Nestor Makhno and Rural Anarchism in Ukraine, 1917-1921. Colin Darch
to the landlords was an important driver of peasant discontent, but recent research has shown that ‘most of peasants’ complaints … focused on the actions not of returning landlords, but of the occupying soldiers’.86 The Germans and Austrians continued to requisition foodstuffs and livestock without compensation. For example, at a horse fair in June, a German detachment took whichever animal seized their fancy, and when the peasants resisted, imposed a fine of 75,000 roubles on the host village for attacking a German officer.87 There were many other incidents. Commissions set up to assess damage to the seized estates forced the peasantry to pay compensation to their former landlords, and each community was responsible for payments by individual members.88 As repression intensified, peasant opposition to the Germans and Skoropadskii moved from the passing of congress resolutions to armed insurrection.89 The first armed detachments were formed in Kursk, Kiev and Chernigov provinces in early May, and attracted vigorous and brutal repressive action from the occupying forces. The scale of these guerrilla actions escalated quickly, especially in Podolia, Khar’kov and Ekaterinoslav.90
Among minority victims of the widening violence were both Germans and Jews. Many German colonists in Ukraine were Mennonites, commercial farmers who had arrived in the Russian Empire in the late-eighteenth century, settling in religious communities in Ekaterinoslav, Tauride and Kherson. They initially welcomed the arrival of the German and Austrian troops, and before the invaders withdrew in the autumn of 1918, set up self-defence (Selbstschutz) units to resist the makhnovtsy and other partisan groups. This was a political error, creating popular hostility towards the Mennonites, and a violation of their non-violent principles.91 The makhnovtsy were responsible for attacks on Mennonite communities from late 1918 onwards, of which the most savage occurred in Eichenfeld in November 1919. Mennonite memoirs of the period typically list the names of martyrs and enumerate pillaged villages, farms and settlements.92 However, as Sean Patterson has argued, pointing to the ‘resentment associated with land hunger and poverty’, such a Mennonite meta-narrative fails to engage with
… the breakdown of neighbourly relations between Mennonites and Ukrainians where roots of the conflict may be glimpsed. This was a process that began before the arrival of Makhno … and even before the German occupation … With the collapse of order in the countryside the situation escalated …93
Mennonites were not the only victims. Peasant units were often anti-Semitic and would plunder Jewish houses, while leaving other homes intact. They also collected taxes.94
Makhno’s return from Russia went unnoticed. He slipped into the village of Rozhdestvenka, 20 kilometres from Guliaipole, and went into hiding.95 Many comrades were under arrest, and the Austrians had burned his mother’s home and shot his brother Emel’ian, a wounded veteran.96 On 4 July he issued a ‘proclamation’, couched in broad terms, exhorting the peasants to expel the invaders and establish a free society. Cautiously, he made ten copies, and circulated them to known sympathisers in the Guliaipole region.97 The response was disappointing: he received a note telling him not to come back, adding that ‘the Jews’ were hunting out revolutionaries, just as they had ‘betrayed the revolution’ to the Austrians in April. Makhno sent back a warning against anti-Semitism, but the reply repeated the same accusations.98
The dominant narrative recounted here describes the embryonic insurgency in the period from April 1918 to the end of the year, before Makhno became a major protagonist in the Ukrainian struggle. However, it derives principally from a sequence of mutually-reinforcing sources: primarily chapters 3, 4, and part of 5 of Arshinov’s 1923 book; the second and third volumes of Makhno’s own memoirs, edited by Volin and published posthumously in the 1930s; and Viktor Belash’s text, as edited by his son in the 1990s. There are identifiable errors in Makhno’s text, and there is still relatively little published primary documentation.99
Makhno planned to organise Guliaipole into zones, each with a nucleus of committed revolutionaries, who would gather their most energetic and fearless neighbours into guerrilla squads. These would selectively ambush Austrian patrols – and landowners – in isolated areas. Such ‘rapid and unexpected blows’ would eventually demoralise the occupying forces sufficiently to permit an assault on the garrison at Guliaipole. Unfortunately, his followers launched several feeble attacks, which the Austrians and Hetmanite authorities easily repulsed. The disorganised raids precipitated a wave of arrests and house searches. Makhno’s presence was revealed, and he beat a hasty retreat to Ternovka, 80 kilometres away, using the false passport issued to him in Moscow.100 In Ternovka – for whatever reason – Makhno found the fighting spirit that Guliaipole’s inhabitants had lacked. He set about organising platoons, and warned of the dangers of launching attacks too early.101 The Red Guards had abandoned some weapons during their retreat in the spring, and the tiny squad was adequately armed.
