Alexandra Kollontai and the “Woman Question”:

 Alexandra Kollontai and the “Woman Question”:

Women and Social Revolution, 1905-1917

Caitlin Vest

This paper was written for Dr.Shirley’s History 3342 course.

Russia celebrated International Women’s Day for the first time on 8

March 1913. One week before the celebration, Alexandra Kollontai published

an article in the newspaper Pravda encouraging women workers to organize

and unite with their male counterparts in order to achieve the economic and

political emancipation of both genders. Kollontai wrote, “The backwardness

and lack of rights suffered by women, their subjection and indifference, are of

no benefit to the working class, and indeed are directly harmful to it.”

Kollontai believed that women’s rights were closely related to the rights

of the working class as a whole, championed by socialism. She believed that

only socialism could liberate even working class women. In addition, she

recognized that the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) needed

the support of women to achieve revolution. Kollontai proved to be correct

in 1917, when working class women began demonstrations on International

Women’s Day that led to the end of autocracy in Russia.

From 1906 until 1923, Alexandra Kollontai was instrumental in bringing

together Marxism and feminism. She worked tirelessly to attract working

women to the RSDLP while denouncing the bourgeois feminist movement.

In addition, Kollontai expanded on already existing Marxist theory in order

to interpret and resolve the oppression of women. She argued that women

were not enslaved by economic conditions alone but also by social and

psychological factors.

Women brought great change to Russia in the name of socialism,

and, more specifically the Bolshevik party. In fact, by the end of World War I,

ten percent of Bolsheviks were women, called Bolshevichki. However, in the

end, communism did not repay its women. Conditions for women under Stalin

were repressive. Kollontai became Soviet ambassador to Sweden but had

little power in Russia, and in the 1930s the “woman question” was declared

resolved too soon.

The “woman question” had several definitions and interpretations.

When it first emerged in Russia, in the aftermath of the disastrous Crimean

War, the “woman question” asked if a woman’s place remained within her

family or if she could benefit society by moving outside the home. This led

to debate about woman’s right to education and employment. However, in

Kollontai’s day women worked alongside men. In the introduction to The

Social Basis of the Women’s Question she asked, “How can we make sure

that the female section of the population of Russia also receives the fruit of the 

long, stubborn and agonisingly difficult struggle for a new political structure in

our homeland?” In essence, what is the relationship between women and

social revolution?

Kollontai was hardly the first to recognize that a relationship existed.

Socialist writers addressed woman’s oppression throughout the 19th century.

In 1848, The Communist Manifesto briefly discussed woman’s subjection

to man. Marx and Engels wrote, “The bourgeois sees in his wife a mere

instrument of production.” They further claimed that the modern family was

based entirely on capital. Because of this, the bourgeois family existed for

personal gain only while the proletarian family lacked stability.

Thirty-one years later, in 1879, August Bebel addressed the struggles

of women working in industry in Woman and Socialism, demanding legislation

that protected working women and children. He wrote that industry sought

female labor for several reasons. First, the increased use of new machinery

meant that physical strength was no longer a requirement for employment. In

addition, the wages of many men were not sufficient to support their families,

so their wives were forced to join them in industry. Last, women, especially

those who were married, were accustomed to expect less than men. As

a result, women were more willing than men to accept lower wages and

less likely to protest maltreatment. This led to conflict between male and

female workers as they competed for jobs. Bebel wrote that such conflict

was unnatural and the entire working class should unite against capitalism.

He declared that both women and men could be liberated only in a socialist

society.

We must therefore seek to bring about a state of society in which

all will enjoy equal rights regardless of sex. That will be possible

when the means of production become the property of society, when

labor has attained its highest degree of fruitfulness...and when all

who are able to work shall be obliged to perform a certain amount of

socially necessary labor, for which society in return will provide all

with the necessary means for the development of their abilities and

the enjoyment of life.

Frederick Engels wrote more about woman’s oppression through the

family in The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, published

in 1884. In this work, he recounted the history of the family, beginning his

narrative before the existence of civilized society. Engels claimed that women

were once highly esteemed members of society: “That woman was the slave

of man at the commencement of society is one of the most absurd notions

that have come down to us...Woman occupied not only a free but also a

highly respected position among all savages.” Women were well-respected 

because of their ability to reproduce since in a barbaric society, which was

naturally communal, the paternity of children was often unidentifiable.

