that had been disturbed.159 Nevertheless, it was a period of relative freedom in the interior of the area under the control of the makhnovtsy. They reached an agreement on a modus vivendi with the Bolsheviks: Antonov was more interested in seizing cities and towns in northern Ukraine. The communists were concentrating on urgent military and political problems rather than local administration – so for a few months the peasants of Guliaipole and its environs again had an opportunity to govern themselves. They returned to the system of communes that they had adopted in 1917–18. Anarchist commentators are careful to distinguish these working communes, or free communes, from other types such as the Bolshevik exemplary communes. These sympathetic accounts are obviously open to charges of bias: according to Volin, for example, the Makhnovite partisans exerted no pressure on the peasants, but confined themselves to propaganda in favour of free communes.160 Arshinov asserts that ‘these were real working communes of peasants who, themselves accustomed to work, valued work in themselves and in others’. But his account provides little detail:
The peasants worked in these communes … to provide their daily bread … The principles of brotherhood and equality permeated the communes. Everyone – men, women and children – worked according to his or her abilities. Organisational work was assigned to one or two comrades who, after finishing it, took up the remaining tasks together with the other members of the commune. It is evident that these communes had these traits because they grew out of a working milieu and that their development followed a natural course.161
One commune near Prokovskoe was named after Rosa Luxemburg. It grew from a few dozen members to over 300, but the Bolsheviks broke it up in June 1919, after the split between Makhno and Trotsky.162 Another, ‘Commune no. 1’, was located about seven kilometres away. Similar communes clustered close to Guliaipole, in a radius of about 20 kilometres. A pamphlet entitled Osnovye polozheniia o vol’nom trudovom Sovet (proekt) (Basic Statute on the Free Worker’s Soviet: Draft) outlined the role of the soviets, which were to be independent of political parties.163 They were to operate within a socioeconomic system based on real equality, consisting only of workers, and could not delegate executive power to any member.164 Even if the anarchist communes were truly voluntary, one difference distinguished the earlier period from the later. Makhno had learned the lesson of the Austro-German invasion. He knew that if the revolution in his area was to remain in peasant control, he needed an army to protect it. He had also learned to choose his enemies. He could distinguish between those to whom he could ally himself (the Bolsheviks), those he could ignore or take advantage of (the Petliurists) and those against whom he should struggle uncompromisingly (the Whites of General Denikin).
Meanwhile, aided by strikes that closed down public utilities, and by the panic which seized the defending nationalists, the Bolsheviks captured Khar’kov in January. Antonov, who had been agitating for the creation of a separate Ukrainian Front for some time, at last got his way. On 12 January the Bolsheviks reached Chernigov in the west, and by the 20th they controlled Poltava. On 16 January, the Directory declared war on Soviet Russia, hoping in vain for assistance from French forces in Odessa, and two days later communist troops led by the sailor Pavel Dybenko attacked Ekaterinoslav, eventually driving the nationalists out for a second time on 27 January. By 5 February Kiev had been abandoned to the Bolsheviks. For civilians, these latest occupiers represented a marked improvement. ‘Compared not only to the makhnovtsy but even to the Petliurists,’ wrote one citizen, ‘the men of the Red Army created an extraordinarily disciplined impression’.165
3
Brigade Commander and Partisan: Makhno’s Campaigns against Denikin, January–May 1919
January is the coldest month in Ukraine, with temperatures below zero and the bora, a northeasterly wind, bringing heavy snowfalls. January in 1919 was not only cold1 but was also marked by a continuation of the political and military realignment of forces – as described in the previous chapter – in the struggle to secure Ukraine in the coming spring. This was a process in which Makhno, and his followers, aimed to play a key role. On 4 January, despite the fact that Russia and Ukraine were at least on paper now separate countries, the Revolutionary Military Council (Revoliutsionnyi Voennyi Sovet or RVS) unilaterally took the important military decision to constitute a Ukrainian Front, with Soviet forces having already captured Khar’kov the day before over ineffectual protests from the Directory in Kiev.2 On 16 January Petliura mounted a coup to gain control of the Directory, and, ignoring earlier diplomatic feelers to Moscow and under pressure from his French sponsors, declared war on Soviet Russia.3
By this time Denikin’s Volunteer Army consisted of over 80,000 men, of whom perhaps 30,000 were tied down in the rear, protecting his communication and supply lines from partisan raids.4 From the first weeks after Skoropadskii’s downfall and the withdrawal of the armies of occupation of the Central Powers, cavalry units of the Volunteer Army had begun probing along the Don and the Kuban rivers into Makhno’s region. Denikin anticipated that the partisans would be engaged in fighting the Petliurists, but in fact, after the brutal struggle for Ekaterinoslav, that front was quiet, and the White cavalry met with unexpectedly stubborn resistance from the outgunned partisans. In January the makhnovtsy moved many of their troops to the southeast and gained control of much of the area eastwards towards the Sea of Azov. The front stretched for over 90 kilometres to the north and northeast of Mariupol’, protecting the anarchist ‘liberated zone’ and even cutting into the Donbass.5
As the Whites increased in power and influence, the idea of an alliance between the partisans and the Bolsheviks, on the face of it in the interests of both sides, began to emerge.6 The Red Army did not come into actual contact with the insurgents until February, when Dybenko’s division arrived from the north at Sinel’nikovo, east of Ekaterinoslav. In fact, according to F. T. Fomin, a former member of the Cheka who was then at the front in charge of counter-espionage for the Bolsheviks, the first contacts had taken place earlier in the winter. Gusev, then Makhno’s chief-of-staff, visited Fomin in his railway carriage at Khar’kov station, and asked him to pass a proposal for a formal alliance to the Ukrainian RVS. In exchange for weapons and supplies the Bolsheviks would gain the advantage of a coordinated command over a vital sector of the front.7 Gusev claimed that the insurgent forces numbered about 10,000, but communist intelligence estimated only 4,000 infantry and about 3,000 unarmed men.8 A few weeks later, in mid-February, the Soviet estimate of Makhno’s strength was only 6,700 men.9 Whatever their actual numbers, Makhno’s forces were stretched thin, and even in a war of movement could not have withstood a determined assault by Denikin’s numerically superior forces. Indeed, in late January and early February, the makhnovtsy only just managed to defend Guliaipole in a series of increasingly desperate actions against the Whites.10
The RVS, chaired by Antonov, discussed the proposed alliance. Denikin’s advance presented a serious threat, and the RVS could not afford to turn away help. One opinion was in favour of breaking up the anarchist army and incorporating the troops into other units as reinforcements, thus minimising the anarchists’ disruptive influence. The second view, which prevailed, was that the Red Army could safely absorb the insurgents as an integral unit, so long as political commissars were assigned to them.11 The decision to conclude an alliance on these terms – permitting Makhno’s forces to stay together – was a key moment in determining the events that followed.12 As we shall see, the distinction between military and political integrity was understood quite differently by the two sides.13 Indeed, by relying on Makhno’s brigade to hold an important sector of the front, the RVS risked exactly the kind of rupture in the heat of battle that in fact occurred in June 1919. By assigning political commissars – who were often low calibre cadres – to Makhno’s units, the Bolsheviks also risked alienating the ideinye anarkhisty who exercised a strong influence on the insurgent army. In addition, the makhnovtsy received the Bolshevik commissars with hostility, as representatives of city-dwellers who stole grain.14
