Alexandra kollontai autobiography

This, perhaps, was the root cause of the protest against everything around me that very early burgeoned within me. Too much was done for me in order to make me happy. I had no freedom of maneuver either in the children's games I played or in the desires that I wanted to express. At the same time I wanted to be free. My parents were well-to-do.

There was no luxury in the house, but I did not know the meaning of privation. Yet I saw how other children were forced to give up things, and I was particularly and painfully shocked by the little peasant children who were my playmates we lived almost always in the countryside, on the estate of my grandfather, who was a Finn. Already as a small [18] child I criticized [19] the injustice of adults and I experienced as a blatant contradiction [20] the fact that everything was offered to me whereas so much was denied to the other children.

My criticism sharpened as the years went by and the feeling of revolt against the many proofs of love around me grew apace. I was never sent to school because my parents lived in a constant state of anxiety over my health and they could not endure the thought that I, like all other children, should spend two hours daily far from home.

My mother probably also had a certain horror of the liberal influences with which I might come into contact at the high school. Mother, of course, considered that I was already sufficiently critically [22] inclined. Thus I received my education at home under the direction of a proficient, clever tutoress who was connected with Russian revolutionary circles.

I owe very much to her, Mme. Marie Strakhova. I took [23] the examinations qualifying me for admission to the university when I was barely sixteen in [24] and thereafter I was expected to lead the life of a "young society woman. On the contrary, they were even [26] rather progressive for their time. But they held fast to traditions where it concerned the child, the young person under their roof.

My first bitter struggle against these traditions revolved around the idea of marriage. I was supposed to make a good match [27] and mother was bent upon marrying me off at a very early age. My oldest sister, at the age of nineteen, had contracted marriage with a highly placed gentleman who was nearly seventy. My maiden name was Domontovich. The happiness of my marriage lasted hardly three years.

I gave birth to a son. Although I personally raised my child with great care, [31] motherhood was never the kernel of my existence. A child had not been able to draw the bonds of my marriage tighter. I still loved my husband, but the happy life of a housewife and spouse became for me a "cage. I read voraciously. I zealously studied all [33] social questions, attended lectures, and worked in semi-legal societies for the enlightenment of the people.

Lenin at that time was only a novice in the literary and revolutionary arena. George Plechanov was the leading mind of the time. I stood close to the materialist conception of history, since in early womanhood I had inclined towards the realistic school. I was an enthusiastic follower of Darwin and Roelsches. A visit to the big and famous Krengolm textile factory, which employed 12, workers of both sexes, decided my fate.

I could not lead a happy, peaceful life when the working population was so terribly enslaved. I simply had to join this movement. At that time this led to differences with my husband, who felt that my inclinations constituted an act of personal defiance directed against him. I left husband and child and journeyed to Zurich in order to study political economy under Professor Heinrich Herkner.

Therewith [34] began my conscious life on behalf of the revolutionary goals of the working-class movement. When I came back to St. I worked as a writer and propagandist. The fate of Finland, whose independence and relative freedom were being threatened by the reactionary policy of the Czarist regime at the end of the '90's, exercised a wholly special power of attraction upon me.

Perhaps my particular gravitation towards Finland resulted from the impressions I received on my grandfather's estate during my childhood. I actively espoused the cause of Finland's national liberation. Thus my first extensive [35] scientific work in political economy was a comprehensive investigation [36] of the living and working conditions of the Finnish proletariat in relation to industry.

My parents had just died, my husband and I had been living separately for a long time, and only my son remained in my care. Now I had the opportunity to devote myself completely to my aims: [38] to the Russian revolutionary movement and to the working-class movement of the whole world. They were there, they intertwine with my life over and over again.

But as great as was my love for my husband, immediately it transgressed a certain limit in relation to my feminine proneness to make sacrifice, rebellion flared in me anew. I had to go away, I had to break with the man of my choice, otherwise this was a subconscious feeling in me I would have exposed myself to the danger of losing my selfhood.

It must also be said that not a single one of the men who were close to me has ever had a direction-giving influence on my inclinations, strivings, or my world-view. On the contrary, most of the time I was the guiding spirit. I acquired my view of life, my political line from life itself, and in uninterrupted study from [40] books. In , at the time the so-called first revolution in Russia broke out, after the famous Bloody Sunday, I had already acquired a reputation in the field of economic and social literature.