However, as the economy developed and wealth increased, the male

became a more important figure in society and the family. Men wished to pass

their wealth to their children and monogamous marriage was established to

resolve the issue of unknown paternity. Monogamy began man’s domination

of woman. Engels wrote that monogamous marriage was characterized by

“the far greater rigidity of the marriage bond...Now, as a rule, only the man

can dissolve it and disown his wife…Should the wife recall the ancient sexual

practice and desire to revive it, she is punished more severely than ever

before.” Engels wrote that women were enslaved by men as a result of the

establishment of private property.

Many who later joined the Revolutionary Movement in Russia,

including Alexandra Kollontai, read the works of Marx, Engels, and Bebel.

Kollontai’s path to socialism resembled that take by many other women. The

1870s saw the beginnings of female involvement in radicalism. In 1872, the

same year Kollontai was born to wealthy parents, a radical study group of

female students formed in Zurich, called the Fritsche Circle. Because men

were more experienced debaters and tended to dominate study groups, the

Fritsche Circle only allowed female students, and they often discussed social

revolution. Most of these women came from the upper class and felt they

owed a debt to the peasants, who had been liberated from serfdom only a

decade earlier. Participating in the popular revolutionary movements of their

time, a number of these women decided to return to Russia to propagandize

among working women. However, many of them became disillusioned and

ceased their revolutionary activity.

Kollontai (born Alexandra Domontovich) was well-educated like her

revolutionary predecessors and aspired to be a writer. Her parents did not

allow her to travel abroad to study for fear that she would encounter and adopt

revolutionary ideas. At the age of twenty-two, she refused to submit to an

arranged marriage. She married her cousin Vladimir Kollontai, an impoverished

army officer, instead. Her parents were supportive but cautioning. Her father

feared that “spiritual closeness” could not exist between people of different

classes.

Alexandra Kollontai soon became discontent with marriage. She

wrote, “The happy existence of a housewife and consort were like a ‘cage’ to

me.” Beatrice Farnsworth claims that Kollontai continued to love her husband

and son, born in 1894, but that she could not reconcile her affection with her

desire to be an independent and important individual. In 1898, Kollontai finally

did study in Zurich, following the path taken by many future Bolshevichki. She

spent a year studying Marxist theory and returned to Russia in 1899 but never

to her husband. However, in spite of her feelings toward marriage, she kept 

his name for the rest of her life.

The period immediately following Kollontai’s return from Switzerland

saw a significant rise in women’s participation in radicalism. In part, this was a

result of the rise of the socialist movement itself and, in 1903, the emergence

of different parties. Until 1905, the RSDLP did not oppose socialist groups

devoted solely to women. Such opposition came with the rise of the bourgeois

feminist movement.

The majority of socialist women were wealthy and educated. Not

required to work because of family wealth, they could devote all their time

to becoming “the professional female revolutionaries.” Working class and

peasant women increasingly sympathized with the socialists. However,

working class women did not have time to devote to the movement and few of

them got beyond protesting personal grievances.

Some diversity existed within the movement, however. Kondordiya

Samoilova and Inessa Armand joined the RSDLP during this time and both

later became leading Bolshevichki. Samoilova was the daughter of a village

priest and was educated in Women’s Higher Courses. In contrast, Armand

came from the intelligentsia and received a higher, professional education.

During these years, Kollontai traveled throughout Europe meeting

other Marxist theoreticians, including Rosa Luxembourg and Georgii

Plekhanov. She also developed her skills as a writer and orator. In 1906, she

joined the Mensheviks out of devotion to Plekhanov. However, her pacifism

led her to become a Bolshevik in 1915, believing Lenin to be the only socialist

leader committed to ending Russia’s involvement in World War I.

Socialists were not the only group interested in women’s rights. The

rise of the bourgeois feminist movement – which coincided with Kollontai’s

joining the Mensheviks – came with the formation of groups like the Women’s

Progressive Party and the Union for Women’s Equality. The latter had the

highest membership of any feminist group and Kollontai considered it the

greatest challenge to attracting women to Marxist feminism. The predominant

goal of the Union for Women’s Equality was suffrage, which was achieved

in August 1917 when Russian women demanded the right to vote of the

provisional government. Natalia Pushkareva writes that the Russian feminists

had only minor success because they attempted “to keep away from a definite

stance in the ongoing social and political struggles in Russia.” The bourgeois

feminists claimed to transcend class divisions, which Kollontai used against

them in much of her criticism of their movement.

