Global lineages of revolutionary feminism: Paris, Havana, and beyond

By Harsh Thakor* 

The history of revolution is incomplete without the women who transformed its very foundations. Across continents and centuries, figures like Isabel Rielo Rodríguez, Nathalie Le Mel, and Elisabeth Dmitrieff embodied the fusion of class struggle and feminist emancipation, proving that no revolution can succeed without dismantling patriarchy. Their journeys resonate deeply with the legacy of Anuradha Ghandy, whose life and work in India carried forward the same spirit of militant, proletarian feminism.

Isabel Rielo Rodríguez: Feminism of the Trenches

On April 9, 1989, Isabel Rielo Rodríguez passed away, symbolizing the end of a heroic generation that had stormed the Moncada Barracks and built a socialist alternative just ninety miles from imperialism’s core. As commander of the Mariana Grajales Women’s Platoon—the only all-women combat unit in Fidel Castro’s Rebel Army—Rielo shattered the myth of female frailty. At the Battle of Cerro Pelado in 1958, her platoon withstood a numerically superior enemy, proving that emancipation comes only when the oppressed arm themselves against their oppressors.

The platoon’s formation was not tokenism but necessity: the Cuban Revolution needed every willing hand. By invoking Mariana Grajales Cuello, the Afro-Cuban matriarch of independence struggles, the unit linked socialism to unfinished anti-colonial battles. Rielo’s leadership permanently altered the internal dynamics of the Rebel Army and laid the groundwork for the Federation of Cuban Women. 

Her feminism was forged in the trenches, aligned with Vietnamese women who shot down B-52s, Zapatista women in Chiapas, and Palestinian women resisting occupation. She embodied the principle that there is no revolution without women’s liberation, and no liberation of women without revolution.

Nathalie Le Mel and Elisabeth Dmitrieff: The Paris Commune’s Women’s Union

More than a century earlier, in April 1871, women workers of Paris rose to defend the Commune. Nathalie Le Mel, a Breton bookbinder, and Elisabeth Dmitrieff, a twenty-year-old Russian envoy of Karl Marx, founded the Union des Femmes pour la Défense de Paris et les Soins aux Blessés. This marked the institutional birth of proletarian feminism within the first workers’ state.

The Union demanded equal wages, the abolition of competition between men and women, and control of abandoned workshops to establish cooperatives. They transformed reproductive labour into socialised, dignified work—canteens, hospitals, and workshops that prefigured the welfare state. Dmitrieff diagnosed that class struggle without gender liberation was a contradiction, while Le Mel fought on the barricades until her capture and deportation. Their efforts revealed that socialism acquires feminism only through organised pressure from women themselves.

Louise Michel, though not a founder, became the Union’s most famous militant, mobilising the Women’s Battalion during the Bloody Week. As Marx observed, the women of Paris showed themselves “heroic, noble and devoted… joyfully giving their lives on the barricades.” Their struggle was a slap in the face of male chauvinism within the left, proving that revolution is not complete until patriarchy is dismantled.

A Shared Legacy

From Paris to Cuba, these women revolutionaries forged paths that challenged both capitalism and patriarchy. Rielo’s platoon and Dmitrieff’s Union were not auxiliary forces but central engines of revolutionary transformation. They demonstrated that socialism does not automatically extinguish patriarchal structures—it requires constant, organised struggle by women themselves.

Anuradha Ghandy, remembered on April 12, carried forward this lineage in India. Her writings and activism against caste, class, and gender oppression echoed the lessons of Rielo, Le Mel, and Dmitrieff: that feminism must be rooted in mass struggle, armed resistance when necessary, and solidarity across borders.

The stories of Isabel Rielo Rodríguez, Nathalie Le Mel, Elisabeth Dmitrieff, and Anuradha Ghandy remind us that revolutionary feminism is not an abstract ideal but a lived practice. It is forged in battlefields, barricades, and cooperative workshops. It is the insistence that women are not auxiliaries but protagonists of history. Their legacy is a blueprint for contemporary struggles against imperialism, capitalism, and patriarchy—a reminder that the liberation of women and the liberation of society are inseparable.

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*Freelance journalist