Alexandra Kollontai: A Biography

by Cathy Porter

Alexandra Kollontai was a key leader of the Russian Socialist movement, the only woman in the early Soviet government, and one of the most famous women in Russian history. She worked tirelessly all her life as a speaker, writer, and organizer for women's emancipation. This compelling biography recounts her life for an emerging generation of fighters for women's liberation. Cathy Porter is a translator, teacher, and researcher on Russian history. She is the author of Fathers and Russian Women in Revolution and translator of Alexandra Kollontai's Love of Worker Bees .

Genres: Biography, History, Nonfiction, Feminism, Audiobook, Russia

560 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Cathy Porter has translated over thirty books and plays from Russian, including The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy and, most recently, Dmitry Bykov's award-winning novel Living Souls.
She is the author of several books: about women terrorists in tsarist Russia, on political art in the 1905 revolution and on Moscow in the Second World War. She has written a biography of the revolutionary Larissa Reisner, and is now compiling a new anthology of Kollontai's writings.

Reviews

[AHW · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid biography of indispensable figure who still provides one of the furthest forward points yet reached in communist thinking and practice on women’s liberation. It spans her personal and political lives rather nicely; the political dimension is sufficient, but could be sharper, and is most damaged by Porter’s apparent allegiance to “feminism” as the framework par excellence for women’s liberation. “Feminism” in Kollontai’s day referred unambiguously to the bourgeois ideology of the Suffragettes, and so this defect makes a bit of a mush of the vitally important debates Kollontai engaged in with others in the party, including other women, over how the party should foster women’s liberation, with any negative mention of “feminism” or preference for the liberation of women to be incorporated directly into the party’s organizational core instead of delegated to Kollontai’s women’s department regarded by Porter as misogyny. So this is a good biography, but we could do with better. When will Kollontai and the other Bolshevik and Opposition women get their Lars Lih?

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a dame.

[Ollie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alexandra Kollontai was a revolutionary Russian Communist, the only woman in the first Bolshevik government of 1917, and one of the few original members to survive the reign of Stalin. In this updated biography, Cathy Porter draws from memoirs, diary entries, and letters to paint a very complex picture of a somewhat neglected historical figure.

Highly detailed and thorough, the 444 pages of Porter’s biography are dedicated mostly to Kollontai’s life as a revolutionary before she was “exiled” as a Russian ambassador to Norway in 1923. As one would expect, this period also the most interesting and turbulent part of her life.

A highly determined, intelligent, and idealistic person, Kollontai has led a life full of sacrifices in order to attempt to change the world either through her writing or as part of the Bolshevik government. Complicating the matter was her role as a women and the lack of agency this gave her in a system that ironically stood for equality across genders. Especially interesting is how this book studies the immediate problems facing the Bolshevik government upon its foundation, the ongoing world war, the onset of a Russian civil war, the lack of able bodies and supplies, the building of a bureaucratic class as a response to the flood of demands, and a new ruling class unprepared to handle these problems. Through it all, Porter paints a picture of the events unfolding from Kollontai’s perspective, the motivation behind her decisions, and the tragic consequence of her attempting to take on an increasingly dangerous system where she had little influence. In the end, it as her revolutionary fire dies out and her options become limited, Kollontai simply becomes another tool of the enemy.

Although very enjoyable, there are several faults with Porter’s biography. First, Kollontai’s childhood figures are not developed enough to distinguish them when they appear later in her life. Adding to this confusion is how Porter often neglects to explain important events and conflicts to the reader, for example how the 1905 revolution founded the Russian Soviet, and what exactly caused the clash between the communists and feminists.

Regardless, there is much to like in Porter’s biography, and in the end, Kollontai is represented as a visionary woman, ahead of her time, whose life was full lessons we can still learn from today.

[Owen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A detailed and interesting work. Viewing the Russian revolutionary movement through Kollontai's life gives Porter the opportunity to give a really rich insight into debates about women's liberation, and exposes the limitations - and sexism - in the Party which limited this work. It also gives an unromantic and realistic view of life in the heat of revolutionary war. Finally, it gives an appropriate depth of personal insight into Kollontai, whose confrontations with sexism in the Bolshevik party was usually so tied up with her mildly turbulent love-life.

While Kollontai does not emerge from this work as a spotless prophet of Marxist-feminism, she appears as an important and pioneering voice, who cannot be easily assimilated by any contemporary tradition with which she might otherwise be associated (Marxist-feminists, Trotskyists, syndicalists, Stalinists).

