Alexandra Kollontai

The daughter of an Imperial Russian Army general, Kollontai turned radical in the 1890s and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1899, initially siding with the Mensheviks against Lenin. Exiled in 1908, she toured Europe and the U.S., broke with the Mensheviks in 1915, and threw in with the Bolsheviks. After the February Revolution ousted Nicholas II, she returned to Russia, voted on the Central Committee for the October uprising, and became People's Commissar for Social Welfare - the first woman cabinet minister in history. She resigned over the Brest-Litovsk treaty, then in 1919 co-founded the Zhenotdel, the women's department aimed at raising the status of Soviet women, emerging as a key figure in Marxist feminism. Her outspoken criticism of party bureaucracy led her to the Workers' Opposition in 1920; she was defeated, sidelined, and nearly expelled. From 1922 she was posted abroad - Norway, Mexico, Sweden - promoted to ambassador in 1943, and retired in 1945. She died in Moscow in 1952.