Alexandra Kollontai - One of Socialist Feminism’s Most Influential Thinkers

A review of Cathy Porter's book

It is often said that feminism is doomed to forget its forebears, to ignore its founding mothers, and even to bury its predecessors in hatred or oblivion. It is probably not entirely feminism's fault that this is so. Despite the rights achieved on paper, we are still a long way from the emancipation of all women, and the bright light in which the successes of women at the top of the social hierarchy who manage to 'break the glass ceiling' are draped cannot hide the backwardness in which the great mass of our fellow citizens are struggling. Driven away and often imprisoned for life in the domestic sphere, women can at best hope for a somewhat gentler exploitation in the workplace. The idea of a career is still the privilege of those who have access to education. For rural women, it is either domestic slavery or a low-paying job - a cleaner, shop assistant, cashier, or nurse. Only someone who is blind and does not see the backwardness in which most of our fellow citizens are struggling because of poverty and lack of access to what we call 'social lifts', school being the most important of them, can claim that women have all the rights in the world, and then some. Often frustrated aesthetic underdogs struggling under the thumb of a partner they fear losing, these honourable gentlemen are under the impression that all women are as powerful as those who dominate them, hence the desire to kill, if possible in torment, feminists - the source of their problems. For them, it is clearly a regression from the state in which only they could work and abuse their financially dependent partner with impunity. But despite their pitiful whimpers, for most women, the emancipation feminists dreamed of a century ago is still a long way off. 

It is often said that women are often very ignorant of the immense amount of hatred that men are trained to harbor towards them. It may be one of the many explanations why a woman like Alexandra Kollontai, a forceful thinker, an exceptional politician trained in the fight for women's emancipation, and a highly successful diplomat is simply ignored. But, like Sofia Nădejde, the Romanian socialist feminist, she has been ignored because of the socialism to which she unreservedly adhered. Western feminists banished her from the ivory tower of progressivism without socialism, and comrade Stalin hated her to his gills, and it was only a miracle that she was not killed along with other opponents of the workers' movement who dared to campaign for democracy in the workplace - today the milk of the program proposed by economist Richard Wolff. They also hated Lenin and Trotsky for their courage and idealism in opposing the church, the traditional family - read the family in which women were systematically beaten and had about as many rights as any other pet. Alongside other militants who were a central part of the revolution through their writings, through their efforts that often put their lives in danger, Alexandra Kollontai campaigned, no more and no less, for the democratization of the workplace, for bringing the party closer to the workers, for opening up the party to freedom of expression and criticism. She escaped with her life, but her enormous feminist and political work remained buried for decades. 

It took more than twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall for her incredible personality to catch the attention of Western scholars. We spoke to Kristen Ghodsee, author of Why Women have Better Sex Under Socialism, who dedicated an audio series to her reading from her work. (Ghodsee, 2018) Cathy Porter, a quiet presence, is the translator of over thirty books from Russian and the author of a biography that despite its considerable length - 537 pages - keeps you breathless until the last page. (Porter, 2014.) The combination of personal detail mixed with the tragedy of life situations, incredible events that not once put her life in danger, plus a timely dose of ideas about women's empowerment that she believed in to the end of her life make the book a read you can't easily tear yourself away from.

