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
12 - A.K. 47 - Make Way for Winged Eros: A Letter to Working Youth, Part IV
This is the fourth episode in a series of episodes that will feature Kristen R. Ghodsee's reading and discussion of Alexandra Kollontai's 1923 essay: "Make Way for Winged Eros: A Letter to Working Youth." In this essay, Kollontai works out her theories of how love and sexuality will be superior under socialism as compared to the bourgeois capitalist past. She provides a Marxist history of love and sex as ideals that change depending on how the ruling class uses them to promote their own economic interests. It is an essential essay in terms of thinking about the intersections of sexuality and political economy, and it was an important inspiration for Ghodsee's 2018 book: Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism: And Other Arguments for Economic Independence.
Many thanks to the folks over at Revolutionary Left Radio for linking to this podcast in the program notes of their March 8, 2019 interview with Kristen Ghodsee.
FYI - the intro music is a Russian version of The Internationale.
www.kristenghodsee.com
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 would like to support the work being done here, please spread the word, share with your friends and networks, and consider exploring the following links.
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 at: www.kristenghodsee.com
Kristen R. Ghodsee is the award-winning author of twelve books and a professor and chair of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
