Kollontai – contents of Russian edition

The following is a note presented to the Editorial Board of Revolutionary History on the 1972 Russian edition of Kollontai’s Selected Articles amd Speeches. Translation from the Russian by JJ Plant – use at your own risk.

Selected articles and speeches, Alexandra Kollontai, Moscow 1972

Contents of the Russian edition. The Russian edition contains a lot more material than the English Language version of 1984. Items which appeared in the English edition are marked with * below. I acquired a very cheap remaindered copy in Dom Knigi (“The house of books”, the largest Moscow bookshop) in 1996.

On the question of class war, 1904
Who are the social-democrats, and what do they want? 1906
The Finnish bourgeoisie and proletariat, 1908
*Introduction to the book The social basis of the woman question, 1908
* The international socialist conference of women workers, 1907-1910
The international proletariat and war, From speeches at Stockholm, 1/5/12
* Womens day Feb 1913
A great fighter for justice and women’s freedom (Recollections of August Bebel), 1913
And in Russia it will be Women’s Day! Feb 1914
* The war and our immediate tasks, Nov. 1914
Jean Juares, Dec. 1914
* Who needs the war? 1915
* Why was the German proletariat silent in the July days? Sep. 1915
* Preface to the book Society & Motherhood, 1915
* The Statue of Liberty, End of 1916
Results of the Election Campaigns in the USA, End of 1916
Who needs the Czar, and can we disregard him? Feb. 1917
* Our memorial to the fighters for freedom, March 1917
Where is “revolutionary defencism” leading? April 1917
* Our tasks, May 1917
Speech to the 9th Congress of the SD Party of Finland, 17/6/17
Speech to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets of workers and soldiers delegates on the Finland question, 20/6/17
The reorganisation of the administration of production, Sep. 1917
When will the war end? Sep. 1917
The bankrupt slogan “civil peace”, Oct 1917
Why the Bolsheviks must win, Dec. 1917
“The cross of maternity” and the Soviet republic, Sep. 1918
Old age – not a curse but a deserved rest, Oct. 1918
Letter to the women workers of red Petrograd, Nov. 1918
Time to do away with “black nests”, Nov. 1918
Priests are still at work, Dec. 1918
How and for whom the 1st Russian Congress of Women Workers was convened. 1919
Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg – fighters, heroes & martyrs, Feb. 1919
Whom have women workers lost? (Memories of YM Sverdlov) 21/3/19
Declaration to the workers among women at the 8th Congress of the RCP(B), 22/3/19
* What are we fighting for? May 1919
The struggle against the Czar-famine, May 1919
Whose will be the golden harvest? July 1919
* On the history of the movement of women workers in Russia 1905-17, 1919
Speech to the 2nd All-Russian Congress of Communist Youth, 5/10/19
Crisis in the countryside, Nov 1919
The 1st International Conference of Communists, 1920
Tasks of the Departments for Work Among Women, Nov. 1920
Conference of Women Communist Organisers of the East, April 1921
Trade unions and women workers, May 1921
Women workers and peasants in Soviet Russia, May-Nov. 1921
The 2nd International Conference of Communists, June 1921
The Czar-famine and the Red Army, Aug. 1921
The international treaties and women workers, Nov. 1921
Norway and our trade balance, Nov. 1923
The Mexican revolution, Sep. 1927
* What the October revolution has done for women in the West, Oct. 1927
The Opposition and the party masses, Oct. 1927
The great constructions, Nov. 1927
Women fighters in the great October revolution, Nov. 1927
* Soviet woman – a full equal citizen of her country, 22/9/46
* Lenin thought of both great and small, Jan. 1946
* Lenin at Smolny, Oct.-Nov. 1917, 1947
Memories of Krupskaya, Feb. 1949

The additional material available in this collection does not add to our knowledge of Kollontai, (Holt was able to use it in preparing the bibliography to her edition of Selected Writings. As a 1972 edition, it could not realistically be expected to reproduce material of the Workers Opposition, or Kollontai’s speeches to the 7th Congress opposing peace with Germany and siding with the Left-Communists – although the biographical notes admit that both of these things happened. (And we always need to be on guard against corruption of the text in publications of this period.)

At the same time it provides material from Kollontai–s Menshevik period (everything before 1915, according to Daniels), while not acknowledging, indeed deliberately seeking to obscure the fact, that she was ever a Menshevik. Nor is there any mention of her regular writing for Nashe Slovo before 1915. Particularly difficult to interpret is the extent, pace and timing of her accommodation to the Stalinist power, given the paucity of material from the mid-1920s. The Mexican revolution is a very odd document, published by a Moscow evening daily newspaper and making a popular introduction to the people of Mexico. It seems to propose a strategy of pressure on the Mexican “labour” government and support for it against the USA, through trade and cultural relations, prefiguring many aspects of official Stalinist diplomacy in later decades. At the same time it has unexpected flashes of leftism – “The coloured races declare to the white their right to existence”.

jjp
28 March 1996

Alexandra Kollontai in English (recently)

1. Selected Writings (ed. Alix Holt), Alison & Busby, London 1977
2. Selected Articles and Speeches (complied I.M. Dazhina et al.), Progress Publishers, Moscow 1984.
3. Communism & the Family, Hera Press, Cleveland (also in 1 above)
4. Women Workers Struggle for their Rights, Falling Wall Press, Bristol, 1971 (includes some notes by Sheila Rowbotham on Kollontai material available in English
5. The Workers’ Opposition, Solidarity, London (1973, reprinted in Holt)
6. International Womens Day, Hera Press, Cleveland
7. Sexual Relations in the Class Struggle, Love and the New Morality, Falling Wall Press, Bristol 1972
8. Love of Worker Bees, Virago, 1977
9. Autobiography of a Sexually Liberated Woman, London 1972