Women’s suffrage, desired by the bourgeois feminists, would certainly

have benefited Kollontai. However, “[a]s a mother she needed more – a

supportive social structure to remove the inner conflict between the intellectual

and the emotional side of her personality.” Barbara Evans Clements writes

that Kollontai’s philosophy toward women and the family developed out of 

her personal experience with marriage and motherhood. Whatever her

personal feelings, it is evident that Kollontai approached socialism out of her

desire to resolve the “woman question” as it related to 20th century working

women.

Kollontai worked tirelessly to convince working class women to join the

socialists rather than the bourgeois feminists. While the Union for Women’s

Equality claimed to transcend classes, Kollontai declared that proletarian

women betrayed the entire working class – men and women – if they joined

the feminist movement. In 1913 she wrote,

What is the aim of the feminists? Their aim is to achieve the same

advantages, the same power, the same rights within capitalist

society as those possessed now by their husbands, fathers, and

brothers. For the woman worker it is a matter of indifference who

is the ‘master’ a man or a woman. Together with the whole of her

class, she can ease her position as a worker.

Kollontai denounced the bourgeois feminists for creating divisions between

men and women. She called for the liberation of the working class as a whole.

However, she recognized that this required the resolution of specific issues

that primarily affected women. Woman’s role as housewife and mother set

her apart from other workers.

Because of the special roles women played, Kollontai and a few

other socialists began to argue for propagandizing and organizing specifically

among women. Shortly after joining the Mensheviks, Kollontai attempted to

create a separate bureau within the party for women workers. However, she

was accused of feminism and separatism, and the Bureau of Women Workers

was not approved until 1917. Some socialist women, including Kondordiya

Samoilova and Inessa Armand, were able to establish unions and clubs to

recruit working class women. These were especially successful in organizing

female textile workers. In 1907, Kollontai set up the Society for Mutual Aid to

Women Workers, an organization in St. Petersburg that offered cultural events

to working class women.

In 1913, Samoilova began writing a column for Pravda about women

in factories. The column, called “The Labor and Life of Women Workers”,

was so popular that she created a journal specifically targeting working class

women. With the help of Armand and others the first edition of Rabotnitsa, or

Working Woman, appeared on Women’s Day in 1914. The journal reached

out to working women by highlighting their struggles. In addition to attracting

working class women, the editors also wanted to inform proletarian women

that capitalism was the cause of their troubles.

Kollontai’s understanding of woman’s role as housewife and mother 

inspired her to expand on the ideas of Marx, Bebel, and Engels concerning

the oppression of women. Like Bebel, she realized the need for legislative

reforms in industry, an issue that she did not believe the bourgeois feminists

would address. In the preface to her book Society and Motherhood, she

wrote that the working class “is the one which most requires that a solution

be found to the painful conflict between compulsory professional labour by

women and their duties as representatives of their sex, as mothers.” Kollontai

wanted reforms such as an eight-hour work day, factory nurseries, maternity

hospitals, free medical care, and the prohibition of night work. These reforms

would benefit all workers, but particularly women and youth.

Kollontai also, like Marx and Engels, saw the modern family as

oppressive to women. She wrote, “[T]he isolated family unit is the result of

the modern individualistic world, with its rat-race, its pressures, its loneliness;

the family is a product of the monstrous capitalist system.” Economics

were, she believed, a significant factor. Bourgeois marriages were based

not on affection but on woman’s dependence on her husband for financial

stability. No such stability existed in proletarian society, making a healthy and

successful marriage difficult.

However, Kollontai was the first to consider that the “woman question”

had psychological, as well as economic, elements. Marriage was oppressive

to women first because, in the household just as in the workplace, women

were viewed as inferior, subject to the rule of their husbands. In addition,

monogamous marriage led spouses to feel ownership of one another,

encouraging the belief that each had rights over the other. Last, marriage

was an attempt for naturally communal human beings to overcome the lonely

existence of individuality. Many Marxists believed that bourgeois society had

created individualism, and one person – though much loved – could not fulfill

the need for community. Even in a marriage of affection, these conditions

naturally led to oppression.

Kollontai believed that women’s emancipation could be achieved

only when society’s mindset regarding marriage and family changed. She

recognized that changes in the psyche of men and women required more

time than the economic restructuring of society. Her socialist solution to

woman’s subjugation was the eventual dissolution of marriage and the family:

“To become really free woman has to throw off the heavy chains of the current

forms of the family, which are outmoded and oppressive.” The tasks and

responsibilities of the individual family would be transferred to a collective and

communal society. Inequality would naturally be eliminated and the need for

community fulfilled. Individuals would belong to the community as a whole but

never to each other.

