Kollontay, Aleksandra

Kollontay, Aleksandra (Mikhaylovna)

 orig. Aleksandra Mikhaylovna Domontovich

(born March 31, 1872, St. Petersburg, Russia—died March 9, 1952, Moscow, Russia, U.S.S.R.) Russian administrator and diplomat. As the first commissar for public welfare in the Bolshevik government (1917), she advocated simplifying marriage and divorce procedures and improving the status of women. She became the first woman to serve as an accredited minister to a foreign country when she was named minister to Norway (1923–25, 1927–30); she later served as minister to Mexico (1926–27) and Sweden (1930–45). In 1944 she conducted the negotiations that ended Soviet-Finnish hostilities in World War II.