I added to these messages a directive received by the Gulyai-Pole Public Committee from the Government Uyezd Commissar which demanded the removal of N. Makhno from any organizing activities in Gulyai-Pole: he was, it seems, to be brought to trial in connection with the disarming of the pomeshchiks and kulaks.
After listening to these messages, the Congress convoked the executive of the Gulyai-Pole Public Committee and asked them to participate in critiquing these missives, in particular the demand of the commissar that I be relieved of any organizing duties.
After a storm of indignation directed at the Government commissar and the Government agents who were roaming the countryside, the Congress passed the following resolution:
“The Gulyai-Pole Congress of Soviets, as well as the Gulyai-Pole Soviet itself, do not recognize, either for themselves or for the toilers who have invested them with full powers, any sanctions, either of the Government Commissar, or the Public Committee of Aleksandrovsk; and the anarchist Makhno they consider above all their friend and mentor in revolutionary and organizing activities.
The former Gulyai-Pole Peasants’ Union sent the anarchist N. Makhno and six other members to the Gulyai-Pole Public Committee to exercise firm control over its work. After the reorganization of the Union into the Peasants’ Soviet, these appointments were confirmed. This Congress also supports these appointments and protests against the impertinent interference of the Uyezd Public Committee and the Government Commissar in local working class affairs.”
This resolution (Book No. 2 in the minutes of the Congress) I sent off to the government commissar Citizen B. K. Mikhno. However this was not the end of the matter. The Anarchist Communist Group asked the Congress for a recess of two hours during the last sitting of the Congress, after which the Group intended to make a very important report about the current state of affairs. The Congress in fact recessed for three hours, during which the delegates engaged in many private conversations. Meanwhile the members of our Group held a meeting at which myself and Comrade Antonov were charged with presenting a report to the Congress about “the counter-revolution in Aleksandrovsk and its uyezd”. The Congress session resumed. The report was presented.
I find it inappropriate to recount here the ideas contained in the report, but I wish fervently that those who dismiss the peasants without knowing them could be present at such a meeting where reports are given on behalf of our anarchist groups of peasants and workers. The reaction of the peasants to these reports is quite instructive and gives a good sense of their psychology. Those peasant toilers require no external advice or authorization when it comes to arranging their own independence and their own productive activities in the revolutionary process. It is for us to go to the peasants humbly and try to understand them.
After hearing the report of our Group, the Congress passed the following resolution:
“The Congress of Toilers of Gulyai-Pole Raion charges the Gulyai-Pole Soviet of Peasants’ and Workers Deputies appoints two representatives from the Gulyai-Pole Anarchist Communist Group, Comrades N. Makhno and V. Antonov. These representatives, provided with appropriate official documentation, are charged with meeting with the factory and dock workers of Aleksandrovsk with the aim of finding out their real views on the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies elected by them in Aleksandrovsk. We, the peasants, need to have a clear understanding of the position of the city workers in relation to Executive Committee of their own Soviet, which is spreading the counter-revolution throughout the rural areas of the uyezd.
It is only in this way that we, the revolutionary peasantry, can correctly evaluate the relative strengths of the revolutionary forces and the forces of our enemies.”
(From the minutes of the Congress of Toilers in Gulyai-Pole, September 1917).
The Congress then discussed some other questions of current importance and charged the Gulyai-Pole Soviet with publishing all its resolutions and distributing them to all the local Soviets. This ended the work of the Congress.
This attitude on the part of the revolutionary peasants towards the parasitic land barons, an attitude observed by us, the peasant-anarchists, for a duration of six months and confirmed in clear-cut fashion by the September Congress, still more consolidated the strength of our Group in the raion.
Henceforth the Anarchist Communist Group attracted more and more attention from all the Soviets and even the Public Committees. But this result was not achieved without growing pains. We expended a lot of effort in order to overcome, internally, resistance to the principle of a well-ordered organization. Our situation in the oppressed villages became firmly established only when the Group had set up a strong organization and when each move of its active members was made with the knowledge of the membership of the group as a whole. Our assignments were as follows:
Soviet of Workers’ and Peasants’ Deputies: V. Antonov, Sokruta, and Kalinichenko.
Workshop Committees: Petrovsky, Seregin, Mironov, G. Sharovsky, and L. Shnayder.
Soviet of the Union of Metal and Carpentry Workers and their Health Insurance Fund: N. Makhno, Seregin, Antonov.
Peasants’ Soviet and the Land Committee: A. Marchenko, A. Semenyuta, Prokofii Sharovksy, F. Krat, Isidor Lyuty, Pavel Korostelev, the brothers Makhno, Stepan Shepel, and Grigori Sereda.
In this way our group was unified around the goal of bringing our ideas to life. Each of us understood this and conscientiously took responsibility for their own work.
At the same time our group was drawn closer to the mass of toilers and was enabled to acquaint the toilers with the ideas of anarchism in the social sense of the term and of the need for vigilance with respect to the activities of the Provisional Government and the Ukrainian Central Rada and its Secretariat at a time when these bodies were most detrimental to the practical goals of the Revolution.
The toilers of the raion declared openly to all and sundry that they were keeping a close eye on their oppressors and were prepared to take up arms against them.
From the end of August 1917 all the Public Committees of the raion began to protest against various government orders they had received. These protests were first discussed at local meetings. Then delegates were sent to Gulyai-Pole to consult with our group, and after this a final decision was arrived at.
However, in spite of the obvious revolutionary consciousness of the toilers, a consciousness which opened the way to full spiritual and material freedom and independence from authority, a freedom which the toilers strived to acquire at whatever cost, with their own blood if necessary, a freedom which they wished to feel in themselves and around themselves thereby realizing a society without authority — in spite of this consciousness so strongly displayed by the toilers — the principle of the abolition of private property in land, factories, and workshops proclaimed by the Gulyai-Pole Committee for the Defence of the Revolution and confirmed by the Raion Congress of Toilers could not be fully realized in practice.
The Provisional Government, backed by Kerensky’s allies (the Right S-Rs and the Mensheviks) and controlling the local state apparatus and the troops (which kept apart from the toilers of Gulyai-Pole raion and knew nothing of their goals), ended up having the upper hand. The Government impeded the revolutionary impulse of the toilers who, with their demands for full liberty, had gone well beyond the programs of these political parties. The Government would not allow this healthy initiative to be brought to fruition.