declaration:
Can there exist laws made by a few people calling themselves revolutionaries, laws that enable them to outlaw en masse people who are more revolutionary than they are themselves? 97
The partisans pointed out that they had held their first two congresses (in January and February) before Dybenko had even arrived in Ukraine. It was they, not the authorities of the Red Army, who had a mandate from the toiling masses.98 Dybenko’s threat was a hollow one, for Makhno was still engaging Shkuro in a key sector of the front. Indeed, while these heated exchanges over the revolutionary legitimacy of the congress in Guliaipole were taking place, Dybenko was continuing to issue detailed orders on the tactical disposition of the regiments of the 3rd Brigade. The broad objective was to liquidate Shkuro’s breakthrough in the Grishino sector by securing the important railway junctions, while maintaining a general eastward advance and holding down the left flank of the 13th Army to the north.99
Shkuro was a Cossack cavalry commander, at his best in a war of movement. He had gained experience of partisan warfare in the northern Caucasus in 1918, and had a reputation for brutality.100 His style of fighting was similar to Makhno’s – he was a self-described partizan – and he was aware of the value of flamboyance and terror in warfare. His cavalry was known as the Wolf Pack, after the wolf skin caps that they wore for effect.101 His corps consisted of a division of Kuban Cossacks, a Circassian cavalry division, an infantry division, and three gun batteries – over 5,000 men and 12 artillery pieces.102
Makhno had occupied Mariupol’ on 30 March, but the collapse of the 9th Division to his left, and his shortage of supplies, placed his position in imminent danger.103 The Red Army command was in a state of confusion. On 12 April Skachko informed Dybenko that Makhno’s brigade was to remain under his command as the anchor on the left flank. He ordered him to counterattack to stop the breakthrough between Makhno’s left and the 9th Division’s right.104 Dybenko, who was in the Crimea, was complaining about a shortage of supplies, especially uniforms. He promised Skachko that he would send artillery, rifles and ammunition to Makhno’s brigade.105
But stop-gap measures could not have solved the problem of weapons and uniforms: more radical steps were needed. Shortly afterwards the Ukrainian army was divided into three to improve its efficiency, with its headquarters in Ekaterinoslav.106 Makhno’s own solution to the supply problem was simple and direct: he seized supply trains and prevented the Bolsheviks from collecting food or from setting up any kind of administration in his area.107 This kind of interference in Ukraine could have had – and often did have – serious consequences for the Bolsheviks in Russia. Military defeats and the failure to collect food from supposedly friendly areas placed the regime in danger. By June, A. G. Shlikhter, who was in charge of collecting food in Ukraine, could report the dispatch of only 12,377 tonnes of grain to Russia. In March Lenin had asked for over 800,000 tonnes.108
On 16 April, despite Dybenko’s promises of help, Makhno had to evacuate Mariupol’ under strong pressure from the Whites.109 Vatsetis and Antonov mistrusted each other and they were unable to solve problems through cooperative action. On the same day, the commander-in-chief ordered Antonov to send another brigade from the Trans-Dnepr Division to support Makhno, ‘whose attack in the direction of Taganrog is slowing down and almost failing’.110 The next day, after Vatsetis had heard the news of Makhno’s reverse and of the loss of Mariupol’ and Volnovakh, he ordered an additional infantry division and a cavalry regiment to reinforce the 3rd Brigade, not counting the brigade ordered on the previous day. Vatsetis calculated that the 13th Army, the 8th Army, and the 3rd Brigade totalled 41,000 infantry and cavalry with 170 heavy guns, opposing 38,000 White Guards. With reinforcements from the 7th Rifle Division the Red Army total rose to 46,000, an advantage of 8,000 men.111 But Antonov was convinced that only he fully understood what was possible and what was not on the Ukrainian Front. His reaction to Vatsetis’ orders was irritable and uncooperative. ‘You exaggerate our strength’, he replied to the commander-in-chief, ‘We have been weakened by constant fighting; we are poorly supplied; the troops want to go home’.112 Food, clothing, ammunition, artillery, horses, even political workers, were nowhere to be found. On top of his other tasks he was now expected to move reinforcements that existed only on paper to a unit that was no longer his responsibility.
Lenin was concerned: on 18 April he cabled Rakovskii that Dybenko’s attack into the Crimea was an unnecessary adventure, and that Dybenko might replace Makhno for a counter-attack towards Taganrog and Rostov.113 The next day he told Trotsky’s aide G. Ia. Sokol’nikov that he was disturbed by the slackening-off of operations against the Donbass and asked him to formulate practical directives to speed things up again.114 Sokol’nikov replied that there were three causes of delay: disorganisation in the army, Denikin’s acquisition of reinforcements and the weakness of Makhno’s brigade on the flank. He recommended the reorganisation of the 9th Army to the east of Lugansk, and the prioritisation of the Southern Front.115 Lenin informed Antonov directly that he should regard the Donbass as the most important objective, and to immediately give solid support to the Donbass-Mariupol’ sector. He brushed aside Antonov’s protests in advance: ‘I see … that there are quantities of military supplies in the Ukraine … they must not be hoarded’.116 But Antonov had been ordered to move troops westwards, past hostile Ukrainian nationalist and Polish forces, to relieve pressure on Soviet Hungary; to move troops eastwards to relieve the Southern Front; and to establish control over Ukraine to secure coal and grain supplies to Russia.
His forces were not the disciplined and well-organised formations depicted by Trotsky. Makhno’s and Grigor’ev’s units were by no means the only partisan forces in Ukraine: in fact, in Ekaterinoslav province, where Makhno was in control and formally in alliance with the Red Army, there were fewer rebellions against the Bolsheviks than there were in northern Ukraine, where no single ataman wielded power.117
Antonov agreed that Makhno’s failure to resist Shkuro was partially the result of his autonomy, but he was not as critical of the insurgents as was Trotsky.118 On 1 May, in a memorandum to the Central Committees of the Russian and Ukrainian parties, Trotsky argued for the reduction of partisan units to half their strength, to turn them into regular troops: Makhno had been ineffective under sustained enemy attack, and his forces had to be absorbed into regular formations. Criminal elements should be purged, discipline established and the system of elected commanders abolished. Antonov’s approach of allowing a special status for the partisan units was ‘opportunism’.119
From mid-April onwards it was clear to the Bolshevik commanders that they had misjudged the atamany’s potential, and over-estimated the effectiveness of their own command structure. This judgement was based on direct observation: Skachko, for example, had visited Grigor’ev’s ‘headquarters’ in March, filing a scathing report that described the filth, disorganisation and drunkenness, and recommended that Grigor’ev himself be ‘eliminated’.120 Grigor’ev also had grandiose ideas about his own importance. On 10 April, after the capture of Odessa from the French on the 6th, he sent telegrams to Rakovskii, Antonov, Dybenko, Makhno and other commanders boasting of his own courage and his troops’ loyalty during the attack.121
A week later, at considerable personal risk, Antonov went to visit Grigor’ev at Aleksandriia in an attempt to bring him and his unit under effective control. He wanted to persuade Grigor’ev to join forces with Makhno’s brigade for a swift offensive towards the Donbass. He was unable to convince him that the plan was a good one.122 On 23 April Antonov met Grigor’ev again, and considered exerting pressure on him to attack southwards into the Donbass. To send the volatile ataman to such a crucial sector of the front was too risky, however, and it was equally impossible to leave him in the rear, close to Makhno’s anarchist partisans. Antonov decided to send him to Bessarabia, to campaign against Romania in support of Soviet Hungary. In an emotional interview he convinced
