Overview

A rare, graphic portrait of Russian life in 1917 immediately after the October Revolution. The heroine struggles with her passion for her husband, and the demands of the new world in which she lives.

Author Biography

Alexandra Kollontai (1872-1952) was a leading member of the Bolshevik Party during the Russian Revolution and the foremost Marxist theoretician of women's oppression and sexuality. She was a founding member of the Women's Bureau of the Communist Party. Cathy Porter has published biographies of the Russian women revolutionaries Alexandra Kollontai and Larissa Reisner, as well as books about women terrorists of the 1860s, Russia's 1905 revolution, and the Battle of Moscow. She has translated more than thirty books and works for the stage, including plays by Gorky and the Czech Karel Capek. She lives in Oxford. Sheila Rowbotham is a Sociology Research Fellow at Manchester University in England.