Information of the Ukraine Free Territory?

[cowslayer]

I am very interested in learning about Anarchist Ukraine but it seems as if there is very little available.

I can only find articles which barely scratch the surface, saying that the economy was organized according to the principles of Kropotkin, but that's as deep as most go.

Are there any books on the Free Territory? Was it plagued with chaos and death or was there a degree of success and mutual order?

Thanks!

[Kiev Communard]

I am very interested in learning about Anarchist Ukraine but it seems as if there is very little available.

I can only find articles which barely scratch the surface, saying that the economy was organized according to the principles of Kropotkin, but that's as deep as most go.

Are there any books on the Free Territory? Was it plagued with chaos and death or was there a degree of success and mutual order?

Thanks!

For the beginning, try this section (http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/append46.html#app7) of the Anarchist FAQ and some sources mentioned there. As for more intensive coverage, I would recommend reading Paul Avrich's Anarchists in the Russian Revolution (http://libcom.org/library/anarchists-russian-revolution-paul-avrich) or Michael Palij's (who is Ukrainian Canadian, by the way) Anarchism of Nestor Makhno. 1918-1921: An Aspect of the Ukrainian Revolution (published in 1976, very hard to find, there are some quotations from it in the Anarchist FAQ link I have posted above). Among the post-Soviet Russian-speaking writers, I would recommend Alexandr Shubin, with his Anarchy - The Mother of Order (http://flibusta.net/b/219750/read) (Russian: Анархия - мать порядка) book. You may use Google Translate to read relevant chapters. Even though Shubin is mutualist/neo-Proudhonist, he is rather sympathetic to communist-anarchists and Maximalist-SRs in the Russian Revolution.

[Jose Gracchus]

Quick aside: who were the SR-Maximalists, exactly, and what was their politics?

[Kiev Communard]

Quick aside: who were the SR-Maximalists, exactly, and what was their politics?

To sum it up briefly, Maximalist-SRs were far left wing of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, which denounced pro-bourgeois positions of mainstream SRs and viewed the wavering of Left-SRs as a symptom of their opportunism. Maximalist-SRs considered themselves to be "revolutionary communists", viewing both parliamentarist and substitutionist-partyist ideas as running contrary to the notion of absolute sovereignty of the toiling masses. Thus they were strongly anti-parliamentarian. They advocated the immediate socialist transformation, which was to be based on the power of Soviets. At the same time, they were in favor of organizing the revolutionary party, which should be an "advisor" of revolutionary masses, and should not "be the director of economic reorganization of the society in post-revolutionary period". As Maximalist-SR Nestroyev remarked:


The aspiration to dominate the masses, to substitute the program of popular Maximalism for the partyist Maximalism, is alien to Maximalism. ...Our role should be that of people's assistants, a role of propagandists and preachers of Maximalism through our organizations, in order to influence the spontaneous movement of the people, to direct it on the way of creating the new, fair forms of a public life, ...entering into the organizations created by the people, working with them in the field, at factory, and in barracks where they exist.

Unlike orthodox Marxists, Maximalist-SRs did not view industrial proletariat as the exclusive revolutionary subject, and thought that the union of "popular classes" (i.e. industrial workers, toiling peasants and laboring intelligentsia) was needed to bring about socialist revolution. Their views on national liberation question was mainly identical to those of Left Communists, as they denounced the illusion according to which the creation of the new bourgeois states will somehow contribute to social liberation of the peoples. They were the proponents of "workers' self-determination", i.e. for the self-determination of the toiling masses of this or another territory. Unlike communist-anarchists, Maximalist-SRs did not think it was possible to bring about the immediate communisation of social life after the revolution, but unlike the Bolsheviks, they denounced bureaucratic centralised state, supporting instead the notion of "Labor Republic", with the federation of quasi-syndicalist workers' councils and peasants' communes united into one political body.

Maximalist-SRs enthusiastically supported Bolsheviks in 1917, and denounced Left-SRs attempt to take over the state power in July 1918. However, they clashed with Bolsheviks in December 1919 over the issue of Prodrazvyorstka (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prodrazvyorstka) and played an important role in Kronstadt Rebellion. They were completely destroyed by GPU in 1923.

