The expanded congresses that represent all the organizations from the towns and villages — which make up the free society — will appoint a commission whose task it is to maintain regular relations with foreign states. This activity ought to be public and free of ambiguousness: no “secret diplomacy” can be countenanced. Issues that the commission cannot resolve will be left for extra-ordinary congresses to debate and determine.
Such, as we sec it, are the bases upon which the free, just and wholesome society for which we are fighting, should be founded.
It is not for us to impose these ideas upon the toiling populace through coercion: our reckoning is that our duty is merely to make our view known and to offer workers and peasants the chance to debate this viewpoint freely — this and others as well, so that they may have absolute freedom to opt for this or that path to the economic and social reconstruction of society.
We are convinced of it: it is only by appealing to the most comprehensive freedom of inquiry and experiment in matters of reconstruction that the toiling population will be able to devise the natural route that leads on to an authentic and wholesome socialism. This freedom of inquiry and experimentation in construction we shall maintain and defend with all our might: it will no doubt be defended in the same way by all the toilers of the Ukraine whom we call upon to take a hand in our great common fight, amending as the need arises the inevitable, mistakes and shortcomings, by displaying their sympathy and bolstering it through the continual recruitment of new fighters and defenders of freedom. It is through the concerted efforts of the broader community of toilers that the shape of the
New society will be freely molded, and by defending this entitlement to creative freedom with armed force that we shall win.
To the entire working population of the city of Alexandrovsk and environs. Comrades and Citizens!
Detachments of the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of the Ukraine (Makhnovist) are at present stationed in your city. That army has broken the back of the Deni-kinists, defeating them between Uman and Pomoshnaya, and is hotly pursuing the remnants of the enemy as they flee eastwards.
The staff and the entire Makhnovist movement deem it their most important duty to inform you of the following:
1. Hitherto you have been told on every side that Makhnoyists were bandits, brigands, and pogromists. Be informed that this is the foulest slander. The members of our insurgent army are decent revolutionary peasants and workers. In any case, let the peaceable population of the city, regardless of nationality, be assured of its safety, let it carry on blithely with its work and let it not look upon us as its enemies.
2. The Revolutionary Insurgent Army has set itself the goal of assisting the peasants and the workers in their long and demanding struggle to emancipate toilers from every form of the yoke of capital and political power, a catastrophic yoke which they can well do without. For that reason, our army appears as the friend and defender of the workers, peasants and the poor generally. It relies not only upon their sympathy and their trusr but equally upon their collaboration and involvement.
Whilst not meddling in the civilian life of the population, the Insurgent Army will be taking certain essential measures aimed at the wealthy bourgeois class, as well as at Denikinists and their supporters. Measures that will be enforced in an organized way. Persons who may arrive to carry out searches and make arrests in the name of the Makhnovists should, if they fail to produce a warrant, seal and signature from the unit commander and signature of the army inspection service, be instantly placed under arrest and brought before the unit staff or that of the inspection branch.
The same procedure should be applied to looters and assailants who may face execution on the spot.
3. The Revolutionary Insurgent Army urges the toiling population of the city and its environs to embark forthwith upon independent organizational endeavor, to wit: any organization representative of local factory workers, railroad workers, posts and telegraphs employees and peasants shall convene a general conference
Of representatives of all the regions toilers. That conference is to raise, discuss and resolve a whole series of social and economic issues: city defenses, organization of fair distribution of essential goods and socially useful items available in the city; it will see to relations between the city and the villages so as to organize exchange of goods and merchandise.
This assembly will lay the lasting groundwork for a free system of peasant and worker soviets. Non-authoritarian reconstruction of social and economic life should thus be initiated.
4. The Revolutionary Insurgent Army calls upon the entire toiling population of the city and its environs to embark in a general way upon autonomous activity in matters social and military alike. The insurgent army will withdraw from the city just as soon as its work has been completed. The toiling population itself is to see to the organization of its social and economic life as well as its defenses against all trespass on the part of the bourgeoisie and any authorities, and is to take upon itself the struggle for the complete success of the revolution.
