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
125 - A.K. 47 - Introduction to The Workers Opposition
On the eve of a possible UPS strike in the United States, Kristen Ghodsee reads a 1968 introduction to Alexandra Kollontai's 1921 pamphlet written in support of the Workers Opposition. This was a fundamental critique of Bolshevism from within the Party ranks, which was squashed and ended Kollontai's political career in the USSR.
Mentioned in this episode:
- Total Liberation Podcast with Mexie (Livestream), “Building Utopia with Dr. Kristen Ghodsee,” July 7, 2023
- Upstream Podcast, “Everyday Utopia and Radical Imagination with Kristen Ghodsee,” June 19, 2023
- RevolutionZ, “Diverse Utopias with Kristen Ghodsee,” June 18, 2023
- “Gender Oppression isn’t inherent in human nature,” Jacobin Magazine, June 23, 2023
More recent writing from Kristen Ghodsee:
- “Living Communally Can Make Us Less Lonely,” The Nation, June 28, 2023
- “The Ukrainian Utopia that almost Existed,” The Washington Post, June 23, 2023
- “To Smash the Patriarchy, We Need to Get Specific About What It Means,” Jacobin Magazine, June 10, 2023
Also check out these upcoming events, all information will be posted here:
- Online - City Lights Bookstore, July 19 (6:00pm Pacific Time)
- Online - How To Academy, August 3 (6:00pm GMT)
- Online - Second Life Book Club, August 9 (12:00pm Pacific Time)
- In person - Society for Ethical Culture Sunday Platform, August 13 (11:00am EDT)
- In person - Half King Reading Series, August 15, (7:00pm EDT)
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