Makhnovshchina

What became the territory of the Makhnovshchina was centered in the region of Zaporizhzhia, which had previously been inhabited by Cossacks before its conquest by the Russian Empire.[19] Rechristened as the province of Katerynoslav, land largely came to be used for agriculture, leading to the rise of a landed nobility and a middle-peasant class known as the kulaks, many of whom were Black Sea Germans. The region's poor peasants attempted to resist Pyotr Stolypin's agrarian reforms, which threatened to break up their traditional communes, but by the 20th century the region had been thoroughly integrated into the grain market and came to export nearly half of its wheat each year.[20]

As the price of land raised in order to prevent poor peasants from buying it, they became actively hostile to the concentration of land ownership by the pomeshchiks and kulaks.[21] Supported by their local governments, peasants resolved to found their own agricultural cooperatives and began trading their grain in a system of market socialism. This eventually led to the development of an agricultural industry in Katerynoslav, which produced almost a quarter of the Russian Empire's agricultural machinery and developed the region's settlements into small industrial centers. The development of industry brought together the peasantry and proletariat for the first time, with peasants often moving to centers of industry to become wage-earners and then back to their villages during times of industrial crisis.[22] This also caused the region to become quite ethnically diverse, with Ukrainians, Russians, Germans, Jews and Greeks all settled alongside eachother. The region's common language soon became Russian and many local Ukrainians eventually became unable to speak the Ukrainian language.[10]

Due in part to the diversity of the region's peasantry, the local Jewish population faced relatively little antisemitism, in comparison to the Jewish communities living in right-bank Ukraine.[23] It was young Jews that eventually formed the nucleus of the nascent Ukrainian anarchist movement,[24] which became a leading force during the 1905 Revolution in Ukraine.[25] The town of Huliaipole was itself hit by strike actions and a series of robberies, carried out by a group of young anarcho-communists known as the Union of Poor Peasants.[26] The group was eventually caught and its leading members arrested, with many of them being sentenced to the death penalty or life imprisonment.[27]

In the wake of the February Revolution, Ukrainian intellectuals around Mykhailo Hrushevsky established the Central Council of Ukraine, which initially sought freedom of the press and education in the Ukrainian language, and eventually declared the autonomy of the Ukrainian People's Republic.[28] In concert with the emergence of the movement for Ukrainian nationalism, largely made up of social democrats and socialist revolutionaries, the Ukrainian anarchist movement also began to experience a revival, catalyzed by the return of Nestor Makhno from his imprisonment in Moscow.[29]

With Makhno as its leading figure, the anarchist movement in Huliaipole established a peasants' union, seized control of the town from the local provisional government and established a Soviet in its place, laying the foundations for the implementation of anarcho-communism.[30] According to Michael Malet, Huliaipole "was moving leftwards at a faster pace than elsewhere", with the town successfully organizing a May Day demonstration and even declaring its support for the workers' uprising in Petrograd, while the Oleksandrivsk Soviet still supported the Provisional Government.[31] The nascent Makhnovist movement undertook the seizure of land from the pomeshchiks and kulaks in Huliaipole and redistributed it to the peasantry, aiming to abolish the concentration of land ownership. By the summer of 1917, the town's peasants had stopped paying rent and had brought the land largely under the control of a land trust, which prevented landlords from selling off livestock or farming equipment.[32]

In August 1917, the Ukrainian Central Council and Russian Provisional Government reached an agreement on the position of the Russia–Ukraine border, which placed Katerynoslav within the territory of the Russian Republic, a decision which was rejected by the province's anarchist movement.[33] Viktor Chernov, the Russian Minister of Agriculture, attempted to implement a comprehensive package of land reform in the province, but his efforts were blocked by the Provisional Government. However, the Kornilov affair had resulted in the Provisional Government losing its control over Katerynoslav and the Makhnovists becoming the dominant force in the region. They subsequently resolved to implement land reform directly, without waiting for the Provisional Government's consent.[34] On October 8 [O.S. September 25], the Huliaipole Congress of Soviets announced that it would be confiscating all land owned by the nobility and bringing it under common ownership, leading many landlords to flee the region.[35] Attempts to bring the region back under the control of the Provisional Government met with resistance, both from the armed anarchist detachments led by Maria Nikiforova and from a series of strike actions by sympathetic industrial workers.[36]

