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
132 - A.K. 47 - The Labor of Women in the Evolution of the Economy - Part 1
Kristen Ghodsee reads the first part of Alexandra Kollontai's 1921 essay, "The Labor of Women in the Evolution of the Economy." A portion of this essay on abortion was discussed on the 6 March 2019 episode, but here Ghodsee digs in to Kollontai's argument for the socialization of the family.
Mentioned in this episode:
- The eight Season 22 finalists for The Next Big Idea Club curated by Adam Grant, Susan Cain, Daniel Pink, and Malcolm Gladwell.
- Just in time for the holidays, the first 15 listeners in the United States who email Alexandra.kollontai.podcast@gmail.com will receive a free, signed, and dedicated copy of Everyday Utopia: What 2000 Years of Wild Experiments Can Teach Us About the Good Life. Please be sure to send your address and the text of your dedication. Books will be sent via Media Mail and may take 7-10 business days to reach you depending on your distance from Philadelphia. Only available for listeners in the United States.
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