Something sincerely nice, not icepick joke #328746279.
Ah yet he worked for the Nazis!
“Trotsky worked with the Nazis. My evidence of this is the lack of evidence for it. Nazis were so good at destroying evidence that if he didn’t work with them there would be some evidence that he had!”
- Grover Furr
Yeah, I’m an ML, but I think a lot mod people on here are in denial about how many whacko MLs there are. I mean we got Lysenkoists and Furr stans on this very site.
Plus whenever I share some anecdote about some ML dork I encountered being weird and creepy I get like 5 dudes replying to me going “well I’ve never seen that and it’s been dialectically proven that all people who ID as MLs are 5000 IQ Rick and Morty fans so clearly you’re lying!”
In all stereotypes there exists a glimmer of a material reality, often disguised in reactionary beliefs.
There's loads of evidence for it. There's over 3000 pages of confessional testimony in which the Trotskyites state how they ended up in the camp of counter-revolution: the prime reason being they did not believe that the Soviet Union could last against "German Fascism which they saw as the most organised and militant form of capitalism". So it was "better to come to terms with them" and offer up the lands Hitler had called for conquering in MeinKampf(Western portion of Russia and the Ukraine for its oil fields) whilst removing Stalin and the Soviet leadership from power and putting in power the Trotskyists in charge of a rump state of Russia
"A military defeat threatens the social basis of the Soviet Union for the same reason that these bases require in peaceful times a bureaucracy and a monopoly of foreign trade – that is, because of their weakness. Can we, however, expect that the Soviet Union will come out of the coming great war without defeat? To this frankly posed question, we will answer as frankly: If the war should remain only a war, the defeat of the Soviet Union would be inevitable. In a technical, economic, and military sense, imperialism in incomparably more strong. If it is not paralyzed by revolution in the West, imperialism will sweep away the regime which issued from the October revolution."
-Trotsky, Revolution Betrayed 1936
"we considered that Fascism was the most organized form of capitalism, that it would triumph and seize Europe and stifle us. It was better therefore to come to terms with it'.
-Sokolnikov
But don't let me interrupt you you can read all their full confessions spanning hundreds of pages in public court which was open to the worlds diplomats and foreign press
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.150911
https://archive.org/details/reportofcourtpro0000piat
But oh right there testimony is faked because Soviet torturers falsified their confessions. Despite them admitting to some crimes but denying others at lengthy testimony with huge back and forths between the defence and prosecutors. Despite the fact most of these men were hardened men who had been dealt torture and imprisonment at the hands of Tsarist police or sent to the Tsars gulags prior to 1917.
No, what really cracked these men was being tortured by Soviet torturers in such a way not a mark could be left on them for when they appeared at trial in front of the worlds press and the worlds diplomats then had a lengthy back and forth of contradiction, admitting to some crimes and not others in such a pantomime way. To have their entire legacy destroyed and ruined because actually they were innocent.
“With an interpreter at my side, I followed the testimony carefully. Naturally I must confess that I was predisposed against the credibility of the testimony of these defendants… Viewed objectively, however, and based upon my experience in the trial of cases and the application of the tests of credibility which past experience had afforded me, I arrived at the reluctant conclusion that the state had established its case, at least to the extent of proving the existence of a widespread conspiracy and plot among the political leaders against the Soviet government, and which under their statutes established the crimes set forth in the indictment… I am still impressed with the many indications of credibility which obtained in the course of the testimony. To have assumed that this proceeding was invented and staged as a project of dramatic political fiction would be to presuppose the creative genius of a Shakespeare and the genius of a Belasco in stage production. The historical background and surrounding circumstances also lend credibility to the testimony. The reasoning which Sokolnikov and Radek applied in justification of their various activities and their hoped-for results were consistent with probability and entirely plausible. The circumstantial detail… brought out by the various accused, gave unintended corroboration to the gist of the charges.”
-Joseph Davies, US diplomat to the USSR
“My grandfather and Tukhachevsky were friends. And grandfather was on the judicial panel that judged both Tukhachevsky and Eideman. My interest in this case became even stronger after the well-known publications of procuror Viktorov, who wrote that Iakov Alksnis was very active at the trial, harrassed the accused. . . . But in the trial transcript everything was just the opposite. Grandfather only asked two or three questions during the entire trial. But the strangest thing is the behavior of the accused. Newspaper accounts claim that all the defendants denied their guilt completely. But according to the transcript they fully admitted their guilt. I realize that an admission of guilt itself can be the result of torture. But in the transcript it was something else entirely: a huge amount of detail, long dialogues, accusations of one another, a mass of precision. It’s simply impossible to stage-manage something like this. . . . I know nothing about the nature of the conspiracy. But of the fact that there really did exist a conspiracy within the Red Army and that Tukhachevsky participated in it I am completely convinced today.”