On November 7, 1917, the Central Council declared the autonomy of Ukraine, which brought Katerynoslav back within its borders.[37] Although the Central Council safely controlled right-bank, its new territorial claims in the left-bank were met with indifference from the more ethnically-mixed population.[38] By December 1917, Eastern Ukraine had come under Soviet influence, with the First All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets establishing the Ukrainian People's Republic of Soviets in Kharkiv.[39] Unable to reconcile their differences, a civil war soon broke out between the forces of the People's Republic and the new Soviet Republic.[40]

Before the outbreak of the October Revolution, the Makhnovists had already established "soviet power" in Katerynoslav, implementing initiatives of workers' control and self-management. So when the Bolsheviks seized power under the slogan of "all power to the soviets", the Ukrainian anarchists initially supported it, while remaining critical of political and economic centralisation.[37] As the Makhnovists desired to bring the region under Soviet power, they declared themselves against the new Ukrainian nation state, establishing armed detachments to combat both the forces of the Ukrainian People's Army and the Don Cossacks.[41] An anarchist detachment led by Savely Makhno aided in the capture of Oleksandrivsk and the reestablishment of Soviet power in the city.[42] By January 1918, Southern Ukraine had largely come under the control of the Soviet Republic, which established revolutionary committees as its local organs of power.[43] In Huliaipole, the local revolutionary committee included members of the Ukrainian Socialist-Revolutionary Party and the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, alongside the anarchists.[44]

The rapid capture of territory by the Soviet Republic culminated on February 8, 1918, when the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv was captured by Mikhail Muravyov's Red Guards.[39]

Just one day after the fall of Kyiv, the Central Council of Ukraine signed a peace treaty with the Central Powers, which invited the Imperial German Army to invade Ukraine and oust the Soviets from power.[45] The Red Guards were unable to halt the imperial advance, which within a month forced the Bolsheviks to negotiate their own peace treaty with the Central Powers, ceding control of Ukraine to the German Empire and Austria-Hungary.[46]

When the Ukrainian nationalists in Huliaipole began threatening anarchists with reprisals, local anarcho-syndicalists initiated a campaign of "revolutionary terror" against them, assassinating one nationalist leader before being forced to the negotiating table by Nestor Makhno.[47] The nationalists subsequently began planning a coup, threatening pogroms against the local Jewish community in order to bring them on side.[48] On the night of April 15–16, the Ukrainian nationalists carried out the coup, launching a surprise attack against the anarchist "free battalion" and disarming them, before arresting leading anarcho-communists.[49] The following day, a demonstration managed to secure the release of the arrested anarchists but were unable to organize any armed defense of the town, which was soon occupied by the Austro-Hungarian Army.[50] Before the end of the month, the Ukrainian People's Republic was overthrown by the Central Powers and replaced with the Ukrainian State. Under the rule of Pavlo Skoropadskyi, the new regime began returning land to the nobility and requisitioning grain from the peasantry, which fomented popular discontent that ignited the Ukrainian War of Independence.[51]

The burial of insurgents killed in battle with the Austro-Hungarian Army.

At a conference in Taganrog, anarchist insurgents regrouped and agreed to return to Huliaipole in July 1918, in order to carry out an insurrection against the occupation forces.[52] By the time they returned to Ukraine, the country was already in revolt against the Ukrainian State, with hundreds of thousands participating in armed uprisings and rail strikes, even in the face of harsh reprisals by the occupation forces.[53] Peasant bands under various self-appointed atamans now attacked the occupation forces and eventually came to dominate the countryside; some defected to the Directorate or the Bolsheviks, but the largest portion followed either socialist revolutionary Matviy Hryhoriyiv or the anarchist flag of Makhno.[54]

On September 30, insurgent detachments led by Nestor Makhno and Fedir Shchus linked up at Dibrivka and defeated the occupation forces in battle.[55] When the November Revolution brought World War I to an end, the occupation finally began to melt away. In right-bank Ukraine, the Ukrainian State was overthrown by the Directorate and the Ukrainian People's Republic was reestablished, while the region of Pryazovia quickly fell under the control of the Makhnovshchina.[56] On November 27, the Makhnovshchina's capital of Huliaipole was definitively retaken by the insurgents, who reestablished the local Soviet and reorganized the town's trade unions.[5] Before long the Makhnovshchina's territory had expanded as far west as Katerynoslav, as far north as Pavlohrad, as far east as Yuzivka and as far south as the Sea of Azov.[57]

