Anarchism in Ukraine

Commanders of the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine, including Semen Karetnyk (3rd from the left), Nestor Makhno (centre), and Fedir Shchus (1st from the right)

Anarchism in Ukraine has its roots in the democratic and egalitarian organization of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, who inhabited the region up until the 18th century. Philosophical anarchism first emerged from the radical movement during the Ukrainian national revival, finding a literary expression in the works of Mykhailo Drahomanov, who was himself inspired by the libertarian socialism of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. The spread of populist ideas by the Narodniks also lay the groundwork for the adoption of anarchism by Ukraine's working classes, gaining notable circulation in the Jewish communities of the Pale of Settlement.

By the outbreak of the 1905 Revolution, a specifically anarchist movement had risen to prominence in Ukraine. The ideas of anarcho-communism, anarcho-syndicalism and individualist anarchism all took root in Ukrainian revolutionary circles, with syndicalism itself developing a notably strong hold in Odesa, while acts of anarchist terrorism by cells such as the Black Banner became more commonplace. After the revolution was suppressed, Ukrainian anarchism began to reorganize itself, culminating in the outburst following the February Revolution, when Nestor Makhno returned to the country and began to organize among the peasantry.

Ukraine became a stronghold of anarchism during the revolutionary period, acting as a counterweight to Ukrainian nationalism, Russian imperialism and Bolshevism. The Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine (RIAU), led by Makhno, carved out an anarchist territory in the south-east of the country, centered in the former cossack lands of Zaporizhzhia. By 1921, the Ukrainian anarchist movement was defeated by the Bolsheviks, who established the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in its place.

Anarchism experienced a brief resurgence in Ukraine during the time of the New Economic Policy, but was again defeated following the rise of totalitarianism under the rule of Joseph Stalin. Further expressions of anarchism existed in the breach of Soviet Ukrainian history, before finally reemerging onto the public sphere following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In the 21st century, the Ukrainian anarchist movement has experienced a resurgence, itself coming into conflict with the rising far-right following Euromaidan.

History

At the western-most point of the Eurasian Steppe, the lands today known as Ukraine came under the control of a number of nomadic societies from the 5th century BCE. First came the Indo-European Scythians and Sarmatians, then the Turkic Khazars, Pechenegs and Cumans, before the migration of Slavs to the region. By the 9th century CE, these Slavs became known as the Rus and had formed a loose federation of principalities, with Kyiv as its center. The Rus were converted to Orthodox Christianity over the following century, before being invaded by the Mongol Empire, which brought about the collapse of Kyivan rule. While ruled by the Golden Horde, the northern states under the rule of Moscow became known as "Russia", while the southern borderlands came to be known as "Ukraine". After the fall of the Horde, Ukraine became a battleground between the competing Polish, Russian and Ottoman Empires, which brought about the development of a distinct Ukrainian culture.

Zaporozhian Cossacks fighting Tatars of the Crimean Khanate.

By this time, the Cossacks had emerged from the conflict, establishing themselves along the banks of the Don and Dniepr rivers, where they practiced a form of participatory democracy in popular assemblies (Krugs) and elected their own military leaders (Atamans). While other cossacks would end up pledging their loyalty to one state or another, the Zaporozhian Cossacks in Ukraine were able to maintain their independence. The Zaporozhians were made up of a broad mix of peoples, including those who had fled from serfdom, who as "free Ukrainians" held their own land and were mobilized as part of the Zaporozhian host. The Ukrainian cossacks fought against the Poles, Russians and Ottomans alike, organized into decentralised regiments (polks) and squadrons (sotnias). The Zaporozhian Sich was itself organized along democratic and egalitarian lines, where military and civilian officials were all directly elected for one-year terms and subject to instant recall by the assemblies, while its land was distributed equally among the people.

Dedicated to the preservation of "Cossack freedoms", Stenka Razin led the Don Cossacks in an uprising against the Tsarist autocracy in Russia and later Yemelyan Pugachev led the Ural Cossacks in a peasants' revolt against serfdom, but both of these rebellions were defeated. The Cossack hosts were subsequently dissolved and inducted into the Imperial Russian Army, in which they became loyal soldiers of the Russian Empire, going on to play a vital role in defeating the Napoleonic invasion of 1812 and later becoming the de facto police force in Russia. Likewise, the Zaporozhian Sich was broken up and its people were forced into either serfdom or exile, with Ukraine being brought definitively under Russian imperial rule. Nevertheless, the tradition of the "libertarian-minded warrior-peasants" persisted, setting the groundwork for the libertarian communist movement in Ukraine.

