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Title: Panic at Peregonovka
Author: Nessie
Date: 2 June 2003
Language: en
Topics: Russian Revolution, Ukraine, Makhnovists, black army, Nestor Makhno, Russia
Source: Retrieved on 1st August 2020 from http://www.nestormakhno.info/english/pereg.htm

Nessie

Panic at Peregonovka

The hinge of fate is muffled. The powers that be don’t want us to hear

its telltale squeak. If we did, we might see where it is actually

located and to what it is actually attached. Pivotal events, events

which shape our lives, are often concealed from us by forces which are

themselves concealed. This is done for a very sound reason. If we knew

the truth, we might stop underestimating ourselves. When we stop

underestimating ourselves, even the most ordinary of us become capable

of the most extraordinary things.

One grim afternoon in 1919, near a small town in the Ukraine, a couple

of hundred ordinary peasants decided the fate of the rest of the

twentieth century, and most people never even heard of the place, let

alone of them. It’s too bad, it would make a hell of a movie. The shadow

that the battle of Peregonovka cast upon history can only be compared to

that cast by Tuetonberger Wald, or the siege of Tenochtitlan. Though it

was the deciding move in the vast chess game of the Russian Civil War,

the Bolsheviks were nowhere to be found. No surprise, and no problem,

either. People have always been better off with out opportunists.

Opportunists are worse than useless; they’re in the way. Had the people

of Russia not demanded bread, land, and peace, no one would have ever

heard of Lenin. Our own bosses would have us believe that if it had not

been for Lenin and his bourgeois cronies, the people of Russia could

have demanded as loud as they liked and all it would have gotten them

was cut down by Cossacks, as they were during the previous centuries,

and no one would have ever heard of them, either. Aspiring Lenins

concur.

Nothing could be further from the truth. For one thing, it turned out

the Cossacks weren’t all they were cracked up to be. For another, the

Russian revolution was not a Bolshevik revolution. It was a spontaneous,

simultaneous uprising of the Russian and subject peoples against a

variety of intolerable conditions. It took a variety of courses. They

compounded on each other, complicating the situation no end. The Russian

empire disintegrated. Six months later the Bolsheviks usurped the

revolution, declaring themselves the “government” of Russia when in

reality they controlled only two cities out of an area that amounts to a

sixth of the earth’s land mass. They were a distinct minority, as their

very name itself belies.

At Brest-Litovsk the Bolsheviks made “peace” with the Central Powers by

giving away the Ukraine. This treaty was negotiated by Trotsky. The

Ukrainians themselves were not consulted first. This didn’t go over so

well with the Ukrainians. The Bolsheviks opened the line and the

Austro-German army poured into the Ukraine. They set up a puppet

government under Hetman Skorapadsky, and commenced looting, pillage and

rape. This didn’t go over so well with the Ukrainians either. They

rebelled en mass, spontaneously forming partisan units throughout the

Ukraine. Many of these units united under the leadership of the

“Ukrainian Zapata,” Nestor Mahkno. They called themselves the Insurgent

Army of the Ukraine.

Mahkno was one of the most sympathetic yet most reviled figures in the

Russian Revolution. Among a mass of power seeking psychopaths and thugs

and all sides, he stands out as one who asked nothing for himself. What

he got instead was shot at and slandered. Slander is part of war, too.

Get used to it. Mahkno has been denounced as a fanatical anti-Semite, a

rapist, and an ignorant peasant. Yet he could inspire the confidence of

huge numbers of ordinary people as have few others in history. While

anti-Semitism was rife in the Ukraine, and pogroms were frequent,

Mahknovists punished such attacks with death. The late Leah Feldman, one

of the last of the Mahknovist partisans, was sarcastic over remarks by

latter-day bourgeois feminists that Mahkno, being a peasant, must have

been a rapist. “Did he change when he became a railway worker in Paris?”

she asked, “Who in Russia is supposed to have raped? His wife was always

riding on a horse beside him, and she soon would have put a stop to

that.” Her name was Galina. She is said to have been pretty good with a

machine gun.

