Читать книгу Nestor Makhno and Rural Anarchism in Ukraine, 1917-1921 - Colin Darch - Страница 11

January is the coldest month in Ukraine, with temperatures below zero and the bora, a northeasterly wind, bringing heavy snowfalls. January in 1919 was not only cold¹ but was also marked by a continuation of the political and military realignment of forces – as described in the previous chapter – in the struggle to secure Ukraine in the coming spring. This was a process in which Makhno, and his followers, aimed to play a key role. On 4 January, despite the fact that Russia and Ukraine were at least on paper now separate countries, the Revolutionary Military Council (Revoliutsionnyi Voennyi Sovet or RVS) unilaterally took the important military decision to constitute a Ukrainian Front, with Soviet forces having already captured Khar’kov the day before over ineffectual protests from the Directory in Kiev.² On 16 January Petliura mounted a coup to gain control of the Directory, and, ignoring earlier diplomatic feelers to Moscow and under pressure from his French sponsors, declared war on Soviet Russia.³

By this time Denikin’s Volunteer Army consisted of over 80,000 men, of whom perhaps 30,000 were tied down in the rear, protecting his communication and supply lines from partisan raids.⁴ From the first weeks after Skoropadskii’s downfall and the withdrawal of the armies of occupation of the Central Powers, cavalry units of the Volunteer Army had begun probing along the Don and the Kuban rivers into Makhno’s region. Denikin anticipated that the partisans would be engaged in fighting the Petliurists, but in fact, after the brutal struggle for Ekaterinoslav, that front was quiet, and the White cavalry met with unexpectedly stubborn resistance from the outgunned partisans. In January the makhnovtsy moved many of their troops to the southeast and gained control of much of the area eastwards towards the Sea of Azov. The front stretched for over 90 kilometres to the north and northeast of Mariupol’, protecting the anarchist ‘liberated zone’ and even cutting into the Donbass.⁵

As the Whites increased in power and influence, the idea of an alliance between the partisans and the Bolsheviks, on the face of it in the interests of both sides, began to emerge.⁶ The Red Army did not come into actual contact with the insurgents until February, when Dybenko’s division arrived from the north at Sinel’nikovo, east of Ekaterinoslav. In fact, according to F. T. Fomin, a former member of the Cheka who was then at the front in charge of counter-espionage for the Bolsheviks, the first contacts had taken place earlier in the winter. Gusev, then Makhno’s chief-of-staff, visited Fomin in his railway carriage at Khar’kov station, and asked him to pass a proposal for a formal alliance to the Ukrainian RVS. In exchange for weapons and supplies the Bolsheviks would gain the advantage of a coordinated command over a vital sector of the front.⁷ Gusev claimed that the insurgent forces numbered about 10,000, but communist intelligence estimated only 4,000 infantry and about 3,000 unarmed men.⁸ A few weeks later, in mid-February, the Soviet estimate of Makhno’s strength was only 6,700 men.⁹ Whatever their actual numbers, Makhno’s forces were stretched thin, and even in a war of movement could not have withstood a determined assault by Denikin’s numerically superior forces. Indeed, in late January and early February, the makhnovtsy only just managed to defend Guliaipole in a series of increasingly desperate actions against the Whites.¹⁰

The RVS, chaired by Antonov, discussed the proposed alliance. Denikin’s advance presented a serious threat, and the RVS could not afford to turn away help. One opinion was in favour of breaking up the anarchist army and incorporating the troops into other units as reinforcements, thus minimising the anarchists’ disruptive influence. The second view, which prevailed, was that the Red Army could safely absorb the insurgents as an integral unit, so long as political commissars were assigned to them.¹¹ The decision to conclude an alliance on these terms – permitting Makhno’s forces to stay together – was a key moment in determining the events that followed.¹² As we shall see, the distinction between military and political integrity was understood quite differently by the two sides.¹³ Indeed, by relying on Makhno’s brigade to hold an important sector of the front, the RVS risked exactly the kind of rupture in the heat of battle that in fact occurred in June 1919. By assigning political commissars – who were often low calibre cadres – to Makhno’s units, the Bolsheviks also risked alienating the ideinye anarkhisty who exercised a strong influence on the insurgent army. In addition, the makhnovtsy received the Bolshevik commissars with hostility, as representatives of city-dwellers who stole grain.¹⁴

