The conversation turned to the situation in the South. The work of organizing Soviet conditions, Petrovsky said, is progressing very satisfactorily in the districts evacuated by the Poles. As to the economic situation, the Ukraina used to be the great breadgiver of Russia, but the farmers have suffered much from confiscation and robbery by the White forces. However, the peasants have learned that only under the Communists they are secure in the enjoyment of their land. It is true, many of them are kulaki; that is, rich farmers who resent sharing their surplus with the Red Army and the workers. They and the numerous counter-revolutionary bands make the work of the Soviet Government very difficult. Makhno, in particular, is a source of much trouble. But the Greens and other bandits are being gradually liquidated, and before long Makhno also will be eliminated. The Government has decreed merciless war against these Soviet enemies, and the peasantry is aiding in its efforts."
"You must have surely heard in Russia about Makhno," Petrovsky remarked, giving me a searching look. "Many legends have grown around his name, and to some he appears almost a heroic figure. But here in the Ukraina you will learn the truth about him. Just a robber ataman, that's all he is. Under the mask of Anarchism he conducts raids upon villages and towns, destroys railroad communications, and takes a fiendish delight in murdering commissars and Communists. But before long we shall terminate his activities."
Girl clerks kept coming in, bringing documents, and answering telephone calls. Most of them were barefoot, while some wore new, high-heeled shoes without hosiery. From time to time the Chairman interrupted the conversation to glance at the papers, putting his signature to some and referring others to the secretary. But he seemed eager to continue our talk, dwelling on the difficult problems presented by the Ukraina, the steps taken to assure greater production of coal, the reorganization of the railways, and the clearing of the labor unions of anti-Soviet influences.
He spoke unaffectedly, in the language of the workingman whose native intelligence has been sharpened by experience in the school of life. His conception of Communism is a simple matter of a strong government and determination to execute its will. It is not a question of experimentation or idealistic possibilities. His picture of a Bolshevik society has no shadows. A powerful central authority, consistently carrying out its policies, would solve all problems, he believes. Opposition must be eliminated; disturbing elements and inciters of the peasantry against the Soviet regime, such as Makhno, crushed. At the same time the work of the polit-prosvet (political education) should be broadened; the youth, especially, must be trained to regard the Bolsheviki as the revolutionary advance guard of humanity. On the whole, Communism is a problem of right bookkeeping, as Lenin had truly said; of taking an invoice of the country's wealth, actual and potential, and arranging for its equalized distribution.
The subject of peasant dissatisfaction kept returning in our conversation. The povstantsi (armed rebel peasantry), Petrovsky admitted, had played a vital part in the Revolution. They repeatedly saved the Ukraina, and even Russia, at most critical moments. By guerrilla warfare they disorganized and demoralized the Austro-German forces, and prevented their marching on Moscow and suppressing the Soviet regime. They defeated the Interventionist attack in the South, by resisting and routing the French and Italian divisions that were landed by the Allies in Odessa with the intention of supporting the nationalistic Directorium in Kiev. They fought Denikin and other White generals, and were largely instrumental in making the victories of the Red Army possible. But some povstantsi elements have now joined the Green and other bands operating against the Communists. They also comprise the greater part of the Makhno forces, possessing even machine guns and artillery. Makhno is particularly dangerous. At one time he had served in the Red Army; but he mutinied, opening the front to Denikin, for which treachery he was outlawed by Trotsky. Since then Makhno has been fighting against the Bolsheviki and helping the enemies of the Revolution.
From the adjoining office, occupied by Petrovsky's secretary, loud talking and a woman's hysterical voice kept disturbing our conversation. "What is going on there, I wonder," the Chairman exclaimed at last, stepping to the door. As he opened it, a young peasant woman rushed toward him, throwing herself at his feet.
"Save us, Little Father I" she cried. "Have mercy I" Petrovsky helped her up. "What is the matter?" he asked kindly.
