A third force (1996)

Book Review from the July 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Struggle Against the State and Other Essays by Nestor Makhno. (AK Press 1996. £7.95.)

The civil war in Russia following the November 1917 revolution involved the Bolshevik-controlled Red Army and the “Whites" (Monarchists and anti-Bolsheviks supported by foreign armies). What is generally less well known is that there was a third force in the struggle—the anarchist Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army. This peasant-based army, led by Nestor Makhno, held much of the Ukraine and briefly larger parts of Russia as the three sides won and lost ground in an increasingly bitter conflict. Eventually the Red Army won out and, by the time of the suppression of the Krondstadt Revolt in 1921, Makhno had fled to the West.

Before his death in exile in 1934 Makhno wrote a series of essays, collected here, defending the anarchist part in the Russian revolution. The anarchists wanted to smash the state; the Bolsheviks wanted to build a state; neither side required majority support for their objective. Both are dictatorial. Democracy requires that a majority understand, approve and participate in bringing about change. And this is the process which will bring about world socialism and sustain it.

Lew Higgins