Scenting the dangers of an “historical and political” rehabilitation of Makhno, the ideologues of the Communist Party of the USSR, while they still held absolute power, urgently commissioned a negative study of the subject. One V. N. Volkovinsky published Makhno and his Downfall in Moscow in 1991.19 Rehashing all the old Leninist cliches and relying upon a one-sided critical apparatus, he delivered he latest anathema upon the Ukrainian insurgents. Alas, the USSR (so-called) met its own spectacular “downfall,” whereby the Party-State’s right of imprimatur over historical publications evaporated. Whereupon a whole series of works much more favorably disposed towards the subject saw publication. We shall dwell upon the most significant of these, Viktor Belash’s memoirs (to which we have referred earlier).
Seymanov wrote that in 1976 he had had a visit from Belash’s son who had given him some information about his father: released by the Reds, he had been banished to Krasnodar in the Kuban where he worked as a mechanic in the workshops of the Hunters’ Union (!). In December 1937 he was arrested and sentenced to face a firing squad. On April 29, 1976, he was posthumously rehabilitated on the basis of “insufficient evidence.”
The published book contains the full text of his self-justifying memoirs, drafted in a Cheka jail and fleshed out by his son through the addition of a large number of documents. In spite of our reservations about passages in which the author claims that he was always a passionate advocate of honest alliance with the Reds and offers the occasional criticism and reproach directed at Makhno — it was this that earned him his “freedom” (one thinks here of the Confession that Bakunin wrote for the Tsar and which also earned him his freedom and facilitated his escape from Siberia) — the book as a whole represents an important source of information. For our purposes.
We shall make do with rehearsing the main items of information from Belash which present our monograph in a new light.
Take for a start, the Gulyai-Polye anarcho-communist group in the aftermath of 1905. It had fifty active — activist — members, each of them in touch with a further four sympathizers. It was in close contact with local and regional anarchist groups, having a supply-line to libertarian literature and arms from Ekaterinoslav and Moscow, through Voldemar Antoni, the groups founder and leader. (He was of Czech origin). The group’s members got together with Antoni on an almost daily basis in order to familiarize themselves with the thought of Proudhon, Stirner, Bakunin and Kropotkin. The reforms of Stolypin, the tsarist prime minister — reforms that destroyed the rural commune — were fiercely criticized (p. 13). In 1905 the group passed a resolution attacking “any trespass against the physical integrity” of any member placed under arrest by the authorities: such trespass would be answered by implacable “revenge.” Let us leap forward in time to a full reprint (see pp. 73—89 of Belash’s book) of the minutes of the 2nd Congress of Insurgents on February 12, 1919, which we ourselves have reprinted in part in bur book (see Chapter 14 and the documentary appendices). This, a document of the greatest significance, was drawn first from the archives by Belash’s son. It records the composition and affiliations of the 13 elected members of the revolutionary military soviet; three Left Social Revolutionaries, three Bolshevik-Communists, and seven anarchists (Belash, p. 88). For good measure, Belash’s son also reprints (p. 96) the minutes of the 3rd All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets controlled by the Bolsheviks. Also included is the resolution from the congress of the Makhnovist revolutionary military soviet which drew delegates from 32 districts of the region (pp. 104-105) and which issued a call for a united front of revolutionaries: it recognized the authority of freely elected soviets: it repudiated any party dictatorship; it called for the death penalty for looters, bandits and counter-revolutionaries to be closely supervised by the local revolutionary military tribunal; for immediate abolition of the Cheka: for all unit commanders to be elected: for freedom of speech, press and assembly for all left-wing organizations, without any repression whatsoever: there was an insistence that there be no national persecution within the revolutionary army: and a strict fraternal discipline rooted in awareness of revolutionary duty was introduced. This text was omitted from both Arshinov’s book and my own book here. The Belashs, father and son, cite several Bolshevik memoranda and reports on frictions between the insurgents, the anarchists and Communist political commissars, offering the occasional interesting and unexpected detail — for instance, that two wagon-loads of literature and appeals meant for the inhabitants of Berdyansk and Mariupol and escorted by anarchist and Social Revolutionary agitators, were sent out in March 17, 1919, provoking the wrath of the political commissar author of the report, for they included an appeal from Makhno denouncing the parasites arriving to talk down to and order people around (p. 109). Look at the resolution from the Nabat (Tocsin) anarchist congress of the Ukraine; the one from the 3rd regional congress
Of insurgent soviets, held in Gulyai-Polye on April 10, 1919. Belash gives a detailed breakdown of the military deployment on each front, which affords us some idea of the part played by the Makhnovists. He reprints numerous appeals and proclamations from Makhno (pp. 196—197, 222—226, 230—231, etc.) as well as other articles or texts lifted from the insurgents’ newspapers and now made available for the first time. Precisely what Makhno did not have at hand when he came to write the remainder of his movement’s history (having stopped at December 1918).
