Massacre (17 page)

Given the circumstances and ideological divisions among Communard leaders, it is not surprising that no full-fledged attempt to transform the economy took place, despite the role of socialists who ultimately wanted workers to have control of the tools of their trades.
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Yet most Communards accepted the idea of private property. Moreover, for Blanquists, a complete social revolution would have to wait until political power was secured.

Even though the structure of the economy remained relatively unchanged, the status of women improved by leaps and bounds. Indeed, the solidarity and militancy of Parisian women, who had suffered such hardship during the Prussian siege, leaps out as one of the most remarkable aspects of the Paris Commune. Women, taking pride in their role as ‘
citoyennes
’, pressured the Commune for attention to their rights and demands, and pushed for an energetic defence of the capital.
Citoyenne
Destrée proclaimed in a club: ‘The social revolution will not be operative until women are equal to men. Until then, you have only the appearance of revolution.’
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Such militants considered the condition of women a reflection of the ‘bourgeois authoritarianism’ of the defunct empire and the enemies gathering their forces at Versailles. Here, too, the Commune seemed to offer exciting possibilities for change. Élisabeth Dmitrieff, who had helped organise cooperatives in Geneva and then arrived in Paris in late March as a representative of the International, put it this way: ‘The work of women was the most exploited of all in the social order of the past … its immediate reorganisation is urgent.’
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The economic disadvantage faced by ordinary female workers infused women’s demands. Many
Communardes
remained more interested in improving their lives than in achieving political equality, a demand that was strikingly absent from the discourse of women. Louise Michel
explained, ‘[The woman] bends under mortification; in her home her burdens crush her. The man wants to keep her that way, to be sure that she will never encroach upon his function or his titles. Gentlemen, we do not want either your functions or your titles.’ Many women were doubly exploited, by their family situation and by employers. One woman denounced bosses as ‘the social wound that must be taken care of’ because they took advantage of workers, whom they considered ‘a machine for work’ while they lived it up. Dmitrieff called for the elimination of all competition and for equal salaries for male and female workers, as well as a reduction in the number of work hours. She also demanded the creation of workshops for unemployed women and asked for funds to be used to aid nascent working-class associations.
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Dmitrieff was born Elisavieta Koucheleva in the north-western Russian province of Pskov in 1850. She was the illegitimate daughter of an aristocratic and a German nurse twenty years younger. Élisabeth entered into a
mariage blanc
(a marriage of convenience) so she could get out of Russia, after having been active in a student group in Saint-Petersburg. She carried funds from her sizable dowry into exile in Geneva in 1868. Dmitrieff went to London and met Karl Marx and his family. Immediately following the proclamation of the Commune, Marx sent her to Paris and she sent reports on the situation back to him.