The end of the imperial occupation and the fall of the Ukrainian State allowed the Makhnovshchina to shift its emphasis from military campaigns towards political concerns, transforming the movement "from a destructive peasant uprising to a social revolutionary movement".[56] In order to restart the construction of a libertarian communist society, the Makhnovists convened a Regional Congress of Peasants, Workers and Insurgents, which would act as the supreme authority of the Makhnovshchina.[58] The Congress declared its intention to create "a society without ruling landowners, without subordinate slaves, without rich or poor", and called on workers and peasants to begin building this society themselves, "without tyrannical decrees and orders, and in defiance of tyrants and oppressors throughout the world."[59]

Under the direction of the democratically-elected Revolutionary Military Soviet (RVS), the Makhnovshchina began to establish a new system of education, redistributed land and set up a number of agricultural cooperatives. The Ukrainian Soviet Army commander Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko reported that the Makhnovists had established a number of schools, hospitals and "children's communes", which had transformed Huliaipole into "one of the most cultured centres of Novorossiya."[60] The RVS also instituted adult educational programs and extended a number of civil liberties to the population, including freedom of speech, press and association, even allowing the Bolsheviks to agitate amongst the local populace.[61] During this period, the peasants of the Makhnovshchina implemented a system of common ownership where "land belongs to no one, and only those who work it may use it." The largest of the peasant communes was one named after the Polish communist Rosa Luxemburg, which, in May 1919, counted 285 members and 125 hectares of land.[3]

While in the Ukrainian Soviet capital of Kharkiv, the insurgent commander Viktor Belash met with the Nabat and requested they begin producing anarchist propaganda for the Makhnovshchina, securing the passage of numerous anarchist intellectuals to the free territory,[62] including Peter Arshinov and Aron Baron. With the Nabat having moved its headquarters to Huliaipole, anarchist newspapers such as The Road to Freedom and the Makhnovist Voice quickly began circulating throughout the free territory, widely publicizing anarchist ideas.[3] The arrival of these "urban anarchist newcomers" accelerated the development of the Makhnovshchina's anarcho-communist character, which aimed to completely restructure Ukrainian society along the lines of "free soviets".[63] These soviets, independent of all political parties, began to be set up by industrial workers, with some even receiving financing from the Makhnovists in order to make up for lost wages, which hadn't been paid due to the conditions of war.[64] The end goal of the free soviet system was to eventually convene an "all-Ukrainian labour congress", which would become the new central organ of an independent Ukraine, as a result of the Ukrainian workers' self-determination.[65]

Around this time, the Bolsheviks finally broke the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and ordered the Red Army to invade Ukraine, with Christian Rakovsky proclaiming the establishment of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in Kharkiv.[66] As the Makhnovshchina had found itself surrounded by the Ukrainian People's Republic and South Russia, the Makhnovists resolved to form an alliance with the Bolsheviks in order to maintain "soviet power" in the region, although they explicitly ruled out a political alliance and held that their pact was an exclusively military endeavor.[67] Now integrated into the Red Army, the Makhnovists secured and expanded their territory with the capture of Orikhiv, Polohy, Bakhmut, Berdiansk and Volnovakha.[68]

However, the implementation of Bolshevik rule in Ukraine was soon followed by repression. As the Bolsheviks favored the proletariat over the peasantry, on April 13, the Ukrainian Soivet government implemented food requisitioning in order to supply its urban centers, shooting any peasants that resisted, which caused a resurgence of peasant revolts in Ukraine.[69] The Cheka also carried out its Red Terror in the areas captured by the Bolsheviks, with residents of Katerynoslav reporting arbitrary political persecution and increased economic hardship.[70] Regiments of the Red Army even began to committ robberies against the local population and carried out a number of antisemitic pogroms, as part of a rising wave of violence against Ukrainian Jews that was perpetrated by the Reds, Whites and nationalists alike.[71] In comparison to the surrounding states, the Makhnovshchina "represented a relatively peaceful model", given the ethnically diverse makeup of the Makhnovists, who severely punished acts of antisemitism.[72]

The Bolsheviks' implementation of bureaucratic collectivism and their authoritarianism brought them into opposition with the Makhnovshchina, which still upheld soviet democracy and libertarian socialism.[73] In May 1919, tensions between the two were exacerbated when Nikifor Grigoriev led an anti-Bolshevik uprising in right-bank Ukraine, during which his green army carried out a series of antisemitic pogroms and anti-communist purges.[74] The Makhnovists decided to take up arms against Grigoriev and maintain their alliance with the Bolsheviks, hoping that talks between the two parties would result in the official extension of autonomy to the territory of the Makhnovshchina.[75] But tensions between the two parties only increased with time, eventually resulting in the Makhnovists completely breaking from their Bolshevik commanders.[76]

