Alexandra Kollontai

THE MANTLE OF Alexandra Kollontai has been appropriated and misused by countless feminists and centrists in recent years. In the early 70s the women's movement claimed Kollontai as an advocate of an autonomous women's movement. They used her to attack the left, winning from it many women who believed socialism, feminism and autonomy could be happily married in one movement.

Tony Cliff, the founder of the SWP used to claim "that the Russian Marxists, including Kollontai, were even more intransigent opponents of women's separatism in the socialist movement than the Germans." (International Socialism Journal 14). He used this misinterpretation of her work to justify the disbandment of the SWP's Women’s Voice organisation and the closing down of any special organisations for work amongst women.

Given the existence of such distorted pictures of Kollontai it is important to seriously assess her strengths, and weaknesses, of her contribution to the development of the Marxist programme for the emancipation of women.

Alexandra Kollontai, born in 1872, had a typical bourgeois intellectual background in common with many Russian Marxists at the time. True to form for radical women, she left her husband and child in 1898 in order to study Marxism in Zurich.

She joined the Russian Social Democratic Party (RSDLP) in 1899 but did not become really active until 1905. It was during the 1905 revolution that Kollontai first took a public interest in the woman question. Bourgeois feminists had proved incapable of relating to the democratic aspirations of working women and drawing them into their liberal suffrage campaigns. Kollontai looked for ways of drawing working women away from the feminists and into the working class struggle.

The Russian Marxists had inherited the traditional positions on the emancipation of women developed by Marx, Bebel and Engels. Consequently they accepted, in theory, that women could only be liberated through being drawn into social production and that there was no separate woman’s question because sexual oppression was inextricably linked to workers' exploitation. The struggle for women's liberation was therefore seen as part of the struggle to destroy class society itself. It followed from this that there was no common interest between proletarian women and bourgeois feminists. Proletarian women had to be organised in the ranks of the working class and demands for women's emancipation had to be included amongst the demands of the working class.

In Germany Clara Zetkin had developed these fundamental positions into a programme for working women which she fought for and won in the German SPD and the Second International. This included demands for universal suffrage, protective labour legislation for women, maternity rights and benefits and equal pay. Zetkin established a strong women's section of the party and a special paper, Die Gleichheit (Equality), which was produced in an attempt to draw more women into the party. She also won rights for women within the party including positive discrimination in leading bodies and party Congresses.

Zetkin's contribution on women and influenced the Russian RSDLP's programme but not initially its activity around women's struggles. Kollontai's work in 1905 showed her lack of awareness of the German Socialist women's movement. After meeting Zetkin the following year Kollontai was inspired to build e mass working class women's organisation in Russia.

Kollontai's struggle to develop a programme for Russian working women was also influenced by the specific features of Russia at that time. The combination of extreme backwardness and poverty, an autocratic political system with a small, highly concentrated industrial workforce had implications for the position of woman. Women were drawn into production in very large numbers during the late nineteenth century. They made up 25% of the industrial workforce in 1880 and 40% by 1914. In many industries women replaced men as they ware considered a cheap and compliant work force by the industrialists. Women's pay was about half to two thirds of men's for the same work, so women were viewed by many male workers as unwelcome cheap competition.

The oppression and exploitation of working women in Tsarist Russia was summarised graphically by Kollontai in "Towards a History of the Working Women's Movement" published in 1920:

"The life of Russia's six million proletarian women was, in those early years of the twentieth century, one long round of hunger, deprivation and humiliation. The working day lasted twelve hours, or at the very least eleven. The women worked for starvation wages of twelve to thirteen rubles a month and they lived in overcrowded barracks. Neither the government nor society assisted them in times of illness, pregnancy or unemployment and it was impossible to arrange a system of mutual aid because the Tsarist government victimised without mercy any such organisational attempts on the part of the workers. Such was the lot of the working woman,” Working and living conditions were appalling even by comparison with other early industrialised countries. Women in particular faced sexual abuse and harassment from the bosses and foremen. They had to work right through pregnancy and birth any time off leading to the loss of her job. The care of children was an additional burden being forced by economic pressures to work, women had to either leave their children to wander the streets, or put them into the care of an old 'Babushka' or factory-owned 'baby-farm’. Living conditions were unsanitary and cramped, single women in particular being forced to live in factory barracks where men and women were crowded together, sanitation was absent and beds were shared by workers on alternating shifts.

