Return to Huliaipole
- a group of released prisoners of Butyrka. In the first row on the left - Nestor Makhno
Eight years and eight months spent Nestor Makhno in custody. 26 August 1908 year 19-year-old Makhno was arrested for killing a military official. The young man then participated in the activities of the Union of Poor Grain-Harvestmen, or of the Gulyaypole group of anarchist communists, led by his senior comrades Alexander Semenyuta and Waldemar Anthony. Odessa Military District Court 22 March 1910, sentenced Nestor Ivanovnicha Makhno to death by hanging. However, as the age of majority, who had not reached the age of majority at the time of the commission of the crime, Nestor’s death penalty was replaced by indefinite penal servitude. To serve the sentence, Makhno in 1911 was transferred to the convict department of the Butyrskaya prison in Moscow.
Although by the time of his arrest Nestor Makhno was already a staunch anarchist and one of the key members of the Anthony Semenuta group, in fact, his formation as an ideological revolutionary occurred precisely in prison. This was not surprising. In childhood and adolescence, Nestor Makhno practically did not receive an education. He was born in a family of peasants Ivan Rodionovich Makhno and Evdokia Matveevna Perederiy. In the family, Ivan had six children — the brothers Polycarp, Savely, Emelyan, Gregory, Nestor, and sister Elena. When the youngest son Nestor was just 1 a year old, his father died. Since childhood, Nestor has learned what hard labor is. Nevertheless, he did learn the literacy - he graduated from the Gulyaypole two-year elementary school. This is where his official education ended. Nestor worked in farms of more prosperous neighbors - kulaks and landlords, and in the 1903 year, in the 15 years, he went to work in the paint shop, then transferred to the M. Kerner iron foundry in the same Gulyaypole. In August, Nestor joined XUUMIPOL group of anarchist communists, and its leader Waldemar Anthony, who, by the way, was only two years older, became the person who told Makhno about the basics of the anarchist worldview, about the political and social system.
In the Butyrka prison, Nestor Makhno met another famous anarchist, Peter Arshinov. In the famous film-series “Nine Lives of Nestor Makhno”, Peter Arshinov is shown as an elderly man, much older than Nestor himself. In fact, they were the same age. Peter Arshinov was born in 1887 year, and Nestor Makhno - in 1888 year. Mentor Nestor Arshinov was not because of age, but because of the much greater experience of participation in the revolutionary movement. Arshinov was not, as was shown in the film, and an “intellectual theorist”. A native of the Penza province, the village of Andreevka, Arshinov worked as a mechanic in railway workshops in Kizil-Arvat (now Turkmenistan) in his youth, and joined the revolutionary movement there. After all, railway workers in the Russian Empire were considered the most advanced detachment of the proletariat, along with printers.
In 1904-1906 Peter Arshinov, who was not yet twenty years old, led the organization of the RSDLP at Kizil-Arvat station, edited an illegal newspaper. In the 1906 year, trying to avoid arrest, he left for Yekaterinoslav. Here Arshinov became disillusioned with Bolshevism and joined the communist anarchists. In the anarchist environment, he became known as “Peter Marin”, participated in numerous expropriations and terrorist actions in Yekaterinoslav and its environs, becoming one of the most prominent militants of the Yekaterinoslav group of anarchist communists. 7 March 1907 Arshinov, who worked by that time as a mechanic at the Shoduar pipe rolling plant, killed the head of the railway workshops Aleksandrovsk Vasilenko. Petr Arshinov was arrested on the same day and 9 of March 1907 was sentenced to death by hanging. But the sentence could not be carried out - on the night of 22 on April 1907, Arshinov safely escaped from prison and left the borders of the Russian Empire. Returning two years later, he was nevertheless arrested and found himself in prison in Butyrka prison - along with Nestor Makhno.
