Comrades, none of us here will deny that among the toiling peasants the desire for independence and freedom from economic and political slavery has grown and grown. And who helped the peasants to develop in this way? Why the Revolution itself and the persistent, hard-working members of the Anarchist Communist Group of which I am a member.
What the results will be of this raised consciousness among the peasants it’s hard to say at the moment, since we have so many enemies and so very few friends. And our friends aren’t even where we need them. They are holed up in the cities and show themselves occasionally.
I’m referring to the anarchists. They and only they do not want the oppressed countryside to remain oppressed by the urban authorities. But they make little effort to help the oppressed peasants compared to what they could be doing. There are reasons for this, it’s true, but it’s difficult to explain and hardly worth the effort. Nevertheless the anarchists are always with us in spirit!”
[My speech was interrupted by applause and cries of “Long live anarchism! Long live the anarchists — our friends!”]
Calm yourselves, friends, I’m getting to the main point. The main point is that we must arm ourselves, we must arm the whole population so that the Revolution will have a powerful army so we can begin to build the New Society ourselves, with our own means, with our own reason, our own work, and our own will.
The toilers of this raion have, since the autumn of 1917, begun this task but now find themselves menaced by the black forces of reaction: the authority, on the one hand, of the Bolsheviks and the Left SRs; on the other hand, the Ukrainian Central Rada. The Central Rada, I’m reliably informed, has formed an alliance with the rulers of Austria and Germany and with their help will deliver, under the banner of saving ‘Mother Ukraine’, death to all the wonderful revolutionary gains made by the Ukrainian toilers.
Arming the whole population is feasible only if the population recognizes its necessity. During the past week, I have received here at the Revkom, and the secretary of the AK Group has received at his office, many representatives of the peasants from all over the raion who have spoken with one voice about the necessity of arming of the people.
But this isn’t enough: we must go out to the peasant assemblies and hear the same will expressed there. Then we must discuss with the peasants how we can realize this goal with the best results. So now we need to send out propagandists everywhere. We’ll have to interrupt the peasants’ preparations for spring sowing so we can borrow wagons and horses. Or we can rent conveyances. Either way we must pay for them. So we need money.
We don’t have any money, but our enemies do — right here in Gulyai-Pole in the homes of the pomeshchiks and merchants. Their bank is almost next door!
I must say to you, nevertheless, comrades, that the bank vault is empty. All the cash is in the State Bank in Aleksandrovsk. But we can still have it. It’s a matter of accepting my proposition.
The whole time the Revolution has been going on, the Credit Bank in Gulyai-Pole has been speculating and pillaging at the expense of labour. Truly, it should have been expropriated long ago and its assets transferred to a common fund for the toilers. Neither the Coalition Government of Kerensky nor the Bolshevik-Left-SR government have done so and they have prevented the revolutionary people from doing so. That’s why I propose that the Gulyai-Pole Raion Revkom resolve to disregard the Left Bloc government and demand that the directors of the bank hand over to the Revkom 250,000 roubles to be used for revolutionary goals and that they do so within 24 hours.”
This resolution was passed unanimously.
The next day I went to the bank and informed the directors about this resolution. They asked the Revkom to extend the time limit to three days. Then they called a general meeting of their depositors at which the SD Zbar was the Revkom’s representative. With his encouragement, the depositors signed cheques proportional to the size of their deposits in the bank. As for those depositors who didn’t show up at the bank meeting, they received visits from an agent of the bank accompanied by a member of the Revkom. In the course of four days all the cheques were collected and on the fifth day a member of the Revkom empowered by the bank travelled to Aleksandrovsk and received the correct sum of money.
The toilers of Gulyai-Pole thus assured the success of the first stages of the Revolution by acquiring the pecuniary means for revolutionary propaganda and the organizing of Labour against Capital and State Power.
Part of the money was put at the disposal of the Soviet for social needs. A second portion was, on my initiative, set aside for founding and maintaining an orphanage for children who had lost their parents as a result of war. A third part, the largest, was turned over to the Revkom. Half of this sum was made available for the temporary use of the Provisioning Section of the Soviet. This section, created by the Soviet and approved by the General Assembly of peasants and workers, was directed by Comrade Seregin from the Anarchist Communist Group. The function of this section was to provide the population with necessary goods of consumption. It was so successful at this that it soon attracted the envy of the central authorities who began to place obstacles in its way.
Chapter 25
How the Exchange of Goods Between City and Village Was Organized and How We Struggled to Make It Work
From the beginning of its work in organizing the peasants, the Anarchist Communist Group had insisted on the necessity of carrying on this work in an anarchist manner. We needed to apply anarchist principles consistently in a various contexts.
At first our tactics aroused protests from some members of the Group. Although entirely devoted to the cause, they were used to the old ways: negation of organization, of unity of action, of the possibility of remaining anarchists while applying its principles under a regime that was not anarchist, not even truly socialist. I was often told: “Comrade Nestor, apparently in prison you became imbued with statist ways of getting things done and now you are carried away with doing things that way and this will lead to a split in our group.” In particular, this thought was often and sharply expressed to me by Comrade Moise Kalinichenko, my old friend who had been a member of our group from 1907, a self-educated worker who was ideologically rock-solid.
Nevertheless, everything I proposed was accepted by the group and put into practice among the peasants during 1917 with the greatest success. Indeed, the peasants listened to us with an attentiveness and confidence which they did not extend to any other social or political group. The peasants followed the guidance of our group in the following areas: the land question, the negation of authority over their own lives, and the struggle against oppression no matter what the source. This showed the way for our comrades: to not separate oneself from the masses but to dissolve oneself among them while remaining true to one’s ideals, and then to struggle forward despite all the obstacles which the politicos put in the way and which held back the movement.
Thus the members of our group became accustomed to the principle of collective unity in action and, even more important, in action which was well thought-out and fruitful. They learned to have confidence in one another and respect one another’s competence in their own area of expertise.
These characteristics, essential in the life and struggle of any organization — and especially an anarchist organization — allowed our group to hold together before the vicissitudes which faced the Ukrainian toilers in those years when “governments” multiplied: one in Petrograd, another in Kursk, a third in Kiev, etc. And they all tried to plant their foot on the neck of the toilers, to control them and rule over them.