Elisabeth Dmitrieff

Elisabeth Dmitrieff (born Elizaveta Lukinichna Kusheleva, , also known as Elizaveta Tomanovskaya; 1 November 1850 – probably between 1916 and 1918) was a Russian revolutionary and feminist activist. The illegitimate daughter of a Russian aristocrat and a German nurse, she had a comfortable upbringing but was marginalized within the Russian aristocracy due to the circumstances of her birth, leading to her interest in Marxism and the radical ideas of Nikolay Chernyshevsky. She entered into a marriage of convenience with Mikhail Tomanovski, a colonel who had retired early due to illness, in order to access her inheritance, which she used to fund revolutionary causes such as the Russian-language journal '' Narodnoye delo''. Her money and married status allowed her to leave Russia and study in Geneva, where she participated in founding the Geneva section of the International Workingmen's Association. Sent by the Geneva section as an envoy to London, she became close to Karl Marx and his daughter Jenny.

When the revolutionary Paris Commune was declared following the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, Marx sent Dmitrieff to Paris as a representative of the International. There, she became one of the most important women's leaders of the Commune, founding the Women's Union to Defend Paris and Care for the Wounded, which demanded rights for working women and organized co-operative textile workshops in the city. During "bloody week", when French government forces retook the city, Dmitrieff fought and was wounded in defense of the Commune. She and Leó Frankel, whom she had worked with during the Commune and rescued in the fighting, hid in Paris for several weeks before escaping to Geneva.

Depressed by the defeat of the Commune and the failure of other revolutionaries to come to its aid, she returned to Russia in October 1871. There, she struggled to re-enter activist politics, since the radical circles of the 1870s were less sympathetic to her feminist socialism than those of the 1860s, and because she was forced to hide her communard past due to being pursued by the French, Swiss, and Russian police. She fell in love with the manager of her aging first husband's estate, Ivan Mikhailovich Davydovski, and had two children with him after she was widowed in 1873. Davydovski would become a key defendant in a sensational mass trial, accused of being a ringleader of the "Jacks of Hearts" criminal conspiracy, and was convicted for fraud and murder. Dmitrieff married him to follow him into exile in Siberia. She passed the last years of her life in obscurity, and the date of her death is uncertain.

Although historiography of the Paris Commune has tended to focus on Louise Michel, Dmitrieff's life has inspired a number of biographies. A public square carries her name in Paris, and a museum is dedicated to her in Volok, her village of birth, where she is remembered as a heroine of the revolutionary movement.

Childhood

Elizaveta Lukinichna Kusheleva was born 1 November 1850, in Volok, a village in Toropets in the Pskov Governorate. Her father was Luka Ivanovich Kushelev (28 October 1793 - 1859) a ''pomeshchik'' (помещик, noble landowner) whose father, Ivan Ivanovich Kushelev, had been a senator under the reign of Paul I and active privy councillor under Alexander I. Kushelev received the education of a young aristocrat and joined the Cadet Corps, participating in the Napoleonic Wars. His first wife, Anna Dmitriyevna (born Bakhmetiyeva), was the illegitimate daughter of a nobleman and a maid; she was a rich heiress ennobled by the emperor. The couple fought often; Kushelev beat his wife and even kidnapped their three daughters, and despite an attempt at mediation the couple separated in 1832.

In 1848, Kushelev inherited the family estate after the death of his brother Nikolai. During his illness, Nikolai was treated by a 26 year old German Lutheran nurse, Carolina Dorothea Troskevich. Troskevich was part of the ''mechtchanstvo'', the urban petty bourgeoisie, and came to Volok from Courland, where she had registered as sister of charity in the Lutheran evangelical order at Hasenpoth. She became Kushelev's mistress.

Dmitrieff was the third of four surviving children of Kushelev and Troskevich: elder siblings Sophia and Alexander and a younger brother, Vladimir. Kushelev, mindful of his status as an aristocrat, did not want to risk dispossessing the three daughters from his first marriage and refused to recognize Elisabeth and her siblings. Kushelev's first wife died of cholera, and he would eventually marry Troskevich in 1856, after she intervened to save him when his serfs revolted. He was 63; Troskevich was 35. She converted to Russian Orthodoxy and adopted the name Natalia Yegorovna.