Alexandrovsk, October 7, 1919.
The Staff of the Insurgent Army (Makhnovist)
Document No. 4
Peasant Comrades!
The toiling peasantry of the Ukraine has been struggling against its age-old enemies and oppressors for many a long year. Thousands of the finest sons of the revolution have fallen in the struggle for complete emancipation of toilers from every yoke. A mortal blow was dealt to the butcher Denikin through the heroic efforts of the insurgent army of the Ukraine. The peasant insurgents, with their guide — Batko Makhno — at their head, stayed for long months in the rear of the White Guard enemy, surrounded by an enemy outnumbering them ten to one, and decimated by the most horrific malady — typhus — which daily carried off hundreds of the finest fighters in their ranks: running low on munitions, they all swooped upon the enemy with daggers drawn, and under their mighty onslaught Denikins best troops, the units of General Shkuro and Mamontov, took to their heels. At the cost of unbelievable effort and blood spilled by the best fighters, insurgent peasants destroyed Denikins rear and opened up a route to brethren in the North, peasants and workers: in the wake of Denikins hordes. Red Army comrades entered the Ukraine — workers and peasants from the north. In turn, the toiling peasantry of the Ukraine was confronted by — besides the broader issue of the fight against the White Guards — the problem of building a real soviet order, in which soviets
Elected by the toilers would be servants of the people, carrying out decisions that the toilers themselves would reach at a Pan-Ukrainian congress of toilers.
However, the Communist Party leaders who, in the Red Army, had created a blind and docile tool for defending the commisarocracy, set about mudsling-ing and peddling the worst calumnies about the best leaders of the insurgents, having determined to “grasp the nettle” and destroy the revolutionary insurgent movement which was hindering these commissar gentlemen from lording it over the toilers of the Ukraine. In the toilers, these commissarocrats wish to see only “a human weapon,” as Trotsky said at one congress, only cannon fodder to be hurled at anyone one wants but who must on no account be afforded the right to dispense with the Communists’ help and make their own working lives and their own order for themselves.
Peasant comrades! The insurgent army of the Ukraine (Makhnovist) is drawn from among you. Your sons, your brothers and your fathers have filled our ranks. The insurgent army is blood of your blood, flesh of your flesh. Having sacrificed tens of thousands of victims, the insurgent army has fought for the toilers’ right to build their order for themselves, to determine the disposition of their goods for themselves and not for all the world to hand over to the commissars.
The insurgent army has fought and fights still for real soviets and not for the Cheka and commissarocracy. In the days of the hangman — the Hetman’s day —- and the Germans and Denikin, the insurgents rose up en masse against oppressors in the defense of the toiling people. Now too the insurgent army considers that it has a sacred duty to defend the interests of the toiling peasantry against attempts by these commissar gentlernen to hitch the Ukraine’s toiling peasantry to their chariot. The insurgent army knows these “upstarts” only too well and well remembers these “liberator” commissars. The autocrat Trotsky has ordered the disarming of the insurgent army set up by the peasants themselves in the Ukraine, for he appreciates that as long as the peasants have their army defending their interests he will never be able to force the toiling people of the Ukraine to march under his baton. By avoiding clashes with the Red Army and abiding only by the wishes of the toilers, the insurgent army, not wishing to shed fraternal blood, will take care to protect the toilers’ interests and will lay down its arms only on the instructions of a free Pan-Ukrainian toilers’ congress, at which the toilers themselves will articulate their wishes. The insurgent army — the sword in the hands of the toilers — calls upon you, peasant comrades, immediately to convene your own congress of toiling muzhiks and to take into your own hands both the further pursuit of your well-being and your hard-earned wealth.
It is true that the power-hungry commissars will take every step to thwart the holding of a free congress of toilers: for that reason and in the very interests of the toilers the stifling of this congtess by the commissars must not be allowed: to that end, it should be clandestine and held in a secret location.
