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Title: To the Young People
Author: Nestor Makhno
Date: June 1920
Language: en
Source: www.ditext.com: Peter Arshinov, History of the Makhnovist Movement, 1918-1921.  Online text retrieved on April 10, 2021, from http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=9809.

Nestor Makhno

To the Young People

Why, comrades, are you sitting at home? Why are you not in our ranks?

Or are you waiting for the arrival of the commissars with punitive

detachments to draft you by force? Don't fool yourselves that they won't

find you, that you will hide, escape. The Bolshevik authority has

already shown that it will stop at nothing: they will arrest your family

and relatives, they will take hostages, if necessary, they will fire

upon the entire village with artillery - and in some way or another, you

and your comrades, who are presently still at liberty, will sooner or

later be drafted by the government.

And then they will send you, with weapons in hand, to kill your brother

peasants and workers - the revolutionary insurgent Makhnovists.

We, Makhnovist insurgents, are not sitting at home, although each one of

us also has a family and relatives and loved ones from whom we do not

wish to be separated. But we are revolutionaries. It is not possible for

us to look on indifferently as the working people are once again thrown

into slavery, as new despots lord it over us, unchecked, under the mask

of the socialist-communists, under the banner of worker-peasant

authority. Three years of revolution have clearly shown that every

authority is counter-revolutionary, without exception, whether it be the

authority of Bloody Nicholas or of the Bolshevik-Communists. We

Makhnovists raise the banner of revolt for a total socialist revolution,

against every authority, against every oppressor; we are fighting for

the free Soviets of the working people.

at home near someone's skirts - we do not need sissies. But you, honest

peasants and workers, your place is with us, among the revolutionary

insurgent Makhnovists. We will take no one by force. But remember: the

Bolshevik government, through its own brutal violence to the

Makhnovists, compels us also to merciless battle.

And so, decide, comrades! Drafted by the commissars, you will be sent

against us, and we will be compelled to treat you as hostile and an

enemy of the revolution. With us or against us - choose!

Insurgent Makhnovists