It was Arshinov who undertook to train an illiterate like-minded person from Gulyaypole in Russian and world history, literature, and mathematics. Inquisitive Makhno listened to his colleague diligently. During the long eight years and eight months that Nestor had spent in Butyrka prison, he had become quite educated, for a barely literate young man, a man. Subsequently, the knowledge transferred by Arshinov and some other cellmates greatly helped Nestor Makhno in leading the rebel movement in the Yekaterinoslav region.
- prisoners of pre-revolutionary Butyrka
The February 1917 revolution liberated numerous political prisoners of the Russian Empire. 2 March 1917 from Nestor Makhno came out of the gates of the Butyrskaya prison in Moscow. He came out, full of emotions, not only for the family, which remained in far Gulyaypole, but also for the fate of the Gulyaypole group of anarchist-communists. When Makhno arrived in Gulyaypole, he was enthusiastically greeted by local anarchists. In his memoirs, he notes that many of those comrades with whom he acted in 1906-1908, were no longer alive, others had left the village, and even Russia. Back in 1910, Alexander Semenyuta shot himself while trying to arrest him. His brother Prokofy also shot himself - even earlier, in 1908. In 1909, Waldemar Anthony, nicknamed “Zarathustra”, left Russia. The founder of Gulyaypol anarchism for more than half a century settled in Latin America. The brother of Alexander Semenyuta Andrei, Savva Makhno, Moses Kalinichenko, Lev Schneider, Isidor Lyuty and some other anarchists rallied around Nestor returning to Gulyaypole. They clearly recognized Nestor Makhno, an anarchist and convict, to be their leader. As a respected person, Nestor was elected as a companion (deputy) chairman of the parish government of Gulyayipol. Then he became chairman of the Gulyaypol Peasant Union.
The idea of creating the Peasant Union in Gulyaypole was proposed by the Socialist-Revolutionary Socialist Party Krylov-Martynov, the emissary of the Peasant Union acting in the Aleksandrovsky district, controlled by the Social Revolutionaries. Makhno agreed with the proposal of Krylov-Martynov, however he made his remark - the Peasant Union in Huliaipole should be created not to support the Socialist-Revolutionary Party in its activities, but for real protection of the interests of the peasantry. The main purpose of the Peasant Union, Makhno saw the expropriation of land, factories and plants in the public domain. Interestingly, the Socialist-Revolutionary Krylov-Martynov did not object, and the Peasant Union was created in Gulyaypole with its special principles that differed from the principles of other branches of the Peasant Union. The committee of the Gulyaypolsky Peasant Union included 28 peasants and, contrary to the wishes of Nestor Makhno himself, who, as a convinced anarchist, did not want to be any leader, he was elected chairman of the Gulyaypolsky Peasant Union. Within five days, practically all the peasants of Gulyaypole entered the Peasant Union, with the exception of a rich stratum of property owners, whose interests did not include the socialization of land. However, activity as the chairman of the Peasant Union and the vice-chairman of the volost Zemstvo could not arrange a revolutionary anarchist, whom Nestor Makhno considered himself to be. He strove for more decisive actions, which in his opinion approximated the victory of the anarchist revolution. 1 May 1917, a large May Day demonstration was held in Gulyaypole, in which even the soldiers of the nearby 8 Serb regiment participated. However, the regimental commander hurried to withdraw units from the village when he saw that the soldiers were interested in anarchist agitation. However, many servicemen joined the demonstrators.
Nestor Makhno, out of several dozen of his associates, created the Black Guard detachment, which proceeded to action against the landowners and capitalists. The Black Guardsmen Makhno attacked trains for the purpose of expropriations. In June, 1917. Anarchists launched an initiative to establish workers' control at enterprises of Guliaipole. The owners of enterprises, fearing reprisals from the Black Guard, were forced to give up. Then, in June, 1917, Makhno visited the neighboring town of Aleksandrovsk, the district center, where isolated anarchist groups and small groups operated. Makhno was invited by Alexander anarchists with a specific goal - to help in organizing the federation of anarchists Aleksandrovsk. Having created a federation, Makhno returned to Gulyaypole, where he helped to unite local workers in the metallurgical and woodworking industries.
