One of the most difficult questions that has been approached within Anarchist circles has been around the context of how best to go about creating radical social change for ourselves and our communities. A variety of responses have been created in response to this question, with no lack of their own unique interpretations of what constitutes “revolution” and if, at all, society can be moved in a direction away from the authoritarianism of state and Capitalistic hierarchies in favor of a more non-authoritarian, autonomous and freely associative society.

In the book “Out of the mountains: the coming age of the urban guerrilla” by David Kilcullen, the theory of “competitive control” acts as one of the major themes discussed through out the book:

“In irregular conflicts (that is, in conflicts where at least one combatant is a non-state armed group), the local armed actor that a given population perceives as best able to establish a predictable, consistent, wide-spectrum normative system of control is most likely to dominate that population and its residential area.”1

This wide-spectrum is perpetuated by the non-state armed group via a variety of approaches based in different administrative, persuasive and coercive methods. The purpose of this is to create a normative system that is capable of perpetuating a consistent, stable and predictable environment that is also capable of out competing other armed groups.

It is under this framework that I wish to analyze Anarchist theory, particularly in an Anarchistic attempt at creating a system of competitive control. I am of the opinion that by dissecting previous attempts we allow ourselves the option to reflect on their achievements, mistakes and possible areas of improvement. I feel this is important in that by being actively critical of our past we may begin to find ways in which to move forward towards our own methods of struggle, while also increasing our chances of avoiding the missteps of previous actors.

Our case study in this case shall be the Anarchist Free Territory that existed from 1918-1921. The Free Territory was an attempt at organizing Ukraine along Anarchist-Communist principles, particularly by organizing workers and peasants councils in towns across Ukraine. In defense of the free Territory was the Black Army or the Insurrectionary army of Ukraine, which existed under the leadership of Anarchist Nestor Makhno.

Administration

On the administrative end of the spectrum, the Ukrainian Anarchists are unique in their approach. This owing to the fact that, as opposed to implementing a top-down administrative system as the Bolsheviks and Whites were attempting to, were encouraging peasants and workers to organize themselves within their villages in a more autonomous and freely associative way.

Peter Arshinov, in writing about the practices of the Black Army upon taking a city, reveals the sort of approach that the Ukrainian Anarchists deferred to when organizing towns and villages:

“As soon as they entered a city, they declared that they did not represent any kind of authority, that their armed forces obliged no one to any sort of obligation and had no other aim than to protect the freedom of the working people. The freedom of the peasants and the workers, said the Makhnovists, resides in the peasants and workers themselves and may not be restricted. In all fields of their lives it is up to the workers and peasants themselves to construct whatever they consider necessary. As for the Makhnovists — they can only assist them with advice, by putting at their disposal the intellectual or military forces they need, but under no circumstances can the Makhnovists prescribe for them in any manner.” 2

What is important to note is the idea of not taking power upon entering cities and towns. While the Black Army did take upon itself the objective of fighting off authoritarian groups that may wish to conquer the area, they ultimately left it up to the local populations to decide in what manner to organize themselves, only getting involved at the request of the population itself. This approach was due to the very nature of the Anarchistic theory which the Black Army and by extension other organized Anarchist groups in the region prescribed to, that being the liberation of all workers and peasants from authoritarian forces in favor of a society based in freely associative principles and autonomous organizational structures built from the bottom up by the peasants and workers themselves.

These structures took the form of organizational methods such as worker and peasant communes, local soviets (Which simply means “council”), as well as regional congresses comprised of delegated workers, peasants and insurgents. These organizational approaches took the problem of administration on by directly allowing those within their given community to create a situation in which they themselves are in control, a system in which the population itself intrinsically creates its own normative system of control that is capable of producing a predictable, stable environment of its own accord, enforced not by an externalized entity, but by the initiative of the local population itself. Makhno, when speaking about the organization of agricultural communes, specifically noted the self organized nature of the communes:

“…were in most cases organised by peasants, though sometimes their composition was a mixture of peasants and workmen [sic!]. Their organisation was based on equality and solidarity of the members. All members of these communes — both men and women — applied themselves willingly to their tasks, whether in the field or the household.” 3

Free association was not ignored within the context of the Free Territory. An example of this is that people were not required to eat collectively with the others in the commune. If they wished, they were free to take their portion of food home to cook and eat in privacy. Makhno, speaking on the subject stated:

“any members of the commune who wanted to cook separately for themselves and their children, or to take food from the communal kitchens and eat it in their own quarters, met with no objection from the other members.”