Peasant comrades, prepare yourselves for the holding of your congress! Make haste to accomplish your task! Your enemies are not sleeping; don’t you sleep either: that will ensure your victory!
Long live the free congress of the region’s toilers! Down with commissarocracy! Long live the insurgent peasant army!
February 8, 1920.
The staff of the insurgent army of the Ukraine (Makhnovist).
Who are the Makhnovists and for what do they fight?
1. The Makhnovists are workers and peasants who rose up back in 1918 against the oppression of the bourgeois power in the Ukraine of the Austro-Hungarian and German occupiers and of the Hetman. The Makhnovists are toilers who have raised the banner of revolt against Denikin, against any yoke, any violence and any falsehood, from wherever they may come. The Makhnovists are the very toilers whose labors enrich, fatten and sustain the bourgeoisie in general and at present the Bolshevik bourgeoisie in particular.
2. Why do we call ourselves Makhnovists?
Because in the darkest days of the reaction in the Ukraine we have seen among us through thick and thin, our friend and guide Makhno whose voice has spoken out against all oppression of toilers throughout the Ukraine, inciting struggle against all oppressors and all the marauders and political tricksters who misled us. Now this friend through thick and thin still marches in our ranks towards our ultimate objective: the emancipation of toilers from every yoke.
3. How do we see any emancipation coming to pass?
Through the overthrow of all government: monarchist, coalition, republican. Social Democrat, Bolshevik-Communist... which must be replaced by a soviet regime independent of them all, and without authority or arbitrarily determined laws: for the soviet order is not the power of Bolshevik-Communist Social Democrats which currently proclaims itself the soviet power, but is instead the higher form of anti-authoritarian, anti-governmental socialism which expresses itself through the construction of a free, harmonious community independent of every power: and the social life of the toilers, wherein every individual toiler and the community in general will be able to seek a happy, prosperous life in an autonomous way according to the principles of solidarity, friendship and equahty for all.
4. What is the Makhnovists’ conception of the soviet regime?
The toilers themselves ought freely to choose their soviets; soviets that would carry out the wishes and decisions of these same toilers, which is to say executive soviets, not authoritarian ones.
The land, workshops, factories, mines, railways and other assets of the people should belong to the toilers who work there which is to say that these must be socialized.
5. What are the means used by the Makhnovists to attain these goals?
Revolutionary, unflinching and consistent struggle against all falsehood, all arbitrariness and all oppression, no matter whence it may come: this is a fight to the death, the struggle of free speech and true endeavor, conducted with weapons in hand. Through the elimination of all who govern, through destruction of all the foundations of their lies, whether in the political, statist or economic spheres. And it is only through destruction of the State and by means of social revolution that the realization of a truly soviet socialist regime of workers and peasants will be feasible.
: April27, 1920. ;
The Cultural Instruction Section of the (Makhnovist)
Insurgent Army.
Down with fratricidal strife!
Red soldier brethren; Nicholas’s henchmen kept you in ignorance and led you into fratricidal war against the Japanese and then the Germans and many another people, simply to increase their own wealth, whereas all you had to look forward to was death at the front and complete ruination at home.
But the dark clouds and fog that blinded your eyes lifted, the sunlight broke through and touched you and you put paid to that fratricidal war. That, though, was only the calm before a fresh storm broke.
Now they send you out again to fight us “Makhnovist insurgents” on behalf of a so-called “worker-peasant” power which once again brings you shackles and slavery! The wealth and the delights go to this gang of parasite bureaucrats who suck your blood. Can you have failed to grasp this in three years of fratricidal strife?
Will you again shed your blood for the freshly resurrected bourgeoisie and for the commissars it has created who dispatch you to the slaughter like cattle!
Have you not yet understood that we “Makhnovist insurgents” are fighting for complete economic and political emancipation of the toilers, for a free life without these commissars and other agents of repression!