And in those stirring times, when all energies were utilized in the storm of revolt, it turned out that I had become very popular as an orator. Yet in that period I realized for the first time how little our Party concerned itself with the fate of the women of the working class and how meager was its interest in women's liberation. To be sure a very strong bourgeois women's movement was already in existence in Russia.

But my Marxist outlook pointed out to me with an illuminating clarity that women's liberation [41] could take place only as the result of the victory of a new social order and a different economic system. Therefore I threw myself into the struggle between the Russian [42] suffragettes and strove with all my might to induce the working-class movement to include the woman question as one of the aims of its struggle in its program.

I was completely isolated with my ideas and demands. Nevertheless in the years I won a small group of women Party comrades over to my plans. I [46] wrote [47] an article published in the illegal press in in which for the first time [48] I set forth the demand to call the working-class movement into being in Russia through systematic Party work.

In Autumn of we opened up the first Working Women's Club. Many of the members of this club, who were still very young workers at that time, now occupy important posts in the new Russia and in the Russian Communist Party K. Nicolaieva, Marie Burke, etc. One result of my activity in connection with the women workers, [49] but especially of my political writings—among which was a pamphlet on Finland containing the call to rise up against the Czarist Duma [50] with "arms"—was the institution of legal proceedings against me which held out the grim prospect of spending many years in prison.

I was forced to disappear immediately and was never again to see my home. My son was taken in by good friends, my small household liquidated. I became "an illegal. The first All-Russian Women's Congress which had been called by the bourgeois suffragettes was scheduled to take place in December of At that time the reaction was on the rise and the working-class movement was prostrate again after the first victory in Many Party comrades were in jail, others had fled abroad.

The vehement struggle between the two factions of the Russian Workers Party broke out anew: the Bolsheviks on the one side, the Mensheviks on the other. In I belonged to the Menshevik faction, having been forced thereto by the hostile position taken by the Bolsheviks towards the Duma, a pseudo-Parliament called by the Czar in order to Pacify the rebellious spirits of the age.

Although with the Mensheviks I espoused the point of view that even a pseudo-Parliament should be utilized as a tribute for our Party and that the elections for the Duma must be used as an assembling point for the working class. But I did not side with the Mensheviks on the question of coordinating the forces of the workers with the Liberals in order to accelerate the overthrow of absolutism.

On this point I was, in fact, very left-radical and was even branded as a "syndicalist" by my Party comrades. Nevertheless I worked with might and main to assure that our [52] women workers, who were to participate in the Congress, emerged as an independent and distinct group. I managed to carry out this plan but not without opposition.

My Party comrades [53] accused me and those women-comrades who shared my views of being "feminists" and of placing too much emphasis on matters of concern to women only. At the time there was still no comprehension at all [54] of the extraordinarily important role in the struggle devolving upon self-employed professional women. Nevertheless our will prevailed.

A women-workers' group came forward at the Congress in St. Petersburg with its own [55] program and it drew a clear line of demarcation between the bourgeois suffragettes and the women's liberation movement of the working class in Russia. However, I was forced to flee before the close of the Congress because the police had come upon my tracks.

I managed to cross the frontier inter Germany and thus, in December of , began a new period of my life, political emigration. As a political refugee henceforth I lived in Europe and America until the overthrow of Czarism in Already in I had taken part, as a delegate from Russia, in the first International Conference of Socialist Women that was held in Stuttgart.

This gathering was presided over by Clara Zetkin and it made an enormous contribution to the development of the women-workers movement along Marxist lines. I put myself at the disposal of the Party press as a writer on social and political questions, and I was also frequently called upon as an orator by the German Party and I worked for the Party as an agitator from the Palatinate to Saxony, from Bremen to south Germany.

But I assumed [59] no leading posts either in the Russian party or in the German party. I can now openly confess [61] that in the Russian Party I deliberately kept somewhat aloof from the controlling center, and that is explainable mainly by the fact that I was not yet in complete agreement with the policy of my comrades. In this way I, too, had my ambition and it was especially noticeable there where I stood with my whole heart and soul [64] in the struggle, where the issue was the abolition of the slavery of working women.

