俄國革命家——女權主義先驅亞歷山卓·柯倫泰（Alexandra Kollantai, 1872.3.31-1952.3.9）
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文 瑪德琳·詹森（Madeleine Johansson）
譯 楊吉姆
校 凡人
亞歷山卓·柯倫泰是女性從政的先驅。她是俄羅斯第一批女性民選代表之一，也是第一位俄羅斯女性部長和內閣成員——早在任何西方政府取得這樣的成就之前——隨後成為第一位女性大使。
柯倫泰的俄羅斯
柯倫泰出生在一個古老的俄羅斯貴族家庭，她是家裡最小的孩子，用她自己的話來說，是「家裡最受嬌縱寵愛的人」。人們期望一個像她這樣地位的16歲年輕女子去過一位「年輕社會女性」的生活。
柯倫泰的父母安排她與一個年近七十的富人結婚。但她拒絕這樁婚事並嫁給了她的表兄，儘管這段年輕人的愛情只持續了三年。就在這時，她開始參加馬克思主義讀書會，並參加了社會主義運動。
柯倫泰奮起反抗當時對俄羅斯婦女的沉重壓迫。婦女在婚後（許多是包辦的）被視為丈夫的財產，不允許離婚和墮胎。婦女在受限的杜馬選舉中沒有投票權，也沒有婦女當選代表。
俄羅斯幾乎沒有社會福利體系，任何一個碰巧有了非婚子女的女人都很可能淪落到可怕的濟貧院裡。此時，許多婦女正反抗自身自由的缺乏。中產階級婦女努力開創事業和爭取就業機會，希望由此獲得經濟自由並隨即從男性的掌控中獨立出來。
另一方面，工人階級婦女已經有了工作，其中很多是家庭傭人，但也有些人在彼得格勒等大城市的工廠工作。在性別壓迫之外，女工還面臨低工資、可怕的工作條件、貧窮等問題。
她的社會主義女權主義
柯倫泰通過反抗限制婦女生活的社會規範開啟了她的政治生涯，而她的許多作品都關注爭取婦女解放及婦女解放運動與工人運動之間的關係。
她組織女工參加女工俱樂部（Working Women’s Clubs），並組織女性黨員參加婦女參政運動組織的會議。
1909年，柯倫泰寫下了一本簡短而影響廣泛的小冊子《女性問題的社會基礎》（The Social Basis of the Women’s Question）。她認為，為了從壓迫中獲得解放，婦女必須加入工人運動，反對壓迫婦女的生產制度。
她解釋說：
「女人的世界和男人的世界一樣，也分為兩大陣營；一群婦女的利益和願望使它接近資產階級的階級，而另一組與無產階級關係密切，後者要求一種完全解決婦女問題的自由。因此，雖然兩個陣營都跟從『解放婦女』的總口號，但她們的目標和利益是不同的。每個群體都不自覺地以自己階級的利益為出發點，這就給自己設定的目標和任務賦予了特定的階級色彩。」
她認為，無論資產階級女權主義者的意圖是什麼，他們的目標和利益都不同於工人階級女性，因為他們的階級利益在於維持現狀。
有時兩個群體的鬥爭不謀而合，但長遠地看，統治階級婦女將滿足于她們自身階級的內部平等。在實踐中，統治階級的婦女和男子就可以在生產過程中更平等地參與對工人的剝削。
然而，柯倫泰認為，婦女壓迫必須得到正面對抗，而不僅僅是社會主義鬥爭的副產品。為了達到這個目的，她主張黨在女工中對女性權利問題進行特別的鼓動。
柯倫泰通過反抗對女性權利和選擇的限制開啟了她的政治生涯，並很快得出結論——唯一的解決方案是工人階級通過革命推翻資本主義制度。像她的許多同志一樣，她夢想著一種不同的社會，那裡男性和女性可以平等地生活。
1917年，歷史上第一次出現了實現這一夢想的機會。
革命的俄羅斯
1917年2月，彼得格勒的婦女在沙皇獨裁統治、戰爭配給和極度貧困的枷鎖下艱難地生活著。國際婦女節那天，女工們湧上街頭抗議，要求「土地、麵包與和平」。他們遊行到工人工作的工廠，向窗戶上扔雪球，號召他們的丈夫、父親、兄弟和朋友加入他們。這些事件掀起了一股罷工浪潮，迫使沙皇退位，並開始了革命的進程。
當流亡歐洲的柯倫泰得知二月革命爆發的消息時，她從挪威經過瑞典北部返回了俄羅斯。在革命的幾個月裡，柯倫泰不知疲倦地作為演說家、作家和鼓動者工作。當年4月，她入選蘇維埃行政部門，5月幫助出版了《女性工人》（The Women Workers ）週報，還參加了洗衣女工的罷工。
《女性工人》積極鼓勵婦女參加革命活動，正如柯倫泰在這篇文章中寫的那樣：
「我們女工在俄國革命時第一個舉起紅旗，第一個在婦女節走上街頭。現在讓我們趕快加入為工人事業而戰鬥的領導隊伍，讓我們加入工會，加入社會民主黨，加入工人和士兵代表的蘇維埃！」
布爾什維克女黨員所做的工作當然不是徒勞的。俄羅斯女性有史以來第一次以空前的數量參與公民和政治生活。婦女工人參加城市的蘇維埃會議，農民婦女參加農村的反地主運動。我們只能依靠想像感受從被關在家中的女性轉變而來的活動家、戰士和決策者身上湧出那股能量和熱情。
到1917年10月，柯倫泰被選為布爾什維克黨的中央委員會成員。
隨著十月革命的成功和蘇維埃政府的成立，柯倫泰被任命為社會福利人民委員，成為歷史上第一位擔任部長職務的女性。她努力將她的著作和演講中所宣揚的平等和公平的理想付諸實踐。
要把俄羅斯變成一個社會主義國家，有大量的工作要做。政府頒佈法令以改善對殘疾士兵的照顧，廢除女子學校的宗教教育，為無家可歸者建設住所，引進婦幼保健和免費的公共衛生系統。
然而，柯倫泰明白，「僅獲得合法權利是不夠的；婦女必須在實踐中得到解放。女性的解放意味著給她們撫養孩子的機會，把做母親和為社會工作結合起來。」
1918年11月，她説明組織了第一次女工和農婦大會（Congress of Women Workers and Women Peasants），以制定教育和婦女參與社會工作的計畫。計畫包括建立公共廚房、公共洗衣房和兒童日托所，目的是將婦女從孤立的家庭工作中解放出來，引導她們為社會利益進行集體工作。此外，計畫也在女工和農婦的教育方面作出了巨大努力，其中許多人還是文盲。
家庭和肉體自由問題得到了許多改革。結婚和離婚成為民事而非宗教事務，經雙方同意即可。非婚子女與已婚夫婦的孩子享有同樣的權利，墮胎合法化也於1919年合法化了。
1920年，柯倫泰寫下了《共產主義和家庭》（ Communism and the Family），闡述了她對一個全新的社會主義社會中新型家庭的願景。新型家庭將不是一個生產或消費單位，而是由兩個夥伴之間的愛與平等組成的單位。柯倫泰大量論述了關於個人自由戀愛以及全社會集體育兒的理念。
內戰結束時，蘇俄幾乎被完全摧毀了。數以百萬計的工人死於戰爭或疾病，工廠被關閉，大片最肥沃的糧食產地被破壞，生產力大幅下降。
1922年，柯倫泰接受蘇俄駐挪威大使的任命。作為第一位擔任該職位的女性，她發現自己被處理條約和貿易協定的工作壓得喘不過氣來。到20世紀20年代末，斯大林和他的忠實支持者已經控制了蘇聯政府。
