The Russian Revolution in Ukraine

^{Chapter 1} My Liberation

The February Revolution of 1917 opened the gates of all Russian prisons for political prisoners. There can be no doubt this was mainly brought about by armed workers and peasants taking to the streets, some in their blue smocks, others in grey military overcoats.

These revolutionary workers demanded an immediate amnesty as the first conquest of the Revolution. They made this demand to the state-socialists who, together with bourgeois liberals, had formed the Provisional “Revolutionary” Government with the intention of submitting revolutionary events to their own wisdom. The Socialist-Revolutionary A. Kerensky, the Minister of Justice, rapidly acceded to this demand of the workers. In a matter of days, all political prisoners were released from prison and were able to devote themselves to vital work among the workers and peasants, work which they had started during the difficult years of underground activity.

The tsarist government of Russia, based on the landowning aristocracy, had walled up these political prisoners in damp dungeons with the aim of depriving the labouring classes of their advanced elements and destroying their means of denouncing the iniquities of the regime. Now these workers and peasants, fighters against the aristocracy, again found themselves free. And I was one of them.

The eight years and eight months I spent in prison, during which I was shackled hand and foot (as a “lifer”) and suffered from a serious illness, failed to shake my belief in the soundness of anarchism. For me anarchism meant the struggle against the State as a form of organizing social life and as a form of power over this social life. On the contrary, in many ways my term in prison helped to strengthen and develop my convictions. Because of them I had been seized by the authorities and locked up “for life” in prison.

Convinced that liberty, free labour, equality, and solidarity will triumph over slavery under the yoke of State and Capital, I emerged from the gates of Butyrki Prison on March 2, 1917. Inspired by these convictions, three days after my release I threw myself into the activities of the Lefortovo Anarchist Group right there in Moscow. But not for a moment did I cease to think about the work of our Gulyai-Pole group of peasant anarcho-communists. As I learned through friends, the work of this group, started over a decade earlier, was still on-going despite the overwhelming loss of its leading members.

One thing oppressed me — my lack of the necessary education and practical preparation in the area of the social and political problems of anarchism. I felt this deficiency deeply. But even more deeply I recognized that nine out of ten of my fellow-anarchists were lacking in the necessary preparation for our work. The source of this harmful situation I found in the failure to establish our own school, despite our frequent plans for such a project. Only the hope that this state of affairs would not endure encouraged and endowed me with energy, for I believed the everyday work of anarchists in the intense revolutionary situation would inevitably lead them to a realization of the necessity of creating their own revolutionary organization and building up its strength. Such an organization would be capable of gathering all the available forces of anarchism to create a movement which could act in a conscious and coherent manner. The enormous growth of the Russian Revolution immediately suggested to me the unshakable notion that anarchist activity at such a time must be inseparably connected with the labouring masses. These masses were the element of society most dedicated to the triumph of liberty and justice, to the winning of new victories, and to the creation of a new communal social structure and new human relationships. Such were my cherished thoughts about the development of the anarchist movement in the Russian Revolution and the ideological influence of this movement on revolutionary events.

With these convictions I returned to Gulyai-Pole three weeks after my release from prison. Gulyai-Pole was my home town where there were many people and things close to my mind and heart. There I could do something useful among the peasants. Our group was founded there among the peasants and there it still survived despite losing two-thirds of its members. Some were killed in shootouts, others on the scaffold. Some disappeared into far-off, icy Siberia while others were forced into exile abroad. The entire central core of the group had almost entirely been wiped out. But the ideas of the group had struck deep roots in Gulyai-Pole and even beyond.

The greatest concentration of will-power and a profound knowledge of the goals of anarchism are necessary in order to decide what it is possible to gain from an unfolding political revolution.

It is there in Gulyai-Pole, in the heart of the labouring peasantry, that will arise that powerful revolutionary force — the self-activity of the masses — on which revolutionary anarchism must be based according to Bakunin, Kropotkin, and a host of other theoreticians of anarchism. This force will show to the oppressed class the ways and means of destroying the old regime of slavery and replacing it with a new world in which slavery has disappeared and authority will no longer have a place. Liberty, equality, and solidarity will then be the principles which will guide individuals and human societies in their lives and struggles, and in their quest for new ideas and equitable relations between people. These ideas sustained me through the long years of suffering in prison and now I carried them back with me to Gulyai-Pole.

^{Chapter 2} Meeting with Comrades and First Attempts to Organize Revolutionary Activities

Upon arrival in Gulyai-Pole, I immediately got together with my comrades from the anarchist group. Many of my former comrades had perished. Those who survived from the old days were: Andrei Semenyuta (the brother of Sasha and Prokofii Semenyuta), Moisei Kalinichenko, Filipp Krat, Savva Makhno, the brothers Prokofii and Grigorii Sharovsky, Pavel Korostelev, Lev Schneider, Pavel Sokruta, Isidor Liutii, Aleksei Marchenko, and Pavel Khundei (Korostilev). Together with these comrades came a younger bunch who had not yet joined the group in my time. But now they had been members for two or three years and were busy reading anarchist literature which they distributed to the peasants. Throughout the whole period of underground activity the group had continued to publish leaflets, printed by hectograph.

And how about the peasants and workers, sympathizing with anarchist ideals, who came to visit me? It would be impossible to list them. At that time they really didn’t figure in the plans I was devising for the future work of our group.

I saw before me my own peasant friends — unknown revolutionary anarchist fighters who in their own lives didn’t know what it means to cheat one another. They were pure peasant types, tough to convince, but once convinced, once they had grasped an idea and tested it against their own reasoning, why then they pushed that idea at every conceivable opportunity. Truly, seeing these people before me I trembled with joy and was overcome with emotion. I immediately decided to start the very next day to carry out active propaganda among the peasants and workers of Gulyai-Pole. I wanted to dissolve the Public Committee (the local organ of the Provisional Government) and the militia, and prevent the formation of any more committees. I decided to take up anarchist action as the first order of business.

The visits from the peasants, both men and women, went on continually for a day and a half. Finally, on March 25, these visitors, who had come to meet “the one who rose from the dead” as they expressed it, began to disperse. The members of our group hastily set up a meeting to discuss practical affairs. By this time my enthusiasm for rushing into action had cooled off considerably. In my report I down played for the time being the carrying on of propaganda work among the peasants and workers and the overthrow of the Public Committee. Indeed I surprised my comrades by insisting that we as a group reach a clear understanding of the state of the anarchist movement generally in Russia. The fragmentation of anarchist groups, a phenomenon well-known to me before the Revolution, was a source of dissatisfaction for me personally. I could never be happy with such a situation.

The comrades were pleased with my report but were far from agreeing with my approach to the whole matter. Comrade Kalinichenko sharply criticized this approach, advocating that our role as anarchists in the current revolution should be restricted to publicizing our ideas. He noted that since we could now act openly, we should make use of this situation to explain our ideas to the workers, without involving ourselves in unions or other organizations.

At this juncture we concluded our meeting. It was 7 a.m. I wanted to attend the general meeting of peasants and workers at which the chairman of the Public Committee, Prusinsky, would read the proclamation of the district commissar, giving the official version of the revolutionary upheaval in the country.

For the time being we decided simply to review my report and submit it to further analysis and discussion. Some of the comrades dispersed, others remained with me in order to attend the general meeting together.

At 10:00 a.m. my comrades and I were at the central marketplace; I viewed the square, the residential buildings and schools. I went into one of the schools, met the principal, and spoke with him at length about the program of instruction, something, incidentally, I knew nothing about. According to the principal, the catechism was part of this program and was zealously defended by the priests and, to some extent, by the parents of the students. I was quite upset. Nevertheless, this did not prevent me, some time later, from becoming a member of the Education Society which subsidized this particular school. I firmly believed that by direct participation in this society, I could undermine the religious bases of education…

Towards noon I arrived at the general meeting which had just started with the report of the chairman of the Public Committee, Ensign Prusinsky. (At that time in Gulyai-Pole was stationed the 8th Regiment of the Serbian Army, to which was attached a Russian machine gun unit with 12 machine guns and a complement of 144 men, led by four officers. During the organization of the Public Committee in Gulyai-Pole some of these officers were invited to take part. One of them, namely Prusinsky, was elected chairman of the Public Committee. Another, Lieutenant Kudinov, was elected Chief of the Militia. These two officers, these “public figures”, determined the ordering of social life in Gulyai-Pole.)

At the conclusion of his report, the chairman of the Public Committee asked me to address the Council in support of his views. This I refused to do and instead asked to speak on another matter.

In my speech I pointed out to the peasants the absurdity of allowing in revolutionary Gulyai-Pole such a Public Committee, headed by people who were strangers to the community and who were not accountable to the community for their actions. And I proposed that the assembly immediately delegate four people from each sotnia (Gulyai-Pole was divided into seven wards, called sotnias) to hold a special conference about this and other questions.

The elementary school teachers at the meeting immediately rallied to my position. The principal of one small school, Korpusenko, offered his building for our meeting.

It was decided that delegates should be elected at separate meetings of the sotnias and a day was fixed for the meetings. Thus ended my first public appearance after getting out of prison.

Now the teachers invited me to their own meeting. First I got to know them a little better. One of them turned out to be a Socialist-Revolutionary; the remaining 12 or 14 people were mostly non-Party.

Then we discussed a series of questions related to the inactivity of the teachers. They wanted to take part in public life and were searching for ways of doing this. We decided to act in concert on behalf of the peasants and workers to displace the officer-kulak Committee. This Committee had not been elected by the whole of society but only by its wealthiest elements.

After this I went to a meeting of our whole group.

Here we analyzed my report and Kalenichenko’s criticism of it. As a result, we decided to begin methodical propaganda work in the sotnias: among the peasants, and in the mills and workshops. This agitation work was to be based on two premises:

1. So long as the peasants and workers found themselves in a disorganized state, they would not be able to constitute themselves as a regional social force of anti-authoritarian character, capable of struggling against the “Public Committee”. Up to this point the peasants and workers, whether they liked it or not, had been obliged to adhere to the “Public Committee”, organized under the auspices of the Provisional Coalition Government. That is why it was important to re-elect this Committee in Gulyai-Pole.

2. Sustained agitation must be carried out for the organization of a Peasants’ Union, which we would take part in and in which we would exercise the dominant influence. We would express our lack of confidence in the “Public Committee”, an organ of the central government, and urge the Peasants’ Union to take over this organ.

The comrades, smiling ironically, replied: “Old buddy, you are deviating from the normal Anarchist tactic. We should be listening to the voice of our movement, as you yourself called upon us to do at our first meeting.”

Well, a whole week was spent in discussions. Nevertheless, all of us had already started work in our chosen fields, in accordance with the decision we had agreed to.

^{Chapter 3} Organization of the Peasants’ Union

About the middle of the week, the elected delegates gathered at the school to discuss the re-election of the Public Committee.

For this meeting I, along with some of the teachers, had prepared a general report which the teacher Korpusenko was chosen to read. This report was well-conceived and well-written.

The elected peasant delegates consulted with the delegates from the factory workers and jointly passed a resolution demanding the re-election of the “Public Committee”. At the insistence of the teachers Lebedev and Korpusenko, I contributed some words of introduction to this resolution.

The delegates returned to their own electors and discussed the resolution with them. When the resolution had been confirmed by the electors, a date was set for new elections.

Meanwhile the members of our group were preparing the peasants for the organization of the Peasants’ Union.

During this period an agent arrived from the District Committee of the Peasants’ Union, formed from the ranks of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. This was Comrade Krylov-Martynov, who was charged with organizing a committee of the Peasants’ Union in Gulyai-Pole.

As a former political prisoner, he was interested in my life history, so we met and went to my place to drink tea and talk. And he ended up staying there till the next day.

Meanwhile I had asked the members of our group to prepare the peasants for a general assembly on the next day to deal with the found of the Peasants’ Union.

The SR Krylov-Martynov was an effective orator. He described in glowing terms to the peasants the impending struggle of the Socialist-Revolutionaries for the transfer of land to the peasants without compensation. This struggle was to take place in the Constituent Assembly, expected to be convened in the near future. For this struggle the support of the peasants was required. He appealed to them to organize themselves into a Peasants’ Union and support the Socialist-Revolutionary Party.

This provided an opening for me and several other members of our group to intervene. I said:

The SR agent of the District Party Committee of the Peasants’ Union was not perturbed by our intervention. In fact he agreed with us. And so on March 28–29, 1917, was founded the Gulyai-Pole Peasants’ Union.

The Executive Committee of the Union was composed of 28 members, all peasants, including myself, in spite of my asking the peasants not to nominate me as a candidate. For I was busy opening an office for our group and editing its Statement of Principles.

The peasants honoured my request by nominating me in four sotnias in each of which I was elected unanimously. Thus the Executive Committee of the Peasants’ Union was elected.

The peasants proceeded to choose me as chairman of the Executive Committee.

The registration of members in the Union was begun. In the space of four or five days all the peasants joined, with the exception, naturally, of land-owning proprietors. These defenders of private property in land had isolated themselves from the labouring masses. They hoped to form a separate group, including the most ignorant of their own hired hands. In this way they hoped to hold out until the Constituent Assembly was convened, at which point they could prevail with the help of the Social-Democrats (at that time still vigorously maintaining the right to private ownership of land).

Admittedly, the labour peasantry had no need of such friends as the landed proprietors. Indeed they were regarded as the mortal enemies of the labouring peasants, who realized that only the forcible expropriation of their land and its transformation into communal property would render them harmless.

Unshakably convinced of this idea, which they freely expressed among themselves, the labouring peasantry thus passed judgement in advance on the Constituent Assembly.

So the Gulyai-Pole Peasants’ Union was organized. But the Union as yet had not absorbed the whole labouring peasantry of Gulyai-Pole raion, which included a number of settlements and villages. Therefore the Union could not act in a sufficiently decisive fashion to exert an influence on other raions, and to carry out the organized revolutionary work of dispossessing the proprietors of their land and distributing it for the general use of the community.

So I left Gulyai-Pole, along with the secretary of the Executive Committee of the Union in order to make a tour of the raion, establishing Peasant Unions in these settlements and villages.

Upon my return, I reported to my group about our successes, emphasizing the evident revolutionary mood of the peasants, which we were obliged to support with all the means at our disposal, while directing it carefully but firmly towards the anti-authoritarian mode of action.

In our group there was much rejoicing and each member told me about his own work on our project, what sort of impression our work was producing on the peasants, etc.

