User:Jeanambr/Sandbox

How to handle the recently added quotes in the article Alexandra Kollontai.

Balabanoff's

Expand the previous account of the Tenth Congress somehow as follows.

Lenin was very upset about the opposition and, at the opening of the Tenth Congress, when he saw Kollontai talking to a French delegate in the foyer, he rushed over to the latter, blatantly marvelling that he still spoke "to this individual". Later, taking the floor before the Congress, he could not keep from drawing snickers from delegates by calling former lovers Shliapnikov and Kollontai "class united". In fact, the congress passed a resolution banning internal factions and the Workers' Opposition ....

Trotsky's

Move to a note referring to the Comintern Executive's 1922 session where Trotsky actively behaved towards her opposition much the same as she later theoretically behaved towards his. In the Italian Wikipedia one could also refer to her 1927 article entitled "The Opposition and the Party Masses".

Hypothesis:

On this occasion Trotsky forced recalcitrant Kollontai into silence and obedience to the party. Just a few years later he would basically charge a finally tamed Kollontai with having learnt her lesson and not remaining recalcitrant to the end. As he wrote in his memoirs, 'In Russia, Kolontay took from the very first an ultra-left stand, not only toward me but toward Lenin as well. She waged many a battle against the "Lenin-Trotsky" regime, only to bow most movingly later on to the Stalin regime.'

In his memoirs, Leon Trotsky was contemptuously critical of Kollontai's political attitude, writing that 'In Russia, Kolontay took from the very first an ultra-left stand, not only toward me but toward Lenin as well. She waged many a battle against the "Lenin-Trotsky" regime, only to bow most movingly later on to the Stalin regime.' Yet, it could also be argued that she had just internalized for good the lesson Trotsky himself had taught her at the aforementioned 1922 meeting of the Comintern, when he had tamed her last remnants of recalcitrance, forcing her into bowing to party discipline. Kollontai herself had, as it were, countered in advance, in her 1927 article through which she finally aligned herself, once and for all, with the Stalinists:

The masses do not believe in the opposition. They greet every statement of the opposition with smiles. Is it possibile that the opposition thinks the masses' memory is so short? If they come across defects in the party, in the political line, who, if not the famous members of the opposition, established them and built them? It seems that the policy of the party and the structure of the apparatus become unfit only from the day that a group of oppositionists breaks with the party.

— Oppozitsiia i partiinaia massa [The Opposition and the Party Masses], "Pravda", 30 October 1927, p. 3

Radek's

Just remove (not worth mentioning).

Silone's

Final hypothesis

After the Eleventh Congress, Kollontai became a political outcast. She was badly shaken by having teetered dangerously close to expulsion, and regarded the idea of being excluded from the 'revolutionary community of the elect' as a real 'nightmare'. Despite her previously having had a penchant for seriousness among her comrades, Kollontai joked about the possibility of her own arrest. Italian writer and former communist leader Ignazio Silone later recounted that, on his departure from Moscow in 1922, Kollontai jokingly warned him not to believe any news of her being arrested for stealing Kremlin silverware, saying that such news could only mean that she was "not entirely in agreement with [Lenin] about some little problem of agricultural or industrial policy."

During this time, Kollontai was also in the process of a painful divorce from her second husband, Pavel Dybenko, which made her want a change of scenery. In the latter half of 1922 she wrote a letter to the newly appointed General Secretary of the Central Committee and her recent inquisitor, Joseph Stalin, asking to be sent on a mission abroad. Stalin granted her request and, starting from October 1922, she began to be entrusted with diplomatic appointments abroad and was thus prevented from playing any further political role at home. At first she hoped it was just a passing phase in her life and that she would soon return to her political work in the Zhenotdel, but eventually she had to realize that the diplomatic assignment had become a sort of exile.

Initially, she was sent as an attaché to .... [then as follows in the article]

OLD

Translate the following part from the Italian Wikipedia, which contains further interesting information, and edit it at the beginning of the section on her diplomatic career.

In parte perché probabilmente scottata dalla piega che avevano preso le vicende della sua vita politica, in parte perché coinvolta in un penoso divorzio dal secondo marito Pavel Dybenko che le faceva desiderare di allontanarsi, nella seconda metà del 1922 la Kollontaj scrisse una "lettera personale" al neoincaricato segretario generale del partito, Iosif Stalin, chiedendo di essere inviata in missione all'estero. Stalin esaudì la sua richiesta e, a partire dall'ottobre del 1922, cominciarono quindi ad esserle affidati incarichi diplomatici all'estero, venendo così messa nella condizione pratica di non poter più esercitare alcun ruolo politico in URSS. Sperò che si trattasse di una fase transitoria della sua vita e che sarebbe presto tornata al suo lavoro politico nello Żenotdel, ma alla fine dovette rendersi conto che si trattava in effetti di una sorta di esilio di fatto.

• Translation

She was deeply affected by the latest occurences in her political life. Italian writer and former communist leader Ignazio Silone later recounted

first option
that, on his departure from Moscow in 1922, Kollontai humourously warned him not to believe any news of her being arrested for stealing Kremlin silverware; for such news could only mean she was "not entirely in agreement with [Lenin] about some little problem of agricultural or industrial policy." Silone also added she used not to be humourous when talking to her Russian comrades.

second option (full quote)

Just as I was leaving Moscow, in 1922, Alexandra Kollontai said to me: “If you happen to read in the papers that Lenin has had me arrested for stealing the silver spoons in the Kremlin, that simply means that I’m not entirely in agreement with him about some little problem of agricultural or industrial policy.”

general translation again
Since in the same period she was also painfully divorcing her second husband, Pavel Dybenko—which made her want a change of scenery—in the latter half of 1922 she wrote a "personal letter" to the newly appointed General Secretary of the Central Committee, Iosif Stalin, asking to be sent on a mission abroad. Stalin granted her request and, starting from October 1922, she began to be entrusted with diplomatic appointments abroad and was thus prevented from playing any further leading role at home. At first she hoped it was just a passing phase in her life and that she would soon return to her political work in the Zhenotdel, but eventually she had to realize that it was actually a sort of de facto exile.