Russian Revolution in Ukraine (March 1917 — April 1918)
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The Russian Revolution in Ukraine (March 1917 — April 1918) Nestor Makhno 1926 Contents Dedication .................................. 5 Preface .................................... 5 Part I 7 Chapter 1: My Liberation 8 Chapter 2: Meeting with comrades and first attempts to organize revolu- tionary activities 11 Chapter 3: Organization of the Peasants’ Union 17 Chapter 4: Examination of the police files 21 Chapter 5: Re-election of the public committee; whether or not to get in- volved in it 24 Chapter 6: The role of teachers. Our work in the public committee 26 Chapter 7: The first of May. Relationship of the peasants to the land question 29 Chapter 8: The workers’ strike 33 Chapter 9: Some results 37 Chapter 10: Struggle against rent 40 Chapter 11: P.A. Kropotkin arrives in Russia. Meeting with Ekaterinoslav anarchists 46 Chapter 12: Kornilov’s march on Petrograd 52 Chapter 13: Struggle with the Counter-Revolution. Going to the villages 61 2 Chapter 14: Visit to the factory workers of Aleksandrovsk 67 Chapter 15: The Provincial Soviet makes advances to Gulyai-Pole 74 Part II 79 Chapter 16: October coup d’état in Russia 80 Chapter 17: Elections to the Constituent Assembly; our attitude towards the party strife 83 Chapter 18: Provincial Congress 87 Chapter 19: Counter-Revolution of the Ukrainian Central Rada 91 Chapter 20: With the Left Bloc against the Counter-Revolution 95 Chapter 21: Armed peasantry go to the aid of the city workers; the Alek- sandrovsk Revkom and the Commission of Inquiry 97 Chapter 22: Battle with Cossacks, negotiations, and an agreement 107 Chapter 23: My observations on the Left Bloc in Aleksandrovsk 114 Chapter 24: Suppression of the zemstvo territorial units; formation of a Revkom by members of the Soviet; search for funds 122 Chapter 25: How the exchange of goods between city and village wasor- ganized and how we struggled to make it work 131 Chapter 26: New members of our Group 139 Chapter 27: The agrarian communes; their organization; their enemies 141 Chapter 28: The successes of the German-Austrian armies and the Ukrainian Central Rada against the Revolution; Agents of the Counter-Revolution and the struggle against them 147 Chapter 29: Consolidation of the detachments; formation of a single Front with the Left Bloc 158 3 Chapter 30: Egorov’s urgent summons; the loss of our military sector 162 4 Dedication I dedicate this volume to the memory of my dead friends and comrades who struggled with me to organize revolutionary Ukrainian workers to bring about a free, anarchist communist society: Peter Gavrilenko, Alexander Kalashnikov, Moise Kalinichenko, Simon Karetnik, Philip Krat, Isidor (Peter) Lyutyi, Alexis Marchenko, Savva Makhno, Andrei Se- menyuta, Gabriel Troyan, Stepan Shepel, Boris Veretelnik, Kh. Gorelik, Pavel Ko- rostilev (Khundai), Luc Panchenko, Abram Shnayder, and others. They perished under various circumstances but always in pursuit of thesame goal: the realization and putting into practice of the concepts of liberty, equality, and free labour. Nestor Makhno Preface On the occasion of publishing the initial volume of “The Russian Revolution in Ukraine” I find it necessary to add a few words of explanation. In the first place, I must advise the reader that this work lacks anumberof important documents: the resolutions and proclamations of the Gulyai-Pole Union of Peasants, the Soviet of Workers’ and Peasants’ Delegates, and their ideological driving force — the Gulyai Pole Peasant Anarcho-Communist Group. The Anarcho-Communist Group struggled to unite the peasants and workers of the Gulyai-Pole region under its own banners. Always in the vanguard of the rev- olutionary movement, the Anarcho-Communist Group explained to the peasants and workers the significance of unfolding events, clarifying the goals of thework- ers in general as well as the aims of the anarcho-communist movement which in spirit most closely approaches the peasant mentality. Secondly, this volume lacks photographs of the members of the Gulyai-Pole Peasant Group of Anarcho-Communists, which, accompanied by brief biograph- ical notes, would have occupied the first place in this volume. This group formed an essential part of the Russian Revolution in Ukraine and was the guiding force of the movement to which it gave rise, the “Revolutionary Makhnovshchina”. The the- ory and practice of this movement lead to a whole range of very important issues which I am trying to present to the workers of the world for discussion. How fitting it would have been to publish photographs of these revolutionaries, who, emerging from the depths of the toiling masses and under my ideological and organizational guidance, created a powerful anti-statist revolutionary move- 5 ment of the broad masses of Ukrainian workers. As is well known, this movement identified itself with the black banners of the