E There is this beautiful closing scene in the tale “Wassilissa Malygina” by the communist feminist Alexandra Kollontai. In the novel the protagonist Wassilissa wrestles with the failure of her marriage. She and her partner had fallen in love in the storm of the October Revolution, but then drifted apart. He betrays her; the marriage lies in shards. In the novel Wassilissa decides on separation – and thus against continuing the broken construct of the marital community.
On the last pages it turns out, however, that Wassilissa is pregnant. Her friend Gruscha therefore asks her the meaningful question whether she intends to raise her child alone after all. It seems there are only these two options: to carry on with the broken marriage or to be overwhelmed in isolation. Yet Kollontai reveals her twist. “It will be our child, our common one,” Wassilissa says – and she means it as her workers’ collective. “A communist one?” Gruscha asks. “Of course!”. Both laugh.
Again, Wassilissa breaks away from the bourgeois family idea. She realizes: There is not only the broken family and loneliness. For community and care can also be organized collectively.
During Christmas time, the hour of the bourgeois nuclear family, Kollontai resonates particularly. For not only are the Berlin streets empty during these days because everyone returns to the villages from which they once fled to the big city. No, the calendars are also empty for all who cannot simulate familial security at Christmas, because the holidays are a time of loneliness, fear, or escalation for them. Because there simply is no family anymore, whether because it is violent or ill, or because it refuses to acknowledge their own identity and way of living.
Places Against the Coercion of the Family
Yet fortunately there are leftist structures that keep alive the idea of self-determined solidarity even on the darkest days of the year. At the Antifamilia Shitmas Gala at Friedrichshain’s house project Schreina47 (Schreinerstr. 47), there is a large (potluck) feast on Christmas Eve from 6 p.m. From 7 p.m. a Shitmas Varieté begins with gift-giving, poetry, songs, and games, and from 10 p.m. the dance floor opens with refined trash- and trap-escalation. And because the solidarity of Antifamilia is truly serious, the proceeds go to victims of right-wing violence.
Also on the outskirts there are offerings: The Hellersdorfer house project La Casa (Wurzener Str. 6) is organizing an Anti-Xmas Counter from 8 p.m. Back in Friedrichshain there is a community People’s Kitchen at Zielona Góra on Boxhagener Platz (Grünbergerstr. 73, from 2 p.m.). And in Tristeza in Neukölln there is a stink-normal pub night (Pannierstr. 5, from 8 p.m.).
Also on the following days, house projects and youth clubs offer support. On Rigaer Straße 78 there is on Christmas Day the Holiday-Wail Concert as a solidarity party for a clandestine neighborhood project (from 8 p.m.). And for those who still need to push memories away afterwards, there is the two-day “Forget Christmas” concert series at Café Köpenick (Seelenbinderstr. 8), with punk rock bands playing on December 26 and 27 from 7 p.m. They show that even at Christmas there is not only a broken family and loneliness – but also places where one can choose free solidarity.
