Theory of Free Love
자유연애론
An early Soviet theory of sex, love, and marriage advanced by Alexandra Kollontai, arguing for sexual relations liberated from bourgeois family and property relations. Viewing marriage and sex as products of class society, it held that under communism freely chosen unions based on mutual attraction and comradeship, not economic dependency, would replace the family. Kollontai coupled this with the socialization of domestic labor and collective child-rearing so that women could achieve economic independence. In the 1920s the position was often misrepresented and debased as the "Glass of Water Theory" (теория стакана воды), which crudely equated sex with quenching thirst.
In depth
Origins and Theoretical Foundations
The theory of free love was first raised by Kollontai in "The Social Basis of the Woman Question" (1909) and systematized in works such as "Sexual Relations and the Class Struggle" (1921) and "Make Way for Winged Eros" (1923). Kollontai took Engels's The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State as her starting point, viewing monogamous marriage not as an institution of affection but as a device for men to pass property to their biological children.
Kollontai distinguished three forms of Eros: "wingless Eros," the mere reproductive instinct; love tainted by bourgeois possessiveness; and "winged Eros," grounded in comradeship and mutual respect. True communist love was this last form, possible only when the proletariat had cast off the bourgeois legacy not only in its economic base but also in consciousness and emotion.
Controversy and Distortion
Kollontai's theory provoked fierce debate within the party. The "Glass of Water Theory" (the reduction of sex to a mere physiological need like thirst, a view she never held) gained currency among some Komsomol youth in the 1920s, and conservative critics deliberately conflated it with Kollontai's position. Lenin, in conversation with Clara Zetkin, condemned the glass-of-water notion as "completely un-Marxist and, moreover, anti-social." Lunacharsky also rebutted it in "On Everyday Life: Youth and the Glass of Water Theory" (1927).
Decline
Under Stalin, Soviet family policy turned conservative. The Women's Department (Zhenotdel) was closed in 1930, criminal penalties for pornography were introduced in 1935, and abortion was banned with divorce restricted in 1936. Aron Zalkind's Twelve Sexual Commandments of the Revolutionary Proletariat (1924) signaled the turn toward disciplining sexual freedom. Kollontai herself, effectively exiled to diplomatic posts from 1922 onward, was no longer able to speak publicly on the subject.
Related people
Sources
- Wikipedia (RU) Russian Wikipedia entry on the Glass of Water Theory, which distinguishes Kollontai's actual views from the theory misattributed to her, and covers the 1920s debates and the decline of sexual radicalism under Stalin.
- Marxists Internet Archive Kollontai's own 1923 pamphlet 'Make Way for Winged Eros,' published in Molodaya Gvardiya, where she lays out her distinction between wingless Eros (mere instinct), bourgeois-possessive love, and winged Eros (communist comradeship-love).
- Marxists Internet Archive Teresa L. Ebert, 'Alexandra Kollontai and Red Love,' Solidarity (ATC), which clarifies that Kollontai did not originate the glass-of-water theory and provides a materialist analysis of her theory of communist sexual morality.