The Anarchist Revolution
By Nestor Makhno
1.
ANARCHISM - a life of freedom and creative independence for humanity.
Anarchism does not depend on theory or programs, which try to grasp man's life in its entirety. It is a teaching, which is based on real life, which outgrows all artificial limitations, which cannot be constricted by any system. Anarchism's outward form is a free, non-governed society, which offers freedom, equality and solidarity for its members. Its foundations are to be found in man's sense of mutual responsibility, which has remained unchanged in all places and times. This sense of responsibility is capable of securing freedom and social justice for all men by its own unaided efforts. It is also the foun... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
From
the upcoming "No Gods, No Masters" edited by Daniel Guerin, to
be published by AK Press the summer of 1997
Anarchists Behind Bars (Summer 1921)
by Gaston Leval
Once I discovered that there were
so many of our comrades in prison, I arranged, together with the French
syndicalist delegates to make overtures to Dzerzhinsky, the People's Commissar
for the Interior, implicitly obedient to Lenin. Being wary of me, my fellow
delegates chose Joaquin Maurin to speak on behalf of the CNT delegation.
Maurin reported back on their first audience. At the sight of the list
of the prisoners whose release was being sought, Dzerzhinsky blanched,
then went red with fury, arguing that these men were counterrevolutionaries
in ca... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
GREAT OCTOBER IN THE UKRAINE
Nestor Makhno
The month of October 1917 is a great historical watershed in the Russian revolution. That watershed consists of the awakening of the toilers of town and country to their right to seize control of their own lives and their social and economic inheritance; the cultivation of the soil, the housing, the factories, the mines, transportation, and lastly the education which had hitherto been used to strip our ancestors of all these assets.
However, as we see it, it would be wide of the mark if we were to see all of the content of the Russian revolution encapsulated in October: in fact, the Russian revolution was hatched over the preceding months, a period during which the peasants in the coun... (From : NestorMakhno.info.)
From Correspondance de Michel Bakounine, published and prefaced by Michel Dragmanov, 1896, Paris, France, pages 121-124.
Letter from Bakunin to Herzen and Ogareff
October 3, 1861San Francisco
My dear friends,
I was able to escape Siberia and after having traveled for a long time on the Amour and through the coasts and straits of Tartarie, in crossing Japan, I have finally arrived in San Francisco. But during this trip my savings, very modest as they were, have been completely exhausted and if I had not stumbled across a generous man who willingly loaned me 250 dollars to take the train from New York, I would have found myself in a terrible predicament. You, my friends, are too far away, and in this particular city I know no ... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
Translators Introduction
The Ukrainian peasant anarchist Nestor Makhno
visited Moscow in June 1918 and was granted extensive interviews with the
Bolshevik leaders Sverdlov and Lenin. Many years later Makhno, an exile in
France, wrote his memoirs of the tumultuous years 1917-18. "My Visit to the
Kremlin" is a translation of the two chapters which deal with his
encounters with the Bolshevik titans. Excerpts from these interviews have been
quoted in various works in English but the full account was presented here for
the first time (1979). (i)
(This pamphlet was sent by us to a Moscow
publisher in 1992 and will appear in a re-translated edition in Russia for the
first time simultaneously with this new edition - 1993 note).
... (From : NestorMakhno.info.)
1. GREAT OCTOBER IN THE UKRAINE The month of October 1917 is a great historical watershed in the Russian revolution. That watershed consists of the awakening of the toilers of town and country to their right to seize control of their own lives and their social and economic inheritance; the cultivation of the soil, the housing, the factories, the mines, transportation, and lastly the education which had hitherto been used to strip our ancestors of all these assets. However, as we see it, it would be wide of the mark if we were to see all of the content of the Russian revolution encapsulated in October: in fact, the Russian revolution was hatched over the preceding months, a period during which the peasants in the countryside and the workers in the towns grasped the essential point. Indeed, the revolution of February 1917 came to be a symbol for the toilers of their economic and political liberation. However, they quickly noticed that the February revolution as it...
TO THE JEWS OF ALL COUNTRIES
Nestor Makhno
Jewish citizens! In my first "Appeal to Jews", published in the French libertarian newspaper,
Le Libertaire, I asked Jews in general, which is to say the bourgeois and the socialist ones as well as the 'anarchist' ones like Yanovsky, who have all spoken of me as a pogromist against Jews and labeled as anti-Semitic the liberation movement of the Ukrainian peasants and workers of which I was the leader, to detail to me the specific facts instead of blathering vacuously away: just where and just when did I or the aforementioned movement perpetrate such acts?
I had expected that Jews in general would answer my "Appeal" after the manner of people eager to disclose to the civilized world t... (From : NestorMakhno.info.)
Part III. After October Chapter 1. The Bolsheviks in Power; Differences Between the Bolsheviks and the Anarchists Struggle between the two concepts of the Social-Revolution — the statist-centralist and the libertarian-federalist ideas -was unequal in the Russia of 1917. The statist conception won, and the Bolshevik government took over the vacant throne. Lenin was its undisputed leader. And to him and his party fell the task of liquidating the war, facing up to all the problems of the Revolution, and leading it onto the course of the real Social Revolution. Having the upper hand, the political idea was going to prove itself. We shall see how it did this. The new Bolshevik regime was in fact a government of intellectuals, of Marxist doctrinaires. Installed in power, claiming to represent the workers, and to be the only group that knew the correct way to lead them to Socialism, they expected to govern, above ...
Chapter 2. Kronstadt Before the Revolution The Baltic Fleet and the Kronstadt garrison played a role of the very first importance in the Russian Revolution. Many factors contributed to this. Tn the first place, the sailors were recruited for the most part from the working class, from whom the navy naturally picked the best-qualified, most literate and alert recruits. But workers of this kind were also the most advanced politically. Frequently, before going to serve in the navy, they had been budding revolutionaries, sometimes even active militants, and inevitably, in spite of discipline and supervision, they wielded a strong influence over their shipmates. Moreover, since the sailors often visited foreign countries in the line of their duty, they were in a good position to compare the relatively free regimes of these lands with that of Czarist Russia. Better than any other section of the people, including the army, they assimilate...
Alexander Berkman died 61 years ago on June 28th, 1936.
We enclose here his editorial for the first issue of The Blast published in San Francisco
on 15th January 1916.
Why The Blast?
Do you mean to destroy?
Do you mean to build?
These are questions we have been asked from any quarters, by inquirers sympathetic and
otherwise.
Our reply is frank and bold:
We mean both: to destroy and to build.
For, socially speaking, Destruction is the beginning of
Construction.
Superficial minds speak sneeringly of destruction. O, it is
easy to destroy -they say- but to build, to build, that’s the important work.
Its nonsense. No structure, social or otherwise, can endure
if bui... (From : Kate Sharpley Library.)