Alexandra Kollontai: The Revolutionary Who Fought for Women’s Liberation

Russian feminist and activist Aleksandra Kollontai

Free kindergartens, paid maternity leave, a ban on night and hard physical work for women, public canteens, libraries, laundries, equal access to education, the right to divorce and alimony, recognition of children born out of wedlock, evening lectures for working women, political representation for women, and the list goes on. No, this is not the programme of a modern left-wing party, but just some of the achievements of one of the most influential Russian socialist politicians, feminists, activists and authors of all time, Alexandra Kollontai (1872-1952).

Today her name is virtually unknown to the general public, but the fruits of her work and lifelong efforts are reaped by many women around the world. Kollontai revolutionised the politics of women’s issues within the socialist movement in Russia and beyond. Indeed, many seemingly utopian ideas became reality precisely because of her tireless persistence.

Kollontayeva was a prominent representative of the Russian far left in the period when it was working to overthrow the centuries-old reactionary tsarist regime. The long-standing revolutionary ferment that grew on the shoulders of thinkers like Marx and Engels was characterised above all by class struggle and the hope of establishing a new, more just, classless society.

Few, however, addressed the question of gender equality and the measures needed to make women truly equal in a socialist society. Kollontaeva, however, was convinced that the revolution could only be successful if it successfully promoted and established women’s independence.

For the attractive and charismatic Alexandra Kollontai, this was a life mission. She envisioned a time when women workers under socialism would be freed from double work, because unlike men, they had to shoulder child and family care and housework in addition to long hours at work. With the State taking on part of their double burden, they would be able to devote themselves more not only to themselves and to their own betterment, but also to enriching relationships and to true partner love based on mutual respect and equality.

For those women who were too constrained by the bonds of marriage, a simple divorce would be possible and, in general, she advocated a much freer and non-binding love. She was a pioneer of sexual freedom and many of her ideas would still be considered extreme in today’s Western society. Her love life, often stigmatised as scandalous, was also very much proof that a woman could remain free, committed to her own goals and professionally fulfilled.

Alexandra, or Shura as she was called in her youth, was born into a progressive liberal but aristocratic and wealthy family. Nevertheless, she grew up ascetic, with a deeply instilled sense of self-discipline, responsibility and justice. She had a very well-developed sense of others and was aware of her privileged position, which did not seem fair to her.

From an early age, she witnessed serious conversations between adults about international politics, wars, peace processes, diplomacy, the situation in Tsarist Russia and the rest of the world. The first two words she should have remembered as a little girl were war and prison. Her adored father was a distinguished military officer who, despite his liberal convictions, held many important positions.

She quickly became aware of the harsh conditions that were causing more and more peasant women to move to the cities and take up jobs in factories. In an era of industrialisation and the unbridled rise of capitalism, this kind of work was already inhumane anyway, but for women, who then gave birth on average between six and eight times, it was intolerable. At least a quarter of all pregnancies ended in abortion or stillbirth.

While it is true that the socialist parties were committed to improving general working conditions, the specific interests of women were quickly forgotten by the mostly male members of these parties. This made the work of women activists like Alexandra Kollontai all the more important. The core of her thought, reading Marx, Bebel and Engels, was that capitalism had created a nuclear family that oppressed women and allowed men to own them as property.

Kollontaiyeva had carefully studied the position of women in Russian society and, because she was an influential revolutionary known throughout the world, she managed to put women’s issues on the agenda of the international and Russian socialist movement. And when the Bolsheviks took power, she became the first female minister (commissar) in any government in the world.

But because she was principled, she often clashed with the party bosses. It is a real miracle, for example, that she was the only representative of the original government to survive all Stalin‘s purges. He got rid of her by sending her to serve a diplomatic internship, but unlike other ‘renegades’ in a similar position, he left her relatively alone. Ironically, perhaps because she was a woman?

I will not live like the others

Alexandra Mikhailovna Kollontai, born Domontovich, came into the world in the same year that Marx’s Das Kapital (1872) was published in Russian. Her parents caused a minor scandal by marrying, since her father was a member of one of Russia’s most influential aristocratic families and her mother was a Finnish woman, the daughter of a former serf, already married once and the mother of three children. But they were destined to be together and they did everything they could to spend the rest of their lives together.

