Alexandra Kollontai, born on this day in 1872, was a Marxist feminist revolutionary who served as People's Commissar for Social Welfare in the Soviet Union and, later in life, as a diplomat for the USSR abroad.

Alexandra was born into a wealthy family of Ukrainian, Russian, and Finnish background, acquiring a fluency in both Russian and Finnish early on. This experience would later assist her in her career as a Soviet diplomat.

In 1895, Kollontai read August Bebel's "Woman and Socialism", which was a major influence on her thinking. In 1896, she helped fundraise in support of a mass textile strike in St. Petersburg, retaining connections with the women textile workers of St. Petersburg for the rest of her career.

In the years leading up to 1917, Kollontai was active as a Marxist theoretician, educator, and anti-war activist (opposing World War I, specifically). During this time, she established contact with Vladimir Lenin and gave a lengthy speaking tour in the U.S., sharing a stage with Eugene V. Debs and giving 123 speeches in 4 languages.

Following the 1917 February Revolution, Kollontai returned to Russia. Later that year, she voted in favor of the decision to launch an armed uprising against the government, also participating in the revolt. At the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets, she was elected Commissar of Social Welfare in the new Soviet government.

The Encyclopedia of Women's Autobiography describes her efforts within the Soviet government: "The changes that Kollontai tried to bring about were enormous, involving the complete destruction of the old system and the creation of a new one...Kollontai authorized decrees that committed the Soviet State to full funding of maternity care from conception through the first year of a child's life - an unheard of measure for the beginning of the 20th century. She attempted to establish full legal, political, and sexual equality for women and to redress the entire marriage code."

In 1920, Kollontai joined the left "Workers' Opposition", an opposition tendency in the Bolshevik Party opposed to what they saw as the increasing bureaucratization of the Soviet state. In March 1921, the Workers' Opposition was banned along with all other factions at the 10th party congress in March 1921, but its members continued to be active as leaders of both the Bolshevik Party and the Soviets.

In 1922, Kollontai was one of the signers of the "Letter of the 22" to the Communist International, protesting the banning of factions in Russia.

Following this incident, Kollontai began to serve as a Soviet diplomat, becoming one of the first women to work in international diplomacy. As ambassador to Norway and Sweden, as a trade delegate to Mexico, as a delegate to the League of Nations, and as negotiator of the Finno-Soviet peace treaty of 1940, she served the USSR with what was generally regarded as great finesse. From 1946 until her death in 1952, she was an advisor to the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

"Class instinct...always shows itself to be more powerful than the noble enthusiasms of 'above-class' politics. So long as the bourgeois women and their [proletarian] 'younger sisters' are equal in their inequality, the former can, with complete sincerity, make great efforts to defend the general interests of women.

But once the barrier is down and the bourgeois women have received access to political activity, the recent defenders of the 'rights of all women' become enthusiastic defenders of the privileges of their class, content to leave the younger sisters with no rights at all. Thus, when the feminists talk to working women about the need for a common struggle to realise some 'general women's' principle, women of the working class are naturally distrustful."

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Alexandra Kollontai Archive

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  • WhyEssEff [she/her]
    ·
    7 个月前

    i apologize nubby, i wasn't really familiar with your number manufacturing unfamiliar-with-your-game

    • WhyEssEff [she/her]
      ·
      edit-2
      7 个月前

      saw a librarian video with it featured as the background and I was like 'what the fuck is all this' but i've sought it out in context and it's coolmath-core plinko balatro and it's kino absolute-cinema

      • WhatDoYouMeanPodcast [comrade/them]
        ·
        7 个月前

        This is not true. Nubby has a problem with diagonally places pegs and it is the most frustrating game ever and I've literally gotten mad at it.

        • FunkyStuff [he/him]
          ·
          7 个月前

          Did you start playing before or after last week's patch? I've barely played since the patch (had completed all challenges except expiration date, which I completed after) but I honestly feel like pre-patch the game was just way too easy.

            • FunkyStuff [he/him]
              ·
              7 个月前

              Unsolicited advice, then - the secret to winning in Nubby is understanding that the goal you have to reach is a function of the total amount of scorable points in the board. Imagine a board that just has 1 peg. If you popped that peg until it disappeared you get 2x - 1 points (where x is the starting value). The round goal is gonna be that 2x - 1 times some scaling factor, which will be less than 1 for the first 50 ish rounds, but eventually surpasses 1. Now, generalize this idea to more than 1 peg by running a sum of the total value of all pegs when fully popped.

              How do you win? Before round 50 ish you just have to make sure you're getting the full value of as many pegs as possible so any build that can reliably pop the biggest pegs several times will be fairly stable. To actually make money (especially in the first 15 rounds) you can actually forget about popping pegs entirely, because the max poppable value of the boards in the early game is very low. That's the time where cheese house, slug, and flutty are amazing. The flat score from those will largely exceed the max poppable value of the board, so they'll get you amazing gold income. Then when you're in the late game, the flat score items are useless, so you need to use other strategies to gain value beyond the max poppable value of the board. This means doubling pegs or getting more value out of pegs in other ways, such as popping them with pants, beach ball, or getting their value without popping using laser pointer.

              The strategy that you go for post round 50 is largely dependent on the perks you get. House of cards is good for pants, drumstick is basically just a free win with any of the rare items that can add points beyond max poppable value (i.e. yeti, horse pill, laser pointer). Drain perk is not super great anymore since it was mostly good with jake the snake before (though it can still be used with kazoo or the tree in a halving build).

              • WhatDoYouMeanPodcast [comrade/them]
                ·
                7 个月前

                I was doing a post round 50 build as early as possible. That makes a ton of sense!! Thank you. I sort of intuited what you're talking about with the finger puppet.

                I was getting MAD mad when I would throw nubby and it'd bounce once and then fall into the abyss.

                • FunkyStuff [he/him]
                  ·
                  7 个月前

                  There's no way around the screwy physics, all you can really do is try and make a build that minimizes the chance for RNG to screw you. Pregnancy test, void perk pants, and strangely chaos perk are all good for that reason (chaos perk can be very strong because it's guaranteed to trigger whatever it spawns several times, if it's anything that adds a significant amount of extra points it will win you rounds even without much else)