Alexandra Kollontai

As the daughter of a decorated general in the Imperial Russian army, Alexandra Kollontai was a member of the elite from birth. From that comfortable perch, she might easily have lived out her days in the drawing rooms and social circles of St. Petersburg's upper classes. Instead, she devoted her life to tearing that world apart. She became a Marxist agitator, a political writer, and one of the first women of her era to gain real political power, serving as the world's first female cabinet minister in the newly formed Soviet government after the Tsar's tottering regime finally came to an end.

And yet, for all her theorizing about women's liberation and the abolition of the old social order, Alexandra Kollontai's life was as full of contradiction as it was of conviction. She was a woman who abandoned her own child in the name of revolutionary ideals, and who preached radical independence while quietly making her peace with one of history's most repressive regimes. She helped build the Soviet state, then watched it consume nearly everyone she had ever known and loved. This is her life; this is her story.