Revolutionary Makhnovshchina. To my great sorrow, no possibility now exists of obtaining photographs of these unknown peasant revolutionaries… This work is an historically accurate account of the Russian Revolution ingen- eral and our role in it in particular. My version could only be disputed by those “ex- perts” who, while not taking any effective part in revolutionary events and in fact left behind by those events, have nevertheless succeeded in passing themselves off to revolutionaries of other countries as people with a profound and detailed knowl- edge of the Russian Revolution. The objections of such experts can be attributed to their failure to understand what it is they are criticizing. I have one regret concerning the present work — that it is not being published in Ukraine and in the Ukrainian language. Culturally the Ukrainian people are moving forward to the full realization of their unique qualities and this work could have played a role in that development. But if I cannot publish my work in the language of my own country, the fault is not mine but is due to the conditions in which I find myself. Nestor Makhno, 1926 P.S. I must express my deep comradely appreciation to the French comrade Eu- gene Wentzel who has rendered me invaluable assistance, allowing me to find the time to edit my notes and prepare the present volume for publication. 6 Part I 7 Chapter 1: My Liberation The February Revolution of 1917 opened the gates of all Russian prisons for political prisoners. There can be no doubt this was mainly brought about byarmed workers and peasants taking to the streets, some in their blue smocks, others in grey military overcoats. These revolutionary workers demanded an immediate amnesty as the first con- quest of the Revolution. They made this demand to the state-socialists who,to- gether with bourgeois liberals, had formed the Provisional “Revolutionary” Gov- ernment with the intention of submitting revolutionary events to their own wis- dom. The Socialist-Revolutionary A. Kerensky, the Minister of Justice, rapidly ac- ceded to this demand of the workers. In a matter of days, all political prisoners were released from prison and were able to devote themselves to vital work among the workers and peasants, work which they had started during the difficult years of underground activity. The tsarist government of Russia, based on the landowning aristocracy, had walled up these political prisoners in damp dungeons with the aim of depriving the labouring classes of their advanced elements and destroying their means of denouncing the iniquities of the regime. Now these workers and peasants, fighters against the aristocracy, again found themselves free. And I was one of them. The eight years and eight months I spent in prison, during which I wasshackled hand and foot (as a “lifer”) and suffered from a serious illness, failed to shake my belief in the soundness of anarchism. For me anarchism meant the struggle against the State as a form of organizing social life and as a form of power over this social life. On the contrary, in many ways my term in prison helped to strengthen and develop my convictions. Because of them I had been seized by the authorities and locked up “for life” in prison. Convinced that liberty, free labour, equality, and solidarity will triumph over slavery under the yoke of State and Capital, I emerged from the gates of Butyrki Prison on March 2, 1917. Inspired by these convictions, three days after my re- lease I threw myself into the activities of the Lefortovo Anarchist Group right there in Moscow. But not for a moment did I cease to think about the work of our Gulyai-Pole group of peasant anarcho-communists. As I learned through friends, the work of this group, started over a decade earlier, was still on-going despite the overwhelming loss of its leading members. 8 One thing oppressed me — my lack of the necessary education and practical preparation in the area of the social and political problems of anarchism. I felt this deficiency deeply. But even more deeply I recognized that nine out often my fellow-anarchists were lacking in the necessary preparation for our work. The source of this harmful situation I found in the failure to establish our own school, despite our frequent plans for such a project. Only the hope that this state of affairs would not endure encouraged and endowed me with energy, for I believed the ev- eryday work of anarchists in the intense revolutionary situation would inevitably lead them to a realization of the necessity of creating their own revolutionary or- ganization and building up its strength. Such an organization would be capable of gathering all the available forces of anarchism to create a movement which could act in a conscious and coherent manner. The enormous growth of the Russian Revo- lution immediately suggested to me the unshakable notion that anarchist activity at such a time must be inseparably connected with the labouring masses.