Nestor Makhno and Rural Anarchism in Ukraine, 1917–21 Nestor Makhno and Rural Anarchism in Ukraine, 1917–21
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Nestor Makhno and Rural Anarchism in Ukraine, 1917–21 Nestor Makhno and Rural Anarchism in Ukraine, 1917–21 Colin Darch First published 2020 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA www.plutobooks.com Copyright © Colin Darch 2020 The right of Colin Darch to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7453 3888 0 Hardback ISBN 978 0 7453 3887 3 Paperback ISBN 978 1 7868 0526 3 PDF eBook ISBN 978 1 7868 0528 7 Kindle eBook ISBN 978 1 7868 0527 0 EPUB eBook Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England For my grandchildren Historia scribitur ad narrandum, non ad probandum – Quintilian Contents List of Maps viii List of Abbreviations ix Acknowledgements x 1. The Deep Roots of Rural Discontent: Guliaipole, 1905–17 1 2. The Turning Point: Organising Resistance to the German Invasion, 1918 20 3. Brigade Commander and Partisan: Makhno’s Campaigns against Denikin, January–May 1919 39 4. Betrayal in the Heat of Battle? The Red–Black Alliance Falls Apart, May–September 1919 54 5. The Long March West and the Battle at Peregonovka 73 6. Red versus White, Red versus Green: The Bolsheviks Assert Control 91 7. The Last Act: Alliance at Starobel’sk, Wrangel’s Defeat, and Betrayal at Perekop 108 8. The Bitter Politics of the Long Exile: Romania, Poland, Germany, and France, 1921–34 128 9. Why Anarchism? Why Ukraine? Contextualising Makhnovshchina 147 10. Epilogue: The Reframing of Makhno for the Twenty-First Century 164 Notes 167 Index 231 Maps 0.1 Makhnovshchina’s Areas of Activity and Influence, 1918–21 xii 2.1 The Occupation of Ukraine by Germany and Austro-Hungary, 1918 22 2.2 Makhno’s Journey to Moscow and Back, 1918 27 4.1 Denikin’s Advance on Moscow, 1919 64 5.1 The Engagement at Peregonovka, September 1919 79 5.2 The Advance Eastwards by the Makhnovtsy, late 1919 83 7.1 The Battle against Wrangel, Perekop, Crimea, 1920 116 Abbreviations GPU State Political Directorate (Gosudarstvennoe Politicheskoe Upravlenie) GRAZ Group of Russian Anarchists Overseas (Gruppa Russkikh Anarkhis- tov za Granitsei) KADA Crimea-Azov Volunteer Army (Krims’ko-Azovs’ka Dobrovol’cha Armiia) KP(b)U Communist Party (bolsheviks) of Ukraine (Komunistychna Partiia [bil’shovykiv] Ukrainy) NEP New Economic Policy (Novaia Ekonomicheskaia Politika) RKP(b) Russian Communist Party (bolsheviks) (Rossiiskaia Kommunistich- eskaia Partiia [bol’shevikov]) RPA(M) Revolutionary Insurgent Army (makhnovists) (Revoliutsionnaia Povstancheskaia Armiia [makhnovtsev]) RVS Revolutionary Military Council (Revoliutsionnyi Voennyi Sovet) SRs Socialist Revolutionary Party (Partiia Sotsialistov-Revoliutsionerov) TsIK Central Exeutive Committee (Tsentral’nyi Vikonavchyi Komitet) UNR Ukrainian National Republic (Ukrains’ka Narodnia Respublika) VRS Military-Revolutionary Soviet (Voenno-Revoliutsionnaia Sovet) VTsIK All-Russian Central Executive Committee (Vserossiiskii Tsentral’nyi Ispolnitel’nyi Komitet) Acknowledgements My interest in makhnovshchina dates back to the late 1960s, and the research for this book was carried out intermittently over the many years since then by visits to, or through correspondence with the following libraries, archives and research centres. I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the librarians and archivists who have assisted me both personally and by providing me with photocopies or microfilm of necessary documents: the Bibliothèque de Docu- mentation Internationale Contemporaine (BDIC), Nanterre; the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; the British Library, London; the Bundesarchiv, Koblenz; the Canadian Mennonite Bible College Library, Winnipeg; the Centre Internatio- nale des Recherches sur l’Anarchisme, Lausanne; Columbia University Library, New York City; the Deutsche Bücherei, Leipzig; what was then the Gosudarst- vennaia Biblioteka SSSR im. V. I. Lenina, Moscow; the then Gosudarstvennaia Publichnaia Biblioteka im. M. E. Saltykova-Shchedrina, St. Petersburg; the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford University; Indiana University Library, Bloomington; the Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Ges- chiedenis, Amsterdam; the Library of Congress, Washington DC; the National Library of Canada, Ottawa; New York Public Library, New York City; the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London; the Schweize- rische Landesbibliothek, Berne; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; the University Libraries of the University of Birmingham, the University of Bradford, the Uni- versity of Helsinki, the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, the University of Toronto and the University of