Alexandra Mikhailovna Kollontai was a Russian revolutionary, politician, diplomat and Marxist theoretician. Serving as the People's Commissar for Welfare in Vladimir Lenin's government in 1917–1918, she was a highly prominent woman within the Bolshevik party. She was the first woman to be a cabinet minister, and the first woman ambassador.
Kollontai, c. 1900
1888 portrait
International Socialist Congress, Copenhagen 1910. Alexandra Kollontai holds a delegate's hand.
Alexander Shliapnikov, Kollontai's fighting comrade and, for some time, her lover
The Mensheviks were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903. The Mensheviks were led by Julius Martov and Pavel Axelrod.
Leaders of the Menshevik Party at Norra Bantorget in Stockholm, Sweden, May 1917 (Pavel Axelrod, Julius Martov, and Alexander Martinov)
Noe Zhordania, Menshevik leader and Prime Minister of Georgia