Elisabeth Dmitrieff

Elisabeth Dmitrieff (born Elizaveta Lukinichna Kusheleva, Russian: Елизавета Лукинична Кушелева, 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 (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.