title: Alexandra Kollontai and the utopian imagination in the Russian revolution
metadata.name: dc.contributor.author
metadata.value: Steinberg, Mark D.
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.date.accessioned
metadata.value: 2017-10-09T15:18:56Z
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.date.available
metadata.value: 2017-10-09T15:18:56Z
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.date.issued
metadata.value: 2017-09
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.identifier.citation
metadata.value: Steinberg M. D. Alexandra Kollontai and the utopian imagination in the Russian revolution. Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. History, 2017, vol. 62, issue 3, pp. 436–448.
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.identifier.other
metadata.value: 10.21638/11701/spbu02.2017.301
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.identifier.uri
metadata.value: http://hdl.handle.net/11701/8439
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.description.abstract
metadata.value: This article reinterprets the alleged “utopianism” of Russian revolutionaries, especially the Bolsheviks,
  through the prism of an alternative definition of the utopian imagination developed only after
  1917 — especially in the work of Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor Adorno. This alternative
  definition of utopia is as a critical analysis of conventional constructions of reality, time, and the possible.
  This is utopia as critical negation of that which merely is in the name of what should be, as a radical
  challenge to assumptions about what is possible and impossible in the present, as a vision of time and
  history as containing the possibility of an explosive “leap in the open air of history” (Benjamin). Utopian
  consciousness breaks into the normativized world of knowledge and expectations about reality
  and possibility in history to reveal the new and unexpected. This is utopia as radical epistemology,
  hermeneutics, and praxis.
  In this article and two following, this alternative definition is concretized in the Russian revolution
  through three individuals: Alexandra Kollontai (in the present article), Lev Trotsky, and Vladimir
  Mayakovsky. Of course, like all Marxists, they denied they were “utopians”. Which was accurate only
  by the definitions they had available to them at the time. However, in the utopian mode, they refused
  to accept the arguments of those who warned that a leap toward the “kingdom of freedom” was utopian
  fancy. They devoted their lives to the negation of that which merely is. They disturbed what Bloch
  called the “darkness of the lived moment”, in order to smash the barrier holding back the “ocean of
  possibility”.
  Kollontai articulated a moral and historical vision of a radically alternative self and society created
  through experience and applied this both to women’s intimate lives and to workers’ struggles
  for “freedom”, “self-activity”, and “creativity.” She explored the possibility of a communist society that
  would allow humanity to leap across the “zapovednyi rubezh” (forbidden border) of normative economic
  laws and necessity into a world of freedom. Refs 43.
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.language.iso
metadata.value: en
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.publisher
metadata.value: St Petersburg State University
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.relation.ispartofseries
metadata.value: Vestnik of St Petersburg University. History;Volume 62; Issue 3
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: Alexandra Kollontai
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: the Russian revolution
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: utopianism
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: Russian revolutionaries
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.title
metadata.value: Alexandra Kollontai and the utopian imagination in the Russian revolution
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.type
metadata.value: Article
metadata.lang: en_GB
resources.filename: 01_Steinberg.pdf
resources.url: https://dspace.spbu.ru/bitstream/11701/8439/1/01_Steinberg.pdf
resources.format: Adobe PDF
resources.size: 1,12 MB