Alexandra Kollontai
Soviet revolutionary, ambassador, diplomat, feminist
Alexandra Mikhailovna Kollontai (Russian: Александра Михайловна Коллонтай; née Domontovich [Домонтович]; 31 March [O.S. 19 March] 1872 – 9 March 1952) was a Russian revolutionary, politician, diplomat and Marxist theoretician. Serving as People's Commissar for Welfare in Vladimir Lenin's government in 1917–1918, she was a highly prominent woman within the Bolshevik party. She was the first woman in history to be a cabinet minister, and one of the first women to be appointed as a diplomatic representative of a modern state, and the first to be promoted to the rank of ambassador.
The daughter of an Imperial Russian Army general, Kollontai embraced radical politics in the 1890s and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in 1899. During the RSDLP ideological split, she sided with Julius Martov's Mensheviks against Lenin's Bolsheviks. Exiled from Russia in 1908, Kollontai toured Western Europe and the United States and campaigned against participation in the First World War. In 1915, she broke with the Mensheviks and became a member of the Bolsheviks.
Following the 1917 February Revolution which ousted Emperor Nicholas II, Kollontai returned to Russia. She supported Lenin's radical proposals and, as a member of the party's Central Committee, voted for the policy of armed uprising which led to the October Revolution and the fall of Alexander Kerensky's Provisional Government. She was appointed People's Commissar for Social Welfare in the first Soviet government, but soon resigned due to her opposition to the peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk in the ranks of the Left Communists.
The public source identifies “Alexandra Kollontai” as soviet revolutionary, ambassador, diplomat, feminist. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Alexandra, Kollontai and Soviet.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q179558. VIAF identifies the subject as 13029. The Library of Congress control number is n2021060262. 6 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1872, 1952, 1917 and 1918.
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This entry incorporates text from “Alexandra Kollontai” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.