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The Political Function of Domestic Objects in the Fiction of Aleksandra Kollontai

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Birgitta Ingemanson
Birgitta Ingemanson*
Affiliation:
Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Washington State University
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Extract

During the winter of 1922-1923 when she was just beginning her diplomatic career, Bolshevik activist Aleksandra Kollontai wrote two novels and several short stories that were immediately published in Russia and subsequently combined into two volumes under the titles Liubov’ pchel trudovykh and Zhenshchina na perelome. They were dismissed as mere autobiographical romances, indulging in unhealthy introspection and dangerously divorced from the “real” demands of society. At a time when Soviet Russia was facing enormous challenges connected with the reconstruction after the civil war and with the partial return to a market economy under the New Economic Policy (NEP), Kollontai's focus on domestic relationships and the status of women seemed narrow and excessively private.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 48 , Issue 1 , Spring 1989 , pp. 71 - 82
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1989

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References

I dedicate this article to the memory of my beloved sister Beppan (Elisabet Jenny Maria Temperley), who died at age 39 on 6 March 1987.

I first discussed some of the ideas in this paper at the Seminar on Soviet and Russian Women, Illinois Summer Research Laboratory, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in August 1983. An early draft was read at the conference of the Western Slavic Association in Portland, Oregon in March 1986. I received funding for this project from the Research and Arts Travel Grants of the Washington State University Foundation in 1983 and 1986. The facilities of the WSU Humanities Research Center have also been of invaluable use, for which I warmly thank Rhonda Blair and Thomas C. Faulkner as well as the Office of the Dean of the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences.

1. Aleksandra Mikhailovna Kollontai, born in St. Petersburg in 1872, joined the Bolshevik party in1915 and was People's Commissar for Social Welfare in Lenin's government from 1917 to 1918. She becamehead of the Zhenotdel, the Women's Section, 1920–1921 and after 1923 served in several prominent diplomaticposts abroad (among them, as minister and then ambassador to Sweden, 1930–1945). She retiredbecause of ill health at the age of 73 and died in Moscow in 1952, three weeks short of her eightieth birthday.Zhenshchina na perelome contains the novel Bol'shaia liubov’ and the short story “Tridtsat’ dve stranitsy. “Liubov’ pchel trudovykh consists of the novel Vasilisa Malygina and the story “Liubov’ trekh pokolenii, “as well as “Sestry,” which had been previously published in the journal Kommunistka in 1921. Unlessotherwise indicated, all translations in this article are mine.

2. Harshest among Kollontai's critics at the time was Polina Vinogradskaia; see her article “ ‘KrylatyiEros’ tov. Kollontai,” Molodaia Gvardiia 3 (May 1923): 111–124; it is included in English as “The'Winged Eros’ of Comrade Kollontai” in Rosenberg, William, ed., Bolshevik Visions: First Phase of the Cultural Revolution in Soviet Russia (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1984), 127–138 Google Scholar. Also see Kollontai, Alexandra, Selected Writings, ed. Holt, Alix (New York: Norton, 1977), 201 Google Scholar, and, for a recent account of the 1923 furor around Kollontai, Rosenberg, Bolshevik Visions, 76–78.

3. Two excellent biographies of Kollontai's life and work devote only a few pages each to her fiction: Clements, Barbara Evans, Bolshevik Feminist: The Life of Aleksandra Kollontai (Bloomington: Indiana UniversityPress, 1979, 228–232 Google Scholar; and Famsworth, Beatrice, Aleksandra Kollontai: Socialism, Feminism, andthe Bolshevik Revolution (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1980), 321–322, 326–333Google Scholar. Otheranalyses are equally restrained: see for example Louis Fisher, “Review of Red Love, by Alexandra Kollontay, “The Nation 22 June 1927, 700; and Rowbotham, Sheila, Women, Resistance and Revolution: A Historyof Women and Revolution in the Modern World (New York: Vintage, 1974), 154–158 Google Scholar.

4. Kollontai used this expression in her memoir notebooks written in 1946–1952 in Moscow; see A. Kollontai, M., Iz moei zhizni i raboty, ed. Dazhina, I. M. et al. (Moscow: Sovetskaia Rossiia, 1974, p. 366 Google Scholar.

It is not altogether accurate, as Alix Holt states on p. 205 of her collection of Kollantai's writings, thatthe stories in Liubov’ pchel trudovykh “were later to be dismissed by Kollontai as unimportant becausethey lacked literary merit.” I. Dazhina makes a similar claim in her introduction to the English edition ofKollontai's Selected Articles and Speeches, trans. Cynthia Carlile (Moscow: Progress; New York: InternationalPublishers, 1984), 14. While Kollontai did acknowledge the weaknesses of her fictional endeavors, published and unpublished materials show that she also recommended them to persons interested in herviews on sexual morality and that she participated directly in their translation into German (1925), Norwegian (1928), and other languages. See a letter to her friend Ellen Michelsen poststamped 15 October 1928, and others written on 13 November 1928 and 27 January-1 February 1929, in Alexandra Kollontay, Karakamrat! Allrakdraste van!: Brev i urval [Dear comrade! most beloved friend!: selected letters], trans, anded., Britta Stovling ([Sweden] n.p.: Gidlunds, 1977), 48–52. Furthermore, as late as 14 October 1948, Kollontai wrote, in French, to another Swedish friend, the prominent writer Marika Stiernstedt, about herwish to talk with her “especially about the questions of the feminine heart [surtout sur les questions du coeurde la femme]. Have you ever read my little stories translated into Swedish, Love of Worker Bees? They haveno literary value, but there is a bit of me in them [il y a un peu de moi dedans]” (Manuscript Division, University Library of Uppsala).

