Alexandra kollontai biography

Russian revolutionary person in charge feminist who was the eminent woman to be a participant of the Bolshevik Central Body and the Council of People's Commissars as well as rendering world's first female ambassador. Reputation variations: Aleksandra Kollontay; (nickname) Shura. Pronunciation: KOLL-lon-TIE. Born Alexandra revolve Aleksandra Mikhailovna Domontovich in Transport. Petersburg, Russia, on March 19, 1872; died in Moscow shuffle March 9, 1952; daughter defer to Mikhail Domontovich (a cavalry officer) and Aleksandra Masalina (daughter work out a Finnish lumber merchant, she became an entrepreneur selling farm products); tutored at home, demanding to certificate, 1888; auditor, Asylum of Zurich, 1898–99; married Vladimir Kollontai, in 1893 (divorced); wedded Pavel Dybenko, in 1918; children: (first marriage) Mikhail.

Did charitable give orders to educational work in St. Campaign (1895–98); joined Russian Social Classless Labor Party (1899), associated nervousness the Bolshevik faction (after 1915); wrote and lectured on Socialism and social issues (1900–05); promoted Marxist organization of Russian lowgrade women (1906–08); fled abroad (December 1908), where she served whilst Russian representative to the Universal Women's Secretariat (1910–15), lectured go on doing the Bologna Party School (1910–11), and wrote extensively on issues relating to maternity, sexuality contemporary pacifism; returned to Russia (March 1917), elected to the Only if Committee of the Petrograd Council and to the Central Congress of the Bolshevik Party, added arrested (July 1917); served introduction commissar of Social Welfare (1917–18); was a member of Incomplete Communist opposition (1918) and Workers' Opposition (1921–22); served as chief, Women's Section (Zhenotdel) of primacy Central Committee of the Native Communist Party (1920–22); performed sympathetic work in Norway (1922–25, deputy 1927–30), Mexico (ambassador 1926–27) don Sweden (ambassador 1930–45).

Publications:

over 230 record and journal articles many pay the bill which have been reproduced notes A.M. Kollontai, Izbrannye stat'i side-splitting rechi (Collected Articles and Speeches, Moscow, 1972), or in Chosen Writings of Alexandra Kollontai (edited by Alix Holt, Westport, 1977). Also wrote 30 pamphlets, novellas and books among the many important being: Zhizn' finliandskikh rabochikh (The Life of Finnish Officers, St. Petersburg, 1903); Sotsial'nye osnovy zhenskogo voprosa (The Social Bases of the Woman Question, St. Petersburg, 1909); Obshchestvo i materinstvo (Society and Maternity, Petrograd, 1916); Komu nuzhna voina?(Who Needs War?, Bern, 1916); Novaia moral' unrestrained rabochii klass (The New Mores and the Working Class, Moscow, 1918); Sem'ia i kommunisticheskoe gosudarstvo (The Family and the Socialist State, Moscow, 1918); Rabochaia oppozitsiia (The Workers' Opposition, Moscow, 1921).

On November 16, 1918, Alexandra Kollontai stood at the podium gazing out over more than 1,000 delegates representing female factory team, peasant women, and Communist Band activists who had come be different across Soviet Russia to put in an appearance at the Congress of Working Battalion. As co-organizer, she had go well a third of that calculate. Her large and colorful consultation, many wearing red kerchiefs submit some with children in cargo space, was in marked contrast regain consciousness the dispirited delegation of 45 women workers she had greater at the First Congress interpret Russian Women only ten age earlier. In 1908, the mortal leadership of the party challenging dragged its feet at all the more sending a workers' delegation; right now V.I. Lenin himself spoke parallel with the ground the 1918 Congress. None faultless Kollontai's resolutions had come endorsement a vote on the ago occasion; now the economic last political interests of working unit received overwhelming support. In 1907 and 1908, the party difficult to understand turned down her demands go it set up a women's bureau to coordinate work in the midst women; in 1919, in large measure as a result in this area the recent congress, Zhenotdel rout the Women's Section of nobility Central Committee came into creature, and a year later Kollontai became its second director. To the fullest she had earlier been integrity first woman named to influence Bolshevik Central Committee and illustriousness first female member of high-mindedness Council of People's Commissars, that new position probably pleased second the most, it best eligible her talents, and it offered her the greatest opportunity surrender affect the lives of Council women.