The secretary of our group, Comrade Krat, who had filled in for me during my absence, told about the arrival in Gulyai-Pole of new agitators from Aleksandrovsk. They had delivered speeches in favour of the War and the Constituent Assembly and had tried to get their resolutions accepted. But the peasants and workers of Gulyai-Pole rejected these resolutions, declaring to the agitators that they were in the process of organizing themselves and were in no position to accept resolutions from outside…

Each of us was cheered by these encouraging signs, inspiring us to tireless revolutionary activity…

^{Chapter 4} Examination of the Police Files

At about this time, the leaders of the Gulyai-Pole Militia, Lieutenant Kudinov and his secretary, the inveterate Kadet A. Rambievski, invited me to help them sift through the files of the Gulyai-Pole police administration.

Since I attached great significance to these files, I asked our group to appoint another comrade to join me. I considered this matter so important that I was prepared to temporarily set aside all other work.

Some of the comrades, Kalinichenko and Krat in particular, scoffed at the idea of my wanting to help the Militia bosses. Only after a lively discussion did Comrade Kalinichenko acknowledge what had to be done and agree to accompany me to examine the files.

There was a document about Petr Sharovsky, a former member of our group, attesting that he had performed great services as a secret agent of the police…

I took all the documents with me to the group. Unfortunately, most of the people implicated by the files had been killed in the War. The only survivors were Sopliak and P. Sharovsky, along with Constables Osnishchenko and Bugayev. The last two liked to disguise themselves in civilian clothes during their off-duty hours and go snooping around the homes of people suspected of political activities.

We made a note of these survivors but considered it inappropriate to kill them at the present time. Anyway, three of them (Sopliak, Sharovsky, and Bugayev) were not in Gulyai-Pole; they had made themselves scarce shortly after my arrival.

The document about Petr Sharovsky, proving his betrayal of Aleksandr Semenyuta and Marfe Piven to the police, was publicized by me at a general meeting.

But the documents about the other three were kept secret for the time being. We hoped they would show themselves in Gulyai-Pole sooner or later and we would be able to seize them without too much difficulty. The former constable Nazar Onishchenko was now living in Gulyai-Pole but never showed himself at councils or meetings. After the Revolution had disbanded the police, he was called up for military service by the new government, but soon contrived to leave the Front and return home.

Shortly after the documents about Sharovsky were publicized, I ran into Nazar Onishchenko right in the middle of town. This was the policeman and secret agent who had once searched my room. He had also permitted himself to search my mother, and when she protested, he slapped her. Now this scoundrel, who was so corrupt he had once turned in his own brother for the reward, rushed up to me in the street and, snatching off his cap, cried: “Nestor Ivanovich! How do you do!” And he extended his hand.

How awful! What a loathing this Judas aroused in me just with his voice, his facial expression, his mannerisms! I began to tremble with rage and screamed at him: “Get away from me, scoundrel, before I put a bullet in you!”

He recoiled and his face turned white as snow.

Without even thinking, I reached in my pocket and nervously fingered my revolver. Should I kill this dog here, or would it be better to wait? Reason won out over fury and the thirst for revenge. Overcome by my agitation, I made my way to a nearby store and collapsed into a chair at the entrance.

The owner of the store, a shop where flour was sold, greeted me and tried to ask me something but I didn’t understand him. I apologized for sitting in his chair and asked him to leave me alone. Ten minutes later I asked a peasant passing by to help me get to the Executive Committee of the Peasants’ Union.

The members of our group and the Executive Committee of the Peasants’ Union learned about my encounter with Onishchenko. They insisted on publicizing the document which incriminated him as an agent of the secret police. (That he had been an ordinary policeman was of course well-known to the peasants and workers. He had arrested and beaten up many of them.)

All of the comrades spoke in favour of making public this document, to be followed by Onishchenko’s execution.

I objected, entreating the comrades to leave him alone for the time being. I noted there were more important secret agents, Sopliak, for example, who had been a specialist in undercover work, according to the available documents. He had worked for a long time in Gulyai-Pole, as well as in Pologi, among the workers at the depot. He had taken part in the manhunt for Comrade Semenyuta.

Bugayev was also an accomplished undercover agent, an expert at disguise. He would go wherever peasants and workers were gathered with his tray of bagels and seltzer water, passing himself off as a pedlar. He was especially active during the period when the Tsarist government had put up a 2,000 rouble reward on the head of Aleksandr Semenyuta. More than once this Bugayev had disguised himself, together with Police Chief Karachentz and Nazar Onishchenko, and the three of them disappeared for whole weeks. Abandoning their official posts, they drifted about the raion of Gulyai-Pole, or the workers’ quarters of Aleksandrovsk and Ekaterinoslav. Chief Karachentz was killed by Comrade Semenyuta at the Gulyai-Pole theatre. Bugyaev, Sopliak, and Sharovsky were still alive and hiding somewhere not far away.

That’s why we couldn’t touch Onishchenko. We had to fortify ourselves with patience and try to get our hands on the others. According to information from the peasants, they occasionally showed themselves in Gulyai-Pole. Therefore I asked the comrades to leave Onishchenko in peace, in the hopes we could seize all these scoundrels and kill them, because such people are pernicious for any human society. I told the comrades, “These people can’t be rehabilitated because they have committed the worst of crimes: they sold themselves for money and they betrayed their friends. A revolution must annihilate them. A free society where there is complete equality has no need of traitors. They must all perish, either by their own hands or by the hands of the revolutionary vanguard.”

All my friends and comrades now refrained from their insistence that Onishchenko be immediately exposed as the perpetrator of the worst of crimes.

^{Chapter 5} Re-election of the Public Committee; Whether or Not to Get Involved in It

Our group occupied itself for a time with internal matters, giving some structure to the organization and distributing tasks among our members, strong in numbers but weak intellectually (we now had over 80 members). One of these tasks was taking out subscriptions to all the Anarchist newspapers being published in Russia and Ukraine. During this period the re-election of the Public Committee was begun.

Along with some other comrades from our group, I was nominated again by the peasants and was elected.

This was the situation. Some of the peasants abstained from voting. The ones who did take part in the election for the most part voted for members of our group or for people sympathetic to us. In spite of the entreaties of my electors, I refused to represent them on the Public Committee. I did not do so from principle, for I was not aware of what position the anarchists of the cities might have taken on this question of whether or not to take part in such institutions if elected. I had made an inquiry through the secretary of the Federation of Moscow Anarchists but did not receive a reply in time. Rather I refused for a more important reason: my entry into the Public Committee via the usual formal election process would be counterproductive to all my plans, which were geared towards attenuating the power of these committees with their governmental form and functions, while building alternatives with our Group and the peasants.

These plans had been adopted by our group and because of them I had accepted the chairmanship of the Executive Committee of the Peasants’ Union.

These plans of mine had been designed with several aims in mind:

This principles inspired the plan of action which I had presented to the group of comrades upon my arrival from Moscow. I had nagged, implored, and persuaded the comrades to accept my plans as the basis of our future program of action among the labouring peasantry. Because of these principles I decided to abandon many tactical positions adopted by the anarchist group of the 1906–1907 period. At that time the anarchists were less interested in mass organizational work than in preserving their own exclusiveness. Isolated in their own circles and groups, they developed abnormally and became mentally sluggish through lack of involvement in practical work. Thus they lost the possibility of intervening effectively at times of popular uprisings and revolution.

My plans were totally accepted by our group of anarcho-communists. Through our activities these plans, refined and corrected, eventually embraced an overwhelming majority of the peasants of Gulyai-Pole. In fact this required several months. We shall describe in detail the activities of our Group, which participated fully in the successive phases of the Revolution.

^{Chapter 6} The Role of Teachers. Our Work in the Public Committee

Earlier I said the elementary school teachers of Gulyai-Pole had supported us from the time of my first speech before the assembly of peasants and workers. But I neglected to mention what this support was based on. The teachers agreed with my comment that it was shameful for the working intelligentsia to remain inactive at such a critical moment. The peasantry was experiencing great difficulties due to the lack of participation of the intelligentsia in their movement.

Now the teachers threw themselves into practical work. They took part in the elections to the Public Committee, were nominated and elected. Of the 14 teachers in Gulyai-Pole, six were elected by the peasants.

The peasantry, with the help of the Anarchist Communist Group, took a close look at the services rendered by the intelligentsia to the peasants and workers. They observed that historically the activities of the village teachers could be divided into three phases. Beginning in 1900, the teachers had gone to work with enthusiasm to enlighten the village poor. But the reaction setting in after 1905 put an end of this energetic and high-minded impulse on the part of the teachers. Their work in the villages faltered. Only on the eve of the World War did the teachers stir themselves again, with faith and hope, to renew their work in the backward villages. But the War, this sudden, bloody blow against civilization, deflected them from their task. The teachers as a whole became the most fervent patriots, and their cultural-educational work was directed to the profit of the war-effort…

It’s true that only three or four of the Gulyai-Pole teachers passed through each of these stages in their own professional careers. The rest were all young and had not yet experienced such inevitable vicissitudes in their own careers. They all applied themselves sincerely to work with the peasants and workers. Some of them, like A. Korpussenko, G. Belouss, Lebedev, G. Kuzmenko, and Maria Alekseyeva, despite having no experience in practical revolutionary work, made every effort to make themselves useful to the vanguard of peasants and workers. In these early months of the Revolution, the teachers did not aspire to direct the movement of peasants and workers. This fact allowed the teachers to work closely and in harmony with the labouring poor.

At first the peasants regarded the teachers with suspicion. But there came a moment, in the exhilarating rush of events, when everyone was inspired with the spirit of the Revolution and came together in the name of its success. Then the peasants and workers accepted the teachers among themselves. At such a moment the peasants elected teachers to the Public Committee. It was also at this time that the Peasants’ Union moved to take control of the Public Committee of Gulyai-Pole. This control was exercised through its own delegation to the Public Committee. I recall the first day we went to the Public Committee, myself and five comrades. We thought our presence would provoke a scandal, that the Committee would not accept a delegation from the Peasants’ Union sent to oversee their work. But things turned out just the opposite. We were met with open arms by those members of the Committee noted for their political chicanery — the representatives of the merchants and shop-owners and those from the Jewish community. These people had got on the Committee to look after their own interests. But now they declared nothing would please them more than friendly collaboration with the peasants in the field of social reconstruction. Up to the moment, it seems, they had not found practical means to convince the peasantry of their disinterested concern. “And now, happily, the peasants themselves have shown the way!” exclaimed one of these slimy characters. So they greeted us, the representatives of the peasants.

Thus six members of the Peasants’ Union were co-opted into the Public Committee. It was essential for them to stand firm in this post, so fraught with danger to the cause of the peasants, and not fall under the influence of ideas inimical to the revolutionary goals of the peasantry. Special vigilance was required of members of the Peasants’ Union who found themselves in institutions such as the Public Committee, which never made a move without orders from the central government or its agents of the S-R or Kadet variety. The peasant delegates had to remain steadfast in their convictions as they were confronted with problems posed to the labouring classes by the developing Revolution, a Revolution which had so far taken shape only in a political sense. With each passing month the actions of the labouring classes were changing the character of the Revolution, liberating it from its initial political framework.

The Peasants’ Union considered the matter of its delegation to the Public Committee very carefully, according to the reports of the Anarchist Communist Group. The mandate of the delegation was formulated as follows: “The Peasants’ Union of Gulyai-Pole, empowering six of its members (N. Makhno, F. Krat, Andrei Semenyuta, P. Korostelyev, G. Sepega, and M. Shramko) to attend all the meetings of the Public Committee and monitor its politics, considers it important that members of the Union control the Land Section of the Committee.” (From the minutes of the Peasants’ Union for April, 1917.)

This last question was crucial for the labouring peasantry as the Land Sections of the Public Committees, following directions from the Centre, were insisting the peasants continue to pay rent to the landlords, pending the resolution of the land question by the Constituent Assembly. The peasants, on the other hand, given some political freedom by the Revolution, considered their slavery and exploitation at the hands of the idle landlords at an end.

The peasants were still badly organized and scarcely prepared to cope with the problems posed by the seizure of land from the landlords, the monasteries, and the State, and its declaration as social property. That’s why they insisted the Union should get control of the Land Section. In fact the peasants insisted the business of the Land Section be submitted to the members of the Anarchist Communist Group. But we, the members of the Group, entreated them not to formulate this demand for the time being, as we wished to avoid premature armed struggle with the authorities of Aleksandrovsk (our uyezd). Meanwhile the Group resolved to lead an intensive agitation in Gulyai-Pole and the surrounding region to encourage the peasants to pressure the Public Committee to abolish its Land Section and allow them to organize independent Land Committees.

This propaganda was greeted by the peasants with enthusiasm. However, from the central authorities came an order to the Public Committee stating that the Land Sections were part of the Public Committees and must not be abolished but rather renamed “Land Departments”… (And later, as we shall see, the Land Departments were renamed “Land Committees” by the government itself.)

Carrying out our mandates from the Peasants’ Union, we succeeded in gaining control of the Land Department which I was put in charge of. With the support of the Peasants’ Union and the Public Committee itself, as well as the approval of the A-K Group, I became for a time the de facto ideological leader of the whole Public Committee.

Our group embarked on this dangerous path thanks solely to my influence. I was driven to this course by my reading of our anarchist press during the first two months of the Revolution. Not a trace could I find of any efforts on the part of the anarchists to create a powerful organization which would master the psychology of the toiling masses and show its organizing skills in developing and defending the nascent Revolution. I saw this movement so dear to me splintered as in the past into various groupuscles. So I made up my mind to provide an impetus towards unification of the movement by setting an example with an anarcho-communist group from the downtrodden countryside. This was all the more important to me as I sensed a certain disdain for the countryside among our urban propagandists.

^{Chapter 7} The First of May. Relationship of the Peasants to the Land Question

1 May 1917. Ten years had passed since I last participated in this labour holiday so I made a special effort to carry out agitational work to organize its celebration among the workers, the soldiers of the artillery detachments, and the peasants.

I collected all the documents relating to the actions of the workers of the cities during the last days of April and presented them to our group, so that our members could prepare their own interpretations for agitational work among the peasants, workers, and soldiers.

The commander of the 8th Serbian regiment sent a delegation to us to sound us out on the wish of this regiment of the Serbian state to participate with the toilers of Gulyai-Pole in the workers’ holiday. Of course we had no objection, even when they proposed to take part fully armed. We relied on our own strength which was quite sufficient to disarm this regiment, if necessary.

Demonstrations began in the streets of Gulyai-Pole at 9:00 a.m. The assembly point of all the demonstrations was Market Square, now knows as Martyrs of the Revolution Square.

Without wasting any time, the anarchists delivered the news about the actions of the Petrograd proletariat of April 18–22, pressuring the government to dismiss ten capitalist ministers and transfer all power to the Soviets of Peasants’, Workers’, and Soldiers’ Deputies. The anarchists described how these actions were suppressed by force of arms. This news transformed the character of the demonstration which became hostile to the Provisional Government and all the socialists who took part in that government.

