Nestor Makhno--Anarchy's Cossack: The Struggle for Free Soviets in the Ukraine 1917-1921

by Alexandre Skirda

Book Overview

Available for the first time in English, here is the gripping story of the legendary Ukrainian anarchist Nestor Makhno. With his usual wit and engaging style, Skirda chronicles the life of a legend and the insurgent army that fought in his name. Always controversial, Makhno has been described as everything from a drunken bandit to an inspirational hero. From Makhno's imprisonment, to battles with the Bolsheviks and the White Army, to the final exile...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1902593685
• ISBN13: 9781902593685
• Release Date: April 2003
• Publisher: AK Press
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.9" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

A fascinating and little known piece of history from the Bolshevik Revolution

Nestor Makhno led an Anarchist movement (the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of the Ukraine, aka the Black Army) which controlled much of the Ukraine for a time following the Bolshevik Revolution and fought both the Reds and the Whites for an independent and Anarchist Ukraine. It's a fascinating story, well-written and as far as I can ascertain, historically accurate. In the end, Makhno's forces were betrayed and destroyed by the Red's - a betrayal of the Anarchists by the Communists that would be repeated in the Spanish Civil War. Anyhows, backto this book and the Ukraine: a summation of the story follows: The Black Army was an anarchist army formed in September 1918 in the Ukraine during the Russian Civil War. Arms and equipment were largely obtained from retreating Austro-Hungarian and German forces. During the Civil War, the Black Army numbered between 15,000 and 110,000 men and was organized on conventional lines, with infantry, cavalry, and artillery units. Makhno's cavalry was considered to be among the best trained and most capable of any of the cavalry units deployed by any side in the Russian Civil War. A primary obstacle to the Ukrainian anarchist army, and one which it never overcame throughout its existence, was a lack of access to industrial manufacturing resources, specifically factories capable of producing large amounts of arms and ammunition. The Black Army was forced to rely on captured supplies from enemy forces, along with food and horses from the local civilian population. The Black Army enjoyed early successes - by early 1919, the Bolsheviks had withdrawn most Red Army forces from Ukraine after White successes in the south. In July, 1919, 40,000 Red Army troops in the Crimea mutinied, deposed their commanders and many set out to join the Black Army. The mutiny was organized by some of Makhno's anarchist comrades who had remained commanders in the ranks of the Red Army, including Kalashnikov, Dermendzhi, and Budanov; these men also planned the transfer of forces. For the Bolshevik government in Moscow, this defection was a major blow; since almost nothing remained of the Red Army in the southern Ukraine and the Crimea, Bolshevik influence in the area became nonexistent. In late 1919,Makhno reached an agreement with the Bolsheviks to fight together against the Whites under Deniken, who were advancing towards Moscow. Makhno's attacks on the Whites diverted strength from the attack on Moscow and interrupted Deniken's supply lines - some historians note that if Makhno and the anarchist forces had not won a decisive victory at Peregonovka, blockading General Denikin's lines of supply and denying the White Army supplies of food, ammunition, and artillery reinforcements, the White Army would probably have entered Moscow in December 1919. After the victories over General Denikin and the White Army, the Bolshevika repudiated its alliance with Makhno, repeatedly attacking concentrations of Black Army troops, ordering Chekist a

Very Thorough, well-sourced, informative

This is a very thorough account of the years 1917-21 Ukraine, and the attempts of Nestor Makno and his anarchist populist army to liberate their country from first, the czarist, counter-revolutionary ("white") army, and then the traitorous Bolsheviks, who attacked the "Maknovites" from behind, (after having taken control of the Revolution, strangling it to death in the name of "the international proletariat." A solid piece of scholarship, stands up well against the other historical accounts, (i.e. the official Soviet slander, and others of dubious moral character). Not as well written as say, Emma Goldman's "My Disillusion in Russia," or Alexander Berkman's "The Bolshevik Myth" (which gives a more-intimate, first-person account); but a stand-out historical marker. One can only hope that Nestor Makno's extensive auto-biography will soon be published in English.