Literacy was a particular problem for women workers, making them much less accessible to the propaganda of revolutionaries. In 1908 in the largely female cotton industry, 72% of men were literate compared with only 25% of women.

The extreme exploitation and oppression of women did not prevent sections of them becoming militant in the 1890s and again in 1905 there were many strikes involving predominantly female workforces. In the mid 1890s there was a wave of women's strikes in Petersburg over pay and conditions, and many underground leaflets took up complaints of sexual exploitation and mistreatment of women. Methods used by these women strikers were often violent and disruptive. Violent clashes were common with one group of working women throwing tobacco in the eyes of the police in an attempt to resist arrest.

It was against this background and these conditions that the 1905 revolution brought to the fore the problem of drawing working women into working class bodies such as the soviets. Women were centrally involved from early on - Father Gapon's Union of Russian Factory' Hands included some 200-500 women, many of whom were involved in the January 9th "Bloody Sunday" massacre, where Kollontai personally observed the slaughter.

The government set up a commission to investigate the causes of the events and women factory workers elected representatives to sit on the commission. The government refused these women entry on the grounds that women had no political rights, sparking off a wave of women's strikes and demonstrations, protests in the name of "all the working women of the capital". Women were involved in many other forms of political activity including the soviets, and political aspirations grew rapidly.

The bourgeois feminist Union for Political Equality organised a petition calling for equal propertied voting rights for men and women. It was signed by about 40,000 factory women, a signal to Kollontai that the aspirations of working women must be actively channelled by the organisations of the working class if these sections were not to be lost to the class enemy.

It was not only town women who were affected by this general political awakening during the revolution. Peasant women supported general political struggles, but also organised themselves to demand full political equality, sending letters to their Duma delegates:"we hope that the representatives obtain civil and political rights for themselves and for us Russian women, who are unfairly treated and without rights even within our families. Remember that a slave cannot be the mother of a free citizen." (Authorised by the Seventy-five women of Nogat kino).

Kollontai and other individual Social-Democrats saw the need far a specific effort to organise the growing militancy of w en in 1905. The party had done very little other than publish a few general articles on women's conditions in Russian society, and had certainly no directed any resources towards special work on women's political rights.

Kollontai was a Menshevik supporter in 1905 being committed to working for a united socialist movement at this time. When the Union for Women's Equality was forced in April 1905 by various feminist groups it attempted to build an all-class alliance, paying particular attention to drawing in working women. Kollontai could see the dangers of this exercise land was astonished to see members of her own party participating. She joined together with other sympathetic women, Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, in a group to take up the question of organising women workers. First interventions were at feminist meetings where Kollontai would get up and denounce feminism, calling on women to join the socialist movement. These efforts were so disliked by the ladies of the Union for Women's Equality that they barred the Social Democrats from speaking at their meetings.

In 1906 the group turned its attention towards factory work, holding gate meetings, special lectures and public meetings to draw women into socialist activity and the party. This work was enhanced by Kollontai's meeting Clara Zetkin in 1906 at the German Socialist Women's Movement. Kollontai returned, determined to build a similar women's section of the RSDLP but received no support for her attempts. Local members were actually hostile and 'obstructive to work around women with only a few individuals becoming involved in the continuing work.

