collecting any followers that he could find along the way.42
The Germans were losing patience with the Rada: on 24 April a senior official wrote that ‘… cooperation with the current government … is impossible … The Ukrainian government must not interfere with the military and economic activities of the German authorities …’43 There followed a list of demands that the Rada would clearly never accept. On 26 April the German commander, General Hermann von Eichhorn, placed Kiev under martial law,44 and two days later Pavlo Skoropadskii was proclaimed Hetman of Ukraine, reviving an eighteenth-century military title.45 Skoropadskii – a wealthy, conservative officer – consented to German demands: to recognise Brest-Litovsk; to form a Ukrainian puppet army; to dissolve the soviets and land committees; to adopt legislation on the compulsory delivery of grain; and to sign a free-trade agreement with Germany. He agreed to restore property rights, permit private ownership of land, and preserve the large estates ‘in the interests of agriculture’.46 The Hetmanate relied upon the professional administrators of the old Tsarist state apparatus: its police force, the Dershavna Warta or State Guards, were noted for their brutality. General Erich Ludendorff commented that ‘we [had] found a man with whom it was very easy to get along’,47 and German officials began planning a puppet Ukraine modelled on British dominions, with a government of dependable local notables.48
In Taganrog, crowded with refugees and deserters, the authorities were trying to control anarchist activity. Nikiforova was arrested for her activities in Elisavetgrad and Aleksandrovsk, but an investigating commission acquitted her.49 The Bolshevik military commander Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko even endorsed her revolutionary spirit.50 But hers was not an isolated case: the Cheka moved against anarchists in other towns and cities such as Petrograd and Samara,51 charging that these fierce critics of Brest-Litovsk were hooligans and thieves. Lenin commented in Pravda on 28 April that anarchists opposed both socialism and communism and that ‘to put [them] down … requires an iron hand’.52
Late in the month, Makhno and his band held an impromptu conference in Taganrog and discussed the disaster at Guliaipole. Makhno was worried that Jews would be blamed for the fall of the town, but the meeting agreed that the Jewish company was not to blame.53 The German occupiers were largely indifferent to both the peasants’ feeling for the land and the intellectuals’ feeling for the nation, but it was only as resistance grew that the makhnovtsy began to be carried along on a wave of dissatisfaction not especially of their own making.54 The meeting agreed to wait for the harvest in June and July before attempting any armed resistance: it would then be easier to mingle with the peasants in the fields. They planned to collect weapons and organise cells of five to ten fighters for a terrorist campaign against German officers and pomeshchiki. In the meantime, Makhno would travel around Russia to assess the situation and contact Russian anarchist groups.55
Heading east towards Rostov-on-Don, Makhno set off on a two-month journey that would take him as far as Moscow and – reputedly – to a meeting with Lenin. Rostov was under pressure from the Whites along the eastern coast of the Sea of Azov, and from the Germans and Austrians in the west. The local anarchists had all but disappeared, and as soon as he could, Makhno moved on to Tsaritsyn, 400 kilometres northeast and far away from both Whites and Germans. He was able to ride a train with some Red Guards, as there was still some rapport between anarchists and Bolsheviks in the field, and indeed some Red Guard commanders were anarchists.56 But even with Red Guards, travelling was risky: north of Rostov, Makhno was arrested while helping to requisition food. Fortunately, he had documents proving he had been chair of the Revolutionary Committee in Guliaipole.57 In Tsaritsyn, Makhno unwisely intervened in a local dispute,58 and then, at the beginning of May, fled on a riverboat, travelling up the Volga to Saratov, 400 kilometres further north.59
As in Tsaritsyn, in Saratov the anarchist movement was in bad shape. News finally reached Makhno that the Rada had been replaced by the pseudomonarchical Hetmanate, supported by Germans and landowners. For Makhno, the news confirmed that while the Bolsheviks were responsible for Brest-Litovsk, the Left SRs shared responsibility ‘for not breaking their coalition with Lenin’s government … [and] for not ordering armed struggle … against the occupation of Ukraine’.60 Gangs of sailors roamed the town and an anarchist ‘Detachment of Odessa Terrorists’ was refusing to be disarmed.61 Again Makhno decided to move on, and set off southwards towards Astrakhan. Here the local Soviet was strong and confident, preaching Bolshevism to the Muslim population of the Volga Valley.62 Makhno got a job with the Soviet, hiding his anarchist affiliation, and was assigned to an agitation section. Meanwhile he secretly contacted the local anarchist group, which printed one of his poems in their newspaper under his prison nickname, Skromnyi, which some anarchists still remembered.63 It was his first publication.
The libertarian content of his agitation work aroused suspicion, and yet again he was compelled to move on, doubling back through Tsaritsyn and Saratov, sailing up the Volga by steamboat.64 Makhno read newspaper stories about the repressive and brutal hetman regime, and decided it was not yet time to return home. He got a ticket to Moscow by producing his identity card as chair of the Guliaipole revkom, and set off by train. The journey was slow, and all kinds of rumours were circulating. There was a delay of over 24 hours in Tambov65 before the train reached Moscow.66 Makhno’s arrival went unnoticed; he had published no theoretical articles and had been working far from the capital.
In June 1918 Bolshevik fortunes were at a low ebb. The Reds were threatened by the Germans in the west and the south, the Whites in the Caucasus and the Czech Legion and the Whites across the Urals. The Mensheviks and Right SRs had been expelled from VTsIK on 14 June, primarily because of their involvement in the so-called ‘democratic counter-revolution’. The Bolsheviks lacked an effective army and were running short of food. The railway workers in Moscow were restless, and on 19 June shooting broke out at a union meeting. A split with the Left SRs over the treaty of Brest-Litovsk was imminent. The 5th All-Russian Congress of Soviets opened in Moscow on 4 July and the SRs, outnumbered three to one by the Bolsheviks, demonstrated noisily against the German occupation: two days later SRs disguised as Chekists assassinated the German ambassador in Moscow.67 In Kiev on 30 July, a Left SR assassinated General von Eichhorn, commander-in-chief of German forces in Ukraine. The SRs then turned against the Bolsheviks themselves, killing two leaders in Petrograd and seriously wounding Lenin in Moscow in August. The regime reacted by unleashing a campaign of terror in the autumn, allowing the unarmed and disorganised urban anarchists no room for manoeuvre. The Cheka’s role was not to judge but to strike: all types of anarchist were crushed.68
Makhno, arriving in Moscow as the crisis was peaking, was shocked by anarchist attitudes, quibbling over points of theory while the Bolsheviks entrenched themselves. Moscow was ‘the capital of the paper revolution’, producing only slogans and manifestos.69
Map 2.2Makhno’s Journey to Moscow and Back, 1918
Makhno’s journey to Moscow by train, riverboat, and in places on foot, led him all over the south between April and June, and allegedly culminated in a meeting with Lenin himself. (Cartographer: Jenny Sandler)
He visited leading anarchists and found them demoralised – even Arshinov was not interested in returning to Ukraine, and others, such as the poet Lev Chernyi, were actively cooperating with the regime. For three weeks Makhno spent his time at meetings, reading and making contacts. He attended the All-Russian Congress of Textile Unions, as well as gatherings of Left SRs.70 He was especially eager to meet Kropotkin, the elder statesman of Russian anarchism, then aged 75.71 He had been bitterly disappointed when Kropotkin supported the war in 1914, but still admired the old man. In 1917, when the anarchists of Guliaipole received news of Kropotkin’s
