Elisabeth Dmitrieff

Elisabeth Dmitrieff, whose true name is Elizaveta Tomanovskaïa (Russian : Елизавета Томановская), was born Elizaveta Lukinichna Kusheleva (Russian : Елизавета Лукинична Кушелева) on November 1, 1850 or 1851 at Volok, a village in the uezd of Toropets in the Pskov Governorate of the Russian Empire. She died between 1910 and 1918. Dmitrieff was a Russian revolutionary and feminist activist.

Elisabeth Dmitrieff
Elisabeth Dmitrieff photographed by Alphonse Liébert in 1871
Born	Elizaveta Lukinichna Kusheleva (1850-11-01)November 1, 1850 or (1851-11-01)November 1, 1851 Volok, Toropets, Russia
Died	Uncertain (1910-1918?)
Other names	Elizaveta Tomanovskaïa

Dmitrieff was born in a Russian aristocratic family, which gave her access to a privileged education, but her status as a girl and a child born out of wedlock, as well as her mother's German nationality, marginalized her within the Russian aristocracy, leading to her interest in the philosophy of Marxism and the radical ideas of Nikolay Chernyshevsky. She married in order to escape her family and study in Geneva, where she co-authored The Cause of the People and participated in founding the Russian section of the International Workingmen's Association.

Sent by Karl Max to Paris to follow events after the proclamation of the Paris Commune on March 18, 1871, she became one of the most active women in the Paris Commune. She founded the Women's Union to Defend Paris and Care for the Wounded, the first association to promote the rights of women, and specifically their right to decent working conditions in France. She participated in the defense of Paris during the "bloody week", then fled to Geneva, returning finally to Russia. In 1877, she married Ivan Davidovski, the head of a gang of thugs named the Jacks of Hearts, in order to be able to follow him into exile in Siberia after he was convicted for fraud and murder. Forced to hide her identity due to being pursued by French, Swiss, and Russian police, she could not reveal her communard past and passed the last years of her life in obscurity. The date of her death is uncertain.

A public square carries her name in Paris, and a museum is dedicated to her in Volok, her village of birth. Although she fell into obscurity and was eclipsed by Louise Michel, her participation in the Paris Commune and the story of her life have inspired a number of biographies.

Biography

Childhood in the Russian aristocracy

Modest Mussorgsky in 1865, one of the teachers of Dmitrieff

Elizaveta Lukinichna Kusheleva was born November 1, 1851, or 1850, in Volok in the Pskov Governorate. Her father was Louka Ivanovitch Kushelev, born October 28, 1793, a pomechtchik (noble landowner) and former officer of the Russian army. Her mother was Carolina Dorothea Troskiévitch, a German Lutheran nurse..

Kusheleva's family

The ancestors of the family received land and titles from the prince of Novgorod Alexander Nevsky for their martial feats. With origins in Novgorod, they established themselves at Volok, a fluvial crossroads on the commercial route connecting the north of Great Russia to Turkey. Dmitrieff's grandfather was a senator under the reign of Paul I and special advisor of Alexander I. Louka Kushelev, her father, had two brothers: one died in combat in Georgia, the other administered the family estate very poorly and nearly drove it to bankruptcy. Kushelev received the education of a young aristocrat and joined the Cadet Corps, participating in the Napoleonic Wars. His first wife, Anna Dmitrievna (born Bakhmetieva), was the daughter of a lord and a maid; she was a rich heiress ennobled by the emperor. Her husband beat her and lied to her, and their marriage disputes were frequent. In 1832, Kushelev kidnapped his three daughters, but despite his efforts, they remained close to their mother.

The cruelty of Louka Kushelev toward his serfs was notorious, to the point that his wife advised the serfs to complain to the communal authorities. 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 Troskiévitch. She became Louka's mistress and gave birth to their first child, a stillborn boy.

The couple had five children: a stillborn boy, Sophia, Alexander, Elisabeth, and Vlamidir. They were considered "bastards" due to being born outside a legitimate marriage, which would profoundly affect Elisabeth. Their father, faithful to his status as an aristocrat, did not want to risk dispossessing the three daughters from his first marriage and refused to recognize his children born outside of marriage, even though they lived under his roof. The situation evolved in 1856, when the couple married.

The family lived in a house close to the izbas of the estate's serfs and Elisabeth often accompanied her mother when she made the rounds in visiting them. The families of the estate, serfs and lords, lived close to each other and were familiar with each other's living conditions. Thus, Dmitrieff was conscious of the fact that her father mistreated his serfs.

Legend says that one summer night, Louka's serfs revolted and a handful of armed men entered the house. As they were about to kill him, Caroline intervened and prevented the murder. To thank her, Louka married her, his first wife having died of cholera. He was 63; Carolina was 35. She converted to the orthodox religion at this time and adopted the name Natalia Iegorovna.

Louka Kushelev died of apoplexy in 1860, just before the agricultural reform of 1861.