從1929年起，柯倫泰的作品明顯缺乏。可悲的是，她從來沒有批評過史達林主義政權，因為許多由柯倫泰自己頒佈的法律和法令正在斯大林主義的「蘇維埃家庭」新理想下遭到侵蝕。
Alexandra Kollontai: Revolutionary
Alexandra Kollontai was a pioneer in terms of women in politics. She was one of the first female elected representatives, the first female Minister and member of Cabinet in Russia – before such a feat was achieved in any Western government – and subsequently became the first female Ambassador.
Kollontai’s Russia
Born into a family of old Russian nobility, Kollontai was the youngest and, in her own words, ‘the most spoiled, the most coddled member of the family’. At the age of sixteen a young woman of her status was expected to begin the life of a ‘young society woman’.
Kollontai’s parents arranged a marriage for her to a well-to-do man who was nearly seventy. But she refused and married her cousin, a young love that lasted about three years. It was at this point that she began attending Marxist reading circles and joined the socialist movement.
Kollontai rebelled against the deep oppression of women in Russia at the time. Women, after their marriage (many of which were arranged), were regarded as the property of their husband, and there was no divorce and no abortion. Women didn’t have the right to vote in the limited Duma elections and there were no women elected representatives.
There was virtually no social welfare system and any woman who happened to have a child out of wedlock was likely to end up in the dreaded workhouses. At this time, many women were rebelling against their lack of freedoms. Middle class women fought to make their way into professions and gain employment, in hopes for the economic freedom and independence from men that would follow.
Working class women, on the other hand, were already in employment, many as domestic servants, but also in factories in the big cities like Petrograd. The problems faced by women workers were those of low wages, horrific working conditions, poverty, on top of the gender-specific oppression.
Her Socialist Feminism
Kollontai began her political life with a revolt against the societal norms which restricted the lives of women and many of her writings are related to the fight for women’s liberation and the relationship between women’s liberation and the workers’ movement.
She spent her time organising women workers into Working Women’s Clubs, and she organised interventions by women party members to conferences organised by the suffragette movement.
In 1909, Kollontai wrote the short but influential pamphlet The Social Basis of the Women’s Question. She argued in order to win liberation from oppression, women must join with the worker’s movement in the fight against a system of production from which women’s oppression stems.
