By Gene Ogorodov
Alexandra Kollontai is an interesting figure that emerged out of Russian Revolutionary politics. A child of a Finish peasant and a Russian General, reared in luxury, she was an early member of the Russian Social Democratic Party that opposed both Martov and Lenin in the Bolshevik/Menshevik split who, like Trotsky, joined Lenin's Bolshevik's in the eleventh hour rising to prominence in the early Soviet Union. She shattered the glass ceiling as a Peoples' Commissar (Soviet equivalent of a Cabinet Secretary) in 1917 and Ambassador in 1923 half a century before Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, or Golda Meir became Prime Ministers in there respective countries.Outspoken and fearless Kollontai relentlessly pursued social and economic equality for women in the Soviet Union, going toe-to-toe with anyone including Lenin when ever she felt the need. She vehemently opposed prostitution and marital infidelity as exploitative for women. (In fact A Great Love was itself written as little more than a thinly veiled attack on Lenin's extra-marital affair with Inessa Armand). Nevertheless, Kollontai was one of the first proponents of "free love." Marriage was, she believed, a relic of the patriarchal domination of women and would vanish along with the state in a perfectly free and communal society.
A Great Love qua piece of literature is hardly worthy of sitting next to the works of great Soviet writers like Babel and Pasternak (Kollontai did intend this to be just a Romance), but as a feminist expose it has views on sexuality and gender roles strikingly familiar to a 21st Century audience. Kollontai's genius wasn't in the beauty of her writing but in the clarity and well developed position of her politics. Her views on gender roles, sexuality, and motherhood were both revolutionary and, as time has shown, surprisingly practical. Her dynamic forward thinking on gender and sexuality has influenced not just Socialist societies but societies that would consider the idea of Marxist-Leninist Socialism repugnant making her unquestionably one of the most significant feminists to have ever lived.
Other short stories and essays have been included in this volume to round-out what would have been a rather thin book with only a brief novella with short works that help further develop the ideas that she addresses in A Great Love.
