, Beryl. ‘Kollontai and after: Women in the Russian Revolution’, in Sian
Reynolds, ed, Women, state and revolution, University of Massachusetts Press, 1987.
Selected online material
Ritter, Leonora. Alexandra Kollontai, part of HSC Online Modern History: Individuals in
Russia and the Soviet Union 1917–1945, available at:
www.hsc.csu.edu.au/modern_history/national_studies/russia/russia.
Condit, Tom. Alexandra Kollontai, Part of The Alexandra Kollontai Archive, available at:
www.marxists.org/archive/kollontai/index.htm.
Andersson, Lars. Alexandra Kollontai: Selected essays and speeches (1926), Part 3 of The
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