A secret order (pp. 238—239) from Trotsky that “the Makhnovschina be mopped up without prevarication or hesitation and with all firmness and severity,” also drawn from the archives, deserves to be publicized, as do other (hitherto unpublished) orders along the same line (pp. 238—239 et seq.). This amounts to a veritable indictment ofTrotsky who stabbed the insurgents in the back and had them gunned down whilst they were trying, with scarcely any arms or munitions, to hold the line against the White offensive; Trotsky’s responsibility here is exposed with plenty of supporting evidence. It is also a terrific indictment of the Bolshevik regime as a whole, which opted to surrender the front to the Whites rather than allow an autonomous popular movement to spread.
Viktor Belash drafted his memoirs on the basis of his staff notes and campaign diary. They offer us a highly detailed picture of insurgent numbers, their organization, the military operations in which they engaged and the outcome thereof.
Apropos of the crucial battle with the Whites in Peregonovka in September 1919, he cites the figure of 18,000 Whites slain.— a considerable toll in terms of the numbers committed. Nearly 7,000 others were eliminated, including 2,500 Chechens, near Alexandrovsk and in the ensuing fighting, etc. At that point the Makhnovists numbered 100,000 men: 250,000, if we count the unarmed reserves in their rear! Their units completely smashed the White rearguard, cutting them off from ports, arms and munitions supply lines in the rear. Denikin was obliged to pull troops out of front line service against the Reds in order to send in his best troops to halt the Makhnovist onslaught. What we have now are detailed figures regarding what we already knew about the crucial significance of the famous encounter at Peregonovka in terms of the outcome of the civil war.
It should be stressed that Belash claims the credit for having dispatched numerous units to all four corners of the territory in order to reap maximum benefits from this victory and this contrary to the opinion of Makhno who allegedly upbraided him for weakening the insurgent army. Among other interesting items, he cites the distribution of wheat to the peasants, free of charge: a 50 percent prior deposit was paid on clothing orders placed with workshops and garment-factories, even though the insurgents were often in no position to pick up those orders on account of the fluid military situation. There are intriguing statistics regarding the social extraction of the insurgents: 25 percent were farmhands or landless peasants, 40 percent were medium-sized or poor peasants, 10 percent were well-to-do peas-
Ants owning no land of their own, 10 percent were landless peasants who earned a living from fishing, 5 percent were drovers, 7 percent industrial and transport workers and, finally, 3 percent were petit bourgeois. Broken down according to age, it transpires that 80 percent of insurgents were aged between 20 and 35- As a result, many had been participants in the 1914—1917 war.
Their geographical provenance is similarly intriguing: 50 percent were from the Ekaterinoslav province, 25 percent from the Tavrida and Kherson, 7 percent from the Don, 8 percent from Poltava province and the remaining 10 percent were drawn from several other regions (Belash, p. 346). In October 1919 the front manned by the Makhnovists covered 1,150 kilometers from end to end (when the Whites’ entire front facing the Reds covered 1,760 kilometers).
Note that in the wake of the second agreement with the Red Army, nearly 8,000 partisans refused to accept this accommodation and left the main body of the army. Even so, the latter fielded 13,000 insurgents along the lines facing the Whites — where they played the telling part of which we know.
One of the most important statistics quoted by Viktor Belash relates to the movement’s political persuasion: of the 40,000 partisans in the insurgent army, in November 1919 — 35,000 of whom were laid low by typhus — 70 percent were Makhnovists and sympathizers, 5 percent of whom were anarchists: 20 percent were sympathetic to the Social Revolutionaries and Petliura: and only 10 percent were former Red Army soldiers, 1 percent of them Bolshevik-Communists (Belash, p. 362).
In short, the Belashs’ book represents a crucial source on the Makhnovist movement. Not merely on account of the statistics cited and the minute descriptions of operations mounted but also because of its reprinting of lots of texts lifted from the archives. It is a splendid book and we look forward to seeing it translated and published in French.
World History
