Nestor Makhno and Rural Anarchism in Ukraine, 1917-1921 , livre ebook

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Histories of the Russian Revolution often present the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917 as the central event, neglecting the diverse struggles of urban and rural revolutionaries across the heartlands of the Russian Empire. This book takes as its subject one such struggle, the anarcho-communist peasant revolt led by Nestor Makhno in left-bank Ukraine, locating it in the context of the final collapse of the Empire that began in 1914.

Between 1917 and 1921, the Makhnovists fought German and Austrian invaders, reactionary monarchist forces, Ukrainian nationalists and sometimes the Bolsheviks themselves. Drawing upon anarchist ideology, the Makhnovists gathered widespread support amongst the Ukrainian peasantry, taking up arms when under attack and playing a significant role - in temporary alliance with the Red Army - in the defeats of the White Generals Denikin and Wrangel. The Makhnovist movement is often dismissed as a kulak revolt, or a manifestation of Ukrainian nationalism; here Colin Darch analyses its successes and its failures, emphasising its revolutionary character.

Over 100 years after the revolutions, this book reveals a lesser known side of 1917, contributing both to histories of the period and broadening the narrative of 1917, whilst enriching the lineage of anarchist history.

List of Maps

List of Abbreviations

Acknowledgements

The Deep Roots of Rural Discontent: Guliaipole, 1905–17

The Turning Point: Organising Resistance to the German Invasion, 1918

Brigade Commander and Partisan: Makhno’s Campaigns against Denikin, January–May 1919

Betrayal in the Heat of Battle? The Red–Black Alliance Falls Apart, May–September 1919

The Long March West and the Battle at Peregonovka

Red versus White, Red versus Green: The Bolsheviks Assert Control

The Last Act: Alliance at Starobel’sk, Wrangel’s Defeat, and Betrayal at Perekop

The Bitter Politics of the Long Exile: Romania, Poland, Germany, and France, 1921–34

Why Anarchism? Why Ukraine? Contextualising Makhnovshchina

Epilogue: The Reframing of Makhno for the Twenty-First Century

Notes

Index

Sujets

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Publié par	Pluto Press
Date de parution	20 septembre 2020
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781786805270
Langue	English

