It seems that Nestor Makhno was opposed to neither hierarchical authority nor a monopoly of legitimate use of violence:
***** From inhabitants of Elizavetgrad and neighboring villages, as well as from some partisans from Grogoriev's units, I learned that every time he had occupied the town Jews had been massacred. In his presence and on his orders, his partisans had murdered nearly two thousand Jews, including the flower of the Jewish youth: many members of the anarchist, Bolshevik and socialist youth organizations. Some of these had even been taken from prison for slaughter.
Upon learning all this, I promptly declared Grigoriev, the ataman of Kherson - a "Socialist Revolutionary" (sic) - a Denikinist agent and open pogromist, directly culpable for the actions of his supporters against Jews.
At the Sentovo meeting on 27 July 1919, Grigoriev was denounced for what he was and executed on the spot for all to see. That execution and the reasons for it were announced thus: "The pogromist Grigoriev has been executed by Makhnovist leaders: Batko Makhno, Semyon Karetnik and Alexis Chubenko. The Makhnovist movement accepts full responsibility before History for this action." That declaration was endorsed by the members of the Soviet of the Insurgent Army and the Socialist Revolutionary Party members present, including Nikolai Kopornitsky (NOTE: The Social Democrats Seliansky and Koliuzhny had vanished utterly following the execution of Grogoriev.)
That was the sort of treatment I always reserved for those who had carried out pogroms or were in the throes of preparing them. And looters were not spared either, whether from the Insurgent Army's own ranks or outsiders. For example this is what happened in August 1920 when two detachments of Petliurist nationalist leanings, under the command of Levchenko and Matyansha, encircled by us, sent emissaries to us to suggest that they be incorporated into our ranks. The Staff and I received them and agreed that they could be enlisted: however, as soon as we realized that the nationalistic elements from these detachments were engaging in looting and blatant anti-Semitism, we shot them out of hand, in the village of Avereski, in Poltava province. A few days later, their commander Matyansha was also shot for his provocative behavior in the town of Zinkov (Poltava province). His detachment was stripped of its weapons and most of its members cashiered.
In December 1920, there was a repeat of this with Red Army troops, when we successfully withstood the onslaught from Budyenny's cavalry and completely routed the XIVth Division of his army, near the village of Petrovo in the Alexandrovsk district, followed by the XIVth Cavalry Division, taking the entire command and Staff prisoners in the latter instance. Many prisoners from the XIth Division expressed an interest in joining the Insurgent Army to combat the autocratic political commissars as they described them. As they were crossing the Kherson region and reached the village of Dobrovelitchka, over half of the population of which was Jewish, certain former Budyennyist or Petliurist cavalrymen, acting on the rumors current in their former units regarding the Makhnovists' hostility towards the "Yids", set about looting the homes of the Jewish villagers. As soon as this came to the attention of experienced Makhnovists, they were all arrested and shot on the spot.
Thus, throughout its entire existence, the Makhnovshschina took an uncompromising line on the anti-Semitism of pogromists: this was because it was a genuinely revolutionary toilers' movement in the Ukraine.
NESTOR MAKHNO
From Dyelo Truda No 30-31, November-December 1927, pp. 15-18
<http://www.spunk.org/library/writers/makhno/sp001781/chap6.html> ***** -- Yoshie
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