[Jose Gracchus]

The SR-Maximalists, if I remember correctly, were a major force in Kronstadt, intervened to support the position of the anarcho-syndicalists in the Central Council of Factory Committees in 1917, and also worked with anarchist communists in the Nabat federation to which the RIAU was supposed to be responsible.

[Joe Payne]

Alexander Skirda's Nestor Makhno–Anarchy’s Cossack: The Struggle for Free Soviets in the Ukraine 1917–1921 is incredibly good. I'd recommend that one overall.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Unlike communist-anarchists, Maximalist-SRs did not think it was possible to bring about the immediate communisation of social life after the revolution, but unlike the Bolsheviks, they denounced bureaucratic centralised state, supporting instead the notion of "Labor Republic", with the federation of quasi-syndicalist workers' councils and peasants' communes united into one political body.

Maximalist-SRs enthusiastically supported Bolsheviks in 1917, and denounced Left-SRs attempt to take over the state power in July 1918. However, they clashed with Bolsheviks in December 1919 over the issue of Prodrazvyorstka (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prodrazvyorstka) and played an important role in Kronstadt Rebellion. They were completely destroyed by GPU in 1923.

Comrade, what was the Maximalist-SR role during the Bolshevik coups d'etat of 1918?

BTW, I don't know what to make of the slogan "Labour Republic." It's less radical and certainly less proletariat-specific than "Workers Republic" for sure. For some reason it also evokes the renegade Kautsky's The Labour Revolution. :confused:

[Jose Gracchus]

I'm sure its just different preferences in translation. I've heard it rendered in English as "Republic of the Toilers" or "Toilers' Republic". The more general labor or toilers, rather than workers invoked the thorough involvement of non-exploiting poor peasants organized communally in this transitional system. Obviously modernization and the expansion of the revolution would see the distinction between peasants' communes and rural proletarians' socialized farming and workers' councils will evaporate, along with all classes.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Unlike German, Russian has two separate words for labour and worker: truda and rabochii. That's why I'm asking. EDIT: Now I got it via Google Translate.

Funny, the word "toiler" is broader in English in "labour," which has a more parochial connotation than "worker" or "workforce." I was in a comradely exchange this past week suggesting "Workforce and Pensioners" rhetoric. :)

[Kiev Communard]

Comrade, what was the Maximalist-SR role during the Bolshevik coups d'etat of 1918?

BTW, I don't know what to make of the slogan "Labour Republic." It's less radical and certainly less proletariat-specific than "Workers Republic" for sure. For some reason it also evokes the renegade Kautsky's The Labour Revolution. :confused:

During the 1918 closures of non-Bolshevik-dominated Soviets, Maximalist-SRs took rather ambiguous position, as they both saw Mensheviks who won the majority of these electoral rolls as pro-capitalist, and disliked authoritarian methods of Bolsheviks. In that case, just as in case of Left-SRs failed putsch, Maximalist-SRs retained uneasy neutrality.

As for "Labour Republic", it was for them actually a term similar in its content to Marxian notion of dictatorship of proletariat, with the Commune of Paris being a role model.

[Jose Gracchus]

I think the best imaginable political outcome would've been the rise of a kind of anti-government socialist front, encompassing the anarchists, SR Maximalists, and various other groups supporting soviet power in the Kronstadt context: Left SRs, Left Mensheviks, Menshevik-Internationalists, and hopefully even pulling over Bolshevik oppositions like the Group of Democratic Centralism and the Workers' Opposition. Such a front deposing the Lenin-Trotsky Bolshevik-CC ruling clique in favor of a new reconstruction might've preserved more of the revolutionary gains. The task of trying to successfully encourage a German Revolution in 1923 or so would be the most important task of any attempt to preserve the Russian Revolution.

