Nestor Makhno and Rural Anarchism in Ukraine, 1917-1921. Colin Darch
events in Petrograd seemed to the peasants of Guliaipole to be a copy on a grander scale of the social revolution that they had already initiated in their region in the preceding months. ‘During the October days’, wrote Makhno,
… the proletariat of Petrograd, Moscow, and other large cities, as also the soldiers and peasants in the towns, under the influence of the anarchists, Bolsheviks and left SRs, were only … expressing with greater precision the objectives for which the revolutionary peasantry of numerous Ukrainian regions had been struggling since August, but in conditions that were favourable from the urban proletariat’s point of view.131
The revolutionary convulsions that seized the major Russian cities throughout the year did not mean that it was inevitable that ‘Petrograd’ would simply be followed by the rest of the country. The initial response in Guliaipole to the news of the October revolution was one of intense interest, although it was not immediately clear exactly what had happened. The slogans ‘land to the peasants’ and ‘factories to the workers’ seemed unobjectionable, but Makhno was unhappy, for example, with the idea of elections to a Constituent Assembly.132 Chronologically, ‘Great October’ was a step that the Ukrainian peasantry had by-and-large already taken – even though the revolution in Guliaipole had not gone as far as Makhno wanted. The policy of expropriation had aroused the enthusiasm of the poor peasants, but they seemed less keen on forming anarchist communes. Nor were land-seizures completed or unopposed by October. The peasants were still felling acres of forest and seizing grain, in the face of disciplinary action by Cossack troops.133 In December the local nationalists attempted to call in Ukrainian troops from Aleksandrovsk against Makhno, but the commander had other priorities and the move failed.134 Makhno had been successful in establishing himself and his group as the dominant political force at the local level, but he was unable to initiate the social revolution that he wanted to see through political action alone. It was time to turn to violence.
Some time in October/November, the anarchists started arming themselves. A Black Guard detachment of 60 members was established, and with Marusia Nikiforova began to accumulate weapons and ammunition by attacking trains, police stations and warehouses.135 Belash admits that at this time they ‘did not yet have a military unit as such’, although they did have access to some rifles.136 In November an incident occurred that made the anarchists aware of their vulnerability. They received news that Nikiforova had been arrested in Aleksandrovsk by the local commissar. Despite threats, the commissar refused to release her; the anarchists then took steps to organise a proper revkom, release the weapons from private hands, and initiate the voluntary mobilisation of the ‘Black Guards’ (Chernaia Gvardiia).137 As the news of the Bolshevik seizure of power broke, Nikiforova was rescued, and makhnovshchina took its first steps towards becoming a militarised movement.138
The divided Ukrainian Bolsheviks did not follow the Russian example and come to power in Kiev. In some places – in Lugansk and other towns of the Donbass – they did gain control and refused to recognise the Rada. In other areas, including Khar’kov and Ekaterinoslav, they collaborated in piecemeal fashion with both Ukrainian and Russian left parties and did acknowledge the Rada. Relations between the Rada and the Bolsheviks in Kiev were hostile, but despite this, the Bolsheviks briefly joined the so-called ‘Small Rada’, a committee that sat in continuous session and made important decisions when the full Rada was in recess. However, the launch of a White counterrevolution in the southeast complicated this struggle between the Bolsheviks and the Rada. The day after the Bolsheviks took over in Petrograd, Alexei Kaledin, a Cossack general, declared an independent Don Cossack state. In December 1917, Lenin assigned Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko to the task of crushing the revolt, and by January the Bolsheviks were at war with the nationalists of the Rada as well. Makhno’s detachment, which by this time consisted of several hundred fighters, fought alongside the Bolsheviks.139 In the early days of this incipient Red versus White civil war there was rapid movement along railway lines, but casualties were light and small forces could still control large areas.
When Makhno had visited Ekaterinoslav for the Provincial Congress, he found the city a microcosm of the confusion in Ukraine as a whole. The Bolsheviks and Left SRs dominated the Soviet. The Rada controlled some armed battalions. Some sailors from Kronstadt on their way to the southeast to fight Kaledin were billeted in the town. There was even a bourgeois ‘neutralist’ faction.140 On 10 January 1918, after Makhno had returned to Guliaipole with some weapons for his comrades, Soviet forces entered Ekaterinoslav on the way to Kiev. They were moving along a narrow front that missed Guliaipole altogether, but it was not possible to remain neutral. The anarchists and poor peasants of Guliaipole recognised the negative attitude of the Rada towards their local revolution, and decided to support the Bolsheviks, forming a class alliance between the workers and the poor peasants against the nationalist petty-bourgeoisie and the conservative elements backing them.
When Makhno’s detachment reached Aleksandrovsk, the Bolsheviks were in control and Makhno busied himself releasing prisoners and trying in vain to blow up the prison.141 Soon afterwards the partisans received news that several train loads of Cossacks were passing through to join Kaledin. Makhno and his forces seized the Kichkas Bridge over the Dnepr at Ekaterinoslav to prevent their passage. After some negotiations, Makhno appropriated the Cossacks’ weapons, but left them their horses and let them go. This seizure of arms – a mixture of Russian, German and Austrian rifles and pistols – provided the basis for Makhno to organise his own army, and to disperse rival centres of power in Guliaipole.142 By spring 1918, his forces numbered 5,000 men.143 The Bolsheviks, however, arrested the unarmed Cossacks at Aleksandrovsk, confiscated their horses, and sent the soldiers back to Khar’kov.144 This incident was the first of several that increased Makhno’s suspicion of Bolshevik intentions. Since Soviet forces had arrived there had been more arrests than under the Rada. Makhno resigned his command and returned to Guliaipole with his detachment.145
By this time the anarchists in Guliaipole were running out of money, which they resolved by the simple expedient of exerting pressure on the local bank. They believed, however, that reliance on such outmoded economic procedures as money-exchange was hindering the implementation of anarchist social organisation. A delegate went to Moscow and other cities to arrange direct exchange of commodities with interested groups of workers; surplus grain for manufactured goods. Some Moscow trade unions showed interest and sent their officials to Guliaipole to complete a deal. The villagers duly sent grain off to Moscow, where the workers dispatched a consignment of textiles and other items in return, only to be held up by the Bolsheviks in Aleksandrovsk. The peasants were outraged at this interference with their almost-successful anarchist economic experiment, and threatened to march on Aleksandrovsk and disperse the Soviet. The Bolsheviks released the goods.146
It was only in February 1918 that a system of anarchist communes was organised on expropriated estates on anything like a significant scale – just as the Austro-German invasion of Ukraine was about to destroy the hope of social revolution. Some agrarian communes had been established earlier in the villages, during the autumn months. In his memoirs Makhno describes the communes with frustratingly little specific detail. He mentions that there were four communes in a radius of around ten kilometres of Guliaipole, and ‘lots of others in the region as a whole’.147 It remains unclear what the anarchists were able to accomplish in this first short period of experimentation before the invaders arrived, and we must rely largely on Makhno’s own account. Livestock and agricultural equipment were seized along with the estates of the pomeshchiki, although the former landlords were allowed to keep a couple of horses, one or two cows and a plough.148 The ‘peasants’ (Makhno does not categorise them), together with ex-soldiers, immediately set to work on ‘springtime farm chores’. Work in the fields, as well as such domestic tasks as preparing and cooking meals, was undertaken communally, but Makhno claims that individuals could absent themselves whenever they wanted, provided that they informed their ‘nearest workmates’. Similarly, although meals were taken communally, ‘each individual, or even an entire group was free to make what provision it chose for … food, provided always that all of the other commune members had prior notification’. Schooling was organised along the