A privileged education

Under Carolina's influence, the estate often welcomed other neighboring aristocratic families, of which some had sons known for their revolutionary ideas: the Tkatchevs, Pissarevs, and Lavrovs. Aleksey Kuropatkin became the friend of Kushelev's children, and later their memorialist.

Their status as illegitimate children and their mother's status as a foreigner negatively affected the position of the children, who were marginalized in the Russian aristocracy. In his will, Kushelev granted to his illegitimate children born before his second marriage the status of wards, permitting them to inherit a part of his fortune; the three daughters from his first marriage were deceased, but this did not allow the illegitimate children to inherit the title of their father.

Elizabeth Dmitrieff benefitted from a good education and read works in English, German, and French from the library of his father, as well as magazines her mother subscribed to. She enjoyed privileges due to the position of her father in the Russian aristocracy, but her status as a "bastard" and as a girl brought prejudice upon her: she and her sister could not enroll into girls' schools, while their brother, also illegitimate, could attend a renowned school. On the other hand, she received a good education thanks to home teachers. Among these teachers were veterans of 1848, including one English woman named Miss Betsy; a Prussian, von Madievaïz; as well as the Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky (possibly a distant cousin of Dmitrieff). In 1862, Mussorgsky went to Volok to treat a depression and spent his time with his fellow artists of The Five: Mily Balakirev, César Cui, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and Alexander Borodin..

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, such as the Zielony family. Nikolay Chernyshevsky came to the Zielony estate every summer, and though it is not possible to know if Dmitrieff ever met the writer, his book would later have a great influence on her life choices..

Dmitrieff's young brother frequently visited members of the first Land and Liberty.

A police report from 1871 described her in these terms: "height 1.66 m; chestnut hair and eyebrows; slightly uncovered forehead; grey and blue eyes; well-shaped nose; medium-sized mouth; round chin; full face with slightly pale complexion; lively gait; usually dressed in black and always elegantly dressed."

Interest in social inequalities and Marxism

The family spent summers at Volok and returned to Saint Petersburg in the fall. There, the Kushelevs lived in No. 12 on Vasilyevsky Island, opposite to the cadet corps where Kushelev, and then his sons, studied. In the 1860s, this quarter housed privileged revolutionary youth, notably including Dobrolyubov, Dostoevsky, Nechayev, Pisarev, Tkatchev, Lavrov, Turgenev, and above all Chernyshevsky. In the house next door lived the Korvin-Krukovskayas, and, notably, Sofya Kovalevskaya and Anna Jaclard.

Dmitrieff read the magazine Rousskoïe slovo (Русское слово de 1859 No. 3).

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. She befriended Anna Korvin-Krukovskaya, drew close to student groups in favor of the emancipation of women and serfs, and learned many languages.

Since her adolescence, Dmitrieff was interested in the ideas of Karl Marx, which she probably read in the magazine Russkoye Slovo, as well as in the writings of Nikolay Chernyshevsky. These two men laid her intellectual foundation, and 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.

Influence of Nikolay Chernyshevsky

Cover page of the novel What Is to Be Done? by Nikolay Chernyshevsky, published in 1865

In the mid 19th century, the Russian Empire experienced profound changes. In 1857, Alexander Herzen and Nikolay Ogarev launched the revolutionary newspaper Kolokol. In 1861, serfdom was abolished. The Kushelevs were influenced by this environment: in 1863, the composer Mussorgsky joined a Saint Petersburg community frequented by the writer Turgenev, the poet Shevchenko, and the historian Kostomarov. Dmitrieff's mother, a friend of the musician, brought her daughter there.

Aleksey Kuropatkin, a friend of Elisabeth's brother Alexander, frequently spent his summers on the Volok estate. After a short crush on Elisabeth's sister Sophia, he fell in love with Elisabeth, then 14 years old. In 1865, he returned to Volok from Turkestan, influenced by his commander Achenbrenner, who educated his young recruits in revolutionary ideas. He brought the novel What Is to Be Done? to discuss it with his friend Alexander, but it was Elisabeth who took an avid interest in it. In the novel, 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 Véra 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. The novel invites the reader to stop dreaming and start adopting the daily practices of an ideal socialist.

Elisabeth 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. She realized the need to pursue her own education, but since the Russian Empire of the time did not permit women to attend university, she decided to go to Geneva, Switzerland and, following the example of Vera Pavlovna, enter a marriage of convenience to escape her family.

Political engagement

Inspired by her readings and sensitized to social inequalities, Dmitrieff was active in Saint Petersburg's social circles from a very young age. In 1867, she entered a marriage of convenience with the colonel Mikhail Tomanovski to emancipate herself from her family and obtain her inheritance. Tomanovski was an advocate for female emancipation. After the marriage, she donated 50,000 rubles to revolutionary organizations. She left for Switzerland in 1868, then went to London.

Stay at Geneva: The Cause of the People and the Workers' International

Warsaw, scene of the January Uprising, April 8, 1861, by Tony Robert-Fleury- MNK XII-A-704 - National Museum in Kraków

In spring 1868, Dmitrieff passed by Geneva, accompanied by her husband for the first time. She was in Geneva when the construction workers' strike broke out, and encountered Anna Jaclard during the same visit.