When the Revolutionary Military Soviet called an extraordinary Regional Congress, it was considered to be an act of treason by the Bolshevik government, which ordered the Congress be prohibited and that any of its participants be executed by firing squad.[77] The Bolsheviks subsequently attacked the Makhnovshchina, killing a number of the Makhnovist general staff and forcing the insurgents to flee, which began a period of guerrilla warfare in the region.[78] By June 1919, the autonomy of the Makhnovshchina had been suppressed by the successive Red Terror and White Terror.[79]

It was at this time that the White movement broke through the Soviet lines in Donbas, with the Kuban Cossacks under Andrei Shkuro leading an attack against Huliaipole, capturing the town from the Makhnovists.[80] As the Red Army had also declared war against the Makhnovshchina, labelling Huliaipole as a "paradise on earth for cowards and good-for-nothings," the local insurgents were left without Bolshevik support and many peasants were forced to defend the town themselves, armed only with farming tools and a few rifles.[81] The Cossacks massacred the peasant rebels and raped 800 of the town's women, before restoring the property rights of the former landowners, causing a mass exodus of the town's peasantry.[82]

The Makhnovists fled to right-bank Ukraine and linked up with Nikifor Grigoriev's green army.[83] But after revelations of the ataman having committed antisemitic pogroms, the Makhnovists assassinated Grigoriev and began rebuilding their forces to take on the Whites.[84] By September 1919, the Makhnovshchina had been pushed back as far as Uman, the last stronghold of the Ukrainian People's Republic. In order for their wounded to be tended to, the Makhnovists formed a temporary alliance with the Directorate, before turning back around and leading an attack against the General Command of the Armed Forces of South Russia.[85] After the Battle of Peregonovka, the tide turned against the Whites as the Makhnovists pushed them back into Katerynoslav, which was brought back under the control of the Makhnovshchina on November 11, 1919.[86]

The Makhnovist advance brought with it a second period of reconstruction, during which a system of libertarian socialism was once again implemented throughout the territory of the Makhnovshchina, with all enteprises being directly transferred to workers' control.[87] Wherever the insurgents captured, the locals were invited to elect their own trade union delegates and Soviets, which would then convoke a regional congress that would form the decision-making body for the region.[88] Regional workers' conferences were subsequently held in Alexandrovsk between October 27 and November 2, bringing together 180 peasant delegates, 20 worker delegates and 100 delegates from left-wing political organizations and insurgent units.[89] Voline, the chair of the congress, proposed that they adopt the anarchist thesis of establishing "free soviets", outside of political party control, throughout the Free Territory. This proposal was objected to by 11 delegates from the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionary Party, who still desired the reestablishment of the Constituent Assembly and walked out of the congress.[90] Further objections were made by a Bolshevik delegate, who rejected calls for anarchy.[91]

By December 1919, the Makhnovshchina was struck by an outbreak of epidemic typhus, which incapacitated the Makhnovist forces, allowing the White movement to briefly recapture Katerynoslav and the Red Army to invade the region.[92]

By the end of January 1920, the territory of the Makhnovshchina had been overrun by the Red Army.[93] The Cheka set about disarming the local populace, taking villagers hostage while their troops set about searching homes, killing the hostages if they found any unreported weaponry.[94] Petro Grigorenko would later state that "there was no end of bloodshed", drawing attention to reports of one massacre in the Makhnovist town of Novospasivka, where the Cheka had "shot down one in every two able-bodied men". In what Alexandre Skirda described as an act of "outright genocide", an estimated 200,000 Ukrainian peasants were killed during the Red Terror.[95]

The Bolshevik government implemented war communism in Ukraine, introducing a strict system of rationing and food requisitioning, which confiscated agricultural produce and livestock from the peasantry, and even forbade them from fishing, hunting or collecting lumber.[96] The attacks against the Ukrainian peasantry were justified under the policy of Dekulakization, despite the fact that, by this point in time, only 0.5% of the peasantry owned more than 10 hectares of land.[97] The sovkhozes also collapsed, with the number of state-owned farms halving and their land area reducing to a third, over the course of 1920. Even the soviet historian Mikhail Kubanin noted that to most of the Ukrainian peasantry: "the Soviet economy was a new and abhorrent form of rule [...] which in reality had merely set the State in the place of the former big landowner." The implementation of war communism thus resulted in a resurgence of peasant revolts. Before the fall of 1920, over 1,000 Bolshevik requisitionists had been killed by the Ukrainian peasantry.[98]