[Kiev Communard]

I think the best imaginable political outcome would've been the rise of a kind of anti-government socialist front, encompassing the anarchists, SR Maximalists, and various other groups supporting soviet power in the Kronstadt context: Left SRs, Left Mensheviks, Menshevik-Internationalists, and hopefully even pulling over Bolshevik oppositions like the Group of Democratic Centralism and the Workers' Opposition. Such a front deposing the Lenin-Trotsky Bolshevik-CC ruling clique in favor of a new reconstruction might've preserved more of the revolutionary gains. The task of trying to successfully encourage a German Revolution in 1923 or so would be the most important task of any attempt to preserve the Russian Revolution.

Well, this would have been just like enrages deposing Robespierre before the Grand Terror, or Levellers triumphing over Cromwell in 1649. Incidentally, some Ukrainian left-communist group, the Union of Revolutionary Socialist, which is a mixed bag of supporters of post-Bordigist Italian Left and the self-declared followers of Maximalist-SRs, posited this very idea in its writings on the subject. You might find their site interesting (naturally, it is on Russian, even though there is a small English section): http://revsoc.org/

[Jose Gracchus]

Nice to know there's an indigenous and eclectic former Soviet revolutionary left, with some decent politics.

How do you feel about them? Are you associated? What do you think about their politics? And the politics of those constituent groups?

[Kiev Communard]

Nice to know there's an indigenous and eclectic former Soviet revolutionary left, with some decent politics.

How do you feel about them? Are you associated? What do you think about their politics? And the politics of those constituent groups?

Unfortunately, they are too small (20 full-time members at all, which is quite large group for Ukraine, by the way), and I feel they have an erroneous position on syndicalism (basically they reject it, following FORA's position), so I do not totally support them. On the other issues, though, such as denunciation of conflation between State property and social property and impeccable internationalism, they seem the best of the Ukrainian Left.

[Jose Gracchus]

FORA? What is their position on syndicalism?

[Die Neue Zeit]

Left Mensheviks, Menshevik-Internationalists

Was there indeed a third Menshevik faction in the form of the "Left Mensheviks"? Who were they compared to the MIs?

As for comrade Kiev's link, I'm reminded of a Ukrainian left group or two that has ties with Boris Kagarlitsky, who wrote about such ties a year or two ago.

[Kiev Communard]

FORA? What is their position on syndicalism?

As far as I know, they seemed to reject it in favor of more ideologically pure "workers' anarchism" in the 1920s to 1930s, and their principal leaders argued that the organization of the new society should be territorial, rather than industrial one. Accordingly, the territorial communes of "associated producers and consumers", not workers' syndicates, were perceived to be a basic crux of the libertarian communist society. In addition, historic FORA appears to have been sceptically predisposed towards large-scale industry and urbanism (preferring integrated agro-industrial communes of the kind Kropotkin envisaged), and held some proto-ecologist ideas, although they naturally would have balked at modern "anarcho-primitivist" nonsense.

[Jose Gracchus]

Syndicat described them before as among Mensheviks who were prepared to go along with October and soviet power, but thought there should not be an all-Bolshevik provisional workers' and soldiers' revolutionary government. I think they probably favored inclusion of the Left SRs and the Second All-Russian Congress of Peasants' Deputies, but they too (with all other parties, despite much workers' protest and struggle, including by militant workers in the Vizkel Railway Union) were excluded from the all-Bolshevik government. The subsequent Congress of Peasants' Deputies was won to a Left SR majority (together with the Bolshevik peasant deputies), thus obliging their incorporation to the Council of People's Commissars, the provisional workers', soldiers', and peasants' government.

They could be the same as Menshevik Internationalists, I am not too clear on them either, I just know about the coups against them in 1918.

[Zederbaum]

Was there indeed a third Menshevik faction in the form of the "Left Mensheviks"? Who were they compared to the MIs?

They could be the same as Menshevik Internationalists, I am not too clear on them either, I just know about the coups against them in 1918.
I think they are the same, but just in case things were in danger of becoming clear, it's worth mentioning that there was a separate group who called themselves "Social Democrat Internationalists". They were organised around the paper Novaia zhizn.

Francis King wrote an article on them in the journal Revolutionary Russia.

I tend to use "Left Menshevik" instead of the full mouthful of "Menshevik Internationalist" in a vain bid to keep syllable length at a respectable level. It's an accurate enough description though.