💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › ryan-robert-mitchell-anarchism-in-ukraine.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 13:43:36. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
➡️ Next capture (2024-07-09)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Anarchism in Ukraine Author: Ryan Robert Mitchell Date: 2009 Language: en Topics: Ukraine, history, Makhnovists Source: Retrieved on 22nd November 2021 from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781405198073.wbierp1753 Notes: Published in The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest.
While anarchist movements in many countries developed as a constituent
part of broader national liberation movements (e.g., Bulgaria and
Georgia), the Ukrainian anarchist movement was characterized by its lack
of, and widespread antipathy toward, the notion of nationalism. Long
subjugated by landlords, German colonists, and repressive tsarist
authorities, the nation’s large peasant population tended to distrust
all governments and was not nearly as enthusiastic at the prospect of
installing one with a Ukrainian variant. The anarchist movement in
Ukraine, best exemplified by the anarchist revolutionary figure Nestor
Makhno (1889– 1935) and his Makhnovist Revolt of 1919–21, seized upon
this volatile population in the political turmoil following the Russian
Revolution of 1917 and World War I.
Makhno’s entrance into non-nationalist, revolutionary politics is
typical of many Ukrainian radicals who became active after the 1905
Revolution in Russia. Stimulated equally by the revolutionary actions in
Russia and the subsequent heavy-handed suppression of political
dissidents by the tsarist authorities, Makhno aligned with anarchism,
believing that nationalism was essentially a bourgeois political
movement aimed at incorporating the masses into a capitalist system of
nation-states.
Although anarchosyndicalism found support in the larger cities and
industrial centers, the face of Ukrainian anarchism was overwhelmingly
anarchocommunist, with its biggest support coming from the peasants who
made up the majority of the partisan movement emerging around 1917. In
addition, the peasants’ support of Makhno suggests they were
uninterested in an abstract notion of the “Ukrainian nation” and instead
merely wanted to secure land and be free from the repression of
landlords, tax collectors, or the tsarist authorities. For this reason,
many of the more educated anarchists distrusted the “unorganized” and
“impure” anarchism of the peasants/partisans, fearing that their
revolutionary exuberance would not be able to be reigned in by the
enlightened revolutionary intelligentsia.
After nearly nine years in tsarist prisons, which only consolidated his
anarchist beliefs (especially after meeting the Russian anarchist Peter
Arshinov, 1887–1937), Makhno returned to his home town of Hulyai Pole in
the spring of 1917 to begin organizing the partisan movement as an
outgrowth of the anarchocommunist group that had existed there since
1905. Makhno’s first objective was to organize expeditions to
“expropriate the expropriators” and transfer land owned by the gentry,
monasteries, and state over to the peasants who would convert this land
into communal space. With the Ukrainian Provisional Government unable to
exert an authority in Hulyai Pole, Makhno’s early appropriation
campaigns saw little bloodshed.
As a result of the German and AustroHungarian occupation of Ukraine in
the spring of 1918, Makhno had to flee to Bolshevik Russia, where he met
both Peter Kropotkin and Vladimir Lenin. Makhno’s experience of
Bolshevik Russia disturbed him, and he would later refer to Moscow as
the center of the “paper revolution,” where the freedoms promised by
Lenin existed only as abstract decrees and proclamations rather than in
actual social or political freedoms.
When Makhno returned to Hulyai Pole in July 1918, he began to organize
the Insurgent Revolutionary Army of Ukraine to combat both the
Provisional Government and the occupying Central Powers army. Makhno was
able to capitalize on peasant discontent and the ranks of his insurgent
army swelled. Using arms appropriated from his enemies, the military
wing of the Makhnovshchina organized on anarchist principles, with
elected commanders and mass assemblies held in order to discuss policy
and strategy. This model of democratic warfare and military organization
would later be adopted by Buenaventura Durruti and the anarchists in
Spain during their Revolution.
Makhno proved to be a brilliant military leader, and after military
successes he was asked by the Bolsheviks to ally with the Red Army
against Anton Ivanovich Denikin’s reactionary White Army. The resulting
precarious alliance would only last until the spring of 1919, when
relations between Makhno’s insurgency and the Red Army deteriorated into
hostility as a result of the Bolshevik regime’s suppression of Russian
anarchists and subsequent crushing of them completely by the end of the
summer of 1919.
One outcome of this was the influx of Russian and Jewish anarchists to
Ukraine, a factor that brought intellectuals to a movement that was
largely comprised of uneducated peasants. Prominent Russian anarchists
like Arshinov and Vsevolod Mikhailovich Eichenbaum (better known as
Voline, 1882–1945) were a part of this wave and became important figures
in both the radical intellectual and partisan movements.
Formed in November 1918, and only lasting from 1918 to the end of 1920,
the Nabat (Alarm) confederation was the country’s largest and most
significant explicitly anarchist organization that covered the whole of
Ukraine. Nabat was formed at the First Conference of the Confederation
of Anarchist Organizations of Ukraine in November 1918. Chapters were
then established throughout the country in major cities such as Kharkov,
Kiev, and Odessa, each publishing its own self-titled edition of the
Nabat newspaper that dealt with anarchist theory and doctrine. Voline
was one of the central ideologues within the group and believed that the
Nabat was necessary to ideologically unite the Ukrainian anarchists in
the contingency of eventual Bolshevik hostility. To this end, the Red
Army was boycotted as an authoritarian organization and anarchists were
instructed to actively resist it.