The Makhnovists themselves began to wage a campaign of guerrilla warfare against the Bolsheviks, launching a series of attacks against small red detachments and infrastructure. In the areas which they captured, they abolished war communism and redistributed requisitoned food back to the peasantry, forcing many Bolsheviks in the area back underground.[93] But following a successful White offensive into Northern Taurida, the Makhnovists and Bolsheviks once again formed an alliance, which extended autonomy to the Makhnovshchina.[99] The conditions of the Political Agreement between the two parties stated that:[100]

1. All Makhnovists and anarchists are to be free immediately;
2. There is to be the fullest freedom of agitation and propaganda both of speech and press for Makhnovist and anarchist ideas and attitudes, excepting appeals for the violent overthrow of the Soviet government, and on condition of respecting the military censorship;
3. There is to be free participation in election to the Soviets;
4. The local worker and peasant population, shall be free, in the area of operations of the Makhnovist Army, to organise free institutions of economic and political self-administration; these institutions shall be autonomous and linked federally by agreements with the governing organs of the Soviet Republics.[101]

The Bolsheviks ratified the first three clauses of the political agreement but held off on agreeing to the fourth clause, which they feared would limit their access to the Ukrainian rail network and turn the Makhnovshchina into a "magnet for all dissidents and refugees from Bolshevik-held territory."[15] But now that Ukrainian anarchists were once again free to operate, they quickly pushed the Russian Army out of Huliaipole and Makhnovshchina control was once again reestablished.[102]

Having once again regained control of their home territory, the Makhnovists drew up a program to reorganize the economy and society along the lines of anarcho-communism.[103] By mid-November, the free soviets were being reconstituted, libertarian schools were established and theater shows were put on daily.[104] According to the Polish anarchist Casimir Teslar, the scars of war ran deep throughout the region. He reported seeing abandoned trenches, demolished houses and a strong presence of insurgent detachments, detailing that even the local children were playing wargames based on the recent events.[105]

After Simon Karetnik's detachment assisted in the siege of Perekop, which had forced the Army of Wrangel to evacuate from Crimea, the Bolsheviks turned against the Makhnovshchina on November 26, 1920.[106] Many prominent Ukrainian anarchists were arrested and shot, while the Makhnovist capital of Huliaipole was itself captured by the Red Army.[107] The Cheka also intensified the Red Terror in Ukraine, ordering the Southern Front to search and disarm peasants, and to shoot any that resisted. They also purged the district of any suspected Makhnovists, arresting the entire revolutionary committee in Polohy and executing a number of its members for allegedly collaborating with the Makhnovists during the Ukrainian War of Independence in 1918.[108] In the place of the liquidated free soviets, the Bolsheviks established committees of Poor Peasants to take over local administration of Ukrainian villages.[109]

Hoping to keep the Makhnovshchina safe from reprisals, the Insurgent Army retreated into right-bank Ukraine then moved on north, passing through Poltava, Chernihiv and Belgorod, before returning to Katerynoslav in February 1921.[110] Once again on their home turf, they aimed to spread the Makhnovshchina to new territories and to establish reliable insurgent bases throughout Ukraine. However, the Bolshevik government's implementation of the New Economic Policy resulted in many Ukrainian peasants losing their will to fight, leading to a series of military defeats and the dwindling of insurgent forces. On August 28, 1921, Nestor Makhno's forces fled to Romania, leaving the country entirely under control of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.[111]

The free soviets were conceived of as the basic form of organization in the Makhnovshchina. These soviets acted independently from any central authority, excluding all political parties from participation, and met to self-manage the activities of workers and peasants through participatory democracy.[114] The soviets acted as the local organs of self-governance and federated together up to the regional and national levels, resulting in the relatively horizontal organization of the soviets. However, the conditions of the war meant that the Soviet model could only be implemented at scale during "periods of relative peace and territorial stability", as the populace was largely concerned with securing food or staying safe from the advancing armies.[115]

Nestor Makhno and his lieutenants

The Regional Congress of Peasants, Workers and Insurgents represented the "highest form of democratic authority" within the political system of the Makhnvoschina.[116] They brought together delegates from the region's peasantry, industrial workers and insurgent soldiers, which would discuss the issues at hand and take their decisions back with them to local popular assemblies.[117] Four Congresses were held over the course of 1919, while one was banned by the Bolsheviks and another was unable to convene due to renewed conflict with the Red Army.[118]

