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
77 - A.K. 47 - International Women's Day - Part 1
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Kristen Ghodsee reads part one of Alexandra Kollontai's 1920 essay on the history of International Women's Day.
Ghodsee also announces some upcoming lectures and events.
5 March 2021 (09:30 GMT-5) Conference Presentation: "Infrastructures of Solidarity: East-South Alliances During the United Nations Decade for Women, 1975-1985," Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London
7 March 2021 (15:00 GMT-5) A special event for the Democratic Socialists of America International Committee (co-sponsored by the socialist feminist working group and Lux Magazine): Love and Sex Behind the Iron Curtain: 20th Century State Socialism in Eastern Europe
9 March 2021 (19:00 GMT-5) A keynote lecture for IWD at the University of Kansas: Women's History Month Lecture: Dr. Kristen R. Ghodsee on International Women's Day
11 March 2021 (10:30 GMT-5) Guest Lecture: "State socialist women's organizations and their role during the U.N. Decade for Women (1975-1985)" Center for History, Sciences Po, Paris
16 March 2021 (11:00 GMT-5) Discussion: "Socialism in the Age of AOC and Bernie Sanders: A Conversation with Bhaskar Sunkara and Kristen Ghodsee" New York Writer's Institute
Goodreads is also doing a giveaway of the paperback version of Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism: And Other Arguments for Economic Independence to mark International Women's Day. If you are interested in winning a free copy you can do that here before March 8th.
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Kristen R. Ghodsee is the award-winning author of twelve books and Professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Check out Kristen Ghodsee's recent books:
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Learn more about Kristen Ghodsee's work: www.kristenghodsee.com or request to follow her on Instagram @prof_kristen
