Antoinette Konikow

Antoinette F. Buchholz Konikow (November 1869 – 2 July 1946) was an American physician, Marxist, and radical political activist. Konikow is best remembered as one of the pioneers of the American birth control movement and as a founding member of the Communist Party of America, forerunner of the Communist Party, USA. Expelled from the Communist Party as a supporter of Leon Trotsky in the fall of 1928, Konikow went on to become a founder of the Communist League of America, the main Trotskyist organization in the United States. Konikow's 1923 book, Voluntary Motherhood, is regarded as a seminal work in the history of 20th-century American feminism.

Biography Early years

Antoinette Federika Buchholz was born to Lutheran parents in 1869, in Orenburg in the Russian Empire. She was the daughter of Theodor Buchholz and Rosa Kuhner Buchholz. She had an older brother who was also a physician, Dr. Wilhelm Buchholz. She attended secondary school in Odessa in Ukraine before immigrating to Zurich, Switzerland to attend the university there.

While in Switzerland, Konikow joined the Emancipation of Labor group headed by Georgii Plekhanov.

The Konikows subsequently came to America on 8 May 1893. Antoinette attended Tufts University, near Boston, from which she graduated with honors in 1902 with a medical degree.

Political career

Antoinette Konikow was politically active from an early age, joining the Socialist Labor Party of America (SLP) in 1893 and writing and speaking on the organization's behalf.

Konikow also worked closely with the Boston Workman's Circle (Yiddish: אַרבעטער־רינג, Arbeter Ring), a socialist Jewish social aid organization. In order to participate in the organization, Konikow learned Yiddish, one of five languages which she learned in her lifetime.

She left the SLP in 1897 over what she believed to be the narrow and dogmatic policies of the organization. Instead, Konikow cast her lot with the Social Democracy of America headed by Eugene V. Debs and Victor L. Berger, going so far as to sign a petition to the Massachusetts SLP convention inviting it to merge with the fledgling Chicago group. For her trouble the May 1898 Massachusetts State Convention of the SLP saw fit to formally expel Konikow from the organization. and was later instrumental in the establishment of several Socialist Sunday Schools, institutions designed to train working class children in socialist principles and ethics as an alternative to religious instruction.

In 1924, Konikow stood as the Workers Party's candidate for U.S. Senate from Massachusetts.

Konikow was also deeply committed to the cause of birth control, a taboo topic in this era. She was a member of the Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis, one of the leading birth control organizations of the day. This did not lead to her immediate removal from the party, however, only to the loss of her position as an instructor in the local party training school. She remained active in the Trotskyist movement until her death, contributing frequently to the party press on women's issues.

At the convention establishing the Socialist Workers Party in January 1938, Konikow was named an honorary member of its governing National Committee.

Death and legacy

Antoinette Konikow died of a heart attack in Boston in July 1946.

Konikow's 1923 book, Voluntary Motherhood, is regarded as a seminal work in the history of 20th century American feminism.

Footnotes

Works

Voluntary Motherhood: A Study of the Physiology and Hygiene of Prevention of Conception. Boston: Buchholz Publishing Co., 1923. Revised: 2nd edition 1926, 3rd edition 1928, 4th edition 1933, and 5th edition 1938. This link gives access to 4 of the five revisions of this pamphlet and to her main Marxists Internet Archive page. Physicians' Manual of Birth Control. New York: Buchholz Publishing Co., 1931.