Nestor Ivanovich Makhno (1889-1934) was born in
Ukraine. During his childhood, he worked as a shepherd and as an agricultural worker. Ended up in jail at 17, after
murdering a police officer. That's where he studied
Anarchism for the first time. He was
sentenced to death but finally they gave him only a long sentence due to his age.
Soon after this event, he became the leader of a peasant libertarian insurrection fighting against bourgeoisie, Bolsheviks and Whites (i.e. Czarists). He ended up in jail again, and finally returned to his village at the time of the February revolution where he organized unions and soviets.
Makhno helped the Bolsheviks during the Russian civil war. With his peasant and worker army, he won many battles against the White threat.
After the civil war, the Bolsheviks eliminated the Machnovshchina and all their independant soviets in Ukraine, just like they did in other parts of USSR.
Another Makhno realisation was the Black Cross. Black Cross units were created in many villages in Ukraine. They were helping the workers with self-defence education and "ambulance" activities during the war, just like the Red Cross was already doing, everywhere else in USSR (but not in rebelious areas). For recognition, they wore denim overalls and a special armband. The Black Cross organized resistance against police operations or White/Red attacks.
"It was, indeed, the first urban army to be formed in the Ukraine; by 1920, when the Whites were an organised body aided by foreign intervention, the city Makhnovistas, the Black Cross, was the only force in the towns that could organise military self-defence along with the peasants. They faced three enemies, Petliura in the West, the Bolsheviks in the North and the monarchists in the East and South. But they were able to defend the cities, though they were never a mobile force like the peasant army." (Bulletin of the Kate Sharpley Library, No. 10)
The Anarchist Black Cross is still active and can be contacted at :
ABC
121 Railton Road
London
SE24 0LR
Below are extraits of texts written by Nestor Makhno. I will also node some of the most interesting (and complete) texts under their respective titles.
"The Bolsheviks have jettisoned the idea of equality, not just in practice but also in theory, for the very enunciation of it strikes them as dangerous now. This is quite understandable, for their entire rule depends on a diametrically contrasting notion, on a screaming inequality, the entire horror and evils of which have battened upon the backs of the workers. Let us hope that the toilers of every country may draw the necessary conclusions and, in turn, finish with the Bolsheviks, those exponents of the idea of slavery and oppressors of Labor. " (N. Makhno, The Idea of Equality and the Bolsheviks)
"Anarchism is not merely a doctrine that treats of man's social life, in the narrow meaning with which the term is invested in political dictionaries, and sometimes, at meetings, by our propagandist speakers. It is also a teaching that embraces the whole existence of man as a rounded individual." (N. Makhno, Anarchism and Our Times)
"In the course of its revolutionary struggle, anarchism not merely overthrows governments and discards their laws, but also sets about the society that spawned their values, their "mores" and their "morality", which is what makes it increasingly comprehensible and digestible to the oppressed portion of mankind. " (N. Makhno, Our Organization)
Nestor Makhno's partial bibliography
Open Letter to the Spanish Anarchists
The Struggle Against the State
Great October in the Ukraine
On Defense of the Revolution
Anarchism and Our Times
To the Jews of All Countries
In Memory of the Kronstadt Revolt
The Idea of Equality and the Bolsheviks
The Paths of "Proletarian" Power
The ABC of Revolutionary Anarchism
On Revolutionary Discipline
"May the calamity of Bolshevik communism never take root in the revolutionary soil of Spain!"
This writeup is in perpetual evolution.