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

306 / ANARCHISM
material, social and moral destruction on the peasants. This exhausted the peasants. It
destroyed their first experiments in the field of workers' self:management. Their spirit of
social creativity was crushed. These conditions tore the Makhnovshchina away from its
healthy foundation, away from socially creative work among the masses, and fo rced it to
concentrate on war-revolutionary war, it is true, but war nevertheless ...
The Makhnovshchina understands the social revolution in its true sense. It understands
that the victory and consolidation of the revolution, the development of
the well being which Gill flow from it. cannot be realized without a close alliance between
the working classes of the cities and those of the countryside. The peasants
understand that without urban workers and powerful industrial enterprises they will
be deprived of most of the benefits which the social revolution makes possible. FurtherInore.
they consider the urban workers to be their brothers. members of the
same family of workers.
There can be no doubt that. at the moment of the victory of the social revolution,
the peasants will give their entire support to the workers. Th is will be voluntary
and truly revolutionary support given directly to the urban proletariat. In the present-day
situation. the bread taken by force from the peasants nourishes mainly the
enormous governmental machine. The peasants see and understand perfectly that
this expensive bureaucratic machine is not in any way needed by them or by the
workers, and that in relation to the workers it plays the same role as that of a prison
administration toward the inmates. This is why the peasants do not have the slightest
desire to give their bread voluntarily to the State. This is why they are so hostile in
their relations with the contemporary tax collectors-the commissars and the various
supply organs of the State.
But the peasants always try to enter into direct relations with the urban workers.
This question was raised more than once at peasant congresses, and the peasants
always resolved it in a revolutionary and positive manner. At the time of the
social revolution, when the masses of urban proletarians become truly independent
and relate directly to the peasants through their own organizations, the peasants will
fu rnish the indispensable foodstuffs and raw materials, knowing that in the near future
the workers will place the entire gigantic power of industry at the service ofthe
needs of the workers of the city and the countryside ...
Statists lie when they claim that the masses are capable only of destroying the
old. that they are great and heroic only when they engage in destruction. and that in
creative work they are inert and vulgar. In the realm of creative activity, in the realm
of daily work, the masses are capable of great deeds and of heroism. But they must