to the Austrians.130
Eventually the refugees were allowed to depart for Berdiansk unharmed.131
Without German support, Skoropadskii’s position was deemed untenable. Symon Petliura, Volodymyr Vynnychenko and other former members of the Rada had been forming a new, radical nationalist government, the Directory, since late summer, and they triggered a revolt in November. Their army entered Kiev on 14 December 1918.132 Makhno had doubts: Vynnychenko might indeed be creating a new government in Ukraine, he told his supporters,
… but I ask you, comrades, where among the toilers in the revolutionary towns and villages of Ukraine are to be found such fools as to believe in the ‘socialism’ of this Petliurist-Vynnychenkovist Ukrainian government … ?’133
Despite this, the makhnovtsy adopted, with reservations, a policy of armed neutrality towards the Directory. Makhno believed that it had compromised itself politically by including Petliura, who had collaborated with the Central Powers during the invasion. Vynnychenko’s democratic socialism might have made a military alliance acceptable to the anarchists, but the Directory’s opportunism and lack of a mandate were deal-breakers: politically the makhnovtsy believed that the Directory was worse than the Rada.134 While not seeking a fight, the makhnovtsy were ready should the need arise.135
On 26 December the Directory abolished the Hetmanate’s police system (the Warta), and recognised trade unions and the right to strike.136 It declared itself to be the Revolutionary Provisional Government of Ukraine, accusing the bourgeoisie and the landowners of bringing ruin on the country.137 However, it struggled to control its Galician military units and could not compete effectively with a rival Bolshevik ‘provisional government-in-exile’, set up in Moscow in November 1918 under Georgii Piatakov, ‘to mask the intervention and the split in the Ukrainian [communist] movement’.138
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It is unclear how strong Makhno’s forces actually were in late 1918. One source indicates that he commanded 300–400 infantry and 150 cavalry, with another 2,000 armed partisans in reserve. Timoshchuk argues that this is an underestimate, citing Denikin’s estimate of five to six thousand fighters, and a report in a Ekaterinoslav newspaper that ‘10,000 well-armed and equipped makhnovtsy’ had helped to restore Soviet power in Pavlograd and Guliaipole. Moreover, he comments, the higher number ‘seems more likely, since at the end of December the makhnovtsy played a major role in the capture of Ekaterinoslav’.139
In late December the Red Army,140 under the command of Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko, began to advance into Ukraine from the north.141 Antonov’s superior officer, the Latvian commander-in-chief of the Red Army, Ioakim Vatsetis (Latvian: Jukums Vācietis) was more concerned with the threat of P. N. Krasnov’s Don Army, to the southeast of Voronezh, and too close to Moscow for comfort. He refused to give Antonov more than the minimum of troops and weapons, and ordered him to attack behind Krasnov’s lines to the southeast, away from Ukraine.142 Nevertheless, Antonov’s offensive from the north gathered momentum. His forces consisted of two ill-disciplined, under-manned and badly armed divisions of fewer than 4,000 men.143 Antonov devised a strategy hinging upon the capture of three key cities: Khar’kov, key to the Donbass; Kiev, capital of Ukraine and the seat of nationalism; and Odessa, a port city crucial to the expected Anglo–French intervention. These were towns with an industrial working class sympathetic to the communist cause.
Antonov was desperate for men and began to recruit partisan groups with a record of anti-German or anti-White activity. He ordered these bands to foment rebellion and to organise themselves in readiness for the expected Allied intervention.144 After the formation of the Ukrainian Soviet Government at Kursk on 28 November Antonov’s position seemed stronger, as he was now, at least technically, working for the Ukrainians. Early in December he assumed real command of the two partisan divisions that had been assigned to him. Both units were under strength, disorganised and demoralised. Antonov energetically set about building his army, a task that required considerable resourcefulness. Throughout December he moved his troops forward into Ukraine, into position for the attack on Khar’kov. He was determined that Vatsetis should not deny him the opportunity to establish Soviet power in the south.
Oddly enough, Makhno had sent a message early in December to local Bolsheviks offering to cooperate against the Directory, but his offer had been refused, ostensibly because his forces were mere anarchist bandits.145 The makhnovtsy were now turning westwards towards Ekaterinoslav, a move that brought them into contact with the forces of the Directory.146 To the nationalists, the makhnovtsy were just another peasant gang that might possibly be usefully recruited. Ignorant of Makhno’s politics, they interrogated him; what did he think of the Directory? What was his idea of Ukraine’s political future? Would an alliance not be in the interests of both groups?147 Makhno was uncompromising, and despite having no allies he refused to have anything to do with the Directory. Ukraine could only be free if the peasants and workers were free. Between the workers’ movement and the movement of the bourgeoisie only an armed struggle was possible.148
After the negotiations broke down, the makhnovtsy moved onto the offensive against Ekaterinoslav. The town had fallen to the nationalists early in December and a week or so later they moved against the local soviet and dispersed it, arresting some Left SRs and communists.149 There were Bolshevik detachments in the suburb of Nizhnedneprovsk on the left bank of the river, and they demanded that their comrades be released.150 The Nizhnedneprovsk committee offered Makhno the command of their workers’ detachments for an attack on the city, with a total of about 15,000 men.151
On 27 December Makhno launched his attack, employing a ruse of the kind that came to be considered typical of his style of warfare. There are various stories of makhnovtsy disguised in wedding dresses, or hiding in coffins at funerals, which are unverifiable and quite possibly fictional.152 Workers were still riding in and out of the city from the suburbs by train, uninspected. The makhnovtsy, with their guns tucked under their greatcoats, boarded an early morning train for the centre of Ekaterinoslav. The trick succeeded, and the insurgents quickly captured the railway station, while fierce fighting broke out in the city.153 The communists captured the bridge into Ekaterinoslav with the loss of only six men. An unexpected bonus came with the defection of a Petliurist artillery officer and his guns and gun-teams to the insurgents’ side.154 The fighting continued in great confusion for three days, until the partisans were in control of most of the city. Makhno opened the jail and released all the prisoners; he also formed a governing soviet and issued a decree against looting.155 As Danilov and Shanin have pointed out, Soviet historiography represented the makhnovtsy as ‘engaged exclusively in looting captured cities … and passenger trains’ while the evidence shows that all the armies – whether German or Austro-Hungarian, Ukrainian nationalists, Bolsheviks and Whites, or peasant insurgencies – needed to survive, and so all robbed and plundered.156 There are other stories of the makhnovtsy engaging in wanton acts of destruction, burning libraries and archives, and deliberately shelling a city’s buildings with cannon.157 However, Makhno was aware that such conduct was incompatible with maintaining popular support and consistently punished it.
The troops of the Directory recaptured Ekaterinoslav after only a day. The insurgents withdrew eastwards across the Dnepr back to the area around Sinel’nikovo, where they dug in.158 A period of cautious non-belligerence followed. Neither side was strong enough to mount a full-scale attack on the other, although intermittent clashes over supplies continued to occur in other areas. Meanwhile, the arrival of Antonov’s army, theoretically under the orders of the Ukrainian Soviet government, split the Directory into a nationalist faction and one (including Vynnychenko) that supported a proletarian revolution as well as a Ukrainian state.
At
