Graham R (Ed.) - Anarchism - A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas Volume One - From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939)

The Russian Revolution / 305
tions and organize their forces. If the movement has already entered the stage of decisive
collision, anarchists should join the movement without losing an instant; they
should help the masses free themselves from erroneous deviations, support their
first creative efforts, assist them intelIectualIy, always striving to help the movement
remain on the path which leads toward the essential goals of the workers. This is the
basic and, in fact, the only task of anarchists in the first phase of the revolution. The
working class, once it has mastered the struggle and begins its social construction,
will no longer surrender to anyone the initiative in creative work. The working class
will then direct itself by its own thought; it will create its society according to its own
plans. Whether or not this will be an anarchist plan, the plan as well as the society
based on it will emerge from the depths of emancipated labour, shaped and framed
by its thought and its will.
When we examine the Makhnovshchina, we are immediately aware of two basic
aspects of this movement: 1) its truly proletarian origins as a popular movement of
the lowest strata of society: the movement sprang up from below, and from beginning
to end it was the popular masses themselves who supported, developed, and directed
it; 2) it deliberately leaned on certain incontestably anarchist principles from
the very beginning: (a) the right of workers to full initiative, (b) the right of workers to
economic and social self-management, (c) the principle of statelessness in social construction
...
In the Makhnovshchina we have an anarchist movement of the working
masses-not completely realized, not entirely crystalIized, but striving toward the
anarchist ideal and moving along the anarchist path.
But precisely because this movement grew out of the depths of the masses, it
did not have the necessary theoretical forces, the powers of generalization indispensable
to any widespread social movement. This shortcoming manifested itself in
the fact that the movement, in the face of the general situation, did not succeed in
developing its ideas and its slogans, or in elaborating its concrete and practical
forms. This is why the movement developed slowly and painfulIy, especially in view
of the numerous enemy forces which attacked it from all sides ...
The basic shortcoming ofthe movement resides in the fact that during its last
two years it concentrated mainly on military activities. This was not an organic flaw
of the movement itself, but rather its misfortune-it was imposed on the movement
by the situation in the Ukraine.
Three years of uninterrupted civil wars made the southern Ukraine a permanent
battlefield. Numerous armies of various parties traversed it in every direction, wreaking