Wisconsin; and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York City. I want to acknowledge and thank the people who, over a long period of many years have given generous, willing and unstinting assistance in the research, writing, correspondence and, of course, conversation that have led to this book. It’s possible that some may have forgotten assisting me. Their help included granting me access to unpublished memoirs and other documents, responding to factual and other queries, criticising draft chapters and helping with transla- tion. I must mention especially Ivan Antypenko of Philadelphia; Paul Avrich; Delice Baker-Duly who provided Swedish translations many years ago; G. N. Britten; the late E. H. Carr; the late Richard Caulk; Georgi Derluguian; Irina Filatova for several points of clarification; M. Fransiszyn; Daniel Guérin; Zenon Jaworskyi; Viktor Kachun; Annemarie Kinfu who provided German trans- lations; Michel Kovetzki; the late A. L. Morton; Richard and Rita Pankhurst; Sean Patterson; Victor Peters; Michael Petrowsky; Mark Plant; the Very Rev. acknowledgements xi N. Pliczkowski; Jenny Sandler, who drew the maps; Alexandre Skirda; the late Teodor Shanin; Iuri Shevchenko of the University of Khar’kov for assistance with routes and distances; Vladimir Shubin (no relation of Aleksandr Shubin) for critical comments; Yehuda Slutsky for sharing his work on the Ukrainian pogroms; the late Volker Stitz; Lucien van der Walt; Leo van Rossum; Gottfried Wellmer who provided German translations; Dr. Olex Wintoniak of Dniprova Khvylia; the late Michael Wolfers; and Jason Yanowitz. Last, my special and enduring thanks go to Gary Littlejohn, who supervised with good humour and patience my now-superseded doctoral dissertation on makhnovshchina, and has also read through this manuscript and made many valuable suggestions; to Leo Zeilig, without whose enthusiastic encouragement a version of this work would still be lying in the bottom of a drawer; and to first Hilary Davies, Tom Rampling and Toni Ongala, and later Agnes Nkhoma-Darch for their many years of extraordinarily patient support. My thanks to the four anonymous reviewers of my original proposal, and to Pluto Press for their ongoing support – specifically to David Shulman, for his patience, and to Robert Webb. Some of the people mentioned above will almost certainly find themselves for various reasons in more or less strong disagreement with my argument and my con- clusions, which now differ significantly from my earlier views on the Makhno rebellion. Nonetheless, I am grateful for their help. Needless to say, I alone am entirely responsible for the interpretation as well as for all errors and omissions of whatever kind in this book. KIEV KHAR’KOV Dn POLTAVA epr PEREGONOVKA ELIZAVETRAD EKATERINOSLAV DIBRIVKI ALEXANDROVSK D n GULIAIPOLE e s NIKOPOL’ t r POLOGI MARIUPOL’ BERDIANSK ODESSA EA OF AZOV RUMANIA S CRIMEA BLACK SEA Area of influence Area of control Map 0.1 Makhnovshchina’s Areas of Activity and Influence, 1918–21 The heartland of makhnovshchina was based around Guliaipole, Ekaterinoslav and Aleksandrovsk, but the movement’s influence extended intermittently over a much wider area. (Cartographer: Jenny Sandler). 1 The Deep Roots of Rural Discontent: Guliaipole, 1905–17 Nestor Ivanovich Makhno was born far from the centres of power, in the pro- vincial Ukrainian town of Guliaipole, in Aleksandrovsk district, Ekaterinoslav province, probably in 1888, the fifth child in a family of former serfs.1 We know little for certain about his childhood and adolescence, and what we do know comes not from contemporary documentation but from later testimonies,2 including Makhno’s own. Some may have fed into each other, and some are the objects of condemnation,3 while Makhno’s own account was written in exile long after the events. The outline of the story of his youth is known but does not help us to understand how this half-educated provincial rebel, with no experi- ence of soldiering, was able to become both an anarchist revolutionary and a successful commander within as well as apart from the Red Army. After the emancipation of the serfs in 1861 his father, Ivan Mikhnenko, con- tinued to work for his former master. When his wife was pregnant with Nestor, their fifth child,4 Ivan got a job with the Jewish merchant Kerner, who owned a factory, a shop and nearly 500 hectares of land.5 Before Nestor was even a year old, Mikhnenko died.6 The family lived in a shack near the market square, on the edge of town. They were too poor, in a semi-rural community, to afford to keep pigs or chickens, and Makhno’s earliest memories were of deprivation and struggle.7 Guliaipole, a provincial town like many others, was located on the river Gaichur, near the railway line to Ekaterinoslav.8 After the Stolypin