Rising radicalism

Radicalism spread through Ukraine in the wake of the War of 1812, as the rise in calls for abolition of the Tsarist autocracy and serfdom led to the establishment of the Southern Society of the Decembrists in 1821. Ukrainian Decembrists were more radical than their northern counterparts, calling for the overthrow of the monarchy and its replacement with a revolutionary republic. Following the death of Alexander I, the Southern Society in Kyiv staged a revolt against the Russian Empire, but it was suppressed.

Radicalism was raised further during the Ukrainian national revival, as Brotherhoods began to advocate for Ukrainian autonomy and the replacement of the Empire with a pan-Slavic federation organized along liberal democratic lines, with Taras Shevchenko even displaying revolutionary sentiments. The Ukrainian intellectual hromadas, inspired by Russian populism, began to engage with the peasantry - leading to the rise of agrarian socialist tendencies in Ukrainian radical circles.

Mykhailo Drahomanov, the first Ukrainian philosophical anarchist and one of the leading figures of the democratic federalist movement.

The most prominent of the hromadas was the one in Kyiv, founded in 1859 by populist students of the Lavrovist tendency, who emphasised the education of the peasantry and rejected revolutionary agitation. It was banned by 1863 but renewed its educational activities in 1869, spearheaded by a new generation of students led by Volodymyr Antonovych, Pavlo Chubynsky and Mykhailo Drahomanov. Continuing the democratic-federalist tradition from the Decembrists and the Brotherhoods, Mykhailo Drahomanov blended together elements from liberal democracy, agrarian socialism and Ukrainian nationalism, envisioning the final goal of the democratic-federalist movement to be the achievement of anarchy, as inspired by the works of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Having coined the slogan "Cosmopolitanism in the ideas and the ends, nationality in the ground and the forms," Drahomanov rejected separatism due to his philosophical anarchist opposition to nation states. Viewing national liberation as "inseparable from social emancipation", he instead encouraged for the Hromada to concentrate on building a bottom-up form of democracy of small communities organized on a federative basis.

Yakov Stefanovich, leader of the Ukrainian buntars during the "Going to the People" campaign.

In 1874, the Narodniks' "Going to the People" campaign culminated in a number of Ukrainian revolutionary anarchists (buntars), led by Yakov Stefanovich, organizing a peasant revolt in Chyhyryn, before being suppressed by Russian authorities. Alexander II subsequently issued the Ems Ukaz which banned the use of the Ukrainian language, resulting in the repression of the hromadas and Drahomanov's flight into exile in Geneva, where he established the Geneva Circle, the first Ukrainian socialist organisation. Drahomanov's socialist tendencies brought him into conflict with more moderate members of the Hromada, as well as the "chauvinist" and "dictatorial" Russian revolutionaries, leaving him isolated from many of his contemporaries by 1886. In Galicia, which Drahomanov had placed at the center of the Ukrainian national struggle due to its constitutionalism, Drahomanov's disciple Ivan Franko found himself persecuted by the Austrian authorities and ostracised by local religious conservatives, due to his staunch anti-clericalism.

Nonetheless, in 1890 Franko was able to found the Ukrainian Radical Party (URP), which engaged in a number of activities including the convocation of popular assemblies, the establishment of cooperatives and the education of the peasantry. In 1895, members of the URP were elected to the Galician Diet and the Austrian parliament, by which point its party congresses were beginning to call for Ukrainian independence and endorsed a number of strikes by agricultural workers. Drahomanov's death that same year accelerated a split in the organization, between orthodox radicals that stayed loyal to Drahomanov's platform, younger social democrats that had gravitated towards Marxism and nationalists who were no longer comfortable with the party's socialist line. By losing the latter two factions, the URP took on a definitively agrarian socialist platform and grew to become the second-largest of the Ukrainian political parties in Galicia.

1905 Revolution

Ukrainian Jews in the Pale of Settlement had been extended a number of rights during the reign of Alexander II, but following his assassination by People's Will, a wave of pogroms broke out and the new government of Alexander III implemented the May Laws, which persecuted Jews living in the Pale. In 1903, a strike in Odesa rapidly escalated into a nationwide Ukrainian general strike, with the heavy industry centers of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv and Katerynoslav all experiencing mass industrial action. The Minister of Interior Vyacheslav von Plehve responded to the strike wave by propagating a number of antisemitic and anti-communist conspiracy theories about the labour movement, which resulted in another wave of pogroms breaking out in Ukraine. The living conditions of Pale nourished the growth of the Ukrainian anarchist movement, which grew particularly strong in Jewish towns, where workers' circles began to educate themselves on a number of radical ideas. Dissatisfied with the existing socialist parties, activists of the General Jewish Labour Bund, Socialist Revolutionary Party and Revolutionary Ukrainian Party all deserted party politics for anarchism. The Bread and Freedom group in London organized the distribution of anarchist literature, including the Yiddish language journals Arbeter Fraynd and Germinal, throughout much of the Pale, reaching as far as the anarchist groups in Odesa and Nizhyn.