Suffice It to say, the actual administrative capacity of the Free Territory fell to the actual peasants and workers that lived in the villages and towns themselves. The Black Army only acted with the purpose of suppressing authoritarian forces from gaining territory within the area. By suppressing these forces, the Black Army were able to allow those regions within the territory the breathing room they needed to begin created the self-administrative structures that were vital to the Anarchist vision of society that the Black Army was attempting to protect.

Persuasion

Why did Ukrainian peasants and workers choose to organize themselves along Anarchist principles? A number of factors play into this sort of question, not least of all the brutal Feudalistic conditions under which the working population of Ukraine and by extension Russia, faced. Of course the ability of the Black Guards to suppress and counter-act invading imperial forces such as the Czarist Whites and the Bolshevik Red Army gave a certain degree of confidence to Ukrainian peasants and workers, but it was hardly the only factor that contributed to the alignment of these populations to Anarchist thought and action. Active and written propaganda played an important role in persuading local populations to fight and create autonomous, self-organized structures, as well as in convincing them in the necessity of opposing the armed forces of the White and Red armies that threatened their existence.

In discussing his return to the village of Gulyai-Pole and meeting with old and new comrades, Nestor Makhno briefly describes the context under which leaflets were created and distributed:

“Together with these comrades came a younger bunch who had not yet joined the group in my time. But now they had been members for two or three years and were busy reading anarchist literature which they distributed to the peasants. Throughout the whole period of underground activity the group had continued to publish leaflets, printed by hectograph. ”4

Throughout the war, numerous leaflets were created with the aim of spreading Anarchist ideals and to declare the position of the Black Army. In them contained the why and how the Black Army planned on implementing their vision of an Anarchist society. In the “Declaration of the revolutionary army of the Ukraine”5 a basic outline for action was written that peasants and workers were asked to take upon themselves, as well as under what manner they were to organize their social structures.

Direct action on the part of the peasants and workers was at the basis of the Ukrainian Anarchists propaganda campaign. It contained the very essence under which they saw the most living elements of Anarchist theory, that being the power that people have when they take active control of their lives and situation. This is often why the Ukrainian Anarchists differed to letting peasants and workers organize themselves, as opposed to organizing them in a top-down manner which would ultimately denigrate the self-organizing capabilities that were crucial to an Anarchistic society. Stated in their declaration :

“It is being proposed that all peasant and worker organizations start the construction of free worker-peasant Soviets. Only labourers who are contributing work necessary to the social economy should participate in the Soviets. Representatives of political organizations have no place in worker-peasant Soviets, since their participation in a workers’ soviet will transform the latter into deputies of the party and can lead to the downfall of the soviet system.”

So self organization in and of itself was seen as an important tool of propaganda among the Ukrainian Anarchists. To them, the most powerful persuasive argument in favor of Anarchism was the ability of the peasants and workers to organize themselves and their communities autonomously. By doing so, they became empowered and saw less of a need for the restrictions of top-down administration, Instead favoring their own autonomous systems of self-administration.

Coercion

While the goal of the Ukrainian Anarchists was to persuade the local peasant and worker populations of the different towns and villages in Ukraine to organize themselves along lines of self-administration, the actual survival of these efforts came down to the coercive abilities of the Anarchists to combat the forces of the White and Red armies, as well as the number of other imperialistic armies that were invading at the time.

At the forefront of this combat initiative was the Black Army under the command of Nestor Makhno. The army itself was organized under the principle of self-administration and voluntary enlistment of combatants. All officers and positions of command were elected by the combatants themselves in order to preserve the democratic nature of the army and assure that combatants follow someone that they trusted.