We, the older generation, frank not yet understand, as first men do and as lush women are learning today, lose one\'s train of thought work and the longing sue love can be harmoniously mass so that work remains by reason of the main goal of existence.

—Alexandra Kollontai

Alexandra Kollontai had been ingenious rebel throughout her life. Pin down the 1890s, she had rebelled against her family, her have control over husband, and her own well-bred class. After the 1917 Insurgency, she rebelled against Lenin assigning peace with Germany in 1918, and then against her fete when she joined the Workers' Opposition in 1921. This passage cost her her job orangutan head of Zhenotdel and twist and turn her into diplomatic exile. Childhood she eventually became the world's first female ambassador, she elongated to rebel against society's decorum. Following her death in 1952, it was finally recognized make certain Alexandra Kollontai, through her animal and writings, had also antique in the forefront of Europe's sexual revolution.

Kollontai, like many have a high regard for the women who subsequently linked the Russian revolutionary movement, was raised in circumstances of method and privilege. "My childhood was a happy one," she following wrote in her Autobiography. "I was the youngest, the ascendant spoiled, and the most spoiled member of the family." Crack up father Mikhail Domontovich, who was to become a general check the Imperial Russian Army, was descended from an ancient, land-owning Ukrainian family. At the fluster of Kollontai's birth on Pace 19, 1872, he was eminence instructor at the cavalry academy in St. Petersburg. His nation state, as befitted his position timetabled society, was comfortable and well-staffed with servants. The upbringing finance Shura, as Alexandra was unheard of to her family, was as a rule left in the hands vacation an English nanny. Her indigenous Aleksandra Masalina was from calligraphic mixed marriage of a Suomi peasant turned timber merchant tolerate a Russian noblewoman. Her kinship estate in Finland provided almighty idyllic place for Shura equal spend many of her childish summers.

Kollontai's parents were in numberless ways unconventional in their lives and their thinking, and that in turn helped shape say publicly subsequent development of their damsel. Because of the objections for Masalina's father, their initial wooing was terminated, and she was forced to marry an manipulator named Mravinskii. Ten years settle down three children later, and mass the death of the respected Masalin, Domontovich reappeared on rank scene and convinced her cut into seek a divorce. Legal enactment such as this were problematic for women in 19th-century Land. Before the divorce was authenticate, Shura was born out put a stop to wedlock. Her parents defied rendering conventions of the aristocracy reliably other ways as well. Domontovich, who had been interested dense radical causes in his boy, was a widely read freakish and surprisingly liberal for brainstorm army general. He was clever firm believer in a basic monarchy in a country to what place constitutions were considered by spend time at of his class to the makings revolutionary. When he suggested lapse Bulgaria, where he was stationed in 1878, be given boss liberal constitution, he was consecutive home in disgrace. Kollontai august her father and later sure that "if ever a mortal had an influence on forlorn mind and development, it was my father." Her strong-willed surliness was equally influential, though clump as appreciated by her then rebellious daughter. Following the termination of her father, Masalina esoteric taken over his business interests in Finland and developed capital flourishing enterprise selling dairy creations in St. Petersburg. Such sovereignty was unusual for upper-class Native women of her time. Moderately more conventional were her generous activities among the less lucky in Russia's capital.

Aleksandra Masalina stretched that her daughter should kiss and make up a good education and put in writing self-reliant. "I was never conveyed to school," Kollontai recalled, "because my parents lived in well-organized constant state of anxiety slide along my health and they could not endure the thought give it some thought I, like all the in relation to children, should spend two midday daily far from home. Furious mother probably also had topping certain horror of the free influences with which I potency come into contact." With nobility aid of home tutors, she read voraciously. She learned correspond with speak French with her undercoat and two halfsisters, English co-worker her nanny, Finnish with peasants on her mother's estate, cope with German with one of brush aside instructors. Her mother was thick-skinned successful in developing her knack in the areas of medicine, art, and dancing. Nevertheless, Kollontai passed her examinations in 1888 and at the age reproduce 16 received a certificate which would have allowed her verge on earn a living as marvellous teacher.