May the dawn rise also over your camp and show you the way that leads to eradication of fratricidal strife among the toiling masses. On that road you will find us and you will go on fighting in our ranks for a better future, for a free life. At every encounter with us and in order to avert shedding of brothers’ blood, send us your delegates for talks, but if this is not possible and the commissars force you to fight us anyway, throw down your rifles and come to our fraternal embrace!
Down with the fratricidal war between toilers!
Long live the peace and fraternal union of toilers of every land and nation!
The Makhnovist Insurgents.
To all toilers of cart and hammer!
Brothers! a new and mortal danger threatens all toilers. All the dark forces of the former lackeys of Nicholas the Bloody have come together and with the help of the Polish lords, French instructors and the traitor Petliura are bearing down on the Ukraine to restore the autocracy among us, and burden us with the estate-owners, capitalists, land agents, gendarmes and all the other executioners of the peasants and workers.
Comrades! the commissars and leaders of the Bolshevik-Communists are good warriors only when they are fighting poor folk. Their punitive detachments and Cheka are above all expert in killing workers and peasants and torching villages and countryside. But against the revolution’s real enemies, against Denikin and the other bands, they shamefully take to their heels, like the despicable cowards that they are.
You, comrades, will not have forgotten how last year, the gold braid-wearers all but entered Moscow and, had they not been stopped by the insurgents, the tricolor flag of Autocracy would long since have been unfurled over revolutionary Russia.
The situation is the same now, comrade! The Red Army, sold out at every turn by its generals and cowardly commissars, quits the front in panic, ceding region after region to the Polish lords. The towns of Zhitomir, Kiev and Zhmerinka have long since been occupied by the Poles; the White Guards’ front line nears Poltava and Kherson. And in the Crimea, Denikinists who have been dug in for the last four months await the opportune moment to reoccupy our native regions.
Brothers! Are you going to blithely await the arrival of the Whites without lifting a finger, are you going to yield up your wives and your children to the exactions of the generals and the Polish Lords?
No, that must not be. As of one mind, to arms and join the ranks of the insurgents!
Rise up along with all of us Makhnovists against all oppressors! In every village, organize detachments and liaise with us! Together we shall drive out the commissars and Cheka, and along with Red Soldier comrades we shall build a solid fighting front against Denikin, Petliura and the Polish Lords!
Comrades! This is not the time to delay: organize your detachments without delay. To work!
Death and ruination to all oppressors and lordlings!
Let us commit ourselves to the crucial final struggle for a true Soviet regime, in which there will be neither Lords nor serfs!
To arms, brothers!
May 1920.
The Cultural Instruction Section of the Revolutionary
Insurgents (Makhnovists) of the Ukraine.
Document No. 8
To the young!
Why do you stay at home, comrade? Why are you not in our ranks? Or perhaps. you await the arrival of the commissar with his punitive expedition to enlist you by force? Do not kid yourself with the thought that they will not find you, that you will be able to hide, to run away. The Bolshevik authorities have already proved that they will stop at nothing: they will arrest your family and your parents and will take hostages: when they so choose, they will have their artillery bombard the whole village and so, sooner or later, you and your chum who is still at large will be carried off by the government as soldiers.
And then they will send you, weapon in hand, to kill your own worker and peasant brothers, the revolutionary Makhnovist insurgents...
So we Makhnovist insurgents are not stay-at-homes, although each of us has a family and parents and dear loved ones, whom we have been reluctant to leave. But we are revolutionaries. We cannot look on with indifference as the toiling people is once again reduced to serfdom, as new despots posing as socialists and revolutionaries and displaying the badge of worker-peasant power, lord it over us without control.
Three years of revolution have clearly demonstrated that all power is counter-revolutionary, whether it be the power of Nicholas the Bloody or that of the Bolshevik-Communists. We Makhnovists have raised the banner of insurrection for a complete social revolution against all power, against all oppressors and we fight for the free soviets of toilers.
Join us, comrade! Let the rogue and the coward hide behind someone’s skirts at home, we have no need of those who hide behind anyone’s skirts. But you, decent worker or peasant, your place is with us, with the Makhnovist insurgent revolutionaries. We press no one into service. But remember that with their savage repression the Bolshevik authorities have forced us into a struggle without quarter.
