Source: Alexandra Kollontai: Selected Articles and Speeches, Progress Publishers, 1984; First Published: Sovetskaya zhenshchina,(Soviet Woman), No. 5, September-October, 1946, pp. 3-4, abridged. Transcribed: Sally Ryan for marxists.org, 2000; Proofed: and corrected by Chris Clayton 2006.
It is a well-known fact that the Soviet Union has achieved exceptional successes in drawing women into the active construction of the state. This generally accepted truth is not disputed even by our enemies. The Soviet woman is a full and equal citizen of her country. In opening up to women access to every sphere of creative activity, our state has simultaneously ensured all the conditions necessary for her to fulfill her natural obligation – that... (From: Marxists.org.)
Source: Alexandra Kollontai: Selected Articles and Speeches, Progress Publishers, 1984; First Published: Inostrannuya Literatura (Foreign Literature), No. 2, 1970, Moscow, pp. 244-5; Transcribed: Sally Ryan for marxists.org, 2000; Proofed: and corrected by Chris Clayton 2006.
Which of us in our childhood did not gaze in awe at the mighty Statue of Liberty, its burning torch lighting the entrance to an international port, to a New World that still retained all its alluring, fairy-tale strangeness for the European? Which of us in our childhood was not struck by its grandeur as it soared above the New York skyscraper skyline? How pitifully small and insignificant did the huge ocean-going ships appear in these pictures as they scurried at t... (From: Marxists.org.)
Source: Alexandra Kollontai, Selected Writings, Allison & Busby, 1977; Translated: by Alix Holt, 1972; First published: Kommunistka, No.s 12-12, 1921;
Family and marriage are historical categories. phenomena which develop in accordance with the economic relations that exist at the given level of production. The form of marriage and of the family is thus determined by the economic system of the given epoch, and it changes as the economic base of society changes. The family. in the same way. as government, religion. science, morals. law and customs, is part of the. superstructure which derives from the economic system of society.
Where economic functions are performed by the family rather than by society as a whole, family and marital ... (From: Marxists.org.)
Source: Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Reminiscences. 1900-1922, Moscow, 1963, pp. 221-223.
Vladimir Ilyich was the one who initiated the involvement of broad masses of women from the cities and villages in the building of a socialist state.
The Soviet Union occupies a unique position in the world in this respect. No comparable phenomenon can be found in any other state.
In every country of the world women waged and are waging their own struggle for their rights, and face powerful resistance and curt rejection on the part of their own bourgeois governments. In many countries women fought heroically for their rights, but they were nonetheless unable to achieve anywhere else those rights enjoyed by every woman in every Soviet republic.
T... (From: Marxists.org.)
First Published: Försvarsnihilisten, November 1914; Source: Alexandra Kollontai: Selected Articles and Speeches, Progress Publishers, 1984; Transcribed: Sally Ryan for marxists.org, 2000; Proofed: and corrected by Chris Clayton 2006.
When the workers' International last met in Basle in 1912 [1]
in order to raise its voice in protest against the threat of a world war, which might have broken out as a result of the events in the Balkans, everyone was filled with confident hope. World war seemed impossible.
While solidarity and the brotherhood of peoples unites the workers of every nation, while there exists that unity of objectives that marked the Basle Congress and draws together the proletariat of states both large and smal... (From: Marxists.org.)
Source: Alexandra Kollontai: Selected Articles and Speeches, Progress Publishers, 1984; Transcribed: Sally Ryan for marxists.org, 2000.
This is a question that disturbs many, the question that faces the Red Army and the workers, and troubles the peasants. Did not the Communist-Bolsheviks, two years ago, summon us in the name of peace ? Why does war continue ? Why are we being mobilized yet again and sent to the front?
In order to answer this question one must understand what is happening all around us, the events that are taking place. As soon as the workers and peasants took power into their hands in October, 1917, they honestly and openly offered peace to all the peoples. However, the workers in the other countries were still too w... (From: Marxists.org.)
Source: Alexandra Kollontai:
Selected Articles and Speeches, Progress Publishers, 1984; First Published: Ogonyok. No. 41, 9 October, 1927, abridged; Transcribed: Sally Ryan for marxists.org, 2000.
What the October Revolution has achieved in terms of the
emancipation of working women in the Soviet Union is well known
to all, is clear and indisputable. However, what effect has the
Great October Revolution had on the movement for the
emancipation of women in other, bourgeois countries abroad? What
has it contributed to the creation of the 'new woman' involved
in the tasks and aspirations of the working class?
