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Alexandra Kollontai19 March 1872 – 9 March 1952 - A Brief Sketch By Dr Santosh Kumar Singh Sri Venkateswara College University of Delhi
Birth of Kollantai • Kollontai was largely brought up by servants and tutored at home • only woman member of the highest body of the Russian Bolshevik Party in the crucial year of 1917. • Appointed Minister for Social Welfare in the first socialist government • sought to solve the dilemmas of women within the framework of marxism. • Developed farsighted legislation in areas affecting women • A revolutionary organiser and writer • glass of water theory
Major Ideas • She tells women that they are capable of a new freedom, beautiful and unexampled. • To the women of Russia: “Cast off your chains! Do not be slaves to religion, to marriage, to children. Break these old ties, the state is your home, the world is your country”. • women those who extolls are the women of the factories and the fields; women who sweep the streets, who scrub, who carry heavy burdens, who plow and weave and drudge
Conti… • We must build a new society in which women are not expected to drudge all day in kitchens. We must have, in Russia, community restaurants, central kitchens, central laundries — institutions which leave the working woman free to devote her evenings to instructive reading or recreation. … • Only by breaking the domestic yoke will we give women a chance to live a richer, happier and more complete life.” • Social suppression of women coincided with the creation of private property
Major Ideas New attitude to life and rules of living (morality) can be observed. • The arrangement of sexual relationship is one aspect of these rule of living • The question of relationship between the sexes is as old as the humanity society itself. • In Russia over the recent years of the civil war there has been little interest of working class towards love.
Philosophy • opposed the ideology of liberal feminism, which she saw as bourgeois. • firmly believed that it "could take place only as the result of the victory of a new social order and a different economic system“ • Kollontai is known for her advocacy of free love.