–Colonel Alksnis (Elementy, 2000)
For me, I.V. Stalin and his time is a very sore and relevant issue until now.
My grandfather – the commander of the second rank, deputy commissar of defense of the USSR for aviation Yakov Ivanovich (Jekabs Janovich) Alksnis, was shot in July 1938. His wife (my grandmother), Kristina Karlovna Mednis-Alksnis, as a member of the family of the traitor to the Motherland (CSIR), spent 13 years in camps and exiles. My father, Imant Yakovlevich, at the age of 10 was left without parents and until the age of 30 wore the stigma “son of an enemy of the people.” He found his mother only in 1957.
Therefore, our family always had anti-Stalinist sentiments and, accordingly, I was an anti-Stalinist.
When perestroika began, he eagerly read all the publications of those years, exposing the crimes of Stalin and his entourage.
In 1989, I was elected People’s Deputy of the USSR and after some time I sent an official deputy request to the then Chairman of the KGB of the USSR V.A. Kryuchkov with a request to acquaint me with the documents relating to my grandfather.
In particular, I asked to show me his criminal case and the materials of the trial of M. Tukhachevsky, since my grandfather was part of the Special Judicial Presence, which sentenced Tukhachevsky and other military leaders to death.
I was particularly interested in the materials of the trial of a group of military leaders led by Tukhachevsky, since M. Tukhachevsky and Robert Eideman (chairman of the Central Council of Osoaviahim of the USSR), who were shot by the sentence of the Special Judicial Presence, were close friends of my grandfather, and they were almost friends with Robert Eideman not since childhood. And for me it was not clear how my grandfather could sentence his friends to death.
After a while I was invited to the Lubyanka and two volumes were placed in front of me. The first is the grandfather’s criminal case, and the second is a transcript of the trial of a group of military men led by Tukhachevsky. I was allowed to make the necessary statements.
I was immediately struck that in the criminal case there were extremely few documents. Grandfather was arrested on November 23, 1937, and shot on July 29, 1938, i.e. He spent 8 months in Lefortovo. And while in the case there were only three or four protocols of interrogations, and almost all of these protocols were about nothing.
For example, one multi-page protocol was devoted to organizing the repair of aircraft of the Air Force. Moreover, the protocol is very detailed, as it seemed to me, the answers to the investigator’s questions were simply rewritten from the governing documents of those years on the organization of aircraft repair.
I was surprised that three days after the arrest, my grandfather wrote a handwritten note in the name of the People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs, Yezhov, about his readiness to give sincere testimonies about his counter-revolutionary activities, but there were no traces of these sincere testimonies in the criminal case.
Judging by the materials of the case, the first interrogation took place only in January 1938. At the same time, judging by the 1956 rehabilitation materials filed in the same case, my grandfather was repeatedly summoned for interrogations and “beat out” evidence from him. But where are these protocols with “knocked out” testimonies, why were they not in the file?
After reviewing the transcript of the Tukhachevsky process, I realized that this process is also not so simple. My conviction that Tukhachevsky and his colleagues were simply forced to incriminate themselves under torture was seriously shaken, because judging by the transcript, they gave their testimonies quite sincerely. After reviewing the transcript of the process, I came to the conclusion that there was still a “military conspiracy”, or something like that, in the Red Army.
-Victor Alksnis, https://diplomaticpost.co.uk/index.php/2020/07/15/the-moscow-trials-colonel-viktor-alksnis-read-the-tukhachevsky-transcript-and-came-away-convinced-he-was-guilty/
You can still choose to believe that Moscow Trials were faked and that these people if you want to. But to strawman that ML position that there "was no evidence" is disingenous - there's mountains of evidence you've just decided that it's fake because it fits in with your caricature of Stalin and Marxist-Leninists without doing any serious investigation of your own.