Reconnoitring Guliaipole, Makhno found that Austrian punitive detachments were requisitioning grain, and fighting had broken out. In general, the Germans failed to restrain the Austrians and pomeshchiki from demanding land, grain and ‘compensation’ all at once, and the landlords were beating and imprisoning the same peasants who had driven them from their estates only months before. The Germans saw the supply of raw materials from Ukraine as essential: ‘we are justified to use our troops there’ wrote Ludendorff, ‘it would be a mistake to do otherwise’.102 But many local men had returned from the front carrying arms, and the Germans had little understanding of the political forces at play. They lacked a clear policy and failed to exploit Ukraine’s resources effectively. The rivalry with the Austrians was an irritant, and even the German Foreign Office and the Supreme Army Command were unable to agree on policy matters.103 As late as September a German officer, Lt.-Col. Bach, wrote that ‘the bands of partisans [are] not political organisations, but only gangster bands, people too lazy to work’.104
In Ternovka, Makhno began to raid country estates, and the Austrians sent a punitive detachment, forcing Makhno to flee westwards towards the Dnepr, where he recruited some demobilised Ukrainians.105 He then set off back to Guliaipole to resume operations. The evidence for this period is sparse and, in Timoshchuk’s words, ‘of a romantic and legendary character’. These ‘terrorist actions of Makhno’ can be seen as ‘ordinary armed robberies’, which were reported as having been ‘decisively suppressed’ by the Warta and the military.106
Makhno’s return coincided with the arrival of various anarchist intellectuals who attached themselves to the movement and subtly changed its character. One outcome of anarchist emigration to Ukraine was the establishment in Khar’kov in autumn 1918 of the ‘Nabat’ Confederation of Anarchist Organisations.107 With a network of branches in Ukrainian cities, it was dominated by Volin (V. M. Eikhenbaum), Petr Arshinov and Aron Baron, and attempted to bring anarcho-syndicalists, anarchist-communists and individualists together, while simultaneously allowing them considerable autonomy.108 The newly-arrived comrades started telling Makhno how to conduct his affairs, arguing that an uprising was impractical and he should wait for Bolshevik help. But Makhno was afraid of losing the initiative if he delayed.109 He had recruited about 100 followers, but still lacked the strength to raid Guliaipole itself; he had already attempted unsuccessfully to blow up the Austrian headquarters.110
It was mid-September before he had built up sufficient military strength to move closer to Guliaipole. His campaign opened with a stroke of good fortune: on the way to Guliaipole he disarmed a troop of haidamaki, capturing horses, uniforms and weapons. Disguised, his men then came upon and routed a militia detachment.111 Guliaipole itself was garrisoned by Austrian troops and in a state of alert. The Austrians took brutal reprisals against anyone who helped the partisans, shooting some and exacting fines on others. The repression, together with Makhno’s growing popular reputation gained him more recruits, some with weapons. Eventually, he attacked the Austrian garrison with 400 fighters, capturing the post office and the railway station. It turned out that most of the Austrians were out on patrol at the time: nonetheless, the raid was a morale-booster.112
The makhnovtsy knew that they could not defend the town against Austrian regular troops and withdrew north-westwards