Alexandra Kollontai is the daughter of a respected Tsarist army figure, Mikhail Domontovich, and his nonconformist mother, Alexandra Masalina, who at a time when divorce was unheard of left her husband to be with Mikhail. The first chapter, “Too much Family Happiness” describes the domestic atmosphere in which Alexandra was born on 19 March 1972. The author links her private life to the events that were shaking Europe at the time. In 1861 the Serbs were finally emancipated. Many members of the Russian aristocracy, including Alexandra's parents, were liberals who wanted reforms, but they were only servants of the Tsar and their power was limited. However, after the bloody Crimean War (1853-1856), feudal lords began to lose authority to serfs and their wives and children. After a life that had remained unchanged since the 12th century, Russia began an extensive process of modernization. Newly emancipated peasants set off for the cities to build a new life. So did women. They left the place that had been reserved for them for centuries and headed for the cities in search of a better life. Cathy Porter notes that from 1860 onwards women all over Russia began to set up women-only discussion groups and the idea of solidarity for emancipation. Many of them realized that their lot could only be improved by revolutionary change, which is why they began to study the program of such a revolution. The social changes were profound: unmarried women were not allowed to have an identity card - a passport - at that time, so men offered them the opportunity to enter into a fake marriage to escape these constraints. Cathy Porter also brings up the establishment of collectives where people wanted to put socialist principles into practice and base their relationships on cooperation, equality, and respect. And what's even more interesting for Tsarist Russia at the time is that teenage girls cut their hair, and started wearing thick blue-rimmed glasses, boots, and short skirts. The "nihilistic" names were met with deep resentment by a society still asleep in its most crass conservatism. 

From the outset, the issue of women's emancipation posed serious problems. Those who opted to merge this problem into the wider revolutionary cause and to merge their groups into mixed women's and men's groups were disappointed to find that too few rights were achieved for them in this way. University education was still denied to them and hundreds of girls from wealthy aristocratic or even peasant families were leaving for Zurich to get the university education they longed for. There they came across Bakunin and his ideas, which led many to abandon their studies to devote themselves to the revolution. The socialists welcomed women into their ranks, which made them attractive to liberals and conservatives. Alexandra's parents appreciated the idealism of these young people. They made a nonconformist couple. Alexandra's mother was the daughter of a former serf who managed to build a prosperous logging operation. But she was divorced - almost unheard of at the time. And she was from a lower social class than Michael's, the upper aristocratic class. Enough reason for admiration for the revolutionary drive to be carefully concealed. But Alexandra's father wanted Russia to have a constitution of its own and sincerely hoped that Tsar Alexander II would provide this progressive institution for the people. Alexandra received a choice education in the company of highly educated English and French nannies who taught her Finnish, and English and petted her 'Shura'. In her own autobiography, Alexandra Kollontai recalls heated discussions in her father's office, as times were such that social upheavals could not bypass anyone. Her family was extremely caring and had no shortage of servants. Her mother is evoked in a positive light for her extraordinary organizational spirit and the efficiency with which she ran her household. Far from the feminist movements, her mother was a domestic feminist, appreciating very simple styles of dress and opting for comfortable outfits and aesthetic concerns that took up no more than a few minutes a day - totally unusual for that period when other women spent at least two hours in front of the mirror on a regular basis. Alexandra's family has an unexpectedly empowering role in neighboring Bulgaria. In the years after the War of Independence 1877-1878 Alexandra's family moved to Bulgaria. Her father is appointed Governor of Tarnovo and then Executive Secretary - a position that helped him to manifest his progressive liberal ideas by being actively involved in imposing the neighboring country's first constitution, one of the most progressive documents of the time. Alexandra's mother takes an active part in the emancipation of women by opening the first high school to prepare girls for higher education in Sofia. She also organizes women's committees to open schools for girls. Unfortunately, Alexandra's father is recalled to Moscow, but it is clear what a significant impact he had on Bulgaria's development when given the opportunity. In Russia, constitutionalism was frowned upon by Tsar Alexander II, who in 1881 was assassinated by anarchists. He was flexible enough to free the serfs in 1861, but rigid enough when it came to the constitution. Unfortunately, in 1894 Tsar Nicholas II came to power, even more retrograde than his predecessor, and led Russia astray in military adventures that cost it dearly in the First World War. He also abdicated in early 1917 because of the military disaster he had dragged his country into. Her sisters from her mother's previous marriage, Adele and Jenny, were, like all girls of the time, preoccupied with fashion and music. Cathy Porter rather tenderly insists on a portrait of Jenny, who was to become a famous opera singer with an extraordinary voice, despite her parents' protests. Shura revered her father and, having been brought up by a mother who often stayed indoors without a corset, in practical clothes and devoted herself to administrative duties, she quickly acquired a taste for politics.