Everybody gangster till @JoeySteel whips out his debunking comments
Great military leader, was actually getting shit done in 1905 while Lenin et al were shitposting in Vienna. The work on a Transitional program is an essential concept for leftists. Permanent revolution is a great theoretical development that just wasn't right for those specific material conditions.
Overall, despite his flaws Lenin was right to single him out as the most competent day-to-day member of the Bolsheviks
He was a nerdy Jewish guy who got laid a lot, and I’m here for it.
Trotsky was an extremely able and talented political organizer and leader before and during the 1917 revolution. He was a real one
His writings against random acts of sporadic revolutionary violence are strategic and wise and genuinely stopped me from doing anything hella dumb in my more impulsive and quicker tempered days, good revolutionary/wartime leader for sure, however much I disagree with him in general.
Trotsky was literally the poster child of factionalism & disunity in these revolutionary groups in Russia, that's a fact. Even Lenin pointed this out about Trotsky
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/may/x01.htm
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/may/x01.htm
there you go
Mahkno was an anarchist and commander of the black army. Anarchists argue they were a revolutionary force who were crushed by the red army because they didn't fit into the Bolsheviks nation building project.
An ML can give you the other side, but what I usually hear is that the black army orchestrates a mutiny in the red army after the retreat from Ukraine, undermining the war effort. This is as far as I can tell true, but doesn't seem a big deal because all the mutineers joined the black army.
Makhno’s “communes” were never very successful and few in the countryside ever participated
Makhno destroyed trains & wrecked equipment that needed to be preserved
this is largely why figures like Kropotkin advocated for the nascent Soviet states & criticized anarchists in their overzealous actions& lack of foresight
Makhno's bandits also committed pogroms and sent runaway locomotives against oncoming trains & generally were a pain in the side of revolution. While they may have helped to hold back the Whites and Hetmanate in places, the anti-communism and sectarian nature of Makhno's approach ensured that chaos would continue longer than it should have in these areas
criticized anarchists in their overzealous actions& lack of foresight
Source? Genuinely curious
“We anarchists have talked much about the revolution, but how many have ever taken pains to prepare for the actual work during & after the revolution? The Russian Revolution has demonstrated the imperativeness of such preparation of practical reconstructive work”
https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/sections/britain/periodicals/communist_review/1922/04/emma_goldman.htm
In case you don't realise what this shithead is dogwhistling
In 1917 the Bolsheviks classified the Black Army as “Deserters and Bandits".
The Bolshevik policy towards “Bandits and Deserters” at the time was that they should be shot on sight. They declassified them for a year while they were making common cause against the Whites but then when they decided to turn on the Mahknovists again in 1919 not only did they reclassify them, they upgraded their policy on Deserters and Bandits to, in Lenin’s own words
After the expiration of the seven-day deadline for deserters to turn themselves in, punishment must be increased for these incorrigible traitors to the cause of the people. Families and anyone found to be assisting them in any way whatsoever are to be considered as hostages and treated accordingly.
If you were wondering what “treated accordingly” meant here’s a Cheka report
Yaroslavl Province, 23 June 1919. The uprising of deserters in the Petropavlovskaya volost has been put down. The families of the deserters have been taken as hostages. When we started to shoot one person from each family, the Greens began to come out of the woods and surrender. Thirty-four deserters were shot as an example.
You can't call chapo.chat a left unity site and allow shit like this.
So when Makhno refused to fight in Poland, or when his secret police were rounding up suspected communists and murdering them or torturing them in jail, was that left unity or what?
Greens were pogromists all the same. They also didn't really have class struggle, because the strata of peasants from which Makhno drew his army literally were just kulaks or envied wealthy kulaks and wanted to have the same sort of comfortable kulak lifestyle with a few land owners who employ masses of impoverished peons doing the labor. They weren't principled anarchists lol
"Makhno's army was drawn from all layers of the peasantry. The fundamental desire of the peasants was not the creation of an anarchist utopia but to possess the land and then to be left alone by gentry, officials, tax collectors, recruiting sergeants and all external agents of authority. The wealthier kulaks in particular did not want the landlords to return but feared above all the rule of the working class and poor peasants.
The anti-state prejudices of the Makhnoite leadership, shared by its peasant base, led them into the camp of enemies of the Soviet state power. But this anti-authoritarian "principle" was one of the few that the Makhnoites respected when confronted by the practical realities of the Civil War. Achieving military success meant forced conscription, summary executions and recruiting anti-Semitic pogromists into their ranks; hostility toward the Bolsheviks meant establishing an alternative government hostile to the central Soviet workers state. As anarchist historian Paul Avrich wrote in his sympathetic account of Makhno (Anarchist Portraits [1988]): "
I've had this argument before too many times.