Kollontai became closely involved with the Union of Textile Workers doing lectures and meetings for them and being elected as their representative to International Socialist Women's Meetings. Moun­ting repression prevented any regular meetings from taking place. In these circumstances Kollontai and her co-workers had to look for other ways of attracting working women. It was decided to organise a club in Petersburg, registered under the name of "Society of Working Women's Mutual Aid". It organised lectures, discussions, meetings and even a summer camp for its members. Police repression eventually began to impinge on the activities of the club, which also became increasingly wracked with antagonisms between the "intellectuals" and the working women. Finally the project had to be abandoned. One of the workers involved was Klaridya Nikolaeve, a 15 year old type-setter who later to succeed Kollontai as leader of the Soviet Women's organisations in the 1920s.

The final episode in this first period of building a working class women's movement occurred in 1908 just before police repression succeeded in curtailing effective political activity. The feminists organised an All-Russian Women's Congress, and Kollontai considered it important that Social-Democrats intervene and clarify the differences between their programme and bourgeois feminism. Both the trade unions and the Petersburg Committees of the Social Democrats eventually agreed to participate and organised delegations. Kollontai did most of the work, however, touring factories and areas of the city to address meetings and see that delegates were elected. She tried to prepare the working women's delegation in advance - they met to discuss resolutions and speeches. Forty-five working women formed the delegation in December 1908, among seven hundred bourgeois feminists. They made a determined and unpopular intervention with resolutions on universal suffrage, labour legislation, and maternity protection and finally on the need for working women organise separately from bourgeois women, in order to "overthrow the capitalist system that exploits and oppresses them." After their final statement the working women walked out, Kollontai herself being forced to leave earlier as the police had a warrant for her arrest. Kollontai later wrote about their intervention: "For the broad mass of working women the conference and the intervention of the working women's group was of great educational significance, for a sharp and distinct line had been drawn between bourgeois feminism and the proletarian women’s movement." She considered the experience of work in 1905-8 vital to the later developments in 1912 and 1917 when the foundations of programme and organisation could be used and built upon.

Throughout this period Kollontai had consistently stressed the need for working class women to organise independently from the bourgeois feminists. In this she was at odds with the majority of the Menshevik faction which consistently adapted to and compromised with the forces of bourgeois feminism. Her hostility to feminism placed her closer to the Bolsheviks who similarly waged a war against feminism. But at this stage she had not yet developed a coherent communist position on the organisation of working women which she was to develop alongside the Bolsheviks on the eve of the 1917 Revolution. Most importantly Kollontai, unlike Zetkin, failed to grasp the importance of ensuring Party leadership of the working class women's movement. In this sense she remained closer to the positions of the Menshevik faction than to those of Lenin and the Bolsheviks.

Kollontai escaped arrest in 1908 and fled into exile, living In many European countries and gaining valuable exposure to different situations including notably the German SPD's women's organisation. She participated in the International Women's Secretariat and continued to develop her theoretical work on women. "The Social Bases of the Woman Question" was completed in 1909. It was followed by a detailed study of maternity conditions and rights. This latter work was commissioned by the Menshevik Duma delegates who planned to draw up legislation on maternity benefits but was never used until Kollontai became minister for Social Welfare in 1917.

Bolshevik leaders in exile became increasingly interested in the question or organising women in the period from 1910-14. Inessa Armand began to press for more articles directed towards women, and she attempted with Krupskaya, to organise Russian émigré women in Paris. It was not however until 1912 that the Bolsheviks significantly increased their work directed towards working women in Russia.

1912 in Russia saw an increase in general political activity, with strikes and demonstrations for better wages, conditions and democratic rights. Within this general movement women were once again a significant factor. This time their struggles gained more attention from both the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.

In 1910 the International Women's Secretariat of the Socialist International had declared March 8th as International Women's Day, and by 1912 the Russian Section began to plan a demonstration for 1913. A club of about one thousand Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, men and women, was formed in Moscow to plan activities. Before being closed down by the police it was able to hold a large meeting in honour of International Women's Day. Similar activities were organised in Petersburg, Kiev and other cities.