The second chapter of the book succeeds in portraying the family life of Alexandra, her sisters and the main political events of the period. For Alexandra Kollontai it is the moment when she decides, again against her parents' protests, to marry Vladimir Kollontai, a man to whom she has been tenderly attached all her life, but with whom she felt she was suffocating. Otherwise, the scenario often repeated itself - she could not easily tolerate romantic relationships that on the one hand took away the time and energy she wanted to devote to the revolutionary cause, intellectual self-improvement and spreading progressive messages, and on the other held her captive. Cathy Porter in turn insists on this pattern of her relationships ending with her decision to sever them. The most passionate of these will take place after the success of the revolution and will feature Pavel Dybenko at its center. Curiously, he is the least loyal, but also the one who shoots himself attempting suicide when Alexandra delivers the news of their break-up. Life as a mother takes over her completely. She finds it impossible to leave little Mihail, nicknamed Misha, in the care of anyone else. She finds it hard to allow others to care for him. Otherwise, she will stubbornly keep him away from politics for the rest of his life in order to protect him. He begins a feverish activity of clandestine collaboration with the socialists for whom he runs all sorts of errands. He has a hard time winning their trust. All the while she is torn between the desire to do more for the revolution and the desire to protect her husband Vladimir and little Misha. She is strongly influenced by the economist Plekhanov, whom she reads with great admiration. Zoya Leonidovna Shadurskaya (1873-1939) was Alexandra's lifelong friend. For more than six decades they were each other's support. They met in Bulgaria and continued to visit and write to each other throughout their lives. Family life proved extremely difficult for Alexandra. It seemed unthinkably cruel to take Zoya's advice and close the door to the nursery and write. She had come to deeply regret the beautiful dreams she had had about marriage. She was simply bored in her new role and family life was becoming increasingly oppressive for her. Lacking the language to express her frustration, she lived for two years convinced that the problem was her, that it was her fault that things weren't working. Women in Russia were living in a state of backwardness, as contraceptive methods were unavailable and they experienced a gap in procuring them. The books helped her articulate her grievances and find the source of them. Cathy Porter refers to her translation of Woman and Socialism (Bebel, 1979 (trans,1961)) which enables her to better understand the structural causes that make marriage a source of frustration for women in particular. Bebel is remembered by Cathy Porter for her particularly progressive role in Germany's Social Democratic Party. According to her biographer, Alexandra was seduced by this book which puts the question of women at the center of revolutionary concerns by elaborating beyond Engels' observations about productive forces, the property system and the oppression of women, explaining that a socialist world without the liberation of this half of the population is not possible. When the complete edition of the work was published in Russia in 1918 Alexandra Kollontai wrote an admiring preface to it, calling it a "women's bible". Cathy Porter refers to Alexandra's husband as a literary character whose liberalism disappears with the first white hair that populates his head. Her husband works as a labor inspector, and she firmly believes that from this position she can make a difference for the better to the appalling plight of working people. When we hear about 'working people' today, we automatically think of slogans. We often consider ourselves superior to that status, even though none of us would survive without selling our labor. But the chain is a little lighter today. In 1895, when Alexandra and her husband visit a textile factory in Kremgholm where he wants to install a complex ventilation system that would partially stop the particles of material destroying the workers' lungs, she has a shock. The factory, located several hundred kilometres south of Kiev, was to benefit from these improvements Vladimir proposes. She travels with her friend Zoia to first class and enjoys accommodation in a luxurious hotel. She decides to visit the factory with Zoia without her husband. She lands in the horrible factory building in the manager's office. She is taken with Zoia to the factory library where literacy classes are held for the 90% of women who cannot read and write. When she spoke to the workers, the young people had the courage to tell her that they were trapped in the factory for 12 to 18 hours and were only allowed out on Sundays. They slept near the factory and had no homes of their own. They all lived in the barracks next to the factory. The single women confessed that it was better for them as their alcoholic husbands could not drink their hard-earned wages. Many wanted to study, to become engineers, but after three years in the factory they fell ill. Life expectancy was somewhere around thirty. They ventured to the barracks. There they found children playing on the cold floor. A little girl was looking at a boy her child's age, Misha. He was dead. The little girl explained very maturely that this sometimes happened and that her aunt would come in the evening to take him away! Cathy Porter insists on this moment because it was, as we can easily see, decisive. Back in the luxury from whence she had come, everything sounds shrill and false, including her husband's voice boasting about the ventilation system. She was talking about economic relations, not about little technical crutches. Once back in Moscow, she starts working clandestinely to promote the socialist cause. After the 1881 assassination of Tsar Alexander II, the secret services and police become increasingly brutal and she fears to go beyond the "library" phase of her revolt. 

