#makhno — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #makhno, aggregated by home.social.
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Trotski et Makhno, l’alliance impossible contre Lénine
Et si Trotski avait choisi Makhno contre Lénine ? Une alliance rouge-noire durable aurait pu faire basculer la révolution russe vers un fédéralisme insurrectionnel, anti-bureaucratique et paysan. #Trotsky #Makhno #Lenin #Utopia #AlternateHistory #Revolution #Anarchism #Bolshevism Dans cette uchronie, la rupture entre Trotski et Lénine devient irréversible au moment où l’Armée rouge cherche à centraliser la…
https://homohortus31.wordpress.com/2026/07/11/trotski-et-makhno-lalliance-impossible-contre-lenine/
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Fascism, Militarism and Anarchism: A Tale of Three Ukrainians
“Sholem Schwarzbard, Simón Radowitzky and Nestor Makhno were three of the most infamous anarchists to ever come out of Ukraine. What do their lives… have to tell us about the Russia-Ukraine war of the past couple of decades…”
Originally published June 15, 2026, spelling errors corrected and more sources added, June 16, 2026
Sholem Schwarzbard, Simón Radowitzky and Nestor Makhno were three of the most infamous anarchists to ever come out of Ukraine. What do their lives, which were lived in a different historical period and under distinct conditions from our own, have to tell us about the Russia-Ukraine war of the past couple of decades, and what does their struggle as anarchists have to tell us about the relationship between militarism and fascism?
Schwarzbard’s relevance to the ongoing war was implied as recently as December of 2025, when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky bestowed an honourary name on the army’s 152nd Separate Jaeger Brigade, the reverential name in this case being that of the historic Ukrainian nationalist military leader Symon Petliura, whom Schwarzbard assassinated in France in 1926 as retaliation for mass pogroms that included the murder of almost a dozen members of his own family.
Schwarzbard had also been brought up back in April of 2022, in the context of the Russian escalation of the war into a full-scale invasion, when a group of anarchists from various parts of the United States mentioned him at the end of their article titled No War But Class War: Against State Nationalism and Inter-Imperialist War in Ukraine.
That article provoked a reply by a person either too slippery or too uncommitted to their own viewpoint to even bother coming up with a pseudonym. Their response, titled “In the Spirit of Sholem Schwarzbard”: Addressing Confusion about the War in Ukraine, was published that same month, in this case at the Russia-based anarchist/anti-antifascist website, Avtonom. Due to the author’s casual decision to go nameless, and the lengthy title of their piece, I will refer to them throughout this article as “the Coward,” for simplicity’s sake.
I don’t intend here to systematically address each point made by the Coward in their article, because there are wider matters to discuss, there are many things that they omitted, and most of what they write consists of outright lies, distortions and manipulations. It will suffice to point out some of the Coward’s most egregious falsehoods, for example, the very first line of their article, in which they claim that the writers of No War But Class War were “decrying support for anarchists in Ukraine who are fighting against the Russian army,” as if the authors in question were pacifists, as if fighting from within a state army was the only way anyone has ever fought throughout history.
Right off the bat, we find that the Coward is an anti-anarchist propagandist, and that the main purpose of their diatribe is to deflect from anarchist anti-militarist and anti-fascist critique, and from Schwarzbard’s main claim to infamy, that being that he, on his own (as far as we know), not while fighting as part of a state army, assassinated the pogromist Petliura, who is still honoured by the Ukrainian state and its army today.
In 2023, the Coward’s article was recommended by the CrimethInc collective in their tribute to their comrade, the state soldier and statist propagandist Dmitry Petrov. The collective falsely describe the Coward’s piece as “a discussion of the complexities of formulating an anarchist anti-war strategy that does not effectively cede the field to state militarism.”
In reality, the Coward’s tract is much the opposite. It does nothing to help formulate an anarchist anti-war strategy and instead simply makes excuses for participation in imperialist war while suggesting that we eventually figure out some alternative, keeping our mouths shut in the meantime unless it’s to cheerlead for the appropriate side, that of the West. It seeks to hide anarchist participation in fascist organizations and it doesn’t so much address confusion about the Russia-Ukraine war as it seeks to create more of it.
In short, the Coward’s article is an exercise in campism, and if you replaced Ukraine as the subject with Iran, many Western anarchists would immediately decry it as such and say that nothing, not even Israeli and American attacks, could ever justify direct participation in such a regime (as it turns out, Ukraine is openly on the side of Western aggression against Iran and is arming the Gulf states to help facilitate that aggression, in keeping with Ukraine’s longer history of buying Israeli weapons, arming Saudi Arabia, and helping America and the United Kingdom occupy Iraq.)
CrimethInc were either too stupid to realize all this or too dishonest to admit it. A few other anarchist sites (such as The Anarchist Library) and distros (such as Scrappy Capy) have also uncritically featured the Coward’s article, which otherwise wouldn’t warrant much of a response.
Meanwhile, in their own article paying tribute to Petrov, CrimethInc admit that they don’t even agree as a group on anti-militarism in the first place, since some of them believe that serving in a state military can advance the anarchist cause, at least in this case, while other members don’t. Why the dissenters go along with the militarists within the collective is a mystery for the ages. Clearly their anti-militarist principles aren’t very strong. The anarchist unity of means and ends is apparently arbitrary and open to compromise.
In February of 2022, CrimethInc had already published an article titled War and Anarchists: Anti-Authoritarian Perspectives in Ukraine, in which the authors admit that some anarchist and anti-fascist volunteers for the Ukrainian army had “even joined the Azov battalion and the OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists),” both of these being fascist organizations. As the anarchist writers in Ukraine further detail, “the reasons were mundane: they joined the most accessible troops,” and “consequently, some people converted to right-wing politics.”
CrimethInc, editorially, brushes this aside, taking the easy way out by adding a note stating that “obviously any supposed anti-fascist or ‘anarchist’ who joined a fascist-organized militia was never really an anarchist in the first place.” CrimethInc usually admonish us to “listen to voices,” but in this case they actually tell us up front that the voices they themselves are amplifying are in fact wrong and that they as Americans know better than the anarchists in Ukraine, despite the distance and the fog of war!
As it turned out, it was CrimethInc who were wrong and the voices who were right, but the situation was even worse than the anarchists in Ukraine were letting on, and would only get worse as time dragged on.
