In this episode, Kristen R. Ghodsee reads selections from Kollontai's 1926 speech, “Marriage and Everyday Life.” By this time Vladimir Lenin was dead and Kollontai was already serving as a diplomat in Norway. She came back to the Soviet Union to participate in the discussions surrounding the proposed Family Code which was to replace the original 1918 Family Code that Kollontai had a big hand in shaping. By 1925, the Bolshevik leaders were retreating from their commitments to sexual equality and focusing instead on building the Soviet Economy. Kollontai fought hard to force the state to support women and children, but the project was too expensive and the population was exhausted from the chaos and instability that followed the initial liberalization of divorce laws.

Mentioned in this episode is Wendy Goldman's excellent book: Women, the State and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917-1936 (Cambridge University Press, 1993)

The intro music is a Russian version of The Internationale

More info about the host can be found at: www.kristenghodsee.com

Also see: AlexandraKollontai.com – A Website for All Things Kollontai 

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Check out Kristen Ghodsee's recent books:

• Everyday Utopia
• Red Valkyries
• Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism
• Second World, Second Sex

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Kristen R. Ghodsee is the award-winning author of twelve books and a professor and chair of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.