It is almost unbelievable how many of the heated disputes that animated socialist circles at the end of the 19th century are unfortunately still so current. When we think of the 19th century we live with the illusion that we are light years away, with our cool phones, with space travel - most recently by the new capitalist pharaohs Musk and Bezos. But when you read Alexandra Kollontai's biography, Nadezhda Krupskaya's “The Working Woman” or “Woman and Socialism”, it's like reading about the problems of women today. Klara Zetkin and Lily Braun called in 1896 for the acceptance of women into the Social Democratic Party and for concrete measures to free them from the double oppression of wage labor and domestic work. To be brought alongside men in the liberation struggle, they needed education and extra support. Also in 1896 Zetkin insists that middle-class women fight against middle-class men, but for their shared privileges. Both Zetkin and Rosa Luxemburg insist that a feminist movement outside the socialist movement is not possible because the interests of the bourgeoisie and aristocrats are diametrically opposed to those of the maids, cooks, nannies, and factory workers. 

An interesting observation is made by Cathy Porter. As the revolutionary movements in Russia gained momentum, employers preferred to fire men and work with women. Much easier to discipline, a resource for sexual abuse, women were cynically brought into the workforce for the ease with which employers could exploit them. In addition, their lack of political rights, illiteracy and lack of contraception made them even more suitable for domination and exploitation. We often wonder why women have been at the center of so many uprisings and why March 1917 was a women's uprising. The fact that they had become a significant percentage of the workforce also made them the revolutionary force of those months. 

Another observation that pervades feminist debates today concerns women's ability to organize as a separate class. Alexandra Kollontai believes that feminism outside socialism is really a ploy to deceive women. She attends feminist rallies to undermine their plans and bring working women over to the side of socialism.

The third chapter is where Alexandra decides to leave her husband and little Misha. She leaves for Zurich with her father's blessing. She has a hard time parting with the family she had sincere feelings for. Cathy Porter captures these moments with subtlety and skill and does not fall into painful sentimental evocations, but lets us understand how difficult it was for a woman of privilege to embark on such a journey. She finds support in Zurich, as she has throughout her life, in reading, learning and writing. She is all the more privileged because her father gives her a small allowance that allows her to make a modest but decent living in Switzerland, where she studies furiously and shuns social life completely. She absorbs all the information about socialism and is deeply impressed by Rosa Luxemburg who writes about the inefficiency of trade unions as long as private property exists and allows larger companies to buy up smaller ones. Her encounter with Rosa is not a pleasant one. Alexandra admires Plekhanov and does not suspect him of anti-Semitic reactions aimed at Rosa Luxemburg herself. Today as yesterday we see economically progressive intellectuals who, unfortunately, can disappoint with xenophobia and racism. Cathy Porter insists that at the time of her meeting with Rosa, Alexandra was unaware of her idol's anti-Semitic outbursts and merely notes the cold encounter with the revolutionary that was to end so tragically.