The commander of the 8th Serbian regiment made haste to lead his troops back to their quarters. Part of the artillery detachment declared their solidarity with the anarchists and joined the ranks of the demonstrators.

The demonstrators were so numerous that their procession seemed endless. After passing a resolution, “Down with the Government and all the parties responsible for inflicting this disgrace on us…”, they marched through the streets singing the March of the Anarchists. In ranks five to eight abreast it took several hours for their column to pass.

The mood was so elated and hostile to the Government and its agents, that the politicians of the Public Committee and the officers of the artillery detachment took refuge at the headquarters of the Serbian regiment. The only exceptions were two officials who were favourites of the soldiers: the anarchist sympathizer Shevchenko and the artist Bogdanovich. The Militia, which during its brief existence had yet to make a single arrest, disappeared entirely from Gulyai-Pole.

The anarchists told the mass of demonstrators about the Chicago anarchist martyrs. The demonstrators honoured their memory by kneeling with bowed heads and then asked the anarchists to lead them without delay to fight against the Government, its agents, and the bourgeoisie.

The day passed, however, without violence.

At that time the authorities of Aleksandrovsk and Ekaterinoslav were keeping a close eye on Gulyai-Pole and would have liked nothing better than to provoke us prematurely to battle.

The whole month of May was devoted to intensive work in the peasant congresses of Gulyai-Pole and Aleksandrovsk.

At the Aleksandrovsk congress I reported that the toiling peasantry of Gulyai-Pole did not trust the Public Committees to carry out the work of the Revolution and had taken control of the local committee. And I explained just how this was done.

The delegates of the peasants at this congress congratulated the peasants of Gulyai-Pole and promised to follow their example. The S-Rs at the congress registered their approval but the S-Ds and Kadets complained that the approach taken by the peasants of Gulyai-Pole towards the Public Committees ran counter to the general political line of the new government. According to them the taking over of established territorial administrations (the Public Committees) by a peasant organization was ruinous to the revolutionary cause for it was undermining the prestige of the local government organs.

One of the peasants exclaimed: “You’re absolutely right! That’s exactly what we’re doing. We shall try in each of our districts to subvert the governmental pretensions of these Public Committees until we adapt them to our own outlook, until they accept our right to freedom and independent action in the seizing of the land from the pomeshchiks.”

This declaration from the ranks of the peasant delegates sufficed to quiet the S-Ds and Kadets. Otherwise the peasant delegates would have left the meeting hall. The S-Ds and Kadets had no desire to be left in an empty hall for at this period of the Revolution they still hoped to master the revolutionary mood of the toilers.

This congress of Aleksandrovsk ended with the passing of a revolution about the transfer of the land into the hands of labouring society without compensation. A provincial committee was elected. The S-Rs rejoiced while the S-Ds and Kadets were furious. The peasant delegates dispersed to their own districts, resolved to organize themselves without the assistance of these political “prattlers”, to unify their villages in order to carry out a common armed struggle against the pomeshchiks. “Otherwise,” they said, “the Revolution will perish and we shall again be left without land…”

When M. Shramko and I returned from the provincial congress of Aleksandrovsk and reported the results to the Peasants’ Union of Gulyai-Pole raion, the peasants regretted very much having sent us to this congress. They said: “It would have been better for us not to participate in this congress, rather we should have held our own congress here in Gulyai-Pole for the raions of Aleksandrovsk uyezd. We are convinced that here we would have made more rapid progress towards our goal of seizing the land for social use. But it’s too late now. We hope our Gulyai-Pole Committee of the Peasants’ Union will make known our position on this question not only to peasants of Aleksandrovsk uyezd, but also to those of the adjacent uyezds: Pavlograd, Mariupol’, Berdyansk, and Melitopol’. Let them know we won’t be satisfied with resolutions — it is necessary to act.”

This stance on the part of the peasants gave rise to the Declaration of the Gulyai-Pole Peasants’ Union stating that “the toiling peasants of the Gulyai-Pole raion believe in their inalienable right to proclaim as communal property the lands of the pomeschchiks, the monasteries, and the State, and intend to carry this into effect in the near future.” A special leaflet was issued urging the toiling peasantry to prepare themselves for this act of justice.

The voice of the Gulyai-Pole peasants was heard far beyond the borders of Ekaterinoslav gubernia. Delegates from peasant villages in other provinces began to arrive in Gulyai-Pole for consultations. This went on for several weeks. As Chairman of the Peasants’ Union, I was constantly busy with these delegations.

Comrades from other organizations had to fill in for me in my regular duties while I carried on discussions with the visiting delegates. To some I gave advice, to others direct instructions on how to organize the peasants into unions and prepare them for the seizure of the land. And having seized the land from the oppressors, the next step would be either to set up agricultural communes on the former estates, or divide up the land and distribute it to the needy.

Most of the delegations told me: “It would be a good thing if Gulyai-Pole were to act first.”

“Why?” I asked. The answer was always the same: “We don’t have any organizers. We read little and hardly any information reaches us. Agitators haven’t appeared among us… and we would not even have read the proclamations of your Union and the Anarchist Communist Group if our sons who work at the Yuzovsky Mine had not sent them to us.”

Listening to the voice of the downtrodden countryside, I felt pain but also anger. I cursed the comrades holed up in the cities, forgetting the oppressed countryside. And yet the triumph of the Revolution ultimately would depend on the countryside. Meanwhile the Provisional Government was already beginning to slow down the revolutionary process, to take control. The creative development of the toilers, gradually becoming conscious of themselves and their rights, was being replaced by written programs meaningless for the real life of the country.

And the more this mental anguish tormented me, the more I was moved to search out the most out-of-the-way corners of the countryside, together with my comrades, to tell the peasants the truth about their situation and about the state of the Revolution. I was willing to set aside all commitments in Gulyai-Pole for the moment, to carry this message to the peasants, for unless they threw their fresh energies into the struggle, the Revolution was doomed.

This work kept me away from Gulyai-Pole for several days. At this time I was cheered by the imminent return of P. A. Kropotkin to Russia, knowing he would draw the attention of the comrades to the oppressed countryside. And who knows? — maybe our old mentor, Uncle Vanya (Nikolai Rogdaev), who had been so active in Ukraine in tsarist times, would also return, along with other comrades less well-known but very active in the old days. Then our activity would get a real boost. The toiling masses would receive thoroughgoing replies to the questions which tormented them. The voice of anarchism would be heard everywhere in the oppressed countryside and would collect and group under its banner the toiling masses to do battle with the pomeshchiks and factory owners for a new world of freedom, equality, and solidarity among all the people.

I believed in this project to the point of fanaticism, and on its behalf I became more and more absorbed in the everyday life of the peasants and workers. I strongly urged the Gulyai-Pole Anarchist Group to do the same.

^{Chapter 8} The Workers’ Strike

Early in June the anarchists of Aleksandrovsk invited me to a conference being held to unify all the local anarchists into a federation. I came immediately to help the comrades come to an agreement. The Aleksandrovsk anarchists were all manual or intellectual workers. Formally they were divided into anarchocommunists and anarcho-individualists, but in reality they were all revolutionary anarcho-communists. All of them I esteemed as the closest of friends and I did my best to help them set up a federation. After organizing themselves, they began to organize the workers and for a time had a great ideological influence on them.

When I returned from Aleksandrovsk, the workers of the Gulyai-Pole Union of Metal and Carpentry Workers invited me to help them set up their union and sign up as a member myself. And when I did this they asked me to direct their impending strike.

Now I was completely absorbed, firstly by the affairs of the Peasant’s Union, secondly by the workers. However, among the workers there were comrades with a better grasp of workplace problems than myself, for which I was grateful. I undertook to lead the strike, hoping to win over these fine comrades and draw them into our Group. One of them — V. Antonov — was sympathetic to the S-Rs. The others were non-party. Of these especially energetic were Seregin and Mironov.

Before declaring the strike, the workers of both foundries, all the mills, home workshops, blacksmith’s and joiner’s shops held a meeting. The upshot was that I was asked to formulate their demands and present them through the union executive to the owners of the enterprises. While this was going on it became clear to me that comrades Antonov, Seregin, and Mironov had been working as anarchists for quite some time in the workshop committees. In fact Antonov had been elected chairman of the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies. These comrades had not joined our Group only because they were overloaded with their work in the shops. Naturally I was against this. From the day of my return from prison I had insisted on the necessity of our Group being well-informed about the work of all our supporters among the peasants. So I strongly urged these comrades to join the Group immediately and in future to coordinate with us their own work in the workshop committees and among the workers generally. The comrades entered the Group and then joined with me in summoning the proprietors of all the enterprises in order to present them with the workers’ demands, which reduced simply to: a wage increase of 80 to 100 percent.

Such a proposal from the workers aroused a storm of protest from the proprietors who categorically refused a wage hike of any such proportions. We gave them one day to consider our position while the workers continued to work at their machines. The next day the proprietors came to the Union Soviet with their own counter proposal of a 35 to 40 percent wage increase. As representatives of the workers we considered this offer insulting and, after a lengthy debate which became abusive on both sides, we offered them one more day to reconsider, as required by civil law. The proprietors and their agents, some of whom knew the constitutions of trade unions by heart and were socialists by conviction, left the meeting assuring us they would not be returning the next day with an offer higher than the one already on the table. They knew the central authorities would back them up.

We called together the members of the workshop committees and representatives from the home workshops and discussed a simultaneous work stoppage for the following day, timed to coincide with the moment when the proprietors would leave the trade union Soviet after arriving without a new offer. It was decided that the Soviet must plant one of its supporters at the telephone exchange to connect my telephone directly with all the workshops. Then I could advise the workers of the rejection of their demands and the owners, upon returning to their enterprises, would be greeted by demonstrations of striking workers.

I now proposed to the members of the Trade Union executive and factory committees a plan of expropriation of all the money capital to be found in the enterprises and the Gulyai-Pole Bank. I had no illusions about our ability to take over the enterprises, even with this cash at our disposal. The uyezd and gubernica Public Service Committees as well as the commissars of the central government would send troops. And these troops, hoping to win favour with the central authorities and avoid being sent to the front to face the Germans, would shoot the best militants of the workers, myself in particular. It was important to me to bring forward the idea of expropriation of capitalist enterprises at a time when the Provisional Government had still not succeeded in controlling the labouring masses and diverting them counter-revolutionary ways.

However, the majority of members of the trade union and factory committees earnestly requested that I refrain from presenting such a plan of action to the mass of the workers. They said we weren’t ready for such a step, justified though it might be, and premature action on our part might jeopardize any possibility of carrying out such a program in the future, when we would be better prepared.

After a frank discussion, the members of the Group came to the same conclusion. If my proposals were carried out now, the workers would have to depend on the peasantry to sustain them by expropriating the estates of the pomeshchiks. Practically this wouldn’t be possible until the fall harvest. Thus we would be taking a fatal step.

These conclusions shook me. I no longer insisted on immediate expropriation of the factories and workshops. But I urged that my proposal be accepted as the basis of the work of the factory committees — namely to prepare the workers to carry out expropriation in the near future. I assured the worker comrades that the peasants were also thinking along the same lines and said we must devote all our strength to coordinate the aspirations of both peasants and workers that they might be realized in practice simultaneously.

My position was adopted. At that time I was elected by all the workers as chairman of the Trade Union and Mutual Aid fund. Comrade Antonov was selected to be my deputy and replacement in the event of my being overloaded with work in other organizations.

The peasants also chose a comrade as a back-up who could replace me. But in both cases the rank-and-file insisted any initiatives come from me and that I coordinate the activities of both organizations.

The proprietors of the factories, mills and workshops came again to the Trade Union Soviet. Their position had not changed from the previous day. After two hours of bargaining they had a fit of generosity and agreed to increase wages by 45 to 60 percent. My response, as chairman of the meeting, was to declare our negotiations at an end. “The Trade Union Soviet has empowered me to take control over all public enterprises directed by you, citizens, but not rightfully belonging to you. We shall settle with you on the street in front of your respective businesses. Meeting adjourned!”

I collected my papers and headed for the telephone. At this moment, the owner of the largest factory in Gulyai-Pole, Boris Mikhailovich Kerner, got up from his seat and exclaimed: “Nestor Ivanovich, don’t be in such a hurry to end the meeting. Personally I consider the workers’ demand totally justified. They are right to expect us to comply with their proposal and I, for one, will sign my agreement to this…”

The other proprietors and especially their agents cried indignantly: “What are you doing, Boris Mikhailovich?”

“No, no, gentlemen, you do as you wish. I’m obligated to satisfy the demand of my workers,” replied Kerner.

I told them all to calm down, called for order, and asked: “Citizens, you’re all sticklers for law and order. Is it legal to re-open the meeting to discuss the same question which led to its adjournment?”

“Certainly, certainly!” was heard from all the proprietors and their agents.

“Then I declare the meeting open and propose that all of you sign the contract raising the workers’ wages by 80 to 100 percent.” And I handed out copies of the contract previously prepared. Feeling rather faint from fatigue and nervous tension, I handed over the meeting to comrade Mironov and retired to another room to take a short break.

Half an hour later I returned to the meeting hall. The proprietors began to sign the text of my proposed conditions. When they had all signed and left the Union hall, I sat at the telephone and called the worker-comrades in all the enterprises about the success of our negotiations, about the acceptance of our demands, and advised everyone to stay at their jobs until evening. And in the evening the members of the Union Soviet made detailed reports about our collective victory…

From that time on the workers of Gulyai-Pole and the surrounding region prepared themselves and organized all their workplaces. They studied the economic and administrative aspects of their enterprises and readied themselves for the seizure and direct management of these businesses.

Also from this time Gulyai-Pole attracted the special attention of the Ekaterinoslav Public Committee, along with the Ukrainian nationalist “Selyan’ska spilka”, [Peasants’ Union] the Provincial Soviet of Workers’, Peasants’, and Soldiers’ Deputies, and the Provincial Industrial Committee, not to mention various Aleksandrovsk organizations controlled by agents of the Provisional Government. The visits to Gulyai-Pole of instructors, organizers, and propagandists from these places became more frequent.

But these agents always left without results, stymied by the actions of the peasant- and the worker-anarchists.

^{Chapter 9} Some Results

Let’s move on to the “Public Committee” and look at how we, delegates from the Peasants’ Union, made use of the authority of this Committee in our region.

In the first place, having taken over the Land Department, we also tried to ensure that the Department of Provisioning was also an independent entity. When the time came that I had taken over the whole Committee, myself and some of my comrades on the Committee demanded the abolition of the Militia. When the central authorities would not allow this, we deprived the Militia of the right to make independent arrests and searches and thereby reduced its role to acting as a courier service for the Public Committee. Furthermore, I summoned all the landowners and kulaks and collected from them all the documents concerning their acquisition of privately-owned land. By means of these documents the Land Department produced a precise account of all the wealth in land at the disposal of the pomeshchiks and kulaks for their idle life-style.