This was almost unheard of in those days, because after seven centuries of serfdom, Russian society was backward, despite Tsar Alexander II‘s many reforms, and the Russian family was trapped in traditional feudal patterns. Women were subordinated and exploited, without rights to property, inheritance, let alone political and social participation. The Church encouraged physical violence against them – in every respectable household, a whip was supposed to hang over the marriage bed. “A hen is not a bird and a woman is not a man.”

After 1861, with the abolition of serfdom, which tied more than 80 per cent of the population to the land, women began to break free, leaving the villages and yearning to be educated. This led many to go abroad, as the doors of schools, and especially universities, were closed to them in Russia. They formed various movements and joined the first revolutionary party, Earth and Freedom. This was extremely dangerous, as the repression of the Tsar’s secret police was increasing and arrests were multiplying.

Alexandra was also brought up in a liberal spirit, and her mother set the best possible example for her – she relied on herself, educated herself, encouraged self-discipline and made her children take responsibility for their actions from a very young age. There was no time for vanity and idleness, and although there was plenty of money, my mother dressed very simply and did not observe any aristocratic etiquette.

Many languages were spoken and Alexandra quickly learned to speak German, English and French, in addition to Russian and Finnish. This knowledge of languages later opened many doors for her around the world and may even have saved her life, as it benefited the new Soviet regime, headed by Stalin, who sent her to various diplomatic posts.

By far her greatest idol was her father. She saw him as a god and was grateful for every minute she could spend with him, even though he did not pay much attention to her. He was tall, handsome and kind, but distant and rarely absent-minded, except when it came to talking about politics and the war. They subscribed to all the radical newspapers and magazines and had a huge home library, where young Alexandra often lingered, devouring every written word. She remained a bookworm all her life, walking around with a book under her arm.

When her father helped the newly independent Bulgaria to write its constitution, the family spent some time in Sofia, and it was there, at the tender age of six, that she met Zoya Shadurskaya. A lifelong friendship was forged and, apart from her son, Zoya was Alexandrina’s closest confidante. She often accompanied her around the world and lived with or near her.

The girl was very advanced for her age and extremely intelligent, but stubborn and rebellious. Whatever she set out to do, she carried out, whatever the cost. Even at home she noticed the differences between social classes and wondered why the maids ate less and less than she did. Most of all, she wanted to go to school, and when her mother granted her wish, her favourite subject quickly became history. She also loved to write – it quickly became clear to her mother that the girl had literary talents, so she got a private tutor.

Then Russia was shaken by the death of Tsar Alexander II, the result of a bomb attack as one of many attempts to assassinate him. It was carried out by the terrorist group People’s Will and coordinated by one of the close friends of Alexandra’s elder sister. Her public execution on the gallows deeply shocked the whole family, and especially the girls. But at the same time, for Shura, these young rebels against the Tsarist regime were real heroes, and she too began to fantasise about political action and activism.

But even before she became a committed revolutionary, despite her shyness and reclusiveness, she began to learn about the charms and hardships of love.

Wife and mother

She always had a huge fan following, because she was beautiful and statuesque, natural and unaffected, with large expressive grey-blue eyes. The first boyfriend she had, at the tender age of fifteen, was incapable of controlling himself because of the intense love. Convinced that she was too good for him, and despite her total commitment to him, he fell into depression and committed suicide. From then on, her mother was particularly protective of her, even though she was shy and rather reclusive. She could only relax around a few people, most of all Zoya.

At the age of nineteen, she met Vladimir Kollontay, her second cousin, a funny, good-natured, open and handsome young man who could make her laugh like few others. He had no money and was not as interested in serious intellectual work as she was, but while she dreamed of changing the world, no one turned her around on the dance floor like him. Her parents tried to dissuade her from marrying him, and she was supposed to cool off by travelling in Europe.

When she arrived in Berlin, she was not a typical tourist, but immediately asked where the legendary German Socialist Party (SPD) met. The SPD was a model for all other left-wing parties in Europe because of its organisation, programme, discipline and success. Alexandra, barely 20 years old, even went to a few of its meetings, while at the same time she was a regular visitor to Berlin and later Paris bookstores, familiarising herself with the revolutionary and socialist literature that was not available at home.