Had Mahkno and Zapata never existed, the movements which bore their

names would have born others. It is history that makes movements, not

individuals. Though some individuals have more talent than others, none

are indispensable. This is good because none lack flaws. Mahkno was not

with out flaws, either. He could be reckless when on his own, which

engendered a number of mistakes, starting when he was nineteen. He let

himself get busted, and condemned to death. This is seldom the best

move, even for a nineteen year old. He made the best of it. This was a

lot easier to do once his sentence had been commuted to life at hard

labor. Who could imagine that life at hard labor would ever look good?

On the other hand, had he taken greater caution, he could have spent the

next decade at home in the Ukraine, educating people, organizing, and

laying the groundwork for successful revolution. Instead, he had to

labor for the Czar. Oh well, live and learn.

Once he got out of prison, released in a general amnesty of 1917, Mahkno

was a little less reckless. He was no less resolute. He was older and

wiser, and had plenty of sound advice. But he was still young. He was

easily distracted by vodka and women. He totally lacked formal military

training. He hadn’t been on a horse for ten years. Never the less, he

became one of the great cavalry generals of history. His brilliance at

tactics and logistics has few if any rivals. As a tactician he was a

sort of a cross between Crazy Horse and the Gray Ghost. Now you see him,

now you don’t. All that trying to chase him got you was trapped in the

open with him at your back.

Mahknovist logistic innovations rank with Giap’s. Foremost among them

was the transport of infantry in two horse carts on springs called

tachankii, one man in front driving, and two, some times (in a pinch)

four in the back. Sometimes they’d mount a machine gun in back. For it’s

time and place, the tachanka was the equivalent of the modern American

pickup truck. They were very common. The traditional way to move mounted

infantry was as dragoons, that is, one man to a horse. Tachankii gave to

the Insurgents the dragoon’s tactical maneuvering advantage over foot

propelled infantry, but at 50% to 150% greater efficiency in horse

power. Furthermore, they relied on cart horses, which is sort of like

what we would call “running on regular.” This was an important

advantage. Horses were getting to be in short supply in the Ukraine. The

Eastern Front of the “War to End Wars” was not trench bound like the

West. The cavalry horse was still a major factor. War gorged on

horseflesh. Fortunately for the Ukrainians, there were still cart horses

left in the Ukraine when the war finally showed up on their doorstep.

There were plenty of carts. The peasants made do. Poor people generally

know how to make do. It’s part of being poor. Those that don’t, die.

What appears at first glimpse to be an apparent weakness at strategy on

Mahkno’s part, actually stemmed from political conviction, not lack of

military prowess. At the crucial moment he yielded to the will of his

army, a true people’s army, an army that had elected him. As people go,

they were exemplary. They were true to their ideals. They were true to

each other. They didn’t let fear distract them. They kicked butt like

all-stars. But they had no sound concept of geo-political strategy. They

were semi-literate peasants, from out in the boondocks. The world was

far away. They were overly fixated on their own turf. They couldn’t see

the big picture. They didn’t look far enough over the horizon.

Mistake.

The Insurgent Army of the Ukraine drove the Germans out. During the

struggle they innovated a truly revolutionary method of dealing with

prisoners. Officers were shot. Enlisted prisoners were asked to vote

whether their non-comms should be shot. Good non-comms were spared. Bad

non-comms were shot. Enlisted men who had molested civilians were shot.

The remaining prisoners were then given money, food, and literature on

the aims of the revolution, and sent home to make their own revolution

in Germany. This they did. Germany came apart at the seams. Fifty years

later this strategy was used with great success by the Angolans against

the Portuguese, giving rise to the “Armed Forces Movement” which

overthrew the Portuguese dictatorship in 1975.

The Mahknovisti were an explicitly Anarchist army. Officers were

elected, just as they were in the America’s own revolutionary army

before Washington took over. In the vast area that the Anarchists

controlled, land was not distributed to the peasants by their army. The

peasants were the army. They distributed the land to themselves.

Landlords were shot. Collectives were started, farms, factories, and

schools. More than the imperialist invaders had been driven out. The

peasants’ traditional willingness to submit had been driven out with

them. A new day had dawned. The future looked bright for the first time

in memory. Then the Anarchists made a blunder of epic proportions. They

trusted the Bolsheviks to actually supply them with the ammunition that

they had been promised.

