A.k. 47 - Selections From The Works Of Alexandra Kollontai

Kristen Ghodsee discusses the later decades of Alexandra Kollontai's life and reads an abridged version of her 1946 essay, "The Soviet Woman, A Full and Equal Citizen of Her Country." This essay was written in the aftermath of World War II and was published in Soviet Woman. Its goal is to encourage Soviet women to have babies while also working to rebuild the Soviet economy.  Although Kollontai is undoubtedly pro-natalist and asserts that women have a social duty to become mothers, she is also trying to defend women's right to have careers. Unlike the United States or Western Germany which forced women back into the home in the aftermath of the War, Kollontai insisted that the state expand kindergartens and creches in order to allow women to better combine their productive and reproductive labor.