Throughout the negotiations, the makhnovtsy remained politically active. In January they had captured 100 railway wagons of wheat, totalling 90,000 pudy, from Denikin, and sent them (with some coal as a bonus) to the workers of Moscow and Petrograd, a major propaganda coup that was even reported in Izvestiia.¹⁵ On 23 January the anarchists convened their first regional congress at Greater Mikhailovka, to discuss, among other things, counter-measures against the twin threats of Petliura and Denikin.¹⁶ Such congresses, it must be remembered, were considered to be the highest form of democratic authority in the political system of the Makhno movement, and involved peasants, workers and soldiers, who would take decisions back to village and local meetings.¹⁷ Makhno took the opportunity presented by this congress to establish firm control over various local, small-scale atamany such as Fedir Shchus, who had been arbitrarily robbing and murdering people in the area, and with whom he had been in conflict.¹⁸

In early February Makhno accepted Antonov-Ovseenko’s command.¹⁹ The Bolsheviks assigned his units to serve as the Third Brigade in the Trans-Dnepr Division under Dybenko and alongside Grigor’ev, an ataman known for his vicious pogroms.²⁰ Ataman Grigor’ev came from a family of kulaks in Podolia, and had fought in both the Russo-Japanese and Great Wars, rising to the rank of captain.²¹ He was cunning and dangerous, although ‘untrained and unskilled’ as a commander. His political views were opportunist in the extreme: he supported in turn the Rada, the Hetmanate, the Directory, and then, after January 1919, the Bolsheviks.²² In 1918 he started to gather local partisan groups together, and by February 1919 controlled a force of 23,000 men with machine-guns and artillery. After he turned against the Directory, the Red Army’s commanders reached a tactical agreement with him and like Makhno, he retained control of his troops, under Red Army command. The most striking difference between the two partisan leaders was one of ideological consistency. Grigor’ev had few scruples about who he aligned himself with; he was an adventurer, anti-Semitic, xenophobic, and a hater of landlords.²³ Makhno, on the other hand, was driven by a political philosophy, which guided his practice: he punished anti-Semitism, he refused to cooperate with the White Guards, he was guardedly hostile towards Ukrainian nationalism. He cooperated with the Bolsheviks but mistrusted them. Perhaps the Red Army commanders should have anticipated problems mainly from the unpredictable Grigor’ev, but in the event, both of the atamany proved dangerous in equal measure, and the military situation in April and May 1919 was too confused to allow Bolshevik strategists time to analyse their allies.

Antonov may have feared the possibility of an alliance against Soviet power by the two unruly guerrilla leaders, but this turned out to be both politically and temperamentally unworkable. In fact, the makhnovtsy joined the Red Army on conditions that were unfavourable to the Bolsheviks. The insurgents were to keep their internal organisation, their black flags and their title of povstantsi.²⁴ They were to receive arms and supplies on the same basis as nearby communist units. In return, they had to accept the assignment of commissars to each regiment.²⁵ The last two points were the cause of bitter recriminations, and eventually of the first rift between the mutually suspicious new allies.

Part of the difficulty in bringing the two forces together was that Makhno’s ideas of insurgent organisation were an attempt to resolve the contradiction between anarchist principle and military necessity. The two key points were mobilisation and discipline. Nominally, all Makhno’s soldiers were volunteers, and they were all eligible for positions of command, either by election or by appointment. But so-called ‘voluntary mobilisation’ was also practised, and the evidence is mixed as to why and how the rural and peri-urban poor joined up with Makhno.²⁶ Possible motives include but are not limited to an ideological commitment to anarchism, a desire for loot and land, adventurism, or simply a desire to get rid of an outside authority that was seen as exploitative.

The most difficult idea to swallow for the Bolsheviks was that of ‘freely accepted discipline’. At least theoretically, the troops voted on every regulation, and if passed, each rule was rigorously enforced ‘on the individual responsibility of each insurgent and each commander’.²⁷ However, direct orders were to be obeyed immediately: a few years later, during his trial in Poland, Makhno angrily insisted that his men would ‘unhesitatingly’ carry out their orders.²⁸ Bolshevik military policy, on the other hand, had evolved from a position based primarily on political considerations, to one in which the problems of fighting to defend the revolution were of first importance. During the war against the Central Powers the Bolsheviks had denounced the militarism of the Tsarist regime. They had urged the peasant soldiers to rebel against the authority of their officers, who belonged to the class enemy. This tactic successfully undermined the Imperial Army, a weapon in the hands of the autocracy. The Bolsheviks infected it with revolutionary defeatism, both by agitation among the troops and by exploiting the soldiers’ concrete experience of their commanders’ cynical incompetence. By March 1918, when Trotsky became People’s Commissar for War (Narkomvoen), all that remained of the Imperial Army was Vatsetis’ division of Latvian riflemen.²⁹ The sentiments of the masses were a mixture of an emotional belief in pacifism and their trust in the Red Guards and the partisan detachments. For example, whether anarchist, SR, or Bolshevik, most revolutionaries believed that officers should be chosen by their troops. Trotsky abandoned these democratic and anti-authoritarian ideas in favour of centralisation and tough discipline. There were good reasons for the reversal, but it gave partisans like Makhno the advantage of appearing more consistent and more faithful to the Russian revolutionary tradition. The makhnovtsy made maximum use of this point in their propaganda.³⁰

