* * *

Though the Bolshevik troops were much more numerous, Makhno and his detachments constantly kept out of their reach. But the Bolsheviks managed to establish themselves solidly in several places, and to stop the free development of the region, which had begun in 1919. It was then that mass executions of peasants began.

Many will remember that the Soviet press, in articles on the struggle with Makhno, cited the number of Makhnovists defeated, captured or shot. But this press always neglected to mention that the victims were usually not insurgents in Makhno’s army but local peasants of various villages who sympathized with the Makhnovshchina. The arrival of Red divisions in a village meant the immediate arrest of many peasants, who were later executed either as Makhnovist insurgents, or as hostages. The commanders of various Red divisions were particularly fond of this savage and vile method of struggle against the Makhnovshchina, preferring it to open struggle against Makhno. It was especially the units of the 42^nd and 46^th Red Rifle divisions who indulged in this type of activity. The village of Gulyai-Polye, which passed from one side to the other several times, suffered the most. Each time the Bolshevik troops entered the village or were obliged to leave, the commanders rounded up several dozen peasants, arresting them unexpectedly in the streets, and shot them. Every inhabitant of Gulyai-Polye can tell horrifying stories about this Bolshevik practice. According to the most moderate estimates, more than 200,000 peasants and workers were shot or seriously injured by the Soviet authorities in the Ukraine at that time. Nearly as many were imprisoned or deported to various parts of Russia and Siberia.

Naturally the Makhnovists — revolutionary sons of a people in revolution — could not remain indifferent to such a monstrous distortion of the revolution. They replied to the Bolshevik terror with blows no less severe. They employed against the Bolsheviks all methods of guerrilla warfare which they had formerly used in their struggle against the Hetman Skoropadsky. Whenever the Red Army units entered into combat with the Makhnovists, the battle followed all the rules of war, and it was unfortunately the simple soldiers of the Red Army who were the main victims of such encounters, soldiers who had been sent into the battle under compulsion and who in no way deserved such a. fate. But this could not be avoided. When the Makhnovists captured Red prisoners they disarmed the soldiers and set them free; those who wished could join the insurgent ranks; but the commanders and Party functionaries were generally killed, except for the rare instances when the soldiers asked that they be spared.

The Soviet authorities and their agents often depicted the Makhnovists as pitiless assassins, giving long lists of soldiers of the Red Army and members of the Communist Party put to death by them. But the authorities were always silent about the essential fact, namely about the circumstances in which these soldiers or Party members had been killed. They were always victims of combats started or provoked by the Communists themselves, combats which were forced on the Makhnovists when they were cornered by the Bolsheviks. War is war; there are always victims on both sides. But the Makhnovists understood perfectly that they were making war, not against the soldiers of the Red Army as a group or against any of them individually, but against the handful of rulers who directed this mass, who disposed of them, and who valued the life of a Red soldier only to the extent that it was useful for the preservation of their power. This is why, although they often struggled bitterly against the Red Army units, once the battle was over the Makhnovists related to the soldiers of the Red Army with the same spirit of brotherhood and friendship which characterized relations among themselves. One can only admire the tact, the self-restraint and the revolutionary honor with which the Makhnovists turned to the soldiers of the Red Army: not one of the soldiers of this army taken prisoner by the Makhnovists was made to suffer by them. And this happened at a time when all the Makhnovists who fell into the hands of the Bolsheviks were invariably shot on the spot.

But the Makhnovists had completely different relations with the chiefs of the Red Army and with the Party aristocracy. They considered them the only real culprits of all the evils and all the horrors which the Soviet power imposed on the region. These chiefs had deliberately annihilated the freedom of the people and transformed the insurgent region into a wound from which the blood of the people flowed. And the Makhnovists treated them accordingly: when they were caught they were usually killed.

The Bolshevik terror against the Makhnovists contained all the symptoms of terror inherent in a ruling caste. If Makhnovist prisoners were not shot on the spot, they were imprisoned and subjected to all types of torture to force them to repudiate the movement, to denounce their comrades and to take employment with the police. The assistant to the commander of the 13^th insurgent regiment, Berezovsky, was taken prisoner by the Bolsheviks and became an agent of the Special Section (Cheka); but according to him, he did this only after being subjected to torture. Similarly, the Bolsheviks more than once offered freedom to the commander of the engineering corps of the Makhnovist army, Chubenko, if he would agree to assist them in killing Makhno. Assassinating Makhno with the help of any imprisoned Makhnovist was the constant concern of the Bolsheviks during the entire summer of 1920. Here is a text of a document published by the Makhnovists after an unsuccessful attempt by the Bolsheviks to assassinate Makhno.

TREACHEROUS ATTEMPT
TO ASSASSINATE BATKO MAKHNO
ORGANIZED BY THE BOLSHEVIK-COMMUNISTS

For two months the staff headquarters of the Ukrainian revolutionary insurgents has been receiving information from many sources about the fact that the ruling Communist-Bolshevik Party, unable in spite of all its regiments and divisions to vanquish the independent and free insurrection of the Makhnov-shchina in open combat, has been plotting, with the help of mercenaries, to assassinate the leader of the revolutionary insurrection, comrade Nestor Makhno.

We possess precise information about the fact that a special section has been instituted for this purpose in the All-Ukrainian Cheka, headed by experienced Bolshevik executioners Mantsev and Martynov. The personnel of this special section is recruited exclusively among former naletchiki (“bandits”) who are condemned to death and buy their lives through services rendered to the Cheka.