If you're interested in my position I outlined it pretty fully here. After you've read that if there's anything you want to bring up I'm happy to go from there.
But the fact remains you can't call chapo.chat a "left unity" website which censors "sectarianism" then leave up posts that say "something nice" about Trotsky was that he engaged in the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of anarchists, their families, and anyone who ideologically supported them.
If Makhno's bands were murdering communists & wanting to keep the ossified kulak class structure intact, then they definitely weren't leftists at all
Again, we can't just lionize & write hagiographies for Makhno just because we believe rabid anti-communist lies about USSR
Makhno's fighting against Denikin & the Black Hundreds can be commended, but we can't fall over ourselves thinking that anti-communism is leftism, nor that Makhno was a principled leftist just because he represents an idealized imagined world where the Bolsheviks didn't win the Civil War
Again, I wrote 2000+ words on this in the post I linked.
If you want to have this discussion with me please read that first to see where I'm coming from.
If there's something in there you want to respond to I'm happy to go from there but I'm not down to rehash a whole lot of shit.
Yes, I read what you wrote, and outside of you not really referencing any real scholarly information or credible resources, I can't really agree with anything you've written there, especially the last part where you say that Makhno did nothing wrong, I really have to disagree
You reference Arshinov, which really isn't a credible resource at all. Arshinov is just writing an effusive fanfic, not a sober or even-handed treatment of this history. I've rehashed this information plenty of times too, and I can go point-by-point if you want. You haven't really offered any new information, and to be honest, your unwillingness to respond in good faith tells me everything I need to know
"Nestor Makhno certainly perpetrated numerous counter-revolutionary exploits. His secret police tortured and murdered many communists. His Ukrainian peasant followers committed frequent pogroms against Jewish petty shopkeepers and merchants… Ukrainian peasant antagonism to the overwhelmingly Russian and Jewish working class of the Ukrainian cities… . Grigorev had the worst record of murder, rape, torture and other atrocities committed against Jews of all the peasant bandit leaders ravaging the Ukrainian country-side during the Russian Civil War.
This alliance ended badly for Grigorev. Makhno murdered him, and Grigorev’s peasant followers joined Makhno’s rebel army—but continued to commit pogroms.
Makhno himself was not personally anti-Semitic, indeed there were Jews in his “collective.” In a sense, it could be said that Makhno was simply following anarchist principle. If his secret policemen were torturing prisoners, and if his peasant followers were committing pogroms, what right did Makhno, as just one member of the “collective,” have to object?"
Now, about your statement that Makhno's bands did nothing wrong. Does that include the Pogroms or no?
"The National Secretariat of Ukrainian Jews’ stated during the period of the pogroms: “A special place is held for the actions of the Makhno bands which waged complete destruction in the Yekaterinoslav-Pavlograd region.”
The journal `Reshumot’ (1920) refers to: “the well known wild animal Makhno who was known for his cruelty and his army which was drunk with blood.”
`Jewish Agriculturalists in the Steppes of Russia’ (Israel 1965)’ states:" The Jewish colonies in the Yekaterinoslav province were situated in the centre of activity of the anarchist bands, Makhno. Almost all the colonies of Yekaterinoslav suffered from attacks. All the inhabitants of the colonies Trudoliubovka and Nechaevka, who numbered 1000 people - were murdered. The property was looted completely and since then no Jewish foot has entered those colonies."
Even Trotsky points out Makhno’s rhetorical position vs. the reality of his armies’ actions "“Without a doubt, Makhno provided de facto aid to Wrangel, as well as to the Polish gentry, since he fought at the same time as they did against the Red Army” (translated from “Makhno and Wrangel,” 14 October 1920, Kak vooruzhalas’ revolyutsiya [How the Revolution Armed], Vol. 2, Book 2 [1924]). "
Again, touting some alternate history about Makhno just because you believe anti-communist lies about USSR or fetishize the Makhnovists' banditry & destruction isn't leftism in the least
I'm sorry you can't agree with my serious and scholarly conclusion of
Anyway, I realise I’ve written a lot of words. I hope you read and get something out of the as I doubt anyone else will.