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Nestor Makhno and Rural Anarchism in Ukraine, 1917-21
Nestor Makhno and Rural Anarchism in Ukraine, 1917-21
Colin Darch
First published 2020 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright Colin Darch 2020
The right of Colin Darch to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 3888 0 Hardback
ISBN 978 0 7453 3887 3 Paperback
ISBN 978 1 7868 0526 3 PDF eBook
ISBN 978 1 7868 0528 7 Kindle eBook
ISBN 978 1 7868 0527 0 EPUB eBook
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.
Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England
Simultaneously printed in the United Kingdom and United States of America
For my grandchildren
Historia scribitur ad narrandum, non ad probandum - Quintilian
Contents
List of Maps
List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
1. The Deep Roots of Rural Discontent: Guliaipole, 1905-17
2. The Turning Point: Organising Resistance to the German Invasion, 1918
3. Brigade Commander and Partisan: Makhno s Campaigns against Denikin, January-May 1919
4. Betrayal in the Heat of Battle? The Red-Black Alliance Falls Apart, May-September 1919
5. The Long March West and the Battle at Peregonovka
6. Red versus White, Red versus Green: The Bolsheviks Assert Control
7. The Last Act: Alliance at Starobel sk, Wrangel s Defeat, and Betrayal at Perekop
8. The Bitter Politics of the Long Exile: Romania, Poland, Germany, and France, 1921-34
9. Why Anarchism? Why Ukraine? Contextualising Makhnovshchina
10. Epilogue: The Reframing of Makhno for the Twenty-First Century
Notes
Index
Maps
0.1 Makhnovshchina s Areas of Activity and Influence, 1918-21
2.1 The Occupation of Ukraine by Germany and Austro-Hungary, 1918
2.2 Makhno s Journey to Moscow and Back, 1918
4.1 Denikin s Advance on Moscow, 1919
5.1 The Engagement at Peregonovka, September 1919
5.2 The Advance Eastwards by the Makhnovtsy , late 1919
7.1 The Battle against Wrangel, Perekop, Crimea, 1920
Abbreviations
GPU
State Political Directorate (Gosudarstvennoe Politicheskoe Upravlenie)
GRAZ
Group of Russian Anarchists Overseas (Gruppa Russkikh Anarkhistov za Granitsei)
KADA
Crimea-Azov Volunteer Army (Krims ko-Azovs ka Dobrovol cha Armiia)
KP(b)U
Communist Party (bolsheviks) of Ukraine (Komunistychna Partiia [bil shovykiv] Ukrainy)
NEP
New Economic Policy (Novaia Ekonomicheskaia Politika)
RKP(b)
Russian Communist Party (bolsheviks) (Rossiiskaia Kommunisticheskaia Partiia [bol shevikov])
RPA(M)
Revolutionary Insurgent Army (makhnovists) (Revoliutsionnaia Povstancheskaia Armiia [makhnovtsev])
RVS
Revolutionary Military Council (Revoliutsionnyi Voennyi Sovet)
SRs
Socialist Revolutionary Party (Partiia Sotsialistov-Revoliutsionerov)
TsIK
Central Exeutive Committee (Tsentral nyi Vikonavchyi Komitet)
UNR
Ukrainian National Republic (Ukrains ka Narodnia Respublika)
VRS
Military-Revolutionary Soviet (Voenno-Revoliutsionnaia Sovet)
VTsIK
All-Russian Central Executive Committee (Vserossiiskii Tsentral nyi Ispolnitel nyi Komitet)
Acknowledgements
My interest in makhnovshchina dates back to the late 1960s, and the research for this book was carried out intermittently over the many years since then by visits to, or through correspondence with the following libraries, archives and research centres. I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the librarians and archivists who have assisted me both personally and by providing me with photocopies or microfilm of necessary documents: the Biblioth que de Documentation Internationale Contemporaine (BDIC), Nanterre; the Biblioth que Nationale, Paris; the British Library, London; the Bundesarchiv, Koblenz; the Canadian Mennonite Bible College Library, Winnipeg; the Centre Internationale des Recherches sur l Anarchisme, Lausanne; Columbia University Library, New York City; the Deutsche B cherei, Leipzig; what was then the Gosudarstvennaia Biblioteka SSSR im. V. I. Lenina, Moscow; the then Gosudarstvennaia Publichnaia Biblioteka im. M. E. Saltykova-Shchedrina, St. Petersburg; the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford University; Indiana University Library, Bloomington; the Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis, Amsterdam; the Library of Congress, Washington DC; the National Library of Canada, Ottawa; New York Public Library, New York City; the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London; the Schweizerische Landesbibliothek, Berne; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; the University Libraries of the University of Birmingham, the University of Bradford, the University of Helsinki, the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, the University of Toronto and the University of Wisconsin; and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York City.
I want to acknowledge and thank the people who, over a long period of many years have given generous, willing and unstinting assistance in the research, writing, correspondence and, of course, conversation that have led to this book. It s possible that some may have forgotten assisting me. Their help included granting me access to unpublished memoirs and other documents, responding to factual and other queries, criticising draft chapters and helping with translation. I must mention especially Ivan Antypenko of Philadelphia; Paul Avrich; Delice Baker-Duly who provided Swedish translations many years ago; G. N. Britten; the late E. H. Carr; the late Richard Caulk; Georgi Derluguian; Irina Filatova for several points of clarification; M. Fransiszyn; Daniel Gu rin; Zenon Jaworskyi; Viktor Kachun; Annemarie Kinfu who provided German translations; Michel Kovetzki; the late A. L. Morton; Richard and Rita Pankhurst; Sean Patterson; Victor Peters; Michael Petrowsky; Mark Plant; the Very Rev. N. Pliczkowski; Jenny Sandler, who drew the maps; Alexandre Skirda; the late Teodor Shanin; Iuri Shevchenko of the University of Khar kov for assistance with routes and distances; Vladimir Shubin (no relation of Aleksandr Shubin) for critical comments; Yehuda Slutsky for sharing his work on the Ukrainian pogroms; the late Volker Stitz; Lucien van der Walt; Leo van Rossum; Gottfried Wellmer who provided German translations; Dr. Olex Wintoniak of Dniprova Khvylia ; the late Michael Wolfers; and Jason Yanowitz. Last, my special and enduring thanks go to Gary Littlejohn, who supervised with good humour and patience my now-superseded doctoral dissertation on makhnovshchina , and has also read through this manuscript and made many valuable suggestions; to Leo Zeilig, without whose enthusiastic encouragement a version of this work would still be lying in the bottom of a drawer; and to first Hilary Davies, Tom Rampling and Toni Ongala, and later Agnes Nkhoma-Darch for their many years of extraordinarily patient support. My thanks to the four anonymous reviewers of my original proposal, and to Pluto Press for their ongoing support - specifically to David Shulman, for his patience, and to Robert Webb. Some of the people mentioned above will almost certainly find themselves for various reasons in more or less strong disagreement with my argument and my conclusions, which now differ significantly from my earlier views on the Makhno rebellion. Nonetheless, I am grateful for their help.
Needless to say, I alone am entirely responsible for the interpretation as well as for all errors and omissions of whatever kind in this book.

Map 0.1 Makhnovshchina s Areas of Activity and Influence, 1918-21
The heartland of makhnovshchina was based around Guliaipole, Ekaterinoslav and Aleksandrovsk, but the movement s influence extended intermittently over a much wider area. (Cartographer: Jenny Sandler).
1
The Deep Roots of Rural Discontent: Guliaipole, 1905-17
Nestor Ivanovich Makhno was born far from the centres of power, in the provincial Ukrainian town of Guliaipole, in Aleksandrovsk district, Ekaterinoslav province, probably in 1888, the fifth child in a family of former serfs. 1 We know little for certain about his childhood and adolescence, and what we do know comes not from contemporary documentation but from later testimonies, 2 including Makhno s own. Some may have fed into each other, and some are the objects of condemnation, 3 while Makhno s own account was written in exile long after the events. The outline of the story of his youth is known but does not help us to understand how this half-educated provincial rebel, with no experience of soldiering, was able to become both an anarchist revolutionary and a successful commander within as well as apart from the Red Army.
After the emancipation of the serfs in 1861 his father, Ivan Mikhnenko, continued to work for his former master. When his wife was pregnant with Nestor, their fifth child, 4 Ivan got a job with the Jewish merchant Kerner, who owned a factory, a shop and nearly 500 hectares of land. 5 Before Nestor was even a year old, Mikhnenko died. 6 The family lived in a shack near the market square, on the edge of town. They were too poor, in a semi-rural community, to afford to keep pigs or chickens, and Makhno s earliest memories were of deprivation and struggle. 7
Guliaipole, a provincial town like many others, was located on the river Gaichur, near the railway line to Ekaterinoslav. 8 After the Stolypin agrarian reforms of 1906, 9 the number of estates in the area grew to around 50, many owned by German colonists. 10 Facilities included banks, a post and telegraph office, churches, a police station, a hospital, the volost administration building and several schools. Small-scale industrialisation had created a semi-prolet