Popular discontent with the Tsarist autocracy eventually culminated in the 1905 Revolution, during which much of the country rebelled against the Russian Empire, with a general strike in October successfully securing civil liberties and the constitution of the State Duma. But workers and peasants throughout the country, having not had any of their economic demands met, continued to openly revolt against the government. During the suppression of the revolution in December, workers' uprisings broke out in Odesa, Kharkiv and Katerynoslav, but they were unsuccessful and the revolution was brought to an end.

Members of the Black Banner.

Members of the Union of Poor Peasants, including Nestor Makhno (bottom-left).

Juda Grossman described the rise of anarchist groups in the wake of the revolution as though they "sprang up like mushrooms after a rain". Jewish anarchist groups sprouted up throughout many of the small towns in the Pale, while in the cities of Ukraine, the anarchist movement that had first appeared in Odesa and Katerynoslav had spread to Kyiv and Kharkiv. In Huliaipole, the Union of Poor Peasants was formed to carry out expropriations against the rich, with a young Nestor Makhno joining the group and later being arrested and imprisoned for killing a police officer. The Black Banner, a terrorist organization inspired by the insurrectionary anarchism of Mikhail Bakunin, grew to include a large membership of Russians, Ukrainians and Jews. In Katerynoslav, Odesa and Sevastopol, the Black banner organized a number of detachments that carried out bombings on buildings, murdered and robbed rich people, and fought with the police in the streets. Even the merchant vessels that docked in Odesa's port became the target of expropriations. At his trial, a member of the Odesa branch of the Black Banner explained their method of "motiveless terror":

We recognize isolated expropriations only to acquire money for our revolutionary deeds. If we get the money, we do not kill the person we are expropriating. But this does not mean that he, the property owner, has bought us off. No! We will find him in the various cafes, restaurants, theaters, balls, concerts, and the like. Death to the bourgeois! Always, wherever he may be, he will be overtaken by an anarchist's bomb or bullet.

Although the terrorists within the Black Banner had been energised by their attacks in Odesa, a dissenting Communard group had also emerged that called for the organization of a mass uprising, rather than individual acts of propaganda of the deed. Anarchists in major cities began to shift their activities towards the distribution of propaganda, with the Kyiv Group of Anarchist-Communists pursuing a more moderate course, inspired by the works of Peter Kropotkin. Inspired by their Narodnik predecessors, anarcho-communists from Odesa, Katerynoslav, Kyiv and Chernihiv "went to the people", distributing radical propaganda among the peasantry. Their leaflet How the Peasants Succeed Without Authority depicted a communal village that lived without government and distributed its resources "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs". Members of Bread and Freedom denounced the "robber bands" of Odesa, comparing them to the Italian mafia and claiming that their terror campaign demoralized and discredited the movement. Nevertheless, the anarcho-communists continued to advocate for propaganda of the deed, even approving "defensive terror" against the police and Black Hundreds, with a report from Odesa printed in Bread and Freedom declaring that "only the enemies of the people can be enemies of terror!"

Alongside anarcho-communism, Ukrainian cities also saw the emergence of other anarchist tendencies, such as anarcho-syndicalism in Odesa and individualist anarchism in Kyiv. The anarcho-syndicalists of Odesa declared themselves in opposition to the terrorist tactics of the time, having experienced a number of them first-hand, instead advocating for the construction of labor unions capable of radical industrial action. However, the Odesa Anarcho-Syndicalists soon found themselves establishing their own "battle detachments" to carry out expropriations, using the stolen money to buy more weapons and fund the printing and distribution of their literature, even going on to establish a bomb laboratory. The anarcho-syndicalist leader Daniil Novomirskii justified this use of terrorism as having acted to benefit the movement "as a whole", which he distinguished from the unplanned "motiveless terror" of the Nechayevshchina. The Odesa Anarcho-Syndicalists had adopted the French General Confederation of Labour (CGT) as a model for anarcho-syndicalism in Ukraine, centring trade unions as the means for class struggle, winning short-term gains while building towards a social revolution, in which the unions could themselves seize the means of production. Like their western counterparts, the Odesa syndicalists rejected vanguardism and tasked themselves with combatting socialist entryism in the unions, going on to form the Revolutionary All-Russian Union of Labor as their own version of the industrial union. The Union quickly spread throughout Ukraine, at one point claiming 5,000 members, creating a union presence particularly among the factory and dock workers of Odesa and the bakers and tailors of Katerynoslav. On the rise of the Ukrainian anarcho-syndicalist movement, Juda Grossman remarked: "I am convinced that God, if he existed, must be a syndicalist—otherwise Novomirskii would not have enjoyed such great success."