Amid sobs she related that her husband, home on furlough from the Army, had gone to Kharkov to visit his sick mother. There he was arrested in a street raid as a labor deserter. He could not prove his identity, because he had been robbed on his way to the city; all his documents and money were gone. He sent word to her about his misfortune; but by the time she reached the city she learned that her husband had been taken away with a party of other prisoners. Since then she failed to find out anything more about him. "Oh, Little Father, they've sure shot him," she wailed, "and he a Red Army man who fought Denikin."
Petrovsky sought to calm the distracted woman. "Nothing will happen to your husband," he assured her, "if he can prove himself a soldier."
"But they've already taken him away somewhere," she moaned, "and they shoot deserters. Oh, good Lord, have mercy on me!"
The Chairman questioned the woman, and then, apparently convinced of the truth of her story, he ordered the secretary to supply her with a "paper" to aid in her search. She grew quieter, and then impulsively kissed Petrovsky's hand, calling upon the saints to "bless the kind commissar."
At labor union headquarters I found a flow of humanity surging through the corridors. Men, women, and children crowded the offices and filled the hallways with shouting and tobacco smoke. A bedraggled assembly it was — poorly nourished and clad; calico kerchiefs worn by the women, the men in thick-soled wooden lapti, the children mostly barefoot. For hours they stood in line, discussing their troubles. Their wages, they complained, though continuously increased, do not keep step with the rising price of food. A week's labor is not enough to purchase two pounds of bread. Moreover, three months' pay is due them: the government has failed to supply enough money. The Soviet distributing centers are short of provisions; one has to look out for himself, or starve. Some have come to ask for a ten days' release from work and permission to visit their folks in the country. There they would get a few pounds of flour or a sack of potatoes to tide the family over for a little while. But it is difficult to secure such a privilege: the new decrees bind the worker to the factory, as in the days of old the peasants were chained to the soil. Yet the village Others have come to enlist the help of their labor organization in locating lost brothers, fathers, husbands, suddenly disappeared — no doubt taken in the frequent raids as military or labor deserters. They had vainly sought information at the various bureaus; maybe the union will help.
After long waiting I gained admission to the Secretary of the Soviet of Labor Unions. He proved to be a young man not over twenty-three, with quick, intelligent eyes and nervous manner. The Chairman had been called away to a special conference, the Secretary informed me, but he would aid our mission as far as possible. He doubted, however, that we would find much valuable material in the city. Most of it had been neglected or destroyed — there had been no time to think of such matters in the intense revolutionary days Kharkov had passed through. But whatever records could be found, he would order them turned over to me. Better yet, he would supply me with a circular letter to the secretaries of the local unions, and I could personally select the material I needed, leaving copies of the same in the archives.
The Secretary himself could give me little information about labor conditions in the city and province, as he had only recently assumed charge of his office. "I am not a local man," he said; "I was sent from Moscow only a few weeks ago. You see, Comrade," he explained, evidently assuming my membership in the Communist Party, "it became necessary to liquidate the whole management of the Soviet and of most of the unions. At their heads were Mensheviki. They conducted the organization on the principle of alleged prois their only hope.
tection of the workers' interests. Protection against whom?" he raged. "You understand how counterrevolutionary such a conception is 1 Just a Menshevik cloak to further their opposition to us. Under capitalism, the union is destructive of bourgeois interests; but with us, it is constructive. The labor bodies must work hand in hand with the government; in fact, they are the actual government, or one of its vital parts. They must serve as schools of Communism and at the same time carry out in industry the will of the proletariat as expressed by the Soviet Government. This is our policy, and we shall eliminate every opposition."
A dark, heavy-set man of medium stature walked quickly into the office, casting a questioning look at me. "A comrade from the center," the Secretary introduced me, "sent to collect data on the Revolution. This is our predsedatel" he explained.
The Chairman of the Labor Soviet shook hands with me hastily: "You will excuse me," he said, "we are just swamped with work. I had to leave the session of the wage commission before it closed, because I have been phoned to attend an important conference of our Party Committee. The Mensheviki have declared a hunger strike in prison, and we are to take action on the matter."