The Revolutionary Military Soviet (RVS) acted as the executive in the interim between sittings of the Regional Congresses.[119] Its powers covered both military and civil matters in the region, although it was also subject to instant recall at the will of the Regional Congress[120] and its activities were limited to those explicitly outlined by the Congresses themselves.[121] At each Regional Congress, the RVS was to provide detailed reports of its activities and subjected itself to reorganization.[122] When it came to the decisions of local soviets and assemblies, the RVS presented itself as a solely advisory board, with no power over the local bodies of self-government.[113]

The Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine (RIAU), commanded by Bat'ko Nestor Makhno, constituted the principal armed force of the Makhnovshchina. Composed largely of peasant partisans and generally supported by the wider peasantry, the RIAU was able to capture large amounts of territory throughout southern Ukraine.[65] Within this "free territory", the RIAU declared that its aim was to "serve and protect" the social revolution in Ukraine, but also that it would not impose its own ideals upon the Ukrainian people.[123] Nominally overseen by the civilian RVS,[124] the RIAU played a purely military role, with Makhno himself functioning as little more than a military strategist and advisor.[125] According to the Soviet historian Mikhail Kubanin, "neither the overall command of the army nor Makhno himself truly ran the movement; they merely reflected the aspirations of the mass, acting as its ideological and technical agents."[126]

For the first year of the Revolution, an energized Ukrainian peasantry carried out a campaign of expropriations against the pomeshchiks and kulaks, redistributing land to those that worked it and creating an agrarian socialist economy.[128] In the wake of the Kornilov affair, the revolutionary defense committee in Huliaipole sanctioned the disarmament and dispossession of the local bourgeoisie, bringing all private enterprise in the area under workers' control.[129] Peasants took control of the farms they worked and large estates were collectivized, creating agrarian communes that were settled by previously landless peasant families and individuals, with each commune counting around 200 members.[130]

The first commune, named after Rosa Luxemburg, was highly successful. Though only a few members actually considered themselves anarchists, the peasants operated the communes on the basis of full social equality, including gender equality. They accepted Kropotkin's principle of mutual aid ("from each according to their ability, to each according to their need") as their fundamental tenet.[131] Land was held in common, with shared meals also being eaten in communal kitchens, though members who wished to cook separately or to take food from the kitchen and eat it in their own quarters were allowed to do so. The work was collectively self-managed, with work programs being voluntarily agreed upon through consensus decision-making at general assemblies, and those who were unable to work could notify their neighbors in order for a replacement to be found.[132] Many commune members considered communal life to be the "highest form of social justice", with some former landowners even voluntarily adopting the new lifestyle.[133]

The father of Victor Kravchenko was one of the promoters of a commune called the "Tocsin", which counted 100 families on an estate made up of 200 hectares of wheat fields and orchards. The estate had been divided up and supplied by the local soviet, with many former industrial workers flocking to the new commune due to the promise of "well-being for everybody", while others were driven to communal life by their own ideological commitments. Some peasants even made fun of the urban communists that had joined the commune, although Kravchenko insisted that "such teasing was without malice", as the peasants still undertook to help the unskilled industrial laborers.[134] However, this commune eventually dissolved, "with commune workers quitting one after another".[135]

While the Makhnovshchina was a primarily agrarian society, efforts were also made to organize the industrial economies in the cities which the Makhnovists briefly occupied, despite the pervasive lack of understanding that the (largely peasant) insurgents had for large-scale industry.[136] Upon the occupation of cities, the Makhnovists organized workers' conferences with the intention of restarting production under a system of workers' self-management. When urban workers asked for the payment of their wages, still in arrears following the end of the White occupation, the Makhnovists responded by proposing they extract payment directly from their customers, albeit exempting the Insurgent Army from such payment.[137]

Railroad workers in Aleksandrovsk took the first steps in organising a self-managed economy in 1919. They formed a committee charged with organizing the railway network of the region, establishing a detailed plan for the movement of trains, the transport of passengers, etc. Soviets were soon formed to coordinate factories and other enterprises across Ukraine.[138]

In Katerynoslav, the local anarcho-syndicalist movement took the reigns on bringing the city's industrial economy under social ownership. Collective agreements were won at a tobacco factory and the city's bakeries were brought under workers' control, with a number of anarcho-syndicalist bakers drawing up plans to ensure food security for the local population.[139]

Many industrial workers ended up becoming disillusioned with the Makhnovshchina and instead supported the program of the Mensheviks.[87] At one Regional Congress of Peasants, Workers and Insurgents, Menshevik trade union delegates were denounced as "counter-revolutionaries" for speaking out against the Makhnovist platform of free soviets and subsequently walked out of the congress.[140]