She explains:
The women’s world is divided, just as is the world of men, into two camps; the interests and aspirations of one group of women bring it close to the bourgeois class, while the other group has close connections with the proletariat, and its claims for liberation encompass a full solution to the woman question. Thus, although both camps follow the general slogan of the ‘liberation of women’, their aims and interests are different. Each of the groups unconsciously takes its starting point from the interests of its own class, which gives a specific class colouring to the targets and tasks it sets itself.
She argued that regardless of the intentions of bourgeois feminists their aims and interests are different from working class women, because they belong to a class whose interests lie in maintaining the status quo.
At times, the struggle of both groups may coincide, but in the long term the women of the ruling class will be satisfied with equality within their own class. In practice, women and men of the ruling class can then engage more equally in the exploitation of workers in the process of production.
Kollontai argued, however, that women’s oppression must be combatted head on, and not just as a by-product of the fight for socialism. To that end, she argued for specific agitation by the Party amongst women workers on the question of women’s rights.
Kollontai had begun her political journey by revolting against the lack of rights and choices for women and had quickly come to the conclusion that the only solution was a revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist system by the working class. Like many of her comrades, she dreamed of a different kind of society where men and women could live as equals.
In 1917 for the first time in history, there was an opportunity to realise that dream.
Revolutionary Russia
In February 1917, the women of Petrograd lived in hardship under the yoke of Tsarist dictatorship, war rations and extreme poverty. On International Women’s day, women workers poured onto the streets to protest with demands for ‘Land, Bread and Peace’. They marched to the factories where the men were working, threw snowballs on the windows and called on their husbands, fathers, brothers and friends to join them. These events unleashed a strike wave which forced the Tsar to abdicate from the throne and began the process of revolution.
Having lived in exile in Europe, when Kollontai received news of the outbreak of the February revolution she travelled from Norway to Russia through Northern Sweden. During the months of the revolution Kollontai worked tirelessly as an orator, a writer and an agitator. She was elected to the Soviet executive in April, she helped publish the weekly newspaper The Women Workers in May and took part in strikes by women laundry workers.
The Women Workers actively encouraged women to take part in the revolutionary activity, as seen in this article by Kollontai:
We, the women workers, were the first to raise the Red Banner in the days of the Russian revolution, the first to go out onto the streets on Women’s Day. Let us now hasten to join the leading ranks of the fighters for the workers’ cause, let us join trade unions, the Social-Democratic Party, the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies!
The work carried out by the women members of the Bolshevik party was certainly not in vain. Russian women were for the first time drawn into civic and political life in vast, historic numbers. Women workers attended the meetings of the Soviet in the cities while peasant women took part in the movement against the landlords in the countryside. We can only imagine the energy and enthusiasm that must have been flowing from the masses of women who were being transformed from women isolated within the family into activists, fighters and decision makers.
By October 1917 Kollontai had been elected to the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party.
With the formation of the Soviet government following the successful insurrection in October, Kollontai was appointed People’s Commissar of Social Welfare, the first woman in history to occupy a Ministerial post. She worked to put into practice the ideals of equality and fairness promoted in her writings and speeches.
There was an enormous amount of work to be done in order to transform Russia into a socialist country. There were decrees to improve care for disabled soldiers, abolish religious instruction in girl’s schools, set up homeless hostels, introduce maternity and infant care and a free public health care system.
However, Kollontai understood that ‘to attain legal rights is insufficient; women must be emancipated in practice. The emancipation of women means giving them the opportunity to bring up their children, combining motherhood with work for society.’
In November 1918, she helped organise the first Congress of Women Workers and Women Peasants which sought the formation of a programme of education and involvement of women into societal tasks. This included the establishment of communal kitchens, communal laundries and children’s day care with the aim of freeing women from isolated work in the home and bring them into working collectively for the good of society. In addition, there was an enormous effort made to educate working and peasant women, many of whom were illiterate.
Many reforms were made to the family and on questions of bodily autonomy. Marriage and divorce became civil matters, not religious, and were allowed by mutual consent. Children born out of wedlock received the same rights as children of married couples, and in 1919 abortion was legalised.
In 1920, Kollontai wrote Communism and the Family, which illustrated the vision Kollontai had for a new type of family in a new socialist society. This family would not be a unit of production or consumption, but rather a unit formed by love and equality between two partners. Kollontai wrote extensively about the concept of free-love for individuals, and collective childrearing for society as a whole.
By the end of the civil war Soviet Russia was all but destroyed. Millions of workers had perished in the fighting or from disease, factories had been closed down, large sections of the most fertile grain-producing land had been lost and productivity had plummeted.
In 1922, Kollontai accepted the appointment of Soviet Ambassador in Norway. She was the first woman ever to hold this position and she found herself overwhelmed by work on treaties and trade agreements. By the late 1920’s, Stalin and his loyal supporters had secured control of the Soviet government.
There was a noticeable lack of writings by Kollontai from 1929 onwards. Tragically, she never criticised the Stalinist regime, as many of the laws and decrees enacted by Kollontai herself were being eroded under the new ideal of the Stalinist “Soviet Family.”
Alexandra Kollontai deserves to be remembered as a pioneer of both socialist and feminist politics. Her political insights, and revolutionary practice, remain relevant to socialist activists today.
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