MATTHEW HAWKINS relishes the valiant defiance of two gay Scottish painters whose example resists both collectors’ taste and historical fiction
Alexandra Kollontai: Writings from the Struggle
Outstanding new book on the revolutionary communist who helped forge inextricable link between socialism and women's liberation
PIONEER: Alexandra Kollontai (centre, c1920) with female deputies at the Conference of Communist Women of the Peoples of the East
[Wikipedia]
Essays on contemporary Latin American feminism, a poetry debut by a queer Texan of Mexican heritage, and a lush volume of tango and milonga drawings
JOHN McINALLY welcomes a rigorous class analysis of the history and exploitation of sectarianism by the Scottish ruling elite
The bard pays homage to his two muses: his wife and his football club
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by an incoherent show that fails to question stereotypical assumptions about the Soviet Union
WILL STONE, JAMES WALSH and MARIA DUARTE review Souleymane’s Story, Sunlight, Good Fortune, and After The Hunt
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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The youngest daughter of Karl Marx and her unwavering humanity in the face of injustice remain relevant for our times, writes DANA MILLS
STEVEN ANDREW welcomes the third instalment of autobiography by a libertarian socialist whose political work is charged with Gramscian realism