Alexandra Kollontai argues for sending sex workers to forced labour camps for 'labour desertion', 1921
Kollontai discusses prostitution in the USSR, stating that the short-term solution should be to place prostitutes into forced labour camps if they do not have additional regular employment. Kollontai argues against the criminalisation of selling sex as such, but takes the position that sex work is not productive labour but instead 'taking from the rations of others'. Professional prostitutes were to be treated as 'labour deserters' justifying the same treatment as 'speculators, traders and hoarders'.
Revolutionary Feminism, Communist Interventions vol. 3
The third volume of the Communist Interventions reader series, on Revolutionary Feminism. A century of debates between communist, anarchist, and radical feminist militants on women's oppression and capitalism.
Kollontai, Alexandra, 1872-1952
Submitted by Ed on Sep 4 2007 17:47
Short biography of the Bolshevik feminist Alexandra Kollontai who played a crucial role in the Workers Opposition movement. The biography does not deal with Kollontai's support for the Bolsheviks against workers, so we have added two examples at the end of the text.
Women fighters in the days of the great October Revolution - Alexandra Kollontai
Submitted by Ed on Sep 4 2007 17:26
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.
International Women's Day - Alexandra Kollontai
Submitted by Ed on Sep 4 2007 17:13
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.
The Workers' Opposition - Alexandra Kollontai
Submitted by Ed on Sep 4 2007 13:48
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.
On the History of the Movement of Women Workers in Russia - Alexandra Kollontai
Submitted by Ed on Sep 4 2007 13:31
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.
