But it came too late. The anarchists should have killed him the moment this counter-revolutionary had threatened them in saying that as soon as his German and Austro-Hungarian friends showed up, he would make it his business to see that the anarchists were locked up.
“Since the leader of the Ukrainian nationalist organization was an enemy of the Revolution,” declared the members of the Revkom, “we consider it quite inadmissible to concern ourselves with this incident and to have it mentioned in the minutes of our meetings.
With the knowledge and approval of his organization, sub-lieutenant Semenyuta-Riabko uttered a vicious threat against the anarchists; it thus belongs to this organization to straighten out this matter, to withdraw the threat and carefully redefine its socio-political position with regard to the Revolution. Only then can the UO be admitted to the Revkom and avoid similar conflicts in the future.”
The delegation left the Revkom and returned to its comrades, bearing the censure of the Revokom against the whole UO.
I must say that personally I did not approve of this response, but I couldn’t protest while the delegation was present. Only after it had left did I affirm once more that the Revkom stood for revolutionary unity and solidarity. As such it should be prepared to enter into negotiations with organizations which requested its intervention in cases where errors of judgement had occurred, errors which could provoke conflicts like the one created by the UO which had led to the death of its leader.
Already when the Anarchist Communist Group first approached the Revkom about the threat against the anarchists, I had said that it was necessary to intervene in this conflict. But the majority of members of the Revkom had objected, claiming that if the Revkom stayed out it the whole thing would blow over and be forgotten.
Now I repeated again: if the Revkom had reacted right away to my desire to maintain the revolutionary honour of the Group of which I was a member, the Group which had close ideological ties with the Revkom in the defence and development of the Revolution, it is entirely possible that the Group would not have killed the agent of the counter-revolutionary Central Rada.
“It’s true that it’s too late to do anything now,” I said to my comrades on the Revkom, “but it’s not too late to act to avoid retaliatory assassinations on the part of the nationalists which — I must declare it openly — will unleash terror against all those who — consciously or just through stupidity — have become agents of the dirty work of the Central Rada and its German allies.”
At this same meeting, the Revkom designated three of its members: Moise Kalinichenko, Paul Sokruta, and myself, who were to form a commission with the nationalists to find a way to avoid killings by either side.
Representing the chauvinists on the commission was a certain Dmitrenko, a convinced SR, who was president of the Prosvita organization. The Anarchist Communist Group was represented by its secretary, A. Kalashnikov.
After some discussion, it appeared that the Ukrainian Organization disassociated itself entirely from the threat addressed by Semenyuta-Riabko to the anarchists.
The representative of the UO, Dmitrenko, declared that Semenyuta-Riabko’s threat could be explained by his boundless enthusiasm and empathy for the suffering of his people. The UO disapproved of this threat and considered it in contradiction with its ideas.
But Dmitrenko was not sincere. His declaration was only a political manoeuvre on the part of the UO.
We understood this, and Comrade Kalashnikov replied that “We see in this threat the desire of the whole UO to attack the anarchists for their tenacious struggle against the invasion of revolutionary territory by the counterrevolutionary armies of the German and Austro-Hungarian emperors and the troops of the Central Rada.”
“The Anarchist Communist Group believed it had a duty to kill the instigator of this enterprise directed against the anarchists and against their ideas. The Group killed him and is prepared in the future to kill any scoundrels like him.”
After this I went to a meeting of the Anarchist Communist Group where I asked the comrades to renounce terror, but my view was attacked by a whole bunch of them. They viewed my appeal as a defence of the agents of the Counter-Revolution and they scoffed at me, not holding anything back.
I found their audacity irritating, but I was also glad to see that I didn’t intimidate them and began to feel more strongly that my work among the younger members of the Group had not been in vain.
In spite of the ridicule, my considerations for and against terror were ultimately adopted by the Group as the basis on which to review its declaration of terror and, after a series of meetings and serious discussions among the comrades, the Group renounced its previous resolution and recorded in the minutes that so long as the enemies of the Revolution restricted themselves to verbal attacks without taking up arms, terrorist acts would not be applied against them.
The younger members of the Group had a lot of trouble understanding this decision and more than once they suggested that “Comrade Makhno wants to convert the most hidebound counter-revolutionaries into revolutionaries. Comrade Makhno has thereby delivered a heavy blow to the unity of the Group”, etc.
However the moment was such that no one wanted to desert the Group. For it was the moment when the Counter-Revolution, borne on the bayonets of the German armies, clearly had the upper hand over the defenders of the Revolution which consisted of a few isolated units of Red Guards. Consequently, for a raion like Gulyai-Pole which could mobilize significant forces for the defense of the Revolution, we needed to pursue a different set of tactics. We needed to push strongly for peace between the different parties, for equality and toleration of different revolutionary opinions, because Gulyai-Pole was becoming the centre of the spiritual and military forces which could save the Revolution.
That’s why I didn’t pay much attention to the naive protests of my young friends. I was confronted with the huge problem of organizing battalions of volunteers to fight the Central Rada and its allies, the German and Austro-Hungarian armies, 600,00 strong.
I felt that the Revkom had been negligent in this area of its work and insisted that all the detachments in the raion which were under the control of the Revkom should be organized as battalions with a complement of 1,500 soldiers each.
The Anarchist Communist Group, in my opinion, had to set an example in this domain just as it had in its other revolutionary work. Otherwise it would trail behind the revolutionary events. It would separate itself from the toilers of the oppressed villages and would be reduced to the level of hundreds of other anarchist groups in Russia which had no influence on the ideas which guided the masses of toilers who had faith in the Revolution but were not able on their own to define its essential core and defend it from the distortions of the chiefs of political socialism.
The Group took this circumstance into consideration and showed militant qualities of the first order in organizing armed forces for the defence of the Revolution.
Other groups in the cities and villages of other raions wasted time in fruitless discussions, along the lines of: “Is it really anarchist for an anarchist group to create revolutionary combat units? Would it not be preferable for such groups to distance themselves from such activity, contenting themselves with not preventing their members from participating in this ‘semi-anarchist’ work?”
The peasant Anarchist Communist Group of Gulyai-Pole advanced the following credo: