Alexandra Kollontai

Cathy Porter was born in Oxford in 1947, and grew up there. She spent a year in Poland before studying Russian and Czech at London University. Since then she has become deeply involved in the political life and intellectual ideas of the nineteenth - and twentieth-century Russia. She is the author of Fathers and Daughters: Russian Women in Revolution, and translator of Kollontai's fiction Love of Worker Bees. Porter lives in London and divides her time between translating, teaching literacy and researching Russian history.

"A very detailed life-story of this extraordinary woman . . . Cathy Porter has written a sad, serious, and very readable book . . ." —Tamara Deutscher, Marxism Today (first edition)"Alexandra Kollontai has the potential to be a true delight for the connoisseur by providing an alternative historical account of Russia and the socialist movement. However, what makes it transcend time is Kollontai's chief belief that women should be at the centre of the economy, not the periphery" —Spokeman"an interesting and detailed account of some of the most exciting years in working class history" —Socialist Review"Kollontai, a staunch opponent of the first world war, broke with moderates who supported the war and joined the Bolsheviks, becoming a vital figure in the women’s liberation movement for which she struggled throughout her life. She was the first woman ever to be appointed an ambassador to Norway and wrote: “I realised that I had thereby achieved a victory not only for myself, but for women in general … When on occasion I am told that it is truly remarkable that a woman has been appointed to such a responsible position, I always think to myself that in the final analysis … what is of a wholly special significance here is that a woman, like myself, who has settled scores with the double standard and who has never concealed it, was accepted into a caste which to this very day staunchly upholds tradition and pseudo-morality.”—Tariq Ali

• CONTENTSChronology xiIntroduction 1Chapter One: Too Much Family Happiness 7Chapter Two: Small Deeds 38Chapter Three: Marxists and Revisionists 65Chapter Four: What Is To Be Done? 85Chapter Five: After Bloody Sunday 103Chapter Six: Heckling the Feminists 121Chapter Seven: Exiled in Workers’ Europe 141Chapter Eight: The Collapse of Internationalism 164Chapter Nine: War on War! 190Chapter Ten: Agitating for Revolution 213Chapter Eleven: Militant Spring 233Chapter Twelve: Peace, Bread, Land and Justice 250Chapter Thirteen: Cooks and Commissars 269Chapter Fourteen: Civil War 293Chapter Fifteen: The Crisis of the Revolution 323Chapter Sixteen: Workers’ Opposition 347Chapter Seventeen: Exiled in Diplomats’ Europe 372Chapter Eighteen: Years of Uncertainty 390Chapter Nineteen: The Purges, Fascism and War 412Chapter Twenty: The Last Years 445Notes 452Bibliography 474Organisations and Russian Terms 499Index