April 1919 the Central Committee of the Komunistychna Partiia (bil’shovykiv) Ukrainy (the KP(b)U), passed a decree ‘On the Tasks of the Party in the Struggle against Kulak Gangsterism’. This implemented committees of poor peasants (kombedy, or in Ukrainian komnezamy) on the Russian model.73 Kulaks were excluded from the village committees completely, and middle peasants were only allowed to vote but not to stand for election.74 However the kombedy had no real incentive to assist the food committees (known as prodorgany), since any surplus that was extracted from the rich peasants went to the cities, and not into support for the rural poor. This applied equally to grain and to animal feed.75 The Bolsheviks had already tried this tactic in Great Russia, under a decree of 11 June 1918, but had absorbed the committees into the rural soviets at the end of the year. In the new decree the Ukrainian Central Committee pledged itself to send as many experienced political workers as possible to the villages, and to publish more peasant-oriented political literature.76 In Ukraine the differentiation between wealthy peasants (kulaks) and poor peasants was sharper than in Russia, and to the Bolsheviks another attempt must have seemed worthwhile.77 However, Lenin noted at the 8th Party congress that it was a mistake to apply Russian policies uncritically to the ‘borderlands’.78 Nonetheless, the kombedy survived in Ukraine into the New Economic Policy (NEP) period, and some delegates at the 8th All-Russian Congress of Soviets were still defending their activities as late as December 1920.79
Despite the praise for and recognition of the military contribution of the makhnovtsy, the Soviet authorities regarded Makhno’s activities with deepening suspicion. The RVS received information that Makhno had allegedly sent a delegate to Ataman Grigor’ev to negotiate terms for an alliance against the Bolsheviks. The town soviet of Ekaterinoslav had arrested the man. The situation, complained the Ekaterinoslav Bolsheviks, was ‘absolutely impossible’, and they urged the RVS to take urgent steps to liquidate the makhnovtsy, who were preventing communist work.80 By mid-April 1919, several months after the incorporation of Makhno’s units into the Red Army, the political position in the 3rd Brigade was still discouraging for the communists. Their decision to keep the insurgent units separate, after their acceptance of the unified command, now came back to haunt them in more ways than one.
Particular difficulties arose around the system of assigning commissars to each unit at all levels. For one thing, the insurgents saw no reason for them: ‘Why do they send us commissars? We can live without them! And if we do need them, we can elect them from amongst ourselves’.81 The assigned commissar for the brigade was stuck in Mariupol’, unable to take up his post. The 7th Regiment was disorganised, and its commissar had been replaced because of his inactivity. The 8th Regiment was keener, but the commissar had been killed in action. In the 9th Regiment the commissar had been obliged to introduce ‘comradely discipline’, and there were no organised party cells. The Pravda Section, formerly the 1st Liubetskii Regiment, had neither commissars nor political workers and was reportedly infected with anti-Semitism. The 1st Don Cossack Regiment was newly formed, and the artillery had little political organisation.82 The commissars were demoralised and complained of widespread pilfering among the troops. Drunkards had been sent to the front, members of the Cheka had been found decapitated or shot in the fields. In one town the partisans had dragged a wounded communist from his hospital bed and beaten him badly. One of Makhno’s aides-de-camp, Boris Veretel’nikov, had gained a reputation for persecuting Bolsheviks and for refusing to supply them with food. One commissar described the partisans as ‘the dregs of Soviet Russia’.83 Another urged the RVS to send the best possible political workers to Makhno’s sections. The work with Red Army men was good, with mobilised troops it was ‘rather bad’ and in the Makhnovite units it was lacking altogether. The commissar pointed out that some of his co-workers were hard drinkers, who themselves needed close supervision. They might easily make things worse, if left together with irresponsible soldiers. The refusal of political workers to go to the Makhnovite sections when assigned, he concluded, only encouraged ‘banditry and anti-Semitism’.84
From the Bolshevik point of view these military difficulties were symptoms of a worsening political situation. Opinion was divided: there were suggestions for various kinds of ‘reform’, and recognition that given the threat posed by the Volunteer Army, it was unlikely that Makhno would take up arms against the Bolsheviks, and therefore he could continue to be ‘used’.85 The Ukrainian Commisar for War (Narkomvoen), Nikolai Podvoiskii, however, wanted ideas on how to ‘put the ‘gangs’ of Grigor’ev and Makhno into regular order. Alternatively, he wanted to know how to disband them and disperse the troops among reliable units. But nobody could suggest a practical method for dispersing armed regiments against their will without using much larger numbers of troops. Additionally, to mingle anarchists with Red Army units was to run the risk of spreading what Trotsky called the ‘infection’ of their radical ideas, their partizanshchina. In the end the Bolsheviks stuck to their decision to allow Makhno’s units to stay together. In this way Antonov was left to deal with the intractable problem of political discipline. Indeed, Khristian Rakovskii, chair of the Ukrainian Sovnarkom, even argued that the atamany could not possibly be as terrifying as they seemed when surrounded by their supporters.86
Makhno’s movement had attracted some qualified support from southern anarchist groups, of which the most important was the Nabat Confederation of Anarchist Federations,87 dominated by the intellectuals Aron Baron and Volin.88 The confederation was suspicious of Makhno, however, who they saw as overly pro-Bolshevik, and even tended to sympathise more with Girigor’ev.89 From 2 to 7 April 1919 the Nabat Confederation held its first congress in Elisavetgrad. The congress strongly opposed anarchist participation in the soviets, which it described as organs of deadening centralism ‘imposed from above’. No army based on conscription, claimed the Nabat intellectuals, could be regarded as a true defender of the revolution. Only a partisan army ‘organised from below’ could do the job.90 This contradiction between a volunteer army and a conscripted one was always a problem for Makhno. His formula of ‘general voluntary and egalitarian mobilisation’ meant in practice that able-bodied men were liable to be drafted. But the Nabat Confederation continued to take a strongly voluntarist line on the question:
A state army of mobilised soldiers and appointed commanders and commissars cannot be considered a true defender of the social revolution … it is a main stronghold of reaction and is used to suppress the uprisings that have broken out all over the whole country today, expressions of dissatisfaction with the policies implemented by those in power.91
By early April the alliance between the Red Army and the partisans was in danger of falling apart. Administrative confusion in the Bolshevik chain of command only made the situation worse. To Antonov’s irritation, the High Command demanded that he better control Makhno and Grigor’ev, while simultaneously sending telegrams directly to the atamany. ‘To deal with Makhno and Grigor’ev as my equals puts me in a false position’, he complained to Rakovskii.92 Indeed, military pressure from the Volunteer Army combined with Makhno’s intransigence over political questions continued to make his position almost impossible.
On 10 April Makhno convened a third Congress of Regional Soviets in Guliaipole, in order to discuss policy questions. Delegates from 72 districts attended.93 Despite the seriousness of the military situation for the Red Army and for the revolution in general, the Congress apparently felt no compunction about adopting and endorsing an anarchist platform, which the Bolsheviks inevitably viewed as a provocation. The platform rejected the dictatorship of the proletariat, denied the legitimacy of the All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets and advocated the liquidation of Bolshevik soviets.94 The anarchists ordered agitation for ‘anti-state socialism’, ignoring their earlier agreement with Antonov’s RVS. The predictable reaction of the Bolshevik military authorities was to ban the Congress. Dybenko sent a telegram to Makhno ordering him to disband the session, on pain of being declared an outlaw.95
The delegates responded with a lengthy and heavily sarcastic manifesto headed