Kollontai’s plan included the communal raising of children. She

considered it the responsibility of the working community to create conditions 

that were safe for pregnant women. In turn, the women themselves should,

according to Kollontai, “observe all the requirements of hygiene during the

period of pregnancy, remembering that during these months she does not

belong to herself, that she is working for the collective.” Once the child was

born, it became the responsibility of all members of the community to care for

and educate it.

Kollontai’s solutions to the problems of marriage and the family often

lacked detail and clarity. However, it was significant because she applied

Marxism to areas outside labor and production. After the Bolshevik Revolution,

Armand expanded on Kollontai’s theory of the psychological oppression of

women. Armand wrote that one step toward liberating women was education.

The majority of Russian women were illiterate and lacked practical skills and

political knowledge. In addition, women learned from birth – through their

fathers, brothers, and eventually husbands – that they were subordinate to

men. Armand believed that educating the backward masses would attack

woman’s oppression at its roots.

Alexandra Kollontai, Inessa Armand, and Kondordiya Samoilova –

all Bolshevichki after 1915 – were leading figures in the socialist movement.

However, not all socialists approved of spending time and resources working

among women. Kollontai admitted in her memoirs that she was not always

supported by her party. The “woman question” was a divisive issue,

even among other socialist women. Many Bolshevik women “consider[ed]

proletarian women a backward lot and efforts to reach them a waste of time.”

Clements writes that other Bolshevichki feared that focusing specifically on

women’s issues would weaken their status in the eyes of male Bolsheviks.

In addition, many socialists considered the emancipation of women a natural

byproduct of the impending socialist revolution. Therefore, focusing special

attention on women’s issues was unnecessary.

Socialist women did have some powerful support. After 1907, Lenin personally

chose delegates to attend international women’s conferences. He was

inspired to do so when the Second International Socialist Conference passed

a resolution demanding that all socialist parties advocate for women’s rights.

Lenin also enthusiastically followed the progress of Rabotnitsa.

However, Elizabeth Wood writes that the Bolshevik Party’s dedication to

solving the “woman question” was not genuine. Rather the rise of bourgeois

feminism sparked fear that other groups would recruit and organize working

women before the socialists could. The Bolsheviks could not deny that

which Kollontai vigorously proclaimed: the support of proletarian women was

necessary to attain the ultimate goal of revolution. However, many leading

socialists did not trust the superstitious and backward masses of women,

even after their spontaneous demonstrations ended autocracy.

In The History of the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky described how protests 

on International Women’s Day – initiated by female textile workers – sparked

social revolution. He wrote,

Thus the fact is that the February revolution was begun from

below, overcoming the resistance of its own revolutionary

organizations, the initiative being taken of their own accord by

the most oppressed and downtrodden part of the proletariat – the

women textile workers, among them no doubt many soldiers’

wives.

Nicholas II abdicated the throne the following week, and the Provisional

Government, under the leadership of Alexander Kerensky, granted women

the right to vote.

Natalia Pushkareva calls the period from 1910 to 1920 a tragic decade,

the heartbreak of which is exacerbated by its potential. She writes, “The goal

of this socialist experiment was to fulfill the long-standing expectations of the

Russian people to create a ‘society of equals,’ without lies or injustice, and

without restrictions on the basis of sex.” Alexandra Kollontai was a leading

voice calling for such a society. She sincerely believed that communism

would liberate working class women from marriage, motherhood, and financial

dependence on men.

For a time, her goals for Russian women seemed on the verge of

being achieved. When the Bolsheviks seized power in October, they granted

women equal status as men. They mandated an eight-hour workday for all

workers and the prohibition of night work for women. In addition, women were

kept out of industries that could be harmful to their health and were granted a

four month maternity leave.

However, in the following years, a number of these policies were

revoked. In 1925, the prohibition of dangerous and night work for women was

rescinded because “the building of the new society demanded an enormous

effort.” In the late 1930s and early 1940s, divorce was made more difficult,

abortion was outlawed, and childlessness was taxed. Also during this time,

the women’s department of the communist party, the zhenotdel was dissolved

and the “woman question” declared resolved.

By the late 1930s, life had improved for women in Russia. They

had equal status with men in the workplace, improved healthcare, and the

opportunity to achieve some education. However, the social and psychological

factors contributing to woman’s oppression, which Kollontai had such fervent

belief in resolving, continued to exist.

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