So make up your mind, comrade! Mobilized by the commissars, you will be sent against us and we will be forced to deal with you as an adversary and as an enemy of the revolution. With us or against us. The choice is yours!
June 1920.
The Makhnovist insurgents.
Document No. 9
The Makhnovists’ address to the toiling Cossacks of the Don and Kuban.
Cossack toiler comrades! For two years you have groaned beneath the yoke of the tsarist general Denikin. For two years your sworn enemies, the big landowners and lordlings have forced you to defend their riches and the oppressors of the toiling people. For two years running, they have squeezed you in a vice. While the wealthy amassed their riches from your blood and sweat, made merry and gave themselves up to debauchery. For two years, the blood and tears of the toilers have flowed in the Kuban and on the Don. For two years, the revolution was smothered in your region, Cossack toilers.
Through your efforts, comrades, the yoke of Denikin and his gang has been shrugged off and the revolution is triumphant once again in the Kuban and on the Don.
However, scarcely had you had time, comrades, to recover from the nightmare you lived under Denikin before new oppressors arrived in your regions.
The party of the Bolshevik-Communists, having seized power, dispatched its commissars and Cheka to your villages and your stanitsas: they oppress you no less than their tsarist henchmen predecessors, Cossack toilers.
As under Denikin, the Bolshevik authorities’ punitive detachments seize your wheat and livestock, and take your sons, and if you dare to protest at the violence done before your eyes, well, they will flog, imprison and indeed shoot you.
Why, then, Cossack toiler comrades, did you revolt against Denikin if it was only to place yourselves under a new yoke now in the shape of the Bolshevik-Communists? Is that what you shed your blood for, to allow the commissars and power-lovers now to lord it over you, stifle you and do violence to you?
Listen, brothers, to what we Makhnovist revolutionary peasants have to tell you. We too have been oppressed since the revolution by a whole series of powers and parties. At first the Austrian and German oppressors tried to reign over us along with the Hetman: then it was the adventurer Pediura, then the Bolshevik-Communists, and General Denikin. But we very quickly disabused them of any inclination to carry it on and-, as you have certainly heard tell, as early as the summer of 1918, with the Gulyai-Polye peasant, toilers’ friend, anarchist and revolutionary Nestor Makhno as our guide (he whom the tsarist authorities had locked up for more than ten years in its prisons and penitentiaries because of his love for the toiling people), we rose up and drove out the Austro-German bands and for nearly two years now we have been pressing on with our struggle gainst all oppressors of the toilers. We are now waging a relentless struggle against agents and commissars of the Bolshevik authorities: we execute iand drive these oppressors from our regions.
The ranks of our revolutionary insurgent detachments are swelling daily. All the oppressed and humiliated join our ranks and the time is approaching when the toiling people in our region will rise up and drive out the power of charlatan Bolshevik politicians, just as they did before with Denikin.
But having driven out the Bolshevik oppressors, it is our intention to entrust power over us to nobody from now on, ¦ for we Makhnovists consider that the toiling people has long ceased to be a flock of sheep for anyone to lead as he may see fit. We find that the toilers will be able to organize a free regime of soviets along independent lines, dispensing with party, commissars and generals: a soviet regime in which those who will have been chosen as members of the soviet will not, as now they can, be able to command us and give us orders, but will instead be the instruments of what we will have determined at our assemblies and toilers’ congresses.
We will make every effort to ensure that all the wealth of the country such as the land, mines, workshops, factories, railways and the rest belong not to private individuals nor to the State, but exclusively to those who work them.
We shall not put up our weapons until such time as we have eliminated economic or political servitude once and for all, until such time as genuine equality and fraternity reign on earth.
That comrades, is what we fight for and what we summon you Cossack toilers of the Don and the Kuban to fight for.