Bolshevik women in Russia again tried to find ways of relating to working women's struggles and demands with Konkodia Samoilova, in particular, understanding that women would not be won sim­ply by encouraging them to be equal party members alongside men. She discussed with Inessa Armand in 1912 when they were editors of Pravda in Petersburg, and they agreed on the need for special forms of work. These ideas were relayed to the exiled Bolshevik leaders when Armand herself was arrested and escaped to Cracow. Armand convinced Nadezhda Krupskaya of the need for a special Bolshevik paper for women, Krupskaya and Lenin then taking these proposals to the Central Committee.

The arguments were supported by the response to a series of articles on women, some written by Kollontai, which had appeared in Pravda in 1912. The number of letters received from working women was so overwhelming that they could not be accommodated in the pages of Pravda.

The Bolshevik Central Committee, meeting in September 1913, finally agreed to pay special attention to working women, and planned a special paper "Rabotnitsa"(Woman Worker) to appear for International Women's Day 1914. It was to be edited by Armand and Krupskaya from exile and Samoilova and others in Petersburg. At the same time the Mensheviks were also planning a women's paper "Golos Rabotnitsy"(Voice of the Working Woman). Both papers were welcomed by Kollontai although she was involved in neither and would have preferred a non-factional united paper. Even at this stage Kollontai still remained committed to building a broad women's paper accommodating all tendencies within Russian socialism.

Rabotnitsa appeared in 1914 - publishing seven issues before the war broke out and stopped its publication. The first issue was beset by difficulties. Although it had been granted a licence for its legal publication, the police raided the Editorial Board in St Petersburg and arrested all but Elizarova, Lenin's sister. She was able, through hard work and fund-raising, to produce the first issue as planned, despite a lack of support from the local Bolshevik committee; while the exiled leadership fully backed the project, local party organisations were not always prepared to give it their full backing. Rabotnitsa was very popular among factory women, all issues quickly selling out, being passed from hand to hand to be read.

The first editorial of Rabotnitsa, written by Krupskaya, is e summary of the Marxist position on women with a statement of the purpose of a women's paper. It displays some of the one-sidedness that was still evident among the Bolsheviks.

She writes, "The woman question, for working men and women, is a question of how to organise the backward masses of working women, how best to explain to them their interests, how to make them comrades sooner in the common struggle."

This statement on the woman question and the purpose of organising woman workers neglects that side of women's oppression, and consequent backwardness, which produces particular demands and interests for women. Zetkin had recognised this particular oppression and the special interests of working women in her Party women's work in Germany. Kollontai, in her own way, also recognised that working women had their own demands and interests. However, it was not until Kollontai joined the Bolsheviks and broke with her previous Menshevism on the Party question that she was able to make a clear and principled stand on this issue. It was only at this point that she realized that the aim of organising working women must be to bring them under the leadership of a revolutionary party which itself is organised to relate to the special needs and problems of women workers.

While Kollontai was not to join the Bolsheviks until 1915, her writings in 1914 show that she was moving closer to the tradition of party work represented by Zetkin. She summed up her position at this time in the following terms, (Separation i.e. special party work) has a double aim; on the one hand these intra-party collectives (commissions, women workers' bureaux and so on) must carry out special agitational work adapted to the level of the questions women want to have answered; their task is to recruit members among the mass of women who have a low level of consciousness, to raise it to the level of the rest of the party members; to move women into the arena of revolutionary struggle. On the other hand these collectives give women workers the possibility of putting forward and defending in practical ways those interests which touch women most of all: motherhood, protection of children, the rate set for children's and women's labour, the struggle against prostitution, reforms in housekeeping and so on." (Kollontai, Women Workers Struggle for Their Rights, p.17)

Rabotnitsa in 1914 was a major step forward in Bolshevik work on women. Opposition remained widespread within the party, reflecting both the divisions within, and the sexism of, the working class, as well as hostility towards bourgeois feminism. Rabotnitsa was a popular Bolshevik publication which organised networks for its distribution and discussion. These were to prove useful in 1917 when the Bolsheviks again began building a working women's movement.

