SO MANY MYTHS surround Alexandra Kollontai. This edition of Selected Writings, compiled and introduced by Alix Holt, is a very welcome format.
mittee; present at the Reichstag when they voted for war credits; imprisoned in summer 1917 and supporter of the Workers Opposition. But the greatest contribution she is remembered for, certainly in today's womens movement, is her unique writings on the connection between personal relationships I prefer her writings on sexual liberation women. and socialism - iney are achievable VICIOUS and rare, only the conditions that were generated by the Russian Revolution the potential unleashed by the working class seizing power So I turned straight to Morality the Society. But for Kollontai fans, don't miss Oll Women the Revolution. It contains Kollontai's pamphlet Working Woman Mother which is simple and brilliant (a word of warning though doesn't menon conud ception once!) Her ability to project images of the new socialist society in easily accessible propaganda made her, together with Trotsky, the most popular Kollontai had a very rich political experience. speaker of all the leaders of the revolution.
The pamphlet was one of the gains coming out 01 the Women's Departments Dovel Russia which were eventually agreed in 1919, and which organised 6000 delegates review by Steph Grant The message, repeated time and again, was that 'motherhood private matter, it's a socia which this has been distorted in present Soviet society, with medals TOT multiple births, shows the dangers of this statement, if 1lUl backed up by society which guarantees women equality, economic freedom of choice.
But back to sex. Her essays are the best expressed ideas of life in a new socialist society I've read. She talks of a 'communist morality' which will derive from the working class. the model of relations that would be in the of the collective Come destine Prison comradeship. ed directly at men i think, but lt 1s also something women will have to build up, in shaking off the trap pings of bourgeois morall ty.
The best, most political of her essays me has to be Sexual Relations and the Class sirus gle. It's almost impossible to describe the effect it has on you, she has the talent of asking exactly the same questions that always haunted me as a teminist and a socialist.
She tackles it with a directness that refreshing, in the midst of the first workers revolution, she saying how to 'unravel the tangle' of sexual relations.
For Kollontai. 'the ideas and code of sexual morality that the working class develops reflect the demands of the working Allison and The only real criticism I have of her that she never deals with relationships OCIWCCI women and women, men and men.
But Kollontai inspiration. politically active Women.
time acute nave it tairly tough. always have the extra burden raising Vul voices to be heard, , to be counted, be taken seriously.
Socialist Action 25 May 1984
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helping to guide the reader through her work. First woman member of the Bolshevik Central Com-
and social change, and her insistence that socialists recognise the importance of this question.