Alexandra Kollontai, born on this day in 1872, was a Marxist feminist revolutionary who served as People’s Commissar for Social Welfare in the Soviet Union and, later in life, as a diplomat for the USSR abroad.
Alexandra was born into a wealthy family of Ukrainian, Russian, and Finnish background, acquiring a fluency in both Russian and Finnish early on. This experience would later assist her in her career as a Soviet diplomat.
In 1895, Kollontai read August Bebel’s “Woman and Socialism”, which was a major influence on her thinking. In 1896, she helped fundraise in support of a mass textile strike in St. Petersburg, retaining connections with the women textile workers of St. Petersburg for the rest of her career.
In the years leading up to 1917, Kollontai was active as a Marxist theoretician, educator, and anti-war activist (opposing World War I, specifically). During this time, she established contact with Vladimir Lenin and gave a lengthy speaking tour in the U.S., sharing a stage with Eugene V. Debs and giving 123 speeches in 4 languages.
Following the 1917 February Revolution, Kollontai returned to Russia. Later that year, she voted in favor of the decision to launch an armed uprising against the government, also participating in the revolt. At the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets, she was elected Commissar of Social Welfare in the new Soviet government.
The Encyclopedia of Women’s Autobiography describes her efforts within the Soviet government: “The changes that Kollontai tried to bring about were enormous, involving the complete destruction of the old system and the creation of a new one…Kollontai authorized decrees that committed the Soviet State to full funding of maternity care from conception through the first year of a child’s life - an unheard of measure for the beginning of the 20th century. She attempted to establish full legal, political, and sexual equality for women and to redress the entire marriage code.”
In 1920, Kollontai joined the left “Workers’ Opposition”, an opposition tendency in the Bolshevik Party opposed to what they saw as the increasing bureaucratization of the Soviet state. In March 1921, the Workers’ Opposition was banned along with all other factions at the 10th party congress in March 1921, but its members continued to be active as leaders of both the Bolshevik Party and the Soviets.
In 1922, Kollontai was one of the signers of the “Letter of the 22” to the Communist International, protesting the banning of factions in Russia.
Following this incident, Kollontai began to serve as a Soviet diplomat, becoming one of the first women to work in international diplomacy. As ambassador to Norway and Sweden, as a trade delegate to Mexico, as a delegate to the League of Nations, and as negotiator of the Finno-Soviet peace treaty of 1940, she served the USSR with what was generally regarded as great finesse. From 1946 until her death in 1952, she was an advisor to the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
"Class instinct…always shows itself to be more powerful than the noble enthusiasms of ‘above-class’ politics. So long as the bourgeois women and their [proletarian] ‘younger sisters’ are equal in their inequality, the former can, with complete sincerity, make great efforts to defend the general interests of women.
But once the barrier is down and the bourgeois women have received access to political activity, the recent defenders of the ‘rights of all women’ become enthusiastic defenders of the privileges of their class, content to leave the younger sisters with no rights at all. Thus, when the feminists talk to working women about the need for a common struggle to realise some ‘general women’s’ principle, women of the working class are naturally distrustful."
- Alexandra Kollontai
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JDPON DON BRINGS JUCHEIST PRINCIPLES TO AMERICA! 🇰🇵🇰🇵🇰🇵SELF RELIANCE
Picked up a pizza today and it came with a fucking ad taped to the box. Advertising as an industry has been an unmitigated disaster for all of humanity.
Left my headphones at home, bout to have to raw dog a gym session for the first time in like 10 years
Edit: my backup ancient AirPods’ case was dead but the headphones themselves are good LFG
stressed out because I’m running a couple minutes late and have to get gas on the way to work, about to get in the car and I notice the “we cut you today” text messageIt’s nice that twitter 2 has gone back to its roots and is now serving random pictures of cock and/or hole again
So apparently they’re thinking that they used an llm to figure up the tariffs lmao
Small domino: guy toying with a chat bots
Big domino: fall of the U.S. empire
Conservatives are trying to do another “trans women in sports” drama, this time with fencing.
A fencer very performatively refused to compete against a trans woman and was DQd for it. She went as far as to hook up her uniform before making a scene.
Thing is, fencing is one of the most trans-friendly sports there is. Most low-level bouts are coed and in higher levels trans athletes just need to be on HRT for like a year. Men and women tend to fence differently, but the skill gap is very small and the community by and large has been moving towards more inclusivity. The consensus seems to be that yes, that is behavior deserving of a black card.
So transphobes are getting mad, but the fencing community recognizes how stupid this all is. We’ve already figured out how we deal with trans athletes. The outrage is entirely from outsiders.
Also, the transphobic fencer recently competed in an open competition. Against men. So it’s not a “men in women’s sport thing”. It’s PURELY transphobia.
I picked the right sport in college.
The Canadians better start trying to join the BRI
That was Nintendo’s price without tariffs? What the fuck.
Me looking at the markets:
Me remembering I’m part of the retirement Ponzi scheme:
Just utterly incapable of doing anything today, really phoning it in. Somebody made a fucky wucky yesterday and took down a majority of the computers here and I spent the whole day putting out fires and now I just want a nap.
Death to Amerikkka
is secure boot something that’s universally good to leave enabled, or is it one of those things that’s only really needed in certain situations (like VPNs)
Bus drivers are literally braver than the troops
Funny to think that my first step towards becoming a communist was just…being a baby raised by liberals and taking what they said seriously. Be kind, share. Treat others how you want them to treat you. You can’t put a price on the beauty of nature. Things like that. Then you grow up and they’re like “Just kidding, go get a job. I hear the orphan crushing factory is hiring.”