As we stepped out of the office, the Chairman was beset by a clamoring crowd. "Dear tovarishtch, just a minute please," an old worker pleaded; "my brother is down with typhus, and I can't get any medicine for him."
"When will we be paid? Three months is due us," another urged.
"Go to your own union," the predsedatel advised him.
"But I've just come from there."
"I haven't time, tovarishtch, I haven't time now," the chairman kept repeating to the right and left, gently forcing his way through the crowd.
"Oh, Little Father," a woman screamed, grabbing him by the arm. It was the young peasant I had met in Petrovsky's office. "Has my husband been shot?"
The Chairman looked bewildered. "Who is your husband?" he demanded.
"A Red Army man, tovartshtch. Taken in a street raid for a labor deserter."
"A deserter! That's bad." Reaching the street, and waving his hand to me, the predsedatel jumped into his waiting automobile, and was driven away.
CHAPTER XXIV A short, slender man of thirty, with lustrous dark eyes set wide apart, and a face of peculiar sadness. The expression of his eyes still haunts me: now mournful, now irate, they reflect all the tragedy of his Jewish descent. His smile speaks the kindliness of a heart that has suffered and learned to understand. The thought kept running through my mind, as he was relating his experiences in the Revolution, that it was his patient, winsome smile which had conquered the brutality of his persecutors.
I had known him in America, him and his friend Lea, a sweet-faced girl of unusual self-control and determination. Both had for years been active in the radical movement in the United States, but the call of the Revolution brought them back to their native land in the hope of helping in the great task of liberation. They worked with the Bolsheviki against Kerensky and the Provisional Government, and cooperated with them in the stormy October days, which "gave so much promise of a rainbow," as the Emigrant remarked sorrowfully. But soon the Communists began to suppress the other revolutionary parties, and Yossif went with Lea to the Ukraina, where they aided in organizing the Southern Confederation of Anarchist Groups under the name of the Nabat (Alarm).
As the "Emigrant," his pen name in the "Nabat," the organ of the Confederation, Yossif is widely known in the South and is much loved for his idealism and sunny disposition. Energetic and active, he is tireless in his labors among the Ukrainian peasantry, and everywhere he is the soul and inspiration of proletarian circles.
I have repeatedly visited him and his friends in the Anarchist bookstore Volnoye Bratstvo (Free Brotherhood). They have witnessed the numerous political changes in the Ukraina, have suffered imprisonment by the Whites, and have been maltreated by Denikin soldiers. "We are hounded no less by the Bolsheviki," the Emigrant said; "we never know what they will do to us. One day they arrest us, and close our club and bookstore; at other times they leave us alone. We never feel safe; they keep us under constant surveillance. In this they have a great advantage over the Whites; under the latter we could work underground, but the Communists know almost everyone of us personally, for we always stood shoulder to shoulder with them against counter-revolution."
The Emigrant, whom I had formerly known as a most peace-loving man, surprised me by his militant enthusiasm regarding Makhno, whom he familiarly calls Nestor. He spent much time with the latter, and he regards him as a thorough Anarchist, who is fighting reaction from the Left as well as from the Right. Yossif was active in Makhno's camp as educator and teacher; he shared the daily life of the povstantsi, and accompanied them as a non-combatant on their campaigns. He is deeply convinced that the Bolsheviki have betrayed the people. "As long as they were revolutionary we cooperated with them," he said; "the fact is, we Anarchists did some of the most responsible and dangerous work all through the Revolution. In Kronstadt, on the Black Sea, in the Ural and Siberia, everywhere we gave a good account of ourselves. But as soon as the Communists gained power, they began eliminating all the other revolutionary elements, and now we are entirely outlawed. Yes, the Bolsheviki, those arch-revolutionists, have outlawed us," he repeated bitterly.
"Could not some way of reapproachment be found?" I suggested, referring to my intention of broaching the matter to Rakovsky, the Lenin of theUkraina.