Engels’ works in particular were a great discovery for her, as he focused a lot on women’s inequality under capitalism and the reasons for it. He wrote about the history of women’s oppression and the hypocrisy of bourgeois society. Only when socialism liberates women from domestic work and tasks and abolishes social classes will they be free and be able to build more sophisticated relationships with their partners based on quality and respect.

August Bebel, the founding father of the German Marxist Socialist Party and one of its most prominent members, also wrote extensively on the situation of women and their double oppression, at home and at work, sexually and economically. He wrote about women with great respect and admiration and had enlightened views on the role they should play in society. He argued that they would have to take care of their own liberation and not wait for the help of men, who had oppressed them throughout history.

Later, when Kollontayeva wrote the introduction to the Russian translation of his Women and Socialism, she called it what she called a women’s bible. A book by a Marxist as eminent as Bebel forced European socialists to begin to address women’s issues. The foundations for a women’s socialist movement were laid, and many feminists, studying Bebel and Engels, came closer to Marxism and political activity in general.

While the young Alexandra was slowly developing into a left-wing and feminist intellectual, she also missed Vladimir more and more. On her return, despite her parents’ disapproval, she was even more convinced of the rightness of her decision and they soon married. She arranged a small home for them, in which the first thing to be done was to find space for bookshelves and a desk, and then for everything else. Very soon the couple had a son, Mikhail and Misha.

She loved her little boy the most in the world, but as she has written and said many times, “motherhood has never been the essence of my existence”. She was angry with herself when she was unable to concentrate on anything else while caring for her child and her thoughts were constantly drifting to his small and soft hands. Vladimir was also a good and loving father, and although she adored them both, motherhood and marriage became her prison. Eventually, however, she began to leave her son with a babysitter and set off again to bookstores, libraries and meetings with like-minded people.

But Vladimir still could not shake his desire for a more traditional wife, even though he respected her and bought her books. But he did not like to debate with her and often summarily dismissed her when she tried to explain her well-thought-out ideas and concerns. Nevertheless, she still could not imagine leaving him, and even then she believed that too much preoccupation with emotions was fruitless and that, between love and work, a woman must always choose the latter. This dichotomy, which she saw as irreconcilable, followed her throughout her life and caused her a great deal of emotional turmoil.

Wife, mother and revolutionary

Alexandra’s main concern was the position of women and how to achieve their equality at all levels. She loved to write and, despite the fact that even she claimed to herself that she was only mediocre at it, she spent hours locked up in her library. She also took up fiction early on – even in her first attempt, she was daring and touched on the subject of free love outside marriage. But, as one publisher said, her style was dull and bland, as her best friend Zoya told her honestly and directly.

She was much better at academic writing and, because she was persistent and precise, her texts were well argued and supported by a wealth of relevant data and analysis. She wrote mainly about education, the importance of proper upbringing, physical care and psychological care for mothers and young children, insisting on the importance of physical contact, laughter, joy, warmth and play.

She also introduced the concept of the so-called ‘new’ family, which would only be possible under socialism, in which women would no longer be economically and emotionally dependent on their husbands, and household chores would be collectivised through communal kitchens, dining rooms, nurseries and laundries. She was also very interested in the new science of sexology and the factors that influence sexual behaviour.

Monogamous marriage could no longer satisfy society’s needs, she argued, and partners could discover a new kind of love through optional erotic friendships. Love is enriching, diverse and multifaceted and must be free. Many of her publications were reprinted in the 1970s.

She stood not only for women, but for all oppressed and exploited people, that is to say, above all, workers. Their numbers were growing exponentially and their working conditions were deteriorating. The strike movement was growing stronger and Kollontaeva allied herself with their leaders, some of whom were militant women.

The women never lacked militancy, but they lacked education, will and time. So Kollontai began to organise free lectures for them in the evenings, encouraging them to stand up for themselves through concrete action.