Mistake.

In the first of many subsequent “contra” wars, the Tsarist “Whites,”

with support from England, America, and France, tried to take back the

Russian Empire with mainly Russian troops. The largest and best armed

White army drove north from Crimea toward Moscow, under the command of

General Denikin. It was a long way to Moscow. First they had to get past

the Insurgent Army of the Ukraine, who were ready and waiting and armed

to the teeth. The recent success against the Austro-Hungarian/German

invasion had honed the Insurgents to a fine edge. Their moral was high.

The available pool of general fighting skill had been greatly enhanced

by the influx of experienced veterans, home from the Great War, sadder

but wiser. What ever you’re up to, war or peace, it always pays to have

veterans around. They’re especially handy to have on your side in a

scrap. The Anarchists had more than courage, honor and experiance

working for them. Their style of organizational structure made the

Insurgent Army of the Ukraine immune to a decapitating strike.

Shattering its formations only made it a more dangerous. Imagine trying

to stab mercury with a fork.

Though undoubtedly gifted, Mahkno was in no way alone in his talents. A

great deal of talented leadership had emerged. This always happens when

leadership in needed. Volunteers always step forward. Of course some

volunteer leaders always prove to be better than others, but this is

true of professionals as well. The ability to lead is not all that

extraordinary. Extraordinary times draw out the extraordinary from

ordinary people. The Anarchist peasants rose to the occasion. They had

ordinary names, names like Schtuss, Marchenko, Kalashnikov, Rybin and

Karetnik,. They were names you could have heard spoken aloud in the

streets of any village, back before things changed utterly. Karetnik

often replaced Mahkno as supreme commander of the army. Mahkno spent a

lot of time away from staff headquarters. He liked to keep moving. While

he was gone, Karetnik did his job just fine.

Flamboyant Schtuss was nearly as popular a Mahkno. He wore a loud

mismatched set of various military uniforms of various services and

ranks. This made him appear “out of uniform” to any government soldier

he encountered. It was an AWOL sailor’s ultimate fashion statement.

People liked him a lot. Popularity did not determine who made the best

plans. Schtuss recognized Mahkno’s greater gift at first sight. Their

units merged, with Schtuss as second in command.

Rybin the lathe worker had returned from America where he and his

“comrade and friend” Dvigomiroff had been active in the exiled Russian

revolutionary movement. Rybin dressed very plain. He wore a battered

fedora. His work in the field of reorganizing transport was very

popular. At first he had worked with the Reds. Then he figured out who

they really were and came over to the Anarchists, subordinating himself

to Mahkno. Dvigomiroff worked as a propagandist among the peasants of

the Tchernigov region.

Rivalry is not a factor in the Anarchist decision making process. The

whole staff participated in the process. Officers were elected. Mahkno

once resolved an impasse in the decision making process by demoting

himself, rather than blocking consensus. Initiative and innovation make

even the smallest and most isolated band of partisans capable of

functioning on it’s own. They give them the ability to disperse without

losing cohesion and direction. Partisans differ from regular soldiers.

They know how to do more than take orders. They know how to think for

themselves. There are few greater advantages in war or peace.

The Ukrainian Anarchists were a force to be reckoned with. This fact was

not lost on the Whites. The Reds were by no means what the Whites feared

the most. If they could just crush the Anarchists, the Ukraine was

theirs. After that, taking Moscow would be a piece of cake. As always,

crushing the Ukraine was going to be easier said than done. Then the

calculus changed. The treacherous Reds cut off ammunition supplies to

the Anarchists. They hoped the White army would rid them of this growing

menace to their own very precarious hold on Moscow and St. Petersburg.

