Nestor Makhno Anarchy S Cossack

The phenomenal life of Ukrainian peasant Nestor Makhno (1888-1934) provides the framework for this breakneck account of the downfall of the tsarist empire and the civil war that convulsed and bloodied Russia between 1917 and 1921. Mahkno and his people were fighting for a society "without masters or slaves, with neither rich nor poor." They acted towards that idea by establishing "free soviets." Unlike the soviets drained of all significance by the dictatorship of a one-party State, the "free soviets" became the grassroots organs of a direct democracy - a living embodiment of the free society - until they were betrayed, and smashed, by the Red Army. Delving into a vast array of documentation to which few other historians have had access, this study illuminates a revolution that started out with the rosiest of prospects but ended up utterly confounded. More than just the incredible exploits of a guerilla revolutionary par excellence, Skirda weaves the tale of a people, and the organizations and practices of anarchism, literally fighting for their lives.

Reveals a little-known history of 1917: the Ukrainian anarch-communist Makhnovists

The Russian Civil War (1918-1924) in Asiatic Russia was like the American Wild West as one regime after another tried to establish its rule over the freedom-loving peasants and miners of the West Siberian plains and mountains. A key role in this struggle was played by the partisan armies put together by anarchists, which fought first against the Whites, then against the Reds. Like the better known Ukrainian peasant movement led by Nestor Makhno--known as the Makhnovshchina--the Siberian anarchists aimed to establish free federations of rural communes and worker-managed industrial enterprises. Long ignored or stigmatized as bandits by Soviet historians and their nationalist successors, the Siberian anarchist-partisans are rescued from oblivion in this pioneering study.

The Makhnovist movement was an attempt by peasants in southeastern Ukraine to create an anarchist society in 1917–1921. This unique social experiment embraced a substantial territory with a population of millions but has been little studied by historians. In the years of revolution and civil war, the movement was protected from its numerous enemies by a remarkable military force—the Insurgent Army—and by an intelligence service—the Kontrrazvedka. It is the latter institution which is the subject of this study by Vyacheslav Azarov, a present-day Ukrainian anarchist.

Before communism, anarchism and syndicalism were central to labour and the Left in the colonial and postcolonial world.Using studies from Africa,Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, this groundbreaking volume examines the revolutionary libertarian Left's class politics and anti-colonialism in the first globalization and imperialism(1870/1930).