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Title: Book Review: Anarchy’s Cossak Author: José Antonio Gutiérrez D. Date: 2005 Language: en Topics: Nestor Makhno, book review, Red & Black Revolution Source: Retrieved on 9th August 2021 from http://struggle.ws/wsm/rbr/rbr10/skirda.html Notes: This article is from Red & Black Revolution (no 10, Autumn 2005)
This was a much awaited book. Published originally in French back in
1982, its English version was advertised for a couple of years by AK
Press, until it finally saw the light of day, and the wait was well
worth it. This fine edition includes the interesting photographs of the
original edition, plus a new appendix to discuss the state of the
research around the Makhnovist movement after the date of its first
edition. It constitutes an invaluable document in anarchist history, and
provides a vivid glimpse of the anarchist principles in action and of a
number of good lessons to be drawn for tomorrow’s revolutions. Needless
to say, we’re very glad to have such a book available in English.
For those who are not familiar with the subject, the Makhnovists were a
libertarian movement, deeply rooted in the traditions of
anarchist-communism, that developed an experience of revolutionary
changes in the economic and political structures of the backwarded
Ukrainian society — its name coming from Nestor Makhno, a remarkable
militant who remained the main figure of the movement. To defend the
gains of the Social Revolution, they launched a guerrilla warfare in
Ukraine against a number of enemies: foreign troops, Nationalists,
Whites, different warlords and Bolsheviks. Finally defeated
treacherously by the Bolsheviks, the book tells the story of the
movement from its very origin, contradicting the traditional view of it
as appearing literally from nowhere.
The movement sprung from the rebellious history of the peasant and
cossack revolts of the region, and the ground for anarchist ideas was
well prepared for more than 10 years before the 1917 revolution by the
agitational activities of the Gulyai Polye anarchist-communist group,
founded by the Semenyuta brothers and V. Antoni. Thus, anarchism had a
local tradition among the local population and it was this advantage
that made it fertile soil for the Makhnovist experience. At the same
time, it gives a very fine description of Makhno’s own life. To
understand the radicality of its revolutionary convictions: the serf
origins of his family, his hard life as a child labourer, his brief
schooling years, his experiences of early revolt against unfair
treatment given by landlords, his activities in the Gulyai Polye
anarchist-communist group, the terrorist years and his imprisonement in
the different dungeons of the Czar.
The bulk of the book is dedicated to the revolutionary period between
1917, when Makhno gained his freedom with the February revolution, to
1921, when the Bolsheviks won complete control over Ukraine. It depicts,
with first hand information and using a wide range of sources, the
Makhnovist campaigns, the difficulties of revolutionary warfare and the
political struggle for the triumph of the “free soviets”. Well informed,
it brings together valuable accounts that discredit most of the usual
charges of the Bolshevik historical mythomania against him and his
movement: banditry, anti-semitism, his alleged alcoholism and their
self-indulgence in orgies (!). All these are systematically exposed as
utter lies, with no factual evidence, but the intention of discrediting
the movement. It is important to take into account that even the
sacrosanct “official anarchist historian” of the Russian Revolution,
Volin, echoes these false accusations — presumably, as part of a
personal vendetta against Makhno, with whom they clashed over a number
of issues, mainly when in exile in Paris. Thus, by way of repeating a
lie again and again, many ended up accepting it as truth. This book is a
healthy way of putting the record straight on the movement.
The other merit of the book, is showing the absurdity of the claim that
the exile in Paris was a period of complete decadence for Makhno in
terms of his activity as an anarchist militant. Quite the opposite: it’s
this time that proved to be the richest in terms of his literary and
theoretical contributions to the anarchist movement, mainly through the
paper Dyelo Trouda, despite all of the difficulties of life in exile. It
was here that he started writing his memoirs, that he had time to draw
the conclusions from his own experiences in the Revolution and that he
takes part in drafting the famous “Platform”. Thus, his active
participation into the debates of the time on organisation and what way
to follow for the anarchist movement, that shaped in one way or another
the international anarchist movement for decades to come, have still a
resounding importance, and give enough material for thought and practice
even in our times.
Only people that were hostile to the thesis of the Platform, their
organisational approach and their revolutionary class-struggle
anarchism, could have depicted his exile as unproductive, in order not
to deal with this most important legacy to the movement and try to
silence it. It is easier to accept the figure of Makhno only as part of
the anarchist “folklore” of somewhere far away, on the Ukrainian
steppes, than to let him expose the historical failures of our movement.
All in all, self-criticism has never been a strong feature of
anarchists.
We can’t leave unnoticed, though, certain aspects of the book that
seriously undermine its value, specially to the eyes of the
non-anarchist reader: first of all, we have Skirda’s style that is full
of adjectives and too obviously takes sides. We all know that absolute
objectivity in history is nothing but a myth, but a historical book (in
opposition to a political diatribe, or a historical-political polemic)
shouldn’t go as far as Skirda does in terms of using nicknames for the
side that doesn’t happen to be in the author’s grace: there’s no need to
say things like “blotting paper revolutionaries”, “supreme guide”
(referring to Lenin) or to resort to ridicule everytime one is to
mention the Bolsheviks, no matter how justified the indignation of
Skirda against them might be. In that point of view, it reminds me of an
inverse sort of “Bolshevik” history, were anarchists were usually
depicted as “bandits”, “dreamers”, “individualists”, “petty-burgeois”
and so on. Immediately, one has a ground to doubt the “objectivity” of
the author -understood as a respect for historical and factual accuracy.