Women factory workers were treated little better than criminals, paid half as much as men, worked 12 to 16 hours a day, sometimes even 18, and in the case of pregnancy, until the last moment before giving birth. Often they gave birth in a squatting position at work, barely hidden from the eyes of others. They could not take care of their children, as this would mean losing their jobs, so they got rid of them or gave them away in various ways. Almost worst of all was the air pollution and the exposure to chemicals, which led to so many newborn deaths, respiratory diseases and premature deaths among workers.

When her husband Vladimir tried to convince her that the more modern ventilation system in the factories he was working on would solve the workers’ ills, she was angry and disappointed by his naive optimism. And when she visited her first factory and saw for herself the conditions in which people were working, she was shocked. In the neglected sleeping quarters, a toddler about the same age as her son lay on the floor among a bunch of ragged children. He was dead, and the young nanny shrugged her shoulders, saying that such things are just part of our daily lives. This was an important turning point in Alexandra Kollontai’s life.

Her rather lavish lifestyle – holidays, parties, dances, ice skating, socialising – was no longer compatible with her beliefs. “I can no longer live like this while others live like animals,” she was convinced. She devoted herself even more to work and learning, for example by studying political economy, in order to better understand the world around her and thus be able to change it.

At the same time, revolutionary activities were also taking shape, with Lenin and other Marxists moving from theory to practice and founding the Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class. They even made some progress, such as the ban on night work for women and children, but with the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II in 1894 many hopes of reform faded.

Once again, a complete autocracy reigned, spiced with a great deal of repression by a powerful secret police, restricting freedom of speech, assembly, education, political activity. Tsar Nicholas was afraid of the potential of his subjects, so the 80% illiteracy rate suited him just fine. He even wanted to ban the use of the word intellectual.

Soon all dissidents, headed by Lenin, were buried or exiled. But work and agitation continued underground and from abroad. Kollontaiyeva escaped arrest for the time being, although she was very active in spreading revolutionary thought.

Freed from traditional shackles

But she was rather isolated in her work with women in Russia – where the majority opinion was still that women had no place in politics – and was all the more impressed by the success of German socialists such as Klara Zetkin, Lily Braun and, of course, Rosa Luxemburg. They were a testament to women’s political power and the driving force of the German SPD, even though they were constantly persecuted and harassed under Bismarck’s iron hand.

His so-called anti-socialist laws were even stricter for women than for men. This gave rise to a rich underground movement where they learned additional organisational skills and gained a new sense of solidarity. German women were also the initiators of the international socialist women’s movement, within which they all eventually became good friends of Alexandra. They were also influential within the Second International, which tried to mobilise socialists all over the world.

More and more Russian socialists were leaving their homeland – for their studies, for too much repression, for the need for international integration. Alexandra was also increasingly drawn to international waters and finally summoned up the courage to tell Vladimir that she wanted to study in Zurich, Switzerland. He was immensely understanding and willing to take care of the barely three-year-old Misha without protest.

From then on, it was always like this whenever Aleksandra travelled or worked without a break. She was grateful for his help for the rest of her life and they have always maintained a warm relationship. Despite her proverbial independence and feminism, she kept his surname even after her divorce and Vladimir’s remarriage.

The decision to put her family second to her studies and work was a difficult one, but an important one in preserving her principles. She found solace in her work, and was buried in it for the rest of her rich life. She lived an even more solitary and simple life, studying, reading and writing, and in her spare time, hiking in the beautiful Swiss Alps. Throughout her life she was renowned for her legendary elegance, but she rarely wore more than one simple grey or brown dress. She always made sure her face and hair were well-groomed, but otherwise she never took time for herself.

After about a year, she returned to Russia, took her son in and continued to consolidate the women’s movement. She taught Marxism and geography in the evenings and wrote during the day. She constantly drew attention to the defeated state of women in Russian society and in the factories, researching how many ended up on the streets, how many among the prostitutes, how many died because of the intolerable working and hygienic conditions. But she did not give herself up completely to illegal activities out of fear for her son’s safety.

She also worked with the Finnish socialists and visited her mother’s homeland several times a year to support the women’s movement there, which was stronger and more militant than the Russian one. Finnish women, for example, were among the first to vote, in 1906.