In conclusion
BORN TO DIE
CURRENCY IS A FUCK
Kill Em All 1917
I am bandit man
410,757,864,530 RED FASCISTS
Mahknov did nothing wrong.
Thanks for reading 😊
😔
Nevertheless I will stand by by because I think it's funny and I enjoyed typing it.
My actual thesis, was that Trotsky and the Bolshevik's narrow definition of "the working class" and "proletariat" as being exclusively wage labourers and explicitly not including the peasantry who they defined as being "inherently reactionary" and needed to be subjugated by terror to install a dictatorship of the "proletariat" was an unmitigated disaster in regions, such as Ukraine, whose population was over 80% peasants and <5% wage labourers.
On the pogroms stuff, again,as you said, institutionally, the Mahknovist Black Army was not Anti-semitic. They frequently condemned the whites on the basis of their anti-semitism, citing it as a reason they could never make common cause, and had a lot of jews in their command structure. Were individual Mahknovists anti-semitic? Yeah, almost certainly, it was 1917. Was that reflected by targetting jews disproportionately when they purged the bourgoisie and aristocrats in the cities they took? In some cases, yeah, almost certainly. But the Black Army didn't engage in Pogroms any more than the Bolsheviks did and it's disingenous to pretend they did. Like, come on, the thing you quoted even specifies that it was jewish "merchants and shopkeepers". Is there perhaps another word for that? One maybe starting with a B?
But all of that is kind of besides the point. The fucked up shit Trotsky and the Red army did wasn't fighting the Black Army. It was the mass forced conscriptions and the mass executions of the friends and families of anyone who resisted or "deserted". That, alongside the Bolsheviks blunt refusal to allow the peasants to redistribute land and negotiate the sale of their produce on a collective basis (y'know, seize their means of production and own the fruits of their labour) and insistence instead, that they keep working their old lords fields and give the grain to the Bolsheviks, and again, policy of executing not only anyone who resisted this but also their families and supporters that kept the peasant revolutions going.
The USSR accomplished some wonderful things, but they shouldn't have done what they did to the Mahknovists.
I don't agree with most of what you've written about Makhno. And it's a shame that you stand by it even knowing that Makhnovists were murderers & anti-leftist pogromists
The peasantry were included in the poor & working classes supporting the Reds, literally the sickle represents the peasantry, and the bourgeois fancy lad Menshevik Trotsky isn't reflective of who actually identified with the Reds.
Actually the Red Army didn't engage more in pogroms than did the Black Army, and the Red Army conscripted specifically among Jewish communities far more than any of these other groups did
" A delegation from Novozlatopol once went to Machno [sic] to discuss his raids against the Jews. Machno’s reply was “What can I do ? They’re just a bunch of ignorant peasants”, referring to his own men.”
Is that your idea of Makhno "condemning" the anti-Jewish murders among his ranks?
Black Army isn't to be lionized. Makhno is beatified in a way comporting with Western anti-communism, not in a historically or functionally accurate manner
If Makhno had maintained his obligations and continued the fight against imperialism where and when he was needed, I think that the situation would've been far different
Questions:
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Was it common that Tsarist forces murder people?
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Was it common that Tsarist judges ordered executions of people?
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Was it common that the White army murder people?
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Was it common that there was chauvinistic white murder (as murder by the reaction / conservatives) common?
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Was that common, too, against women and gays?
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Was it common that the mercenaries of the white army murder people?
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Was it common that the capitalistic troops (factory owners and such) murder people?
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Was it common that the Western forces did murder people?
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Was it common that the colonial empires and the imperial core murder people?
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Was it common that the World War killed people, or rather their governments and police/military?
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Was it common that hunger killed people?
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Was it common that Makhno's clique killed people (read communists and people they associated with)?
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Was it common that the right wing of the left revolutions kill people?
If so, why do you single out Lenin as one who doesn't stand for left unity instead of critiquing them? This isn't just meant to be a rhetorical device.
