English speakers in Russia

[Andrew Flood]

>Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2002 12:28:06 +0300
>From: Chris Doss <chrisd at russiajournal.com>
>Subject: RE: English speakers in Russia

>As to Makhno, I will confess to knowing nothing about him. I asked a
>Ukrainian co-worker in her early 30s and she said she remembers being taught
>in high school that he was some vicious killer, but that in post-USSR
>Ukraine he has become somewhat popular.

There is a lot about Makhno online in fact (your summary above
it pretty funny but perhaps what it might be expected would
be taught in schools of that period).  In fact Makhno led
a substantial anarchist army that liberated the eastern part
of the Ukraine from the Austro-Hungarians in 1918 and
later from Denkin and Wrangel.  For most of that time he
was in alliance with the Red Army and in fact for part
of 1919 his forces were part of the Red Army but the
alliance was betrayed three times by the Bolsheviks
who eventually suceeded in destroying the movement. He
fled into exile and died in Paris of TB (and
probably alcoholism) in 1927.

As well as his contribution to anarchism (he was one of
the authors of the 'Organisational Platform of the
Libertarian Communists') he's also of historical interest
as one of the first victims of the 'Stalinist school of
falsification' except in his case it was Trotsky rather
then Stalin using the method in 1919/20 by attempting to
link his former military ally with the whites (rather
the fascists).

Anyway lots for info at
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Embassy/8559/makhno.htm

On Russia anarchism to day there is quite a lot of material
at http://struggle.ws/eastern.html which also covers other
parts of Eastern Europe.

And one last one, did you know there was an IWW colony in
the Kuzbass from 1922 - 26?
http://struggle.ws/russia/kuzbass_colony.html

(see someone else was following it)

Andrew

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