Although Kollontai was not involved directly in the development of Rabotnitsa, she continued to elaborate her own ideas on the basis of the experience of the German and Russian women's movements. Her positions on special work and organisation were codified in the pamphlet quoted above, 'Women Workers Struggle for Their Rights' which was written before the war and republished in 1918 in preparation for an All-Russia conference of working women. She argued that because of women's specific oppression and their backwardness in the workers' movement, it was necessary for the party to do special work with propaganda, meetings and activities organised with attention paid to their appeal to working women. This work should be led by a separate bureau of the party, charged specifically with the task of drawing in women workers. Kollontai recognised the need for women to pressure the party into taking up their demands and the importance of drawing women towards the party by actually fighting in their interests, "Although the interests of the working class as a whole are bound up with bringing about political equality for women workers, their actual lack of rights, however, even in countries where male workers possess political rights, imposes on women particularly unpleasant conditions. Joining together in a special collective gives women workers an opportunity to influence their comrades within the party, to inspire and urge them on to the struggle for political rights for working class women, gaining for women those rights which they themselves possess." (Women Workers Struggle for Their Rights, p.16.)

Kollontai's failure to convince either the Bolsheviks or the Mensheviks of the need for a special party structure to carry out this work,' reflected her isolation from the leaderships of both factions. Standing aside from the political struggle within Russian Social Democracy she was unable to make a serious contribution to the development of the programme.

The outbreak of war in August 1914 stopped most open political activity in Russia, Including Rabotnitsa. It also propelled Kollontai, and many others, towards Bolshevism. Amidst the overwhelming chauvinism in Europe, with the Second Internationals sections turning to defence of their re­spective Fatherlands, Kollontai was a pacifist and an internationalist. "I know horror and despair:' she wrote as she watched from the Gallery of the Reichstag when the SPD voted for war credits. Moving to Stockholm to evade arrest again, she wrote a passionate declaration to the women of Europe demanding a "Just and democratic peace."

Such pacifist sentiments in favour of peace and disarmament were common amongst left social democrats, but were not shared by Lenin. After a period of corresponding with Lenin, Kollontai was won over to his revolutionary defeatist position and finally joined the Bolshevik Party in June 1915.

Lenin's position was defeated at an International Conference of Socialist Women, convened by Lenin and Zetkin in 1915 and attended by representatives from several national parties. The conference adopted Zetkin's position, similar to Kollontai's initial one, after Lenin's was defeated. Kollontai was unable to attend this conference but became an important Bolshevik figure touring Europe and the United States arguing for defeatism. Her talents as a writer were used to produce the popular Bolshevik pamphlet, "Who Needs War" a key agitational article used in Russia itself. The imperialist war had particularly devastating effects on the Russian working class. The poverty, starvation and demoralisation were common to workers, peasants and soldiers. Women workers again bore their share of the hardship. As their men folk were sent to the slaughter of the front­lines, the women were drawn into the industrial workforce in ever greater numbers. By the end of the war, women formed 40% of the labour-force in large scale industry and 60% of all textile workers in the Moscow region.

Strikes and food riots by women desperate to feed themselves and their children became more frequent throughout 1916. It was a mass strike of Vyborg women textile workers on International Women's Day that heralded the February Revolution in 1917. Throughout that year, women played an important role in action and organisation.

Appreciating the role of working women, the March 13th Petrograd Committee of the Bolsheviks set up a bureau of women workers and relaunched Rabotnitsa; Vera Slutskaya, previously an opponent of any separate work, was convinced of the need for this work, "In view of the fact that, at the present time, an appreciable movement has come into existence among working women, it is desirable to direct the said movement into the channels of political action, having first organised them into trade cells."

Kollontai returned to Russia in March 1917 after 8 years of exile and immediately launched into the political disagreements between Lenin, Stalin and Kamenev and other old Bolsheviks. She was a committed supporter of Lenin's from the start, personally carrying his "Letters From Afar" back to Russia and supporting his" April Theses" on his return. Kollontai also launched once more into work amongst working women. Pleased by the establishment of the Petrograd women's bureau, she was nevertheless disturbed by the growth of the Feminists.

