Nestor Makhno and Rural Anarchism in Ukraine, 1917-1921. Colin Darch
towards Taganrog and Rostov.113 The next day he told Trotsky’s aide G. Ia. Sokol’nikov that he was disturbed by the slackening-off of operations against the Donbass and asked him to formulate practical directives to speed things up again.114 Sokol’nikov replied that there were three causes of delay: disorganisation in the army, Denikin’s acquisition of reinforcements and the weakness of Makhno’s brigade on the flank. He recommended the reorganisation of the 9th Army to the east of Lugansk, and the prioritisation of the Southern Front.115 Lenin informed Antonov directly that he should regard the Donbass as the most important objective, and to immediately give solid support to the Donbass-Mariupol’ sector. He brushed aside Antonov’s protests in advance: ‘I see … that there are quantities of military supplies in the Ukraine … they must not be hoarded’.116 But Antonov had been ordered to move troops westwards, past hostile Ukrainian nationalist and Polish forces, to relieve pressure on Soviet Hungary; to move troops eastwards to relieve the Southern Front; and to establish control over Ukraine to secure coal and grain supplies to Russia.
His forces were not the disciplined and well-organised formations depicted by Trotsky. Makhno’s and Grigor’ev’s units were by no means the only partisan forces in Ukraine: in fact, in Ekaterinoslav province, where Makhno was in control and formally in alliance with the Red Army, there were fewer rebellions against the Bolsheviks than there were in northern Ukraine, where no single ataman wielded power.117
Antonov agreed that Makhno’s failure to resist Shkuro was partially the result of his autonomy, but he was not as critical of the insurgents as was Trotsky.118 On 1 May, in a memorandum to the Central Committees of the Russian and Ukrainian parties, Trotsky argued for the reduction of partisan units to half their strength, to turn them into regular troops: Makhno had been ineffective under sustained enemy attack, and his forces had to be absorbed into regular formations. Criminal elements should be purged, discipline established and the system of elected commanders abolished. Antonov’s approach of allowing a special status for the partisan units was ‘opportunism’.119
From mid-April onwards it was clear to the Bolshevik commanders that they had misjudged the atamany’s potential, and over-estimated the effectiveness of their own command structure. This judgement was based on direct observation: Skachko, for example, had visited Grigor’ev’s ‘headquarters’ in March, filing a scathing report that described the filth, disorganisation and drunkenness, and recommended that Grigor’ev himself be ‘eliminated’.120 Grigor’ev also had grandiose ideas about his own importance. On 10 April, after the capture of Odessa from the French on the 6th, he sent telegrams to Rakovskii, Antonov, Dybenko, Makhno and other commanders boasting of his own courage and his troops’ loyalty during the attack.121
A week later, at considerable personal risk, Antonov went to visit Grigor’ev at Aleksandriia in an attempt to bring him and his unit under effective control. He wanted to persuade Grigor’ev to join forces with Makhno’s brigade for a swift offensive towards the Donbass. He was unable to convince him that the plan was a good one.122 On 23 April Antonov met Grigor’ev again, and considered exerting pressure on him to attack southwards into the Donbass. To send the volatile ataman to such a crucial sector of the front was too risky, however, and it was equally impossible to leave him in the rear, close to Makhno’s anarchist partisans. Antonov decided to send him to Bessarabia, to campaign against Romania in support of Soviet Hungary. In an emotional interview he convinced Grigor’ev, releasing more reliable troops and resolving his dilemma.123
Meanwhile Makhno was being particularly pugnacious. Grain requisition detachments (prodovol’stvennye otriady) were unable to operate in his area, and he had lost patience with the Bolshevik commissars in the 3rd Brigade, and arrested them, breaking the February agreement. His troops were wavering under the White attacks, and Antonov could ill afford to antagonise him. He therefore decided to visit Guliaipole himself, with two purposes in mind: to see for himself this ‘under-sized, young-looking, dark-eyed man, wearing a Caucasian fur cap at an angle’, and to assess him and his unit.124 On arrival he noted that three secondary schools had been set up, several medical posts to treat the wounded and a workshop for repairing military equipment. There was also adult education underway focussing on political agitation.125 The visit gave Antonov an opportunity to try to solve the two problems of Makhno’s relations with Grigor’ev, and of his treatment of the commissars. Antonov was, by his own account, satisfied with the way Makhno ran his headquarters and with the fighting qualities of his men. He telegraphed to Khar’kov that he had stayed with Makhno for the whole day, and was convinced that there was no anti-Soviet conspiracy, and that the makhnovtsy were ‘a great fighting force’, and potentially ‘an indestructible fortress’. The newspaper propaganda campaign needed to stop at once.126 Still, Makhno had much to complain of – he was short of arms, ammunition, clothing and money. He had received 3,000 Italian rifles, but so few bullets that they were already used up.127 His grumbles were justifiable – although the 3rd Brigade was under bombardment from land and sea, they had only two 3-inch guns in good condition and lacked machine-guns and cartridges. Yet when Dybenko had raised this point, headquarters accused him of placing the brigade’s welfare before that of the division as a whole.128
Antonov was sympathetic, and issued orders for supplies to be sent to Makhno forthwith. On the question of the arrested commissars he was adamant. Makhno unexpectedly backed down, and released the imprisoned political workers, on condition that they must no longer work as spies for the Bolsheviks.129 Even more comforting for Antonov to hear were Makhno’s assurances that he did not have close relations with Grigor’ev, who he suspected of counter-revolutionary intentions. He admitted that he had indeed sent an envoy to Grigor’ev’s camp, but only to discover what his plans really were. Shortly after this surprisingly friendly visit to Makhno, another senior Bolshevik arrived in Guliaipole. Lev Kamenev, deputy chairman of the Russian Sovnarkom, was on a mission to Ukraine, primarily to sort out the administrative problems that were preventing food supplies from moving northwards. As he was to discover, the problems were, in fact, much more than merely administrative.
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