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.

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Avsnitt(166)

54 - Bonus Episode - On Kollontai and Turning Fifty

In this episode, Kristen Ghodsee reads a passage from Cathy Porter's excellent biography of Alexandra Kollontai about the events of the year 1922 when Kollontai turned 50. Her standing in the Party wa...

26 Apr 202026min

53 - A.K. 47 - Sisters Part III

In this episode Kristen Ghodsee reads the third and final part of Alexandra Kollontai's 1923 short story, "Sisters." The "Nepmen" in the story are Soviet revolutionaries that take advantage of Lenin's...

17 Apr 202020min

52 - A.K. 47 - Sisters Part II

In this episode Kristen Ghodsee reads the second part of Alexandra Kollontai's 1923 short story, "Sisters." The "Nepmen" in the story are Soviet revolutionaries that take advantage of Lenin's New Econ...

10 Apr 202018min

51 - A.K. 47 - Sisters Part I

In this episode Kristen Ghodsee reflects on the coronavirus and begins to read Alexandra Kollontai's 1923 short story, "Sisters." Mentioned in this episode are the $2.99 e-book sale for the entire m...

1 Apr 202019min

50 - A.K. 47 - Bonus Episode - Post-IWD Greetings from Wellington, New Zealand

In this episode, Kristen Ghodsee send greetings from New Zealand and shares some exciting news about various articles and interviews that were published in conjunction with International Women's Day a...

10 Mars 20208min

49 - A.K. 47 - Bonus Episode - International Women's Day 2020

In this episode, Kristen Ghodsee recounts the amazing story of how Alexandra Kollontai saved the lives of one of her colleague's parents in Sweden. After the Nazi invasion of Norway in 1940, Hans Cerf...

8 Mars 202016min

48 - A.K. 47 - The Loves of Three Generations Discussion II

In this episode, Kristen Ghodsee discusses the fraught historical relationship between left movements and women's emancipation. As the case of Kollontai shows us, revolutionary men do not always remai...

1 Mars 202017min

47 - A.K. 47 - The Loves of Three Generations Discussion I

In this episode, Kristen R. Ghodsee discusses Alexandra Kollontai's 1923 short story, "The Loves of Three Generations," her most controversial piece of fiction and one that caused her terrible amounts...

14 Feb 202018min