Such an attitude on the part of the toilers towards “rights” and towards the authority of their oppressors and enemies of the Revolution, enemies of everything healthy and creative in it, raised a terrible stir in the ranks of the ruling stratum. The zealous supporters of the idea of coalition with the bourgeoisie against the Revolution began to sound the alarm. However, in spite of the fury and rage they displayed at meetings of the Communal Committees and other local meetings, and in spite of all the actions taken by them with the help of the central authorities to undermine the position taken by the toilers of Gulyai-Pole raion towards them and the power of their government, and in spite of, finally, all the foul tales spread everywhere, either orally or in print, attacking the toilers of the raion in general and the Anarchist Communist Group in particular, all their efforts came to nought.
The real actions of the authorities in general, including the authorities who called themselves revolutionary, collided with the real demands of the Revolution. These actions stalled the course of the Revolution and encouraged the growth of the Counter-Revolution, which, in the repulsive form of the Kornilov movement, starkly confronted the toiling masses.
The toilers of Gulyai-Pole raion, having observed these facts during long months, now recognized that only the anarchist conception of the Revolution was capable of saving the Revolution and carrying it through to fulfilment. That’s why, every time the uyezd Public Committee and the uyezd Government Commissar requested from Gulyai-Pole weekly reports about the development of revolutionary-social life in the raion, and also the remittance of taxes to be used to spread the propaganda of the Provisional Government, they received the answer that through the Committee for the Defence of the Revolution the whole bourgeois element in the raion had been disarmed and all rights to private property in land, factories, workshops, and other enterprises of the raion had been declared null and void. “Everything must belong to everyone, and not to some clique of idle parasites”… (from the Minutes No. 3, Book 2, Committee for the Defence of the Revolution in Gulyai-Pole, 1917).
Chapter 13
Struggle with the Counter-Revolution. Going to the Villages
Thus the bourgeoisie was disarmed and its weapons were distributed among the revolutionary peasants. The disarmament took place without any blood being spilled.
A Congress of Raion Soviets was convened with the purpose of examining the causes and goals of General Kornilov’s movement.
The Congress welcomed the election by the Gulyai-Pole Soviet and other organizations of the “Committee for the Defence of the Revolution”, as well as all its actions up to the time the Congress was convened. The Congress expressed the conviction that the time for such actions had arrived.
Reviewing the Kornilov attack on Petrograd, which had already been suppressed, the Congress once more emphasized that it considered the dismantling of the External Front a crime because this Front was necessary to defend the Revolution against the exterior enemy. The Congress encouraged all toilers to root out the Kornilov movement in their midst.
The Congress dealt with some other questions, approved the declaration of the abolition of private property in our raion, and discussed the agrarian question.
The Anarchist Communist Group proposed to the Congress to make its own report on the agrarian question. This report was presented by Comrades Krat and Andrei Semenyuta. It was concerned mainly with practical measures for liquidating the rights of the pomeshchiks and kulaks to ownership of land, especially fabulously large estates which they couldn’t possibly work with their own hands. The Group proposed to immediately expropriate the land and to convert the estates into free agrarian communes. The pomeshchiks and kulaks were to be given an opportunity to be part of these communes. But if they refused to become members of the family of free toilers and wished to work individually for themselves, then they would be assigned a portion of the people’s wealth appropriate for their labour power. In this way they would have the means of making a living while working separately from the free agrarian communes of the rest of the toilers.
The Congress summoned representatives of the Gulyai-Pole Land Committee and asked them to make a report explaining what this Committee had been doing about the land question. Comrade Krat was a member of the Land Committee. With the approval of the other Committee members he reported what had been undertaken by the Committee in this field, emphasizing that the Committee was in accord with the position just set forth by the Anarchist Communist Group. He noted that this position had been placed on the agenda of the Raion Congress of Land Committees by the Gulyai-Pole representatives and that this Congress had adopted it as the basis for arriving at a solution of the land question.
The Congress of Soviets, with the full participation (as I have already mentioned) of the Soviet of the Trade Union, the Land Committee, and the Anarchist Communist Group, discussed these two reports with full awareness of its revolutionary duty towards the oppressed toilers, who had only just decided to rid themselves of their oppressors by revolutionary means. The resolution passed by the Congress on this question reads:
“The Gulyai-Pole Raion Congress of Toilers firmly condemns the pretensions of the Provisional Government in Petrograd and the Ukrainian Central Rada in Kiev to direct the life of the toilers and invites the local soviets and the whole organized proletarian population to ignore any orders of these governments.
The people must be in charge of their own lives. The time has finally come to realize this age-old dream. From now on, all the land, the factories, and the workshops must belong to the toilers.
The labouring peasantry must be masters of the land, and the workers must be masters of the factories and workshops.
Before the peasants stands the task — to expel all the pomeshchiks and kulaks who don’t want to contribute their own labour from their estates and organize free agrarian communes on these estates, communes composed of volunteer peasants and workers. The Congress recognizes that the initiator of this approach is the Anarchist Communist Group and charges the Group with carrying it through.
The Congress hopes that the local Soviets and Land Committees will provide the Group with all the technical means at their disposal for the carrying through of this project.”
Then the Congress expressed its conviction that the consolidation of the conquests of the Revolution by the toilers, in the face of the opposition of their enemies, would immediately lead to, not just in our raion but in the whole of Ukraine and Russia, the total expropriation of all collective enterprises so that the labouring population could enjoy the fruits of their labour instead of the bourgeoisie and the State.
As the Congress was winding down, the Committee for the Defence of the Revolution received a bunch of telephonograms from a whole series of raions which had been loyal to the authorities in Aleksandrovsk. These messages said agents of the Aleksandrovsk Uyezd Public Committee, the Uyezd Soviet, and the government commissar had been trolling the villages and countryside, holding meetings and urging the peasants to boycott the Congress of Soviets in Gulyai-Pole. The reason given was that the Congress was deciding questions which no one had the right to decide before the Constituent Assembly convened… They declared that the Congress in Gulyai-Pole, although passing itself off as a peasant congress, was actually making decisions that would harm the peasants… That the leaders of the Congress were sworn enemies of the peasants who did not understand the laws of the Revolution which is why they had repudiated the Provisional “Revolutionary” Government (with Kerensky at the top) and the Constituent Assembly (the supreme revolutionary tribunal)…