But in Russia, the boiling point was rising and Lenin was already predicting revolution in the years before 1905. He believed that the workers would take power definitively and uncompromisingly, and this vehement conviction already pointed to the coming conflict between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks. The former were more conciliatory and favoured cooperation with the liberal parties in overthrowing the tsarist regime, while the latter were categorically opposed.

Kollontayeva initially saw the conflict as a trivial argument between emigrants, as the differences between the two factions were supposed to be small. What annoyed her more was that neither one nor the other paid enough attention to women, even though there were more and more of them in the factories. All other issues were supposedly more pressing for the party tops than gender equality.

She wanted to convince her comrades that women and men should work side by side within the party, as in Germany. But she came under heavy attack within the party for promoting a dangerous deviation towards feminism. The Bolsheviks, in particular, feared that in already difficult circumstances for the workers’ movement, the women’s demands would divide it even more.

But Kollontaeva persisted with her warnings, and at the same time, with effort and discipline, fought her way within the party apparatus, because she was an excellent agitator and orator.

The Revolution of 1905

In 1905, the tension of the last decades came to a head with the Revolution. In its aftermath, the Tsar, fearing a repetition and even worse strike waves, promised for the first time reforms instead of whips and pogroms, such as the four freedoms – of the media, of speech, of assembly and of religion – and even universal suffrage for men. The scope for legal political activity temporarily increased, and trade unions and soviets – associations of workers with representative and executive functions – proliferated in all the major factories and towns.

The new Russian parliament, the Duma, was also to have more powers and to represent different social and demographic interests. But its doors remained completely closed to women. In any case, it was soon dissolved by the Tsar, as was the next one, and its leftist deputies were impeached on false charges.

The conflict between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks temporarily subsided and they tried to act together, since the workers were not interested in their differences either. The Mensheviks, in particular, wanted an official unification because they were more moderate and pragmatic. That is why they also supported cooperation with the old elites within the Duma and with the new government of Tsar Nicholas. The Bolsheviks, who had built their party on iron discipline and a rigid organisational structure, were categorically opposed. But it was a strong organisation that later helped them to take power. Alexandra was officially more on the side of the Mensheviks, although she cooperated with both of them, but in the exile in which she ended up after 1908, this was anyway of secondary importance.

When the revolution failed ignominiously, many abandoned their most radical demands, and even women were urged to wait until the situation was more mature again. Alexandra was used to such disappointments and never gave up. She took every opportunity to fight for equality and even founded a new women’s club. It became a true haven where both men and women gathered in the evenings for lectures, talks and snacks.

But even such clubs were becoming illegal, and the opportunities for activism of any kind were becoming fewer by the day. Everyone had been arrested, and she was the only one still at large. And indeed she was on the arrest list, but she picked up her awls and hooves in time to move to Germany, where she spent the next eight years.

During those years she became a convinced internationalist, travelled extensively and became extremely well-known as an influential and interesting speaker. For example, the German party organised a three-week speaking tour for her in industrial German cities and she became a sensation.

Despite a terrible initial shake-up, she had a special charm on stage. Her speeches were personal and genuine, she was witty and inventive, and she talked about her experience of the 1905 revolution, her ideas on the family, the role of women, her work with newspapers, clubs, trade unions and so on.

Her audience usually consisted of several hundred men and the beer flowed in torrents. Later, the offers multiplied, and she gave similar speaking tours in impoverished industrial Belgian towns with a long history of protest movements.

Privately, she still preferred to keep to herself, but was in regular contact with Misha and Zoya. She also had her first love affair since her divorce from Vladimir, with a prominent economist and politician a few years older. He was married with five children, which was a constant pang to her conscience. Not wanting to bear the burden of his divorce, she refused to marry him. But then it became clear that he expected her to subordinate her wants and needs to his anyway. She was disappointed because he was interested in her primarily physically, whereas she wanted to see in him an intellectual partner of equal worth.

Love and work

Her love life really came to life when she met Alexander Shliapnikov, thirteen years her junior, a factory worker and a close friend and comrade of Lenin. Throughout his years of exile, he participated in revolutionary activities and smuggled Marxist literature into Russia. The spark between them immediately jumped and she finally met someone who was genuinely interested in her work.

