Elizabeth Dmitrieff

Russian Marxist feminist who organized women workers during Paris Commune

Born Elisaveta Loukinitchna Kusheleva in 1851, this aristocrat-turned-revolutionary brought radical gender politics to the 1871 Paris Commune. At 20, she became Karl Marx's emissary to Paris where she co-founded the Union des Femmes - history's first socialist feminist organization with 1,500 members.

Dmitrieff instituted equal pay mandates for 3,000 female munitions workers and converted convents into cooperative workshops. Her April 1871 'Appeal to Women Citizens' demanded workplace democracy and free vocational training. When Versailles forces attacked, she commanded a 120-woman battalion at Place Blanche barricades.

After the Commune's fall, she escaped to Switzerland where her 1871-74 correspondence with Marx shaped his analysis of revolutionary gender dynamics. Unlike contemporary suffragists, Dmitrieff pioneered class-conscious feminism, arguing that 'women's liberation requires means of production control'. Her disappearance after 1878 remains one of labor history's great mysteries.