How It All Began
What CrimethInc never mention, either in War and Anarchists, their subsequent tribute to their statist friend, or anywhere else, is that Petrov’s so-called Anti-Authoritarian Platoon was started with the help of Yuri Samoylenko, a commanding officer in the fascist and OUN-associated Right Sector Volunteer Corps, that Samoylenko had used his crucial position within the military hierarchy to facilitate Petrov’s project. The Solidarity Collectives in Ukraine now admit that Samoylenko’s military position was important to the platoon project but neglect to mention that it was a position within the fascist Right Sector specifically. However, this is public knowledge in Ukraine, since the army is not a secret organization.
This is also likely what Petrov had meant in 2022, when he wrote that “I have concluded that we, as revolutionaries, should not be squeamish about making contacts within state institutions,” and when he said, in a separate interview with The Final Straw podcast, that “we need to collaborate somehow with the state military structures.” To my knowledge, none of his comrades have ever addressed let alone challenged these openly statist remarks. Nor do CrimethInc or any other anarcho-warmongers ever mention anywhere that Petrov later publicly supported conscription in an interview with the German media outlet Taz in 2023.
Petrov’s aesthetically “anti-authoritarian” platoon was associated with the so-called Resistance Committee, that being little more than a branding exercise and a social network among soldiers, with a statist manifesto demanding, among other reforms, more militarism in Ukrainian society.
The Coward, in their disinformation piece, claims that “if the Resistance Committee had meaningful ties to fascists, you would think we would already have heard about it from other anarchists in Ukraine, Belarus, or Russia.” In reality, anarchists in Ukraine had already vaguely admitted to such ties in War and Anarchists, and in fact, the term “ties” is quite the understatement, since Samoylenko was a commanding officer in the fascist Right Sector and was using that position to help set up Petrov’s platoon. Eastern European anarchists, at first, purposely concealed the full extent of their fascist connections in Ukraine in order to keep the donations coming in from abroad. Once they realized that prominent Western anarchists were soft on fascism, the same level of subterfuge was no longer necessary.
In November of 2022, a few months after the Coward’s disinformation piece was published, the Anarchist Black Cross (ABC) of Dresden, Germany, wrote an article admitting that “some comrades, trying to get a place in the military ranks, directly joined units that are connected with Ukrainian fascist groups.”
As they further explain, “some of the comrades unfortunately went into denial mode and tried to downplay the political organization of Azov, Right Sector and other fascist military-political groups.”
ABC Dresden clarify that they personally don’t want to support people in right-wing military formations, but they will accept others doing so through them, noting that “if you want to donate for anti-fascists and anarchists in right-wing units despite all contradictions, just write it in the donation note.”
According to ABC Dresden, some of the donations that had already been made by anarchists abroad had been taken by the Ukrainian army and allocated to other units that don’t have anarchists in them. It’s not clear why this wasn’t anticipated, since the Ukrainian state and its army are not anarchist organizations who need to follow anarchist principles or even basic standards of decency.
In the space of only a few months, the Coward was proven wrong about the anarchist-fascist connections in Ukraine, and in the time since, things have only gotten worse, and have been revealed as having been worse than we knew at first. Yet, we have never heard from the hit-and-run artist the Coward ever again, and why would we? They are not a principled and committed anarchist but a con artist and a statist.
In the end, Petrov’s aesthetic anti-authoritarian platoon went nowhere, given the ultimate decision-making power of the state military hierarchy, and so it was disbanded, while its members, in some cases, were assigned to far-right military units such as Brotherhood (Bratstvo), whose members Petrov died fighting alongside.
If there was a lesson to be learned from Petrov’s experience it would be the time-honoured negative example of a person thinking they could change the system from within only to end up being changed by that system instead.
If anarchists want to avoid being assigned to far-right military units and being deployed as cannon fodder, it’s best to do what one can to avoid the armies that feature them, rather than “freely” enlisting and then doing propaganda for such armies, as Petrov did. Even if there’s no option but to join the army, there’s always the option to not do a side interview endorsing conscription and state collaboration. By CrimethInc’s own logic, they should disavow their friend Petrov as having been “never really an anarchist in the first place,” or, at the very least, a gullible type whose path is to be avoided at all costs.
It should also be noted that beyond Azov and the Right Sector there are several other openly fascist parts of the Ukrainian army, some of which even name themselves after various Nazi Germany military components (such as the Luftwaffe and Nachtigall) and adorn themselves with assorted Nazi Germany insignias. The Ukrainian army’s fascist 3rd Army Corps, which grew out the Azov movement and battalion of the same name, and is led by the notorious white supremacist Andriy Biletsky, now has some 20,000 soldiers and is expected to grow to 40,000.
The OUN’s fascist history in Ukraine is extensive. During World War II, they publicly pledged to work with Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Germany, also reaching out to Benito Mussolini in Italy and Francisco Franco in Spain. Most seriously, they committed major pogroms against Jews and Poles during the war. According to historian Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, Franco, arch-enemy of the Spanish anarchists, offered the OUN leader Stepan Bandera sanctuary and met with OUN leader Yaroslav Stetsko more than once.
Today’s anarchist apologists for militarism and fascism in Ukraine not only spit on the memory of past Ukrainian anarchists, on all the anti-militarist and anti-fascist anarchists of the past, but also on the anarchists who died in Spain at the hands of Franco and Joseph Stalin during that country’s Civil War (and after).
An Eye for Thousands of Eyes
Before I go any further, let’s look a little more closely at Schwarzbard’s life. As mentioned, he was a Jewish anarchist from Ukraine, and he twice fled to France, where, ultimately, he assassinated the Ukrainian nationalist military leader Petliura in Paris in 1926. Schwarzbard told the court that he’d done it “to avenge the death of the thousands of pogrom victims in Ukraine who were massacred by Petliura’s forces without his taking any steps to prevent these massacres.” As mentioned, several members of his own family had been killed in those pogroms. Despite his admission of guilt, the French jury sympathized with Schwarzbard and set him free.
In today’s Ukraine, however, it’s not Schwarzbard who is regarded as the hero. Just the opposite. He is slandered and bad-jacketed by the Kyiv Independent as a secret operative of the authoritarian Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), despite the fact that he was an anarchist. He couldn’t possibly have had his own personal and political motivations to oppose a pogromist, even if it concerned his own family, according to modern-day Ukrainian nationalist propagandists.
