FORTY YEARS ago this month, Alexandra Kollontai died, shortly before her eighteth birthday. Her contribution to socialism and feminismn was immense, as were her personal achievements - she was the only woman in Lenin's revolutionary government.
Filty years before the slogan the stay of the women's liberation move. ment. Koronat was champont ideas about sexual moralty and freedom, is relation to berating women from sexual exploitation, that wouk make, even today, some on the left squitm.
Certainly. at the time, her ideas were considered not only unorthodox out postively dangerous. but such was her stubborn bloody-mindedress, dongsie her cuistindly tal ents as an agitator and propagandist, that Lenin, Trotsky and the rest of the Bolshevik leadership couki not do without her.
March 21, 1992 No. 18 question of her te though why she ended up not opposng Stain's conquest of the Party. It ran completely against the grain; If anything Koliontai ist. Stalin's reversal of most of the gains of the revolution for and the new prominence for the Soviet Famly an completesy contrary to reachsals tifelong work.
This question wil probably never be anewored. But it is highly Ekely that after her experience in the Workers' Opposition (1920-22) she became cynical about the loadershio ci the Party in osneral. At the Tenth Party Congress, Lenin and Trotsky - among others - attacked her cas wan exteme ferocky, and with a large degree of personal ri dicule, before banning tacbons in ust Party -thereby stifling the debate.
It seems that after this she concentrated on leading trade delegations and doing diplomatic service, rather than be involved in internal debates in the Party. It is likely that by this point she no longer trusted anyone, and decided to keep her head down to pretent come shot off It is easy in retrospect to say she houki have joined the Left Opposi to - and yes, she shouk have. But it seems that by this time her spirt, once so lorinidable and nassionate i her defence of the ideals of the revolution, had been cnished. She probably died a very bitter woman - and who couki blame her for that.
Cathy Porter has written the best biography of Kollontai, published by of consumption assumes of course inevitably a bourgeois state, for law is nothing without an apparatus capable compelling observance of its norms. It follows that under Communism not only will bourgeois law survive for a certain time, but also even a bourgeois state without the bourgeoisie!"
Lenin did not accept this as a norm; he saw it as a transitional stake to be overcome by break ing the isolation of the Russian Kevolution. opening up anks with more advanced economies to make to prostess Trotsky emphasised the im. portance of Lenin's analysis in understanding the dual role of the state under Stalin's burgeoning bureaucracy:
"The state assumes directly and from the very beginning a dual character: socialistic insofar as it defends social property in the means of production; bourgeois insolar as the dis tribution of life's goods is carwith a capitalistic mcasure or vaite ...
no, then is to uphold the authority of this state? Not the workers, who have no interest in defending the privileges of the minority:
"For the defence of "bourgeois law", the workers' state development of the productive forces than is possible under capitalism. It is this same comparison that is today exploited by those arguing for capitalist restoration in Bastern Europe Eastern europe Trotsky's writings on the USSR help us understand today's complex events. The Tanure to cuminate want has brought back all the 'old crap' in the shape of restorationist currentsand the chactic fragmentamon of the soviet Union into nationalistic religious and ethnic The new, bureaucratic regimes in the ex-Soviet repub lics are now committed to privatising their continies, while still relying upon ile state machinery of the burcaucratised workers state to maintain them against mass opposition From the working cass.
Marxisto fighting against the stream tor a workins class pro gramme in Eastern Europe and the ex-USSR are hampered by the wav in which the wi cept of the dictatorship of the proletaria: has been discredited by assocation with prolonged Stalinist nilc, which in reality represented the antithesis of the marxist tougar or by borate and Trotsky.
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