Dmitrieff went back to Geneva in 1869, this time without her husband. 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, intellectual revolutionaries and Russian exiles crossed paths. Mikhail Bakunin stayed there, and meetings took place between the international socialist movements and the Russian revolutionaries. In that city, Dmitrieff met the French Eugène Varlin and Benoît Malon, who, like her, would participate in the Paris Commune in 1871. She was also very close to the Russian socialist Nicholas Outine, who distanced himself from Bakunin and drew closer to Karl Marx. The Russian intelligence services reported that one named "Élise" stayed at Nicholas Outine's place.

Narodnoe Delo

Once settled, she financed and codirected the newspaper The Cause of the People (Narodnoe Delo) with Nicholas Outine.

The Cause of the People was a Russian newspaper founded in Geneva after the congress of the League of Peace and Freedom in 1867 by a group of exiled Russian revolutionaries. The circle of Russian revolutionaries involved in the writing of the newspaper wished to promote the First International in Russia, having in common with its founders their support of the Polish insurgents against the tyranny of the Russian Empire. Nikolay Zhukovsky approached Mikhail Bakunin to collaborate on the newspaper. Other Russians living on the banks of Lake Geneva agreed to join the initiative: Zoïa Obolenskaïa, the Polish Walery Mroczkowski, Victor and Ekaterina Barteneva, Nicholas and Nathalie Outine, the publisher Mikhaïl Elpidin, and Olga Levacheva (sister-in-law of Zhukovsky). Bakunin prevented Nicholas Outine from participating in the first edition of the newspaper, which was published September 1, 1868 by Elpidin's press in Geneva. Bakunin and Nikolay Zhukovsky wrote two of the four articles published in the first issue, before Nicholas Outine took control of the editorial.

In the first issue, Joukovski described the newspaper as materialist, atheist, and in favor of the socio-economic liberation of the people. Bakunin declared that the goal of the Russian people was "land and freedom", a reference to the ideas of Nikolay Chernyshevsky and of Land and Liberty.

The goal of The Cause of the People was to demonstrate that though the peasant struggle in Russia took different forms from those described by Marx, it nevertheless promotes the same collectivization of the means of production. Thus, the declaration of intention of the first issue affirmed:

As the foundation of economic justice, we propose two fundamental theses. First, the land belongs to those who work it with their own hands, that is, to agricultural communes. Second, capital and all work tools belong to the workers, that is, to associations of workers.

The International

Geneva's Temple Unique around 1870, according to a postcard. The Geneva sessions of the International took place here.

Church of the Sacred Heart (which was called Temple Unique until its purchase by the Catholic Church in 1873) in Geneva on July 18, 2018, during the fire

Session of the Geneva section of the International Workingmen's Association at the former Temple Unique in Geneva, between 1869 and 1875

Dmitrieff participated in the founding of the Russian section of the International Workingmen's Association--also known as the First International--with Nicholas Outine. 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 Levacheva. She inspired him to dedicate his life to the revolution. Other founders include Natalia Ieronimovna Korsini (who married Nicholas Outine and became Nathalie Outline), Zoïa Serguéïevna Obolonskaïa, Ekaterina Barteneva and Anne Jaclard. Elisabeth Dmitrieff was the last arrival and the youngest of the group.

Stay at London and 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 arrived in Geneva in 1869, was welcomed with open arms by Bakunin, who sympathized with him before their final quarrel. Nicholas Outine was suspicious and criticized the passionate enthusiasm of Bakunin. Dmitrieff followed the positions of Nicholas Outine very loyally, and had all the confidence of the latter, who wrote a letter of introduction to Karl Marx:

Dear citizen, allow us to recommend to you our best friend, Elisabeth Tomanovskaia, sincerely and profoundly devoted to the revolutionary cause in Russia. We will be happy, if through her we get to know you better, and if at the same time we could let you know in more detail the situation of our action, of which she will be able to tell you in depth...

She arrived in London at the end of 1870 and quickly became a family friend, building ties with both Karl Marx and his daughters. She wrote to him on January 7, 1871:

I thank you for your good will and the interest you've shown toward my health. Naturally I don't want to take your time, but if you have some free hours, Sunday evening, I'm convinced that your daughters would be as happy as I to meet you at your place.

Dmitrieff spent the three months preceding the Commune discussing with him traditional Russian rural organizations--the obshchina and the artel--as well as the ideas of Nikolay Chernyshevsky. She sent him prints of the newspaper The Cause of the People, 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.

In Paris, an uprising marked the beginning of the Commune on March 18, 1871. In the days that followed, revolutionary institutions were put in place. Karl Marx sent Dmitrieff on an information gathering mission to Paris, after first choosing Hermann Jung; the latter fell ill, and Dmitrieff offered to take his place. She embarked on March 27, 1871 toward Calais. She abandoned her patronym Tomanovskaïa and took the "nom de guerre" Dmitrieff, inspired by the patronym of her paternal grandmother, Dmitrievna. She arrived in Paris on March 28 or 29, 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 events.