Instead it’s Petliura who is celebrated and even officially lauded with street names, statues, official military patches and now, as mentioned, the honourary naming of a military brigade after him, signed by Zelensky himself. The Coward of course mentions none of this. In the latter case of the 152nd Symon Petliura Separate Jaeger Brigade, their honourary name was bestowed so recently that it couldn’t have been included in the Coward’s 2022 article anyway, but a mea culpa seems highly unlikely to be forthcoming.
The official lionizing of the pogromist Petliura is far from unique in modern-day Ukraine. Even more recently, in May of 2026, Zelensky heaped praise upon the Nazi collaborator and Ukrainian fascist, Andriy Melnyk, as his corpse was taken from Luxembourg to be official reburied and honoured in Ukraine at the National Military Memorial Cemetery. Zelensky also that month bestowed upon a special forces unit of the army the honourary title of “Heroes of the UPA” (Ukrainska Povstanska Armiia), which was the armed formation of the OUN, the pogromists and Nazi collaborators mentioned previously.
In 2023, when a Ukrainian-Canadian veteran of the Nazi SS Division Galicia, Yaroslav Hunka was given a standing ovation in Canada’s parliament, Canadian society was still sensitive enough to fascism and World War II for it to be a scandal. But back in Ukraine, in the Ternopil region, the response was just the opposite. Hunka was honoured with an official medal, received on Hunka’s behalf by one of his relatives, this particular medal being named after the Nazi collaborator and OUN official Stetsko.
Justifying Fascism and Colonialism With Militarism
The Coward makes much of the fact that Schwarzbard enlisted in the French Foreign Legion during World War I, as if mere individual service, whether “freely” enlisted or conscripted, was the question, instead of militarism and fascism as systems and ideologies (which in turn form part of a global system of imperialism and capitalism). What the Coward deflects from is the crucial fact that Schwarzbard assassinated a pogromist, autonomously (as best we know), instead of officially honouring pogromists, as the Ukrainian state does, or fighting alongside and commemorating open fascists, as some self-proclaimed anarchists do from within Ukraine’s military today.
The Coward even bemoans the possibility that Schwarzbard, during WWI, could have fled France instead of joining its army, because that would have been “leaving the entire battlefield (and their hapless neighbors) to other forces.” Instead, we’re supposed to believe that defending the French colonial empire was actually the proper thing to do! The Coward does not prioritize the defense of those colonized by France from the occupying French Empire, but rather the protection of the loot of the French colonizer from his fellow colonizers, as the prominent anarchist Peter Kropotkin and his flunkeys also advocated at the time, much to the rejection of the majority of the global anarchist movement.
The Anarchist Black Cross of Galicja, Poland, and the Seditionist Distro of the United Kingdom also recently invoked Kropotkin’s pro-imperialist stance on WWI, starting out a book on the war in Ukraine by quoting Kropotkin’s incoherent statement that anti-militarists should join the French army to defend the empire from invasion. Not even the current day genocides in Palestine, Lebanon and Iran, or the ongoing struggle in Kanaky are enough to shame European anarchists away from supporting European colonialism. Instead, they brazenly uphold it as the only way forward.
The Coward also seems to forget that imperial Russia was on the same side as France in WWI, so if the ultimate anarchist principle is that you should always fight against Russia, even if you have to join the state army, Schwarzbard actually made a big mistake by joining the French military that was allied with Russia at the time, allied with the very government that had just repressed him in Ukraine, causing him to flee to France the first time around.
One of the reasons that the Jewish Lithuanian-American anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman opposed Kropotkin’s stance on WWI was that Russia was one of the Allies, and Russia was repressing various peoples within its vast empire. In the end, it was not the Allies’ ultimate victory but Russia’s battlefield defeats that in part led to the 1917 revolution in Russia and Ukraine.
And what did the other Allies end up having to show for their win in the War to End All Wars but the continuation of murderous colonialism, the rise of fascism, a Second World War and the creation of a new colony, Israel, that still scorches the earth today? Schwarzbard, though he claimed not to be Zionist, expressed his desire to leave France and settle in Palestine, which, at the time had come under the mandate of British imperialism, a factor of no importance to someone like the Coward (as it turned out, the British rejected Schwarzbard’s request). Schwarzbard did not want to stay in France (and help prevent another potential German invasion), he wanted to escape antisemitism by going elsewhere, exactly what the Coward and CrimethInc tell us is the wrong thing to do.
According to the Coward, who brings up Rojava and the fight against the Islamic State to prove their point, “sometimes you do not have the choice to opt out of war,” as if Black and Native peoples in America, Palestine or Kanaky are incapable of being aware of this fact, as if fleeing or being forced to move to adjacent territories can be reduced to simply “opting out of war.”
If such was the case, then war is precisely what Schwarzbard eventually opted out of, at least the second time he fled Ukraine to France. War between Russia and Japan, and Russia’s defeat, is also part of what had led to the Revolution of 1905 in Russia and Ukraine, and the repression of that revolution was what Schwarzbard had fled the first time around. Another invasion of France, whether he knew it was coming or not, is exactly what Schwarzbard didn’t stick around to help build up France’s military defenses against. Instead he left for the US.
If the Coward’s message is that defeating Russia and defending the French Empire are the most important things in the world, WWI seems like an extremely bad example, both because Schwarzbard fought on the same side as Russia (and its regime was replaced by another one that also invaded Ukraine) and because the Allies’ victory didn’t prevent France from being invaded again just over two decades later.
Imperialist war doesn’t appear to be a means of ending imperialist war but only of perpetuating it. The Coward wants you to be confused about all this, but it’s not really that hard to follow along.
Conscription and Insubordination
The Coward ridiculously complains that the No War But Class War writers “conscripted” the names and histories of Schwarzbard and Rosa Luxemburg in order to “legitimize” an anti-fascist and anti-imperialist polemic regarding the war. It’s not the actual conscription, as violent as it is, carried out by the Ukrainian state that concerns the Coward (who never mentions it), it’s the mere fact that some anarchists were inspired enough by Schwarzbard’s action against racist Ukrainian nationalism and Luxemburg’s anti-imperialist analysis to commemorate their names. We see that the Coward is not only a con artist but also a clown.
Unsurprisingly, the fact that Petrov went on to tell German media that Ukrainian conscription is an unfortunate necessity in the fight against Russia didn’t prompt any new articles from the Coward either. Their mission was adding disinformation to the mix and providing cover for the normalization of fascism in the Ukrainian anarchist scene, and that mission has been completed. They just have to hope that anarchists abroad continue to not pay attention to what’s actually happening in Ukraine, how their “own” governments and corporations are involved in it, and how that reverberates back here.