We organized as part of the Soviet of Workers’ and Peasants’ Deputies a Committee of Batraks and created a batrak movement against the pomeshchiks and kulaks who were living on their labour.

We established practical control of the batraks over the pomeshchik and kulak estates and khutors, preparing the batraks to unite with the peasants and act together to expropriate all the wealth of individuals and declare it the social property of the toilers.

After all this, I personally was already losing interest in the Public Committee as an institution through which, within the framework of the existing order, one could do things legally which would keep the Revolution moving forward among the oppressed toilers in the countryside.

After consulting with a number of different comrades, I proposed to the whole group to establish an obligation for all our members: to propagandize among the peasants and workers urging them to change by any means possible their Public Committees, which tended to be less dependent on the will and rights of the peasants and workers than on the orders of some government commissar.

“Indeed,” I said, “The Public Committees as territorial extension of the government cannot be revolutionary entities around which the living forces of the Revolution can group themselves. As the Revolution develops they must disappear. The labouring masses will dissolve them. The Social Revolution demands it.

“Taking a look now at the Social Revolution, we must work in the name of its ideas, we must help the peasants and workers move forward. We cannot allow the Public Committees to ignore the will of those who elected them. All their decisions (decisions and orders of the government) must be presented at general meetings — meetings of all citizens — for approval or rejection.

“It is now the end of June. That means that we, peasant and worker anarchists, have had four months to work legally among the oppressed toilers. It seems to me we have accomplished something in this time. Now we need to draw the proper conclusions from our experiences. Then we shall embark on new activity which reflects the ultimate goal of our movement. This activity must take place outside the Public Committee. We now have connections with a whole series of regions where our ideas carry influence. And among them is Kamishevatsky raion where our comrades are playing a leading role in everything. This raion has already responded to our request for support in our struggle against the Aleksandrovsk Public Committee. The representative from this raion, Comrade Dudnik, has visited us three times in order to coordinate the actions of the workers of the Kamishevatsky region with the actions of the Gulyai-Pole workers. With each passing day the workers of other raions pay more attention to the voices of Gulyai-Pole and organize themselves according to our principles, in spite of attempts to dissuade them on the part of the S-Rs, S-Ds, and Kadets. [At that time there were no Bolsheviks in the villages.]

“After a serious, four-month study of the Revolution, we know it is time to move forward in a definite direction and to directly oppose the activity of the politicians — those of the right already in power and those of the left striving for power, because the right-wing socialists and the bourgeoisie, who have appropriated the Revolution for themselves, are leading it into a blind alley. For us, working in the oppressed villages, it was evident from the first days of the Revolution that the Ukrainian peasantry had not yet had time to liberate itself entirely from the yoke of slavery and to grasp the real sense of the Revolution. The peasantry has hardly begun to shake off this heavy, ancient yoke and is already looking for ways to liberate itself from economic and political slavery. The oppressed villages are looking to the anarchists for help. It would be very easy for us to ignore the oppressed peasantry and not hasten to help them. We would just be adopting the attitude of our comrades in the cities and we would be repeating the false logic of these comrades who regard the peasants as partisans of a return to a bourgeois-capitalist system, etc. But I believe we won’t do anything of the sort. We’ve seen how things are working out in our own village and, based on our experience, we know there are revolutionary elements among the downtrodden peasants in other villages. It’s only necessary for us to release them from the garrotte of statism which has been applied to them by the politicians. We revolutionary anarchists can render them reliable help.

“Our movement in the cities, on which our more senior comrades pinned such unrealistic hopes, is clearly much too weak to deal with problems of such vast scale and responsibility. I’m not saying that there are not people in our ranks who are capable of great things. Indeed there are such people. In our current work we need to take a close look at this problem: when there is responsible work to be done demanding tenacious efforts many of our comrades have avoided it in the past and are avoiding it now. This has contributed to and will continue to contribute to disorganization. Oh! How dangerous is this disorganization for the healthy life of our movement! Nothing can compare to it. Thanks to the disorganization of our movement as a whole, our best forces are dissipated even now during the Revolution without any benefit to our movement. This phenomenon has always hindered us but now we anarchists suffer from it more than ever. It prevents us from creating a powerful organization, indispensable for playing an effective role in this Revolution. Only such an organization would be capable of responding to the suffering cry of the Revolution. And the current appeal from the downtrodden villages is just such a cry of the Revolution. If we had the organization, then we anarchists would be able to respond to this appeal.

“It is painful to dwell on this, but it is extremely necessary. Each of us, comrades, who haven’t forgotten the ultimate goal of the Revolution, who haven’t lost themselves in nebulous and sterile theories, but who are sincerely searching for the most effective means of elevating and realizing our ideal in the life of the masses — each of us will not cease to protest against disorganization because it represents an immense danger for our movement. But to protest is not sufficient. I say: we must work and work, tirelessly, not stifling in ourselves that uplifting revolutionary spirit, and especially not hindering the revolutionary development of others. With the help of this spirit, the anarchist ideal will generate fresh forces and allow us to create an organization which will get us moving in the right direction.”

^{Chapter 10} Struggle Against Rent

The month of June. The peasants of the Gulyai-Pole raion refused to pay the second instalment of their land rent to the pomeshchiks and kulaks. They hoped that after the harvest they would seize the land themselves without entering into any negotiations with either the owners of the government which protected the owners. Then the peasants would divide the land between themselves and any factory workers who wished to cultivate it themselves.

Several other uyezds and raions followed the example of Gulyai-Pole.

In Aleksandrovsk there was alarm among the government authorities and their agents from the Socialist and Constitutional-Democratic Parties — the S-Rs, S-Ds, and Kadets. With the technical and financial assistance of the Public Committees and the government commissar, the revolutionary uyezds and raions were inundated with party propagandists-agitators, appealing to the peasants not to undermine the authority of the Provisional “Revolutionary” Government which, they said, was very concerned with the fate of the peasants and intended in the very near future to convene the Constituent Assembly. And until this “competent” institution convened, and until it has issued its opinion about land reform, no one had the right to infringe on the ownership rights of the pomeshchiks and other landowners. And hastily, on orders from the top, the Land Departments were renamed Land Committees and separated from the Public Committees as independent entities. These Land Committees were invested with the right to collect from the peasants the rent for land rented by them from the pomeshchiks and kulaks. The local raion Land Committees were supposed to send these payments to the uyezd Land Committees which would then hand over the money to the landowners.

The propagandist-agitators of the various parties brazenly told the peasants that the pomeshchiks and kulaks still had huge taxes to pay for their land. “Our revolutionary government,” they said, “is demanding payment and the ‘poor’ landowners have nowhere else to get the money than from the peasants to whom they rented their land.”

A bitter struggle took place between the Anarchist Communist Group of Gulyai-Pole and the Peasants’ Union on the one hand — and these agents and the government bureaucracy which supported them on the other hand. And under the protection of the government were the well-organized rural, industrial, and commercial bourgeoisie. The peasants at the meetings held by order of the government commissars dragged down from the podium the representatives of those groups which supported the Provisional “Revolutionary” Government and beat them for their abominable speeches, hypocritically adorned with revolutionary phrases, designed to deflect the peasants from their main goal: to take possession of their own historical legacy — the land.

In some locales, the bewildered peasants, doubting their own just strivings, gathered their last kopeck to pay their rent to ferocious landowners, who were supported by the Church, the State, and its hired servant — the government.

But even those peasants who were lead into error did not lose hope for victory over their enemies. They listened with great attention to the call of the Anarchist Communist Group and the Peasants’ Union: “Don’t lose hope and bravely prepare for the next battle with the enemy.”

This is what I said at the time at a meeting of thousands of peasants and workers in Gulyai-Pole, inspired by the main idea of an appeal launched by the Anarchist Communist Group and the Peasants’ Union (I was speaking in the name of both organizations):

After me spoke a Ukrainian S-R who beseeched the toilers of Gulyai-Pole to remember that as a counterbalance to the “foul Provisional Government in Petrograd, in Kiev existed ‘our’ Ukrainian Government in the form of the Central Rada. It was genuinely revolutionary, the only government on Ukrainian soil capable and competent to restore freedom and a happy life for the Ukrainian people”. In conclusion he exclaimed:

“Drive the katzaps from our land! — Death to these suppressors of our native tongue! In our native land long live ‘our’ power — the Central Rada — and its Secretariat!… ”

But the toilers of Gulyai-Pole were deaf to the appeal of the Ukrainian “Socialist-Revolutionary”. Not only that, but they shouted at him in unison: “Down from the tribune! We don’t want your government!” Then they passed the following resolution:

For a long time after this discussion and the resolution voted by the peasants and workers, the Russian and Ukrainian nationalists and the state-socialists cursed me and the whole Anarchist Communist Group, because it was henceforth impossible for them to sing the praises of their various governments and their role in the toilers’ lives in Gulyai-Pole. The toilers looked upon them as hired agents and they were constantly interrupted when they tried to praise government power.

So day after day passed, accumulating into weeks and months, as my comrades and I circulated through the countryside, propagandizing the ideas of anarchism.

Soon arrived the 2nd Congress of Peasants’ Unions of our uyezd, and our Union did not fail to send two delegates, Comrade Krat and myself. The Congress was crowded. Everyone said what had already been said many times. The Russian and Ukrainian S-Rs, the former represented by S. S. Popov, the latter by the teacher Radomsky, put on a display of solidarity before the peasant delegates by agreeing to work together in the struggle for land and freedom for the peasantry. After each had expounded his party’s program, they stood before the podium and shook hands.

The peasant delegates from Gulyai-Pole, Kamishevansky, Pozhdestbensky, and Konno-Razdorsky raions told them: “It’s all very fine that you are agreeing to struggle together for land and freedom, but where and against whom do you intend to struggle?”

“Everywhere and with anyone who does not want to hand over land to the peasants without compensation,” replied the S-R delegates.

“But ultimately we will finish our struggle in the Constituent Assembly,” said the S-R. Popov.

“In the All-Ukrainian Seim!” added the teacher Radomsky.

And here was a small difference of opinion between the S-R allies. They exchanged opinions in whispers while on the benches of the peasant delegates some were laughing, the others frowning.

At the end of the Congress representatives were elected to go to the Provincial Congress of the Peasants’ Unions and Soviets of Workers’, Peasants’ and Soldiers’ Deputies.

In elections of delegates from the Uyezd Congress to the Provincial Congress, we, the Gulyai-Pole delegates, abstained. We declared our protest against the fact that delegates to the Provincial Congress were not elected directly by the grassroots. This abstention led to us being treated as disturbers of electoral law and order and therefore violently criticized by the leaders of the congress — the S-Rs, S-Ds, and Kadets who said we were the only delegates who did not want what the peasants wanted. This provoked more laughter from the peasant delegates which soon became disruptive whistles when the big shots tried to speak.

We, the delegates of the Peasants’ Union of Gulyai-Pole, protested once more against the method of elections, insisting that the delegates to the Provincial Congress be elected directly by the peasants. Such an election would give a true picture of the revolutionary peasantry throughout the whole province, we said. But again we were treated as incorrectly understanding the interests of the peasants. The “leaders” of the congress proposed to bring up our point of view at the Provincial Congress of peasants and workers. But since we refused to participate in the elections to Provincial Congress from the delegates of the Uyezd Congress, then we could not stand as candidates and were thus excluded from the Provincial Congress.

However, we had numerous reasons to believe that the organizational bureau of the Provincial Congress would directly invite delegates from Gulyai-Pole because of an exchange of opinions which had taken place between the Peasants’ Union of Gulyai-Pole and the Provincial Committee of the Peasants’ Unions. But the initiative for this would have to come from Ekaterinoslav, not Gulyai-Pole, i.e. not directly but in an indirect fashion. So we were not certain of participating in the Provincial Congress and returned to Gulyai-Pole with a gloomy feeling that we had suffered a defeat on this occasion.

However, our line of behaviour at the Congress was the correct one from our point of view, and we were not worried about the revolutionary future of our Peasants’ Union. When we got back home we made a report to the Executive of the Peasants’ Union as well as the Union of Metal and Carpentry Workers which always took an interest in peasant congresses and asked to be informed about them. And then we made a report to a general meeting of peasants and workers in Gulyai-Pole and district. At the same time we prepared the peasants and workers to send delegates to the Provincial Congress even without an invitation. Our goal was to expose the attitude of the leaders of the Uyezd Congress which had just ended and also to inform the peasant delegates to the Provincial Congress about how the S-Rs, S-Ds, and Kadets had tried to stifle the revolutionary initiative and self-activity of the peasantry, how their agitator-propagandists with the assistance of the government commissars travelled around the cities and villages holding meetings where they duped the peasants and squeezed rent money out of them for the benefit of the pomeshchiks, rendering thus more difficult the situation of the peasants who, impoverished by the ravages of war, had not taken part in pillaging and brigandage like the pomeshchiks and kulaks, and were not able to acquire the money necessary to pay the landowners for the land which these thieves had appropriated.

But while we were preparing for the Provincial Congress, and also giving advice to the peasants of raions and uyezds belonging to other provinces, the Executive of the Peasant Union of Gulyai-Pole received from the Provincial Soviet of Workers’, Peasants’, Soldiers’ and Cossacks’ Deputies an invitation to send two delegates to the Provincial Congress of Soviets and Unions of Peasants’, Workers’, Soldiers’ and Cossacks’ Deputies.

We decided to call a congress of the Gulyai-Pole Raion Peasant Union. At this time the Executive of the Union prepared a report appropriate for the agenda of the Provincial Congress.

^{Chapter 11} P. A. Kropotkin Arrives in Russia. Meeting with Ekaterinoslav Anarchists

Around this time we received news that P. A. Kropotkin was already in Petrograd. The local newspapers had written about this, but we, peasant-anarchists, not hearing his powerful appeal to anarchists and his detailed instructions about how the anarchists should begin to overcome the fragmentation in their own movement so we could take our rightful place in the Revolution, did not believe the newspapers. But now we received newspapers and letters directly from Petrograd indicating that P. A. Kropotkin had been taken ill on the journey from London to Russia but had safely arrived at the very heart of the revolution — Petrograd. We heard about how he had been greeted by the socialists in power, in particular by A. Kerensky.

The joy in the ranks of our group was indescribable. A general meeting of the group was called which was devoted exclusively to the subject What Does Our Old Friend Petr Alekseevich Have To Tell Us?

We all came to the same conclusion: Petr Alekseevich showed us the concrete way to organize our movement in the villages. With his sensitivity and his lively comprehension, he saw the absolute necessity for the villages to have the support of our revolutionary force. As a true apostle of anarchism, he recognized the importance of this unique moment in Russian history and, using his moral influence on the anarchists and their groups, he hastened to formulate in a practical way the guidelines of revolutionary anarchism which must inspire the anarchists in this Revolution.