Participation in the 1871 Paris Commune

Page 274 of The Third Defeat of the French proletariat by Benoît Malon, published in Neuchâtel in 1871, which mentions Elisabeth Dmitrieff

Dmitrieff arrived in Paris as a representative of the International, and reported on the events there; she addressed several reports to Karl Marx before taking part in the action.  She thus found an 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.

She met the Russian socialist Pyotr Lavrov and the sisters Sofya Kovalevskaya and Anne Jaclard, her neighbors in Saint Petersburg, who also participated in the Commune.

She met with members of the revolutionary government as well as with workers. On April 11, 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." This appeal led to the founding of the Women's Union to Defend Paris and Care for the Wounded, which Dmitrieff co-founded with Nathalie Lemel,, on April 11, 1871 in the Larched room (79 Temple Road) in the 10th arrondissement.

Women's Union to Defend Paris and Care for the Wounded

Paris Commune : "Call to Female Workers" of May 18, 1871, signed by Dmitrieff, among others

She partnered with Léo Frankel, an activist of Hungarian origin and a jewelry worker, who headed the Commune's commission of labor and trade. 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 May 7, 1871. It stipulated:

The goal of the Commune would be attained by the creation of special workshops for women's work and sales counters for the sale of fabricated products.

The Union of Women assembled more than 1,000 members.  They procured aid to the wounded.  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 of Women 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.  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.  She busied herself above all with political questions, especially the organization of cooperative workshops.

The goal of the Union of Women was the formation of a trade union chamber of female workers.

Reproduction of the letter sent by Dmitrieff on April 24, 1871 to Hermann Jung, and possibly intended for Karl Marx

Between the Union of Women and the Vigilance Committee of Montmartre, relations were not always cordial. A certain poorly documented rivalry existed between the positions of André Léo and Anna Jaclard, and those of Dmitrieff. The latter was resolutely interventionist, and doubtless 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. As for André Léo, she positioned herself against excessive interventionism, renouncing the use of violence. It is notable that André Léo and Anna Jaclard were absent from the Union of Women, even though Dmitrieff had known Jaclard in Russia, and fled with her to Geneva before the Commune. These tensions were made apparent in the formation of ambulance groups for the front. André Léo announced in a statement the formation of an ambulance group in a certain quarter, which the Union of Women 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 of Women. Her status as a foreigner could equally have positioned the young Dmitrieff in rivalry with her Parisian elders.

Dmitrieff shared with Louise Michel the wish not to differentiate women from men.

In April 1871, she wrote to Hermann Jung that she barely saw Benoît Malon and Léo 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:

How could you stay there while doing nothing, allowing Paris to perish? It's necessary to agitate the provinces at all costs, so that they come to our aid. The Parisian population (in part) is fighting heroically, but we never counted on being abandoned like this. However, up until now, we have been guarding all our positions, Dąbrowski is fighting well, and Paris is really revolutionary. We don't lack provisions. You know, I am pessimistic and don't see anything going well, I'm therefore waiting to die one of these days on a barricade.

Engels emphasized the concrete implementation of the phalanstère from What is to be Done? by the Union of Women (sometimes presented as the first female section of the Internationale), thus translating into reality the theses of both Marx and Chernyshevsky.

The Bloody Week

Versailles troops entered Paris on May 21. In one week--named the Bloody Week--they retook control of Paris. Around May 22, the Union launched an appeal to fight for the "triumph of the Commune", and fifty women of the Union headed toward Montmartre.

Dmitrieff took part in the street fights on the barricades in Faubourg Saint-Antoine (11th-12th arrondissement), caring for the wounded, in particular Léo Frankel. Gustave Lefrançais mentioned in his memoirs her presence on May 22 at the entry of Rue Lepic (18th arrondissement), with a group of armed female citizens, which is confirmed by the counsellor of the Russian ambassador and by Colonel Gaillard, both anti-communards, the latter affirming that she was at the head of all the canteen workers, ambulance drivers and barricaders. The figure of 120 women appeared in an article on May 24, 1871, in the last issue of the Commune's official newspaper, published in Belleville. A barricade on Rue Blanche was mentioned in Le Rappel,,. This barricade would have been staffed only by women, but the facts concerning the role of women in the fighting are difficult to establish because in court, they denied having participated in combat in order to escape conviction.

Dmitrieff after the Paris Commune

Wounded on the barricades, Dmitrieff fled with Léo Frankel, thereby escaping the massacres of the Versailles army. Both reached Switzerland in June. After several months in Geneva, she returned to Russia alone in October 1871

Return to Geneva

Frankel and Dmitrieff, thanks to their knowledge of the German language and their cultivated appearance, successfully disguised themselves as a bourgeois Prussian couple. Unlike André Léo and Paule Mink, Dmitrieff stayed discreet about her communard past and readopted her former name, Élisaveta Tomanovskaïa, to complicate the police investigation. After arriving in Switzerland, she first tried to reconnect with the Geneva International.

