She made women’s liberation the revolution’s business
The cruiser Aurora fired over the Neva on the night of 25 October 1917, and Lenin proclaimed Soviet power. Kollontai later wrote: it was the greatest moment of her life.
A general’s daughter who became the world’s first woman cabinet minister, as Commissar of Welfare, and scandalized even her own party with free love and the socialization of housework. Siding with the Workers’ Opposition earned her an honourable exile into diplomacy, and the embassies of Norway and Sweden carried her alive through the Terror. One of the few Old Bolsheviks to die in bed.
Career Timeline
- 1908–17Exile; organizing working women
- 1909Published The Social Basis of the Woman Question
- 1917–18Commissar of Welfare, the first woman in a cabinet
- 1919–22Leads the Zhenotdel, the women’s department
- 1920–21Sides with the Workers’ Opposition
- 1921Published the pamphlet The Workers’ Opposition
- 1923–45Envoy to Norway, Mexico, Sweden: the first woman minister-diplomat
- 1923Published Make Way for Winged Eros
- 1944Brokers the Soviet–Finnish armistice contacts
Related historical events
- 1905–1907The Revolution of 1905AgitatorShe was present at the Bloody Sunday march and threw herself into strike support and the organization of women workers.
- 1917.02–07The February RevolutionFirst supporter of the April ThesesOne of the few leaders to back the April Theses at once, she spoke among soldiers and women workers, arguing for the deepening of the revolution.
- 1917.10–1918.01The October RevolutionCommissar of Social WelfareAs Commissar of Social Welfare she became one of the first women ministers in the world, driving legislation on civil marriage, divorce, and maternity protection.
- 1941–1945The Great Patriotic WarAmbassador to Sweden, pursued peace negotiations with Finland
Women's Liberation and Socialism
Kollontai was among the first Marxists to elevate women's liberation as a central task of socialist revolution. She argued not for bourgeois 'sexual liberation' but for structural emancipation through the socialization of housework and collective childcare. As Commissar of Welfare in 1917 she became the world's first woman cabinet minister, then led the Zhenotdel (Women's Department), organizing working women and advancing maternity protection and child welfare. Her advocacy of 'free love' and her Workers' Opposition stance made her controversial in the 1920s, but the question she posed (whether genuine women's liberation is possible without dismantling the private family) became foundational for all subsequent socialist feminism.