In our insurgent army there is a goodly number of Don and Kuban Cossacks: they formed two cavalry regiments which fought bravely with us against the Denikinists. We now call upon you Cossack toilers again, to join our ranks in
Order to wage a common struggle against the oppressors and the Red hangmen Trotsky and Lenin. Enough of slavish submission and toleration of the yoke and the power which calls itself worker-peasant. To arms and into the ranks of the revolutionary insurgents, and then we shall quickly rid anyone and everyone of this urge to oppress and grind us down.
Do not, comrades, believe the calumnies that label us bandits or which say that we are only a gang. These are lies peddled by the Commissars for the sole purpose of misleading the peasant toilers and workers who are well aware that Makhnovists are decent toilers who, having no wish to be enslaved, have risen up to free themselves once and for all from every yoke. Do not believe the Bolsheviks’ newspapers which report virtually every day that Batko Makhno has been killed and that we Makhnovists have been crushed. These are only lies. Batko Makhno lives and continues with us to defeat the regiments and punitive detachments of the power of the commissars day after day, striking mortal panic into the hearts of Red oppressors.
Rise up, Cossack toilers, against the yoke and oppression of the commissars! Do not let them set foot in your villages and stanitsas! Pay them no taxes! Deny them your wheat! Do not let them take your sons as soldiers! Organize your insurgent detachments. Execute the aggressors. Join with us. We will afford you all possible help.
Enough of slavish forbearance! Let us put an end to the vexations visited upon us!
Long live the insurrection for a genuine system of worker and peasant soviets! Long live the free Don and the free Kuban!
Long live the fraternal union of the toilers of every land and all nations!
Long live the social revolution!
June 1920.
The Soviet of the Revolutionary Insurgents of the Ukraine
(Makhnovists).
Document No. 10
Workers, peasants, and Red soldiers!
With your own eyes you saw how the villainous bourgeoisie, with Denikin and company at its head, sought to reduce the workers and peasants to serfdom for fully a century and tried to reintroduce the feudal system of the great landowners. But they have been definitively crushed through the spirit of revolutionary revolt that is abroad among the Makhnovists.
Now again the beast bares its fangs: abetted by the western bourgeoisie of which it seems to be the final card, it hurls its hordes upon us, seeking to subject us to its power and foist its yoke upon us. We can have but one reaction: to have no truce of any sort with them, for we have set ourselves a single goal: to fight to the last drop of blood to annihilate our bourgeoisie once and for all, and with it the worldwide bourgeoisie, or perish in the attempt.
Listen to what the Bolshevik-Communists, the agents of the “worker and peasant” government, say about us. By means of craven falsehoods they accuse us in their slanderous propaganda of siding with Wrangel: which makes them the laughing-stock of workers and peasants the world over. Have they no shame? Do not they themselves represent the new counter-revolution with their authoritarian institutions like the Cheka and the power of the commissars who make up a new aristocracy like the autocracy before them?
Yes, we must record the fact that the only ones responsible for the emergence of the counter-revolution are the Bolsheviks themselves, the advocates of the “socialist State.” They lead us in the direction of State capitalism, of new despots at home and they revive private capitalism, our greatest enemy.
We Makhnovists will either fall in combat or we will win and destroy the new capitalism in both its guises, and we will build a new life under a genuinely free socialism!
Down with oppressors of the toiling people, whether they come from the Right or Left!
Long live the worldwide union of towns and villages!
Long live the social revolution!
July 1920.
The Information Committee of the Insurgent Army of the
Ukraine (Makhnovist).
Document No. 11
The Makhnovist conception of soviets
The first session of the free soviet of Gulyai-Polye was held in the great hall of the town’s college. The teacher Chernoknizhny, chairman of the soviet, gave this address:
“Comrades! Let us salute the formation of Gulyai-Polye’s first free soviet. On this occasion, I think it essential that a brief general account be given of the nature, organization and import of free toilers’ soviets such as they have been established at the toilers’ own instigation in this free region of ours.
Let it be stated first of all that the characteristic feature of social life among us takes the form of toilers’ self-governance in local affairs; this going hand in glove with organization of the partisan struggle: and all of this is at odds with the Bolsheviks’ conception of political soviets.