Dmitrieff cut quite a figure. She wore a riding costume of black, a felt hat with feathers, and a red silk shawl trimmed in gold. A police description had her about 5 foot 3 inches tall, with chestnut hair and grey-blue eyes. Léo Frankel was probably just one of the Communards who fell in love with her. Dmitrieff combined a precocious feminism with a socialism influenced by Marx and a firm hope and expectation that revolution would someday come to Russia.
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As in the case of Dmitrieff, clothes worn by some women during the Commune reflected their determination to effect change. Some garments were colourful, indeed flamboyant, with the colour red omnipresent, for example in sashes. Other women wore men’s clothing and carried rifles. Lodoiska Cawaska, a thirty-year-old Polish woman, rode at the head of soldiers, adorned in ‘Turkish pants, high-buttoned shoes with a red cockade, and a blue belt from which hung two pistols’.
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On 8 April, Dmitrieff sought to rally
citoyennes
in the defence of Paris in the tradition of the women who had marched to Versailles in October 1789. Three days later mothers, wives and sisters, including Dmitrieff and Natalie Le Mel, published an ‘Appeal to the Women Citizens of Paris’: ‘We must prepare to defend and avenge our brothers.’
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That evening, the Union des Femmes was constituted, led by a council of five women, with Dmitrieff as general secretary. The union called on women to form branches in each
arrondissement
. Saluting the Commune as representing ‘the regeneration of society’, the organisation asked women to build barricades and to ‘fight to the end’ for the Commune. It set up committees in most
arrondissements
as recruiting centres for volunteers for nursing and canteen work and barricade construction.
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The Union des Femmes also took the fight for equal rights to Parisian factories. The manufacture of National Guard uniforms, the vast majority of which were produced by women, was one Parisian industry that maintained full steam. The Commune had first signed contracts with traditional manufacturers for the production of uniforms. A report submitted assessed that this meant that female workers were being paid less than under the Government of National Defence. The Union des femmes demanded that all future contracts be awarded to workers’ producers’ cooperatives and that piece rates be negotiated between the Tailors’ Union and delegates from the Commission of Labour and Exchange.
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The Commune gave women in the Union des Femmes, which included at least 1,000 and perhaps as many as 2,000 women, unprecedented public responsibilities, but the response was not all positive. Some Communard leaders and other men reacted with uncertainty and even outright hostility. An official of the Tenth Arrondissement told the female administrator of a welfare hostel that members of the union committee ‘were to be kept away from all administrative agencies’.
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Yet without question women made essential contributions to the Commune, denouncing the clergy at club gatherings, encouraging the military defence of Paris, and caring for wounded Communard fighters.

While the Commune’s main concern was the wellbeing of its citizens, the new government also faced the daunting task of demonstrating its stability and legitimacy to foreigners living in or visiting the city. About 5,000 US citizens who had been living in Paris before the Commune found themselves surrounded by Versaillais troops. US Ambassador Washburne feared that it would be a long time ‘before these terrible troubles in Paris are ended’. Counting tourists passing through, the number of US citizens in Paris during the Commune may have reached 13,000. They read the newspaper
American Register.
Most resided on the Right Bank on the Champs-Elysées or in the Sixteenth Arrondissement. Many spoke no
French, but benefited from the strong dollar. They had the reputation of being ‘without polish’, even boorish, and ‘arrogantly aloof’.