I composed a letter of welcome in the name of the Gulyai-Pole Peasant Group of Anarcho-Communists and sent it, if I remember correctly, to Petr Alekseevich care of the editorial staff of the newspaper “Burevestnik”.

In this letter we greeted Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin and congratulated him on his happy return to his country, expressing our belief that his country, in the person of its best people, has been waiting impatiently for the return of a tireless fighter for the highest concepts of justice, who could not help but influence the unfolding and realization of the Russian Revolution…

We signed: the Ukrainian Anarcho-Communist Group of the Village of Gulyai-Pole, Ekaterinoslav Province.

We didn’t expect an answer to our modest welcoming letter. But we waited impatiently for an answer to the burning question of the moment, without which we would be wasting our efforts for our goal might not be the same as the goal of other groups or it might be the same but we might be working towards it in a completely different way. It seemed to us that the downtrodden countryside posed this direction question: “How do we go about seizing the land and, without submitting to any authority, drive out the parasites who produce nothing and live a life of luxury at our expense?”

The response to this question had been given by Petr Alekseevich in his work “The Conquest of Bread”. But the masses had not read this work, only a few individuals had read it, and now the masses no longer had time to read. What was necessary was that an energetic voice exposed to them in clear, simple language the essential points of “Conquest of Bread” to prevent them from sinking into a speculative inertia, and to show them directly the right path to take and furnish a guide for their actions. But who could provide this lively, strong, straight-forward voice?

Only an anarchist-propagandist and organizer!

But, placing my hand on my heart, I asked: were there ever in Russia or Ukraine schools of anarchist propaganda? I had never heard of any. But if there were, then where were the advanced militants who had graduated from them?

Twice I travelled through several raions and uyezds belonging administratively to the same province, and I did not run into one situation where, in answer to my questions: “Have you had here any anarchist animators?” they would answer: “There have been.” Everywhere they answered: “We have never had any such. And we are very happy and grateful that you have not forgotten us.”.

Where were the forces of our movement generally? In my view they were vegetating in the cities where they were often doing things they shouldn’t have been doing.

The arrival of Petr Alekseevich and his active participation in the Revolution (if his advanced age allowed such a thing) would hopefully give a strong push to our comrades in the cities. Otherwise the oppressed countryside would be enslaved by the political parties and, through them, by the power of the Provisional Government, and that would put an end to the subsequent development of the revolution.

My opinions drew support from those comrades who, working in the factories, had not travelled about the region and sampled the mood of the oppressed peasants directly. Those, on the other hand, who knew the villages, sharply criticized my thinking. They detected in it hesitation and doubt as to the revolutionary

mood of the villages. “The villages,” they said, “have well understood the intentions of the agents of the different socialist parties and the bourgeoisie who have been coming around to them on behalf of the Provisional Government and would never under any circumstances allow themselves to be duped by these agents.”

Indeed there were signs of this mood in the villages, but in my view these signs were weak. At this critical moment in the Revolution, the peasants needed to feel that they had better support, especially for their revolutionary activists, so that they could bring about permanent change by getting rid of the existing privileged classes and not allowing new ones to take their place.

Two weeks went by. No news from Petrograd. We didn’t know how Petr Alekseevich viewed the role of our movement in the Revolution: Were we on the right track? Or was it correct to concentrate our forces in the cities, paying little or no attention to the oppressed peasantry?

During this period of expectation arrived the time of the Provincial Congress of Soviets of Workers’, Peasants’, Soldiers’, and Cossacks’ Deputies and the Peasants Unions. [August 5–7, 1918]

An assembly of the Peasants’ Union was held in Gulyai-Pole. We discussed the agenda of the Provincial Congress. We spent a lot of time discussing the re-organizing of the Peasants’ Unions into Peasants’ Soviets and finally decided to send delegates to the Provincial Congress. I was elected representative of the peasants, and Comrade Seregin was elected representative of the workers.

I was particularly happy to go to Ekaterinoslav where I hoped to make contact with the Anarchist Federation and discuss all the questions which were of interest to our Group (especially the question: why are there no anarchist agitators going from the city into the villages?).

I deliberately arrived at the Congress a day early. From the railway station I went directly to the Federation’s office. I found there the secretary — Comrade Molchansky, an old friend from Odessa. We knew each other in prison. With great joy we embraced each other.

I immediately pressured him: what were they doing in the cities? Why didn’t they send organizers around the whole province?

Comrade Molchansky, waving his hands excitedly, said: “Brother, we don’t have the forces. We’re weak. We’ve only just pulled together a group and we’ve hardly attended to the workers in the local factories and soldiers in the garrison. We hope that with time our strength will increase and then we can establish closer links with you and the villages and begin more energetic work in the countryside… ”

For a long time after this we sat quietly and looked at each other, each of us absorbed in thinking about the future of our movement in the revolution… And then Comrade Molchansky began to reassure me, affirming that in the near future there would arrive in Elizavetgrad Rogdaev, Roshchin, Arshinov and a bunch of other comrades and the focus of our work would be shifted into the villages. Then he led me into the Federation’s club, which had earlier been known as the “English Club”.

There I found many comrades. Some were arguing about the Revolution, others were reading, a third bunch were eating. In a word, I found an “anarchist” society which did not allow, as a matter of principle, any order, any authority, and which did not devote a moment to propagandize among the mass of toilers in the countryside who were in such dire need of this propaganda.

Then I asked myself: why did they requisition from the bourgeoisie such a large and well-appointed building? What use is it to them when, in this babbling crowd, there is no order even in the animated discussions with which they resolve the most important problems of the Revolution? Meanwhile the hall is not swept, in many places chairs are overturned, and the big table, covered with luxurious velvet, is scattered with lumps of bread, fish heads, and picked bones.

I observed all this with a heavy heart. At that moment into the club came Ivan Tarasyuk (actually Kabas), comrade Molchansky’s deputy. With anguish and indignation he yelled, at first quietly, then at full voice: “Whoever ate at this table, clean it up!”… Then he began to straighten the chairs…

Quickly everything was removed from the table and people set about sweeping the floor.

From the club I returned to the Federation office and picked out a bunch of brochures to take to Gulyai-Pole. I was intending to go to the office of the Congress to get a billet for the duration of the event when a young woman entered who turned out to be a comrade. She asked the comrades present to go with her to the Winter Theatre to back her up in a debate with the S-D “Nil” who was winning over a good number of workers. But the comrades present told her they were busy. Without another word she turned and left.

Comrade Molchansky asked me: “Do you know her? She is a fine, energetic comrade.” I immediately left the office and overtook her. I proposed that we go together to the meeting but she answered: “If you will not speak, you will not be necessary to me there.” I promised her I would speak.

Then she took me by the hand and we hurried to the Winter Theatre. This young and charming comrade told me along the way that she had become an anarchist three years earlier. It wasn’t easy for her. She had been reading Kropotkin and Bakunin for about two years. Now she felt that the works she read had helped to confirm her convictions. She had become an active proselytizer. Up until July she had spoken before worker audiences but had not dared to debate with the enemies of anarchism — the social democrats. In July at one of the open air meetings she debated “Nil”. He had whipped her. “Now,” she said, “I’m going to try as hard as I can to go up against ‘Nil” again. He is the agitational superstar of the S-Ds.”

Our conversation ended there.

At the meeting I spoke against the celebrated “Nil”, using the pseudonym “Skromny” (my nickname in prison). I spoke badly although my comrades later assured me that I had been very good, just a little nervous.

As for my young and energetic comrade, she won over the whole hall with her pleasant but strong speaking voice: the auditorium was delighted with this voice and there was dead quiet when they listened to what she said, changing to stormy applause and thunderous cries: “Excellent, excellent, Comrade!”

The comrade didn’t speak long, 43 minutes, but she stirred up the mass of listeners against the positions espoused by “Nil” so that when the latter tried to respond to all those who had spoken against him, the entire hall erupted against him: “That’s not true! Don’t make up false stories — the anarchists are telling the truth — you are telling lies!… ”

When we returned from the meeting, several comrades joined us. Our young comrade said to me: “You know, Comrade Skromny, this ‘Nil” with his influence over the workers up to now has been driving me crazy. I have set myself the goal of destroying his influence, whatever the cost. There’s only one thing holding me back — my youth. The workers are more trusting of older comrades. I’m afraid that this will prevent me from fulfilling my duties to the workers…”

I could only wish her further successes in her revolutionary anarchist work, and we separated after promising to meet the next day to speak about Gulyai-Pole about which she had heard good things.

This meeting caused me to arrive late at the office of the Congress and I was unable to obtain a hotel room. So I spent the night in Comrade Seregin’s room.

I devoted the whole next day to the Congress and could not find a moment to meet with the young comrade as I had promised her. The second day of the Congress I was occupied the whole time at the Land Commission. Here I met with the Left S-R Schneider, sent to the Provincial Congress from the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets of Workers’, Peasants’ & Cossacks’ Deputies and elected to the Land Commission of the Congress. The Commission unanimously passed a resolution about socializing the land and passed this resolution on to the presidium of the Congress. After this the Commission asked Comrade Schneider to make a report about what was happening in Petrograd.

He made only a brief summary as time was lacking, he said, and asked us to support the resolution about re-organizing the Peasants’ Unions into Soviets. This re-organization was, subsequently, approved by the Congress. This was the only question on the agenda at the Congress which had not been considered at the meeting in Gulyai-Pole.

On our return from the Congress, and after a series of reports, the Peasants’ Union of Gulyai-Pole was transformed into a Soviet of peasants; its principles were not modified nor were its methods of struggle which it was intensively preparing the peasants to use in its upcoming struggles. It appealed to the workers to drive out the owners of the factories and plants and to liquidate their right of private ownership of social enterprises.

During this time, while we were busy with the formal transformation of Union into Soviet, in Moscow on August 14 opened the All-Russian Democratic Conference and on its tribune appeared our esteemed, dear elder — Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin.

Our Anarchist Communist Group of Gulyai-Pole was dumbfounded by this news, although we appreciated very well that it was difficult for our old friend, after so many years of work and being shunted about foreign lands, preoccupied in his old age with humanitarian ideas, to return to Russia and refuse his assistance to this Democratic Conference. But all such considerations had to take a back seat to the tragic crisis in the Revolution which immediately followed this Conference.

We condemned our old friend for taking part in the Conference. We naively imagined that the former apostle of anarchism had transformed himself into a sentimental old man searching for peace and quiet and the strength for applying his knowledge to life one last time. But this blame we kept inside our group, and our enemies were not aware of it, because deep down Kropotkin remained for us the greatest and strongest theoretician of the anarchist movement. We knew that if he were not so advanced in years, he would have put himself at the head of the Russian Revolution and would have been the uncontested chief of anarchism.

Whether we were right or not, we never discussed with our political enemies the question of the participation of Kropotkin in the All-Russian Democratic Conference of Moscow…

Thus with a sinking feeling we listened to what Petr Alekseevich said. We didn’t lose faith that he remained always dear and close to us, but the revolutionary moment called us in a different direction. For a number of reasons of purely artificial character, the Revolution showed signs of reaching an impasse. On it was fitted a noose by all the political parties participating in the Provisional Government. And all these parties were gradually becoming more entrenched in power and becoming in themselves a threatening counter-revolutionary force.

^{Chapter 12} Kornilov’s March on Petrograd

Around August 20 1917 our group reviewed the distribution and utilization of our forces. This meeting was the most serious one we had held. I have already mentioned that our group did not have in its ranks a single theoretically-trained anarchist. We were all peasants and workers. Our schools turned out half-educated people. Schools of anarchism did not exist. Our fund of knowledge of revolutionary anarchism was obtained reading anarchist literature for many years and exchanging views with each other and with the peasants, with whom we shared all that we had read and understood in the works of Kropotkin and Bakunin. We owe thanks to Comrade Vladimir Antoni (known as Zarathustra) for supplying us with literature.

In the course of this very important meeting we discussed a number of burning questions and came to the conclusion that the Revolution was having the life choked out of it by the garrotte of the State. It was turning pale, weakening, but could still emerge victorious in the supreme struggle. Help would come to it principally from the revolutionary peasant masses who would remove the garrotte and get rid of this plague — the Provisional Government and its satellite parties. Drawing some conclusions from our analysis for practical activity we formulated a series of positions, namely:

The Russian Revolution has, from the beginning, posed a clear choice to the Russian and Ukrainian anarchist groups, a choice which imperiously demands a decision on our part. Either we go to the masses and dissolve ourselves in them, creating from them revolutionary cadres, and make the Revolution; or we renounce our slogan about the necessity of social transformation, the necessity of carrying through to the end the workers’ struggle with the powers of Capital and the State.

To remain as before, restricted to isolated group activities, limited to publishing pamphlets, journals, and newspapers and holding meetings — was impossible. At this time of decisive events, the anarchists risked finding themselves completely isolated from the masses, or dragging along behind them.

Anarchism, by its very essence, cannot accept such a role. Only a lack of understanding and enthusiasm on the part of its adherents — the anarchist groups and federations — created the possibility of dragging it down the wrong path.

Every militant group, the revolutionary anarchists in particular, must try to draw the labour masses to its side at the moment of insurrection or revolution. At the moment when they begin to show confidence in the group, it must, without being carried away, follow the broken path of unfolding events (a path which may be revolutionary but not anarchist) and seize the right moment to draw the labouring masses in the right direction.

This is an old method, but one not experienced by our movement in practice, and one which will not be experienced until such time as we master certain organizational principles and create our own organization. A serious movement requires strategic planning. A movement without a definite organization of forces is a bunch of uncoordinated groups, frequently ignorant of each other and even taking conflicting actions in relation to their political enemies. Such a movement could, certainly, be created at the revolutionary moment, but it would be impossible to infuse it with a lasting existence, to give it a credo which could guide the revolting masses towards genuine liberation from their economic, political, and moral chains. There would just be a useless loss of human lives, sacrificed in a struggle both necessary and just in its goals, but unequal.

After having observed for seven months the anarchist movement in the cities, our group could no longer ignore the very numerous militants who failed to recognize their role and were stifling the movement, preventing it from liberating itself from the traditional forms of disorganization and transforming itself from grouplets into a mass movement. That is why our Group threw itself with renewed energy into the study of problems not yet solved by the anarchist movement, for example: the problem of coordinating the activities of different groups as events unfolded. None of the federations which sprang up after the February Revolution had formulated an answer although they all published their resolutions and indicated their view of the way forward.

