ALEXANDRA KOLLONTAI

In May 1917, Kollontai issued this call to arms in an article published in Rabotnitsa, the newly revived Bolshevik magazine for women.

“All our strength, all our hope lie in organizing!

Now our cry should be: comrade women workers. Don’t stand alone! In isolation we are straw people that every boss can bend down. Organized, we are a great force that no one can crush.

We, women workers, in the first days of the Russian Revolution supported the Red Banner. We went to the streets first on Women’s Day. We are hurrying now into the front ranks of the fighters for the workers’ cause; we are joining trade unions, the Social Democratic Party, the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies!

By closing ranks, we will achieve the quickest end to the world war. We will fight against those who forgot the great call of the working people for unity, for the solidarity of workers of all countries.

Only in revolutionary struggle against the capitalists of all countries and only in unity with the female and male workers of the whole world will we establish a new, bright future–the socialist brotherhood of the workers.”

SOURCE: A. M. KOLLONTAI, “NASHI ZADACHI,” IN IZBRANNYE STATI I RECHI (MOSCOW: POLITIZDAT, 1972), 213. TRANSLATED BY BARBARA CLEMENTS.

The other famous female radical of 1917, Kollontai, played on the winning side. A very popular speaker, she was elected to the Petrograd soviet as well as to the Bolsheviks’ Central Committee. Kollontai was one of the Central Committee members who voted in early October for the party to overthrow the Provisional Government. After it did so, Lenin appointed her commissar of social welfare, and Kollontai set about enacting the reforms for women that she had long advocated. After a few months, she too fell out with Lenin, because she, like Spiridonova, believed the treaty with Germany was an unnecessary surrender to a capitalist power. In March 1918 Kollontai resigned her government position and went off to lick her political wounds.

Bochkareva, Kollontai, and Spiridonova were the most famous female activists of 1917. Like so many women in Russia’s past, they became prominent because they were strong‑willed, self‑confident, talented people who seized the opportunities their times gave them. Those same qualities led them to oppose the new rulers, with disastrous consequences for Bochkareva and Spiridonova. Kollontai came out of her self‑imposed exile later in 1918 and claimed a leading part in reforms for women, without recanting any of her criticism. A few years after that, she locked horns with Lenin again.