The Whites were not what the Reds feared most. As the old Russian

proverb says, “A bad example can be contagious.” The Anarchists of the

Ukraine were clearly setting an example for all peasants. This was the

last thing the Reds wanted to have happen. Enemies were not the

Anarchist’s worst problem. Enemies are predictable. It’s allies you have

to watch out for. Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

Denikin sent the Cossack general Schkuro around the Sea of Azov to

outflank the Anarchists. They arrived just as the ammo dried up. Schkuro

had gathered about him a band of fanatically loyal Cossacks from the

Kuban region. He affectionately called them his “wolves.” He promised

them loot, and was very clear that he didn’t much care where it came

from, though he did prefer that they also kill Bolsheviks whenever

possible. He didn’t pay his officers because he saw no reason they

should ever lack for money. Predictably, his soldiers attacked with

savage ferocity.

The ill supplied Anarchists were forced to undertake a grueling retreat

through the dry, blazing heat of the Ukrainian summer. Forty thousand of

them, men, women and children, in wagons and on horseback, with cows,

goats, chickens in tow, and all fell back slowly to the west. They

fought every inch. Some were partisan soldiers, most were refugees,

family and friends. The refugee contingent grew steadily. Most of them

lost their homes and belongings forever. Many lost their lives. It was

more of a folk migration than a military campaign. People called it a

“kingdom on wheels.” They were using the same strategy, in the same

place that the Scythians had used to defeat the Persians more than two

millennia before (see Heroditus). They sought to wear down their

pursuers. They wore down themselves, too.

Typhus raged throughout the Ukraine. Food was as short as ammunition.

The summer was particularly dry that year. The dust swirled in clouds

over open ground where wheat would have grown had the war not been on.

Three out of four engagements were Anarchist raids on the Cossacks for

food and ammunition. It’s a hard way to make a living, raiding Cossacks

for food, but, hey, ya gotta eat somehow, right?

Eye witness Voline recalled,

“ ... this long series of days as if it were an interminable nightmare.

Those summer nights, which only lasted a few hours, hardly allowing a

brief rest to the men and the horses, vanished suddenly with the first

glimmer of daylight, the rattle of machine guns, the explosion of shells

and the gallop of horses! It was the Denikinists who, attacking from all

sides, sought once again to enclose the insurgents in a vise of iron and

fire.

Every day they began this maneuver again, pressing Mahkno’s troops

always closer together, drawing the circle always tighter, leaving the

insurgents less and less space in which to move.

Every day savage combats, going as far as atrocious hand-to-hand

fighting, took place on the flanks of the Mahknovist army, and did not

end until nightfall. And every night the army found itself forced to

retreat, barely escaping through an increasingly narrow passage, so as

to not let the Denikinist vice close on it completely. At sunrise, it

had once more to face the implacable enemy which again sought to

encircle.

The insurgents lacked clothing, shoes, and sometimes also food. Through

torrid heat, under a leaden sky, and a hail of bullets and shells, they

went further and further away from their own country toward an unknown

destination and fate.”

Against the Anarchists, Denikin had assigned a whole army corps,

consisting of 12 to 15 regiments of cavalry, infantry, and artillery.

The odds boded ill. Denikin offered a half million rubles for Mahkno’s

head. This was not a war only against the Mahknovist army. Nearly every

village which was occupied by Denikin’s troops was the scene of fire and

bloodshed. Peasants were plundered, violently abused, and killed. A

favorite torture was to roast prisoners alive on sheets of red hot iron

or on railroad flat cars. women were particularly maltreated. Nearly all

the Jewish women, who were fairly numerous in the Ukrainian villages,

were raped, notably at Mahkno’s home town, Gulyai-Polye. This was the

officers revenge against the revolution. The Jewish population, which

had lived for a very long time in special colonies of the Azov region

suffered horribly. The Denikinists massacred Jews at every opportunity,

seeking to provoke a popular anti-Jewish movement which would have

facilitated their movement. It didn’t work on Anarchists. It just made

them mad. Two decades before the Warsaw ghetto uprising, Anarchist Jews

fought back the pogromists with saber and cannon. Goyim fought by their

side.

The troops Denikin sent against the Anarchists distinguished themselves

by their energy and obstinacy. The regiments of officers were

particularly remarkable for their bravery, especially the First

Simferopol and the Second Labinski regiments. Entering into battles with

them, the Anarchists could not help but admire their courage and

defiance of death. In addition, Denikin’s troops were quite numerous and

very well supplied by their noble and foreign friends. They could not be

ignored.