That’s why, after having feverishly searched for a guiding rule in the works of Bakunin, Kropotkin, and Malatesta, we arrived at the conclusion that our group of anarchist-communist peasants of Gulyai-Pole could neither imitate the anarchist movement of the cities, nor could we listen to its voice. We could count on no one but ourselves at this critical moment in the Revolution. It was up to us to help the downtrodden peasants realize that they must create the Revolution themselves in the villages, that it is up to them to determine the character and the course of the Revolution. We must not let their faith in themselves be shaken by the political parties and the government which have done nothing to create the revolutionary movement in the villages.

And the group dispersed among the downtrodden toilers of the countryside, leaving only an information office; by word and action the Group helped the toilers get their bearings at that moment in the Revolution and inspired them to a great intensity in their struggle.

In a very short time after adopting our decision, as we began already to notice the fruits of our organizational activity in the raion, we became convinced that we had been correct in our perception of stagnation in the Revolution and the critical situation full of mortal menace. The Revolution found itself definitely in the noose which the statists needed only to tighten in order to strangle it.

The introduction of the death penalty at the Front was direct evidence that revolutionary soldiers must die on the external Front, while the counter-revolutionaries could continue their work at the very heart of the Revolution. Revolutionary military units, which were fraternizing with workers in the cities and with peasants in the villages, were beginning to see themselves as slaves of militarism and were thinking of using the tools provided them — cannons and machine guns — against their real enemies. Now those units with a revolutionary attitude were being ordered to the Front, as being too dangerous to the growing forces of the counter-revolution.

Seeing all this and recognizing how the way was being prepared for strengthening the power of the bourgeoisie, already recovering from its original defeat by the Revolution and ready to get its revenge, we were still more strongly convinced that our method of helping the toilers to correctly orient themselves at this critical moment was the true method. However, it was imperative to complete the process and issue clear directives.

What had we accomplished with our actions?

We had ensured that from the end of August the peasants had completely understood us and would not allow their ranks to be splintered into various political groupings, thereby dissipating their power so that they were incapable of achieving what was strong and durable in the Revolution.

The better the peasants understood us, the more strongly they believed in themselves and in their direct role in the Revolution. Their role was, firstly, to abolish private ownership of land and to proclaim it social property; and secondly, with the help of the urban proletariat, to abolish any possibility of new privileges.

And thus we arrived at those days when our gloom and doom about this anxious moment in the Revolution received its full justification. We received news from the Provisional Government itself and from the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’, Peasants’, Soldiers’ and Cossacks’ Deputies that the commander-in-chief of the external Front, General Kornilov, had withdrawn from the Front a division of soldiers loyal to him and was advancing on Petrograd to liquidate the Revolution and its conquests.

That was on August 29, 1917. An anarchist from Aleksandrovsk, M. Nikiforova, had arrived and organized a meeting which I chaired. While she was speaking, a courier delivered a packet in which I read the news about Kornilov’s advance. I broke into her speech and made a brief statement about the bloody repression which was threatening the revolution. Then I read two telegrams from the Government and from the All-Russian Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers’, Peasants’, Soldiers’, and Cossacks’ Deputies.

This news produced a painful impression on the peasants and workers present. They tried to contain their emotions, but someone cried out from the crowd: “The brothers’ blood is already flowing, but here the counter-revolutionaries are walk around freely, laughing at us!” He pointed at the former Gulyai-Pole political cop Citizen Ivanov. Comrade Nikiforova jumped down from the tribune and arrested him while the crowd hurled abuse at him.

But I also jumped down and went to Nikiforova and Ivanov, already surrounded by a bunch of comrades from our Group and the Peasants’ Soviet and insisted that the constable be released. I told him to relax, that no one was going to touch him. Then I made my way back to the tribune and told the peasants and workers that our struggle in defence of the Revolution should begin not with the murder of a former policeman like Ivanov, who had turned himself in without resistance in the first days of the Revolution and had not gone into hiding.

All the members of the Soviet had gathered. When I arrived the meeting was started. I read the dispatches and next presented my report on what we needed to do and how we were going to do it. The dispatch from the Petrograd Soviet suggested the formation of local “Committees for the Salvation of the Revolution”.

The meeting assigned members to this Committee from its own ranks, expressing the wish that it call itself the “Committee for the Defence of the Revolution” and entrusted me to direct its work.

We, the members of this hastily knocked together organization, got together and decided to begin disarming all the bourgeois in the region and liquidating their rights to the wealth of the people: on the land, in the factories and plants, in the printshops, theatres, circuses, cinemas and other public enterprises.

We considered that this was the only sure way to liquidate both General Kornilov’s movement and the rights of the bourgeoisie to dominance over the toiling masses.

During the time that I was at the meeting of the Soviet, and then the meeting of the Committee for the Defence of the Revolution (all this took about five hours), the mass of toilers was still awaiting my return to finish my speech on how to defend the Revolution.

When, finally, I arrived back, all the members of the Soviet, the members of the Group of Anarcho-Communists, and some members of the Trade Union were parading up and down the street with rifles and shotguns on their shoulders. Gulyai-Pole had been transformed into an armed revolutionary camp.

I went through the gate into the public garden and made my way to the square where the tribune was situated. The peasants and workers had broken up into groups dispersed throughout the garden and were animatedly exchanging opinions about the disturbing news. They gathered around me rapidly, saying: “Well! Are you finally free? Are you going to finish what you were starting to tell us? The bad telegrams prevented you!”

I climbed up on the tribune exhausted, because I had been travelling all over the raion in the preceding days, promising myself that I would only have one meeting on Sunday and then I could rest. But the disquieting telegrams, which the peasants called “bad”, did not allow me any time to rest.

Finishing my thought about the defence of the Revolution, I clarified that no one except they themselves could defend and further develop it. The Revolution is their business and they must be its bold propagators and its real defenders.

I next told them what had been decided at the assembly, that a Committee of the Defence of the Revolution had been formed which was destined to combat not only the movement of General Kornilov but also the Provisional Government and all the socialist parties which shared its ideas. I added that this Committee would become effective only when everyone, no matter who, adopted it as their own. As we group ourselves around this Committee, I said, we will sustain it not just with words but with actions.

I presented in shortened form to the large audience the program of action of this Committee.

From the crowd were heard cries of “Long Live the Revolution!” And these were cries not of activists used to carrying on in this way at political meetings, but truly spontaneous cries coming from the depths of the soul of the people.

“What now, Comrade Nestor,” sounded several voices, “should we prepare to go fight at the side of the city workers?”

I explained to them a point from the program of action of the Committee in which it was said that the peasants by “sotnias”, and the workers by factories and workshops, must discuss our resolution and tomorrow (August 30) send us their delegates with their final decision.

With this ended August 29, 1917. It was a depressing day because of the news about General Kornilov’s movement. But then it pushed the masses to take the initiative and engage in revolutionary self-activity. And wherever among the workers were found revolutionaries who understood the tasks at hand, there the theoretical side of events was discussed and a plan of action formulated to guide the masses in their direct struggle.

On the next day early in the morning I walked to Cathedral Square in Gulyai-Pole. Groups of workers from the plants and peasants from the sotnias were marching along the street under black and red banners and singing as they proceeded to the building of the Soviet of Peasants’ and Workers’ Deputies, in which was located the “Committee for the Defence of the Revolution”. I sprinted through the courtyard of the building and then into the front yard of the Soviet in order to meet the demonstrators. When they spotted me they broke into a thunderous shout: “Long Live the Revolution! Long Live Its True Son, and Our Friend, Comrade Makhno!”

These shouts were flattering for me, but I felt I didn’t deserve them from the toilers. I stopped these enthusiastic shouts and asked them to listen to me. But the crowd picked me up and carried me on their hands, crying “Long Live the Revolution! Long Live Comrade Makhno!”

Finally, I prevailed upon the demonstrators to listen to me and when they had quieted down I asked them in honour of what they had come to the Committee for the Defence of the Revolution?

“We have come to put ourselves at the disposition of the Committee,” was the response, “and we are not alone.”

“You mean there’s still life in the old dog?!”

“Yes, yes, and again yes!” cried the demonstrators.

I began to feel dizzy, I almost wept with joy because of the great spirit of the Ukrainian peasants and workers. Before me was embodied the peasant will for freedom and independence, which only the Ukrainian spirit can so quickly and strongly display in such breadth and depth. My first words to the demonstrators were: “Listen, comrades, if you have come to put yourselves at the disposal of the Committee for the Defence of the Revolution, then I propose that you divide yourselves up into groups of 10 or 15, with 5 to a wagon, and don’t lose any time — cover the whole Gulyai-Pole raion and visit the pomeshchiks’ estates, the kulak khutors, and the rich German colonies and confiscate from the bourgeoisie all the fire-arms you can find: rifles, muskets, shot-guns, even swords. But do not harm in any way, either by word or gesture, the bourgeoisie themselves… With revolutionary honour and courage we must do this in the interests of the Revolution. For the leaders of the bourgeoisie, taking advantage of the negligence of the revolutionaries, have organized their forces under the protection of the Provisional Government and have already taken up arms against the Revolution.

“As the representative of the Soviet of Peasants’ andWorkers’ Deputies of the raion, the Anarchist Communist Group, and the Soviet of the Trade Union, I am authorized to direct our revolutionary movement on an interim basis, while at the same time remaining the chief commissar of the Committee for the Defence of the Revolution. As such I consider it appropriate to say to all the comrades setting out to disarm the bourgeoisie that they must not get carried away and be involved in pillaging. Pillaging is not a revolutionary act, and so long as I am at the head our movement any delinquent parties will find themselves before the Tribunal of the Revolutionary General Assembly of Peasants and Workers of Gulyai-Pole.

“In the course of two or three days we must disarm the bourgeoisie and turn in all weapons to the Committee for the Defence of the Revolution for distribution to the real defenders of the Revolution. So don’t waste time, break up into groups, be sure to take a certificate from the Committee verifying your official role in confiscating the arms we need from the bourgeoisie. Go!”

When the peasants realize that something has to be done, they quickly get it done. As soon as I mentioned to the demonstrators that they should split up into groups, with five to a wagon, immediately people went to fetch conveyances from their homes, and about 30–40 wagons had already arrived and were assembled on Cathedral Square awaiting passengers.

As for the certificates, they had been prepared the night before by the Committee for the Defence of the Revolution. It remained only to inscribe the names of the bearers and add the signature of the Chief Commissar. And the latter was prepared to sign these certificates even standing in the middle of the street. That’s what happened — I stood next to the wagons and signed the certificates of peasants and workers who were setting out to disarm the bourgeoisie.

When everything was ready, and everyone had taken their place on the wagons, I spoke a few words about the present critical moment for the Revolution, about the importance of simultaneous and decisive actions on the part of the toilers on the local level. And here in Gulyai-Pole the peasants and workers were setting an example by their action against the bourgeoisie, an example which was being emulated by several neighbouring regions. The wagons then set out to cover the raion.

Another group of peasants and workers proceeded to confiscate weapons in Gulyai-Pole itself from the bourgeoisie and from officers who had arrived here from the Front.

The Committee for the Defence of the Revolution together with the Soviet of Peasants’ and Workers’ Deputies held a special meeting at which it was decided to convene in short order an extraordinary raion Congress of Soviets, with the participation of the Anarchist Communist Group and the Soviet of the Union of Metal and Carpentry Workers of Gulyai-Pole.

It was also decided at this impromptu meeting to strengthen links with the Anarchist Communist Group in order to take joint action, before the Congress of Soviets, to withdraw from the “Public Committees” in the raion the right to make binding decisions of a social character.

This collaborative work of the three revolutionary entities allowed our group to further develop its activity among the oppressed toilers of the villages and to get them used to the idea of a free, libertarian society.

The toilers of the Gulyai-Pole raion, without worrying about any repercussions on the part of the central authorities, acted to limit the power of all the Public Committees of the coalition government of socialists with the bourgeoisie. These Committees, the principal function of which had consisted of issuing ordinances and decrees telling people what they could or couldn’t do without permission from the government, and what they could or couldn’t think without authorization by the future Constituent Assembly. Now they were limited in their rights to the point that they were transformed from legislative bodies into consultative bodies. They were deprived of the right to decide in a definitive way any question of public interest no matter what, without having it approved by a public assembly.

Such an attitude on the part of the toilers towards “rights” and towards the authority of their oppressors and enemies of the Revolution, enemies of everything healthy and creative in it, raised a terrible stir in the ranks of the ruling stratum. The zealous supporters of the idea of coalition with the bourgeoisie against the Revolution began to sound the alarm. However, in spite of the fury and rage they displayed at meetings of the Communal Committees and other local meetings, and in spite of all the actions taken by them with the help of the central authorities to undermine the position taken by the toilers of Gulyai-Pole raion towards them and the power of their government, and in spite of, finally, all the foul tales spread everywhere, either orally or in print, attacking the toilers of the raion in general and the Anarchist Communist Group in particular, all their efforts came to nought.

The real actions of the authorities in general, including the authorities who called themselves revolutionary, collided with the real demands of the Revolution. These actions stalled the course of the Revolution and encouraged the growth of the Counter-Revolution, which, in the repulsive form of the Kornilov movement, starkly confronted the toiling masses.

The toilers of Gulyai-Pole raion, having observed these facts during long months, now recognized that only the anarchist conception of the Revolution was capable of saving the Revolution and carrying it through to fulfilment. That’s why, every time the uyezd Public Committee and the uyezd Government Commissar requested from Gulyai-Pole weekly reports about the development of revolutionary-social life in the raion, and also the remittance of taxes to be used to spread the propaganda of the Provisional Government, they received the answer that through the Committee for the Defence of the Revolution the whole bourgeois element in the raion had been disarmed and all rights to private property in land, factories, workshops, and other enterprises of the raion had been declared null and void. “Everything must belong to everyone, and not to some clique of idle parasites”… (from the Minutes No. 3, Book 2, Committee for the Defence of the Revolution in Gulyai-Pole, 1917).

^{Chapter 13} Struggle with the Counter-Revolution. Going to the Villages

Thus the bourgeoisie was disarmed and its weapons were distributed among the revolutionary peasants. The disarmament took place without any blood being spilled.

A Congress of Raion Soviets was convened with the purpose of examining the causes and goals of General Kornilov’s movement.

The Congress welcomed the election by the Gulyai-Pole Soviet and other organizations of the “Committee for the Defence of the Revolution”, as well as all its actions up to the time the Congress was convened. The Congress expressed the conviction that the time for such actions had arrived.

Reviewing the Kornilov attack on Petrograd, which had already been suppressed, the Congress once more emphasized that it considered the dismantling of the External Front a crime because this Front was necessary to defend the Revolution against the exterior enemy. The Congress encouraged all toilers to root out the Kornilov movement in their midst.

The Congress dealt with some other questions, approved the declaration of the abolition of private property in our raion, and discussed the agrarian question.

