Activities and affiliations

What people did, and whom they served in that activity.

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Social movements and organizing · International Workingmen's Association (First International) people 2

Social movements and organizing × International Workingmen's Association (First International) ×

Leó Frankel

Frankel Leó
Social movements and organizing International Workingmen's Association (First International) Hungary Hungary 1844–1896 ○ Natural causes

Jeweller who headed the Commune’s Labour and Exchange Commission and later founded Hungary’s workers’ party

He voted to create the Committee of Public Safety on 1 May 1871, then signed the minority declaration criticizing it on 15 May.

Born to a Jewish family in Óbuda, he trained as a jeweller, came to Paris via Germany in 1867 and worked in the International’s German-speaking section, being convicted in the International trial of 1870. The only foreigner elected to the Commune, he headed its Labour and Exchange Commission, pressed the ban on night work in bakeries and the abandoned-workshops decree, and sided with the minority against the Committee of Public Safety. Wounded in Bloody Week, he escaped to London and joined the General Council. Returning to Hungary in 1876, he founded the General Workers’ Party of Hungary in 1880 and spent his last years in Paris.

Career timeline
  • 1870Arrested and imprisoned for his International Workingmen’s Association activity, he was released after the Empire fell and resumed work in its Paris Federal Council.
  • 1871Elected to the Paris Commune for the 13th arrondissement and appointed delegate for Labour and Exchange, he advanced the bakery night-work ban and plans to survey and run abandoned workshops cooperatively. He voted for creating the Committee of Public Safety on 1 May, then signed the minority declaration on 15 May.
  • 1871–1872Wounded twice at a barricade during Bloody Week, he escaped and went to London, where he was elected to the General Council of the International Workingmen’s Association.
  • 1878–1880He took part in the founding congress of a workers’ party in Hungary and helped found the General Workers’ Party of Hungary in 1880.
  • 1889–1896He returned to Paris in 1889 and died of pneumonia in 1896.

Elisabeth Lukinichna Dmitrieff

Елизавета Лукинична Кушелева
Social movements and organizing International Workingmen's Association (First International) Russian Russian 1850–1918?

Russian revolutionary who organized the Paris Commune's Women's Union

She organized cooperative workshops to give women control over their labor.

Born Elizaveta Kusheleva, she later used the married name Tomanovskaya. She took part in the Geneva section of the First International and met Marx in London in 1870. Sent to Paris in 1871 as the International's representative, she founded the Women's Union and organized cooperative workshops for women workers. Wounded while fighting on the barricades during the suppression of the Commune, she escaped to Geneva, returned to Russia, and later followed her second husband, Ivan Davydovski, into Siberian exile. Her date of death is unknown; it has been placed probably between 1916 and 1918.

Career timeline
  • 1867Married Mikhail Tomanovski to gain access to her inheritance and funded revolutionary organizations.
  • 1868–1869Financed and co-edited the Russian-language journal Narodnoye delo and helped found the First International's Russian section in Geneva.
  • 1870Went to London as an envoy of the Geneva section and met Karl Marx.
  • 1871Founded the Women's Union during the Paris Commune and promoted cooperative workshops and labor rights for women.
  • 1871–1877Returned to Russia after the Commune's defeat, then married Ivan Davydovski and followed him into Siberian exile.