Anarchists from many nations journey to Ukraine, intent on repulsing the forces of tyranny and reaction. But this story isn’t about 2022, it’s about 1917. For four years Southern Ukraine was covered by an anarcho-communist confederation, fighting German occupiers, then monarchist reactionaries, and finally the statist communists they had trusted to be their comrades. Makhnovia, as anarchist Ukraine is sometimes called, had no political leader. But its name comes from the inspiring military commander Nestor Makhno, whose expertise allowed anarchists for a brief time to try to remake Ukraine. Today we will look at how Makhnovia, or the Free Territory, actually worked, and what libertarians can learn from it and its tragic downfall.

Ukraine, contrary to what Putin may say, has not “always been part of Russia”. As a frontier territory it has been split and ruled by many different empires in the last 500 years. The Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth controlled much of it from the 1500s until 1649 when the Cossacks who lived in Ukraine revolted and made a nominally independent “Hetmanate” (led by a Hetman, basically a military commander. Makhno would later be called a Hetman in a callback to this tradition). The Cossacks were a semi-nomadic, intriguingly democratic and decentralist society, where each “Host” was given enormous autonomy in its given territory. Serfdom did not exist in Cossack territory, and the Hetman of the Great Host was elected to his position (as were the military leaders of each individual host). The state was technically vassal to first the Ottoman and later the Russian empire, but in exchange for their excellent military service were not tampered with, even when their vassalage ended in 1708 and they became direct subjects of the Tsar. Cossacks enjoyed a far more egalitarian society than the serfs in the rest of Russia and the parts of Ukraine not assigned to the Hosts, and this led many serfs who fled the repressive feudalism of their masters to come to Southern Ukraine, where they expanded the size of the cossack forces. This promise of a better and freer life to their underclass eventually became annoying to the Russian Empire. After a decisive victory against the Ottomans in 1774 which made the Ukrainian Cossacks unnecessary for imperial defense, Catherine the Great ordered the liquidation of the Hetmanate. Russia replaced its Cossack forces in Southern Ukraine (which still bordered the Ottoman Empire and its vassals) with a program of colonization, named Novorossia. This may sound familiar to followers of the Russo-Ukrainian War as the proposed breakaway state of Russian speakers from Ukraine. The original Novorossia was a plan to populate the very sparsely populated South and Southeast of Ukraine with loyal Russians and other ethnic groups (including Serbians who fought and fled from the Ottomans and German skilled workers). The cossacks, while shorn of their autonomy, still held some privileges from the Tsar such as land ownership and tax exemption, which continued to attract runaway peasants. 

For the next 150 years Ukraine was gradually integrated into the Russian imperial system, and Ukrainian language and culture was suppressed. Cossack military forces were still an important part of the Russian army in every successive war waged by the Tsar: The Crimean War, the Russo-Japanese War, and finally World War I. During this time, a young Ukranian man who had learned a little about the new ideology of Anarchism in the failed revolution of 1905 (after the disastrous war against the Japanese created mass strikes) was jailed for his subversive beliefs in 1908. Nestor Makhno spent 9 long years in prison, developing his ideology with the help of other revolutionary prisoners. The Tsar’s war against Germany was going terribly by 1917, and he was deposed by the liberal February Government. This led to the release of all political prisoners, including Makhno, who could finally return home to Huilapole, his Southern Ukrainian home. When he came there there was a mass peasant movement that he saw revolutionary potential in, engaging in mass strikes, breaking up the oppressive landholdings of the nobility (as well as the non-oppressive landholdings of Kulaks, rich peasants). Makhno threw himself into incubating the social revolution at once. By 1918 However, with the military defeats of Russia the Central powers had set up a puppet regime in Ukraine and occupied it with Austro-Hungarian and German troops. Determined to stop a foreign despot from again ruling Ukraine, Makhno helped form autonomous rebel groups, especially cavalry units that harassed and destroyed these invaders. Generally Makhno’s strategy after their men capitulated was to execute officers, but set the conscripted enlisted men free and even offer them membership in his Anarchist band. Under pressure from Makhno and other peasant bands and the collapse of the central powers on the Western Front, the “Ukrainian State” finally collapsed in December 1918. Now Makhno and his anarchist comrades had some breathing room to build an anarcho-communist community. An important part of the structure of Makhnovian governance was the extreme levels of democracy within and between the worker/peasant “soviets” or communes. In the elections for the Congress of Peasants, Workers and Insurgents, doing away with the tradition of “election campaigns”, simply announced that they would be held and soviets would send the delegates they elected. This bothered a statist communist who remarked to the Anarchist Voline (who later became the founder of synthesis anarchism that combined Anarcho-communism, syndicalism and individualism) and how foolish it was to conduct elections this way. this is a part of their exchange:

“Now then,” he continued, more and more excited, “you call a congress of peasants and workers. This congress will have enormous importance. But you are such babies! in your ineffable naivete, what do you do? You send out little slips of paper on which is scrawled that a congress will take place! That is all. It’s frightening, it’s crazy. No explanation, no propaganda, no electoral campaign, no list of candidates, nothing, nothing! I beg you, Comrade V., open your eyes a little! In your situation, you have to be a little realistic, after all! Do something, while there is still time. Send agitators, present candidates to the voters. Give us time to make a little campaign. For what would you say if the population—who are mainly peasants—send you reactionary delegates who demand the calling of the Constituent Assembly, or even the restoration of the monarchy? The people are seriously influenced by the counter-revolution. And what would you do if the majority of the delegates are counter-revolutionary and sabotage your congress. Act, therefore, before it is too late! Postpone the congress a little while and take some steps.”

“Listen, Lubim,” I said to him, “If, in the existing conditions, in the midst of a popular revolution, and after everything that has happened, the working masses send counter-revolutionaries and monarchists to their own congress, then the whole of my life’s work will have been a profound error, and I shall have only one thing to do—to blow out my brains with that revolver you see on my desk.”

“We must talk seriously.” he interrupted, “and not dramatise …”

“I assure you, Comrade Lubim, that I am talking very seriously. We will change nothing in our procedure, and if the congress is counter-revolutionary, I will kill myself.”

Such was the trust the anarchists held in the common people. This also extended to education, and disciples of the Spanish anarchist educator Ferrer set up new schools that promoted experience and children’s natural curiosity over rote learning, and respecting children’s rights over a focus on obedience. The industry (such that existed in 1917 Ukraine) was fully collectivized by the workers of each factory, and while Makhnovists eventually wanted to try the disastrous experiment of a “moneyless society”, they still allowed money to be used as a means of exchange between industrial workers in the cities and the peasants in the country. Indeed, the Free Territory allowed all issued currency to be used as legal tender, even printing its own money that explicitly said counterfeiting would not be prosecuted. This created a hyperinflationary effect, although given the communist approach of Makhnovia, it can be seen more as an experiment in a “scrip” economy than a failure of a banking system.

Meanwhile, on the front lines manned through an all volunteer force of anarchists, the reactionary White Army continued to menace both the new Bolshevik Russia as well as Makhnovia. The “Red” and “Black” armies agreed to team up against the Whites, although as early as May 1919 there was an attempted statist assassination against Makhno, and the Bolsheviks tried as much as possible to isolate the Anarchists from desperately needed weapons, while still recognizing the threat the Whites posed. This alliance was finally dissolved by the Red Army leader Trotsky when he outright banned the 4th assembly of the Makhnovian congress in his infamous order no. 1824 on June 4, 1919. This is the beginning of an outright war on the Black Army by the Reds, and Makhno’s forces, while severely outnumbered and still having to fight the reactionaries on the other front, managed to evade the capture and destruction of his troops for 2 more years before, full of battle wounds, he led his forces across the Romanian border to internment and exile, dying in Paris in 1934. 

The betrayal of the Anarchists by the State Socialists in Ukraine is one of several instances where “left unity” is revealed as simply opportunism and a sinkhole for suckers. From the framing and execution of mutualist Gustave Chaudey by the statist Blanquists in the Paris Commune in 1870, to the May Days in 1937 in Barcelona where the Bolsheviks killed the Anarcho-syndicalists on the streets instead of fighting Franco, sidelining opposition to statism over a belief in egalitarianism never seems to work out. This channel has talked about anarchist unity, and while it may be difficult to find common enough ground with social anarchists, the sentiment of the famous Ancom Murray Bookchin is one that should be celebrated, “Let me make it very plain that if socialism, which is what I call the authoritarian version of collectivism, were to emerge, I would join your [Free Market] community.” Such should be the sentiment of true market anarchists towards the statist right. Like the left-anarchists, we have been enticed into coalitions with our supposed statist allies. The counter-revolution of the constitution and the imposition of a strong central government in the United States, a process that took almost 90 years and culminated in the crushing of the Confederacy, can be seen as a folly by the radical libertarians like Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams and Thomas Jefferson of allying with conservative nationalists like Washington, Hamilton, and John Adams. The threat of “right unity” is nothing less than the loss of the promise of the American dream and to paraphrase Spooner, the authorization of such government as we have had. In the name of the anarchists of all colors who have been betrayed by authoritarians, and in the name of the descendants of the Cossacks still fighting for freedom against the Russian Empire, may 1000 flowers bloom!