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On The Woman Question: A Defense Of Alexandra Kollontai Against Liberal Critics, Nicole Baltzer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Alexandra Kollontai envisioned a world in which all women and their proletarian comrades were liberated from subordination under capitalism. She served as People’s Commissar in the Bolshevik government and established the Zhenotdel, the government’s department for women. Under the Bolsheviks, women were granted equal legal status to men, divorce rights, access to birth control, and were the primary benefiters of the nationalization of domestic work (i.e., communal childcare, dining, and laundry halls). Kollontai and the Soviet Union provide us with one of the few examples of Marxist feminism in action. Liberal critics of Kollontai and her Marxist comrades and contemporaries …