Even after the three daughters from his first marriage had died, Kushelev did not legitimize the children of his second marriage. His will granted them the status of "wards", permitting inheritance of his fortune but not his noble title. The children were further marginalized in the Russian aristocracy by their mother's status as a foreigner. Her status as an illegitimate child and her rejection by the Russian aristocracy were probably the origin of Dmitrieff's sensitivity to inequalities, whether serfdom in the countryside or poverty in Saint Petersburg.

Education

Dmitrieff enjoyed privileges due to her father's position in the Russian aristocracy, but her combined status as both a bastard and a girl prevented her and her sister from enrolling in school, while their brothers faced no such impediment. However, she was educated by private tutors, among whom were veterans of the revolutions of 1848 and composer Modest Mussorgsky, possibly a distant cousin of Dmitrieff, who came to Volok in 1862 to treat his depression and spent his time with fellow artists of The Five.

Dmitrieff read works in English, German, and French from her father's library, as well as magazines her mother subscribed to. Dmitrieff's father possessed a library which gathered the new ideas of his time, and, paradoxically for an authoritarian man who was violent toward his serfs, he liked surrounding himself with people with progressive ideas. The Kushelevs often visited the Zielony estate, which frequently hosted radicals and other controversial figures, such as Nikolay Chernyshevsky. After Kushelev's death, Dmitrieff's mother continued to welcome revolutionary guests. The family spent summers at Volok, returning in the fall to Saint Petersburg, where they lived in No. 12 on Vasilyevsky Island, opposite the cadet corps where Kushelev, and then his sons, studied. In the house next door lived Sofya Kovalevskaya and Anne Jaclard, the latter whom Dmitrieff befriended. Additionally, this quarter housed privileged revolutionaries, notably including Dobrolyubov, Dostoevsky, Nechayev, Pisarev, Tkachev, Lavrov, and most importantly Chernyshevsky. Dmitrieff's younger brother frequently visited members of the first Land and Liberty. In 1863, Mussorgsky joined a Saint Petersburg community frequented by the writer Turgenev, the poet Shevchenko, and the historian Kostomarov, and Dmitrieff's mother brought her there. Dmitrieff drew close to student groups in favor of the emancipation of women and serfs.

Nikolay Chernyshevsky's novel ''What Is to Be Done?'' would become one of Dmitrieff's most important influences. In 1865, Aleksey Kuropatkin, a friend of her brother Alexander, brought it to discuss with him, but she was the one who took an avid interest in it. In the book, Nikolay Chernyshevsky proposes a radical questioning of social conventions and the prevailing way of life, notably marriage and inheritance. The novel recounts the story of Vera Pavlovna, a young emancipated woman who lives in a community with other young people and advocates a system of cooperatives to emancipate workers. She founds a cooperative of seamstresses, an urban obshchina, which serves as a model for similar initiatives throughout Russia. Chernyshevsky invites the reader to stop dreaming and start adopting the daily practices of an ideal socialist.

It was through this book and, probably, the magazine ''Russkoye Slovo'', that Dmitrieff became interested in the ideas of Karl Marx. She was determined to build a bridge between Marx's economic theories and Chernyshevsky's ideas on the emancipatory capacity of the Russian village commune model. She had seen first-hand her father's notorious cruelty toward his serfs, and the families of the estate, serfs and lords, lived close to each other and were familiar with each other's living conditions. Dmitrieff developed through her reading a critical analysis of gender and class hierarchies, and envisaged using her fortune to construct a cooperative mill—an artel—which would serve the peasants of Volok.

Dmitrieff was determined to attend university, but women could not attend university at that time in Russia. Inspired by Vera Pavlovna in Chernyshevsky's novel, she decided to enter a marriage of convenience to emancipate herself from her family and obtain her inheritance. In 1867, she married the colonel Mikhail Tomanovski, who had been forced into retirement by an illness, and was an advocate for women's emancipation. After the marriage, she donated 50,000 rubles to revolutionary organizations.