The fourth chapter begins a discussion of the 1903 split between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. Alexandra is long attracted to the latter and only in 1914 does she finally renounce them to join the Bolsheviks. However, she was never fully Menshevik - which is why she attracted much criticism - nor Bolshevik - which would give Lenin and later Stalin ammunition against her. Already in 1903 waves of peasant and worker uprisings swept Russia. It all came to a head in 1905 when for a few months the fairly sophisticated trade union movement managed to organise protests that paralyse the country. But in the absence of a political program to organise the revolting workers, the movement collapses. Alexandra begins publishing in a series of socialist publications and giving impassioned speeches. One of them to Nihilist students who had begun to develop a cult following for Nietzsche. In 1899 Alexandra Kollontai returns to Russia. Then on her way back to Switzerland she goes to Finland where she studies the life of workers. The result was a serious work, Life of Finnish Workers, published in 1903. It is recorded in history when the publisher asked her if it would not be better if the real author of the work came to discuss publication, and she had the awkward task of convincing him that she had written the book herself. It's a work that has earned her respect. Since the early 19th century Finland has been a Russian-dominated region with relative economic autonomy. Tsar Nicholas II also suppressed the autonomy and protests of Finnish workers. The work carefully interprets the type of exploitation and oppression specific to Finnish workers.               

The fifth chapter is devoted by Cathy Porter to an effective and rarely synthesized account of Alexandra Kollontai's personal and political turmoil. Separated from her social class workers and her fellow party members of her own sex, she joins the voices in the German Social Democratic Party campaigning for women's suffrage, and for the inclusion of women in party leadership. As usual, the fear arises that women, once fully integrated into the party, will create separate spaces and threaten its political coherence, unity and militancy. Although it was clear to her that feminism could only be socialist, Alexandra Kollontai fought for the integration of women's issues into the socialist-democratic party program. It is very important to point out that between 1905 and 1908 she waged, supported by a few voices of the Social Democrats, a sustained campaign against the feminist union, wishing to attract working women to the socialist cause. 

The sixth chapter discusses some of the most thorny issues that still inflame people today. The issue of women's suffrage, particularly as the German Social Democratic Party had won an unprecedented number of seats in parliament in 1903, was more pressing than ever. As usual, women were told to wait, that the time was not ripe, that the final stage of the revolution had yet to be reached, that society was not mature, that we should wait until universal suffrage for men had been achieved - all excuses that appear when a marginalized group demands its rights. It was only natural that women should link their cause to that of workers excluded from the electoral process on class grounds. With participation in the Social Democratic Congress came disappointments. There was no mention at all of the uprisings in Russia. Moreover, fraternizing with them was treated as "anarcho-syndicalism". And to make things even clearer Rose Luxemburg was not allowed to speak. The Social Democratic Party was already showing its shortcomings and oversights. From misogynistic reactions and attacks on the person to extremely conservative attitudes. They opposed, for example, Karl Liebknecht's idea of recruiting as many young people as possible before they were drafted into the army to fight militarism. They felt that fighting the army was beyond the powers of the party. If things were bad in Germany, when he returned to Russia the idea of a special women's organisation within the party met with impenetrable indifference. Fear of the "danger of feminist deviationism" added to this indifference. When she managed to persuade the Socialist political office in St. Petersburg to allow her to hold a special meeting of Socialist working women, she found the door of the building locked and a sign mockingly reading "Women's only meeting postponed. The men-only meeting is tomorrow." (Porter, 2014, 131). The stupidity of Russian male socialists could not be winked at by rational arguments either: more and more women students and workers were leaving their organizations to join feminist organizations that excluded socialism. However, more and more women were joining trade unions and workers' clubs. Only a few dozen in an organization that had 600, 700 male members. But slowly, slowly, women began to show up at these meetings. Cathy Porter insists on Alexandra Kollontai's daring solo struggle to champion the women's cause. After all, if socialist men were indifferent to the truly terrible living conditions of working women, how could they have been sensitized to the problems of a middle-class woman like herself with a child to raise? She made a few friends who were completely dedicated to the cause and committed themselves to the initiative of holding women's classes, but the women's union had gained huge support, tens of thousands of signatures for the admission of women to the Duma, and seemed a force to be reckoned with. Of course, despite the huge support, the petition was almost completely ignored. A Menshevik gave it voice, but the Bolsheviks were of the opinion that the women's problem would only be solved when the proletariat's problem was solved. However, seeing the mobilising power of women, the Bolsheviks began in 1907 to support Alexandra Kollontai in holding a series of meetings at the Petersburg textile workers' union. The speeches dealt with concrete issues of everyday life, which electrified the audience. After a major strike, the police banned the meetings, but the Bolsheviks agreed to hold them at the workers' meeting places. All the while, arrests, police harassment, and pressure of all kinds continued. In 1907 Alexandra Kollontai went to the first international meeting of socialist women as the only representative from Russia. A year later, she wrote the book “What is to be done for Women Textile Workers”, which was published a few months later. At the international congress Klara Zetkin calls for women's suffrage to be at the centre of the party's concerns, but delegates from Austria and France are very timid, saying that men should win this right first. On this occasion, Alexandra Kollontai tried to allay almost paranoid fears of separatism by showing that women's suffrage is not part of such plans and that it is a way of making her male colleagues aware of their problems. But their position seemed too radical at the time. In 1908 Alexandra published “The Social Basis of the Woman's Question”, in which she showed why only through socialism could wage-earning women truly achieve emancipation and liberation. She also attacks the idea that bourgeois feminism can really offer anything to wage-earning women. Maxim Gorky runs the "Knowledge" publishing house on the small island of Capri. He was the only one who appreciated Alexandra's manuscript and, although he replied to her after a few months, agreed to publish it. 