Among the agents provocateurs, there are some who have had connections with the anarchist movement, for example: Peter Sidorov, Tima-lvan Petrakov, Zhenya Ermakova (Anna Sukhova), Chaldon and Burtsev. Their links to the anarchist movement were mainly military. We have also been informed that one of these agents provocateurs is “Big Nicholas” — an individualist who last year edited the journal K Svetu (Toward the Light) in Khar’kov, and who is also known as Vasili.

There are no limits to the treachery of this band of provocateurs. Having learned many of the clandestine names and addresses of anarchists at the time of Denikin’s invasion, they burst into the comrades’ quarters and carried out outright pogroms; it goes without saying that all the anarchists whom they knew, and who were more or less hostile to the Bolshevik authorities, were arrested and shot.

After having operated this way in Khar’kov and Odessa, this unsavory band, headed by its boss, Mantsev, moved to Ekaterinoslav in order to prepare the assassination of Batko Makhno from there, and to recruit collaborators.

However, the “revolutionary” Bolsheviks have evidently forgotten, during the three years they have ruled, the type of sincerity with which agents provocateurs served the Czarist government, and how many times a Petrov emerged from their ranks, who succeeded in redeeming his honor. Such is the case again. Among the provocateurs bought by the Bolsheviks in exchange for money and the promise to have their lives spared, there are people who, haunted by moral obligations or possibly by the awareness of their betrayal, manage to thwart all the ventures of Mister Mantsev and his friends.

THE CAPTURE OF MANTSEV’S AGENTS[20]

On June 20, one hour after the arrival of a group of revolutionary insurgents (Makhnovists) in Turkenovka, ten miles from Gulyai-Polye, a certain Fedya Glushchenko, who during the preceding year had worked in counter-espionage for the insurrectionary army, and who had just arrived in the village, approached Comrade Makhno in the street and said to him nervously: “Batko, I have some very important information for you!...” Comrade Makhno instructed him to make his communication to Comrade Kuri-lenko, who was nearby. Fedya declared that he and another person, who at that time stood on the street close to Comrade Makhno, had been sent there to assassinate Batko Makhno. Kurilenko cautiously approached the other person and succeeded in disarming him. He was carrying a Mauser revolver, a Browning and two bombs, and Fedya himself had a Colt revolver.

The other individual was Yakov Kostykhin, a naletchik who had the nickname “Bad Yashka.” He quickly described, in detail and with all sincerity, verbally as well as in writing, everything he was supposed to do at the instigation of Mister Mantsev, toward whom he showed no respect. They had received 13 thousand rubles in Czarist paper money and a sum of Soviet money. A detailed plan of the projected assassination had been carefully worked out in Ekaterinoslav by Mantsev, Martynov and Fedya. Kostyukhin was under Fedya’s orders. Fedya also had the mission of winning over to his side the former head of counter-espionage of the First (Donets) Makhnovist Corps, Lev Zadov. Kostyukhin, knowing that he deserved only to die, offered his services for any purpose whatever. Naturally this offer was rejected, and he was executed the following day. Just before he died, he cursed Fedya for having led him here and then betrayed him.

Fedya declared that he had been arrested by Mantsev and had been offered the choice between death and working under the orders of the Cheka with a view to assassinating Makhno. He chose the latter proposition, with the intention, he said, of warning Comrade Makhno in time. He remained firm and declared that he deserved to die for his participation in the Cheka; but he repeated that he had done this in order to be able to warn his comrades and to die by their hands. The insurgents obviously could not let collaboration with the Cheka go unpunished, whatever the motives which had induced Fedya to do this, since a revolutionary cannot under any circumstances collaborate with the police. On June 21 Fedya Glushchenko was executed together with Kostyukhin. He died calmly, saying that he fully deserved to die, but he asked that his Makhnovist comrades be informed that he did not die as a villain, but as a true friend of the insurgents who had accepted service with the Cheka only so that his death would save the life of Batko Makhno. “God help you!” were his last words.

Thus ended the treacherous attempt of the All-Ukrainian Cheka to use mercenaries to assassinate the leader of the revolutionary insurrection, comrade Makhno.

Council of Ukrainian Revolutionary Insurgents (Makhnovists) June 21, 1920.

All through the year of 1920 and even later, the Soviet authorities carried on the fight against the Makhnovists pretending to be fighting banditry. They engaged in intense agitation to persuade the country of this, using their press and all their means of propaganda to uphold the slander both inside and outside of Russia. At the same time, numerous infantry and cavalry divisions were sent against the insurgents, for the purpose of destroying the movement and pushing its members toward the gulf of real banditry. The Makhnovist prisoners were pitilessly put to death, their families — fathers, mothers, wives, relatives — were tortured and killed, their property was pillaged or confiscated, their houses were destroyed. All this was practiced on a large scale. A superhuman will and heroic efforts were needed by the vast masses of insurgents, in the face of all these horrors committed daily by the authorities, to retain intact their rigorously revolutionary position, and not to fall, in exasperation, into the abyss of banditry. But the masses never lost their courage, they never lowered their revolutionary banner, but remained to the end faithful to their task. For those who saw it during this hard and painful period, this was a genuine miracle, demonstrating how deep was the faith of these working masses in the revolution, how strong their devotion to the cause whose ideas had won them over.