"No, it's too late," Yossif replied positively. "We've tried it repeatedly, but every time the Bolsheviki broke their promises and exploited our agreements only to demoralize our ranks. You must understand that the Communist Party has now become a fullfledged government, seeking to impose its rule upon the people and doing it by the most drastic methods. There is no more hope of turning the Bolsheviki into revolutionary channels. Today they are the worst enemies of the Revolution, far more dangerous than the Denikins and Wrangels, whom the peasantry know as such. The. only hope of Russia now is in the forcible overthrow of the Communists by a new uprising of the people."
"I see no evidence of such a possibility," I objected.
"The whole peasantry of the South is bitterly opposed to them," Yossif replied, "but, of course, we must turn their blind hatred into conscious rebellion. In this regard I consider Makhno's povstantsi movement as a most promising beginning of a great popular upheaval against the new tyranny."
"I have heard many conflicting stories about Makhno," I remarked. "He is painted either as a devil or as a saint."
Yossif smiled. "Ever since I learned that you are in Russia," he said earnestly, "I have been hoping you would come here." In a lowered voice he added: "The best way to find out the truth about Makhno would be to investigate for yourself."
I looked at him questioningly. We were alone in the bookstore, save for a young woman who was busying herself at the shelves. Yossif s eyes wandered to the street, and his look rested on two men conversing on the sidewalk. "Tcheka," he declared laconically, "always sneaking around here."
"I have something to propose to you," he continued, "but we must find a safer place. Tomorrow evening I shall have several comrades meet you. Come to the datcha he- named a summer house occupied by a friend, "but be careful you are not followed."
At the datcha, situated in a park in the environs of the city, I found a number of Yossif s friends. They felt safe in that retreat, they averred; but the hunted look did not leave them, and they spoke in lowered voices. Someone remarked that the occasion reminded him of his university days, in the time of Nicholas II, when the students used to gather in the woods to discuss forbidden political questions. "Things have not changed in that respect," he added sadly.
"Incomparably worse in every regard," a darkfeatured Ukrainian remarked emphatically.
"Don't take him literally," smiled Yossif, "he is our inveteratelpessimist."
"I do mean it literally," the Ukrainian persisted. "There isn't enough left of the Revolution to make a figleaf for Bolshevik nakedness. Russia has never before lived under such absolute despotism. Socialism, Communism, indeed! Never had we less liberty and equality than today. We have merely exchanged Nicholas for Ilyitch."
"You see only the forms," put in a young man introduced as the Poet; "but there is an essence in the present Russia that escapes you. There is a spiritual revolution which is the symbol and the germ of a new Kultur. For every Kultur," he continued, "is an organic whole of manifold realization; it is the knowing of something in connection with something else. In other words, consciousness. The highest expression of such Kultur is man's consciousness of self, as a spiritual being, and in Russia today this Kultur is being born."
"I can't follow your mysticism," the Pessimist retorted. "Where do you see this resurrection?"
"It is not a resurrection; it is a new birth," the Poet replied thoughtfully. "Russia is not made up of revolutionists and counter-revolutionists only. There are others, in all walks of life, and they are sick of all political dogmas. There are millions of consciousnesses that are painfully struggling toward new criteria of reality. In their souls they have lived through the tremendous collision of life and death; they have died and come to life again. They have attained to new values. In them is the coming dawn of the new Russian Kultur."
"Ah, the Revolution is dead," remarked a short, smooth-shaven man of middle age, in a Red Army uniform. "When I think of the October days and the mighty enthusiasm which swept the country, I realize to what depths we have sunk. Then was liberty, indeed, and brotherhood. Why, the joy of the people was such, strangers kissed each other on the highways. And even later, when I fought against the Czechoslovaks on the Ural, the Army was inspired. Each felt himself a free man defending the Revolution that was his. But when we returned from the front, we found the Bolsheviki proclaimed themselves dictators over us, in the name of their Party. It's dead, our Revolution," he concluded, with a deep sigh.