5. Emy Lorentsson, who became Kollontai's personal secretary in 1932 and returned to live in Russiawith her in 1945, told Norwegian scholar Kaare Hauge that both Bol'shaia liubov’ and Vasilisa Malyginawere based on autobiographical material, see “Alexandra Mikhailovna Kollontai: The Scandinavian Period, 1922–1945” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1971), pp. 28, 50. For a modified view of this, see Clements, Bolshevik Feminist, p. 305. Kollontai used the phrase Lieblingsidee in an unpublished letter tothe well-known Danish journalist Anker Kirkeby, a participant in the Russian Revolution, who had interviewedKollontai for Politiken, a leftist newspaper published in Copenhagen, 15 October 1923 (ManuscriptDivision, the Royal Library, Copenhagen).

6. For brief mentions of the NEP aspect, see Clements, Bolshevik Feminist, pp. 230–231, 234; andRowbotham, Women, Resistance, and Revolution, p. 155. 1 have seen only two notes on Kollontai's specialfocus on the objects of contention between Vasia and Volodia, namely in Susan Barrowclough's review ofLiubov’ pchel trudovykh in History Workshop Journal (Spring 1981): 184–185, and in an afterword to aSwedish version of the same novel by Agneta Pleijel, “Alexandra Kollontay, kvinnofrigorelsen och realpolitikeni Sovjet [Alexandra Kollontai, women's liberation, and Soviet Realpolitik],” afterword to Arbetsbienskarlek ([Sweden] n.p.: Litteraturframjandet, 1981), 302–303.1 wish to thank Barrowclough and Pleijelfor the impetus their articles provided for my own work on Kollontai.

7. For an English version of Kollontai's speech at the Tenth Party congress, see Holt, ed., “TheWorkers’ Opposition,” in Selected Writings, 159–200. A Russian text does not exist. The quotation concerning “practical everyday life” is on 164.

8. Bol'shaia liubov’ (Moscow-Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo, 1927), 3. I have used thefollowing editions of Kollontai's other novel and short stories: Liubov’ pchel trudovykh. Iz serii rasskazov: “Revoliutsiia chuvstv i revoliutsiia nravov” (Moscow-Petrograd: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo, 1923, 1924), where “Liubov’ trekh pokolenii” occupies 3–51, “Sestry” 52–66, and Vasilisa Malygina 67–304.Because I have been unable to locate Russian versions of the two remaining stories, I have used the mostrecent edition in English of Bol'shaia liubov'—A Great Love, tr. Cathy Porter (New York: Norton, 1981) for “Thirty-Two Pages,” 135–151, and “Conversation Piece,” 153–156. Page references from these sourceswill be included in the text.

9. Her article “Novaia ugroza” was published in Kommunistka, no. 8–9 (1922), 5–9.

10. Clements, Bolshevik Feminist, 223.

11. Viktor Shklovskii, review of Love of Worker Bees, Russkii sovremennik 1 (1924): 339–340.

12. Iz moei zhizni i raboty, 366.

13. The more than 600 known letters to friends in Sweden are strewn with comments on Kollontai'svoluminous reading. Throughout her diplomatic years, she continued to explore both serious and light representationsof adventure stories, women's literature, and historical novels, and she often sought solace fromher diplomatic cares in what she called, in Swedish parlance, “Miss novels [missromaner],” Stovling, ed.Kara kamrat!, 141.For Kollontai's awareness of writing “for uneducated women and men and for many half-educatedparty comrades,” see Stites, Richard, “Alexandra Kollontai and the Russian Revolution,” in EuropeanWomen on the Left: Socialism, Feminism, and the Problems Faced by Political Women, 1880 to the Present, ed. Slaughter, Jane and Kern, Robert (Westport, Conn., and London: Greenwood, 1981), 116 Google Scholar.

14. Brooks, Jeffrey, When Russia Learned to Read: Literacy and Popular Literature, 1861–1917 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985), xiv, xviii, xix Google Scholar.

15. See for example Stites, Richard, The Women's Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism, and Bolshevism 1860–1930 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978), 302 Google Scholar; and Clements, Bolshevik Feminist, 109, 112, 117–118.

16. Unpublished postcard to Hannes Sköld in French, stamped 5 February 1923 in Norway (Manuscript Division, University Library of Lund). See also letter to Fredrik Ström, 8 February 1923, in Stövling, ed., Kara kamrat!, 21. For more on Kollontai's relationship with Skold, see my article “Letters from Aleksandra Kollontaj in Sweden,” Russian Language Journal, no. 140 (1987): 197–214.

