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ABSTRACT
Nestor Makhno was an anarchist political prisoner who was released from prison with the February Revolution. He was able to convince anarchists in Huliaipole by numbing the “Social Committee” with anti-authoritarian theory. He succeeded in the first mass experiment of a united front of all classes in the village in Huliaipole, which would form the basis of his political struggle. In the process, the Peasant League became the Peasant Soviet.
This article studies the social base of the Makhno Movement, and evaluates its political praxis against the background of its libertarian theoretical claims, especially in the context of its endeavors to differentiate itself from the Bolsheviks.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
2 “Anarchism was a very revolutionary theory in non-revolutionary times”, but in revolutionary times it was not possible for this to be carried into practice. Anarchist theory and practice “are like a raincoat which only leaks when it rains, which is to say only under ‘exceptional’ circumstances does it leak, but on sunny days it certainly does not”. (Trotsky, as narrated by Yanowitz Citation2007)
3 From this point on, it can also be suggested that Makhno was standing on Narodnik ground because Makhno’s program of uniting all classes of the village was identical to that of the Narodniks. The Narodniks advocated the transition from feudalism to direct socialism against the backdrop of village unions (mir) based on all classes of the village. The participation of the SRs (social revolutionaries) from the Narodnik tradition in the ranks of Makhno also reflected this trend. One of Makhno’s commanders was Boris Veretelnikov, who was originally an SR. But more important was the fact that Dimitri Ivanovich Popov, the military leader of the left SR coup in Moscow on July 7, 1918, fled after the failure of the coup and joined Makhno’s ranks.
4 A local anarchist congress questioned Makhno’s secret service, taking this decision: “It has been reported to us that there exists in the army a counter-espionage service which engages in arbitrary and uncontrolled actions, of which some are very serious, rather like the Bolshevik Cheka. Searches, arrests, even torture and executions are reported.” (Yanowitz Citation2007)
5 During the period when the Makhnovist army ruled, propaganda activities of socialist parties (despite censorship in military news) in the cities of Aleksandrovsk and Ekaterinoslav were generally free. However, the establishment of revolutionary committees and the activities of revolutionary organising in general were prohibited: “In allowing all political parties and organizations full and complete freedom to propagate their ideas, the Makhnovist insurgent army wishes to inform all the parties that any attempt to prepare, organize and impose political authority over the working people will not be permitted by the revolutionary insurgents, such an act having nothing in common with the free dissemination of ideas.” (Arshinov Citation1974, 115) In short, this was the “freedom” that the Makhnovist Army “recognised”. By destroying all the legal and administrative structures that existed in the cities it captured, the Makhnovists also forcefully suppressed the attempts of revolutionary parties to organise civil and social life. In Aleksandrovsk, when the local Bolshevik organisation proposed to Makhno “a division of spheres of action, leaving Makhno the military power, and reserving for the Committee full freedom of action and all political and civil authority” (Arshinov Citation1974, 114) Makhno’s response was to threaten the Bolsheviks with execution. The Makhnovists, who banned the establishment of other parties on the grounds of their evaluation of them as opposed to the idea of freedom determined by the “revolutionary committees”, ruled the region for 3 years on the basis of their own Military Revolutionary Committee.
6 This ‘voluntarism’ was described in a Makhnovist newspaper (namely, Road to Freedom) as follows: “the peasants had voluntarily decided to be mobilized, and [that] therefore nobody was permitted to refuse service” (Nomad Citation1939). Similarly, a bulletin published by the Makhnovists read as follows: “Some groups have understood voluntary mobilization only for those who wish to enter the Insurrectionary Army, and that anyone who for any reason wishes to stay at home is not liable […] This is not correct […] The voluntary mobilization has been called because the peasants, workers and insurgents themselves decided to mobilize themselves without awaiting the arrival of instructions from the central authorities.” (Yanowitz Citation2007)
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Alp Altınörs
Alp Altınörs is a socialist writer and translator in Turkey, where he has been deeply involved in the socialist movement since his university years. Born in Trabzon, the site of the last joint Turkish-Greek workers' resistance to Turkish nationalist militias in the country, he pursued organized struggle through the Socialist Party of the Oppressed for over two decades, and then in 2013 rose to deputy co-chair in the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), a popular-front anti-fascist umbrella progressive party jointly governed by various Kurdish liberationist, socialist, ecologist, feminist, and LGBT+ parties and organisations. He has served as the editor for Abstrakt (https://www.abstraktdergi.net), an academic and popular internet magazine which publishes in Turkish, English, and other languages, for which he has also written manuscripts, including this one below. He has been imprisoned in Turkey since September 2020 for alleged “terrorism,” for which he has yet to be sentenced. The indictment against him and many others relates to being party to the tweets shared by the Central Steering Committee of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) on October 6, 2014 (9 years ago!), calling for solidarity with the people of Kobanê fighting against ISIS terrorism and genocide. This democratic call is being criminalized and counted as the cause of violence that took place in Turkey in the days that followed. Alp is the author of İmkânsız Sermaye (Impossible Capital) where he analyzes the defining features of late capitalism and discusses the current potentials for socialism. He is also the translator and editor of various books from Spanish, Russian and English originals into Turkish. The piece published here first appeared in Abstrakt in Turkish on October 5, 2016.– Güney Işıkara, New York University Liberal Studies.