Socialism from Below by George Woodcock, Chapter 10 - Russia and the Makhnovist Movement

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George Woodcock (1912-1995) was a historian, political biographer, essayist, poet, and anarchist. He wrote biographies of such anarchist thinkers as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, William Godwin, Oscar Wilde, and Peter Kropotkin. Throughout his life, Woodcock was given numerous awards for his work, but he refused several awards from the government of Canada on the grounds that he only accepted awards granted by his peers.

In this chapter, Woodcock briefly summarizes the anarchist movement during the Russian Revolution. Led by Nestor Makhno (1888-1934), a Ukrainian peasant turned guerrilla fighter, the anarchists successfully fought against the Whites, the Reds, the Germans, the Austrians, and other factions while securing the Ukrainian Free Territory for an anarchist society. But by the end of the Russian Civil War, as the Bolsheviks were emerging victorious in their rush to control the Russian state, they turned on the anarchists and violently repressed the blooming anarchist federation in Ukraine.