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
164 - A.K 47 - Who are the social democrats and what do they want? - part I
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Kristen Ghodsee reads a 1906 essay of Alexandra Kollontai, which is weirdly prescient of the present day, 120 years later. This is the first installment of a multipart episode with reading, commentary, and analysis of "Who are the social democrats and what do they want?”
Please examine the paperback of Red Valkyries out on 26 May 2026 with Verso Books, featuring none other than Alexandra Kollontai!
If you are in Berlin, please join us on Friday, 29 May 2026 at Shakespeare and Sons.
Thanks so much for listening. This podcast has no Patreon-type account and receives no funding. There are no ads and there is no monetization. If you'd like to support the work being done here, please spread the word with your networks.
Kristen R. Ghodsee is the award-winning author of twelve critically acclaimed books published in over 20 languages, and a University of Pennsylvania Professor of Russian and East European Studies. Check out Kristen Ghodsee's recent books:
Subscribe to Kristen Ghodsee’s free, episodic newsletter at: https://kristenghodsee.substack.com
Learn more about Kristen Ghodsee's work: www.kristenghodsee.com or request to follow her on Instagram @prof_kristen