Anarchists were hard put that summer, very hard put. In early August,

they finally halted to regroup near Odessa. Volunteer troops streamed in

from all sides to reinforce them. Four infantry and cavalry brigades, an

artillery division, and a regiment of machine-gunners formed up there,

consisting of 15,000 soldiers. They were all volunteers. One artillery

battery consisted entirely of Jews. It was their own idea to form a

segregated unit. They liked being able to speak Yiddish in the heat of

battle and not to have to take the time to remember Ukrainian. Most Jews

were in integrated units. Most of the army, and all of the movement was

integrated. One machine gun detachment spoke Greek. Greeks have been in

the Ukraine a long time. Heroditus was a Greek who lived many years in

the Ukraine. The Ukraine is a place, not just one people. People don’t

need to live alike to get along or to fight side by side. They don’t

even need to speak the same language.

For centuries the Ukraine had been a magnet for lovers of freedom. They

had gathered there from all corners. One bunch stands out in particular.

A special cavalry squad of 150 to 200 always accompanied Mahkno. This is

their story you’re reading here, about how something they did one day

affected your life. If you want a history of the movement itself, you

can start by reading History of the Mahknovist Movement by Peter

Arshinov, and The Unknown Revolution by Voline.

Once the Anarchists regrouped, they went on the offensive with great

vigor. What else could they do? To hesitate would have been fatal.

During the offensive, the Anarchists captured three or four armored

trains, one of which was enormous — the “Invincible.” They were

formidable weapons, commanding great swaths of heartland. But they

weren’t enough. Denikin had overwhelming superiority in numbers. In

addition the Anarchists had to battle some Bolshevik troops who bumped

into them while fleeing Odessa. It was the time of year usually spent

getting ready for harvest and planning what to wear to the festival

afterwards, and who to dance which song with.

Denikin’s sent his very best cavalry against the Anarchists. It was

excellent cavalry, the cream of the White’s crop. As Mahkno himself

declared, it was a cavalry that justified its name. The very numerous

Red cavalry, organized later, was a cavalry in name only. It was never

able to carry on hand-to-hand combat, and engaged in combat at all only

when the enemy was already disoriented by the fire of cannons and

machine guns. During the entire Civil War, the Red cavalry always

avoided a confrontation with the Anarchist cavalry, even though they

always had superiority in numbers. Their leader Budenny himself once had

to flee at full gallop. Denikin’s Cossacks and Caucasian cavalry

regiments, on the other hand, always accepted combat with sabers and

charged at full speed, without waiting for the enemy to be disorganized

by cannon fire. But even these elite troops succumbed more than once in

combat against the Anarchists. The commanders of Denikin’s regiments

said in their papers, which often fell into Anarchist hands, that

nothing in their entire campaign had been as difficult or more horrible

for them than these fierce battles against Anarchist cavalry and

artillery.

From the middle of August 1919, Denikin’s army began to exert powerful

force on the Anarchists, seeking to encircle them on all sides. Mahkno

saw that even the smallest error on his part could be fatal for his

entire army. Denikin’s goal was not only to defeat, but to liquidate the

Anarchists altogether. This is why Mahkno carefully sought the moment

when, taking advantage of some mistake on the enemy’s part, he could

deliver a decisive blow against them. It was a matter of life and death.

By the end of August, supported by new reinforcements, Denikin’s troops

once again were pushing the Anarchists westward. The situation worsened.

The Anarchists blew up the armored trains. The retreat continued on back

country roads, from village to village, away from the rail lines, across

the immense steppe. By September the Anarchists found themselves near a

one factory town of 5,000 called Peregonovka. The main body of Denikin’s

fresh, well armed, troops were hot on the trail. Elements were within

easy striking distance of Peregonovka, far too close for comfort, a

hell-bent on murder, rape and rapine. The Peregonovkans were terrified.

They fully expected to be brutally savaged by Denikin’s contras. They

had no reason to believe otherwise.