The purpose of a self-administrated army allowed peasant and workers to rise to form their own defenses, allowing them to take the initiative of defense away from an external actor such as the Red or White armies and placed it in the hands of the peasants and workers themselves. This allowed not only for the reinforcement of Anarchist ideals to those participating, but it allowed them the ability to actively enforce them.

When it came to actively taking ground, as well as removing local hostile forces that risk impeding Anarchist organizational efforts, the Black Army acted as an important coercive element in preventing aggressive reactions and attempts at taking these newly liberated regions. Without the threat of force, the Anarchists may have very well been crushed much earlier on, had they not been willing to organize themselves in a manner that allowed them to actively defend themselves.

Failures

Eventually, the Free Territory and all subsequent Anarchist experiments in the region would come to an end. Lasting about four years, the Free Territory fell under Bolshevik pressure, both due to extensive propaganda campaigns and military might on the part of the Red Army. Their failures are important to understand, if we are to learn from them and what mistakes to avoid making ourselves in the future.

One of the problems that the Ukrainian Anarchists faced was that the regions and areas that they were familiar with were largely rural, peasant villages with little industry on their own. While the Anarchists did have success in organizing a number of these villages, when it came to larger towns and cities, the predominantly rural Anarchists were at a disadvantage:

“As a rule the Makhnovist rank and file had little or no experience of life in the cities and this placed severe limits on their ability to understand the specific problems of the workers there. In addition, the cities did not have a large anarchist movement, meaning that the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks had more support then they did. Both parties were, at best, neutral to the Makhnovists and anarchists, so making it likely that they would influence the city workers against the movement. As Voline noted, the “absence of a vigorous organised workers’ movement which could support the peasant insurgents” was a disadvantage. ”6

Lacking the ability to organize effectively in the large cities, the Anarchists simply lacked a lot of the industry that allowed for easier production of propaganda and weapons on the part of the Bolsheviks. Unable to properly produce their own munitions, the Black Army itself largely benefited from raiding supplies from the Red and White armies. However, this was not enough when it came to what was necessary to defending themselves and their territory. The Black Army was simply out gunned.

Another issue the Anarchists faced was the tendency to ally themselves with the Bolshevik forces, due to a need for munitions and armaments that they were severely lacking in their front against the White Army. These alliances usually ended in the betrayal of the Black Army, with them acting on behalf of the Bolsheviks only to have their own forces eventually dismantled by the very people they thought were their allies.

These two factors, a lack of industry and too trusting an attitude towards the Bolsheviks, ultimately caused the Anarchist experiment of the Free Territory to fall under the pressure of the Red Army and its Bolshevik leaders. Lacking the ability to produce their own weapons, as well as giving credence to the Bolsheviks through their alliances, severely undermined the Anarchists ability to build structures of self organization and administration. In other words, the Anarchists inability to create a proper system of competitive control that was capable of challenging that of the Bolsheviks resulted in the Bolsheviks out competing the Anarchists.

Looking forward

If there is one thing I can take away from the history of the Ukrainian Anarchists it is the extreme importance that our own power must play in our liberation. We cannot make the mistakes that our predecessors made and allow ourselves to trust others when it should be our own power that we must trust. We must learn to organizes ourselves based in the very principles we expound. We must be willing to take full advantage of the technological advancements that we have in our modern society. The internet has allowed for even the most unknown of us to spread our thoughts, feelings and actions to the world. To not take advantage of this would be foolish. Most importantly of all, we must be willing to defend what we attempt to build, as there will always be those who seek to abolish our progress.

If we, as Anarchists, do seek to act upon our own autonomy, free from any sort of unjustified or coercive authorities, then we must be willing to understand the full task ahead of us. We must take full advantage of all the tools at our disposal. We must be willing to create a wide spread normative system that is capable of out competing other systems of control. If we are unwilling to act upon every facet at our disposal, from creating self-administrative bodies, to using the inter-communicative power of the internet, as well as an open willingness to violently defend ourselves, we can never hope to see any change in our world. It is not enough simply to talk. We must also be willing to take action.

1pg.126 of “Out of the Mountains: The coming age of the Urban Guerrilla” by David Kilcullen