The Soviet diplomat Aleksandra Mikhailovna Kollontai (1872-1952) was a champion of women's rights. She is also known for her advocacy of free love and revolutionary opposition.

Aleksandra Kollontai was born Aleksandra M. Domontovich on April 1, 1872, in St. Petersburg. Her father was a czarist general, and her early life reflected her family's privileged status. She was briefly married to a czarist officer but soon separated from him and from the background that he and her family represented. At the turn of the century she became an agitator for woman's rights and joined the nascent Russian Social Democratic movement. When the movement divided into Bolshevik and Menshevik factions, she vacillated between both groups. She drifted from both factions, spending her time abroad after 1908, where she moved through various countries arguing that a revolutionary movement must overthrow conventional family structure as well as political and economic structures. Her "winged Eros" theory...