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I support the idealized end goals of anarchism. For instance, I agree with the anarchist Lucy Parsons who had much to say on Makhno & on the Russian Revolution. But I do not support left anti-communism
Parsons was a noted anarchist & communist & socialist & committed revolutionary who never backed down & always stood for these positions at key points. Parsons and Haywood again disagree with Goldman’s privileged & aloof anti-communism, "After telling that the Russian revolution was doomed at its birth, fought by united capitalism of all countries, she tries to show that it was only the Marxian policies that weakened the strength of the revolution. Not entirely satisfied with this statement, which she knew to be false when she wrote it, she adds, “Counter-revolutionists, Right-Social-Revolutionaries, Cadets, and Mensheviks were the disrupting internal forces against Russia.” She could have also truthfully said, “Anarchists of the Mahkno school, leader of the bandits,” of which Emma seems to be a warm disciple. Something more will be said of the viciousness of this type of anarchist. Miss Goldman quotes from somewhere, “It was not against the Russian people, but against the Bolsheviks—they have instigated the revolution, and they must be exterminated.” This is given as the hypocritical attitude of the interventionists, but I ask if it is not exactly the thing she had in her heart to do with her miserable malignant stories...
The “anarchist” Mahkno is mentioned by Emma Goldman as a friend and sending food to Kropotkin. In a diary of Fedora-Gianko, the wife of Mahkno, are recorded facts and dates to show that these marauders were guilty of arson, train-wrecking, murder, robbery, all committed against the Soviet Government. By them workers were killed, villages destroyed, bridges blown up, wrecks caused by wild engines turned loose against approaching trains until Mahkno was driven from the country. This kind of work against the Soviet Government meets with the approval of Miss Goldman."
Kropotkin similarly had much to say about anarchists during the Revolution, and it wasn't all positive: "“We anarchists have talked much about the revolution, but how many have ever taken pains to prepare for the actual work during & after the revolution? The Russian Revolution has demonstrated the imperativeness of such preparation of practical reconstructive work”
Same goes for Rosa Luxemburg, who herself takes on the air today of being a radical who anarchists support: "Anarchism has become in the Russian Revolution, not the theory of the struggling proletariat, but the ideological signboard of the counterrevolutionary lumpenproletariat, who, like a school of sharks, swarm in the wake of the battleship of the revolution. And therewith the historical career of anarchism is well-nigh ended."
Are Lucy Parsons & Kropotkin and Luxemburg merely sectarians who just didn't properly respect all anarchists had to offer the Revolution during this time?
I'm more inclined to trust Goldman who lived in Russia than Parsons and Luxemburg who very much did not. That said, there isn't really good scholarship on the matter. There are accounts by participants which got embellished by Hagiographs like Voline, and there is the official position of the Bolsheviks. So I'm inclined to take arguments about the black army not as debates about established facts, but as political positions.
Parsons & Haywood definitely visited & lived in Russia during this time, and are writing from such a perspective
In fact, they call Goldman out directly on this matter, because Goldman talks out of both sides of her mouth to appease the capitalistic Western imperialist & anti-communist press:
"It is strange that Emma Goldman did not take issue with the Brest-Litovsk Peace before she left the United States. Perhaps she knew that criticising the Bolsheviki revolution would not give her the same opportunity for exploitation as the means she resorted to. At any rate, it is a long silence from March, 1917, until March, 1922. It may be that, knowing that she was to be deported to Russia, she felt that silence was golden, while her collections were mostly currency and silver.
If Emma Goldman had been describing the famine area, one could understand what she meant when she speaks of only having seen one child in Russia who laughed. Because it is true that in that vast territory comprising several provinces, hunger has daily counted its tolls of hundreds of once smiling and laughing children. Starving children can’t laugh. It is to be regretted that Emma could not have visited Sparrow’s Hill, and seen there the thousands of children, boys and girls, robust and rugged, rosy-cheeked and beautiful in their remarkable collective exercise. Or have spent days at Pushkino, or some of the many hundreds of similar communities throughout Russia, where the summer homes of the bourgeoisie are turned into children’s colonies. At one of these homes I saw between forty and fifty of these little tots just after their bath, romping and frollicking, laughing and full of glee, a sight that would please the heart of almost any man or woman. Too bad that Miss Goldman could not have visited the Moscow River within the environs of the city, where on summer days anyone could see the naked boys and girls at play enjoying a plunge in the water. She should have met the children that Mary Heaton Vorse had temporarily adopted while here. Little Demitrus and his friends would have been other laughing children to her credit. It is a great loss to think that she did not visit Children’s Town. There the babes are learning, as they do in play, the advantage of association and solidarity. It is possible that Miss Goldman might have learnt, even from the little ones, that rules of order, discipline and self-government are the essentials of a socialised community. Miss Goldman would mention in the same breath men of such splendid character and attributes as Lunaraharsky and Gorky, comparing them with that crooked little politician, Judge Linsay, who conducted the juvenile Court in Denver, Colorado, and who only by the efforts of the officials of the Western Federation of Miners was prevented from sending little boys, who for delinquency were dealt with in his court, to work in the beet fields of Colorado, there to take the place of Russian emigrants who seasonally migrated from industrial centres for that work.