Hermann Jung mentioned her arrival in Geneva in a latter addressed to Karl Marx. Jung had received a letter from the general secretary of the Romandy federation of the International, Henri Perret, who told Jung that a young woman will write to him soon, and that she is safe and sound. However, Dmitrieff would write neither to Marx nor Jung; according to Carolyn J. Eichner, she reproached her comrades for insufficiently supporting the Commune from London, as shown by the letter written to Jung two months prior in April 1871 (well before Marx wrote his famous text in support of the Commune): "How could you stay there inactive, when Paris is perishing?" She would stay in Geneva from June to October. If the refugees there seemed relatively safe, the arrest of the lieutenant colonel Eugène Razoua in Switzerland was worrying. On July 23, 1871, Perret wrote to Jung that Dmitrieff was threatened with arrest. On July 1, France requested the extradition of Léo Frankel, and on the 12th, that of a woman with the first name "Élise". The French foreign minister pushed the Swiss government to extradite every person who participated in the Commune, considering them criminals and not political figures. The Swiss government did not adopt this position; it freed Razoua and refused the extradition of former communards, in agreement with the rules of the right of asylum.

Dmitrieff remained unfindable by the police of the continent thanks to her change of identity, despite investigations and police reports:

List of charges:

1. Having provoked civil war by causing the citizens and inhabitants to arm themselves against each other
2. Having caused the assembly of insurgents by the distribution of orders or proclamations

On October 26, 1871 (or 1872), she was convicted in absentia and sentenced to deportation. At the same time, she reached Russia in a severe depressive state.

Return to Russia

Ekaterina Barteneva, communard, whom Dmitrieff met again in Saint Petersburg after 1871

Arriving in Russia, Dmitrieff reunited with her family and attempted to recover her health. She was very discreet, as she was still being searched for by French, Russian, and Swiss authorities. She returned to Saint Petersburg, where she did not find the same climate that had prevailed on Vasilyevsky Island when she was young. After the attempted assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1866, a reactionary climate descended, and the secret police started tracking revolutionaries.

Dmitrieff had difficulty being accepted in this new generation of revolutionaries. The buzzword was now the "going to the people" of the Narodniks. She attempted to collaborate with the movement's newspaper, Narodnoe delo ("The Cause of the People"), but did not adhere to its political ideology, which excluded feminist questions. She reunited with Ekaterina Barteneva, former communard, with whom she envisaged joining a rural community.

Marriage with Ivan Davidovski

Aleksey Kuropatkin met Dmitrieff in 1872, when she attempted to enroll him in a plot to overthrow the Tsar.

Dmitrieff left Saint Petersburg and, in 1872, met Ivan Davidovski, steward of her husband's estate. He was educated and privileged, as well as the boss of the Jacks of Hearts criminal organization. Davidovski, from a noble family that was dispossessed with the abolition of serfdom, held a type of revolutionary ideology which consisted of defrauding and stealing from rich aristocrats, while Dmitrieff based her approach on the valorization of work. The couple had two daughters.

In 1873, she inherited a large sum of money due to the death of her first husband Mikhaïl Nikolaïevitch Tomanovski, all of which she spent. She abandoned all subversive activity to concentrate on her daughters, Irina and Vera. In 1876, Davidovski was arrested, accused of embezzlement and fraud as well as the murder of a magistrate. Dmitrieff mobilized her old friends, notably Ekaterina Barteneva and her husband Victor, who wrote to Nicholas Outine. On December 17, 1876, a letter from Outine reached Karl Marx, who quickly hired a lawyer at his own expense to defend Dmitrieff. Dr. Carloyn J. Eichner highlights the latent paternalism of Dmitrieff's male socialist friends, who treated her like a lost child.

Dmitrieff testified during the trial:

I met Ivan Mikhaïlovitch in October 1871; my first husband, the colonel Tomanovsky, was then dying. Gentlemen of the jury, I would like to start with one thing: I've had enough of hearing that I'm a poor woman. I'm not really a poor woman. I like my husband and I married him in spite of all the calumnies raining down on him.

Exile in Siberia

As the boss of the Jacks of Hearts gang, Ivan Davidovski was charged with fraud, theft, and swindling of a merchant (Popov) and a rich heiress, as well as the murder of a man named Slavichensky. He was convicted on all charges and deported to Siberia, including 8 years of penal labor, followed by exile and the revocation of his civil rights. Dmitrieff married him in 1877 in order to follow him into his exile in Siberia. The couple lived for a time in Nazarovo, then in Iemelianovo, and from 1898 to 1902 at Krasnoyarsk They bought a cake shop in Achinsk and tried to contact the political exiles of the region. However, they did not appreciate the "common criminal" Davidovski, and Dmitrieff could not bring proof of her involvement in the Paris Commune, which she had hidden for fear of arrest. She was still being sought by the French police until the general amnesty of 1879, the news of which would never reach her. Boycotted and ignored by the overly poor local population, their enterprise went bankrupt. In 1881, she tried to contact Mikhail Sajine, who had been deported to Krasnoyarsk, so that he could prove her communard past, but her attempts failed.

