A.K. 47 - Selections from the Works of Alexandra Kollontai
Kristen R. Ghodsee reads and discusses 47 selections from the works of Alexandra Kollontai (1872-1952), a socialist women's activist who had radical ideas about the intersections of socialism and women's emancipation. Born into aristocratic privilege, the Ukrainian-Finnish Kollontai was initially a member of the Mensheviks before she joined Lenin and the Bolsheviks and became an important revolutionary figure during the 1917 Russian Revolution. Kollontai was a socialist theorist of women’s emancipation and a strident proponent of sexual relations freed from all economic considerations. After the October Revolution, Kollontai became the Commissar of Social Welfare and helped to found the Zhenotdel (the women's section of the Party). She oversaw a wide variety of legal reforms and public policies to help liberate working women and to create the basis of a new socialist sexual morality. But Russians were not ready for her vision of emancipation, and she was sent away to Norway to serve as the first Russian female ambassador (and only the third female ambassador in the world).In this podcast, Kristen R. Ghodsee – a professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism: And Other Arguments for Economic Independence (Bold Type Books 2018) – selects excerpts from the essays, speeches, and fiction of Alexandra Kollontai and puts them in context. Each episode provides an introduction to the abridged reading with some relevant background on Kollontai and the historical moment in which she was writing.
A.K. 47 - Selections from the Works of Alexandra Kollontai
40 - A.K. 47 - Soon (In 48 Years Time)
In this episode, Kristen Ghodsee reads Alexandra Kollontai's short story, "Soon (In 48 years time)," written in 1922 about her imagination of the future of the Soviet Union. This is the first piece of Kollontai's fiction to appear on this podcast and it imagines a future "fir tree festival" on the 7th of January 1970 where the young people living on Commune 10 no longer know the words for "rich" and "poor." The story features a "Red Grandmother" who tells stories of the "Great Years" of the revolution and the long forgotten system called "capitalism."
What is so interesting about this short story is the implicit hint that the future communards of the Soviet Union are committed environmentalists. They have special guardians of the plant kingdom and they now use reflected light rays instead of electricity. Kollontai also gives the reader a glimpse of what life on a commune is like in 1970, with everybody responsible for only two hours of work a day in order to meet their basic needs. The world is now a confederation of self-sufficient communes with no war and no hunger and no money. This is obviously a piece of utopian science fiction, but it shows a dreamier side to Kollontai who probably used this story as an opportunity to justify the brutal realities of her 1922 present as a necessary stepping stone to a bright communist future that her grand children and great grand children would enjoy.
Thanks so much for listening. This podcast has no Patreon account and receives no funding. If you would like to support the work being done here, please spread the word and share with your friends and networks, and consider exploring the following links:
Buy Kristen Ghodsee's new book now: Everyday Utopia
Subscribe to Kristen Ghodsee's (very occasional) free newsletter.
Learn more about Kristen Ghodsee's work at: www.kristenghodsee.com