Emma admits, “More and more I came to see that the Bolsheviki were trying to do all they could for the children, but that their efforts were being defeated by the parasitic bureaucracy their State had created.” She does not explain that the Soviet government, which is trying to do all it can for the child has been compelled to depend largely upon teachers of the old regime. These and their cohorts are the parasites of which she complains, but of them she makes no mention.
Lunarcharsky, the head of education, and hundreds of splendid Communist women, among them the wives of Zinoviev and Radek, are striving for the children’s sake to for ever entomb the “dead souls,” and to correct other detrimental influences. Miss Goldman knows, but she does not write about the hundreds of children that daily starve to death in the United States, the many thousands that go to school hungry every morning—this in a country with an abundance of food! Russia with one bountiful harvest, and the children of this great Republic will come into their own."
One thing that cannot be overlooked in these matters is Goldman's tacit Russophobia, which she even admits to having in her own personal writings
There is plenty of good scholarship on the matter including by Darch & Palij & others. Volin & Arshinov definitely did write unbelievable & effusive fanfic hagiographies that cannot be trusted
Established fact is that Makhno's Army, while perhaps not commanded by Makhno himself to do so, committed many pogroms & did so unabashedly
Makhno personally abhorred anti-Semitism and was recorded to have personally executed anti-Semitic elements of his forces on a few occasions. I’d say any pogroms committed by his forces can be attributed to their national character rather than any failings on Makhno or anarchism and he did as much as could be realistically expected to abate that as a trend.
That said, Makhno basically completely failed to implement any social revolution or class abolition in the free territories. Like you noted earlier, the ‘communes’ never really existed in any tangible way and the commercial agriculture economy of Ukraine with it’s dichotomy between the poor and rich peasants continued unabated.
While I think the characterization of Makhno as just a marauding bandit is reductionist, Trotskys flak in ending the ‘Free Territory’ is entirely undeserved and it’s inane that some people apparently think he and the Bolsheviks should have just let everyone in the Russian cities starve and the Soviets collapse to preserve what was essentially a Robin-Hoodesque peasant army that had repeatedly repressed Bolshevik Soviets in Ukraine and had made zero tangible strides in actually building any sort of sustainable anarchist or otherwise socialism project.
Regardless of Makhno's personal relatonships with Jewish people & outward condemnation of those pogroms, we can't functionally separate Makhnovism from the actions of the Makhnovists themselves, especially when considering the extent to which the Red Army had offered protection and, to an even greater extent than the Black Army's leaders, worked to crush anti-Jewish scapegoating in their ranks. To this end, I think you are underestimating the character of your own statement
If Makhnovists' pogroms reflect the Ukrainian cultural character more than they reflect anarchism, something I agree with, then it's not the anarchism that was to blame, it was the Makhnovism & anti-communism.
"Nestor Makhno certainly perpetrated numerous counter-revolutionary exploits. His secret police tortured and murdered many communists. His Ukrainian peasant followers committed frequent pogroms against Jewish petty shopkeepers and merchants... Ukrainian peasant antagonism to the overwhelmingly Russian and Jewish working class of the Ukrainian cities... . Grigorev had the worst record of murder, rape, torture and other atrocities committed against Jews of all the peasant bandit leaders ravaging the Ukrainian country-side during the Russian Civil War.
This alliance ended badly for Grigorev. Makhno murdered him, and Grigorev's peasant followers joined Makhno's rebel army—but continued to commit pogroms.
Makhno himself was not personally anti-Semitic, indeed there were Jews in his "collective." In a sense, it could be said that Makhno was simply following anarchist principle. If his secret policemen were torturing prisoners, and if his peasant followers were committing pogroms, what right did Makhno, as just one member of the "collective," have to object?"