At Krasnoyarsk, she was involved in the local branch of the Red Cross and did a study on the carbon reserves at Nazarovo.

The end of her life is very poorly known. In the 1890s, she was interested in Eastern Orthodoxy and astronomy, in addition to educating her daughters. She wrote to the authorities to request pardon for her husband, who launched himself into the mining industry and encountered new setbacks. She thus decided to leave him. While Anton Chekhov was passing by Krasnoyarsk during his return from exile in Sakhalin Oblast, she asked him if he could point her to a place to stay in Saint Petersburg. Chekhov telegraphed his wife Olka Knipper, and Dmitrieff left for Saint Petersburg without her daughters, passing by Omsk, Tomsk, and Novosibirsk.

On September 21, 1899, Olga Knipper wrote to her husband:

Your protégé E. Tomanovskaïa has arrived at Saint Petersburg, she telegraphed us and thanks you for everything.

Aleksey Kuropatkin attests to having seen her again in 1898 or 1899, while he was Ministry of War of the Russian Empire, and on this occasion, she asked him to support her request for the pardon of her husband. Between this episode and the day of her mother's funeral, little is known about her life. Her brother Vladimir refused to say the name of her husband, and no longer wanted to see her. Their quarrel concerned the inheritance of the Kushelevs. On the other hand, he maintained business relations with Ivan Davidovski until 1902, a fact attested to by promissory notes archived at Krasnoyarsk.

Afterwards, the sources lose track of her, and diverge on the date of her death: 1910, 1916, or 1918.

One of the last events where her presence is attested is the burial of her mother in the autumn of 1903, according to the testimony of Ekaterina V. Gount, who was then a 9 year old child. Gount lived on the estate of Kushelev family where her parents were employed, and which was managed by Dmitrieff's brother, Vladimir Loukitch Kushelev. She saw Dmitrieff--then 52 years old--arriving with a crew to the estate. That night, a dispute broke out between her and her brother regarding her participation in the Paris revolution and she left very early the next morning by horse.

Legacy and posterity

Prosper-Olivier Lissagaray cites Dmitrieff in his 1876 book, History of the 1871 Commune.

Prosper-Olivier Lissagaray

The history of the communards Paule Mink, Victoire Léodile Béra, and Elisabeth Dmitrieff is, according to Carolyn J. Eichner, characteristic of the invisibility of revolutionary women. The historiography of the Paris Commune is very divided after 1871 between the pro-communards, who only mention them briefly, and the anti-communards, who describe them as "pétroleuses", monstrous and arsonous women. Their history is even sometimes left out of the history of feminism, for the reason that the communards would not have described themselves as such. However, in the path these women followed, there exist dimensions of gender and class criticism which we find in the feminist socialists of which they were the precursors.

Dmitrieff is a less well-known figure than Louise Michel, long seen as the emblematic representative of all female communards. Dmitrieff's biographers have often treated her critically ,, or marginally. However, there are many positive descriptions of her from her contemporaries: Arthur Arnould, Gustave Paul Cluseret, Gustave Lefrançais, Benoît Malon or Prosper-Olivier Lissagaray, the last of which idealized her in comparing her to Theroigne de Mericourt.

Russian biographers

The historian Ivan Knijnik-Vetrov, one of the Russian biographers of Dmitrieff

On the Russian side, three biographers have studied Dmitrieff's life: Ivan Knijnik-Vetrov, Nata Efremova, and Lev Kokin.

The Russian historian Ivan Knijnik, an anarchist close to Peter Kropotkin, took the name Knijnik-Vetrov after the self-immolation of Matria Vetrova, promising to tell her story for posterity. He then devoted himself to the history of the Paris Commune, and during his research, read the autobiography of the anarchist painter Mikhail Sazhin, who referred to Elisabeth Dmitrieff. The historian pursued research on Dmitrieff for more than forty years, against all odds. His first article was published in the Annals of Marxism in 1928, supported by David Riazanov. The latter was arrested and shot by the order of Joseph Stalin, and the works of Knijnik-Vetrov were destroyed in the process. Dmitrieff's biographer was not discouraged, as he undertook a doctoral thesis with the same theme, publishing it in 1945 under the title A Russian activist in the Paris Commune at the pedagogical institute of Alexander Herzen in Leningrad. In 1947, he was deported to Siberia and his thesis was destroyed by six institutes. In 1955, rehabilitated and admitted to the Academy of Sciences, he finally published his work. On the end of Dmitrieff's life, he weaved a double interpretation: she might have been both revolutionary and religious. The inhabitants of Krasnoyarsk having written to him to say that Dmitrieff would sit on a chair to observe the stars, he took away the following conclusions:

She spent entire nights in her courtyard, in the cold, to watch the stars [...] She was nearly 50 years old. The church was close to her house. Maria Ossipovna Chebalina, a narodnik, "went to the people" as a nurse. Davidovski's family were among her patients, and she bonded quite intimately with them. In the Krasnoyarsk house, Maria Ossipovna saw icons. Thus, Elisabeth had refound faith.