I had above all set myself the task of winning over women workers in Russia to socialism and, at the same time, of working for the liberation of [65] woman, for her equality of rights. My book "The Social Foundations of the Women's Question" had appeared shortly before my flight; it was a polemical disputation with the bourgeois suffragettes but, at the same time, a challenge to the Party to build a viable women workers movement in Russia.

The book enjoyed a great success. At that time I wrote for the legal and illegal press. Through an exchange of letters I tried to influence Party comrades and women workers themselves. Naturally, I always did this in such a way that I demanded from the Party that it [66] espouse the cause of women's liberation. I did not always have an easy time of it.

Much passive resistance, little understanding, and even less interest for this aim, over and over again, lay as an obstacle in the path. It was not until , shortly before the outbreak of the World War, that finally both factions—the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks—took up the question in an earnest and practical way, a fact which had on me an effect almost tantamount to a personal commendation.

Two periodicals for working women were launched in Russia, the International Working Women's Congress of March 8, , was celebrated. I was still living in exile, however, and could help the so dearly loved women-workers movement in my homeland only from afar. I was in close contact, also from afar, with the working women of Russia. Already several years earlier [67] I had been appointed by the Textile Workers Union as an official delegate to the Second International Conference of Socialist Women and, further, [68] to the extraordinary International Socialist Congress in Basle in Later when a draft of a bill on social insurance was introduced in the Russian pseudo-Parliament the Duma , the Social Democratic Duma faction of the Menshevik wing requested me to elaborate the draft of a bill on maternity welfare.

It was not the first time that the [69] faction lay claim to my energies for legislative work. Just before I was forced to go into exile, I had been enlisted by them—as a qualified expert—to participate in the deliberation of the question of Finland in the Imperial Duma. The task that had been assigned to me, namely, the elaboration of a draft of a bill in the field of maternity welfare, motivated me to undertake a most thorough study of this special question.

Nevertheless I also studied the question in England, France, and in the Scandinavian countries. The result of these studies was my book "Motherhood and Society," a comprehensive [70] work of pages on maternity welfare and the relevant legislation in Europe and Australia. The fundamental regulations and demands in this field, which I summed up at the end of my book, were realized later in by the Soviet regime in the first social insurance laws.

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Alexandra kollontai autobiography

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She boasted of having "succeeded in structuring her intimate life according to her own standards and that she make s no secret of her love experiences anymore than does a man" but this statement, too, was crossed out by her. A marvelous exhibition of how to write with both your hands tied up. Nathan "N. Alexandra Kollontai had the misfortune of fighting the good fight in the wrong country.

Meanwhile, many of her writings, including the two pieces included in this volume, are available free!! But reading it was a terribly dull experience. Dhanaraj Rajan. I have some basic knowledge of Dialectical Materialism. To read this book, that was not enough. One needed to be well acquainted with Russian History Soviet Revolutions.

Otherwise, I liked her views on the struggle to choose between Love and Career. A woman is to be valued for the contribution that she makes towards the Socialist Society. Woman's value is to decided by the work she does. But Love, Marriage and Motherhood stand in opposition to such aims. Love and Marriage chains a woman to a particular person and family.

Her work remains within that. That should not be. This was her opinion. But Kollontai also admits that in spite of knowing it, she always falls for the love of a man. This has been her struggle, she says. Kollontai indirectly states that a woman is made for man and man is made for woman. Each one depends on the other. One can not live without the other.

This has been the intention of the Author of Life. That is why, He created humankind - "male and female He created them. That is not wrong. That is equally right. But she placed them in opposite poles - Love vs Career. She never gave a thought to Love and Career. Andrea Vega. Author 7 books followers. El libro lo pueden encontrar, como siempre, en mi carpeta: epub, mobi y pdf.

A quick recap of Aleksandra Kollontai's life and work for the liberation of working women; I also agree with her about the struggle being international, rather than national, in nature. My only complaint is that she left out many details, specially of her role as the People's Commisariat for Social Welfare - and all the work she did to redefine the role of women in familial units.

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