Anti-Traditional

oh for sure, that shit forever contaminated the idea of socialism in ireland with nationalism. so much so that even the largest anarchist group in Ireland are incredibly soft on republicanism. tragic.

indeed, sadly there are literally only a handful of us

Me too. Every generation thinks 'I don't know how things can go on like this' though. Been happening since the Paris Commune at the latest.

You're back!

Well put. And very much to the point. But perhaps Bosnia can serve as a counter-example. I hope so.

I'm a little out of the loop - the best stuff I've seen is at LibCom, but I'll admit to not knowing a whole heao about what's going on. Seems from what i can see much more positive than Ukraine, however.

Yes, I think they did fear general peasant risings, but Makhno wasn't fighting the Bolsheviks, peasants forming soviets would only be a problem if they then became little autonomous zones. But is taht what was happening in Ukraine? I think they feared Makhno's army becoming a threat, but were they right to? There are three potential answers to that...

1 - no, Makhno was no threat to them;
2 - yes, Makhno was a threat to them but only because they were counter-revolutionary;
3 - yes, Makhno was a threat so had to be stopped to preserve the revolution.

Depends if you think that the Bolsheviks in 19...? 'embodied' the revolution in any way. My own view is that neither the Bolsheviks nor Makhno were 'revolutionary saviours'.

Hi AT, I have been thinking about this, honest.

Lenin said to Makhno 'if all Anarchists were like you we might rethink our policy'. The 'Anarchist clubs' on the other hand were suspected/accused of harbouring among others foreign agents and 'anti-revolutionary elements'.

The Anarchists (like the contemporary Left Communists) were I think wrong about Brest-Litovsk, just as the Left SRs were.

I don't believe that the 'goal' of the RSDLP(B) was "to establish their own one party state capitalist dictatorship", I think that's a ridiculous position. It' blatently not true. That such dictatorship happenedd is not in doubt, but to claim it was planned is just... nonsense.

Never read Frank McCourt. I've always found Orwell's writing to be somewhat simple but effective. No, never really considered becoming a writer, I figure I need at least another couple big life moments before I can get started on my memoirs, like maybe getting abducted by aliens or something?

Hmm.

I'm not much of a fan of Makhno but honestly, if it came to it and I was there in 1918, I don't know that I wouldn't be on the side of the Makhnovists against the Red Army. I'm not clued up enough on the relationship between the Nabat Confederation and the Makhnovists to make an informed judgement. I do think the Bolsheviks were wrong to attack them, and I'm pretty sure Trotsky lied.

As to why... I don't know. I can't work out what the Bolsheviks thought they were doing at that stage. I do know that the revolution was degenerating and Lenin & Trotsky din't know what they were doing. A catastrophic calculated risk, perhaps?