The Coward concedes that it’s not “anarchist” to participate in a “state military mobilization,” but justifies it by pointing out that “under duress, anarchists do all sorts of things that are not anarchistic, that do nothing to advance any anarchist project—laboring to enrich capitalist bosses, for example, or paying rent to landlords.”
“If we can understand why workers alienate their labor in return for a wage in order to survive, we can understand why they might join a state military in hopes of resisting an invasion, as well,” the Coward explains.
However, the difference is precisely that anarchists typically don’t do propaganda for their bosses and landlords portraying work done for a boss or rent paid to a landlord as a righteous component of the overall anarchist struggle. The army anarchists in Ukraine today didn’t just enlist and then keep their mouths shut, focusing on the task at hand, fighting Russia. They created, with the help of anarchists abroad, a whole propaganda campaign of support for the war effort, demanding donations both from other anarchists and from NATO’s weapons stockpiles, denouncing anti-militarist anarchists, normalizing fascism, and portraying militarism as a glorious component of anarchism.
The Coward portrays themselves as the truly knowledgable one regarding Schwarzbard’s life, in contrast to the No War But Class War authors. But here we see that their knowledge is used in the service of lies, not in clarifying details. The issue was never whether one person should or did join an army at some point. The issue is that Schwarzbard was one person who didn’t tolerate his family and his people being genocided and took action against it, in contrast to today’s anarchists in Ukraine who serve in an army that has a unit named in honour of the exact pogromist Schwarzbard took his revenge against.
Fascism, though largely derivative of militarism, imperialism and colonialism, is not exactly the same thing as them. It’s quite possible to have enlisted in the army at some point but also be so opposed to fascism, or a particular racist nationalist, that one puts their own life on the line to make that opposition as strong as possible, like Schwarzbard did.
It’s also possible to have joined the army, but then later recognize how much of a mistake that was, and take action against it, as the principled American anarchist and air force member Aaron Bushnell did, only to be mocked as a coward and lied about by the actual cowards within CrimethInc.
It’s equally possible to appreciate one or more things that a historical figure did but disagree with other things they did. We can appreciate Kropotkin’s writings on communism and mutual aid while firmly rejecting his militarist turn. We can appreciate Ricardo Flores Magón’s steadfast anti-militarism (which he died for in a US prison), while firmly rejecting his sexist and transphobic tendencies. There’s no reason we can’t do the same for Schwarzbard, rejecting his participation in WWI but appreciating his action against antisemitic Ukrainian nationalism. The Coward, however, is not interested in reality, or in principles or analysis, only gotcha journalism and the kind of whataboutism popularized, ironically, by the USSR.
The Coward also complains that the No War But Class War authors invoked Luxemburg given that she was a Marxist and a determinist, and considering that, supposedly, “as an anarchist, Schwarzbard had no recourse to determinist frameworks like Luxemburg’s.” Part of the Coward’s implicit tactic here is to deflect from the fact that Luxemburg was Jewish like Schwarzbard, and therefore was less likely to side with the Ukrainian pogromists and their commemoration than today’s gentile anarchists in the Ukrainian army have shown themselves to be.
But the other point is to deflect from the fact that the most notorious of all anarchist turncoats, with regard to militarism and imperialism, was Kropotkin, and he also happened to be a determinist like Luxemburg, but unlike, say, the anarchist Errico Malatesta, who stood by his principles when WWI broke out. The Coward is either very unfamiliar with anarchist history or a bald-faced liar.
To the Coward and CrimethInc, militarism against Russia is of such a top priority that it eclipses all other concerns, such as those that Bushnell and Schwarzbard held. It even overrides the need for honesty. But this is not a stance all anarchists need to follow, as a further look at anarchist history confirms.
Perseverance Against Repressive Power
Radowitzky was another Jewish anarchist, and as a teenager in Ukraine he had taken part in strikes, riots, and the Revolution of 1905. In fleeing the imperialist repression of Russia, he went to Argentina, where he continued to take part in the class war. He did not stay and fight Russian power until the last Ukrainian fell, he moved forward, so as to carry on the struggle elsewhere.
In 1909, Radowitzky assassinated the federal police chief Ramón Falcón in Buenos Aires, in retaliation for his murderous repression of striking workers. Radowitzky was subsequently sentenced to between 20 and 25 years in prison. In 1918, Chilean and Argentinian anarchists helped him escape by boat from the remote southern prison of Ushuaia, but he was quickly recaptured.
Radowitzky eventually served a 21 year sentence, but despite this unimaginable hardship, he didn’t give up the fight, traveling to Spain to join the International Brigades and the revolutionary struggle of the anarchists during the Spanish Civil War. He didn’t stay and fight until the last man in Spain either, but instead fled to France. There he was interned, and again, he did not stay and fight in WWII, but rather fled to Mexico.
Does all this fleeing mean Radowitzky was a coward? The question is beyond insulting in its stupidity. Radowitzky represents a level of anarchist commitment and bravery that would be basically impossible to find among today’s anarchists, and most certainly could never be found among the CrimethInc collective or the anonymous Coward, who don’t even have a minute’s worth of the strength of their own self-proclaimed convictions, let alone the strength to persevere for two decades through real material hardship as a convict in a remote prison.
Batko and his Disobedient Stepson
Makhno was the most infamous of all the anarchists from Ukraine, even if others like Maria Nikiforova, Olga Taratuta, or Sophie Kropotkin deserve as much recognition but have yet to receive it. A gentile who spoke Russian but not Ukrainian, Makhno led the autonomous and anti-statist Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine, which, at various points fought against the Russian White movement, the invading Austro-Hungarian and German forces, and the Bolsheviks.
At other points, Makhno’s forces allied with or temporarily subordinated themselves to the Bolsheviks, but this ultimately led to betrayal and repression. If the lesson the anarcho-warmongers want us to learn is that joining state forces is legitimate and indeed the only way to advance our cause, Makhno seems like a poor example. Furthermore, what the war boosters also want you to forget is that Makhno, like Schwarzbard and Radowitzky before him, didn’t stay and fight until the last Ukrainian, but instead fled west, ending up in France, like Schwarzbard. There, Makhno even wrote an article claiming that the British Empire was the worst in the world (rather than, say, the new empire of the USSR, which had just forced him into exile).
