A.K. 47 - Selections from the Works of Alexandra Kollontai

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.

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Jaksot(166)

102 - A.K. 47 - Women Workers Struggle for their Rights - Part 1

Kristen Ghodsee reads Alexandra Kollontai's 1918 pamphlet: "Women Workers Struggle for their Rights." Mentioned in this episode are the blurbs for Red Valkyries: Feminist Lessons from Five Revolution...

23 Huhti 202220min

101 - A.K. 47 - Bonus Episode - Verticality versus Horizontality

In this bonus episode, Kristen Ghodsee speaks with an anarchist activist recently returned from a pipeline resistance camp (who wished to remain anonymous). They discuss theories of organizing for suc...

29 Maalis 202221min

100 - A.K. 47 - The Third International

For the 100th episode of A.K. 47, Kristen Ghodsee reads Alexandra Kollontai's 1915 speech, "The Third International," which she delivered in the United States while rallying Americans against World Wa...

8 Maalis 202216min

99 - A.K. 47 - War and the International Proletariat

Kristen Ghodsee reads a 1912 speech which Alexandra Kollontai delivered on May 1st in Stockholm, Sweden. She talks about the intersections of war and capitalism. Mentioned in this episode is former ...

3 Maalis 202216min

98 - A.K. 47 - Bonus Episode - Celebrating the Third Year Anniversary of the Podcast

Kristen Ghodsee's (now twenty-year-old) daughter interviews Ghodsee about the original idea for the podcast and how it has developed since January 2019 when she posted her first episode. Mentioned i...

20 Tammi 202226min

97 - A.K. 47 - Bonus Episode - 100 Years of Kollontai's Work in Yugoslavia and Serbia

Kristen Ghodsee records part of a spontaneous chat with Minja Bujakovic and Marta Chmielewska, both Ph.D. researchers at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Over a bottle of wine, Mi...

29 Joulu 202115min

96 - A.K. 47 - New Woman - Part 5

Kristen Ghodsee discusses two key themes in Kollontai's 1918 essay, "New Woman." The first is the persistence of nostalgia for an imagined traditional family of the past that might save us from the di...

15 Joulu 202120min

95 - A.K. 47 - New Woman - Part 4

Kristen Ghodsee reads Part 4 of Alexandra Kollontai's 1918 essay: "New Woman" where Kollontai discusses the relationship between life and art in the representation of female characters in literature. ...

7 Joulu 202123min