"He sought to give land to the peasants, factories to the workers intact and advised them to organiz

Nestor Makhno was a man of unparalleled single-mindedness, unflagging courage, tactical brilliance, and utter devotion to the necessity of real human liberty, fraternity and equality. Although described as a Ukrainian partisan, nothing was provincial about Makhno's anarchist vision as Skirda's book demonstrates. The Ukraine was the arena in which he fought for that vision and for the safety and well being of the Ukrainian "toilers." The Ukrainians were beset by murderers and oppressors of every sort and ideology. After the fall of the Russian empire and the ascendancy of Bolsheviks, the Bolsheviks entered into the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, ceding the Ukraine among other territories to the Central Powers effectively ending Russia's involvement in World War 1. The Makhnovists successfully repulsed the new masters of the Ukraine. But others enemies would arise--the White Russian forces, the Red Army--that the Makhnovists would engage almost always successfully. In the end the Makhnovists made a fatal mistake, one that would be repeated by the anarchists years later during the Spanish civil war. They entered into a military alliance with the Bolsheviks (Marxist Leninists) to fight the Whites, trusting the USSR's promises that they had no territorial aims on the Ukraine. Although successfully winning battles against the Red army, the sheer size of their forces overwhelmed the Makhnovists. Makhno barely escaped and ended his years poor, cheated by "sympathizers" out of funds donated to him and almost completely abandoned as an exile in Paris. Skirda's book dispels many myths about Makhno, mostly spread by historical revisionists in the Soviet Union. Here we see Makhno the executioner of anti-Semitic murders not one himself; Makhno the worst nightmare of the White Russian forces and not one of their collaborators; Makhno the liberator of the toilers and not their enslaver like the Reds. Nothing in the text of this book is disappointing. It's thorough, passionately written, admirably detailed, yet lacking in one important respect to make it an important scholarly tool. It has no index. I cannot fathom why. Nevertheless, I highly recommend reading this book. I suspect it is probably the best portrait of Makhno's life in print.

What your history teacher didn't tell you

For those of us who went or are going to school in the United States, it sometimes seems impossible to get a real picture of the Russian Revolution. So much baggage and enmity clogs the works that most of the time only a two dimensional sketch of one of the pivotal periods of modern history can be achieved, leaving out the breadth and complexity of the many players, parties, ideas, struggles, and factions. Most people graduate from high school and even college with the formless impression that "communism" is "bad." Luckily, I had a high school history teacher that took the time to say, "These are the basic ideas of Communism: A, B, C, & D. These are the various currents of Communist thought. This is the basic history of the Revolution and the early Soviet state. What matches up? What doesn't? What went on here?" Skirda's biography of Makhno achieves the same thing. It follows this pivotal figure and his cadre, from well before the Revolution to well after it. It offers actual history of the Revolution--history that was abused and twisted by the Soviet state as "reactionary," and completely ignored in the West, perhaps because it would undermine the flat demonization of the Revolution as "bad." Makhno and his group literally took to the hills to wrench the central Ukraine from the grip of tyrannical barons; fought off invading armies intent on reinstating the old regime; and then turned around to try to keep the Bolshevik invaders from instituting an entirely new regime of tyrannical barons. While the book is occasionally a bit heavy on blow-by-blow recounting of military movements and tactical nuances, after a while the reader begins to get a sense for Makhno, not only as a military leader and tactician, but also as an amazingly sharp and daring human being. Skirda does an excellent job at contrastinig between the aims and methods of the Bolsheviks, and the aims and methods of the Ukrainian Anarchists. A reader with no background at all in the history of the Revolution will come away from this book with a solid footing upon which to build; and the student of 1915 will come away with a completely new angle and set of knowledge that will deeply inform their understanding of these events. Books like this are an act of kindness to people that want to understand the realities history (and the present), rather than just shrug and drink down the same old rhetoric.