Some say Makhno advised Schwarzbard not to kill Petliura, doubting the latter’s responsibility for pogroms and the usefulness of assassination. Aside from that, was Makhno a coward or fool for not remaining in Ukraine and fighting to the death? The question is almost as ridiculous as the one regarding Radowitzky. Yet, CrimethInc, the Coward and their fellow anarcho-warmongers pose sticking it out in the current war as the only option, as precisely the justification for anarchists enlisting in the army and doing propaganda for it, even as more than five million refugees have already fled Ukraine since 2022.
Alternatively, if one wanted to blame conscription as the reason that enlisting is the only alternative to fleeing, it’s strange to then tolerate a person like Petrov actually doing propaganda on behalf of violent state conscription and throwing under the bus all the people who are resisting themselves or their relatives being thrown into busses by agents of conscription.
CrimethInc and the Coward don’t want you to recognize that the real coward is not the one who flees, refuses to become a murderer for the State, and lives to fight another day. The real coward is the one who, from the sidelines, at no threat to themselves, advises others to go to war on behalf of the liberal Ukrainian state.
The Coward and CrimethInc don’t want you to fully remember Schwarzbard, Radowitzky and Makhno’s lives, much less properly honour them. They want you stuffed in a cannon and shot toward the enemy lines, or at least cheering in the stands when it happens to others, and begging your government for more NATO weaponry for Ukraine (they never address that Ukraine has been buying Israeli weaponry for years.)
Schwarzbard, Radowitzky and Makhno’s lives show us that it takes courage, effort and perseverance to carve out one’s own path, that staying put and following orders can be the easy way out, but it’s not the only way. The strength of these comrades will forever stand in stark contrast to the sniveling propagandist without so much as a pseudonym, or the CrimethInc collective, who’d rather try to revise history than own-up to any of their own mistakes. To lie to the people is the work of the politician, not the anarchist.
The Further Adventures of Fascism
The war in Ukraine has also seen anarchists other than CrimethInc and the Coward publicly promote militarism or downplay the threat of the Ukrainian fascists.
American anarchist pundit Peter Gelderloos recently downplayed fascism in Ukraine by saying that “there are far more neo-Nazis on the Russian side,” and that “Russian society on the whole, since the days of the Soviet Union, has been extremely rightwing.”
What he fails to mention is that some of those Russian fascists are fighting for the Ukrainian side! Gelderloos also neglects to consider that the Ukrainian neo-Nazis are, in a significant sense, “our” Nazis more so than the Russian ones, given that “our” governments in the US and Canada are more directly and extensively supporting the Ukrainian side, including the fascist branches of its military (Canada also indirectly and to a lesser extent supports the Russian side through various business ventures already mentioned in my 2025 article The Downward Spiral of Militarism). Gelderloos admits that there are right-wing nationalists in Ukraine but says that “Russian influence on media and social media exaggerated their importance,” failing to consider that US and Canadian media have also downplayed their importance.
Furthermore, the fact that one side in a war may exploit a point for propaganda doesn’t mean that point is entirely untrue. For example, during WWII, Nazi Germany cynically produced several movies about British oppression of the Irish. The conclusion to draw from this is not that the British never oppressed the Irish but that the Nazis were insincere and opportunist! The same goes for today’s war in Ukraine, as some supposed anarchists are using Russian propaganda as an excuse to liberal-wash the Ukrainian state and its fascist military units.
In March of 2022, Gelderloos had either mistakenly or intentionally portrayed anarchists in Ukraine as being in autonomous formations that only formed an alliance with the state military (as for example Makhno’s forces had, to their detriment), rather than being subsumed within and subordinated to the state, which is the reality. By the time he’d written his article, Saša Kaluža had already published one of their own explaining that “initiatives such as the Resistance Committee are formed within the military structure of the Ukrainian state”, and further clarifying that “they are not anarchist initiatives, even though most of the participants are anarchists”.
ABC Dresden soon confirmed this in their November of 2022 article where they stated that “there are no independent units.” Gelderloos never bothered to correct his mistake, to my knowledge.
The self-proclaimed anti-authoritarian Solidarity Collectives in Ukraine, in their 2025 year in review, included, without commentary, a photo that features the red-and-black (horizontal bars) blood-and-soil flag of the fascist Right Sector, a design that pays homage to the flag of their fascist forefathers, the OUN. This was not as out-of-character as one might hope, since the Collectives, and the supposedly anti-authoritarian Resistance Committee, have previously accepted Russian fascists and Ukrainian apologists for fascism into their ranks, persons quite open about either their involvement in or their support for fascist organizations.
In particular, I refer to the Ukrainian former prisoner Oleksandr Kolchenko, who repeatedly posts praise for the fascist UPA on his own facebook account (as for example he’s done on International Women’s Day), and who regurgitated the propaganda of the fascist Azov Regiment in a 2022 interview with the media outlet The Insider. In the CrimethInc-published War and Anarchists article, Kolchenko was lauded as an “anarchist.” Again, if CrimethInc really believed in their own straightedge-inspired position of “if you’re not now, you never were,” they would have disavowed Kolchenko. Instead, we hear only crickets.
Next, there is the Russian neo-nazi Sergey Petrovichev, who was a member of fascist organizations in Russia, fought for the fascist Right Sector once in Ukraine, and posted pictures on his own facebook account of himself wearing a fascist UPA t-shirt and hanging out with fellow fascists under a banner for White Rex, the well-known Russian fascist brand, whose mastermind, Denis Kapustin, is also fighting for the Ukrainian army, where he founded its Russian Volunteer Corps. The Solidarity Collectives, among others, even commemorate Petrovichev as a fallen “anarchist,” banking on the ignorance of their audience.
Finally, there is the Russian fascist Alexey Makarov, who in a media interview admitted to being a member of the fascist National Bolsheviks in Russia and the far-right Christian nationalist Brotherhood (Bratstvo) party in Ukraine before he joined the real Ukrainian army and the primarily aesthetic Resistance Committee. Makarov, in his interview, does not have a single negative word for these far-right groups he had belonged to, let alone renounce or denounce them, which you’d think would be the bare minimum for peer acceptance into the anarchist scene.
