86 - A.K. 47 - Bonus Episode - Louise Bryant on Alexandra Kollontai, 1923

In response to a listener request from the Chicago Teachers' Union, Kristen Ghodsee reads Louise Bryant's chapter on Alexandra Kollontai from Bryant's 1923 book: Mirrors of Moscow. Bryant was a feminist and a journalist who traveled to Russia in 1917 to report on the revolution with her husband, John Reed. This chapter is based on Bryant's personal conversations with Kollontai, and although her biography of Kollontai contains some errors, it is an interesting first hand account from another American woman who met Kollontai in Russia in the years following the October Revolution. Also mentioned in this episode are: Kristen Ghodsee on the podcast with Le Monde Diplomatique (English): Podcast with George Miller: The forgotten chapter of the women’s movement, July 14, 2021The Review of Taking Stock of Shock in The American ConservativePortuguese translation: Por que as mulheres tem melhor sexo sob o socialismo e outros argumentos a favor da independência econômicaKristen Ghodsee's author website: www.kristenghodsee.comPopular Books:Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism: And Other Arguments for Economic IndependenceRed Valkyries: Feminist Lessons from Five Revolutionary WomenThanks so much for listening. This podcast has no Patreon account and receives no funding. If you would like to support the work being done here, please spread the word and share with your friends and networks, and consider exploring the following links:Buy Kristen Ghodsee's new book now: Everyday UtopiaSubscribe to Kristen Ghodsee's (very occasional) free newsletter. Learn more about Kristen Ghodsee's work at: www.kristenghodsee.com

Om Podcasten

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.