17. These ideas are present in many of Kollontai's political pamphlets from this time, for exampleSem'ia ikommunisticheskoegosudarstvo (1918) and “Tezisy okommunisticheskoi morali voblastibrachnykhotnoshenii” (1921). For English translations, see Holt, ed., Writings, 250–260 and 225–231.

18. First published in 1911, this article was combined with two others on the “new moral” and reissuedin book form after the revolution, Novaia moral’ i rabochii klass 1918. See Holt, ed., Writings239–240.

19. Kollontai often refers to this idea, e.g. in Tezisy, see Holt, ed., Writings, 228.

20. Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read, xvi.

21. Clements, Bolshevik Feminist, 231. Barrowclough also criticizes Kollontai for her characters'gender-determined qualities and states, “It is never clear why this is so,” 184. I believe the answer is in thestrict class roles that most women and men are forced to play in Kollontai's fiction: They are really personifications of socialism and capitalism.

22. The gender lines can of course become blurred. For example, through her association with variousNEP men, Nina Konstantinovna in Vasilisa Malygina is a negative character; whereas Vanechka, the maleparty worker in Bol'shaia liubov', is as gentle and poor as the main women characters. Only the stereotyped figures play leading roles.

23. That Kollontai habitually used the phrase “two camps” to denote capitalism and socialism is evidentfrom her other writings, as in the following quotation: “Zhenskii mir, kak i mir muzhskoi, razdelen nadva lageria: odin—po svoim tseliam, stremleniiam i interesam primykaet k klassam burzhuaznym, drugoi—tesno sviazan s proletariatom” [emphasis mine]. From the introduction to her book Sotsial'nye osnovyzhenskogo voprosa (1908), see Kollontai, A. M., Izbrannye stat'i i rechi, ed. Dazhina, I. M. et al. (Moscow: Politizdat, 1972, p. 78 Google Scholar. Another instance of the same usage is found in a letter to Clara Zetkin in German, 24 November 1917, in Stövling, ed., Kära kamrat!, p. 17.

24. In Russian: “Gde prazdnost', tam gnusnost'—gde roskosh', tam gnusnost'!—Begi, begi!” Chernyshevskii, N. G., Chto delat'?: h rasskazov o novykh liudiakh (Leningrad: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1976), 56 Google Scholar.

25. On 72, 82, 101, and 104. Unfortunately, Cathy Porter's translation of Bol'shaia liubov’ captureslittle of this, variously describing the carpet instead as “with deep pile” (89), “awful” (91), “loathsome “ (100), and finally “repulsive” (120). In this rendition, the carpet remains unpleasant, but the reader cannotknow the specific bourgeois quality that makes it so.

26. Farnsworth, Kollontai. 222, 241.

27. For a timely confirmation of this kind of influence, see Trotskii, Lev, Voprosy byta (1923) in his Sochineniia (Moscow and Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo, 1927), 21: 207 Google Scholar.

28. Quoted from the writings of clothes designer Vera Stepanova in Bovvlt, John E., “Constructivismand Early Soviet Fashion Design,” Bolshevik Culture: Experiment and Order in the Russian Revolution, ed., Gleason, Abbott, Kenez, Peter, and Stites, Richard (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985, p. 213 Google Scholar.

29. See, for example, A. A. Solts, “Communist Ethics” in Bolshevik Visions, ed. Rosenberg, particularly 48–50. How the socialist approach to domestic objects was soon transformed into an indulgence inmeshchanstvo is outlined in the extraordinary study by Dunham, Vera S., In Stalin's Time: Middleclass Valuesin Soviet Fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976 Google Scholar.

30. See, for example, Mikhail Guerman, Art of the October Revolution (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1979)Google Scholar, plates 352–353; and Elliott, David, ed., Rodchenko and the Arts of Revolutionary Russia (New York: Pantheon, 1979 Google Scholar, especially concerning the work of Vera Stepanova.

31. For Kollontai's first attempt at writing a novel, see her autobiography Den första etappen [The firstphase] (Stockholm: Albert Bonniers, 1945), 233–235.

32. Holt, ed., Writings, 21.

33. In Russian: “Al.[eksandr] v Moskve. Vy ved’ znaete, chto my s nim ‘buntovali’ partii. Za eto ‘vnakazanie’ menia poslali za granitsu, a ego posadili na skuchn.[uiu] rabotu. No on vse khvoraet, bednyi! “Unpublished postcard, stamped 16 January 1923 in Kristiania [=Oslo]. Manuscript Division, University Library of Lund. See also Farnsworth, Kollontai, p. 375, for a proud letter to Swedish socialist leaderFredrik Strom in the summer of 1924.

34. Simon Karlinsky, “The Menshevik, Bolshevik, Stalinist Feminist,” The New York Times BookReview, 4 January 1981, 12, calls Kollontai's stories treacly. The Chernyshevskii quotation is on ibid., 27