Instead of falling over ourselves trying to be overly nuanced here, why can't we say the truth? Makhno's bandits were guilty of committing pogroms because they were never really there for the principled "anarchism" to begin with
"
TheNational Secretariat of Ukrainian Jews' stated during the period of the pogroms: "A special place is held for the actions of the Makhno bands which waged complete destruction in the Yekaterinoslav-Pavlograd region."The journal `Reshumot' (1920) refers to: "the well known wild animal Makhno who was known for his cruelty and his army which was drunk with blood."
`Jewish Agriculturalists in the Steppes of Russia' (Israel 1965)' states:" The Jewish colonies in the Yekaterinoslav province were situated in the centre of activity of the anarchist bands, Makhno. Almost all the colonies of Yekaterinoslav suffered from attacks. All the inhabitants of the colonies Trudoliubovka and Nechaevka, who numbered 1000 people - were murdered. The property was looted completely and since then no Jewish foot has entered those colonies."
Even Trotsky points out Makhno's rhetorical position vs. the reality of his armies' actions ""Without a doubt, Makhno provided de facto aid to Wrangel, as well as to the Polish gentry, since he fought at the same time as they did against the Red Army" (translated from "Makhno and Wrangel," 14 October 1920, Kak vooruzhalas' revolyutsiya [How the Revolution Armed], Vol. 2, Book 2 [1924]). "
I agree that Makhnovists failed to codify or enact the kind of real revolutionary class struggle in those areas that they may have envisioned. And though landlords were expropriated, it was precisely in this unwillingness to undo the larger ossified kulak-dominated agrarian social structure in these Eastern Ukraine areas that we can say Makhno in practice was a lot less effective than some of his biggest fans would lead us to believe.
Right, we have to look at the history of this situation in the aggregate & when doing so we can say that truth is in the unfolding of real events rather than any idealism or "statements" of intent.
I will again quote Haywood & Parsons here:
“A good sample of ‘revolutionary individual initiative’ is the Kronstadt affair. I have given it a little study since I saw you last. There is no question that if the Kronstadt affair had not been wiped out, it would have resulted in the downfall of the Soviet Power. There is no doubt that many of the participants who called themselves Anarchists and S.R.’s were sincere in their notions. Subjectively they were doubtlessly highly moral revolutionists. But objectively it was a filthy counter-revolution. I don’t give a damn for the moral values. The counter-revolutionary officers came over from Finland (protected by the Finnish Government!) and joined the anarchists and the S.R.’s and the Mensheviks. The French Navy lay outside the frozen area, waiting for the ‘Anarchists’ (who could compromise enough to associate with Cadet officers), to hold Kronstadt until the ice would break and let the French and British battleships fight for ‘Soviets without Bolsheviks! Yes, that is a fine example of free and easy ‘revolution’ without discipline. The fellows that did this crazy thing, killed thousands of the best and youngest and bravest of the soldiers that the revolution had. And yet there are people who call themselves ‘Anarchists,’ and ask me to pity the fellows who were responsible for the Kronstadt affair. Monks that ponder in their cells on the misfortunes of man in general can pity them, I have not time to pity such men.
“There are people calling themselves ‘Anarchists’ that are now saying that Kronstadt was the real ‘Revolution.’ If such people were to be allowed to operate with ‘free speech’ and ‘free demonstration’ within the circle that is held by the bayonets of the Red Army, the revolution would be dead now, and here would reign the ‘democratic freedom’ and pogroms of Capitalist Hungary, with Wrangel, Seminoff, Pilsudski, Harding, Briand, and Llovd George guaranteeing you your “freedom of revolutionary initiative.’”
we can't just look at this history as a series of "mistakes" that the Soviets are supposedly said to have made. And mutiny is definitely not leftism
As a Jew, not to positively since:
Sailor Dmitry Urin wrote on March 5, in a letter to his father in the Herson province of Ukraine, “We dismissed the commune, we have Commune no more, now we have only Soviet power. We in Kronstadt made a resolution to send all the Jews to Palestine, in order not to have in Russia such filth, all sailors shouted: ‘Jews Out’...”
(9) Ibid, vol. 1, doc. 58, p. 119.
Say what you will about Trotsky but without him there is no 1905 and possibly no Soviet victory in the civil war
Not into the great man of history either but credit where it's due. Just like, I'm no Stalinist but he did defeat the Nazi's. I'm not saying someone else couldn't have taken their places just that we shouldn't shit on their legacies in a shallow sectarian ways. Mostly because it doesn't matter anyway these days.