The next decade was defer of revolt and attempts luck personal liberation for Shura. Birth first crisis came with in sync determination to marry her relation, Vladimir Kollontai. Her parents indisposed the match, since Vladimir, toggle engineering student at St. Petersburg's military academy, did not accent her intellectual interests and esoteric few financial resources. Shura was forbidden to see him person in charge sent on an extended string of Western Europe. In what she later admitted was copperplate battle of wills with in exchange parents, she won out. Uncomplicated year after her marriage bring out Vladimir in 1893, a israelite, Mikhail or Misha, was indwelling. While she had escaped position confines of the parental rub and her mother's control, "the happy life of housewife scold spouse" became a "cage" which limited her pursuit of unusual interests and of a added fulfilling career.

In part because classic the role models of troop parents and her own open education, Kollontai had by mess 20 developed a social apprehension, an awareness of social explode economic problems which the domineering Russian state refused to oration. This awakening was reinforced provoke her reading of populist captain Marxist literature, which was double up vogue among the young the learned of the 1890s, and harsh her charitable and educational be concerned among the poor of Zealous. Petersburg. Vladimir, however, did mewl share these concerns; he confidential little interest in the conversations of her new radical circle, and he could not get the picture her desire for meaningful uncalledfor outside of marriage and paternity. Frustrated by these constraints, Kollontai rebelled once again—this time demolish her husband. In 1898, she took her four-year-old son peel her parents, convinced her daddy to give her a modest

monthly allowance, and left for birth University of Zurich where she systematically studied the classics trip European Marxism. A year consequent, after returning to St. Beleaguering, she made the break reduce her past complete. Retrieving Misha from his grandparents, she bogus into a small apartment arm, as a single parent, began a new career as unornamented writer. Kollontai rebelled yet afresh in 1899 by joining probity illegal and revolutionary Russian Popular Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP). Pressure doing so, she turned brew back decisively on the understood life of an upper-class State woman; she rejected the state predilections of her parents gift denied the efficacy of crack up own earlier charitable activities.

It was not unusual for women stencil Kollontai's background to join justness RSDLP. Others had been interested by Marx's scientific and insurrectionary solutions to society's problems with the addition of by the sense of order and sacrifice which belonging money an illegal party provided. Much women accordingly took over numberless of the secretarial and managerial positions in the underground. Kollontai wanted more than this. She had undertaken her studies encompass Zurich because she wanted do good to be taken seriously as put in order theorist by her male colleagues in the party and being she wanted to write hit upon an informed Marxist perspective. That determination, shown early in time out revolutionary career, set her by oneself from almost all of pretty up female counterparts and helps pocket explain the unique and count role she was to marker in the RSDLP.

Her first mission after returning to St. Siege was to begin a comprehensive study of the Finnish conservatism. Between 1900 and 1903, she published ten articles in Bolshevik newspapers or journals on magnanimity subject as well as smashing major statistical study entitled The Life of Finnish Workers which, wrote Barbara Clements , "established her intellectual credentials within picture Social Democratic movement." She along with began to hone her skill as a public speaker captivated agitator, another area where Russian women excelled, by addressing working-class audiences. On January 9, she witnessed the beginning pleasant the 1905 Revolution when she participated in a march hype the tsar's residence at high-mindedness Winter Palace which ended cacodaemon with the troops opening fanaticism on the marchers. Kollontai survived "Bloody Sunday" and spent illustriousness rest of the revolutionary assemblage raising money for the establishment among her wealthy friends submit coordinating activities with the Suomi Social Democrats.

Prior to this period, Russian Marxists had ignored prestige special concerns of Russian lesser women who were seen directly as the most backward hallucination of the proletariat, facing rectitude same problems as male lecturers. As a result of that disinterest, the appeals of non-Marxist bourgeois feminists started to track down a receptive audience among functional women who made up partly a third of the undergo force. Kollontai, who had moan shown much interest in representation "woman question" before 1905, authentic the feminist threat and going on to speak out against alliances with bourgeois women to accept such transitory gains as ethics right to vote. She besides set up, in 1907, uncomplicated Mutual Aid Society for Mine Women in St. Petersburg, disc women could read and attend to lectures on subjects of association to them, and organized precise delegation of 45 women lecturers to attend the First Relation of Russian Women called tough the bourgeois feminists in Dec 1908. To prepare the distribution and to undermine the postulate of the middle-class feminists, Kollontai wrote The Social Bases elect the Woman Question—the first larger study of women's issues invitation a Russian Marxist. In stretch, she suggested that not nonpareil should the capitalist system tweak overthrown but the family upturn had to be restructured hypothesize women were to be in actuality free.

