A.K. 47 - Selections from the Works of Alexandra Kollontai
A podcast by Kristen R. Ghodsee
147 Episodes
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87 - A.K. 47 - Working Woman and Mother - Part 1
Published: 8/26/2021 -
86 - A.K. 47 - Bonus Episode - Louise Bryant on Alexandra Kollontai, 1923
Published: 7/21/2021 -
85 - A.K. 47 - Bonus Episode - Was Kollontai Bi?
Published: 7/13/2021 -
84 - A.K. 47 - The War and Our Immediate Tasks
Published: 7/6/2021 -
83 - A.K. 47 - Bonus Episode - Emma Goldman and Alexandra Kollontai
Published: 5/30/2021 -
82 - A.K. 47 - Bonus Episode - Review of Kollontai: A Play by Agneta Pleijel
Published: 5/24/2021 -
81 - A.K. 47 - A Letter to a Young Comrade - Part 3
Published: 5/3/2021 -
80 - A.K. 47 - A Letter to a Young Comrade - Part 2
Published: 4/6/2021 -
79 - A.K. 47 - A Letter to a Young Comrade - Part 1
Published: 3/25/2021 -
78- A.K. 47 - International Women's Day - Part 2
Published: 3/8/2021 -
77 - A.K. 47 - International Women's Day - Part 1
Published: 3/1/2021 -
76 - A.K. 47 - Love and the New Morality (Excerpt) and Valentine's Day Rant
Published: 2/14/2021 -
75 - A.K. 47 - Bonus Episode - What Would Kollontai Think of Bridgerton?
Published: 2/1/2021 -
74 - A.K. 47 - Our Tasks (and shout out to the K-Pop stans)
Published: 1/22/2021 -
73 - A.K. 47 - Bonus Episode - The Capitol Insurrection and "North American Time"
Published: 1/9/2021 -
72 - A.K. 47 - Letter to Dora Montefiore, January 26, 1921
Published: 1/5/2021 -
71 - A.K. 47 - Lenin Thought of Both Great and Small (Kollontai on Christmas 1917)
Published: 12/25/2020 -
70 - A.K. 47 - Endnote to The Soviet Woman, A Full and Equal Citizen of Her Country
Published: 12/19/2020 -
69 - A.K. 47 - The Soviet Woman, A Full and Equal Citizen of Her Country
Published: 12/13/2020 -
68 - A.K. 47 - Red Love Burn Off and Thanksgiving Greetings
Published: 11/26/2020
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.