In 2024, American anarchist space cadet William Gillis wrote an article in which they downplayed the creep of fascism into the anarchist scene in Ukraine, seemingly referring indirectly to CrimethInc’s War and Anarchists article when they wrote that “no one in the west can speak to the details or extent, rumors are rumors, perhaps it is only a handful of the usual suspects who have embraced full nationalism,” when the reality was much worse (as the ABC Dresden article had already partly confirmed), and when an open fascist like Petrovichev was being (and still is being) hailed as an “anarchist” hero by the scene in Ukraine.
Gillis also describes as “quite decent” an anarchist panel in Switzerland in 2023 that had a moment of silence for the fascist Petrovichev and other state soldiers. Gillis further regards as “true” the misleading statement made during the panel that “it’s a strange world where anarchists tell fighting people to lay down their weapons,” despite it being the opposite of the truth. State soldiers don’t have their own arms to lay down in the first place, and anarchist anti-militarism is not pacifism, it’s not a rejection of all use of weapons. However, Gillis has a well-known penchant for confusing fantasy for reality, as well as not doing the research, so this is not particularly surprising, just exceedingly gullible, if not outrightly deceptive.
A few months after Gillis’ article was published, the Resistance Committee announced and mourned the death of Roman Legar, who they admitted had died while fighting as a soldier in the fascist Azov Brigade. The Resistance Committee no longer felt the need to hide their fascist connections, given the fluffing they’d received from some American and European anarchists. It’s been crickets instead of correction from Gillis ever since.
In a 2023 article, the Belarusian-Polish anarchist historian Aleksander Łaniewski openly praised the fascist Azov Brigade, saying that they “showed incredible heroism during the defense of Azovstal,” and that they had undergone “an ideological transformation unlike the couch-potato anarchists.”
We see in these examples, with striking clarity, that the anarcho-warmongers in Ukraine and their boosters abroad do not take Ukrainian fascism seriously, let alone oppose it. And why should they? They are not the Poles or Ukrainian Jews who suffered pogroms at the hands of the OUN/UPA or Petliura. They are not non-white persons in North America who have to be concerned about fascists attacking them or their family based merely on the colour of their skin.
Furthermore, it’s not only NATO training and weapons or the Hunka scandal that connects fascism in Ukraine to fascism in North America. The growing fascist Active Clubs movement in North America is largely inspired by Kapustin’s White Rex brand and the Ukrainian fascist movement.
American Active Clubs co-founder Robert Rundo, who has been imprisoned and released after violent attacks in the US, explained to a right-wing podcast back in 2017 that with regard to Ukraine’s Azov movement, “this is always my whole inspiration for everything.”
Rundo furthermore referred to Azov as “the future.”
“They really have the culture out there,” he detailed, “they have their own clubs, they have their own bars, they have their own dress style.”
Rundo, however, didn’t just talk about Ukraine but actually went there to spend time with and learn from his fellow fascists. The many fascist units in the Ukrainian army provide a training ground for fascists from other parts of the world.
Rundo at one point even co-hosted a podcast with White Rex Kapustin, who’s now a star in the Ukrainian army, as previously mentioned (and as Gelderloos told you not to worry about).
Fascism and Free Land
With regard to Canada, the militarist and fascist connections with Ukraine go far beyond both the Active Clubs movement and the Hunka scandal.
Canada has long had one of the world’s largest Ukrainian diasporas, in part because settlement by Ukrainians was encouraged by both the Canadian government and the Ukrainian professor Joseph Oleskiw, who wrote the pamphlets, On Free Lands and On Emigration in the 1890s. Land on the prairies was newly “free” for the Canadian government to advertise and give away because they’d just stolen it from Indigenous peoples with overwhelming military force during the Northwest Resistance of the 1880s.
After WWII, numerous Ukrainian fascists were given refuge (and commemoration) in Canada, which is when Hunka came in.
Ukrainian immigration, however, has not had entirely reactionary results, given that, for example, Ukrainian-Canadian senator Paul Yuzyk is known as the “father of multiculturalism” for his work in getting Canada to adopt the Multiculturalism Act of 1988 and saving the country from even further descent into official dual Anglo-Franco ethno-nationalism.
Since 2015, both Canada’s colonial police and army have been training their counterparts in Ukraine. One of the Canadian army regiments involved has been the Royal 22e, which is the regiment that laid siege to two Mohawk communities within Canada in 1990, sparking a cross-country Indigenous uprising and a growth in Indigenous sovereigntist consciousness. The Canadian army is no liberator of nations from invasion but is itself an occupying force teaching imperialist methods to its allies.
Beyond the colonialism, Canada’s army also has its own history of unofficial fascist and white-supremacist activity (see the Somalia affair of 1993). The Canadian army’s initial training of fascists in Ukraine’s Azov units seemed like it might end up a scandal, but this ultimately fizzled out. Since then, the Canadian army has continued its contacts with members of the Azov Brigade right up to the present.
Canada’s former Deputy Prime Minister (and Minister of Finance), ironically named Chrystia Freeland, is the granddaughter of a Ukrainian propagandist for Nazi Germany, Michael Chomiak, a fact which she at first dismissed as Russian propaganda, despite knowing it to be the truth. Freeland was at one point seen holding a red-and-black blood-and-soil Ukrainian scarf at a solidarity demonstration, and was a big proponent of the business opportunities opened up by war with Russia (Canada, for example, now supplies all of the uranium used in Ukraine’s remaining nuclear reactors). In 2025, she was appointed as a special representative for the reconstruction of Ukraine, and in January of 2026, Zelensky appointed her as an economic development advisor for his government (she resigned from the Canadian government a few days later.)
For the sake of full disclosure, I should admit here that two of my grandfathers fought for Canada and the Allies against the side that Freeland’s grandpa was on in WWII. I’m no more free of bias than anyone else.
In October of 2025, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) interviewed a trainer with the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade in Ukraine but blurred out the prominent swastika tattoo on one of his arms in order to liberal-wash his part of the army.
Ironically, during the recent Minneapolis immigration raids, the Ukraine/NATO side of the war that American anarchists like CrimethInc and Gelderloos have been supporting really did come home to them, in this case in the form of the armoured vehicles made by Roshel, a Canadian company with both Ukrainian and Israeli connections. Run by a former member of the Israel Defense Forces, Roman Shimonov, the company has been profiting off sales to the Canadian government for aid to Ukraine and re-investing in expanded production for American law enforcement, including immigration enforcement. Even more recently a Roshel armoured vehicle was spotted before an anti-ICE protest in Portland, Oregon.