Early activism

Geneva: ''Narodnoye delo'' and the Workers' International

Dmitrieff and her husband travelled around Europe, arriving in spring 1868 in Geneva, a popular destination for revolutionaries and Russian exiles. Here, she re-encountered Anne Jaclard and met Ekaterina and Victor Barteneva and Nikolai Utin, with whom she would become close friends. She eventually returned to Russia with her husband, then returned to Geneva in 1869 without him.

In the years that followed, she would no longer give any news to her family, and called herself "citizen Élise". She sometimes went to Basel and Zurich. In Geneva, meetings took place between the international socialist movements and the Russian revolutionaries. In that city, Dmitrieff met the French socialists Eugène Varlin and Benoît Malon, who, like her, would participate in the Paris Commune in 1871.

She financed and co-edited the Russian-language journal '' Narodnoye delo'' ("''The Cause of the People''"), which was founded in Geneva by Nikolai Utin and other exiled revolutionaries in 1868. The circle involved in the writing of the newspaper included Zoya Obolenskaya, Walery Mroczkowski, Victor and Ekaterina Barteneva, Nikolai and Natalia Utin, the publisher Mikhail Elpidin, and Olga Levashova (sister-in-law of Zhukovsky).Dmitrieff participated in the founding of the Russian section of the International Workingmen's Association—also known as the First International—with Nikolai Utin. She was equally involved in the "ladies' section", fighting for the emancipation of female workers.

The Geneva section of the International met in the former Temple Unique, a former Masonic temple, which would be bought in 1873 by the Catholic Church. Half of the founders of the Russian section of the International were emancipated women. The key figure in the organization, according to Peter Kropotkin, was Olga Levashova. She inspired him to dedicate his life to the revolution. Other founders include Natalia Geronimovna Korsini (who married Nikolai Utin and became Natalia Utin), Zoya Obolenskaya, Ekaterina Barteneva and Anne Jaclard. Elisabeth Dmitrieff was the last arrival and the youngest of the group. The Geneva section did not focus on women's roles and rights, but owing to the significant proportion of women in the section, and the strong influence of ''What Is to Be Done?'', it had a relatively egalitarian atmosphere.

London: meeting with Karl Marx

In November 1870, the Geneva internationalists sent Dmitrieff to London to ask Karl Marx to arbitrate their internal conflicts: Sergey Nechayev, who had arrived in Geneva in 1869 and was not popular in Russian revolutionary circles, had been welcomed with open arms by Bakunin, who at this time still sympathized with his methods. Nikolai Utin was suspicious of Nechayev and critical of Bakunin's ideas; he wanted to bring the Geneva section closer to Marx, in part to counter Bakunin's influence. Dmitrieff and Utin were good friends, and she followed his positions very loyally. Russian intelligence reported that an "Élise" stayed at Utin's place. He wrote her a letter of introduction to Karl Marx:

She arrived in London at the end of 1870 and quickly became a family friend, building ties with both Karl Marx and his daughters. With Marx, she discussed traditional Russian rural organizations—the obshchina and the artel—as well as the ideas of Nikolay Chernyshevsky. She sent him prints of the newspaper ''Narodnoye delo'', which she had sent from Geneva. Chernyshevsky thought that Russia could pass from the feudal to the socialist stage without transitioning through the capitalist stage of development, which he called the "theory of the omission". This would be achieved by revitalizing the communes under the model of Charles Fourier's phalanstère, while ridding them of their elements of patriarchal oppression. Dmitrieff had an influence on the ideas of Marx, who started to envisage the possibility of alternative and plural paths to socialism, without passing by the stage of capitalist development. These conversations continued with Vera Zasulich.

The Paris Commune

The city of Paris had been besieged in the winter of 1870-1871, and its fall marked France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. On 18 March 1871, radicalized citizens and members of the National Guard refused to surrender control over the city to the Third Republic and instituted a revolutionary government, the Paris Commune. Many Commune politicians had hoped for a peaceful reconciliation with the Versailles government, but it soon became clear that France was in a state of civil war.

