He was convinced that I would get in trouble for arresting him. But I told him that he had been arrested in order to clarify from whom he had received the anonymous letters about a society in Gulyai-Pole and its raion which had money available for funding the organization of troops for the Central Rada. Vulfovich stopped his swaggering; in fact, he entirely caved in and told us everything. He said he received the letters an hour before the meeting from Citizen Althausen, owner of a hotel in Gulyai-Pole and the uncle of Naum Althausen, a provocateur well known to our group.
Citizen Althausen was also arrested right away. I explained to him the reason for his arrest and said that, along with Vulfovich, he would be remanded by the Soviet to a tribunal of the General Assembly of Peasants and Workers of Gulyai-Pole.
Citizen Althausen realized that this matter was taking a serious turn. The General Assembly would demand to know the details of the existence in the raion of a secret funder of the Central Rada. He preferred to tell the truth right away.
“The Jewish community in Gulyai-Pole,” he said, “are afraid of the Ukrainian nationalists. That’s why they decided to take the initiative to seek them out and offer them financial support. Then in the event of their triumph they would know that the Jews supported an independent Ukraine and those who struggled for it.”
He added: “You realize, Citizen Makhno, there’s nothing going on here that could harm the Revolution. The only loss would be to our Society because it would be paying this money out of its own pocket.” And he pointed at his left pocket.
The comrade members of the Soviet of Peasants’ and Workers’ Deputies, hearing that Gulyai-Pole was in an uproar, hurried to join us. They were outraged by the conduct of the Jewish community and demanded the arrest and interrogation of all its leaders with the aim of finding out the truth about their odious behaviour in relation to the freedom of Gulyai-Pole.
Realizing the hatred that the knowledge of this act of the Jews would provoke among the non-Jewish population of Gulyai-Pole, I tried to keep the lid on things. I advised that we limit ourselves to interrogating Althausen and then make a detailed report to the General Assembly. We would ask that the whole Jewish community not be held responsible for the acts of a few.
The comrades from the Soviet agreed with me and trusted my judgement in this matter. Citizens Vulfovich and Althausen were immediately released.
Anyone who aspires to write an authentic history of Gulyai-Pole would need to have been present at that General Assembly of Peasants and Workers. The insurgency in Gulyai-Pole and its raion was unique in the annals of the Revolution, an uprising which, taking birth among the oppressed peasants, was sustained by all the toilers of the raion. When external forces tried to suppress it, the Revolution in Gulyai-Pole exploded into a colossal movement which, alas, never reached its full development. It would be necessary to be present, I say, to be convinced of the seriousness and the extreme care with which the toilers approached a question which in other places in Ukraine would have given rise to beatings and killings of poor Jews, the innocent victims throughout Russian and Ukrainian history who have not enjoyed peace up to this time.
Certainly I had something to do with the way things were handled, but I made no attempt to diminish the significance of the problem and laid out all the evidence before the assembly. The assembly decided to leave matters to the conscience of the Jewish community. But it issued a stern warning to the leaders of that community that a repetition of actions inimical to the freedom of Gulyai-Pole would be answered in a different way. They would then be dragged before a revolutionary tribunal.
And thus the issue was settled. The right of Jews to participate in meetings of the Soviets, to take part in the debates and decisions, was not abrogated in any way. We acknowledged the right of each person, without distinction, to freely express their opinion, provided they accepted and respected the right to destroy all that was harmful to the development of social Revolution, because the new Society which was struggling to be born demanded great sacrifices and prodigious efforts from our collective, creative forces.
Up to this time in Gulyai-Pole and its raion there existed a territorial unit known as the “zemstvo”. But this term was no longer used because the Soviet had taken over all the social functions and, with the approval of the General Assembly of peasants, set up a Revkom charged with organizing and training our revolutionary armed forces.
The following were invited to belong to the Revkom: the Anarchist Communist Group, the SRs (there were a few of them in the raion), and the Ukrainian SRs grouped around the “Prosvit” movement (having as leader the agronomist Dmitrenko). As for the Bolsheviks, there just weren’t any of them.
The formation of the Revkom was the result of tactical considerations by the Soviet which were endorsed by the Anarchist Communist Group. The Revkom, as an independent revolutionary entity authorized by the triumphant Left Bloc, would allow us to do a better job organizing the peasantry.
Our strength at that time did not allow us to address the needs of urban workers and indeed we still cherished vain illusions about our anarchist comrades in the cities. They existed in a vacuum without any connection with the revolutionary course of events and engaged in sterile discussions, totally useless for our work.
In setting up the Revkom, the Soviet was faced with the question: which member should be entrusted with the ideological direction of the Revkom? The Soviet wanted to have an anarchist in this position and appointed me although I by no means pursued the job. I knew that no matter where I ended up, the Revkom would follow the line of the Anarchist Communist Group, studied and refined by the Soviet and the Revkom and supported by the population.
As a result of prolonged discussion, the leadership of the Revkom, constituted as a military-revolutionary body, was entrusted to me. This position demanded initiative and decisive action.
After my departure from the Soviet there was a move to install Maxim Shramko as the new chairperson. A non-party worker-sailor, he was former head of the zemstvo, a post which I had categorically refused. (I even left Gulyai-Pole temporarily when they were electing the zemstvo head in order to avoid listening to the arguments of the peasants trying to persuade me to run for this position.) But Shramko, after I had gone to the front in Aleksandrovsk, gathered a band of marauders and led them to the Kosovtze-Tkhomirov estate (about two kilometres from Gulyai-Pole) which, on my initiative, had been converted to an orphanage. He tore apart the valuable library (only half the books were ever salvaged) and removed the window frames. By doing this he discredited himself in the eyes of the peasants who had previously held him in high esteem. He was not entrusted with the chair of the Soviet and instead was given the task of making an inventory of equipment and livestock available on the estates of the pomeshchiks in preparation for the redistribution planned for the spring.
The chair of the Soviet was awarded to the Comrade Luc Korostilev, an active member of our group before the Revolution, now only a fellow traveller.
The Anarchist Communist Group asked that the functions of the Revkom be clearly defined. The Revkom declared publicly that its main task was the revolutionary organization of the toilers in order to unite all of them in the struggle to maintain the development and triumph of the Revolution. The Revkom recognized that the Revolution was under attack from all sides by enemies which were trying to reduce the toilers to a passive instrument in the hands of political parties struggling to seize power.