March 9 Shero: Aleksandra Kollantai

In honor of Women's History Month, we will bring profiles of courageous and skilled women from around the world and present their herstories, so that they may not be forgotten.These women are taken from the 2008 Sheroes Womyn Warriors Wall Calendar.

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March 9 Shero: Aleksandra Kollantai (March 9, 1872 - March 9, 1952)

"Sex should be as easy and as uncomplicated as drinking a glass of water."

Bolshevik feminist, writer, the only woman on Lenin's Central Committee, who later fell into disfavor and was "exiled" as a diplomat. She shaped the first socialist republic's policies such as paid maternal care, day care, communal living arrangements, easy divorce, and recruitment of women into the labor force. She boldly and creatively applied Marxism to concepts of love, sexuality, women's liberation and revolutionary struggle and commitment. By 1922 she had become one of the first Bolshevik leaders to criticize the growing bureaucracy and authoritarianism in the new socialist state; Lenin had her assigned abroad as a diplomat.