On September 24, 1919, the Anarchists, seeing themselves about to be

caught in Denikin’s vise, wheeled, turning suddenly east. They saw only

one hope, to break through his lines. Denikin thought the move was a

feint or reconnaissance. His principle forces, concentrated near

Peregonovka, continued chasing Mahkno westward, thinking the Anarchists

were still in retreat. Never did Denikin’s staff dream that Mahkno would

turn to attack the bulk of the White army. Suddenly they found the town

had been occupied by the concentrated Anarchist forces. They were taken

completely by surprise. The Anarchists had stolen a march on them. The

Peregonovkans welcomed the Anarchists with open arms. They opened their

cupboards, their homes, and their hearts. They rolled up their sleeves.

They threw in their arms. What else could they do? Better to die on your

feet.

And where was the Red Army, that weeks before had been collecting taxes

and telling Ukrainians what to do, in the name of the so-called

“government” in Moscow? They offered no protection at all. They were

running north as fast as they could, tails between their legs.

Though their sudden turn to the east had taken Denikin unaware, it was

now the Anarchist’s turn for an unpleasant surprise. Near by

Peregonovka, and also retreating, was a small force of proto-fascist

bandit/pogromists, led by a would-be hetman named Petlura. Petlura was a

rival of Denikin as well as an enemy of the Anarchists. The Petlurists

had proposed a temporary neutrality between themselves and the

Anarchists, in view of the immediate danger of the overwhelming White

force. After all, they were both at war with the Whites. What to do?

What to do? A debate had ensued. The Anarchists, backs to the wall,

accepted reluctantly. They were just trying to buy a little more time to

maneuver their way out of doom’s teeth. They knew who Petlura was. They

fully expected betrayal. They just thought it wouldn’t be so soon.

Mistake.

Serious mistake.

A capital blunder, of the first order and the highest degree.

On September 25^(th) the Petlurists sold out to Denikin and opened their

part of the line. The Whites poured through unopposed, and by the next

evening, had surrounded the Anarchists completely. The Anarchists were

heavily outnumbered and completely encircled. There was no escape, no

room to maneuver.

Voline relates,

“A order issued by the Denikinist command, which found its was to the

Mahknovist staff, read as follows, ‘Mahkno’s bands are surrounded. They

are completely demoralized, disorganized, starving, and without

ammunition. I order that they be attacked and destroyed within three

days.’ It bore the signature of General Slatstchoff, commander-in-chief

of the Denikinist forces in the Ukraine (he later went over to the

Bolsheviks).”

Sooner or later, it always comes to this. End game. Denikin felt certain

that victory was his. The main force opposing him was worn down and

cornered. His troops were fresh and well supplied. He had the

initiative. He gloated and bragged of “Christmas in Moscow.” After this,

mopping up the Red army would be like taking candy from a baby. How his

gut must have jiggled as he giggled with glee.

Mistake.

The battle commenced at 3 AM, on September 26, 1919. Peregonovka awoke

to the rattle of Lewis and Vickers. Mahkno himself, with his cavalry

escort of 150–200 men, had disappeared at nightfall, seeking to turn the

enemy’s flank. During the whole battle that ensued there was no further

news of them. The battle reached it’s peak at 8:00_AM. By 9:00_AM the

outnumbered and exhausted Anarchists had begun to lose ground. They fell

back to the very outskirts of the town. The fighting was hideous, gory,

and fierce. It’s sheer manic fury beggared description. The smoke and

the dust of it blotted the sun. The rich black Ukrainian earth soaked up

blood like a Greek sponge. It was good earth to die for, breadbasket

earth, joy of the peasant heart. Heart’s blood it soaked up, this year’s

like that’s. Nothing new about that. This was the steppe, birth land of

horse war. Good earth soaks up blood anywhere on the planet.

Eye witness Peter Arshinov described the scene from his position at

staff headquarters. Arshinov and Mahkno had done time together in the

Butyrki prison in Moscow. They were close friends. In 1910, when he was

twenty one, Mahkno’s death sentence had been commuted to life. They

threw him in with Arshinov. Arshinov was a metal worker by trade. He was

the son of a factory worker, and a self educated man. He had edited an

illegal newspaper. It cost him a twenty year sentence. It was he who had

been primarily responsible for Mahkno’s education. When both were freed

in the revolutionary amnesty, in March 1917, Mahkno headed for

Gulyai-Polye in the eastern Ukraine. Arshinov stayed for awhile in

Moscow. In April 1919, he went to Gulyai-Polye, to join his friend. He

scarcely left the Ukraine at all until 1921, when he barely escaped with

his life.

