During the Russian Civil War it was not only Reds versus Whites, communists versus anti-communists.
There were other factions as well: think of the nationalist factions, or the Allied
Intervention Force and the anarchists, also known as the Blacks. They were led by Nestor
Makhno. In this video I'm gonna talk about this person and his anarchist ideas. Keep watching.
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In history you have fascinating persons and some are very well known and others are well known,
but if you ask: who was this person exactly, people can come up with just one word: anarchism.
And in this case I'm talking about Nestor Makhno. Who was he? And were did he stand for?
Nestor Makhno was born on 27 October 1888 in Huliaipole (Gulyai-Polye), then Ekaterinoslav
province of the Russian Empire. Makhno was the fifth son of two parents who had been serfs
until Tsar Alexander II abolished serfdom in 1861. His father remained at work at his former master.
When Makhno was eleven his father died and from that point on Makhno's childhood was marked by
poverty. He completed elementary school and starting working as a stable-boy. In
1902 at the age of 13 he witnessed how another stable-boy
was beaten severily by the children of his landlord. He ran to the head stable boy (Batko Ivan)
Batko Ivan chased these children away. Later the landlord apologized for the behaviour of his sons.
Batko Ivan then turned to Nestor and spoke the following words:
"No one here should countenance the disgrace of being beaten ... and as for you, little Nestor,
if one of your masters should ever strike you, pick up the first pitchfork you lay
hands on and let him have it . . . . "
This left a mark on Makhno's soul. He later quit his job as a stable boy to work
on the land of his mother as his older brother got married and moved elsewhere. The 1905 Russian
Revolution left an impact on Nestor Makhno. The Social Democrats was the first political affiliation.
Yet, later he joined local peasant anarchists who advocated libertarian communism. After the
failed 1905 revolution tsarist control was everywhere and a detachment of Don Cossacks
were stationed in Gulyai-Polye. Despite the strict control the group of 10 to 15 met on
a regular basis to study the teachings of Proudhon, Stirner, Bakunin and Kropotkin.
Makhno recalled these meetings as follows:
" For me such nights (we most often would gather to meet by night) were filled with light and joy.
We peasants, with our meager learning, would assemble in winter at the home of one of us, in
summer in the fields, near a pond, on the green grass, or, from time to time, in the broad
daylight like young folks out for a stroll. We would meet to debate the issues that move us. "
Between 1906 and 1908 his group carried out several robberies: wealthy businessmen
and landowners were targetted. For this he spent 10 months in prison. Makhno would soon see
more prison time. Mid-1911 he was dispatched to Moscow's central prison,
the ill-famed Butyrki which housed 3,000 prisoners at that time,
a great deal of them political prisoners. There Makhno familiarized himself with the basic ideas
of groups like the Social Revolutionaries. He also met anarchist Peter Arshinov who was sentenced to
20 years in prison and helped him shaping his ideas on anarchism.
When WW1 broke out in 1914 the inmates were split in two sides: patriots versus internationalists.
Makhno supporting the latter. After the February Revolution in 1917 Makhno was
released from prison and the now 27-year old Nestor Makhno after several years
returned to his home town Gulyai-Polye. He re-joined the Gulyai-Polye libertarian communist group.
“To them he spelled out his analysis of the situation; without waiting for the libertarian
movement nationwide to recover its strength and start to organize itself, anarchists
ought to be in the vanguard of mass revolutionary action. His activism clashed with the opposition
from certain traditional anarchist militants who were calling for a propaganda drive to
target the workers and designed solely to familiarize them with libertarian ideas.”
You can see some similarities with Vladimir Lenin who also advocated that a vanguard should carry out the revolution.
However, there were big differences and we get to that later. Makhno was elected as chairman.
He advocated that the estates of landowners had to be handed to the peasant communes without payment
of compensation. The Social Democrats and Kadats were against this and wanted a buy-back policy.
Only a several huge estates were collectivized; some farming communes, made up of landless
families and small like-minded groups settled on them. Each commune numbered about 200 individuals.
In the whole region many communes came into existence. From far and wide persons traveled to
the Gulyai-Polye soviet (as it was called now) to consult Makhno. Makhno's followers
disarmed local police to form their own militias. By now his followers numbered in the tens of thousands.
Then came the October Revolution. The Bolsheviks seized power and the left-SRs joined them. An
anti-bolshevik movement known as the Whites began to take shape and then also Ukrainian nationalists
claimed an independent Ukraine. When the Bolshevik coup occured an 80,000-strong demonstration was
held in Ekaterinoslav (now Dnipro, Ukraine) where the anarchists walked with black flags.
The problem was that the "anarchist intelligentsia" was not in the region.
Most of these lived in exile and were released after the February Revolution and settled in the big cities (Moscow and
Petrograd) where they lived under the spell of the Bolsheviks and could not exercise any influence.
A big difference with the Bolsheviks is that the Bolsheviks wanted to centralize
control and the anarchists didn't. Here is their criticism towards Lenin after a few years:
“You are in power in Russia, but what has changed? The factories and the land are still not in the
toilers' hands but in that of the boss-State. Wage slavery, the fundamental evil of the bourgeois
order, is still in existence: as a result, hunger, cold and unemployment are inevitable. On account
of the 'need to put up with everything' for the sake of a better future, and to 'defend'
that which is already won, a huge bureaucratic machine has been set up, the right to strike
abolished, and freedoms of speech, assembly and the press have been stamped out.”
The area of the anarchists was named the Free Territory, also known as Makhnovschina:
"[The] Makhnovschina has denied all statism and aspired to the building of a free society on the
basis of the social independence, solidarity and self-direction of the toilers . . . "
The Nabat (Kharkiv-based Confederation of Anarchist Organizations) alligned
itself with the Makhnovists and therefore the Makhnovists became a strong movement
to oppose their enemies. Who were their enemies?
Back to early 1918 at the negotiation table of Brest-Litovsk the Ukrainian nationalists managed
to get recognition by the Central Powers. The Central Powers moved into Ukraine and thus the
Bolsheviks signed the Brest Litovsk Treaty and recognized the Ukrainian Nationalist
Republic. Yet, in April the Germans installed a new puppet government led by Pavlo Skoropadskyi.
It was during the time of the Ukrainian State,
also known as the Hetmanate, Nestor Makhno formed his army Revolutionary Insurgent Army
of Ukraine to fight the Skoropadskyi regime. This Army would operate from
the Free Territory of Ukraine and fought later against the Whites co-operating with the Reds.
However, they were betrayed by the Reds. How that all played out I will discuss in a future episode.
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