They were very similar, even though he came from a poor peasant family. Both had strong wills and even stronger principles, they were resourceful and committed to socialist ideology, but without any secret agendas and completely uninterested in internal political and party disputes.

They saw each other only rarely because of their work, which was particularly difficult for her. She often wanted to break off the relationship, but she adored him too much, and he always came after her, encouraging her and writing her wonderful letters. Soon they were known as husband and wife, and Lenin addressed them as such. Once, when she was imprisoned in Stockholm for illegal activities, he was only concerned with getting her out of jail. It was one of the few times when he neglected his political work.

But when they were together, she was annoyed that he was taking time away from her that she could have spent working and writing. This disconnect between the desire to give love and the need for constant social usefulness followed her throughout her life.

The constant work and worries soon caused her the first serious health problems, which she never recovered from. She began to experience chest pains, high blood pressure and numerous angina attacks. When she was ill and alone, she buried herself in books, including novels, about women, their sufferings, relationships and experiences. The ‘new’ woman was still present in her thinking, exhausted when she returned home alone in the evening after a hard day, but liberated and perfected.

Within four years, Kollontaeva had written a 600-page work, Society and Motherhood, in which she gave a shocking and fatal account of Russian society and the place of women in it, with detailed statistics on stillbirths, abortions, pregnancy rates and so on. There was only one midwife for every 4 000 women giving birth, mothers were not given a day off after giving birth, more than 30% of babies died before the age of two, and so on.

She also took part in a four-month speaking tour of the United States, where she spoke in 123 cities in English, German and Russian and, among other things, persuaded audiences, especially German workers, to support Lenin’s idea of a new Communist International. She was advertised as a renowned lecturer of international repute and the queues outside her speeches snaked like snakes. She described in her diary all her adventures and fascination with progress and modern gadgets and devices – the elevator, for example – that she had never seen before.

She was happy for a while, and Shliapnikov joined her. But eventually exhaustion overcame her and she could hardly wait to return to Europe. There, everything was already in readiness for the First World War.

Love in wartime

The only people in Europe who were against the war were the Bolsheviks, part of the British Independence Party and the Serbs. This led to a clash within the European socialist structure, as most socialists supported their countries’ entry into the war.

The initial good fortune of the Russians on the battlefields quickly turned against them, and already at the Battle of Tannenburg in August 1914 300,000 Russians were massacred. One of Kollontai’s most influential contributions was a classic anti-war manifesto entitled “Who Needs War?”, addressed to German and Russian factory workers and soldiers at the front. After a year or two, Russian industry and transport were already in ruins, the rouble worthless, the people hungry and poor as church mice, the Tsar despised. Russians took to the streets in violent demonstrations and riots to demand an end to the war, the murder and starvation, and the Tsar’s resignation. The February Revolution began, and the Tsar’s resignation ended the 300-year rule of the Romanovs.

After a few unsuccessful months of the provisional government of the moderate liberal Alexander Kerensky, which declared a political amnesty, many influential exiles returned to their homeland, including, of course, Lenin and Kollontaiva. Russia was still at war and the Bolsheviks were calling on soldiers and sailors to turn their arms away from the imperialist war to the enemy at home and seize power in the name of socialism. The Bolsheviks began to take over the factories and proclaim themselves the force that would carry out the next successful revolution. Only three weeks after Lenin’s return, it was clear that the Bolsheviks were going to take power one way or another.

Kollontayeva was one of the most visible representatives of the leading Bolshevik set, and she electrified the masses with her vast international experience, her powerful and convincing theatrical voice, her pleasant gestures and her attention-grabbing elegant appearance.

She never forgot women when she called for an end to war and a classless world. She was persistent in her advocacy for their equality and for them to have a place in the Soviets.

During this turbulent revolutionary period, 45-year-old Alexandra met the love of her life. She and Shliapnik had long since broken up when the romantic 28-year-old Pavel Dybenko, a Ukrainian with humble peasant roots, came her way. Their relationship was as stormy as the period in which they met.