The Makhnovshchina came up against difficulties concerning the issue of money, as its largely peasant base could easily go without money through subsistence farming, while urban workers still needed to buy their own food. When the direct exchange of goods was not possible, the Makhnovshchina largely continued to use money, but planned to build a moneyless system of anarcho-communism following the Russian Civil War.[141]

Early on, barter had been a popular means of exchange, with the Huliaipole Soviet even establishing links with textile factories in industrial centers such as Moscow. The Soviet procured wagon loads of cloth in exchange for grain, directly exchanged in quantities determined by the needs of both parties.[142] However, this barter economy was frustrated by the newly established Council of People's Commissars, controlled by the Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, which demanded an end to the independent barter economy and called for it to be brought under the control of the government.[135]

50 ruble banknote, allegedly issued by the Makhnovshchina.

Although the anarchists of the Makhnovshchina preferred a barter economy, they recognized that the working poor were still in need of money and permitted the use of any currencies, including the Imperial ruble, Soviet ruble and Ukrainian hryvnia.[143] One account even suggests that the Makhnovists printed their own money, which stated on its reverse that "no-one would be prosecuted for forging it".[144]

The regional congresses imposed levies against the local bourgeoisie and banks, extracting about 40 million rubles from the bourgeoisie and seizing 100 million rubles from the banks.[145] An extensive wealth redistribution campaign was subsequently implemented, in which the poor were able to apply for material assistance from the Military Revolutionary Soviet. One resident of Katerynoslav reported that thousands of people queued up on a daily basis for the redistribution packages, which they would receive in varying amounts depending on the assessment of their needs, with applicants being awarded up to thousands of rubles.[146] Redistribution measures reportedly continued up until the final days of Makhnovshchina control, with an estimate 3–10 million rubles being distributed to the population of Katerynoslav alone.[147]

The Makhnovists' unfamiliarity with monetary economics led to high rates of inflation, while the changing military situation resulted in wild fluctuations of currency value, with Soviet rubles appreciating in value as the Red Army advanced into Ukraine.[148] They also neglected to impose price controls, which caused the price of bread to rise by 25% during Makhnovshchina control.[147]

Ethnic groups of Ukraine (1926)

Largest ethnic groups by region

Second largest ethnic groups by region

Following the end of World War I, the existing empires and multinational states were collapsing, leading to a rise of the nation state as the dominant polity.[150] While a number of ethnic minorities of the former Russian Empire began to break off and form their own independent states, such as the Ukrainian People's Republic, the territory of the Makhnovshchina was notably multicultural and resisted the rising wave of Ukrainian nationalism.[10] According to Peter Arshinov, while 90% of the Makhnovshchina was made up of Ukrainians, 6–8% was made up of Russians and the remainder consisted of Jewish and Greek communities. There also existed small minorities of Georgians, Armenians, Bulgarians, Serbs, Montenegrins and Germans.[151]

As such, the Makhnovshchina sought "to deconstruct the entire state-based national paradigm, and build local socio-economic relations from the bottom up on anarchist principles."[152] In February 1919, the Second Regional Congress of Peasants, Workers and Insurgents passed a resolution denouncing nationalism and called on "the workers and peasants of every land and all nationalities" to join together in a social revolution to overthrow the state and capitalism.[153] In October 1919, the Draft Declaration adopted by the Military Revolutionary Soviet hoped to put an end to the "domination of one nationality over others" through the introduction of free soviets.[154] Although it proclaimed "the right of the Ukrainian people (and every other nation) to self-determination", it also considered nationalism to be "profoundly bourgeois and negative" and called instead for the "union of nationalities" under socialism, which it believed would "lead to development of the culture peculiar to each nationality."[155]

The Makhnovists specifically railed against antisemitism, which they considered to be a "bequest" of the Tsarist autocracy,[156] and the Revolutionary Military Soviet even went so far as to declare a "war on anti-Semitism".[157] Instances of antisemitic violence were notably much less common in the territory of the Makhnovshchina than they were in right-bank Ukraine,[158] with any cases of antisemitism being punished severely by the Makhnovists.[159] After one documented instance of an antisemitic pogrom taking place in Makhnovist territory, the insurgents responsible were executed by firing squad and weapons were redistributed to the local Jewish communities for their own protection.[160] Many of the Makhnovshchina's most influential figures also came from a Jewish background, including a number of Nabat's leading members: Aron Baron, Mark Mratchny and Volin.[161]

Map of the most common native languages in the districts and cities of the Ukrainian SSR, developed by the Soviet Census of December 1926.