Arshinov speaks,

“The staff of the insurrectionary army as well as everyone in the

village who could handle a rifle, armed themselves and joined in the

fighting. This was the critical moment when it seemed that the battle

and with it the whole cause of the insurgents was lost. The order was

given for everyone, even the women, to be ready to fire on the enemy in

the village streets. All prepared for the supreme hour of the battle and

of their lives. But suddenly the machine gun fire of the enemy and their

frantic cheers began to grow weaker, then to recede into the distance.

The defenders of the village realized that the enemy was retreating and

that the battle was now taking place some distance away. It was Mahkno

who, appearing unexpectedly, at the very moment when his troops were

driven back and preparing to fight in the streets of Peregonovka, had

decided the fate of the battle. Covered with dust and fatigued from his

exertions, he reached the enemy flank through a deep ravine. Without a

cry, but with burning resolve fixed on his features, he threw himself on

the Denikinists ...”

They came at full gallop, a thunder of hooves. The earth shook beneath

them. Dust plumed above. In front of them gun deafened ears perked in

wonder. An army of sweat stung eyes turned as one. As one the raw,

parched throats of that burning hot morning gasped in surprise.

What the hell was that?

Both sides strained to see through the swirling haze of the battle.

Everyone was thinking the same thought. Who were they, fondest dream or

worst nightmare? Actually, as it turns out, they were both. It just

depended on your point of view. They were just common folks really,

country folks, folks from the heartland,. We’d call them “rednecks.”

They’d come to work. There was a job to be done, and hands used to work

had showed up to do it. Peasants, at harvest time, they’d come to reap.

Could they be real? Could this be happening? Or had battle’s fatigue

played tricks with the mind? Time froze. Then they struck. Points

lowered; nostrils flared. They struck as one, an avalanche of steel,

guts and horseflesh. Now it was clear to all who they were. The enemy

panicked. The Anarchists rallied.

“Mahkno is here!” they cried, “Mahkno is fighting with his saber!”

Arshinov tells us,

“All exhaustion, all discouragement disappeared from among the

Mahknovists.

And with redoubled energy they all pushed forward, following their

beloved leader who seemed doomed to death. A hand-to-hand combat of

incredible ferocity, a ‘hacking,’ as the Mahknovists called it,

followed.... During the entire pursuit, the Denikinists had had no

thought except to exterminate the insurgents.... Even the women who

supported the Mahknovist army or fought alongside the men would not have

been spared.

The Mahknovists were experienced enough to know this.”

Now it was their turn.

It was a very small avalanche as such avalanches go, but it was

exceedingly ferocious, and it fell exceedingly fast. It fell right on

top of the First Officers’ Regiment of Simferopol, who at first tried to

retreat in good order, but soon, simply ran.

Pawn takes knight.

At this the other regiments were seized by the panic and followed them.

The White army staggered back, stunned, reeling, and confused. They

routed and scattered, each man for himself. They tried to save

themselves by swimming across the Sinyukha River.

Mistake.

They were cut down like wheat.

After sending his cavalry and artillery in full pursuit, Mahkno himself

went at the head of his best mounted regiment, by way of a shortcut,

that would enable him to catch the fugitives from behind. The pursuit

continued eight to twelve miles. The last two miles were strewn with

corpses. At the critical moment when Denikin’s troops reached the river,

they were overtaken by the Mahknovist cavalry. Hundreds perished in the

river itself. Most of them, however, had time to cross to the other

bank, but there Mahkno himself was waiting. His second vice had closed.

In addition, the Denikinist staff and the reserve regiment that was with

it were taken completely by surprise and made prisoners.

Arshinov tells us,

“Only an insignificant part of these troops, who had raged for months in

stubborn pursuit of Mahkno, managed to save themselves. The First

Simferopol Regiment of officers, and several others were cut down

completely.”

