Alexandra Kollontai (1872–1952)

Alexandra Mikhailovna Kollontai, née Domontovich, was born in St. Petersburg, Russia to a wealthy family. Her father was a general in the Tsar’s army, and her mother was the daughter of a prosperous Finnish businessman. Alexandra's mother had fled an arranged marriage to be with her father, and this background influenced Alexandra's own views on marriage and relationships. Alexandra was a good student in childhood, with an interest in history, and learned to speak French, English, Finnish, and German. She wanted to attend university, but her mother refused permission; instead, Alexandra was to be allowed to become a school teacher before debuting in society to find a husband, as was the custom of girls of her class. At age 21, against her parents' wishes, she married her cousin Vladimir Kollontai, an engineering student of modest means, with whom she had a son. But she felt trapped by domestic life and seethed with anger at social injustice. She abandoned her husband and son and went to the University of Zurich to study political economy. Upon returning to Russia in 1899, she joined the illegal Social Democratic Labor Party to organize female workers. In 1908, about to be arrested for her political writing, she fled for Europe and the USA, where she wrote, organized, lectured, and spent time in prison for her anti-war activism. At the onset of World War I, outraged by the hypocrisy of Europe’s newly-hawkish Social Democrats, she returned to Russia in time to meet the sealed train that brought Lenin to the Finland Station. For her support of the Bolshevik Revolution, she was named Commissar for Social Welfare in the first Soviet government, a position she held for five months, before resigning in protest against the treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Kollantai continued in the government, working for women's liberation and sexual freedom, but was frequently critical of Communist Party leaders. She became a political outcast and was sent into the diplomatic corps, one of the first women in the service, with posts in Norway, Mexico, and Sweden; eventually she attained the rank of Ambassador. She wrote many publications expressing her views on the struggles of women, including short stories and the novels Love of Worker Bees and
A Great Love. Her Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman was published in English in 1971.