"You are wrong, my friend," Yossif protested. "The Bolsheviki have indeed retarded the progress of the Revolution and they are trying to destroy it altogether, to secure their political power. But the spirit of the Revolution lives, in spite of them. March, 19 17, was only the revolutionary honeymoon, the lisping of lovers. It was clean and pure, but it was inarticulate, impotent. The real passion was yet to come. October sprang from the womb of Russia itself. True, the Bolsheviki have turned Jesuits, but the Revolution has accomplished much — it has destroyed capitalism and undermined the principles of private ownership. In its concrete expression today Bolshevism is a system of the most ruthless despotism. It has organized a socialistic slavery. Yet, notwithstanding, I declare that the Russian Revolution lives. For the leaders and the present forms of Bolshevism are a temporary element. They are a morbid spasm in the general process. The paroxysm will pass; the healthy revolutionary essence will remain. Everything that is good and valuable in human history was always born and developed in the atmosphere of evil and corruption, mixing and interweaving with it. That is the fate of every struggle for liberty. It also applies to Russia today, and it is our mission to give aid and strength to the fine and the true, the permanent, in that struggle."
"I suppose that's why you are so partial to Makhno," put in the Red Army man.
"Makhno represents the real spirit of October," Yossif replied with warmth. "In the revolutionary povstantsi, whom he leads, is the sole hope of the country. The Ukrainian peasant is an instinctive Anarchist, and his experience has taught him that all governments are essentially alike — taking everything from him and giving nothing in return. He wants to be rid of them; to be left alone to arrange his own life and affairs. He will fight the new tyranny."
"They are kulaki with petty bourgeois ideas of property," retorted the Pessimist.
"There is such an element," Yossif admitted, "but the great majority are not of that type. As to the Makhno movement, it offers the greatest field for propaganda. Nestor, himself an Anarchist, affords us the fullest opportunity to work in his army, even to the extent of supplying us with printed material and machinery for the publication of our newspapers and leaflets. The territory occupied by Makhno is the only place where liberty of speech and press prevails."
"But not for Communists," retorted the soldier.
"Makhno justly considers the Communists as much counter-revolutionary as the Whites," replied Yossif. "But for the revolutionists — for Anarchists, Maximalists, and Left Social Revolutionists — there is full liberty of action in the povstantsi districts."
Makhno may call himself an Anarchist," spoke up ' M, an Individualist Anarchist, "but I disagree entirely with Yossif about the significance of his movement. I consider his 'army' merely an enlarged band of rebel peasants without revolutionary purpose or consciousness."
"They have been guilty of brutality and pogroms," added the Pessimist.
"There have been excesses," Yossif replied, "just as they happen in every army, the Communist not excepted. But Nestor is merciless toward those guilty of Jew-baiting. Most of you have read his numerous proclamations against pogroms, and you know how severely he punishes such things. I remember, for instance, the incident at Verkhny Takmar. It was characteristic. It happened about a year ago, on the 4th or 5th of May, 19 19. Makhno, accompanied by several members of his military staff, was on his way from the front to Gulyai-Pole, his headquarters, for a conference with the special Soviet emissaries sent from Kharkov. At the station of Verkhny Takmar Nestor noticed a large poster reading: 'Kill the Jews I Save Russia I Long live Makhno I' Nestor sent for the station master. 'Who put up that poster?' he demanded. 'I did,' replied the official, a peasant who had been in fights against Denikin. Without another word Makhno shot him. That's the way Nestor treats Jew baiters," Yossif concluded "I have heard many stories of atrocities and pogroms committed by Makhno units," I remarked.
"They are lies willfully spread by the Bolsheviki," Yossif asserted. "They hate Nestor worse than they do Wrangel. Trotsky once said that it were better the Ukraina were taken by Denikin than to allow Makhno to continue there. With reason: for the savage rule of the Tsarist generals would soon turn the peasantry against them and thus enable the Bolsheviki to defeat them, while the spread of M akhnovstchina, as the Makhno movement is known, with its Anarchist ideas threatens the whole Bolshevik system. The pogroms ascribed to Makhno upon investigation always prove to have been committed by the Greens or other bandits. The fact is, Makhno and his staff keep up a continuous agitation against religious and nationalistic superstitions and prejudices."
