Her marriage was an arranged marriage which turned out to be unhappy, and eventually, she divorced. In 1898, she went to Zürich, Switzerland to study economics. She became a member of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in 1899 at the age of 27. In 1905, Kollontai was a witness to the popular uprising known as Bloody Sunday at Saint Petersburg in front of the Winter Palace. She went into exile to Germany in 1908 after publishing "Finland and Socialism", which called on the Finnish people to rise up against oppression within the Russian Empire. She traveled across Western Europe and became acquainted with Rosa Luxemburg. In 1917, she returned to Russia upon receiving news of Tsar's abdication and the onset of the Russian Revolution. She became a member of the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, and she was a constant agitator for revolution in Russia as a speaker, leaflet writer, and worker on the Bolshevik women's paper Rabotnitsa. In 1920, she sided with the Workers' Opposition. She served as an attaché in Mexico (1926-27), in Norway (1927-30) and in Sweden (1930-45). She was finally promoted to Ambassador in 1943. She wrote articles in 1946 for a Russian magazine. She viewed marriage and traditional families as legacies of the oppressive, property-rights-based, egoist past. Her book the Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman was published in 1971.