The different language policies of the various regimes that occupied Ukraine during the war of independence led to a number of shifts in the use of language throughout Zaporizhzhia. The Ukrainian State had prioritized the use of the Ukrainian language, enforcing its use in education,[162] and following the region's occupation by the Volunteer Army in June 1919, Vladimir May-Mayevsky banned the use of the Ukrainian language in schools throughout South Russia, instead enforcing the use of the Russian language.[163] In reaction to the linguistic restrictions enforced by the various preceding governments, after the Makhnovist victory over the White movement at the Battle of Peregonovka, the Makhnovshchina's "Cultural Enlightenment Section" declared that people were to be educated in whichever language was used by the local population, to be decided on voluntarily by the people themselves.[164] In the majority of villages and towns in the Makhnovist territory, this meant a return to the use of the Ukrainian language[165] and an end to the privileged status of the Russian language.[166]

Nevertheless, the Russian language had a notable prevalence in left-bank Ukraine.[167] Since the 1905 Revolution, the Ukrainian anarchist movement's publications had largely been in the Russian language,[168] and the predominance of the Russian language in anarchist literature continued following the emigration of Russian anarchists to the territory of the Makhnovshchina.[169] But driven by a small number of Ukrainian intellectuals, led by Halyna Kuzmenko, the Makhnovshchina increasingly started to use the Ukrainian language in both its propaganda and educational activities, leading to a notable Ukrainization of the Makhnovist movement.[170] In late 1919, the Makhnovists began to publish a Ukrainian language edition of The Road to Freedom (Ukrainian: Шлях до Воли) in Katerynoslav, and set up a new publication called Anarchist Rebel (Ukrainian: Анархіст-Повстанець) in Poltava. But this would prove to be the extent of the Makhnovist movement's Ukrainian language publications, as they still lacked editors and proofreaders that were competent in the written Ukrainian language, and sometimes had no access to printing presses that carried the Ukrainian alphabet.[171]

As a result of the war, schools had been abandoned and teachers received no wages, meaning education was nonexistent in the region for months.[172] In the summer of 1919, the Bolsheviks dispersed the Nabat Confederation of Anarchist Organizations, leading many of its leading intellectuals to flee to the free territory. Under the stewardship of Volin, Peter Arshinov and Aron Baron, they organized a Cultural-Educational Commission, which distributed leaflets and delivered lectures to the insurgent troops.[173]

Upon the creation of soviets and assemblies in the region, the reconstruction of schools began, with the foundation a new self-managed secular education system, outside of state control.[174] Members of the Cultural-Educational Commission, who had been inspired by the Ferrer movement, began to work towards the establishment of a "unified workers' school", which energized much the local inhabitants to participate in the new education system. The Educational Commission, composed of workers, peasants and teachers, undertook the task of fulfilling both the economic and pedagogic needs of primary and secondary schools. Courses were set up for illiterate and semi-literate adults to help them read and courses for history, sociology and political theory were all offered free of charge to the general public.[175][173] All of these efforts increased literacy in the region.[176]

The Makhnovists also paid a great amount of attention to theatre, and soldiers from the Black Army often practiced theatre to entertain themselves and keep up morale.[177] The Cultural Commission founded an experimental theatre which put on daily shows for the public, the production of which were also self-managed by the local inhabitants. In Huliaipole, many workers and students began to write and perform in plays.[178][173]

While the territory of the Makhnovshchina was a predominantly rural, it also included a number of large cities, with the Insurgent Army capturing several following the Battle of Peregonovka.[179] Its capital city was Nestor Makhno's relatively small hometown of Huliaipole, which was nicknamed "Makhnograd" by the Bolsheviks.[9]

Largest cities or towns in the Makhnovshchina[179] Encyclopedia of Ukraine
	Rank		Province	Pop.
Katerynoslav Yelisavetgrad	1	Katerynoslav	Katerynoslav	189,000 (1920)	Oleksandrivsk Mariupol
	2	Yelisavetgrad	Kherson	65,000 (1926)
	3	Oleksandrivsk	Katerynoslav	58,517 (1917)
	4	Mariupol	Katerynoslav	30,000 (1921)
	5	Berdiansk	Taurida	26,400 (1926)
	6	Huliaipole	Katerynoslav	25,000 (1917)
	7	Melitopol	Taurida	22,022 (1912)
	8	Nikopol	Taurida	21,282 (1897)
	9	Kryvyi Rih	Kherson	19,000 (1923)
	10	Polohy	Katerynoslav	16,490 (1959)