Though radically differing concerning the character and significance of the M akhnovstchina, those present agreed that Nestor himself is a unique figure and one of the most outstanding personalities on the revolutionary horizon. To his admirer Yossif, however, he typifies the spirit of Revolution as it expresses itself in the feeling, thought, and life of the rebel peasantry of the Ukraina.
CHAPTER XXV NESTOR MAKHNO Greatly interested in the personality and activities of Makhno, I induced Yossif to sketch his story in its essential features.
Born of very poor parents in the village of Gulyai- Pole (county of Alexandrovsk, province of Yekaterinoslav, Ukraina), Nestor spent a sunless childhood. His father died early, leaving five small boys to the care of the mother. Already at the tender age of eight young Makhno had to help eke out an existence for the family. In the winter months he attended school, while in the summer he was "hired out" to take care of the rich peasants' cattle. When not yet twelve years old, he went to work in the neighboring estates, where brutal treatment and thankless labor taught him to hate his hard taskmasters and the Tsarist officials who always sided against the poor. The Revolution of 1905 brought Makhno, then only sixteen, in touch with socialist ideas. The movement for human emancipation and well-being quickly appealed to the intense and imaginative boy, and presently he joined the little group of young peasant Anarchists in his village.
In 1908, arrested for revolutionary activities, Makhno was tried and condemned to death. Because of his youth, however, and the efforts of his energetic mother, the sentence was subsequently commuted to penal servitude for life. He spent seven years in the Butirki prison in Moscow, where his rebellious spirit continually involved him in difficulties with the authorities. Most of the time he was kept in solitary confinement, chained hand and foot. But he employed they bestowed the honored and affectionate title of bat'ka (father).
The spirit of Makhnovst china swept the whole southern Ukraina. In the northwest there were also numerous povstantsi units, fighting against the foreign invaders and White generals, but without any clear social consciousness and ideal. Makhno, however, assumed the black flag of the Russian Anarchists as his emblem, and announced a definite program: autonomous communes of free peasants; the negation of all government, and complete self-determination based on the principle of labor. Free Soviets of peasants and workers were to be formed of delegates in contra-distinction to the Bolshevik Soviets of deputies; that is, to be informative and executive instead of authoritarian.
The Communists appreciated the unique military genius of Makhno, but they also realized the danger to their Party dictatorship from the spread of Anarchist ideas. They sought to exploit his forces in their own interests, while at the same time intent upon destroying the essential quality of the movement. Because of Makhno's remarkable success against the occupation armies and counter-revolutionary generals, the Bolsheviki proposed to him to join the Red Army, preserving for his povstantsi units their autonomy. Makhno consented, and his troops became the Third Brigade of the Red Army, later officially known as the First Revolutionary Povstantsi Ukrainian Division. But the hope of the Bolsheviki to absorb the rebel peasants in the Red Army failed. In the Makhno territory the influence of the Communists remained insignificant, and they found themselves even unable to support their institutions there. Under various pretexts they interdicted the conferences of the povstantsi and outlawed Makhno, hoping thus to alienate the peasantry from him.
NESTOR MAKHNO NESTOR MAKHNO But whatever the relations between the Bolsheviki and Makhno, the latter always came to the rescue of the Revolution when it was threatened by the Whites. He fought every counter-revolutionary enemy who sought to establish his rule over the Ukraina, including Herman Skoropadsky, Petlura, and Denikin. He eliminated Grigoriev, who had at one time served the Communists and then betrayed them. But the Bolsheviki, fearing the spirit of Makhnovstchina, continually tried to disorganize and disperse its forces, and even set a price on Makhno's head, as Denikin had done. Repeated Communist treachery finally brought a complete rupture, and compelled Makhno to fight the Communists as bitterly as the reactionists of the Right.