Kerensky's Provisional Government had brought the Feminists back into the political arena. During the war they were exemplary patriots, supporting their country in whatever ways possible. Now they demanded recognition of their contribution by the granting of political rights. Kollontai was alarmed at the number of women workers who were joining their demonstrations.

Once again she faced abuse and physical attack from the feminists as she forced a platform for herself at their various public gatherings. This time she was backed up by an active Bolshevik women's bureau and paper. Rabotnitsa in this period became a central organiser in this period, holding a large anti-war rally of over 10,000 people, regular meetings in factories and on the streets, arguing for women's participation in the soviets rather than reliance on Kerensky as the Feminist and the Mensheviks proposed. During the period of police repression after the July Days, Rabotnitsa was the only Bolshevik publication that appeared.

Arguments continued within the Bolshevik Party as to the best way of organising work amongst women. Krupskaya maintained that a special section of the party was wrong. Kollontai managed to achieve more success on this question as local organisations often established their own women's sections. While it was not until 1919 that the Zhenotdel (Women's Section) was officially formed as a network of women's sections at all levels of the party, from 1917 onwards, bureaux developed sporadically in local committees and the leading women's commission continued to organise work amongst women.

In addition to general Bolshevik propaganda, Rabotnitsa included articles and organised activities around issues of particular importance to women - the level of allowances for soldiers' wives, conditions of women's labour and so on, In October 1917, Rabotnitsa organised the first All-City Conference of Petrograd Women Workers, attended by 500 delegates representing 80,000 women.

The growth of this communist-led mass working women's movement shows both the potential and the necessity of the special work that was being done. In the post-revolutionary period this was to become even more important as women had to be drawn into the defence of the Soviet Republic during the Civil War and suffered enormous deprivations themselves in the process. Without the conscious attempt to organise working women many more would have joined the Feminists and Mensheviks, becoming a reactionary rather than revolutionary factor.

Kollontai's contribution to the development of the Marxist programme for the emancipation of women is an important one. Proceeding from what was available to her in the traditional Marxist writings on women and on the basis of an understanding of the particular situation in Russia; she developed a programme and methods of work for organising working women. She was able to combine a vigorous attack on feminism, seeing the threat that an all-class alliance posed to the working class, with a sensitive appreciation of the questions facing women workers. She understood the need for a special body within the party to lead the work, drawing women in not just as a backward, hard to organise, group of workers, but as workers with particular needs and conditions. Working women pushed themselves forward as a group worthy of attention in 1905, 1912 and again in 1917, each time with their own particular ways of organising and taking action. Kollontai, and other Bolsheviks, recognised and responded to that by creating an organisation and system of demands that would lead those women into revolutionary politics and towards the fulfilment of their aspirations.

The feminists of recent years have seen Kollontai as the original, 'Socialist-Feminist". Their attempt to portray her as a supporter of women's autonomy is a distortion that they are themselves now beginning to recognise as more of her work is translated. Whilst she understood women's specific oppression, and this informed her work, she did not argue for a women-only movement, independent from the working class and its political party. To be branded a feminist of any description would surely have offended Kollontai who dedicated much of her time to polemicising with the various strands of Russian and European feminism.

Kollontai’s fight for the Party to take up the fight for women's rights, to use special forms of propaganda, organisation and activities to draw women into the party, is clearly counter posed to the Second Internationalist view that the, "whole party should fight for all workers", ignoring specific oppression within the working class.

In re-elaborating the Marxist programme for working women in today's conditions, we have much to learn from Kollontai. We recognise the specific oppression of working class women and the need to develop organisational forms that relate to this. But, in doing so, we need to remember the vital lesson that Kollontai herself learnt our aim Is to build a mass communist women's movement as part of the struggle to build a revolutionary communist party able to lead the struggles of the working class to the final destruction of capitalism.

by Helen Ward

Fri 19, January 2007 @ 17:15