Trotsky believed that the peasants were the least reliable members of the Red Army. They deserted in droves, and their morale was often fragile. ‘The chaos of irregular warfare expressed the peasant element that lay beneath the revolution’, he wrote in 1929, ‘whereas the struggle against it was also a struggle in favor of the proletarian state organization as opposed to the elemental, petty-bourgeois anarchy that was undermining it’.³¹ However, Trotsky was quite prepared to recruit former Imperial officers for their military expertise, so long as the army contained a core of proletarians on whose support the Bolsheviks could politically depend.³² He placed political commissars alongside the officers, from company level up to the commander-in-chief. Orders were valid only if both officer and commissar agreed. Thus, the Bolshevik leadership, with the support of small numbers of worker-soldiers, hoped to provide an example of dedication and enthusiasm, combined with iron discipline – the certainty of death in the rear – to hold the new army together. But the incorporation of units such as Makhno’s into the Red Army as regular troops presented difficult practical problems, and there were regular clashes. When the first commissars arrived in the Makhnovite regiments they discovered a general lack of organisation and discipline. The 3rd Brigade’s commissar reported from Guliaipole that, ‘the headquarters as such do not exist. There were a few men, headed by the Brigade commander, who ran the whole brigade […] everything was in a state of uncertainty and chaos’.³³

Meanwhile, Makhno continued to consolidate his political base. A second regional congress was held in Guliaipole from 12–16 February³⁴ at which Makhno refused his nomination as presiding chair, citing the pressure of military events at the front.³⁵ Both Nabat and the Left SRs were represented, and speeches were made condemning attempts by the Bolsheviks to monopolise the soviets.³⁶ Importantly, the congress established a Military-Revolutionary Soviet (Voenno-Revoliutsionnaia Sovet or VRS) with ten members, of whom seven were anarchists, as its executive arm.³⁷ The congress retained, at least in theory, the right to dissolve the VRS.³⁸ After heated debate, the congress also resolved that a ‘general voluntary and egalitarian mobilisation’ should be called, which placated anarchist objections to enforced conscription, and also had the effect of creating a militia force with a centralised command structure, recruited village by village.³⁹ Makhno’s comrade Petr Arshinov claimed that the decision resulted in a greater influx of volunteers, but he admits that most of them were turned away because there were no guns for them.⁴⁰ Indeed, by May, the troop strength had reportedly grown to as many as 55,000 men, of whom only about 20,000 or so were actually armed.⁴¹

On 19 February the order creating the Trans-Dnepr Division out of Makhno’s, Dybenko’s and Grigor’ev’s units was finally issued. Makhno’s troops – the 3rd Brigade – consisted of the 7th, 8th and 9th Rifle Regiments, and the 19th and 20th regiments.⁴² The immediate benefit for Makhno was that he received several thousand Italian rifles, ammunition and funds to pay his soldiers.⁴³ Nevertheless, conditions for the Reds remained precarious: one political commissar reported that his troops had no equipment or uniforms, there were no billets, there were no medical staff even though a typhoid epidemic was raging, and nobody had been paid for months.⁴⁴ At the time Makhno was skirmishing to the southwest of Guliaipole, and he received orders to make contact with the Donbass units to his left.⁴⁵ The Red Army’s primary military task in the south was to consolidate its advanced positions, and to destroy the White forces in the Donbass.⁴⁶

In general, the spring of 1919 was a period of moderate success for the Red Army, as it pushed the Whites eastwards out of the Donbass. In March, Makhno’s brigade was ordered to cut off the White forces in the Berdiansk sector, as well as those operating further west from Melitopol’.⁴⁷ The makhnovtsy had already moved to secure the key railway junction at Pologi, on the line connecting Berdiansk to its hinterland. The station was defended by a White force of 500 men, with another 1,500 covering the approaches. The fighting, with artillery and armoured trains deployed, lasted for six days at the beginning of February and ended with a pincer movement executed by the makhnovtsy and Red Army detachments.⁴⁸ The defenders did not combine well, and were later even accused of cowardice,⁴⁹ but in any event, the insurgents captured significant amounts of weaponry and materiel.⁵⁰ The Red commander Pavel Dybenko commended Makhno’s ‘brilliant leadership’ in personally leading the attack.⁵¹ The subsequent advance towards Berdiansk was slowed by White resistance at the railway station of Velikii Tokmak, southeast of Aleksandrovsk, but the insurgents finally captured it on 10 March.⁵²