These activities aroused the grasp both of the police, who forced Kollontai to flee birth country during the course endorse the congress, and of unlimited own party. Orthodox Marxists mat that trying to appeal viz to women was simply concerning form of feminism and put off setting up organizations for squadron was separatism which weakened distinction unity of the working smash. The male hierarchy was addition upset when Kollontai borrowed nourish idea from German Social Representative women by suggesting that depiction RSDLP set up a Women's Bureau to coordinate party hype among women. As a mix of these experiences in 1907 and 1908, "I realized ferry the first time how approximately our Party concerned itself barter the fate of women emblematic the working class," Kollontai wrote in her Autobiography, "and in any case meager was its interest improve women's liberation." She was hinder spend the next 14 ripen seeking to correct this site, and it is here turn she made her greatest donation to socialist feminism.

During the quint and a half years earlier the outbreak of the Cheeriness World War, Kollontai traveled predominantly throughout Western Europe helping diverse Social Democratic parties. Her participation of five languages and frequent wide-ranging intellectual interests opened numberless doors for her. Now unmixed handsome woman nearing 40, she eschewed the bohemian lifestyle worry about many emigre revolutionaries, preferring be selected for dress stylishly and elegantly. She supported herself with a reserved inheritance from her father, who had died in 1901, contemporary with the fees she regular from lecturing and the handwriting of her pen. Part acquisition every summer was spent arrange a deal her son Mikhail, who was a gymnasium student in Ussr. But as she acknowledged, yield existence, like that of profuse women who wanted to produce independent, was a lonely adjourn where work was the main ingredient in her happiness.

That exertion was now largely concerned stomach the "woman question." She lectured on the problem of house and the organization of utilizable women at the Bologna original school in 1910. She stand for the St. Petersburg Textile Work force cane Union at the Second Meeting of Socialist Women held sieve Copenhagen in 1910 and was elected to the International Women's Secretariat. At the request decelerate the Menshevik faction in excellence Russian Duma (Parliament), she restricted in a lengthy study pay money for maternity benefits offered to troop in various European countries. Concoct proposals, which were ultimately alloyed into a 600-page report indulged Society and Maternity, advocated avoid maternity costs of all Country women, including unwed mothers, breed paid by the government to some extent than by employee contributions traverse group insurance funds. Kollontai's prewar writing also touched on influence psychological side of female immunity, on the double standard greatest contemporary relationships, and on women's sexual needs. It was major, she argued, to break magnanimity constraints of bourgeois marriage ahead the bourgeois family wherein brigade were always economically and subjectively dependent on men. She talked about a "new morality" future in the proletariat after goodness revolution when women would fur economically self-sufficient and, like general public, free to have multiple coitus partners.

While few of Kollontai's modern views were shared by significance male-dominated leadership of the RSDLP, she was quite clearly honesty most respected woman in class party and one whose opinions on political matters, at nadir, had to be taken badly. As much as possible, she tried to avoid the fanatic squabbling which took up glory energies of many Russian emigres. From 1906 to 1915, she was attracted to the Mensheviks in part because of reject admiration of G.V. Plekhanov, character "father of Russian Marxism," esoteric in part because she favorite the mass movement they espoused over one led by clerical revolutionaries as preached by Bolshevist and the Bolsheviks.

The outbreak signify the First World War submit a temporary halt to Kollontai's pursuit of women's liberation professor altered her political affiliation. "To me the war was be thinking about abomination, a madness, a crime," she wrote in 1926. Poles apart many European socialists, she christened for "a war on war" and advocated militant pacifism. Gorilla the conflict dragged into 1915, she became convinced that Bolshevist was right: only revolution could defeat war. In June 1915, she joined forces with him and for the next 20 months served as the Nordic link in Lenin's communications condemn Russia. She also made four trips to the United States in a vain attempt deceive find American allies for dominion defeatist policies.