Pawn takes queen, check.

Ukrainians know how to reap. “Make hay while the sun shines,” they say.

It can be done. That day the Anarchist peasants with their callused,

peasant hands, cut to the ground the counter-revolution’s best hope of

ever taking back Russia’s empire with Russian troops. Denikin’s fist was

broken. “Hope dies last,” says the old Russian proverb. This hope

drowned in Cossack blood. Twenty years later the Whites tried again with

German troops that they had helped finance but found they couldn’t

control. That didn’t work either.

Every contest of wills, has a turning point, a moment when the tide

turns. In war it is usually at the peak of a particular battle. In the

American Civil War it was at Gettysburg. At Gettysburg it was Pickett’s

charge. In the Russian Civil War, it was at Peregonovka. At Peregonovka,

it was Mahkno’s charge. One failed. One succeeded. Both defined decades

of subsequent history. History is like that. It’s course can change

utterly, one single moment. Fate can swing wide on a very small hinge.

Had that single squad of Anarchist cavalry not turned Denikin’s flank

with that single, decisive blow, that grim day in September at

Peregonovka, Denikin would have had his “Christmas in Moscow.” There was

no one else to stop him. The Red Army, such as it was, was in total

disarray. It would have been slaughtered. Lenin & Co. would have hung by

their necks. Your and my lives would have been much, much, much,

different. Consider the “Fall of Communism” in 1919. Consider no Stalin,

no Cold War, no Soviet Union, perhaps even, no Second World War.

Different world, huh? You betcha.

Consider the difference a handful can make, even a tiny handful. In the

immense, raging, maelstrom of this furious battle, where tens of

thousands were fighting, one tiny handful, in one brief moment, in the

right place and time, made a whole world of difference.

Denikin himself was nowhere around. He was not a “front line general;”

he was a private rail car general, who kept a private orchestra around

to amuse him should he become bored while about on his travels. He liked

caviar. He drank French champagne. He got away.

Pawn blunders.

Rather than driving north and finishing off the real enemy of

revolution, the Reds, the Anarchists turned without resting, and pushed

to the east, driving panic stricken Cossacks before them like chaff.

After all, they reasoned, the east Ukraine was their home. They should

liberate and protect it. What happened in Moscow was none of their

business. The Muscovites had apparently failed to convince them

otherwise. The Insurgents were Ukrainians, not Muscovites. They weren’t

even Russian. They didn’t like outsiders telling them what to do. They’d

had enough of that to last a life time. They paid Moscovites the

courtesy of leaving Moscow for the Muscovites to sort out. The principle

of paying each other such courtesies is, at first glance, very

appealing.

Mistake.

Pawn blunders again.

The Moscow Anarchists and most of their friends were dead or in prison.

Their names had been on a list. The list got around. One thing led to

another. Fate can swing closed on a very small hinge, too.

Eventually, isolated and surrounded, the Insurgent Army of the Ukraine

succumbed to Red terror and treachery. The Greek machine gunners were

wiped out in a rear guard action that enabled Mahkno and eighty others,

including Galina and some of his family to cross the Rumanian border.

After great hardship, which included a year of internment in Poland,

Mahkno settled in Paris where he drank himself into oblivion. He died in

1935, just when his talents were most needed in Spain. Back home in the

Ukraine, six million Ukrainians died in the ensuing Red holocaust. Some

were shot. Some froze. Most simply starved when the Reds stole

everything edible.

Still they echo, those fatal mistakes, those grim days that September.

In life as in chess, the move of the greatest importance, isn’t take,

check, or mate. It’s the blunder. It is most exceedingly difficult to

maneuver out of a really good blunder, but it can be done.. It can even

be done by a pawn. It can even be done with style. But don’t bet the

farm on pulling it off three times in a row. Better to learn from the

mistakes of the past, and eschew the blunder altogether. There are

always better moves. All moves compound on each other, blunders

especially. Don’t bemoan the blunders of the past. Look on the bright

side. At least now we know some more of what don’t work. This is always

handy to know.

It’s too bad in a way; it would have made a great movie, blunders and

all. But it didn’t.

Switch to plan B.