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__________ Nestor
Makhno __________
It had been relatively easy to
liquidate the small, weak nuclei of anarchists in the cities,
but things were different in the Ukraine, where the peasant
Nestor Makhno had built up a strong rural anarchist
organization, both economic and military. Makhno was born of
poor Ukrainian peasants and was twenty years old in 1919. As a
child, he had seen the 1905 Revolution and later became an
anarchist. The Tsarist regime sentenced him to death, commuted
to eight years' imprisonment, which was spent, more often than
not in irons, in Butyrki prison, the only school he was ever
to attend. He filled at least some of the gaps in his
education with the help of a fellow-prisoner, Peter Archinov.
Immediately after the October
Revolution, Makhno took the initiative in organizing masses of
peasants into an autonomous region, a roughly circular area
480 by 400 miles, with seven million inhabitants. Its southern
end reached the Sea of Azov at the port of Berdyansk, and it
was centered in Gulyai-Polye, a large town of 20,000 to 30,000
people. This was a traditionally rebellious region which had
seen violent disturbances in 1905.
The story began when the German
and Austrian armies of occupation imposed a right-wing regime
which hastened to return to their former owners the lands
which had been seized by revolutionary peasants. The land
workers put up an armed defense of their new conquests. They
resisted reaction but also the untimely intrusion of Bolshevik
commissars, and their excessive levies. This vast jacquerie
[1] was inspired by a "lover of justice," a
sort of anarchist Robin Hood called "Father" Makhno by the
peasants. His first feat of arms was the capture of
Gulyai-Polye in mid-September 1918. The armistice of November
11, however, led to the withdrawal of the Austro-German
occupation forces, and gave Makhno a unique opportunity to
build up reserves of arms and supplies.
For the first time in history,
the principles of libertarian communism were applied in the
liberated Ukraine, and self-management was put into force as
far as possible in the circumstances of the civil war.
Peasants united in "communes" or "free-work soviets," and
communally tilled the land for which they had fought with the
former owners. These groups respected the principles of
equality and fraternity. Each man, woman, or child had to work
in proportion to his or her strength, and comrades elected to
temporary managerial functions subsequently returned to their
regular work alongside the other members of the communes.
Each soviet was simply the
executive of the will of the peasants in the locality from
which it had been elected. Production units were federated
into districts, and districts into regions. The soviets were
integrated into a general economic system based on social
equality; they were to be independent of any political party.
No politician was to dictate his will to them under cover of
soviet power. Members had to be authentic workers at the
service of the laboring masses.
When the Makhnovist partisans
moved into an area they put up posters reading: "The freedom
of the workers and peasants is their own, and not subject to
any restriction. It is up to the workers and peasants
themselves to act, to organize themselves, to agree among
themselves in all aspects of their lives, as they themselves
see fit and desire .... The Makhnovists can do no more than
give aid and counsel .... In no circumstances can they, nor do
they wish to, govern."
When, in 1920, Makhno's men
were brought to negotiate with the Bolsheviks, they did so as
their equals, and concluded an ephemeral agreement with them,
to which they insisted that the following appendix be added:
"In the area where the Makhnovist army is operating the worker
and peasant population shall create its own free institutions
for economic and political self-administration; these
institutions shall be autonomous and linked federally by
agreements with the governing organs of the Soviet Republics."
The Bolshevik negotiators were staggered and separated the
appendix from the agreement in order to refer it to Moscow
where of course, it was, considered "absolutely inadmissible."
One of the relative weaknesses
of the Makhnovist movement was its lack of libertarian
intellectuals, but it did receive some intermittent aid from
outside. This came first from Kharkov and Kursk where the
anarchists, inspired by Voline, had in 1918 formed a union
called Nabat (the tocsin). In 1919 they held a congress
at which they declared themselves "categorically and
definitely opposed to any form of participation in the
soviets, which have become purely political bodies, organized
on an authoritarian, centralized, statist basis." The
Bolshevik government regarded this statement as a declaration
of war and the Nabat was forced to give up all its activities.
Later, in July, Voline got through to Makhno's headquarters
and joined with Peter Archinoff to take charge of the cultural
and educational side of the movement. He presided at the
congress held in October at Alexandrovsk, where the "General
Theses" setting out the doctrine of the "free soviets" were
adopted.
Peasant and partisan delegates
took part in these congresses. In fact, the civil organization
was an extension of a peasant army of insurrection, practicing
guerrilla tactics. This army was remarkably mobile, covering
as much as 160 miles in a day, thanks not only to its cavalry
but also to its infantry, which traveled in light horse-drawn
carts with springs. This army was organized on a specifically
libertarian, voluntary basis. The elective principle was
applied at all levels and discipline freely agreed to: the
rules of the latter were drawn up by commissions of partisans,
then validated by general assemblies, and were strictly
observed by all.
Makhno's franc-tireurs
gave the White armies of intervention plenty of trouble. The
units of Bolshevik Red Guards, for their part, were not very
effective. They fought only along the railways and never went
far from their armored trains, to which they withdrew at the
first reverse, sometimes without taking on board all their own
combatants. This did not give much confidence to the peasants
who were short of arms and isolated in their villages and so
would have been at the mercy of the counter-revolutionaries.
Archinov, the historian of the Makhnovtchina, wrote that "the
honor of destroying Denikin's counter-revolution in the autumn
of 1919 is principally due to the anarchist insurgents."
But after the units of Red
Guards had been absorbed into the Red Army, Makhno persisted
in refusing to place his army under the supreme command of the
Red Army chief, Trotsky. That great revolutionary therefore
believed it necessary to turn upon the insurrectionary
movement. On June 4, 1919, he drafted an order banning the
forthcoming Makhnovist congress, accusing them of standing out
against Soviet power in the Ukraine. He characterized
participation in the congress as an act of "high treason" and
called for the arrest of the delegates. He refused to give
arms to Makhno's partisans, failing in his duty of assisting
them, and subsequently accused them of "betrayal" and of
allowing themselves to be beaten by the White troupe. The same
procedure was followed eighteen years later by the Spanish
Stalinists against the anarchist brigades.
The two armies, however, came
to an agreement again, on two occasions, when the extreme
danger caused by the intervention required them to act
together. This occurred first in March 1919, against Denikin,
the second during the summer and autumn of 1920, before the
menace of the White forces of Wrangel which were finally
destroyed by Makhno. But as soon as the supreme danger was
past the Red Army returned to military operations against the
partisans of Makhno, who returned blow for blow.
At the end of November 1920
those in power went so far as to prepare an ambush. The
Bolsheviks invited the officers of the Crimean Makhnovist army
to take part in a military council. There they were
immediately arrested by the Cheka, the political police, and
shot while their partisans were disarmed. At the same time a
regular offensive was launched against Gulyai-Polye. The
increasingly unequal struggle between libertarians and
authoritarians continued for another nine months. In the end,
however, overcome by more numerous and better equipped forces,
Makhno had to give up the struggle. He managed to take refuge
in Romania in August 1921, and later reached Paris, where he
died much later of disease and poverty. This was the end of
the epic story of the Makhnovtchina. According to Peter
Archinov, it was the prototype of an independent movement of
the working masses and hence a source of future inspiration
for the workers of the world.
--by Daniel Guérin, an extract from "Anarchism: From Theory
to Practice" |
