practical advice.72 Later, when Kropotkin was in need, the makhnovtsy sent some food to him in Dmitrov.73 Makhno went to see Kropotkin in Moscow in a reverent frame of mind, expecting answers to questions; however, when the two met, the outcome was inconclusive. Kropotkin, the ideinye anarchist, insisted that only Makhno could solve his own problems, remarking ‘one must bear in mind, dear comrade, that there is no sentimentality in our struggle – selflessness and strength of heart on the path to the goal one has chosen will conquer everything’. Makhno later wrote that this comment stayed in his mind and sustained him through his long struggle.74
In the posthumously-published second volume of his memoirs, Makhno describes meetings with both Sverdlov and Lenin while he was in Moscow, probably sometime between 14 and 29 June 1918.75 Makhno’s account is the only known evidence for these encounters,76 but as Louis Fischer wrote in the 1960s, Lenin often talked to peasants as a way of ‘taking the pulse’.77 Aleksandr Shubin, writing more recently, agrees: ‘the description of the conversation in Makhno’s memoirs is quite plausible’.78 Nevertheless, some caution is required; there are other errors in the volume.79 As the English translator observes, in writing the memoirs
Makhno was not interested … in serving the needs of professional historians … He portrays … himself as a supporter of some form of Ukrainian autonomy … [but] the emphasis on his nationality may be a later interpolation.80
According to Makhno, he wandered into the Kremlin complex, and managed to find the building he was looking for, where he was directed to Sverdlov’s office.81 The conversations, reconstructed from memory years later, are stilted and formulaic, exchanges of pleasantries followed by obvious questions about the class character of the Ukrainian peasantry. Lenin asked Makhno what he understood by the slogan ‘All power to the Soviets’ – the role of the soviets was a key point of difference between anarchists and Bolsheviks. Shubin has written that ‘while soldiers went to their deaths for Power to the Soviets, singing the International under the red flag, Soviet Power was becoming stronger behind them. It became clear that they were not the same thing’.82 The peasants, said Makhno, took the slogan ‘All power to the Soviets’ to mean that power over their affairs must rest with the workers themselves at the local level. The other main bone of contention was the Bolsheviks’ general lack of interest in the peasantry. Makhno claimed that Lenin told him that if there were other anarchists like him, the Bolsheviks might be willing to work with them to set up ‘free producer’s organisations’.83
On 29 June 1918 Makhno left Moscow on a slow train for the south, with a false passport and disguised as a Ukrainian officer. Arshinov was at the station to see him off.84 The trip was a risky one, and at one point he was arrested by the Austrians; he walked the last 25 kilometres to Guliaipole.85
The Hetmanate’s policy of restoring estates to the landlords was an important driver of peasant discontent, but recent research has shown that ‘most of peasants’ complaints … focused on the actions not of returning landlords, but of the occupying soldiers’.86 The Germans and Austrians continued to requisition foodstuffs and livestock without compensation. For example, at a horse fair in June, a German detachment took whichever animal seized their fancy, and when the peasants resisted, imposed a fine of 75,000 roubles on the host village for attacking a German officer.87 There were many other incidents. Commissions set up to assess damage to the seized estates forced the peasantry to pay compensation to their former landlords, and each community was responsible for payments by individual members.88 As repression intensified, peasant opposition to the Germans and Skoropadskii moved from the passing of congress resolutions to armed insurrection.89 The first armed detachments were formed in Kursk, Kiev and Chernigov provinces in early May, and attracted vigorous and brutal repressive action from the occupying forces. The scale of these guerrilla actions escalated quickly, especially in Podolia, Khar’kov and Ekaterinoslav.90
Among minority victims of the widening violence were both Germans and Jews. Many German colonists in Ukraine were Mennonites, commercial farmers who had arrived in the Russian Empire in the late-eighteenth century, settling in religious communities in Ekaterinoslav, Tauride and Kherson. They initially welcomed the arrival of the German and Austrian troops, and before the invaders withdrew in the autumn of 1918, set up self-defence (Selbstschutz) units to resist the makhnovtsy and other partisan groups. This was a political error, creating popular hostility towards the Mennonites, and a violation of their non-violent principles.91 The makhnovtsy were responsible for attacks on Mennonite communities from late 1918 onwards, of which the most savage occurred in Eichenfeld in November 1919. Mennonite memoirs of the period typically list the names of martyrs and enumerate pillaged villages, farms and settlements.92 However, as Sean Patterson has argued, pointing to the ‘resentment associated with land hunger and poverty’, such a Mennonite meta-narrative fails to engage with
… the breakdown of neighbourly relations between Mennonites and Ukrainians where roots of the conflict may be glimpsed. This was a process that began before the arrival of Makhno … and even before the German occupation … With the collapse of order in the countryside the situation escalated …93
Mennonites were not the only victims. Peasant units were often anti-Semitic and would plunder Jewish houses, while leaving other homes intact. They also collected taxes.94
Makhno’s return from Russia went unnoticed. He slipped into the village of Rozhdestvenka, 20 kilometres from Guliaipole, and went into hiding.95 Many comrades were under arrest, and the Austrians had burned his mother’s home and shot his brother Emel’ian, a wounded veteran.96 On 4 July he issued a ‘proclamation’, couched in broad terms, exhorting the peasants to expel the invaders and establish a free society. Cautiously, he made ten copies, and circulated them to known sympathisers in the Guliaipole region.97 The response was disappointing: he received a note telling him not to come back, adding that ‘the Jews’ were hunting out revolutionaries, just as they had ‘betrayed the revolution’ to the Austrians in April. Makhno sent back a warning against anti-Semitism, but the reply repeated the same accusations.98
The dominant narrative recounted here describes the embryonic insurgency in the period from April 1918 to the end of the year, before Makhno became a major protagonist in the Ukrainian struggle. However, it derives principally from a sequence of mutually-reinforcing sources: primarily chapters 3, 4, and part of 5 of Arshinov’s 1923 book; the second and third volumes of Makhno’s own memoirs, edited by Volin and published posthumously in the 1930s; and Viktor Belash’s text, as edited by his son in the 1990s. There are identifiable errors in Makhno’s text, and there is still relatively little published primary documentation.99
Makhno planned to organise Guliaipole into zones, each with a nucleus of committed revolutionaries, who would gather their most energetic and fearless neighbours into guerrilla squads. These would selectively ambush Austrian patrols – and landowners – in isolated areas. Such ‘rapid and unexpected blows’ would eventually demoralise the occupying forces sufficiently to permit an assault on the garrison at Guliaipole. Unfortunately, his followers launched several feeble attacks, which the Austrians and Hetmanite authorities easily repulsed. The disorganised raids precipitated a wave of arrests and house searches. Makhno’s presence was revealed, and he beat a hasty retreat to Ternovka, 80 kilometres away, using the false passport issued to him in Moscow.100 In Ternovka – for whatever reason – Makhno found the fighting spirit that Guliaipole’s inhabitants had lacked. He set about organising platoons, and warned of the dangers of launching attacks too early.101 The Red Guards had abandoned some weapons during their retreat in the spring, and the tiny squad was adequately armed.
Reconnoitring Guliaipole, Makhno found that Austrian punitive detachments were requisitioning grain, and fighting had broken out. In general, the Germans failed to restrain the Austrians
