Blake's Baby

Well, hope you're better now.

ICC (or whatever one youre in) work, if you don't mind me asking?

I'm glad you're back!

yay

You are back!

...continued

2. From the beginning their goal was to establish their own one party state capitalist dictatorship- as evidenced by suppression of the soviets,factory councils- imposition of one man management of factories etc...

3. (The most likely reason in my opinion) Makhno's movement was primarily peasant based and they feared that the peasants all across Russia would follow Makhno's example due to their grievances arising from the brutal measures of the War Communism period.

I think there is three possible reasons for the suppression:

1. They just didn't like/trust Anarchists in general- ''most anarchists became disillusioned quite quickly... [bolsheviks] took over the soviets. The sense of betrayal came to a head in March 1918, when Lenin signed the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty with Germany... anarchists widely saw it as an excessive compromise which counteracted the idea of international revolution. After months of increasing anarchist resistance and dwindling Bolshevik patience ... On the night of April 12, 1918 the Cheka raided 26 anarchist centres in Moscow... About 40 anarchists were killed or wounded, and approximately 500 were imprisoned. Anarchists joined Mensheviks and Left Socialist revolutionaries in boycotting the 1918 May Day celebrations. By this time some belligerent anarchist dissenters armed themselves and formed groups of so-called “Black Guards''- Paul Avrich, The Anarchists in the Russian Revolution.

'A catastrophic calculated risk' - From the Bolsheviks point of view I don't think it was that catastrophic, they did manage to defeat Makhno. Also, if it was a risk, then what was the reward?

What's your opinion on the Ukrainian Free Territory? Why do you think the Bolsheviks suppressed it?

In reply to your conversation with "Bolshevik Sickle": Except, of course, "state socialism" equated nationalization with socialism, and thus you had people practically portraying Bismarck as a socialist at that time.