Olha Taratuta, member of the Black Banner and organizer for the Anarchist Red Cross.

The anti-intellectualism of the Polish revolutionary Jan Wacław Machajski, inspired by Bakunin's insurrectionary anarchism, also made an impression among Ukrainian anarchists, with the Black Banner members Olha Taratuta and Vladimir Striga organizing alongside Makhaevists in a secret society known as the Intransigents. Even the Odesa Anarcho-Syndicalists were influenced by Machajski's anti-intellectualism, with their denunciations of social democracy being rooted in their opposition to the creation of a new intellectual elite, declaring that "the liberation of the workers must be the task of the working class itself".

Despite the best efforts of the syndicalists, their extremist counterparts attracted far more attention from the press and the government. Pyotr Stolypin instituted pacification measures against the terrorist movement, placing the Russian Empire under a state of emergency and unleashing a wave of punishment against the Black Banner and other radical organisations, with a number of militants committing suicide after their capture. The concept of martyrdom entered the anarchist zeitgeist as hundreds of young anarchists were executed in the repression, including the Ukrainian individualist Matrena Prisiazhniuk, who was sentenced to death for raiding a sugar factory, murdering a priest and attempting to murder a police officer. Following her sentence, she remarked:

I am an Anarchist-Individualist [...] My ideal is the free development of the individual personality in the broadest sense of the word, and the overthrow of slavery in all its forms. [...] Proudly and bravely we shall mount the scaffold, casting a look of defiance at you. Our death, like a hot flame, will ignite many hearts. We are dying as victors. Forward, then! Our death is our triumph!

Contempt of court was common among anarchist defendants, with one terrorist from Odesa, Lev Aleshker, attacking the judges: "You yourselves should be sitting on the bench of the accused! [...] Down with all of you! Villainous hangmen! Long live anarchy!" In Aleshker's last testament, he predicted the coming of an anarchist future:

Slavery, poverty, weakness, and ignorance—the eternal fetters of man—will be broken. Man will be at the center of nature. The earth and its products will serve everyone dutifully. Weapons will cease to be a measure of strength and gold a measure of wealth; the strong will be those who are bold and daring in the conquest of nature, and riches will be the things that are useful. Such a world is called "Anarchy." It will have no castles, no place for masters and slaves. Life will be open to all. Everyone will take what he needs—this is the anarchist ideal. And when it comes about, men will live wisely and well. The masses must take part in the construction of this paradise on earth.

Five young anarchists were brought to trial for the bombing of the Cafe Libman in Odesa, all of them being sentenced to the death penalty. One of the defendants, Moisei Mets, denied any criminal guilt while also confessing to the bombing, declaring to the court that they demanded nothing less than "the final annihilation of eternal slavery and exploitation". Before his execution, Mets declared: "Death and destruction to the whole bourgeois order! Hail the revolutionary class struggle of the oppressed! Long live anarchism and communism!"

In Odesa alone, 167 anarchists were tried in the wake of the revolution, including 12 anarcho-syndicalists, 94 members of the Black Banner, 51 sympathisers, 5 members of the SR Combat Organization and 5 members of the Anarchist Red Cross. They were mostly young people of mixed Russian, Ukrainian and Jewish backgrounds, of whom 28 received the death penalty and 5 escaped prison. One of those that escaped was Olha Taratuta, who fled to Geneva and joined the buntars before returning to Katerynoslav and joining an anarcho-communist "battle detachment", which saw her arrested again and this time sentenced to hard labor. Vladimir Ushakov had also fled capture in Saint Petersburg, hiding out in Lviv before joining the Katerynoslav battle detachment and going on to expropriate a bank in Yalta. He was caught in the act and taken to prison in Sevastopol, where he committed suicide during a failed escape attempt. The leaders of the anarcho-syndicalist movement in Odesa and the anarcho-communist movement in Kyiv were all sentenced to long terms of hard labor.