In many ways, he saw her as his teacher, encouraging him to read Marx and learn history. He was one of the most influential and popular Bolsheviks, a naval commander and at the forefront of many revolts against the Tsar and the Provisional Government and later during the October Revolution and the Civil War. Nevertheless, many were shocked by the union, mainly because of the difference in years. It certainly damaged Kollontaiva’s reputation, as even Lenin said that he would not vouch for a woman who mixed her love life with politics.

Minister and diplomat

The last desperate attempt at an offensive against Germany, ordered by Kerensky, failed and with it the provisional government. The Bolsheviks, with the crucial help of soldiers and sailors, took over one institution after another and set up a new government. Alexandra Kollontai became the first woman in the world to hold a ministerial post. She became Minister or Commissioner for Social Affairs.

But the country was in complete chaos. In 1918-1920, five million Russians died of cholera, pneumonia and typhoid fever, and there was only one doctor for every five thousand people. As many as two million soldiers out of nine deserted. No basic services worked, there was no money in the treasury, and the Allies, with Churchill at their head, decided to “strangle Bolshevism in its cradle”. Nobody recognised the new regime.

But, as usual, Alexandra Kollontai undertook her difficult task with deliberation and perseverance. Her portfolio included girls’ schools, allowances for war veterans, retirement homes, pensions, leper colonies, mental hospitals, tuberculosis sanatoriums, orphanages, etc. It had neither money nor equipment, only a few dedicated workers.

She abolished the hierarchy in the ministry and equalised all salaries, then started talking to people and writing the first draft laws. They quickly changed the tsarist family law, simplified marriage and divorce, decriminalised homosexuality, and gave mothers protection and care for their young children. They were also the first in the world to legalise abortion. Indeed, abandoned children, of which there were seven million in the cities by 1922, were a major problem for its Commissariat.

Despite being totally exhausted by the amount of work and the hunger, it was the most beautiful period of her life. Dybenko was also at the peak of his activity, although their relationship was becoming increasingly unstable. He often cheated on her. Success went to his head and he too wished she had stood by his side as a more traditional wife. Slowly, their relationship worked out.

But the war was still not over and the first negotiations with Germany failed. When Lenin and Trotsky decided to sign a humiliating armistice treaty with the Germans, but Kollontaiyeva opposed it, she quickly fell out of favour. She lost her post as Commissar and fell into political inactivity. She was also thrown out of the Central Committee and no one stood up for her. Moreover, she feared for both Misha and Dybenko.

But when the civil war started and the European countries, the USA and Japan coordinated the overthrow of the Bolsheviks, the Bolsheviks rallied again. The war lasted two and a half years and killed between five and seven million Russians. In the end, the Bolsheviks were victorious, as few had foreseen. Trotsky and Lenin agreed on the need for temporary drastic measures on the militarisation and reorganisation of the army and the Party’s control over millions of workers and every aspect of their lives. The regime was slowly becoming a distorted version of its own ideal. And it has survived in that very form.

During the war, Kollontai’s persistence in spreading Bolshevik thought was exhausting. In 1919 she suffered her first heart attack and her heart problems only intensified. From then on, she was never the same. She was further affected by the brutal deaths of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in Germany, which dashed hopes of an international revolution.

After Lenin’s death, everything had already turned upside down in the Soviet Union. Stalin had, in one way or another, purged all the cadres over the years, and Alexandra Kollontai was lucky, because of her international prestige and perhaps her gender, to have survived his purges as the sole representative of the First Government.

In poor health and exhausted, she accepted his offer to join the diplomatic corps. She was thus once again breaking new ground, as until then, no women ambassadors had been known anywhere. In the end, it was Norway that accepted her as head of a small diplomatic trade mission in Oslo. She also served in Mexico and Sweden.

She also excelled in diplomacy, immersed herself in her work and signed important trade agreements for the Soviet Union, among other things. She was also a member of the Soviet delegation to the League of Nations and, after the war, was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts in the peace negotiations between the Soviet Union and Finland in 1940-1944.

She died in Moscow in 1952 at the age of 80. She lived the life she had imagined as a little girl. Different from everyone else. But always with a clear mission to fight for the rights of women, the oppressed and the weaker.