Russian feminists were not at all the progressives we imagined. Often obsessed with irrational religious beliefs, do-gooder philanthropists with no political conscience (or knowledge), they intuitively engaged in a kind of "let's be good, let's not be bad for women, let's ban vodka and prostitution and pray to God" politics. Cathy Porter refers to the hostess of a large gathering of feminists who prayed to the good Lord to purify her house when she heard that awful Kollontai with her atheistic ideas had entered her domestic space. She was anathematized by those limited conservatives who, yesterday as today, want a good feminism. Then they fraternized with the church, today they fraternize with the brothel - "sex work is work" - but they don't want to shake up society too much to get real rights for women. Alexandra hasn't given up. What she did would leave us in awe today. She made sure all the working women knew about the feminist congress and would attend. What's more, in the few months leading up to the 1908 congress she trained 45 women workers to read speeches to champion their cause at this distinguished gathering of bourgeois feminists! Nor did they let themselves down and landed at the workers' homes with cakes and sweets the night before warning them of the dangers of attending the congress. A whole play with unexpected twists could be written out of these terrible plots. Working women were further marginalized in the strikingly luxurious atmosphere in which bourgeois women adorned in the most expensive gowns stood on the stage full of floral arrangements. When one working woman wanted to plead her cause she was interrupted: she was told that it was precisely because they, the privileged, did not have to struggle with life's hardships as she did that she should speak up and take up her cause. Alexandra Kollontai who already had a warrant for her arrest could not help herself and took the stage to the amazement of the honored audience. She narrowly escaped arrest and it was then that she had to flee leaving her teenage son in the care of his father. (Porter, 2014, 146). 

The seventh chapter is dedicated by biographer Cathy Porter to Alexandra Kollontai's years in exile. Russia after the failed uprisings of 1905 plunges into a hallucinatory violence against women. Demoralised by their lack of political success, men take revenge, as usual, on the victims at hand, women and children. Alexandra Kollontai, who has been accused of debauchery and the glorification of promiscuity by so many narrow-minded conservatives, dreams of a world where people, much like the socialist Eastern states (except Romania and Albania) of the 1970s, love each other freely as equal citizens. The landscape he left behind in Russia in 1908 was different. Novels that truly glorified pornography were all the rage. But because they were written by men, they received good-natured badges, not swearing. Sexual perversions, the glorification of the character Sanin in Mikhail Artsybashev's novel who brutally rapes his sister, sex parties with children, were all the rage in St Petersburg. It is exactly this kind of "free love" that Kollontai denounces in his pamphlet, but for conservatives, these details go unnoticed. 

