>Stalin's USSR was not strong enough to be a rogue state in search of
>global domination--thank God.
>
>Where Stalin *was* strong enough, interesting things happened. Go ask
>Trotsky, Bukharin, Kollontai, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Radek, Kirov, and
>many others whether Stalin was interested in domination or not.
>
>Tell me what they say.
Alexandra Kollontai doesn't belong in that list. She never broke with, nor was broken by, Stalin once he assumed the power. She served from 1930 to 1945 as ambassador to Sweden (she had been the world's first woman ambassador when she was posted to Norway as plenipotentiary in 1923), and returned in 1945 to serve as counsellor in the Foreign Ministry. She played a key role in the settlement with Finland in 1944 (the Finns had been allied up to that point with the Nazis), a settlement that left that country unoccupied, with a popular front government, and neutrally out of the cold war ("Finlandization"). She died, of natural causes, in 1952 at the age of 80. She served Stalin's USSR loyally, effectively, and to the last.
There was a brief period of intense interest in the late 70s and early 80s in her life and writings that saw 3 english language biographies published. The best was Cathy Porter's "Alexandra Kollontai : a biography" published in 1980 by the Virago group in London. The 1977 Alix Holt selection of her writings is also excellent. Recently Theresa Ebert (beloved of the three - or are there four - or-anges) has become interested in her. Kollontai's long been a heroine of mine. In 1921 Lenin in a much publicized letter to Clara Zetkin very strongly criticized Kollontai's defense of sexual experimentation and fun, advocating instead a "Soviet Morality" that was fully adopted by the Stalin regime and that IMHO is in some degree responsible for the disaster that overtook the USSR. Among other things, Kollontai argued in "Two Sisters" that as long as there would be money there would be prostitution, and that it might even represent an attempt by women to be independent - this in NEP Russia.
Yet all in all, I think I can tell Brad what Madame Kollontai would say if she were to be put down in Moscow today. Something like: "This is a despicable nightmare of degradation of women, callous murder by slow starvation of the weak and old, all orchestrated and for the sole benefit of subhuman criminal monsters and "democratic" intellectuals morally inferior to any prostitute. Better, despite all that was wrong in it, Stalin's Russia." If you think I am wrong, check out the Alix Holt edited collected writings and then do the thought experiment suggested by Brad.
john mage