The future that a brave few anarchist anti-militarists warned us about in 2022 (and prior) is already here, and the CrimethInc collective and their sycophants are still none the wiser. They have never once acknowledged that America-based arms companies are producing for Ukraine and Israel at the same time (and one after another), using the increased capacity developed to support Ukraine to up the support for Israel, and vice versa.
Militarism Manifested and Contested
One might be tempted by all the above to say that militarism and fascism seem to go hand in hand. Instead, one could say that fascism is derivative of militarism, imperialism, colonialism and nationalism, even of liberalism, and that the latter easily develop into the former.
Some of the Spanish anarchists who fought in their country’s Civil War in the 1930s proclaimed that “for us, the military is an integral part of fascism.”
“The army is the characteristic instrument of authoritarianism,” they further clarified, showing up Petrov’s much later Anti-Authoritarian Platoon of the Ukrainian army as a basic contradiction in terms.
As the infamous Spanish anarchist Buenaventura Durruti put it, “the military-fascist provocation of July 19 [1936] gave rise to an authentic and indisputably popular movement which definitively condemned, among other things, hierarchical military organization and the Code of [Military] Justice…” Like other anarchists before him, Durruti wasn’t just opposed to this or that army, but the inherently hierarchical form of every military, because anarchists are against hierarchy.
This was a point that Malatesta had also made back in 1902, when he wrote that “for us, it is truly the very existence of the army that we want to destroy, however it is organized.”
As he further explained, “it is loathing for the role of soldier — the role of slave and cop combined — that we must inspire in the spirit of the people and especially of the youth.”
Yet, today’s warmonger anarchists promote just the opposite, subservience to the military hierarchy and tolerance of fascism. Everything is to be sacrificed in the fight against Russia, because everything else can only be considered a lesser evil, even if one lives in a country where NATO or Israel is the more direct oppressor. The unity of means and ends that distinguishes anarchists from marxists and liberals is to be tossed in the trash bin of history, perhaps to be dumpster-dived and dusted-off later, according to these turncoats. Russian authoritarianism can supposedly be fought with authoritarian means.
The anarchists of today have forgotten Malatesta’s insight from 1901 that “for a people that goes to oppress another, for anyone who performs work of violence and injustice, it is truer to say, ‘woe to the victors,’” than “woe to the defeated.”
“An English victory would be the victory of militarism and would prepare the ground for the suppression of English freedoms,” Malatesta reminded us long ago, and this still applies to all imperialist countries today.
Elsewhere, I’ve already discussed some the disturbing details of the militarism and junior partner imperialism of the Ukrainian state (see my 2025 article The Downward Spiral of Militarism.)
Since then, Ukraine has only gotten worse in that regard, just like it’s gotten worse on official commemoration of Nazi collaborators and pogromists. Recently Ukraine, for the first time, voted at the United Nations to support the cruel US blockade of Cuba. Zelensky has in the past months been meeting with the Gulf monarchies to seal weapons deals in support of Israeli, American and Gulf monarchy aggression against Iran and Lebanon.
Never mind that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is also backing the genocide carried out by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan. Ukraine, at least at first, didn’t have enough scruples to stop arming the state of Myanmar as it committed the Rohingya genocide; and it didn’t have a problem arming one of the richest countries in the world, Saudi Arabia, to attack one of the poorest, Yemen; why would it scrounge up principles about a genocide in Sudan with a UAE intermediary in between them?
Zelenksy has even been meeting recently with the son of the former Iranian Shah. In 2022, Zelensky met with former Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo, who presided over the 1997 Acteal Massacre in Chiapas. Resistance to invasion or not, there’s no accounting for taste. Russian aggression may be problematic, but genocidal aggression by other regimes is not a barrier to collaboration for those in the Ukrainian government.
From Colonialism to Fascism and Back Again
Much as the first fascist movement, that of Mussolini in Italy, was grounded in militarism, including the disgruntled former soldiers and the supposed “mutilated victory” of WWI, fascism is also based in colonialism.
When the fascists took power in 1922, Italy already had colonies in Libya, and was hungry for more. Like Israel would do later, Italy portrayed the colonization of Africa as simply a return to a place they’d already been and had unjustly been cast out of, referring to the Roman Empire of old. Before WWII, the world stood idly by as Italy committed genocide in Libya, although the elder Omar al-Mukhtar fought as valiantly as he could against the fascists.
Then came the invasions of Ethiopia and Albania. The rest of the world didn’t have to imagine what fascism would be like, it was already happening before their eyes, it just wasn’t happening yet to them.
When the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, the fascists in Italy and the Nazis in Germany came to Franco’s aid, as the rest of the world continued to sit on their hands, aside from the USSR with their intrigues that only undermined the struggle. The USSR, furthermore, had already been supplying Italy with oil and didn’t fully cut off trade with the fascists until 1941. The other Allies supplied Italy, Germany and Japan with crucial materials and technology just prior to the war as well.
In 1941, the OUN in Lviv declared the Restoration of the Ukrainian state, explaining that they would work with Hitler, and then took part in pogroms against the Jewish community. In today’s Lviv, the blood-and-soil flag of those same pogromists flies outside the army recruitment center. A fascist would have no problem enlisting in such a place, would even feel welcomed, and wouldn’t need to be violently shoved into a van by conscription agents, as the former anarchist Petrov supported, to the ongoing silence of his anarchist friends and comrades.
I contend that part of the reason that modern day anarchists like CrimethInc, Gelderloos and Gillis have such a poor analysis of fascism (and are soft on it) is because they have such a poor analysis of (and a lack of negative experience with) its parent ideologies, militarism and colonialism (and by extension, liberalism).
In contrast, as the fellow traveller of anarchists George Padmore wrote in 1936, “the fight against fascism cannot be separated from the right of all colonial peoples and subject races to Self-Determination.”
And as the Spanish anarchist labour federation newspaper Solidaridad Obrera put it that same year, “the struggle against fascism, which at this time has a clear international character, must advise us to try with all our means to foment a healthy atmosphere of rebellion in the communities of the Riff [in Morocco].”
Zelensky’s current day glad-handing with colonizers and genocidaires is not an aberration but part of the long history of collaboration between liberals and fascists, and the evolution of democratic liberal militarism and colonialism into fascism itself.
