Alexandra Kollontai

Kollontai, Alexandra, 1872-1952

Short biography of the Bolshevik feminist Alexandra Kollontai who played a crucial role in the Workers Opposition movement.

Alexandra Kollontai was a major figure in the Russian socialist movement from the turn of the century through the revolution and civil war. During periods of exile she was also active as a speaker and writer in Germany, Belgium, France, Britain, Scandinavia and the United States.

Women fighters in the days of the great October Revolution - Alexandra Kollontai

In this article, written in 1927 (well after the Bolshevik consolidation of power), Alexandra Kollontai describes the leading role in which women played in Russian Revolution of 1917. Though heavily Bolshevik in focus, it describes well the activity of working class women in the revolution.

The women who took part in the Great October Revolution – who were they? Isolated individuals? No, there were hosts of them; tens, hundreds of thousands of nameless heroines who, marching side by side with the workers and peasants behind the Red Flag and the slogan of the Soviets, passed over the ruins of tsarist theocracy into a new future...

International Women's Day - Alexandra Kollontai

International Women's Day poster in post-revolution Russia

First published in 1920, this essay traces the history of international women's day and its importance to working class struggle with particular focus on the 1917 Russian Revolution.

A militant celebration
Women's Day or Working Women's Day is a day of international solidarity, and a day for reviewing the strength and organization of proletarian women.

The Workers' Opposition - Alexandra Kollontai

Alexandra Kollontai at the International Women's Conference, 1921

Kollontai's pamphlet was one of the central theoretical works of the Workers' Opposition movement within the Bolshevik Party, arguing for increased union control of the economy and the debureaucratisation of the party hierarchy.

First published in Pravda, January 25, 1921 this text was banned in Soviet Russia in March of 1921, by resolution of the 10th Congress of the Communist Party. It was then printed in the Workers ' Dreadnought (by Sylvia Pankhurst), April 22 - August 19, 1921.

On the History of the Movement of Women Workers in Russia - Alexandra Kollontai

Written in 1919, Alexandra Kollontai's essay looks at the role of working class women in the history of Russian radicalism with particular focus on the 1905 revolution.

What year could be said to mark the beginning of the working women's movement in Russia?

news

Cape Town: two anti-eviction campaigners arrested
On Wednesday, July 2nd at the Bellville Magistrates Court courtroom E, two members of the Delft Anti-Eviction Campaign, Jerome Daniels and Ridwaan Isaacs, were each sentenced twelve months in prison - simply for being community leaders at Delft-Symphony Way settlement.

articles

Labour Rebellions of the 1930s in the British Caribbean Region Colonies - Richard Hart
A brief overview of the numerous struggles which occurred in the British Caribbean during the 1930s, which led to the introduction of many trade union rights across the region, written by Jamaican trade unionist Richard Hart.

1968

Review: Whatever happened to the Situationists?
A steady trickle of publications about the situationists testifies to the market value of their ideas, but it also reminds us of the continued requirement for revolutionaries to engage with them. In this review we look at two recent books. Ken Knabb's Public Secrets illustrates the self-obsessed nature of the situationist milieu after the heady days of 1968. What is Situationism? A Reader includes Barrot's important critique of the Situationist International for their one-sided emphasis on circulation rather then production.