Most Americans seem to have sided against the Commune. W. Pembroke Fetridge disparaged it as ‘the most criminal (act) the world has ever seen … a revolution of blood and violence’, led by ‘ruthless desperadoes … the refuse of France … bandits … atheists and free-thinkers … madmen, drunk with wine and blood’. Yet two Americans residing in Paris could find no fault with the way the city operated. Marie Putnam described the ‘apparent orderliness of the Commune’. Frank M. Pixley from California remembered: ‘I was present in the city of Paris during the entire period that the Commune held sway … And yet during the five weeks – weeks of menace from without and suffering within – I saw and heard of no single act of pillage and murder.’
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Indeed the Commune’s leaders trumpeted a ‘revolutionary morality’, knowing that they would be closely scrutinised by their constituents and foreign observers alike. They held themselves to a high standard of honesty and accountability, which was intended to stand in stark contrast to the rampant corruption of Napoleon III’s Second Empire. Communard leaders went out of their way to demonstrate that they ran a tight ship and could account for all expenditures. Inspired by the goals of equality and decentralisation, the Commune rejected high salaries for officials, while affirming the principle of having elected functionaries. The idea was that public servants would listen to citizens, who in turn would be actively involved in their government; a poster in the Second Arrondissement called for ‘the permanent intervention of citizens in communal affairs through the free expression of their ideas and free defence of their interests’. Administrators of the Commune were considered responsible to ordinary people, as their representatives and delegates.
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The ability of the Commune to provide public services in the wake of the prolonged Prussian siege and the government’s overthrow was also essential to demonstrate its legitimacy. The situation was complicated by the sudden departure of so many officials and employees. Yet the Commune’s municipality managed well enough, providing water, light and a postal service. Streets were regularly cleaned and garbage properly disposed of. Taxes were collected. An American woman had received her tax bill, and went to see an official, relating that, in view of the events, her family was having trouble coming up with the money they owed. The Communard replied that this would be no problem, much to the American’s relief. She was forced to admit that ‘Communards were not as
bad as all that’. The cemetery service continued to function as always – and would have increasingly more to do.
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Some observers insisted that crime seemed less of a problem in Paris during the Commune than before or after. On 23 March a poster warned that thieves arrested
en flagrant délit
would be shot. Relatively few thefts seem to have been reported and probably only a couple of murders occurred in a city that, despite the departure of so many people, remained a teeming place. Charles Beslay attributed this to the spontaneous emergence of a ‘revolutionary morality’. Yet some evidence suggests that thefts may have actually increased. We just do not know. The Prefecture of Police forbade begging – Rigault admitted on 17 April that it had ‘taken on a considerable extension’ – and banned gambling, and a decree warned cheats and hucksters to stay away from markets. The Commune outlawed prostitution, making some arrests and pushing the industry into corners, although venereal disease proliferated, as it had during the Prussian siege. A decree in May returned prostitutes to the old draconian regulations, including resented obligatory medical inspections. Despite Rigault’s police decree banning the serving of drinks to anyone ‘in a state of drunkenness’ (ironically, considering the source), alcoholism continued its ravages in the ‘City of Light’, which could well have been called the City of Drink.
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The Commune also wanted to ensure that food was available and affordable. To that end, it established a Commission on Subsistence on 29 March. The annual Ham Fair took place on April 4 to 6; pigs and
charcuterie
went on sale as they had since the medieval era. The price of food rose, but it was nothing like the extreme shortages that had compounded the disastrous effects of the freezing weather during the Prussian siege. Once German military authorities allowed the Commune to open the gates that led to their zone of occupation, more provisions entered the city. Some
mairies
purchased and then sold meat at about cost. Yet Henri Dabot, who lived in the Latin Quarter, complained that his cook could not find what she wanted at the market, and that a modest little rabbit, which before would have gone for 2 francs (almost a day’s wage for a worker in ordinary times), now sported the price of 5 francs. Courbet drank a little glass of Gentiane liqueur ‘to forget having to eat black bread and horsemeat’. However, for ordinary people who did not have cooks, prices put some commodities increasingly out of range. In early May an employee of the Prefecture of Police reported that Parisians were complaining about the rising cost of food. Denunciations of hoarders became common and officials ordered some stores to be searched.
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Arrondisement
mairies
became hubs of activity during the Commune; in addition to selling food at or near cost, they handled matters of local governance that brought in a steady stream of citizens. Paul Martine, a former
normalien
(a student at the prestigious École normale) and
lycée
teacher, related the creative chaos of the
mairie
at Batignolles in the Seventeenth Arrondissement: ‘First came our tumultuous deliberations in the large hall where the municipal council met, then the public crowding the door with demands of all kinds. Then came those carrying news, the dissatisfied, foreigners and people who wanted to declare births, deaths, or ask to be married. And this while the cannons rumbled, day and night, all around the ramparts. We were there almost permanently.’ Martine often slept on one of the mattresses placed in the corner, as the ‘hall of the municipal council was transformed into a dormitory’.

Depending on supplies, the
mairie
of each
arrondissement
provided national guardsmen and indigents with coal, wood and bread. Beginning early in the morning ‘an uninterrupted procession of poor women, without work and bread, and whose husbands had been killed in the fighting’ arrived asking for vouchers that could be exchanged for food whenever stocks were available. The
mairie
undertook
soupes populaires
(soup kitchens) when sufficient provisions were available. Couples arrived asking to be married: Benoît Malon sometimes performed the brief ceremonies. Malon, who had eight national guardsmen arrested for theft on 25 April, also oversaw burials of Communards killed in fighting outside the ramparts or by Versaillais cannon fire, sad events followed by angry shouts for vengeance and the death of Thiers and the ‘bombers of Paris!’
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