The Anarchist Communist Group proposed to the Congress to make its own report on the agrarian question. This report was presented by Comrades Krat and Andrei Semenyuta. It was concerned mainly with practical measures for liquidating the rights of the pomeshchiks and kulaks to ownership of land, especially fabulously large estates which they couldn’t possibly work with their own hands. The Group proposed to immediately expropriate the land and to convert the estates into free agrarian communes. The pomeshchiks and kulaks were to be given an opportunity to be part of these communes. But if they refused to become members of the family of free toilers and wished to work individually for themselves, then they would be assigned a portion of the people’s wealth appropriate for their labour power. In this way they would have the means of making a living while working separately from the free agrarian communes of the rest of the toilers.

The Congress summoned representatives of the Gulyai-Pole Land Committee and asked them to make a report explaining what this Committee had been doing about the land question. Comrade Krat was a member of the Land Committee. With the approval of the other Committee members he reported what had been undertaken by the Committee in this field, emphasizing that the Committee was in accord with the position just set forth by the Anarchist Communist Group. He noted that this position had been placed on the agenda of the Raion Congress of Land Committees by the Gulyai-Pole representatives and that this Congress had adopted it as the basis for arriving at a solution of the land question.

The Congress of Soviets, with the full participation (as I have already mentioned) of the Soviet of the Trade Union, the Land Committee, and the Anarchist Communist Group, discussed these two reports with full awareness of its revolutionary duty towards the oppressed toilers, who had only just decided to rid themselves of their oppressors by revolutionary means. The resolution passed by the Congress on this question reads:

Then the Congress expressed its conviction that the consolidation of the conquests of the Revolution by the toilers, in the face of the opposition of their enemies, would immediately lead to, not just in our raion but in the whole of Ukraine and Russia, the total expropriation of all collective enterprises so that the labouring population could enjoy the fruits of their labour instead of the bourgeoisie and the State.

As the Congress was winding down, the Committee for the Defence of the Revolution received a bunch of telephonograms from a whole series of raions which had been loyal to the authorities in Aleksandrovsk. These messages said agents of the Aleksandrovsk Uyezd Public Committee, the Uyezd Soviet, and the government commissar had been trolling the villages and countryside, holding meetings and urging the peasants to boycott the Congress of Soviets in Gulyai-Pole. The reason given was that the Congress was deciding questions which no one had the right to decide before the Constituent Assembly convened… They declared that the Congress in Gulyai-Pole, although passing itself off as a peasant congress, was actually making decisions that would harm the peasants… That the leaders of the Congress were sworn enemies of the peasants who did not understand the laws of the Revolution which is why they had repudiated the Provisional “Revolutionary” Government (with Kerensky at the top) and the Constituent Assembly (the supreme revolutionary tribunal)…

I added to these messages a directive received by the Gulyai-Pole Public Committee from the Government Uyezd Commissar which demanded the removal of N. Makhno from any organizing activities in Gulyai-Pole: he was, it seems, to be brought to trial in connection with the disarming of the pomeshchiks and kulaks.

After listening to these messages, the Congress convoked the executive of the Gulyai-Pole Public Committee and asked them to participate in critiquing these missives, in particular the demand of the commissar that I be relieved of any organizing duties.

After a storm of indignation directed at the Government commissar and the Government agents who were roaming the countryside, the Congress passed the following resolution:

This resolution (Book No. 2 in the minutes of the Congress) I sent off to the government commissar Citizen B. K. Mikhno. However this was not the end of the matter. The Anarchist Communist Group asked the Congress for a recess of two hours during the last sitting of the Congress, after which the Group intended to make a very important report about the current state of affairs. The Congress in fact recessed for three hours, during which the delegates engaged in many private conversations. Meanwhile the members of our Group held a meeting at which myself and Comrade Antonov were charged with presenting a report to the Congress about “the counter-revolution in Aleksandrovsk and its uyezd”. The Congress session resumed. The report was presented.

I find it inappropriate to recount here the ideas contained in the report, but I wish fervently that those who dismiss the peasants without knowing them could be present at such a meeting where reports are given on behalf of our anarchist groups of peasants and workers. The reaction of the peasants to these reports is quite instructive and gives a good sense of their psychology. Those peasant toilers require no external advice or authorization when it comes to arranging their own independence and their own productive activities in the revolutionary process. It is for us to go to the peasants humbly and try to understand them.

After hearing the report of our Group, the Congress passed the following resolution:

The Congress then discussed some other questions of current importance and charged the Gulyai-Pole Soviet with publishing all its resolutions and distributing them to all the local Soviets. This ended the work of the Congress.

This attitude on the part of the revolutionary peasants towards the parasitic land barons, an attitude observed by us, the peasant-anarchists, for a duration of six months and confirmed in clear-cut fashion by the September Congress, still more consolidated the strength of our Group in the raion.

Henceforth the Anarchist Communist Group attracted more and more attention from all the Soviets and even the Public Committees. But this result was not achieved without growing pains. We expended a lot of effort in order to overcome, internally, resistance to the principle of a well-ordered organization. Our situation in the oppressed villages became firmly established only when the Group had set up a strong organization and when each move of its active members was made with the knowledge of the membership of the group as a whole. Our assignments were as follows:

In this way our group was unified around the goal of bringing our ideas to life. Each of us understood this and conscientiously took responsibility for their own work.

At the same time our group was drawn closer to the mass of toilers and was enabled to acquaint the toilers with the ideas of anarchism in the social sense of the term and of the need for vigilance with respect to the activities of the Provisional Government and the Ukrainian Central Rada and its Secretariat at a time when these bodies were most detrimental to the practical goals of the Revolution.

The toilers of the raion declared openly to all and sundry that they were keeping a close eye on their oppressors and were prepared to take up arms against them.

From the end of August 1917 all the Public Committees of the raion began to protest against various government orders they had received. These protests were first discussed at local meetings. Then delegates were sent to Gulyai-Pole to consult with our group, and after this a final decision was arrived at.

However, in spite of the obvious revolutionary consciousness of the toilers, a consciousness which opened the way to full spiritual and material freedom and independence from authority, a freedom which the toilers strived to acquire at whatever cost, with their own blood if necessary, a freedom which they wished to feel in themselves and around themselves thereby realizing a society without authority — in spite of this consciousness so strongly displayed by the toilers — the principle of the abolition of private property in land, factories, and workshops proclaimed by the Gulyai-Pole Committee for the Defence of the Revolution and confirmed by the Raion Congress of Toilers could not be fully realized in practice.

The Provisional Government, backed by Kerensky’s allies (the Right S-Rs and the Mensheviks) and controlling the local state apparatus and the troops (which kept apart from the toilers of Gulyai-Pole raion and knew nothing of their goals), ended up having the upper hand. The Government impeded the revolutionary impulse of the toilers who, with their demands for full liberty, had gone well beyond the programs of these political parties. The Government would not allow this healthy initiative to be brought to fruition.

It was thus that, temporarily at least, the privileges of the bourgeoisie shamefully triumphed over the revolutionary masses.

Those who marched under the banner of socialism and played at being socialists contributed incontestably to this result. The toilers of Gulyai-Pole raion, who had boldly tried to seize liberty and happiness, had to content themselves, this time, with not paying to the pomeshchiks the land rent and placing under the control of the Land Committees the land, equipment, and livestock so that the pomeshchiks couldn’t sell them.

It was painful to see how all the toilers in the raion suffered with their physical powerlessness in comparison to the strength of their enemies. This powerlessness was quite obvious and the question was posed: where can one find strength? The toilers finally came to the conclusion that they could count only on themselves. They closed ranks, trying to create sufficient force to liberate all the toilers from the baleful tyranny of the State.

^{Chapter 14} Visit to the Factory Workers of Aleksandrovsk

In spite of the reaction which reigned in all the government institutions and in the workers’ Soviet of Aleksandrovsk towards the toilers of Gulyai-Pole raion, the delegates of the Gulyai-Pole Soviet and the Congress, namely Comrade Antonov and myself, left for Aleksandrovsk with the aim of presenting to the factory workers a report on “the Counter-Revolution in the city and uyezd of Aleksandrovsk”, because we were convinced that revolutionary Gulyai-Pole could have an impact in Aleksandrovsk.

The authorities received us with hostility but didn’t dare hinder us from making an official tour of all the factories, plants, and workshops so we could let the workers know what the peasants were thinking and what measures they intended to take in their revolutionary work. At the same time we hoped to find out what the workers were thinking and what plans they were making for the future, surrounded as they were by the Counter-Revolution which, in the name of the workers, was extending its activity into the countryside.

The Gulyai-Pole Soviet and the Trade Union had promised that if the authorities took it into their heads to arrest us, they would launch a campaign against Aleksandrovsk.

When we arrived in Aleksandrovsk we first went to the Soviet and asked the executive to suggest the most expeditious way to arrange our tour of workplaces so that we wouldn’t skip any place and wouldn’t waste our time. In response to questioning from members of the executive as to what we were up to, we showed them our mandates and, after pondering a bit, they suggested an itinerary and stamped our mandates. But after leaving the Soviet we didn’t follow their suggestions, but made our way instead to the Federation of Anarchists. There we picked up a guide and assistant in the person of the anarchist Comrade Nikiforova and all three of us headed out to visit the workplaces.

We presented our mandates to the factory and plant committees and right away they collected all the workers to hear our report from the peasants.

We spent several days visiting workplaces, making reports to the workers about activities being carried on in their name in the villages by the counter-revolution, activities which were being resisted by the peasants. The workers listened to us with rapt attention and passed their own resolutions of protest against the actions of their own Soviet. They thanked us and, through us, all the toilers of Gulyai-Pole raion for our visit and for exposing to them these vile machinations which were being carried out in the uyezd by their own Soviet together with other government organizations.

At many of these sessions there appeared members of the Aleksandrovsk Soviet and the Public Committee, as well as agents of the Government Commissar and the Military Commissar himself, the S-Rs. Popov. All of these characters spoke out against our reports in an arrogant fashion, acting as if they were incontestably in charge of the situation.

However, they didn’t prevail. The workers declared to them: “We don’t trust you any more because, letting yourselves be run by the bourgeoisie, you have hidden from us a lot of stuff which is useful to the Revolution. You want us to support the Revolution but you don’t want us to develop and broaden it.”

On the evening of the third day we had one report left to make at the munitions workshops, formerly the Badovsky plant. We arrived at the gates of these workshops. At our request to the sentry to admit us to the Committee of Military Workshops, the sentry silently locked the gates in front of us. We shouted through the gates that we had come on behalf of the peasants to make a report to the military workers. The sentry called a member of the Military Committee who declared to us, through the gates, that the Committee knew about us but could not let us in to talk to the soldiers because the Military Commissar, the S-R Popov, had ordered that we were not to be admitted under any circumstances. At this time groups of soldiers began to gather in the courtyard behind the gates. I spoke to them directly: “Comrade soldiers, who’s the boss here? Is the Commissar, elected by you to the Public Committee, the boss over you? Or does the Commissar answer to you? It’s a disgrace, comrades, that you find yourselves in a situation where you aren’t allowed to receive representatives of the peasants — they’re your fathers and mothers, your brothers and sisters!”

Cries were heard from the soldiers: “Where’s our Committee? Bring them here! The Committee must open the gates and let in the representatives of the peasants!… Or else we’ll let them in ourselves… ”

Five soldiers, bare-headed, ran up and opened the gates. We were let into their dining hall where they bombarded us with sensible questions about Gulyai-Pole and the activities there.

A dozen of them surrounded me and said: “We are mostly Left S-Rs and Bolsheviks, there are some anarchists here as well, but we are helpless. If we make the slightest move in a revolutionary sense the Military Commissar will immediately send us to the Front against the Germans and recruit new people to take our places. Help us if you can, Comrade Makhno. We would like to recall all the soldiers’ representatives from the Soviet and the Public Committee and replace them with others who are closer to our ideas.”

I told them we had been charged by the peasants to carry out a mission. “Since our mission coincides with your revolutionary ideas, you should rejoice at its success and try to contribute to it.”

We began our report. The soldiers from the workshops avidly devoured each word, trying to understand everything correctly. They asked questions and openly expressed their joy.

When we invited the soldier-workers to form an organizational connection with the peasants of the uyezd through Gulyai-Pole raion and create a common revolutionary front against the Counter-Revolution, a cry was heard from the mass of soldiers: “Against what Counter-Revolution? All power is in the hands of the revolutionaries! Where can the Counter-Revolution arise?” This was none other than Military Commissar Popov, surrounded by his cohorts.

When Comrade Antonov responded to him that it was precisely this “revolutionary power” which was creating the Counter-Revolution, Commissar Popov, the S-R Martinov, and other socialists began to object violently. From this dispute it became clear that the military workshops were under the influence of the S-Rs and S-Ds. But this influence was not, strictly speaking, ideological, but authoritarian-statist. The mass of soldiers were divided into various political groupings of which the Right S-Rs and the Mensheviks (S-Ds) did not form the majority. But, if they expressed a revolutionary opinion even once (the soldiers told me this openly), they risked being sent to the External Front. So they abstained from speaking out and submitted to the tyranny of the statist power of the Right S-Rs and Mensheviks. This domination of the SRs and SDs got me so worked up that I immediately asked the soldiers to recall these socialists from all the institutions and even expel any of them found in the workshops. I promised the soldiers to intervene at the Provincial Military Commissariat to ensure that their rights were not trampled on. At that time the head of the Commissariat was an anarcho-syndicalist, Comrade Grunbaum, a man with a strong revolutionary will and a good administrator. In the worst case scenario they must be prepared to defend their rights by force of arms in the street and they could count on Gulyai-Pole to support them.

My appeal filled the soldiers with enthusiasm. They wanted to kick the SRs and SDs out of the workshops right away. And if they had not been restrained by their revolutionary consciousness of their responsibility for the lives of these people, why they would have torn them in pieces. Actually it was only with great effort that we succeeded in preventing the soldiers from committing an act unworthy of revolutionaries and directed against other revolutionaries. (However the agents of the government and of these “revolutionaries” on July 3–5, 1917 murdered Comrade Asnin in Petrograd at the Durnovo dacha, as well as many other revolutionaries and anarchists.)

The soldier-workers of the military workshops passed a resolution in connection with our report about recalling their representatives from the Soviet and the Public Committee if these two organizations were not re-organized by all the workers. They also passed a resolution supporting the revolutionary toilers of Gulyai-Pole raion…

And when we left the workshops the soldiers asked us to tell the peasants that the soldiers would always support them in their struggle for liberty and requested them to send similar reports more often.

It was already late. Exhausted, we grabbed a hasty meal at the home of the comrade workers and returned to our rooms.

During the night the Government and Military Commissars — the pomeshchik Mikhno and the S-D Popov — gathered their forces and ordered the secret arrest of the anarchist Nikiforova because she had accompanied us in our meetings with the workers and didn’t enjoy the protection of a mandate from the peasants. The agents of the commissars quickly found her apartment and, seizing her, they took to prison in an automobile.