For the time being at least the anarchist forces were popular with the Soviet authorities on military, if not on political grounds. Antonov issued an order emphasising the need to ‘maximize on Makhno’s success’ in making contact with the enemy and driving them from the Berdiansk and Mariupol’ area. He ordered the movement of troops and arms from the Crimea to reinforce Makhno’s group for the assault.⁵³ The 3rd Brigade launched a ‘decisive and energetic attack’ that carried them as far as the junction of the Mariupol’-Platanovka railway, where they quickly destroyed the defending force.⁵⁴ The commissars noticed the effect of the partisans’ success on the morale of other units. The political inspector of one Trans-Dnepr regiment reported that there was a glut of volunteers, but – again – no weapons for them. He suspected that they were motivated by the prospect of easy loot; ‘all are drawn to Makhno, whose popularity is inconceivable’. He suggested that the political situation could be corrected after the military one was more firmly under control.⁵⁵

The insurgents continued their advance towards Berdiansk. On 16 March Pravda reported that ‘our forces’ – that is to say, the insurgents – were moving south, and Izvestiia reported around the same time that the insurgent forces were driving back some of the best regiments of the former Imperial Guard.⁵⁶ Berdiansk was defended by the local Krims’ko-Azovs’ka Dobrovol’cha Armiia (Crimea-Azov Volunteer Army, or KADA) which, according to a local memoir, dismissed the Makhno threat as inconsequential – since they were just bandits, while KADA was made up of ‘proper soldiers’.⁵⁷ But their confidence was misplaced: Makhno’s advance began to create an atmosphere of panic in Berdiansk town, which at that time had a population of around 30,000, mainly made up of Russians, but with Greeks, Jews, Italians, Bulgarians and Turks as well.⁵⁸ Ticket prices on departing steamships were sold for highly speculative prices as ‘bankers, merchants, homeowners, and the staff of foreign consulates’ tried to secure passage to safety.⁵⁹ However, Makhno’s forces, under the command of Kalashnikov, held off on the outskirts of the town while the terrified citizens fled as best they could, only entering the centre of Berdiansk on 28 March.⁶⁰

The story of the capture of Berdiansk was subsequently to feed into a meta-narrative of the cruel behaviour of the makhnovtsy towards the population at large, a narrative that included but was not limited to accusations of carrying out pogroms and massacring German Mennonite settlers at various times.⁶¹ In Berdiansk, the panic-stricken evacuees would not have been so frightened, according to this logic, unless they had something to hide from revolutionary justice, and so deserved whatever fate befell them – the same logic of the French anarchist Émile Henry’s remark that ‘there are no innocent bourgeois’. Later, Soviet sources would claim that people were stabbed to death or blown up with grenades for having collaborated with the Whites.⁶² Given the horrific atrocities that were common occurrences everywhere during the civil war, this seems plausible, even if unproven; nevertheless, the numbers killed, and the extent of the cruelty exercised by the conquerors of Berdiansk, both remain the subject of dispute.⁶³

By the end of March, the Bolshevik commanders were arguing about the best way to deploy Makhno’s troops. On 22 March, Dybenko telephoned Anatol Skachko, the commander of the Khar’kov group, to inform him of his intention to replace the anarchists at the front with newly-formed units despite what he called Makhno’s ‘inspired leadership’.⁶⁴ Four days later Skachko received orders to push the insurgent brigade forward in an attempt to capture Taganrog on the Sea of Azov and to turn the White flank and rear in the Bakhmut region to the northwest.⁶⁵ But on 28 March Denikin attacked the Soviet 8th Army northeast of Makhno’s sector, and drove it northwards almost to Lugansk. Simultaneously, Makhno had again occupied Mariupol’ on the coast, and was driving forward towards Rostov.⁶⁶ He was yet again short of supplies, partly because Dybenko had, on his own initiative, advanced into the Crimea.⁶⁷ There was in fact ongoing confusion in the command structure. Vatsetis ordered that the 3rd Brigade should be transferred across to the Southern Front, and despite Antonov’s protests the move was carried out.⁶⁸ Makhno’s units, between Mariupol’ and Taganrog, came under the different command for operational matters, however the discipline and organisation remained in Antonov’s hands. Supplies were to be provided by the Ukrainian government.⁶⁹