In July, anarchists broke up the zemstvo 1917, after which new elections were held. Nestor Makhno was elected chairman of the zemstvo, he also declared himself commissioner of the Gulyaypolsky district. The next step of Makhno was the creation of the Committee of farm laborers, which was supposed to consolidate the agricultural workers who were employed in kulak and landowner farms. The active actions of Makhno to protect the interests of middle-peasants and poor peasants met with massive support from the people of Gulyaypole and the surrounding area. The recent political prisoner was becoming an increasingly popular political figure not only in his native village, but also beyond. In August, Nestor Makhno, 1917, was elected chairman of the Gulyaypole Council. At the same time, Nestor Makhno emphasized his opposition to the Provisional Government and demanded that the peasants of the region ignore the orders and instructions of the new government. Makhno made a proposal for the immediate expropriation of church and landlord land. After the expropriation of land, Makhno considered it necessary to transfer them to a free agricultural commune.
Meanwhile, the situation in the Yekaterinoslav region was heating up. 25 September 1918, Nestor Makhno signed a decree of the County Council on the nationalization of the land, after which the division of the nationalized landed estates between the peasants began. In early December 1917, a provincial congress of workers ', peasants' and soldiers 'deputies' councils was held in Yekaterinoslav, in which Nestor Makhno participated as a delegate from Gulyaypole, who also supported the demand for the convening of an All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets. Nestor Makhno as a well-known revolutionary and former political prisoner was elected to the judicial commission of the Alexander Revolutionary Committee. He was given the task of examining the cases of the socialist revolutionaries and Mensheviks arrested by the Soviet government, but Makhno proposed to blow up the Alexander prison and release the prisoners. Makhno's position did not find support in the revolutionary committee, so he left his staff and returned to Gulyaypole.
In December 1917, Yekaterinoslav was captured by the armed forces of the Central Rada. The threat hung over Huliaipolem. Nestor Makhno convened an emergency Congress of Soviets of the Gulyaypolsky district, which issued a resolution under the slogan "Death of the Central Rada." Even then, Nestor Makhno, from whom at the end of the twentieth century, Ukrainian nationalists completely unreasonably tried to dazzle the image of "a supporter of separatist Ukraine", spoke out categorically criticizing the position of the Central Rada, and generally showed a negative attitude towards Ukrainian nationalism. Of course, at first, with tactical necessity, it was necessary to cooperate with the Ukrainian socialists who spoke from nationalist positions, but Makhno always distinguished between the anarchist idea and the "political Ukrainians", to which he treated, like any other "bourgeois ideologies", negatively . In January 1918, Makhno resigned from the post of chairman of the Gulyaypole Council and headed the Gulyaypole Revolutionary Committee, which included representatives of anarchists and left-wing socialist revolutionaries.
In his memoirs, Nestor Makhno subsequently settled on one of the main reasons for the weakness of the anarchists in those revolutionary months. In his opinion, it consisted in their lack of organization, inability to unite into single structures that could act cohesively and achieve much greater results. The October revolution of 1917, as Makhno later emphasized, showed that anarchist groups failed to cope with their goals and were at the tail of revolutionary events, speaking as junior associates and assistants of the Bolsheviks (anarcho-communists and part of anarcho-syndicalists).
After Yekaterinoslav was captured by the Austro-German troops and the troops of the Ukrainian state assisting them, Nestor Makhno organized a partisan detachment in early April 1918 and fought against the Austro-German occupation to the best of his abilities. However, the forces were unequal, and the detachment of Makhno eventually retreated to Taganrog. Thus ended the first, initial stage of the presence of the legendary "Batka" in Huliaipole. It was at this time that the foundations were laid for the subsequent formation and success of the famous free-peasant republic, which then resisted for three years both white and Ukrainian nationalists, and red.
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