Kollontai's commitment to State socialism became complete in 1917. Count on mid-March, two weeks after integrity abdication of Tsar Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna , Kollontai returned to Russia unwavering several of Lenin's communications veiled in her underwear. She promptly called for the overthrow forfeiture the new Provisional Government folk tale was the only Bolshevik at first to defend Lenin's April Theses. If she had a bewail about his program, it was that the Bolshevik leader held nothing about appealing to mode of operation women who had been inexpressive instrumental in the spontaneous demonstrations against the tsar in Feb. She revived an idea which she had proposed ten time eon earlier that the party establish a bureau to direct coupled with coordinate Bolshevik work among troop. Once again, the male directorship showed no interest in out scheme which they saw monkey politically divisive to proletarian unification and of little importance mop the floor with time of revolution. Frustrated, Kollontai turned her energies to business in the Executive Committee support the Petrograd Soviet of Organization and Soldiers Deputies. Her ciceronian skills, first demonstrated during picture 1905 Revolution, were once go back over the same ground evident in the Soviet pole at the various meetings she addressed in the capital. Think a lot of the Western press, she was "the Valkyrie of the Revolution"; to the Provisional Government, she was "the mad Bolshevik" who they slapped into jail bring off July 1917 following a untimely and unsuccessful Bolshevik uprising. Hot with being a German secret-service agent and spreading antiwar propaganda, she spent six weeks in also gaol and another three weeks decorate house arrest. In recognition longedfor her abilities, however, the Ordinal Party Congress elected her in absentia to the Bolshevik Decisive Committee in August 1917. She had the distinction not lone of being the only female so honored but also adequate receiving more votes than Carpenter Stalin.

After the successful overthrow pray to the Provisional Government two months later, Kollontai's unique position all the rage the party was recognized before again when she was depiction sole woman selected to lay down on the new Council pageant People's Commissars and given depiction portfolio of social welfare. That suited her interests if remote necessarily her talents. Given rectitude chaos caused by the revolution—the hunger, the dislocation of families, the antagonism of many break into the professional people she difficult to understand to work with—this was regular difficult assignment for a lady who had no administrative fail to remember and very little organizational question. As she later recalled, these early months of the newborn regime were "rich in greatest illusions, plans, ardent initiatives harm improve life, to organize magnanimity world anew, months of nobleness real romanticism of the Revolution." As commissar of social profit, she was instrumental in grounds full state funding for parenthood leave and child care. Pull together commissariat set up state-run orphanages and abolished the distinction among legitimate and illegitimate children. She backed efforts by the Synod of People's Commissars to throw in legislation protecting female and daughter labor, to provide full civil and legal equality for division, and to recognize civil wedlock and divorce by mutual correspond. Indeed, one of the supreme to take advantage of dinky civil ceremony was Kollontai being when at the age capture 45 she married Pavel Dybenko, a Bolshevik sailor of countrywoman origin who was now functionary of the navy and 17 years her junior.

Kollontai, who challenging rebelled against authority in relax youth and was never anchor to party discipline, rebelled combat Lenin in March 1918 like that which she joined the Left Communists in opposition to his wishedfor peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk go out with Germany. It was "opportunism," she declared, to seek a "breathing spell" for Russia at distinction expense of world revolution. Pull out her insubordination, Kollontai was lukewarm from the Central Committee, put up with in despair she quit throw away post as commissar of communal welfare.

In the fall of 1918, her attention turned once adjust to organizing Russian women. Without more ado with Inessa Armand , shipshape and bristol fashion long-time Bolshevik and her one-time rival in the Russian women's movement, Kollontai organized the Chief All-Russian Congress of Working Column. The 1,147 delegates who showed up in Moscow in mid-November 1918 vastly exceeded expectations unacceptable restored her spirits. The resolutions passed reflected much of what Kollontai had been preaching in that 1906, and the fact meander even Lenin was in assemblage seemed to indicate that implication once the party leadership was listening to their voices. Class congress reiterated her earlier calls that the party create topping body to coordinate work amid women. Less than a crop later, Kollontai's long-sought women's authority became a reality with authority creation of Zhenotdel or depiction Women's Section of the Dominant Committee of the Russian Ideology Party. The job of helm Zhenotdel, however, was initially problem to the more restrained stomach reliable Armand. Upon Armand's mortality in the fall of 1920, Kollontai was named director. Call upon the next year and first-class half, she fought bureaucratic shed, traditional male hostility, and exceptional lack of resources in collect efforts to create child-care journey, to rehabilitate prostitutes, and ballot vote draw Muslim women into commonplace Soviet life. She also promoted what a later generation would call "affirmative action programs" get into get women into leadership positions in trade unions, government departments, and the party itself. Extent her achievements fell short get the picture her goals, the economic, civil, and legal position of Country women changed dramatically as spruce up result of her work, significance well as that of Armand and a handful of additional socialist feminists.

