The development of social welfare system under the leadership of Alexandra Kollontai: from private sphere in Russian Empire to the public realm in Soviet Russia (12 November 1917 – 11 March 1918)

Abstract

The October Revolution of 1917 brought with it a desire on the part of the state to become deeply involved in the state of society. As such it soon found itself in need of a coherent social policy and a form of social welfare. This article is based on the study of archive materials, published academic work and research. It examines the development of the Bolshevik Social Policy in its formative years in building a state. These were years of civil war, the economic ruin caused by war communism and serious social dislocation. First and foremost, the authors seek to shed light on the work of the first female leader in the Soviet government of this period, Alexandra Kollontai, who was appointed the head of the People’s Commissariat for Social Welfare. This also includes studying the narrative of Kollontai’s career within the theoretical framework of gender theory. The second aspect involves revealing the administrative mechanisms by which social policy was enacted and implemented in the challenging conditions of the civil war. This in many ways was concerned with removing the ideas of ‘charity’ or ‘kindness to less-fortunate’ as inadequate, ‘bourgeois’ positions. They were to be replaced with a more politically charged understanding of social welfare. What emerges from this study is a government keen to enact serious social welfare reform but lacking not only the resources to achieve this but also a clearly worked out strategy or programme of redistribution. Overall, it was the Red Army soldiers and their families who would take priority, despite Kollontai’s best efforts to shift the benefits of social welfare policy towards women and children on the home front.