Chapter eight follows Kollontai to Germany. Porter insists on bringing to light the difficulties Kollontai faced in touring to present socialist ideas to the German workers. Again, we can see from these moments that a socialist revolution in Germany seemed impossible. But let us not anticipate. Naturally, the language barrier was quite serious. In addition, the arrogance of the Germans, boosted by a shady deal with a Georgian bank robber who took the stolen money to Germany, made them declare that a socialist party could not emerge in (backward) Russia. Speaking Russian was impossible for him because German workers were not interested and German was not yet a language he could master. In the months that followed he learned it well enough to embark on a tour. On this occasion, she encountered the Russophobia of the German workers, and their anti-feminism, and there were a few times when the German party bureaucracy was defeated by the workers who invited her to speak to them. There were moments of genuine relaxation and connection beyond the iron party bureaucracy that did not allow such 'outings'. Even from these pages, we begin to see that German workers were dominated by the most anti-socialist impulses and that a revolution in Germany seemed unlikely despite the fact that the Russians regarded this country as the source of revolutionary 'light'.

Chapter Nine is one of the most dramatic. Cathy Porter follows the agonizing period when Kollondai sees his German socialist friends cross over to the militarist boat. It took the irresponsible Tsar Nicholas II declaring war to probably put an end to the riots for all the Social Democrats to vote enthusiastically for the defense budget. The international socialist movement crumbled in 1914 in the face of German xenophobia, which suddenly began to refer to the Russians as barbarians. Yesterday, as today, noble socialist ideals and the union of workers on the basis of common economic interests gave way to the most primitive forms of persecution and xenophobia. The socialists who had helped Alexandra Kollontai set off on a tour to promote socialist ideas suddenly told her that she had no place in Germany. She was no longer a feminist, no longer a socialist. She was a Russian! What's more, young Misha was visiting her at the time. He was arrested and Alexandra agonized for weeks trying to save him. Several Russians were simply arrested and the great German socialists were not too seriously moved. The most "generous" wanted yesterday, as today, to save the Russians from the evil Tsar by war. The parallels with the present day are striking. "Generous" socialists who want to save Russia by means of war from its unsuitable leaders, Russophobia, the fact that Russia was not credited with the ability to form socialist parties because it was too "savage" - these are themes that have been repeated quite recently in national and international socialist circles. But for Alexandra Kollontai the situation was dramatic. She could not return to Russia because she was hunted by the tsarist police. In Germany she could no longer stay because, after all she had written, after dedicating her life to socialism, she was suddenly a "Russian". On a horrific journey, after rescuing Misha from prison, she flees to Denmark where she is also very badly received. She eventually finds refuge in Norway.

In chapter ten, the meticulous Cathy Porter follows Alexandra Kollontai on her American tour. Given her extraordinary oratorical skills, the fact that she spoke German, Finnish, French, and English, her courageous work on women's issues, and her unquestionable aesthetic advantages make her a real draw for American audiences. Left-wing parties are organizing a tour for her. Interestingly, American pragmatists are carrying her like an attraction at a hellish pace across the US, which is draining her of power. They put her up in extremely bad conditions only to later apostrophize her as not revolutionary enough if she doesn't accept the mess they propose to make her dance to the infernal pace at which she has to give speeches. And yet she copes with it brilliantly and in the end manages to devote a week in New York to rest. 

The following chapters are even more thrilling as they show her great revolutionary dreams and the disappointment of seeing, in particular, the Socialist Women's Organisation. 

The first part of this review is only a modest attempt to bring closer to the public a true force of socialist thought that should be required reading in all curricula devoted to the struggle for women's emancipation. But the uncritical imposition of liberal feminism has effectively erased from memory texts of rare profundity with which, yes, we may disagree, but ignoring them is intellectually self-sabotaging most pathetically. 

References

Bebel, A. (1979). Women and Socialism. Political Publishing House.

Ghodsee, K. R. (2018) Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism: And Other Arguments for Economic Independence. PublicAffairs.

Porter, C. (2014) Alexandra Kollontai: A Biography. Haymarket Books.