Yossif's story was interrupted by the arrival of the friends whom I had met at the datcha on the previous occasion. Several hours were spent in discussing matters of Anarchist organization, the difficulty of activity in the face of Bolshevik persecution, and the increasingly reactionary attitude of the Communist Government. But, as usual in the Ukraina, the subject gradually converged upon Makhno. Someone read excerpts from the official Soviet press bitterly attacking and vilifying Nestor. Though the Bolsheviki formerly extolled him as a great revolutionary leader, they now painted him as a bandit and counter-revolutionary. But the peasants of the South — Yossif felt confident — love Makhno too well to be alienated from him. They know him as their truest friend; they look upon him as one of their own. They realize that he does not seek power over them, as do the Bolsheviki no less than Denikin. It is Makhno's custom upon taking a city or town to call the people together and announce to them that henceforth they are free to organize their lives as they think best for themselves. He always proclaims complete freedom of speech and press; he does not fill the prisons or begin executions, as the Communists do. In fact, Nestor considers jails useless to a liberated people.
"It is difficult to say who is right or wrong in this conflict between the Bolsheviki and Makhno," remarked the Red Army man. "Trotsky charges Makhno with having willfully opened the front to Denikin, while Makhno claims that his retreat was caused by Trotsky purposely failing to supply his division with ammunition at a critical period. Yet it is true that Makhno's activities against Denikin's rear, especially by cutting the White Army off from its artillery base, enabled the Bolsheviki to stem the advance on Moscow."
"But Makhno refused to join the campaign against the Poles," the Pessimist objected.
"Rightly so," Yossif replied. "Trotsky's order sending Makhno's forces to the Polish front was meant only to eliminate Nestor from his own district and then bring the latter under the control of the commissars, in the absence of its defenders. Makhno saw through the scheme and protested against it."
"The fact is," the Pessimist persisted, "that the Communists and the Makhnovtsi are doing their best to exterminate each other. Both sides are guilty of the greatest brutalities and atrocities. It seems to me Makhno has no object save Bolshevik-killing."
"You are pitifully blind," retorted Yasha, an Anarchist holding a high position in a Soviet institution, "if you can't see the great revolutionary meaning of the Makhnovstchina. It is the most significant expression of the whole Revolution. The Communist Party is only a political body, attempting — successfully indeed — to create a new master class over the producers, a Socialist rulership. But the Makhno movement is the expression of the toilers themselves. It's the first great mass movement that by its own NESTOR MAKHNO i95 efforts seeks to free itself from government and establish economic self-determination. In that sense it is thoroughly Anarchistic."
"But Anarchism cannot be established by military force," I remarked.
"Of course not," Yossif admitted. "Nor does Nestor pretend to do so. Tm just clearing the field,' — that's what he always tells the comrades visiting him. Tm driving out the rulers, White and Red,' he says, 'and it's up to you to take advantage of the opportunity. Agitate, propagate your ideals. Help to release and to apply the creative forces of the Revolution.' That is Nestor's view of the situation."
"It is a great mistake that most of our people stay away from Makhno," Yasha declared. "They remain in Moscow or Petrograd, and what are they accomplishing? They can do nothing but fill Bolshevik prisons. With the povstantsi we have an exceptional chance of popularizing our views and helping the people to build a new life."
"As for myself," announced Yossif, "I am convinced that the Revolution is dead in Russia. The only place where it still lives is the Ukraina. Here it holds out a rich promise to us," he added confidently. "What we should do is to join Nestor, all of us who want to be active.
"I disagree," the Pessimist objected.
"He always disagrees when there is work to be done," Yossif retorted with the inimitable smile that took the sting out of even his sharpest words. "But you, friends" — he faced the others — "you must clearly realize this: October, like February, was but one of the phases in the process of social regeneration. In October the Communist Party exploited the situation to further its own aims. But that stage has by no means exhausted the possibilities of the Revolution. Its fountain head contains springs that continue to t 9 6 THE BOLSHEVIK MYTH flow to the height of their source, seeking the realization of their great historic mission, the emancipation of the toilers. The Bolsheviki, become static, must give place to new creative forces."