Karl Marx sent Dmitrieff on an information gathering mission to Paris as a representative of the International; Hermann Jung was supposed to go, but when he fell ill, Dmitrieff offered to take his place. She embarked on 27 March 1871 toward Calais. She abandoned her married name, Tomanovskaya, and took the nom de guerre Dmitrieff, inspired by the patronym of her paternal grandmother, Dmitrievna. She arrived in Paris on 28 or 29 March 1871, either the day of the official proclamation of the Commune or the day after. She joined Auguste Serraillier, also an activist of the International, who was in Paris to participate in the events. She also met with Russian socialist Pyotr Lavrov and sisters Sofya Kovalevskaya and Anne Jaclard, her neighbors in Saint Petersburg, who also participated in the Commune.

The ''Union des femmes''

On 11 April 1871, she launched an "appeal to the female citizens of Paris" to encourage women to engage actively in the fight: "Female citizens of Paris, descendants of the women of the great revolution, we are going to defend and avenge our brothers, and if we have neither rifles nor bayonettes, we're still left with paving stones to crush the traitors." On the same day, in the Larched room (79 Temple Road) in the 10th arrondissement, Dmitrieff founded the Union des femmes pour la défense de Paris et les soins aux blessés ("Women's Union to Defend Paris and Care for the Wounded"). Dmitrieff, a member of the central committee, remained general secretary of the Union's executive committee, the only non-elected and non-revocable post of the organization. The executive committee also included Nathalie Lemel.

The main goal of the ''Union des femmes'' was to give women control over their own labor. Dmitrieff used her activist experience acquired during her trips to Switzerland and London to organize the Union. She obtained funding from the Commune's executive committee, in exchange for close supervision of the Union. The ''Union des femmes'' was the only organization to receive financial resources from the Paris Commune. Dmitrieff structured the organization in a hierarchical manner, with committees in each arrondissement, a central committee, an office, and an executive committee composed of seven members representing the districts. She organized the work of women in workshops in the traditional sectors of the clothing and textile industries, assuring them outlets thanks to the support of the Commune's executive committee, which she reported to regularly. She could not, however, avoid the competition of convents, prisons, or capitalist enterprises in the sector, who had a much lower-paid workforce, which caused friction. She busied herself above all with political questions, especially the organization of cooperative workshops. She thus found her opportunity to link Marxist theory with Chernyshevsky's practice, which concretized in the creation of workshops in the textile industry for seamstresses, laundresses, tailors, and drapers.

Dmitrieff partnered with Leó Frankel, an activist of Hungarian origin and a jewelry worker, who headed the Commune's Commission of Labor and Exchange. Together, the two attempted to advance the cause of women's rights in labor and social security, drafting a bill to organize the work of women in workshops, of which the text was published on 7 May 1871. It stipulated:

Relations were not always cordial between the ''Union des femmes'' and the Vigilance Committee of Montmartre. A certain poorly documented rivalry existed between the positions of André Léo and Anna Jaclard, and those of Dmitrieff. Both Léo and Jaclard were notably absent from the ''Union des femmes'', even though Dmitrieff had befriended Jaclard in Russia, and remained in contact with her in Geneva before the Commune. Léo positioned herself against excessive interventionism, renouncing the use of violence. In contrast, Dmitrieff was resolutely interventionist. These tensions were made apparent in the formation of ambulance groups for the front. Léo announced in a statement the formation of an ambulance group in a certain quarter, which the ''Union des femmes'' was not previously aware of. Dmitrieff responded via a publication of the official newspaper that this ambulance group did not have the backing of the ''Union des femmes''. Her status as a foreigner could equally have positioned the young Dmitrieff in rivalry with her Parisian elders.

Dmitrieff was less inclined to the "two spheres critique" (according to which there are natural differences between men and women). In addition, she defended actions that focused on class instead of gender differences. According to Carolyn Eichner, she "saw intergender, intraclass conflict as detrimental to all progress." Much of her work with the ''Union des femmes'' involved trying to break down the longstanding resistance to women's economic participation that was present in labor and socialist organization.

In April 1871, she wrote to Hermann Jung that she barely saw Benoît Malon and Leó Frankel because everyone was very busy, and that she was sick and tired but could not be replaced. Showing her pessimism, she asked why he would not get involved:

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