The free soviets of toilers represent a firm realization of the principles underlying such self-governance...
• Soviets free, in that they are wholly independent of any central authority
Whatever and are elected with complete independence to boot.
• Soviets of toilers, in that they are fotmded on a basis of shared labor and - embrace only toilers, operate in accordance with their wishes, serve their interests alone and are wholly impervious to any and all political influence.
Each such soviet is executor of the vvishes of local toilers and their organizations. Soviets elsewhere, which are to liaise closely with them, will be able to set up popular self-governance bodies, coordinating their activities insofar as their territorial remit and economic activities require.
Publication of a declaration on the principles, broad characteristics and organization of free soviets on the part of the Military Revolutionary Sovieti represents the prescribed constitution of these organizations.
It is interesting to note that since its inception, the idea of free soviets has begun to be favorably and instantly received by the masses, and has spread in very quick order to regions far removed from Gulyai-Polye.
Having instinctively grasped the simple system of free soviets, the peasants have striven slowly but surely to establish such organizations. Once they have accomplished this, they will indubitably become its staunchest supporters and will without the shadow of a doubt feel that this is a wholesome foundation that guarantees the construction of a shared, free existence.
Likewise appreciation of the necessity for direct union with the workers of neighboring towns is beginning to ripen and gain ever greater sway over the peasant masses.
Let us quote the example of the Gulyai-Polye peasants’ appeal: “Worker, hold out your hand to the peasant,” which has not gone unheeded: it spreads and is discussed and has become our region’s watchword: among the urban workers whom it has reached it arouses lively interest. And neither encirclement by hostile forces from every camp, nor the expression of other schools of thought, are impediments to propagation of the notion of a rapprochement between workers and peasants.
The conception of free, toilers’ soviets springs from life itself This transitional form of self-governance leads on in practice to the non-authoritarian order of the future, founded upon principles of unrestricted freedom, complete equality and fraternity.
In other words I would say that the libertarian current will, in this way, have found its true expression, its rightful one: social action. The receptivity of the toilers is an irrefutable demonstration that love of liberty is abroad among the
Peasants, as is the unshakable determination to play their parts in the building of a free, independent and egalitarian life.
In a different, less troubled context, that same movement could have taken a different tack, found expression in quite different ways and would also have been quite wholesome, original and deliberate in its development. Ultimately, we must believe that it would have led to construction of the groundwork of a really free society of toilers.
But to our regret, these are at present naught but dreams, for harsh reality presents a very different face. What does this consist of, exactly?
The fact of the matter is that even now the traditional enemy of Labor and of Liberty — Authority — is making inroads in this region of ours. The essential and underlying motivation of the exploiters who invade our region (Bolsheviks and Denikinists) consists of their steadfast determination to assert their power by violently eradicating everyone else’s freedom and, what is more, wholly reducing the toilers to the status of inanimate objects.
By such methods, all these statist-authoritarians will annihilate all the efforts and advances of the toilers.
In the first instance, the peasants life and labors would be saddled with the yoke of the Cheka and the Sovnarkom [soviet of people s commissars], which is to say a gang of adventurers, expert in political chicanery: the very same people who have adroitly deceived the toilers and have turned the Russian social revolution into a vague effervescence of the masses.
In the second instance, the peasant has to look to the rule of the cosh of these privileged “gendemen” who hide behind the gold-braided saber-draggers.
The peasantry could not and of course would not accept this prospect, once having sampled the fruits of the liberty tree. For that very reason, it has risen up as one man in defense of its derided interests. It has risen because it has once and for all rejected state exploitation of society, rejected economic plunder and political whimsy.
“I call upon you,” Chernoknizhny closed, “to watch over the peasantry’s ideal of free, toilers’ soviets, as you would over the apple of your eye, for, as I have indicated, such soviets assure the people of authentic self-governance by the toilers themselves and lead on to real freedom, genuine equality and honest fraternity.”
World History