There was still a lot of suspicion between the two groups, justifiably or not. In the second half of March Makhno received intelligence reports that his people were under surveillance, that his popularity was regarded with suspicion and that there might even be an assassination attempt in the offing. Makhno subsequently met Dybenko in a Berdiansk hotel and raised the issue with him. Dybenko denied all knowledge of the plan and assured the bat’ko that he remained in the good books of the command. There was much slandering of honest revlutionaries, he added, and Makhno was not the only target.⁷⁰

On 31 March, the Ukrainian 2nd Army and the 13th Army counter-attacked against the Whites, initially with some success, in an attempt to occupy the whole of the west bank of the Don and thus release troops for other fronts. In response, Denikin’s cavalry commander Andrei Shkuro attacked to the west in an attempt to outflank the Soviet right, where Makhno’s brigade was still pushing forward along the coast to Rostov from Mariupol’.

Political problems continued, however, to distract from the military difficulties that faced the Red Army. At one level, Makhno’s successes were still being lauded in such newspapers as Pravda and Izvestiia, and his popularity was at its height. Nevertheless, the problem of the situation of the commissars continued to worry the Bolsheviks.⁷¹ On 2 April the political commissar of the Trans-Dnepr Division complained that anarchist and Left SR agitation was making his work difficult. The fighting units of the Guliaipole garrison were anti-communist and included many non-party elements. There was a shortage of arms and of uniforms, and the partisans who comprised most of the fighting units were tired and demoralised. What he needed, nonetheless, were more political workers and more political literature.⁷²

At a broader policy level, the Bolsheviks were also having considerable difficulty developing a policy towards the local peasantry that would secure food supplies. In 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 Kontr-revoliutsionnyi li? (Are We Counterrevolutionary?)⁹⁶ This document attacked the legalism of Dybenko’s 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 7^th 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 Grigor’ev, releasing more reliable troops and resolving his dilemma.¹²³

Meanwhile Makhno was being particularly pugnacious. Grain requisition detachments (prodovol’stvennye otriady) were unable to operate in his area, and he had lost patience with the Bolshevik commissars in the 3rd Brigade, and arrested them, breaking the February agreement. His troops were wavering under the White attacks, and Antonov could ill afford to antagonise him. He therefore decided to visit Guliaipole himself, with two purposes in mind: to see for himself this ‘under-sized, young-looking, dark-eyed man, wearing a Caucasian fur cap at an angle’, and to assess him and his unit.¹²⁴ On arrival he noted that three secondary schools had been set up, several medical posts to treat the wounded and a workshop for repairing military equipment. There was also adult education underway focussing on political agitation.¹²⁵ The visit gave Antonov an opportunity to try to solve the two problems of Makhno’s relations with Grigor’ev, and of his treatment of the commissars. Antonov was, by his own account, satisfied with the way Makhno ran his headquarters and with the fighting qualities of his men. He telegraphed to Khar’kov that he had stayed with Makhno for the whole day, and was convinced that there was no anti-Soviet conspiracy, and that the makhnovtsy were ‘a great fighting force’, and potentially ‘an indestructible fortress’. The newspaper propaganda campaign needed to stop at once.¹²⁶ Still, Makhno had much to complain of – he was short of arms, ammunition, clothing and money. He had received 3,000 Italian rifles, but so few bullets that they were already used up.¹²⁷ His grumbles were justifiable – although the 3rd Brigade was under bombardment from land and sea, they had only two 3-inch guns in good condition and lacked machine-guns and cartridges. Yet when Dybenko had raised this point, headquarters accused him of placing the brigade’s welfare before that of the division as a whole.¹²⁸

Antonov was sympathetic, and issued orders for supplies to be sent to Makhno forthwith. On the question of the arrested commissars he was adamant. Makhno unexpectedly backed down, and released the imprisoned political workers, on condition that they must no longer work as spies for the Bolsheviks.¹²⁹ Even more comforting for Antonov to hear were Makhno’s assurances that he did not have close relations with Grigor’ev, who he suspected of counter-revolutionary intentions. He admitted that he had indeed sent an envoy to Grigor’ev’s camp, but only to discover what his plans really were. Shortly after this surprisingly friendly visit to Makhno, another senior Bolshevik arrived in Guliaipole. Lev Kamenev, deputy chairman of the Russian Sovnarkom, was on a mission to Ukraine, primarily to sort out the administrative problems that were preventing food supplies from moving northwards. As he was to discover, the problems were, in fact, much more than merely administrative.