During this period, not a day passed in Gulyai-Pole itself, or in its raion, without some meeting where there was an attempt to induce the toilers to repudiate the Revolution for the benefit of the counter-revolution.
This infiltration by spies and provocateurs of the most revolutionary part of Ukraine, namely the Left Bank region, had the logical effect of uniting all the Ukrainian chauvinists of Gulyai-Pole into a “revolutionary” organization which labelled itself as “socialist-revolutionary”. At the head of this organization stood the agronomist Dmitrenko, P. Semenyuta-Riabko, A. Volokh, Volkov, and Prekhodko. These last four were lieutenants. Most of them were owners of large estates and one of them, Volkov, owned a dry goods store.
These landowner-lieutenants had long regarded the work of the Revolution with anger and spite, for it deprived them of their lands to the benefit of the community as a whole. However, they called themselves revolutionaries and under this phoney label they engaged in a struggle against the activities of the Revkom, the Soviet, and the Land Committee. When they had convinced themselves that the ideological inspiration behind these revolutionary entities, as well as the initiator of solutions to the agrarian and social-political questions for the whole raion, was the Anarchist Communist Group, they tried, first behind the scenes and then openly, to accuse anarchists generally and the Anarchist Communist Group in particular of being “thieves” and “bandits” who did not respect “either the laws of the Revolution or the limits which cannot be exceeded”.
These “revolutionaries” cited as an example other raions where the anarchists had not penetrated the ranks of the toilers and where the population did not try to resolve the land question without permission from the Provisional Government, up to the moment when the new government took over, “the government of Bolshevik-bandits”! — whined these ‘revolutionaries’.
“While here, in Gulyai-Pole, and in the neighbouring raions,” said these characters, “this question was resolved by brigandage starting in 1917. And all thanks to the anarchists.”
Such accusations against the anarchists by people covering themselves with the banner of socialism diminished only themselves and their ideas.
The Gulyai-Pole peasants had organizational connections with the anarchists that went back 11 years during most of which the anarchists had to live an underground existence. And during the past year the peasants had seen the anarchists openly in the vanguard of the Revolution and were convinced that the anarchists would always be on the right road with them. So the peasants hissed these newly minted “revolutionaries” when they gratuitously insulted the anarchist by comparing them with thieves and bandits.
As for the anarchists, they could only point out the work they had accomplished, along with the toilers, in the previous months including setting up the agrarian communes on the former properties of the pomeshchiks.
And the village toilers, recognizing that the anarchists were correct in their understanding of the meaning of the Revolution and of the rights of the toilers to liberate themselves entirely from all the bonds of slavery, continued to engage in revolutionary work themselves, despite all the traps set for them by their enemies.
Equality, freedom to think for yourself, and independence for each and everyone in Gulyai-Pole and its raion led to the following results: the workers acquired self-esteem and began to understand their place in life and in the struggle against their oppressors, whether from the Right or from the Left. This healthy course of the toilers to affirm their rights to liberty and independence worried the statists who, frightened at the idea of seeing their authoritarian principles go down the drain, began to take action against the toilers and spared none of the means at their disposal.
At the moment when the Ukrainian nationalist “revolutionary” organization of Gulyai-Pole unleashed their dirty campaign against the anarchists, the victorious advance of the counter-revolutionary German and Austro-Hungarian armies, preceded by detachments of the also counter-revolutionary Central Rada, had already crushed the Revolution in Right-Bank Ukraine. The Revolution there was rendered defenceless by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk concluded between the Bolshevik Party and the titular heads of these armies, Wilhelm of Germany and Karl of Austria-Hungary. I really don’t know if the Ukrainian socialist-chauvinists, who had agreed to an alliance with foreign tsars against the popular Revolution were even aware how odious their action was towards the Revolution. But their followers, the rank-in-file nationalists, certainly knew it because they clung to this shameful alliance and the armed support it provided them as a unique means to liberate Ukraine from the Revolution and re-establish the rule of the pomeshchiks.
Every day at their meetings the socialist “revolutionary” nationalists of Gulyai-Pole bragged that the counter-revolutionary armies of the Germans and Austro-Hungarians and the counter-revolutionary detachments of the Central Rada were smashing and crushing all the living forces of the Revolution as they advanced. Now the revolutionary toilers believed in freedom of speech and the inalienable right to have one’s own opinions, so the “revolutionary” socialists were not restrained from spreading their odious propaganda. In fact they felt encouraged to organize a General Assembly of the toilers of Gulyai-Pole.
This Assembly promised to be most interesting. The organizers had posed the following question: who are the toilers of Gulyai-Pole who support the Central Rada [and consequently German and Austro-Hungarian militarists who were leading a 600,000 strong army against the Revolution], and who were the toilers who were against the Central Rada? And if against, under which banner did they march?
All the speakers competed in seeing how low they could stoop. The lied shamelessly. For “Mother Ukraine” and her independent government, her prisons, her jailers, and her executioners, everything must submit without resistance: the Revolution and liberty, and the toilers of the cities and villages who, advancing in the front line of the Revolution had adopted its best goals and worked to develop them.
“In the contrary case, in the case of resistance,” said the socialist-chauvinist orators, “we shall exterminate everything by force, assisted by our allies, by our brothers. [They meant Wilhelm II of Germany and Karl of Austria-Hungary with their armies.]
Those who do not resist the powerful armies of our allies will receive from the German command, through the intermediary of the Central Rada, sugar, cloth, and shoes from the thousands of trains which are following them.” [There was a great shortage of these items at that moment.]
But for those who resist, they will be no mercy! Entire villages and towns will be destroyed by fire; the populations will be lead into captivity and one prisoner in ten will be shot.
And the others? The others, for their treason, will receive a terrible punishment from their own Ukrainian brothers…”
Upon hearing these declarations, I spoke up and requested that all the speakers belonging to the Party which organized the meeting be prepared to back up their claims with verifiable data.
Next I addressed a few words to the citizens present on the statements presented by the speakers about the shameful alliance of the Central Rada with the emperors and drew some conclusions from what had been said by these speakers and by their opponents.