The mass imprisonment of anarchist agitators affected each of them differently, with some taking the time to educate themselves and write of their experiences. In the Butyrka prison, Nestor Makhno met Peter Arshinov, who educated the young peasant on the anarcho-communist theories of Bakunin and Kropotkin, up until their release following the February Revolution. Makhno subsequently returned to Ukraine, where he began organizing an agricultural workers' union and was later elected chairman of the Huliaipole Soviet, from which he ordered the armed expropriation of land by the peasantry.

During World War I, the URP took part in the establishment of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen and, following the war, collaborated in the constitution of the West Ukrainian People's Republic, with a number of its members subsequently joining the Central Council of the Ukrainian People's Republic. The federalist orientation of the Central Council was inspired in part by Drahomanov platform, and Drahomanov's influence further inspired the Socialist-Federalists and the Socialist-Revolutionaries.

Makhnovist Revolution

Main article: Makhnovshchina

Demonstrations in Kyiv during the 1917 Revolution.

The outbreak of the February Revolution brought with it a resurgence in anarchist activity in Ukraine. Within the month, anarcho-syndicalist circles had been organized in the factories of Ukraine's largest industrial cities and miners in Donbas had adopted the preamble to the Industrial Workers of the World's constitution. In May 1917, the adoption of workers' control as Bolshevik policy was welcomed by many Ukrainian anarcho-syndicalists, with one proclaiming that "since the time of the revolution, the [Bolsheviks] have decisively broken with Social Democracy, and have been endeavoring to apply Anarcho-syndicalist methods of struggle." By this time, anarcho-syndicalists in Donbas had begun to reject traditional trade unions in favor of the newly established factory committees, which they considered to be more in line with revolutionary syndicalism.

Nestor Makhno following the outbreak of the 1917 Revolution.

In July, attempts were made to unify the revolutionary anarchist movement, with an anarchist conference in Kharkiv discussing the revolutionary role of factory committees versus trade unions and how they could convert the world war into a world revolution. They also established an "Anarchist Information Bureau" to organize a national conference and gauge the movement's strength throughout the country. It was around this time that the Ukrainian revolutionary anarchist Nestor Makhno returned to his native Huliaipole, where he became involved as a union organizer among the local peasants. By August 1917, Makhno had been elected as the Chairman of the local Soviet, a position from which he organized an armed peasant band to expropriate the large privately held estates and redistribute those lands equally to the whole peasantry.

As the year went on, more anarchist political prisoners were released from prison and returned from exile, which brought a number of intellectuals into the movement. By the turn of 1918, further anarchist conferences had been held in Donbas, Kharkiv and Katerynoslav, resulting in the foundation of the newspaper Golos Anarkhista and the election of a Donbas Anarchist Bureau. The Bureau then organized a series of political lectures in Ukraine, inviting anarchist intellectuals such as Juda Grossman, Nikolai Rogdaev and Peter Arshinov. It was at this time that Volin returned to Ukraine and began work for the People's Commissariat for Education in Kharkiv, even getting so far as to turn down an appointment that would have made him the Ukrainian Commissar for Education.

But following the October Revolution, the anarchist movement came into conflict with the Bolsheviks. The Kharkiv Anarchist-Communist Association described the new soviet state as a "commissarocracy, the ulcer of our time", due to the centralization of power under the Council of People's Commissars, the direction of economics by the Supreme Soviet of the National Economy and the repression of dissident elements by the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission. In Katerynoslav, anarcho-communists called on the masses to overthrow the Bolshevik dictatorship and establish a libertarian socialist society in its place. Left-wing opposition to the Bolsheviks intensified after the ratification of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which ceded the entirety of Ukraine to the Central Powers.

Ukrainian anarchists responded with the formation of armed detachments known as the Black Guards, which would undertake a campaign of guerilla warfare against the invading German Empire. Armed anarchist contingents quickly spread throughout Ukraine, with the Anarcho-Futurists of Kharkiv proclaiming "death to world civilization!" and anarchists in Katerynoslav breaking into the city's prisons and freeing the prisoners. Inspired by the earlier armed struggle during the 1905 Revolution, Ukrainian anarchists dedicated themselves to the destruction of "would-be counterrevolutionaries", which included the Whites, Bolsheviks, nationalists and German imperialists alike. Partisan detachments in Simferopol and Katerynoslav sang songs of the incoming "era of dynamite", which they believed would bring about libertarian communism. Ukrainian anarchist detachments subsequently carried out a wave of attacks and expropriations, eventually establishing ties with other underground anarchists in Moscow.