And when one suspects that the bias is too much, the natural reaction is
to leave the book aside and entertain youself with some other book.
Instead of writing history, sometimes it appears he’s just bitching.
His tendency, as well, to blame the Bolsheviks for absolutely every evil
in the Civil War, makes his genuine complaints about them appear less
credible to the non-anarchist reader. For example, blaming the
Bolsheviks for the emergence of the Whites, as Skirda insinuates in some
parts of his book, is inaccurate and naive: ”(Shkuro) had begun to fight
the Bolsheviks (...), having tasted their summary methods of justice”
(p144) or “(The Kuban Cossacks), at first neutral, (...) they had
quickly been persuaded of the danger inherent in the Bolsheviks who
abruptly abolished their traditional rights and, moreover, brutally
commandeered their foodstuffs and belongings” (p70). He seems somehow to
be justifying not the revolt against the Bolsheviks, but white revolt
against the Bolsheviks — Makhno, who wasn’t a pro-Bolshevik at all,
agreed that the worst catastrophe for Russia would be the triumph of the
whites. It is naive to explain the side taken by reactionary militaries,
indoctrinated in their distrust for the riff raff, in terms of the
“excesses” of Lenin’s goverment, as we can explain many of the workers’
and peasants’ revolts of the time — rather, they can be explained by
their fear to lose the privileges they enjoyed in the former regime.
Every revolution faces opposition from reactionary quarters, that are
not particularly motivated by the “excesses” of the revolutionaries, as
the very excesses of all these counter-revolutionaries show. This
undermines claims, that have a factual ground — like the military
mistakes and actual sabotage of the southern front by the Bolsheviks as
the main reason for Denikin’s successful offensive in mid 1919.
The same could be said about the support of the Allies to the Whites:
“Discovering its perilous consequences (of the Soviet regime and its
truce with the Central Empires, ed.) in the shape of German offensives
on the French front, Paris, London and Washington were forced to make a
stand” (p73). Skirda seems to forget the fact that this was a time of
violent proletarian upheavals in most of Europe and the example set by
the Russian Revolution was sparking flames everywhere! This was the main
reason why the reactionaries in the West wanted to see the revolution
smashed, not for secondary military tactical matters; in fact, after the
end of the WWI, they kept supporting the whites -so “forced” they were
to take a stand!
His anti-Bolshevism as well, can lead sometimes to ambiguous positions
like his defense of the Constituent Assembly (pp. 43–44, 72). He forgets
that the defense of the Constituent Assembly was the defense of the
burgeois concept of representative and parliamentary democracy, of the
“liberal” State, in opposition to the direct democracy and the organic
workers’ and peasants’ society being formed from below through the
Soviets and Factory Commitees, and the whole network of rank and file
organisation that flourished in Russia during 1917. It’s true that
Bolshevik opposition to the Assembly was not progressive at all: they
attacked the liberal State (where they were a minority) for the sake of
the dictatorship of their sole party, but they were not alone in their
criticisms and many quarters, with different arguments, did criticise
it; indeed, he doesn’t mention the fact that he surely knows, in the
face of his deep knowledge of Russian anarchism, that the Assembly was
dissolved actually by the detachment of the anarchist Anatoli
Zheleshniakov! But again, he’d still blame the Bolsheviks.
I think it is time to move beyond the history of “goodies” and
“baddies”, of “marxists” versus “anarchists” and try to see the
underlying forces operating in society as a whole. Skirda’s anarchist
point about the State as a reactionary institution to be abolished is
seriously undermined by his moralistic and simplistic approach to the
Bolshevik strategy of seizure of power: “(Lenin) had merely played upon
these (popular) aspirations for the sole purpose of ensconcing himself
in power; once at the controls, he was to devote himself primarily to
consolidation of his tenous authority” (p43).
Thus, it could be understood the treason of the revolution due to the
Bolshevik’s greediness for power, instead of the unavoidable logic of
the bourgeois division of powers in the form of Statist institutions. No
matter how genuine Lenin or other Bolsheviks were as revolutionaries
(and certainly many weren’t) the results couldn’t have been any
different, and that is the main strength of anarchism as a revolutionary
alternative: it’s not about who’s in power, is about how we control the
power from below.
Finally, Paul Sharkey’s translation, also, is a bit difficult to the
reader, full of twists and turns, literal translations and words in
French, that give a certain elegance to the edition, but seriously make
the reading quite difficult at points, even to the extent of making the
reader unsure of the real meaning behind some paragraphs. This is noted
in others of Sharkey’s translations as well (like Facing the Enemy, for
instance).
These flaws that are commented upon don’t invalidate the work at all;
but they make it more directed to an anarchist public, than to a
non-anarchist one; and unfortunately, the information provided here is
quite strong and well researched, and would be very valuable to discuss
with a broader leftist audience, but the language make it a bit
difficult, as it sounds sectarian. We are still waiting for a further
history on the Makhnovist movement that is done in such a fashion that
allows us to start that discussion around the methods of the revolution
under the light of this historical experience.
We want to finish the review thanking the people of AK Press for the
fantastic work they’ve done in providing us with so many interesting
books and documents, certainly filling many gaps in anarchist history
and theory in English speaking countries. In particular, to thank them
for providing us with this jewel of anarchist history that is Skirda’s
work on the Makhnovist movement, a book that definitely will make any
libertarian militant vibrate.