Kollontai was always an independent and idiosyncratic political figure. At times, she appears heroic, at others cowardly. Porter's biggest difficulty here is in treading this line appropriately. Porter's sympathies are evidently Trotskyist, and at times her anti-Stalinism is even a little crude. But Porter is also somewhat over-eager to reduce Kollontai to an oppositional voice against Stalinism, even as she played a full diplomatic role in the foreign policy of Litvinov and Molotov, and refused to associate with any opposition group in the key era of resistance to Stalinism. Perhaps related to this, the book doesn't always give a clear synoptic view of revolutionary politics and the world-historical contexts for Kollontai's political life.

While these limitations prevent this book from achieving the status of a classic biography, they do not take away too substantially from its interest and usefulness. Would recommend.

[Tara Brabazon · Rating 3 out of 5]

First published in 1980 and moving to a second edition in 2014, Cathy Porter has balanced the personal and political infusions of Kollontai's life. The many meanings - and the many burdens - of the double shift for women through the Bolshevik revolution and beyond are shown with clarity and edge throughout this book.

It is structured chronologically, but the writing style is even and engaging. The complex choices made about education, family, writing and men through Kollontai's life are revealed.

Porter makes the point in her introduction that the time had come for a revision of this biography. She is right. Kollontai's battle against capitalism - rather than men - is just as relevant and fresh in public discourse as during the Bolshevik revolution.

[Garry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing life story told with great detail. Two flaws, a tremendous overuse of personal pronouns instead clearly stating whom is being written about. And a great deal of factual statements made without reasonable attribution. Nevertheless, a vital insight into the history of socialism, communism, women's rights, and the birth of the USSR.

[Jane Scarfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible Woman. Was almost in tears at the conclusion.

[Daniel Bickle-Lazarow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alexandra Kollontai was the only woman on the Central committee of the Bolshevik party that took power in Russia in 1917 at a time when before the revolution women didn't even have the vote. The biography has good insight into the inspiring journey Alexandra took from criticising the feminist movement for focusing for equal voting rights when poor women had no child support and had to work 14 hours to when she was essentially exiled for her opposition to the new economic policy. The end of her life is quite depressing when she saw many of her revolutionary friends persecuted by Stalin and eventually purged, but ultimately it shows the incredibly inspiring character of kollontai.

It's quite a long book so I'd only recommend if you're interested in the relationship of Bolshevik socialism and feminism but if that's what you're into, this is an amazing recount.

[Martin Weigand · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rarely do you read a historical biography written with such depth and love for the subject. Here is one of the most shocking things about the book: It has NEVER been made into a blockbuster film. Alexandra Kollontai's life cries out for a sweeping film epic. This book will introduce you to a Russian woman from the upper classes in the 1880s, who became a committed communist, knew Lenin, Stalin, and all the major movers of history in Russia. Politically, sexually, romantically: she had seen it all and done it all. She witnessed and lived through brutally and death, war and romance, betrayal and passion. She lived a thousand lifetimes in one life from 1872 to 1952. READ THIS BOOK!

[Elizabeth Mills · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another insightful read on the subject of Russia as it lurched into revolution. I bought this book, and Trotsky's 'History of the Russian Revolution' as part of my research for my two Natalie Tereshchenko novels, set in that country at that time. It was a revelation to see things through the eyes of the only woman to serve on Lenin's first government.

Cathy Porter's own research for this book provides the depth needed to understand Alexandra Kollontai's complex character. No wonder it has become a standard work for students of the feminist movement. A delightful book.

[Alana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alexandra Kollantai is a fascinating historical figure, and I learned a lot of Russian history reading this. But I also skipped long passages for being very dry and academic and... long.

[Barry Smirnoff]

Not an easy read. The difficult terrain that Alexandra(what the author calls her) traverses combining good taste, progressive politics, feminism, social welfare and social policy and the Bolshevik Revolution. She is in the avantguard of promoting the needs of working women, girls, mothers, widows and orphans. Also the education and training of women to socialize housework to the maximum extent. She somehow avoided the meat grinder that destroyed the other old Bolsheviks, by being an international celebrity and the face of the Soviet Union in Europe. These theories somehow seem quaint right now, as women strive to change their place in society on an international level. She lived an interesting life and somehow lived to tell about it.