World war, which, in Europe and North America, drew enormous numbers of women from the poorer sections of the population, ... (From: Marxists.org.)
Source: Alexandra Kollontai:
Selected Articles and Speeches, Progress Publishers, 1984; Translated from Russian: Cynthia Carlile
Designed: Inna Borisova Compiled and commentary: I. M. Dazhina, M. M. Mukhamedzhanov and R. Y. Tsivlina Copyright: English translation, introduction, commentary © Progress Publishers 1984
All rights reserved Printed: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. This edition co-published by International Publishers, New York Scanning, formatting and markup: Christopher Hill and David Walters
“HEROES”
The war had not yet ended, indeed its end was still not in sight, but the number of cripples was multiplying: the armless, the legless, the blind, the deaf, the mutilated... They had set off for th... (From: Marxists.org.)
Source: Alexandra Kollontai: Selected Articles and Speeches, Progress Publishers, 1984; Transcribed: Sally Ryan for marxists.org, 2000; First Published: in Revolt, December, 1917; Proofed: and corrected by Chris Clayton 2006.
A great and long-awaited event which we Marxists always believed to be inevitable, but which we nonetheless viewed rather as a dream or an ideal of the future rather than as an imminent reality, has at last occurred. [October Revolution]
The Russian proletariat, supported by armed soldiers - and they too are the sons of proletarians or peasants - have seized state power. For the first time in the history of man a state is headed not by the representatives of capital, of the bourgeoisie, but by the vanguard of th... (From: Marxists.org.)
Source: Alexandra Kollontai:
Selected Articles and Speeches, Progress Publishers, 1984; First Published: Kommunist Switzerland, Nos. 1-2, 1915, pp. 159-161; Transcribed: Sally Ryan for marxists.org, 2000; Proofed: and corrected by Chris Clayton 2006.
Many people still cannot understand how or why it could be that
the German proletarians were suddenly transformed from class
fighters into an obedient herd going with heads bowed to certain
death. For many people it is still a mystery why these
masses – and we are talking of the broad masses and not the
leaders – did nothing to defend their previous positions of
principle when the guns began to roar in Europe, but gave up
their worker fortresses to the class enemy withou... (From: Marxists.org.)
Source:
Alexandra Kollontai: Selected Articles and Speeches,
Progress Publishers, 1984; First Published: in Zhensky
zhurnal (The Women's Journal), No. 11, November, 1927, pp.
2-3, abridged: Transcribed: Sally
Ryan for marxists.org, 2000; Proofed: and corrected by
Chris Clayton 2006 and Zdravko Saveski 2017
The women who took part in the Great
October Revolution – who
were they? Isolated individuals? No, there were hosts of them;
tens, hundreds of thousands of nameless heroines who, marching
side by side with the workers and peasants behind the Red Flag
and the slogan of the Soviets, passed over the ruins of czarist
theocracy into a new future...
If one looks back into the past, one can see them, these masses of
n... (From: Marxists.org.)
Source: Alexandra Kollontai: Selected Articles and Speeches, Progress Publishers, 1984; First Published: Pravda, No. 40(244), 17 February, 1913, St Petersburg; Transcribed: Sally Ryan for marxists.org, 2000; Proofed: and corrected by Chris Clayton 2006.
The article 'Women's Day' by Alexandra Kollontai was published in the newspaper Pravda one week before the first-ever celebration in Russia of the Day of International Solidarity among the Female Proletariat on 23 February (8 March), 1913. In St Petersburg this day was marked by a call for a campaign against women workers' lack of economic and political rights, for the unity of the working class, and for the awakening of self-consciousness among women workers.
What is 'Women's Day'? I... (From: Marxists.org.)
First Published: 1916, as a pamphlet; Source: Selected Writings of Alexandra Kollontai, Allison & Busby, 1977; Translated: by Alix Holt; Transcribed: by Aaliyah Zionov.
Mashenka the factory director’s wife
Mashenka is the factory director’s wife. Mashenka is expecting a baby. Although everyone in the factory director’s house is a little bit anxious, there is a festive atmosphere. This is not surprising, for Mashenka is going to present her husband with an heir. There will be someone to whom he can leave all his wealth – the wealth created by the hands of working men and women. The doctor has ordered them to look after Mashenka very carefully. Don’t let her get tired, don’t let her lift anything hea... (From: Marxists.org.)