“I suppose that’s why you are so partial to Makhno,” put in the Red Army man.
“Makhno represents the real spirit of October,” Yossif replied with warmth. “In the revolutionary povstantsi, whom he leads, is the sole hope of the country. The Ukrainian peasant is an instinctive Anarchist, and his experience has taught him that all governments are essentially alike—taking everything from him and giving nothing in return. He wants to be rid of them; to be left alone to arrange his own life and affairs. He will fight the new tyranny.”
“They are kulaki with petty bourgeois ideas of property,” retorted the Pessimist.
“There is such an element,” Yossif admitted, “but the great majority are not of that type. As to the Makhno movement, it offers the greatest field for propaganda. Nestor, himself an Anarchist, affords us the fullest opportunity to work in his army, even to the extent of supplying us with printed material and machinery for the publication of our newspapers and leaflets. The territory occupied by Makhno is the only place where liberty of speech and press prevails.”
“But not for Communists,” retorted the soldier.
“Makhno justly considers the Communists as much counterrevolutionary as the Whites,” replied Yossif. “But for the revolutionists—for Anarchists, Maximalists, and Left Social Revolutionists—there is full liberty of action in the povstantsi districts.”
“Makhno may call himself an Anarchist,” spoke up M⸺, an Individualist Anarchist, “but I disagree entirely with Yossif about the significance of his movement. I consider his ‘army’ merely an enlarged band of rebel peasants without revolutionary purpose or consciousness.”
“They have been guilty of brutality and pogroms,” added the Pessimist.
“There have been excesses,” Yossif replied, “just as they happen in every army, the Communist not excepted. But Nestor is merciless toward those guilty of Jew-baiting. Most of you have read his numerous proclamations against pogroms, and you know how severely he punishes such things. I remember, for instance, the incident at Verkhny Takmar. It was characteristic. It happened about a year ago, on the 4th or 5th of May, 1919. Makhno, accompanied by several members of his military staff, was on his way from the front to Gulyai-Pole, his headquarters, for a conference with the special Soviet emissaries sent from Kharkov. At the station of Verkhny Takmar Nestor noticed a large poster reading: ‘Kill the Jews! Save Russia! Long live Makhno!’ Nestor sent for the station master. ‘Who put up that poster?’ he demanded. ‘I did,’ replied the official, a peasant who had been in fights against Denikin. Without another word Makhno shot him. That’s the way Nestor treats Jew baiters,” Yossif concluded.
“I have beard many stories of atrocities and pogroms committed by Makhno units,” I remarked.
“They are lies willfully spread by the Bolsheviki,” Yossif asserted. “They hate Nestor worse than they do Wrangel. Trotsky once said that it were better the Ukraine were taken by Denikin than to allow Makhno to continue there. With reason: for the savage rule of the Tsarist generals would soon turn the peasantry against them and thus enable the Bolsheviki to defeat them, while the spread of Makhnovstchina, as the Makhno movement is known, with its Anarchist ideas threatens the whole Bolshevik system. The pogroms ascribed to Makhno upon investigation always prove to have been committed by the Greens or other bandits. The fact is, Makhno and his staff keep up a continuous agitation against religious and nationalistic superstitions and prejudices.”
Though radically differing concerning the character and significance of the Makhnovstchina, those present agreed that Nestor himself is a unique figure and one of the most outstanding personalities on the revolutionary horizon. To his admirer Yossif, however, he typifies the spirit of Revolution as it expresses itself in the feeling, thought, and life of the rebel peasantry of the Ukraine.
XXV
Nestor Makhno
Greatly interested in the personality and activities of Makhno, I induced Yossif to sketch his story in its essential features.
Born of very poor parents in the village of Gulyai-Pole (county of Alexandrovsk, province of Yekaterinoslav, Ukraine), Nestor spent a sunless childhood. His father died early, leaving five small boys to the care of the mother. Already at the tender age of eight young Makhno had to help eke out an existence for the family. In the winter months he attended school, while in the summer he was “hired out” to take care of the rich peasants’ cattle. When not yet twelve years old, he went to work in the neighboring estates, where brutal treatment and thankless labor taught him to hate his hard taskmasters and the Tsarist officials who always sided against the poor. The Revolution of 1905 brought Makhno, then only sixteen, in touch with socialist ideas. The movement for human emancipation and well-being quickly appealed to the intense and imaginative boy, and presently he joined the little group of young peasant Anarchists in his village.
In 1908, arrested for revolutionary activities, Makhno was tried and condemned to death. Because of his youth, however, and the efforts of his energetic mother, the sentence was subsequently commuted to penal servitude for life. He spent seven years in the Butirki prison in Moscow, where his rebellious spirit continually involved him in difficulties with the authorities. Most of the time