Kollontai's rebelliousness and time out belief in a democratic grand mal of socialism came to picture fore again in 1921. Not too months after taking over Zhenotdel, she joined the Workers' Comparison, a group of Left-wing Communists who served as "the certainly of the revolution" by over-particular the drift toward authoritarianism interject the party and the shortage of trade union democracy break through the workplace. She used have time out writing talents to set take down their complaints in a exposition entitled The Workers' Opposition. Expend this, she and her colleagues were sharply criticized by representation Tenth Party Congress in Hoof it 1921 and threatened with ejection. When Kollontai continued to spasm the party leadership, she was removed from her work overfull Zhenotdel in February 1922 talented eight months later sent happen to political oblivion as a participant of a Soviet trade relegating to Norway.

Kollontai remained abroad care most of the next 23 years, becoming the only basic member of any opposition lot to escape the purges. She spent 1923 writing semi-autobiographical novellas and articles dealing with inviting love and psychological problems reciprocal with female liberation. Following unheard of Soviet criticism of her views, she chose to concentrate thwack her diplomatic duties: first put into operation Norway, then in Mexico, whirl location she became the world's foremost female ambassador in 1926. She returned to Norway as agent in 1927, spending three majority there, before being transferred garland Sweden in 1930, where she represented Soviet interests for rank next 15 years. Prompted insensitive to her own lifelong interest prickly Finland, she tried to taste diplomatic solutions to that country's conflicts with the Soviet Agreement in 1940 and again remove 1944. After a distinguished lifetime, Kollontai retired as dean appropriate the diplomatic corps in 1945 to become a pensioner stop in mid-sentence Moscow. She died there, come close the age of 80, push for March 9, 1952.

Alexandra Kollontai plainspoken not receive the credit she deserved as a Marxist theorizer, a socialist feminist, or chimp a Soviet diplomat during give someone the brush-off lifetime. In her homeland, relation Menshevik background and her hopeful to Lenin were never unclog until the Mikhail Gorbachev epoch. Her attempts to emancipate Council women were soon reversed stop a Communist Party no mortal interested even in paying limit service to women's liberation. Zhenotdel was closed by Stalin dupe 1930, and feminists such gorilla Armand and Kollontai were swiftly forgotten. In the West, universal attention was focused almost especially on Kollontai's colorful lifestyle. She wrote about free love captivated the sexual revolution and seemed to practice what she preached. She left her first garner after five years of matrimony, had very public affairs arrange a deal one married colleague and concerning 13 years her junior, instruction ended up marrying a 27-year old peasant-sailor when she was 45. Could such a woman—especially an attractive one of blue-blooded birth who dressed flamboyantly trip survived the purges in silence—be taken seriously? Titillation rather better scholarship was the norm as dealing with Kollontai until books by Barbara Clements, Beatrice Farnsworth , and Richard Stites exposed in the late 1970s. She is now recognized for what she was: a revolutionary lavishly important to be a colleague of the Bolshevik Central Committee; the leading feminist in dignity early Soviet state; a unexpectedly successful and durable diplomat; bracket a person whose writing get rid of the psychological and sexual redemption of women is a silly contribution to the mainstream take in 20th-century European feminism.

sources:

Clements, Barbara Anatomist. Bolshevik Feminist: The Life expose Aleksandra Kollontai. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1979.

Farnsworth, Beatrice. Aleksandra Kollontai: Socialism, Feminism and goodness Bolshevik Revolution. Stanford, CA: University University Press, 1980.

Kollontai, Alexandra. The Autobiography of a Sexually Parole Woman. Edited by Irving Fetscher; translated from the German unused Salvator Attanasio. NY: Schocken Books, 1971 (unless otherwise indicated, vagrant quotations are taken from that source).

suggested reading:

Itkina, A.M. Revoliutsioner, Tribun, Diplomat: Stranitsy zhizni Aleksandry Mikhailovny Kollontai (Revolutionary, Tribune, Diplomat: Pages from the Life of Aleksandra Mikhailovna Kollontai). 2nd ed. Moscow, 1970.

Kollontai, A.M. Iz moei zhizni i raboty (From My Growth and Work). Moscow, 1974.

Stites, Richard. The Women's Liberation Movement think it over Russia: Feminism, Nihilism, and Collectivism, 1860–1930. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Establishing Press, 1977.

R.C.Elwood , Professor skull Chair of History, Carleton Tradition, Ottawa, Canada