Despite worries about the increasingly centralized and authoritarian
Bolshevik regime, Nabat had believed that the recent Russian Revolution
was just the first stage of a worldwide revolution that was about to
spread through the rest of Europe. Nabat’s theorists also believed that
within the Ukrainian partisan movement there was the seed of a second
revolution, seeing it as a spontaneous uprising of the revolutionary
proletariat. Despite this faith in the potential of the partisan
movement, many within Nabat were concerned that the insurgents lacked
theory or sufficient ideological purpose, so its members were then
determined to get involved with the Ukrainian insurgency by joining
cultural and propaganda detachments in order to maintain the movement’s
ideological resolve.
Although many Nabat members distrusted the “unruly” anarchism of the
Makhnovist movement, by early 1919 Nabat had decided to support the
Makhnovshchina, considering it to have the most revolutionary potential
of any of the partisan groups. Voline would lead a cultural detachment
of Nabat members to join Makhno’s Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of
Ukraine. Other members would join combat units, but most did not stay
for long, leading Makhno to label these urban anarchists “tourists.”
The Nabat organization wanted Makhno to establish a permanent
territorial base in order to engage in anarchist social experimentation
through the creation of permanent communes. Makhno claimed that his type
of guerilla warfare was premised on constant movement and that a
permanent base was not only a luxury, but often made poor strategic
sense as well. This would be only one among many of the disagreements
between the Nabat activists and Makhno’s forces. Although the groups
worked extremely well together, there remained a disconnect between the
“academic” Nabat anarchists and the “soldier” Makhnovshchina.
In mid-1920, Makhno formed another alliance with the Bolsheviks against
White forces led by Wrangel. This alliance with the Bolsheviks caused
many within Nabat to withdraw their support for Makhnovists. Makhno, on
the other hand, claimed that the writers and activists in Nabat could
maintain the luxury of their ideological purity since they were not
involved in combat and subject to casualties. Tactically, however, the
alliance with the Bolsheviks proved to be a serious mistake, since after
the defeat of Wrangel they quickly turned on the Makhnovshchina. On
November 26, 1920, the Bolsheviks coordinated their attack on the
Makhnovshchina power base in Hulyai Pole with a countrywide roundup of
anarchists. Voline and many others were arrested at the Nabat conference
in Kharkov. Although Voline would secure his release in the following
months, many Nabat members and anarchists disappeared in Soviet prisons
and concentration camps. Nabat was utterly destroyed by the end of 1920,
and its allies in the Makhnovshchina would only hold out until the
spring of 1921.
Only a minor underground anarchist movement existed in Ukraine after the
defeat of the Makhnovshchina. It would resurface briefly during World
War II in support of the partisan units fighting both Stalin and the
Germans, but, for the most part, the anarchist movement was dormant in
the face of a hostile Soviet regime.
By 1987, with the glasnost-era Soviet Union relaxing its suppression of
political dissidents, anarchocommunist and Makhno study groups began
reviving the anarchist movement in Ukraine. Outside of simply
coordinating and networking, the main task of the Ukrainian anarchists
was to rehabilitate the anarchist tradition in the face of Soviet
historical revisionism, which depicted the Makhnovshchina as either
murdering bandits or bourgeois nihilists. Despite the support of the
emerging environmentalist movement and the modest base of some 500
anarchists across the country, the Ukrainian anarchist movement largely
collapsed due to internal problems only a few years later. By 1993, the
“second-wave” Ukrainian anarchist movement was finished.
Despite its strong history and tradition, the Ukrainian anarchist
movement has not experienced the same revival in recent years witnessed
in other post-Soviet countries such as Bulgaria or Czechoslovakia.
Although smaller anarchocommunist and syndicalist groups have formed
throughout the country, they have yet to create the vibrant anarchist
and activist scene of other countries within the region.
Arshinov, P. (1974) History of the Makhnovist Movement, 1918–1921.
Detroit: Black & Red.
Eichenbaum, V. M. [Voline] (1974) The Unknown Revolution, 1917–1921. New
York: Free Life Editions.
Dubovik, A. & Skorzitsky, A. (1995) A Survey of the Anarchist Movement
in Ukraine (1987–1994). Available at
.
Goldman, E. (1923) [2003] My Disillusionment in Russia. London: Dover.
Makhno, N. (1928) [2007] The Russian Revolution in Ukraine (March
1917-April 1918). Edmonton: Black Cat Press.
Palij, M. (1976) The Anarchism of Nestor Makhno, 1918–1921: An Aspect of
the Ukrainian Revolution. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Skirda, A. (2004) Nestor Makhno: Anarchy’s Cossack: The Struggle for
Free Soviets in Ukraine, 1917–1921. Edinburgh: AK Press.