Alexandra Kollontai Quotes

Women will only become free and equal in a world where labor has been socialised and where communism has been victorious.

Some third person decides your fate: this is the whole essence of bureaucracy.

ALEXANDRA To be natural and clean, like the water we drink, love must be free and mutual. But men demand obedience and deny pleasure. Without a new morality, without a radical shift in daily life, there will be no real emancipation. If the revolution is not to be a lie, it must abolish in law and in custom men’s right of property over women and the rigid social norms that are the enemies of diversity. Give or take a word, this is what Alexandra Kollontai, the only woman in Lenin’s cabinet, demanded. Thanks to her, homosexuality and abortion were no longer crimes, marriage was no longer a life sentence, women had the right to vote and to equal pay, and there were free child care centers, communal dining halls, and collective laundries. Years

لا زلت أنتمي إلى جيل من النساء نشأ عند منعطف التاريخ. وكان الحب, بكل ما يجره من خيبات أمل متكررة ومآس وسعي دائم وراء السعادة الكاملة, لا يزال يلعب دورا كبيرا في حياتي, دورا أكبر مما يجب أن يكونه ! ولقد هدرت فيه الوقت الثمين والكثير من الطاقة, ويمكن القول أنه كان عديم الجدوى, في التحليل الأخير. فنحن, نساء الجيل الماضي, لم نكتشف السبيل إلى التحرر الفعلي. فبذلنا طاقاتنا بدون حساب, وهدرنا طاقاتنا العملية في تجارب عاطفية عقيمة. وتأكيدا, فإني وغيري من المناضلات والكادحات, أدركنا أن الحب ليس الهدف الأساسي للحياة, وتمكنا من أن نجعل العمل محورا لحياتنا. ولولا أننا لم نهدر طاقاتنا في الصراع الدائم مع عواطفنا تجاه الآخرين, لكنا استطعنا بذل المزيد من الجهد الخلاق. والواقع أن هذا النزاع كان حربا دائمة ضد تدخل الرجل في شؤوننا وتعديه على ذاتيتنا, نزاع يدور حول مشكلة معقدة: العمل أو الحب والزواج؟ نحن نساء الجيل القديم, لم ندرك, كما يدرك الشباب والشابات اليوم, أنه يمكن التوفيق بين العمل والسعي وراء الحب, بحيث يبقى العمل محورا للوجود.

Yet the longing to be understood by a man down to the deepest, most secret recesses of one's soul, to be recognized by him as a striving human being, repeatedly decided matters. And repeatedly disappointment ensued all too swiftly, since the friend saw in me only the feminine element which he tried to mold into a willing sounding board to his own ego. So repeatedly the moment inevitably arrived in which I had to shake off the chains of community with an aching heart but with a sovereign, uninfluenced will. Then I was again alone.

We, the older generation, did not yet understand, as most men do and as young women are learning today, that work and the longing for love can be harmoniously combined so that work remains as the main goal of existence. Our mistake was that each time we succumbed to the belief that we had finally found the one and only in the man we loved, the person with whom we believed we could blend our soul, one who was ready fully to recognize us as a spiritual-physical force. But over and over again things turned out differently, since the man always tried to impose his ego upon us and adapt us fully to his purposes.

How difficult it is for today's woman to cast aside this capacity, internalized in the course of centuries, of millenniums, with which she tried to assimilate herself to the man whom fate seemed to have singled out to be her lord and master. How difficult she will find it to convince herself that woman must reckon self-renunciation as a sin, even a renunciation for the sake of the beloved and for the sake of the power of love.

But when the wave of passion sweeps over her, she does not renounce the brilliant smile of life, she does not hypocritically wrap herself up in a faded cloak of female virtue. No, she holds out her hand to her chosen one and goes away for several weeks to drink from the cup of love’s joy, however deep it is, and to satisfy herself. When the cup is empty, she throws it away without regret and bitterness. And again to work.

In her own memoirs, Emma Goldman reports being deeply moved by the speech Alexandra Kollontai gave over the grave of John Reed, but Kollontai must have also had Armand in mind when she spoke these words: “We call ourselves Communists, but are we really that? Do we not rather draw the life essence from those who come to us, and when they are no longer of use, we let them fall by the wayside, neglected and forgotten? Our Communism and our comradeship are dead letters if we do not give out of ourselves to those who need us. Let us beware of such Communism. It slays the best in our ranks.”30

El ideal de exclusividad en el amor se ha forjado históricamente, ligado a la ideología basada en la noción de propiedad.