But, unfortunately for the commissars, the workers of Aleksandrovsk found out about the Nikiforova’s arrest first thing in the morning when they went to work. They immediately elected delegates and sent them to the commissars, empowering them to demand the immediate release of Nikiforova. The commissars avoided the workers’ delegates and couldn’t be found.

Then the workers of the factories, plants, and workshops abandoned their machines and, accompanied by the wailing of the plant sirens, marched on the Soviet under their banners, singing revolutionary songs.

As the workers were showing their revolutionary solidarity by marching on the Soviet, they encountered the President of the Soviet, the Social Democrat Mochalii and seized him. A delegation, elected on the spot, put the President in a horse-drawn cab and accompanied him to the prison to liberate the anarchist Nikiforova.

When the workers’ delegation, President Mochalii, and the anarchist Nikiforova arrived back from the prison at the procession which was marching along Cathedral Street, the workers grabbed Nikiforova and, passing her from hand to hand, bore her in triumph to the Soviet, congratulating her on her release and cursing the Provisional Government and all its agents.

None of the commissars dared show themselves at the tribune of the Soviet. Only the anarchist Nikiforova occupied this tribune and, with her powerful voice, urged the workers to struggle against the Government for the Revolution and for a society free of all authority.

We had finished our reports with an appeal to the workers to do something about the Aleksandrovsk Soviet which had gone too far in its anti-revolutionary activities. We knew what kind of organization it was from the behaviour of its agents in the villages and at congresses. Our reports predicted its fate. The arrogant act of the commissars towards our comrade anarchist was inexcusable both from a political and a tactical point of view and could only hasten the fall of this Soviet of Right S-Rs, Menshevik S-Ds, and Kadets.

The industrial workers were now confronted with the problem of how to reelect the Soviet in the most expeditious manner. In the course of several days new elections were scheduled. The workers recalled all their former representatives and elected, in most cases, new people. In this way a new Executive Committee of the Aleksandrovsk Soviet was formed.

This new Executive Committee was again composed not of workers interested directly in furthering their class interests, but of people who, while they were workers, were also by conviction very close to the Left S-Rs, and Bolsheviks, and even the anarchists. These newly-elected people divided themselves into fractions and, from the very first day of their entry into the Executive Committee, were guilty of distorting the meaning of Revolution among the working masses and, if it were not for the anarchists, would have ended up doing away with the essence of Revolution altogether.

However, this new Executive of the Aleksandrovsk Soviet at least did not support the clearly counter-revolutionary Public Committee of Aleksandrovsk uyezd and the Government Commissar in their demands to the Gulyai-Pole Public Committee to remove me from organizational work because of my role in disarming the bourgeoisie. Also the new Soviet did not insist on the return of the confiscated weapons.

The new Aleksandrovsk Soviet, like all the higher political institutions and administrations, felt the need to give each of its members a portfolio to carry under their arms as if they were going to decide the fate of the Revolution. And they met day after day elaborating rules for their own activities. The time for such work was propitious. This was the period when the Bolsheviks and Left S-Rs agreed on many points and the question of forming a bloc arose. This question had not yet been posed by the leadership of either party but it was easy to predict a positive outcome.

Comrade Antonov and myself left Aleksandrovsk with regret. We would have liked to spend more time with the industrial workers of Aleksandrovsk, among whom were many well-known and devoted revolutionaries. They were outstanding members of their class and yet did not belong any political party. The sympathized with the anarchists. We would have liked to stay with them but we didn’t have the right. We had begun organizational work among the peasants and we had to see it through. We returned to Gulyai-Pole.

Upon our return we called a meeting of all the Gulyai-Pole revolutionary, trade union, and social organizations and made a detailed report about our successes in Aleksandrovsk. Then we convened a general assembly of the whole working population of Gulyai-Pole and made a detailed report about the reception we got from the city workers and their reaction to our report to them about the counter-revolutionary activities going on in Aleksandrovsk and its uyezd. We also passed on the message from the soldier-workers of the munitions workshops. Our successes among the Aleksandrovsk workers invoked general rejoicing among the toiling population.

The revolutionary toilers thirsted for action.

I proposed to the peasants to designate reliable people who would be able to help the Land Committee to proceed immediately to dividing up the land belonging to the churches, the monasteries, and the pomeshchiks, because it was necessary to seed this land before winter or plough it in preparation for spring.

The peasants resolutely set about this work, but when they got out in the field and actually began to divide up the land, they realized that each peasant would have to keep, for that year at least, the land which he had ploughed and seeded with winter wheat. It was decided that each of these peasants should pay a certain sum to the community in order to maintain the public funds which provided for needs of the community, funds which would receive nothing that year from those peasants who had not been working.

In general the peasants took over the land which it was necessary to seed before winter and shared it out without paying the least attention to threats from government agents. A number of raions and uyezds followed the example of the peasants of Gulyai-Pole.

Our Anarchist Communist Group and members of the Gulyai-Pole Soviet sent out literature and agents over a wide area encouraging the peasants to follow our example. We hoped that the local successes of direct revolutionary action by the toilers would resolve the land question in a definitive and just manner before the convocation of the Constituent Assembly. At the same time we hoped also to predetermine the fate of private ownership of factories, plants, and other enterprises, so that the workers, following the example of the peasants, would not remain slaves of the owners of these social enterprises. We hoped they would declare them public property and put them under the direct control of their union plant committees and unions.

This would lead to the commencement of the struggle against the political power of the government (assuming that the anarchist groups in the cities were on the job) and thus the death of the principles of statism itself would become an accomplished fact in the life of the toilers. There would remain only one task: to bury these principles so deeply that they would never be resurrected.

In Gulyai-Pole and the surrounding territory public life took on a healthy character, to the great joy of the revolutionary anarchists, peasants, and workers.

^{Chapter 15} The Provincial Soviet Makes Advances to Gulyai-Pole

While Comrade Antonov and myself were in Aleksandrovsk, the Executive Committee of the Ekaterinoslav Provincial Soviet of Workers’, Peasants’, and Soldiers’ Deputies began to direct serious attention towards Gulyai-Pole. This Committee, politically astute, did not have recourse to repressions as is normally the case with inconsiderate and foolish revolutionary and counter-revolutionary politicians. Instead it resorted to “political wisdom”: by-passing the uyezd level, it sent a proposal to the Gulyai-Pole Soviet to delegate its own permanent representative to the Provincial Executive Committee of Soviets.

In the course of the discussion on this proposal, the Gulyai-Pole Soviet was astonished by the following circumstance: there was already a delegate from Gulyai-Pole on the Provincial Executive Committee — elected at the Provincial Congress. However, the Provincial Executive Committee was proposing that we send a second delegate directly from the Gulyai-Pole Soviet.

This proposal compelled our Soviet to review its past policies, according to which it had always determined it own role in revolutionary work and rejected the direction of higher bodies as incompatible with its understanding of the essence of revolution. Thus it seemed that our response to the Ekaterinoslav Provincial Soviet had, in principle, already been decided and merely needed to be formalized by means of a meeting and a resolution.

However, after we had referred to our original revolutionary views, we realized that they gave rise to problems in carrying revolutionary work in practice. We needed to form alliances with the industrial workers so that together we could claim the right to our heritage: the land, the factories, the plants, etc., and so that together we could exercise this right.

Guided by this idea, we found it mandatory to study the proposal of the Provincial Soviet from all points of view and try to understand what importance its acceptance or rejection would have for revolutionary work in Gulyai-Pole.

The proposition was submitted to serious discussion. Two questions required clarification: (1) the links generally of the toilers of Gulyai-Pole raion with other raions which were also striving to broaden and deepen the revolutionary process; and (2) the possibility that direct representation on the Provincial Soviet would lead to a conflict of ideas in our ranks.

In the end it was clear that the influence of Gulyai-Pole raion was widespread in the region, and that Kamishevatsky raion was working energetically with us. Many raions from Berdyansk, Mariupol’, Pavlograd, and Bakhmyt uyezds were sending us their delegates to learn our attitude towards the enemies of the revolution: the Provisional Government and the Ukrainian Central Rada; also to find out how be we were struggling to transfer all the land, factories, and workshops under the direct control of the peasant and worker organizations.

Moreover, the toilers of many raions of the mentioned uyezds had, by their actions. They had confirmed their solidarity with our ideas, confirmed that they shared our perspective on the land question and on the necessity of doing away with the rule of the Public Committees. They stood for self-management of social affairs and demanded their right to put their ideas into action.

The Gulyai-Pole Soviet and the Anarchist Communist Group saw in this the fruits of their combined efforts. Under the influence of the idea of unity, the Soviet resolved the question about sending their representative to the Provincial Executive Committee in a positive sense: to send a capable, reliable comrade from the Anarchist-Communist Group.

The rationale for this positive resolution was given by the members of the Gulyai-Pole Soviet — peasants and workers — who were not members of the Group. They considered themselves revolutionaries and sympathized with the anarchists but remained embedded in the working class as excellent defenders of the rights of labour. The resolution could be summarized as follows:

Following this reasoning, both the Anarchist Communist Group and the Trade Union Executive spoke out at meeting of the Gulyai-Pole Soviet in favour of the decision to send their own representative to the Provincial Executive of the Soviets.

Since the Soviet insisted on sending a member of our Group, we chose Comrade Lev Schneider, an experienced working class organizer.

It was a time of troubles. Kerensky threatened the leftists with reaction. Revolutionary anarchists had to be ready either to begin armed struggle against the Provisional Government or to disappear into the underground.

I knew perfectly well that our anarchist movement, because of the absence of a strong organization, was weak in the cities and in the countryside scarcely existed. Consequently, our anarchist group had to operate completely independently, as we had earlier decided, and be ready for anything.

Our Soviet provided Comrade L. Schneider with documents certifying that he was authorized to represent it on the Executive Committee of the Provincial Soviet. The Anarchist Communist Group gave him instructions about how to conduct himself and about working with the Ekaterinoslav Federation of Anarchists. The Soviet of the Trade Union also empowered him to try to enter into negotiations with the Provincial Industrial Committee which was located in Ekaterinoslav. The purpose of this was to ensure that the foundries of Gulyai-Pole received the raw materials they needed in sufficient quantity and in a timely fashion so that work in the plants would not have to stop. Or if it did have to stop, then only in those branches which were least necessary for the population of Gulyai-Pole raion.

At the Provincial Executive Committee of Soviets, Comrade Schneider was welcomed with open arms. But… after one or two meetings of the Committee, and one or two speeches by Comrade Schneider — the attitude of the leaders of the Committee changed drastically. His position became difficult. Some members of the Committee raised the question of denying him the right to vote on decisions, leaving him with only a consultative role. Lev Schneider responded that he had never had the right to take part in the decisions of the Provincial Executive Committee of Soviets because the Gulyai-Pole Soviet had not authorized him to do so. He had been delegated to the Committee only to keep informed of all new measures taken by the Committee in the revolutionary domain, and to acquaint the representatives of the toilers from other parts of the province with what was being accomplished by the toilers of Gulyai-Pole. In this way he hoped it would be possible to coordinate the self-activity of the toilers of the various uyezds or raions so as to fill in any gaps in a coordinated way.

After this frank declaration by Schneider of the motives which had brought him to the Provincial Executive Committee of Soviets from the Gulyai-Pole Soviet, numerous members of the Committee requested that an item be added to agenda demanding the complete exclusion of the representative of Gulyai-Pole.

However, the times were such that to exclude the representative from Gulyai-Pole would have provoked a boycott of the Provincial Executive by Gulyai-Pole and a number of revolutionary-minded raions adjacent to it. This would have demonstrated to the toiling masses of the whole province, and even well beyond its boundaries, that the Ekaterinoslav Provincial Executive was trailing the masses when it came to revolutionary action. A boycott at such a high-stress point in the Revolution would create serious problems, at least for politicians.

The Provincial Executive understood this very well and, grudgingly, allowed the representative of Gulyai-Pole to remain in its ranks, assigning him to a place in one of its sections. He ended up in the industrial section, if I am not mistaken.

Each week our representative came back to Gulyai-Pole to make reports to the Soviet, the Trade Union, and the Anarchist Communist Group. His reports were discussed. His strength renewed, he headed back to Ekaterinoslav for another week.

Through his mediation the Soviet of the Trade Union concluded an agreement with the Provincial Industrial Committee and began to receive vital raw materials for its plants.

The Raion Congress of Land Committees designated a number of properties of pomeshchiks to be turned into agrarian communes with the help of volunteers.

The toiling peasantry and workers, made up of people with the appropriate skills — often extended families or groups of neighbours — organized themselves into free agrarian communes ranging in size from 50 to 200 people. They had joy on their faces as they discussed among themselves what they must do before spring, what kind of wheat they should sow so as to give the best harvest and, of course, help the Revolution, on condition that the weather was good, not too dry, with the rain necessary for our black earth at the right time in the spring and first two months of summer.

“Sowing all the land with a good grain, followed by an abundant harvest, will allow us to overcome the devastations of war and support the forces of the Revolution as they work in our best interests,” said the peasants.

And when the anarchists put this question to them: “What about the Provisional Government in Petrograd and the Central Rada in Kiev? They are the direct enemies of this Revolution which you are striving to support.” The answer was always the same, delivered with revolutionary emotion: “But we are organizing ourselves precisely to overthrow the Provisional Government and not allow the Central Rada to triumph. We hope that by the time spring rolls around we will have done with all governments.”

And sometimes we asked: “Who’s going to do this — you?”

“We, the peasants and workers. You went to Aleksandrovsk and were able to see that the workers want to live, like us, free and independent of any kind of rulers over our heads.”

In September, during our organizing work among the peasants and workers, the Government Commissar, the pomeshchik Mikhno, sent to Gulyai-Pole an official charged with conducting an investigation of me and the other peasants and workers who had disarmed the bourgeoisie of the raion.

This official set up shop in the office of the Militia and told the Militia to summon all these peasants and workers, including myself, so he could interrogate them one at a time.

There I sat him on a chair and asked him to explain as calmly as possible the reason for his presence in Gulyai-Pole. He tried his best to give me explanations in a calm manner but, for reasons I can’t imagine, he didn’t manage at all: his lips trembled, his teeth clattered, he face alternated between red and white, and his eyes were fixed on the floor.

Then I asked him to compose himself and write down what I was going to dictate to him. And when he, holding his pen with great difficulty, had written down what I said, I gave him 20 minutes to get out of Gulyai-Pole and two hours to leave the borders of the raion. And the official indeed left very quickly, astonishing the Committee and myself with his speed, as he returned to his boss in Aleksandrovsk.

After this Gulyai-Pole no longer received any external orders, nor any special envoys from Aleksandrovsk.