Nata Efremova was a specialist in Russian revolutionary and pioneer women of the 19th century. She wrote biographies for the magazine Soviet woman until 1991 (for example on Sofya Kovalevskaya, Ekaterina Fleischitz, Nadezhda Suslova). For her, the chair incident, which she related in 1982, had a simple explanation: Dmitrieff was interested in astronomy and science. On her involvement with Davidovski and the Jacks of Hearts, she declared that revolutionary women are too involved to succeed in their emotional lives, because--according to her--they have too much personality.

Elisabeth Dmitrieff circle

In May 1971, a group of feminist Trotskyists, participating in the Women's Liberation Movement and the Revolutionary Marxist Alliance, simultaneously close to the values of the women's movement and to that of workers' self-management, created Elisabeth Dmitrieff Circle.

Elisabeth Dmitrieff Place

Plaque at Elisabeth Dmitrieff Place in Paris, in the 3rd arrondissement

In Paris, the 3rd arrondissement contains a Elisabeth Dmitrieff Place. This is a small median strip containing the Temple metro station, at the intersection of Temple Road and Turbigo Road. It was inaugurated on Thursday, March 8, 2007 to commemorate International Women's Day, the same day as Nathalie Lemel Place--named after another female communard--and Renée Vivien Place, also in the 3rd arrondissement.

Michèle Audin, a specialist in the history of the Commune, questioned the reasons that led to the name choice and the choice of text on the plaque.

Exposition

On the 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune, the artist Dugudus drew a portrait for a retrospective exposition that took place from March 18 to May 27, 2021, organized by the Paris City Hall.

Dmitrieff's birth village, Volok, situated 200 km from Novgorod, is different today from the city she knew, but "the inhabitants honor the memory of their compatriot": the school has borne her name since 1965, and a commemorative plaque is dedicated to her at the House of Culture. During the 100th anniversary of the Commune, the Dmitrieva museum was inaugurated there. It is attached to the museum of K. Marx and F. Engels, whose funds and collections were transferred to the Russian Center for Conservation and Study of Documents in Contemporary History in 1993. The expositions there are regularly renewed. In Russia, Dmitrieff is still a symbol of heroism and of the working class, considered by the popular encyclopedia « Мой Красноярск » as "one of the most brilliant women of the Russian revolutionary movement, and of the world".

Family keepsakes

In 1993, Sylvie Braibant published Elisabeth Dmitrieff: aristocrat and pétroleuse. She related the trip in Russia that she undertook in 1990 to research Elisabeth Dmitrieff. In the former house of the Kushelevs, in Saint Petersburg, lived the great-grandniece of Dmitrieff (Xénia), and her nephew, pretender to the title of viscount, as well as the great-grandniece of Anne Jaclard. The two retired women were engineers who graduated from the polytechnic institute, and collected family keepsakes linked to their great-grandaunts.

Comics and literature

In 2014, Catherine Clément devoted several chapters of her novel Let's like one another to her.

In 2015, Glénat published in its Female Communards collection a comics album by Wilfrid Lupano and Anthony Jean, entitled The Phantom Aristocrat.

In 2021, Michael Löwy and Olivier Besancenot published a fiction book entitled Jenny's Blue Notebook, recounting an imaginary visit by Jenny Longuet and her father Karl Marx to Paris during the Paris Commune, during which they met Dmitrieff.

Music and theater

In 2017, Emmanuel Bex and David Lescot created the musical jazz show The Common Thing, which includes a piece entitled Elisabeth Dmitrieff.

Bibliography

Biographies on Elisabeth Dmitrieff

• Sylvie Braibant (1992). "Élisabeth Dmitrieff, le mythe chancelant". Héroïnes révolutionnaires russes du XIX^e siècle, images, stéréotypes, mythes, pour quelles histoires ?. École des hautes études en sciences sociales (mémoire de DEA d'histoire).
• Braibant, Sylvie (1993). Élisabeth Dmitrieff : aristocrate et pétroleuse. Belfond. ISBN 2-7144-2963-7. OCLC 28516706. Retrieved 2021-04-07.
• Ivan Sergueïevitch Knijnik (pseud. Vetrov et Knijnik-Vetrov), Jeunesse et Enfance d'Elisaviéta Dmitrieva, Marx, Moscou, 1930.
• Lev Mikhaïlovitch Kokin (1984). Tchas boudouchtchevo (in Russian). Moscou: Politizdat..
• Singer-Lecocq, Yvonne (2011). Rouge Élisabeth. Galodé. ISBN 978-2-35593-148-2. OCLC 755062059. Retrieved 2021-03-15.

