The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Sebastian, Four Mothers, Restless, and The Most Precious of Cargoes
Alexandra Kollontai: Writings from the Struggle
Outstanding new book on the revolutionary communist who helped forge inextricable link between socialism and women's liberation

ALTHOUGH brought up and educated in what was for the period a middle class, liberal and progressive environment, from her early teens Alexandra Kollontai (1872-1952) had no intention of becoming a dutiful bourgeois wife.
A thirst for social justice, knowledge and a profession quickly brought her into contact with Russian revolutionaries, more specifically Marxists, and it was there that she began a lifelong struggle for communism.
Extremely well read, well-travelled and a fluent speaker of at least five languages, Kollontai rapidly became a grassroots activist, prodigious writer, skilled educator and propagandist.
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