Works on the women of the Paris Commune

• Bard, Christine; Chaperon, Sylvie (2017). Dictionnaire des féministes: France, XVIII^e-XXI^e siècle. ISBN 978-2-13-078720-4. OCLC 972902161. Retrieved 2021-03-04.
• Carolyn J. Eichner (2020). Franchir les barricades : Les Femmes dans la Commune de Paris. ISBN 979-10-351-0522-8. OCLC 1149074370. Eichner. Retrieved 2021-03-04.
• Ivan Sergueïevitch Knijnik (pseud. Vetrov et Knijnik-Vetrov), Trois Femmes russes dans la Première Internationale et la Commune de Paris, Moscou, Naouka, 1964.
• Sofia Kovalevskaïa, Souvenirs d'enfance, Paris, Hachette, 1907.
• M^me A. Ch. Leffler, duchesse de Cajanello (1895). Souvenirs d'enfance de Sophie Kovalewsky (in French). Librairie Hachette et Cie.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link).
• Kovalevskaïa, S. V. (1978). A Russian childhood. Springer-Verlag. ISBN 0-387-90348-8. OCLC 4194495. Retrieved 2021-09-08..
• Eugene W. Schulkind (1950). Le rôle des femmes dans la Commune de 1871. Vol. 42. Revue d'Histoire du XIXe siècle - 1848. p. 15–29..
• Marisa Linton (1997). "Les femmes et la Commune de Paris de 1871". Revue historique (in French) (603). Paris: Presses Universitaires de France (PUF): 23-48. ISSN 0035-3264. Retrieved 25 February 2021..
• Jacques Rougerie, « La Révolution avec ou sans la femme ? La Commune de 1871 », dans Christine Fauré (dir.), Encyclopédie politique et historique des femmes : Europe, Amérique du Nord, Presses universitaires de France, 2010, 885 p. (lire en ligne), p503-532. 
• Édith Thomas (1963). Les Pétroleuses. La suite des temps. Éditions Gallimard. p. 295. ISBN 2-0702-6262-6.
• Schrupp, Antje (2018-03-10). Bringing Together Feminism and Socialism in the First International: Four Examples. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-33546-2. Retrieved 2021-09-08.

General works

• Bantigny, Ludivine (2021). La Commune au présent : Une correspondance par-delà le temps. ISBN 978-2-348-06669-6. OCLC 1241123887. Retrieved 2021-03-19..
• Michel Cadot, L'Occident de Versilov, Dostoevsky studies, volume 4, 1983.
• Nata (Natalia) Pavlovna Efremova (1987). Dotch' Revolioutsionnoï Rossii (in Russian). Moscou: Moskovskii Rabotchii..
• Prosper Lissagaray, La Revue blanche, Paris, 1874 (à comparer avec le portrait brossé dans son Histoire de la Commune de Paris, Paris, Librairie E. Dentu, 1896).
• Riot-Sarcey, Michèle (2008). Histoire du féminisme. La Découverte. ISBN 978-2-7071-5472-9. OCLC 300280620. Retrieved 2021-09-08..
• Kristin Ross; Étienne Dobenesque (2015). L'Imaginaire de la Commune. La Fabrique. p. 186. ISBN 978-2-35872-064-9. OCLC 902796458. Retrieved 2021-03-16.
• McClellan, Woodford (1979). Revolutionary exiles : the Russians in the First International and the Paris Commune. Cass. ISBN 0-203-98802-7. OCLC 243606265. Retrieved 2021-09-11.

Artikel

• La Raison, juin 1971, No. 158, portrait d'Élisabeth Dmitrieff (par un anonyme).
• Antonov, Sergei (February 2018). "Russian Capitalism on Trial: The Case of the Jacks of Hearts". Law and History Review. 36 (1): 35–76. doi:10.1017/S0738248017000517. ISSN 0738-2480. Retrieved 2021-09-09..
• Candar, Gilles (2021-03-04). "Du nouveau sur la Commune de Paris à la veille de son cent-cinquantième anniversaire:". Revue historique. n° 697 (1): 223–236. doi:10.3917/rhis.211.0223. ISSN 0035-3264. Retrieved 2021-09-08. {{cite journal}}: |volume= has extra text (help).
• Collectif (January 4, 1975). "La commune et les femmes par Duclos - Lanoux - Durand sur Mmes Le Mel - Dmitrieff et Louise Michel - Dhervilly-Lambert / Admirables pionnières de la Commune - Sandrin / L'Instruction publique sous la Commune - Les femmes dans la Commune par Laot". La Commune (2)..
• "Elisabeth Dmitrieff, l'autre cheffe de file des femmes de la Commune de Paris". TV5MONDE (in French). 2014-12-24. Retrieved 2021-09-08.
• Eugene Schulkind (1985). "Socialist Women during the 1871 Paris Commune". Past & Present (106)..

See also

• Paris Commune
• Pétroleuses
• Union des femmes pour la défense de Paris et les soins aux blessés

External links

• François Bodinaux; Dominique Plasman; Michèle Ribourdouille (2014). "On les disait pétroleuses". Docplayer.fr. (archival date)
• "5 mai 1871, Union des femmes, ambulancières, délégué à la Guerre, maréchal…". La Commune de Paris (in French). 2021-05-04. Retrieved 2021-09-08.