Schwarzbard, Radowitzky and Makhno deserve much better treatment than the Coward, CrimethInc and other supposed anarchists are capable of, but they also point to how unnecessary and unproductive current day anarchist warmongering is. Militarism and fascism cannot be used against themselves. It’s not necessary or even useful to sacrifice principles for pragmatics. Imperialist war has only ever bred more wars and genocide, and the unity of means and ends is not only an anarchist principle but also an increasingly practical stance.
– K. C. Sinclair (2026)
* * *
Sources
German Court Rejects Palestinian Bid to Halt Arms Exports to Israel
https://www.dw.com/en/german-court-rejects-bid-to-halt-arms-exports-to-israel/a-74713158
How the German-Israeli RGW 90 Matador is Helping Ukraine’s War Effort (Interesting Engineering)
https://interestingengineering.com/videos/ep-6-how-rgw-90-matador-is-helping-ukraines-war-effort
The 152nd Jaeger Brigade “Symon Petliura”
https://www.istpravda.com.ua/short/2025/12/7/165529/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/152nd_Jaeger_Brigade_(Ukraine)
Sholem Schwarzbard: Biography of a Jewish Assassin (Kelly Johnson)
https://dash.harvard.edu/entities/publication/73120378-a38b-6bd4-e053-0100007fdf3b
No War But Class War: Against State Nationalism and Inter-Imperialist War in Ukraine
“In the Spirit of Sholem Schwarzbard”: Addressing Confusion about the War in Ukraine
https://avtonom.org/en/news/spirit-sholem-schwarzbard-addressing-confusion-about-war-ukraine
In Memory of Dmitry Petrov, An Incomplete Biography and Translation of His Work (CrimethInc)
War and Anarchists: Anti-Authoritarian Perspectives in Ukraine, published by CrimethInc
https://crimethinc.com/2022/02/15/war-and-anarchists-anti-authoritarian-perspectives-in-ukraine
Obukhiv City Council tribute to Yuri Samoylenko, company commander within the fascist Right Sector Volunteer Corps and co-founder of the Anti-Authoritarian Platoon
https://obcity.gov.ua/2022/09/14/naviki-u-nashiy-pamyati/
“Our commander and comrade, Senior Lieutenant Yuriy “Yanov” Samoilenko, was killed in action in the Kharkiv region… a combat officer.” (Resistance Committee)
https://web.archive.org/web/20221013010630/https://t.me/theblackheadquarter/300
“The anti-authoritarian unit could be established thanks to a familiar commander, Yuri Samoilenko. He had connections with the Territorial Defense Forces, a volunteer unit of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.” (Solidarity Collectives)
https://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article75840
Four Months in an Anti-Authoritarian Platoon in Ukraine (Petrov)
Anarchists in Ukraine Against War, interview with Petrov by Final Straw Radio
https://thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org/post/2022/02/25/anarchists-in-ukraine-against-war/
German media outlet Taz asks Petrov if he supports conscription, the answer might surprise you
https://taz.de/Russischer-Anarchist-verteidigt-Ukraine/!5918395/
Manifesto of the Resistance Committee
https://medium.com/@rescom/manifesto-of-resistance-committee-261e01769dac
A political and personal statement as well as a review of our solidarity work around the war in Ukraine so far (ABC-Dresden)
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https://memorial.ua/obituaries/militaries/petrov-dmytro-1756
Finbar Cafferkey, an Irish fighter who served in the far-right Bratstvo Battalion alongside Petrov in Ukraine
Video that includes interview with a comrade of Cafferkey’s who explains that they were assigned to the Bratstvo Battalion by the military but didn’t adopt its ideology
Anarchist movement answered to the provocation of German newspaper Junge Welt, by the Resistance Committee
Bratstvo (Brotherhood) Battalion (Wikipedia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bratstvo_Battalion
422nd Unmanned Systems Regiment Luftwaffe (Wikipedia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/422nd_Unmanned_Systems_Regiment_(Ukraine)
Nachtigall Battalion of Nazi Germany
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nachtigall_Battalion
Nachtigall Battalion of Ukraine
Brigadier General Andriy Biletsky, Ukrainian white supremacist (Wikipedia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andriy_Biletsky
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe: Transnational Fascism in Western Ukraine: From Bandera to Putin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXGGTGPtJUA
OUN leader Stepan Bandera (Wikipedia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepan_Bandera
OUN leader Yaroslav Stetsko (Wikipedia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaroslav_Stetsko
Symon_Petliura’s commemoration in modern Ukraine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symon_Petliura#Legacy
The many deaths of Symon Petliura (and slander of Schwarzbard), from the Kyiv Independent
Ukraine reburies Nazi collaborator with state honors, drawing Israeli condemnation, from Forward
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SS Veteran in Parliament Scandal Receives Award Named After Nazi Collaborator
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Anarchism and Revolutionary Defeatism (Sinclair)
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Observations and Comments on Kropotkin and the European War (Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman’s ‘Mother Earth’)
“This Is What Our Ruling Class Has Decided Will Be Normal”: On Aaron Bushnell’s Action in Solidarity with Gaza (CrimethInc)
Clarity Contra Complicity: On Aaron Bushnell’s action (Sinclair)
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Alfredo M. Bonanno details Kropotkin’s determinism
https://www.elephanteditions.net/library/peter-kropotkin-the-conquest-of-bread#toc1
Anarchists Have Forgotten Their Principles, Pro-Government Anarchists (Errico Malatesta)
Simón Radowitzky and the People’s Justice (Osvaldo Bayer)
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/osvaldo-bayer-simon-radowitzky-and-the-people-s-justice
Prisoner 155: Simón Radowitzky (Agustín Comotto)
https://www.akpress.org/catalog/product/view/id/3237/s/prisoner-155-simon-radowitzky/category/3/
Atamansha: The Life of Marusya Nikiforova (Malcolm Archibald)
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/malcolm-archibald-atamansha
Taratuta, Olga Ilyinichna 1876-1938 (Nick Heath)
Sophie Kropotkin (Wikipedia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Kropotkin
Mention of Makhno’s untranslated article about the British Empire
Nestor Makhno: Anarchy’s Cossack, The Struggle for Free Soviets in Ukraine 1917–1921 (Alexandre Skirda)
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alexandre-skirda-nestor-makhno-anarchy-s-cossack
Conscription and resistance incidents in Ukraine
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War is the health of the State and we need Ukraine’s state to stay healthy (Gelderloos)
https://petergelderloos.substack.com/p/war-is-the-health-of-the-state
Why anarchist should ally with statist forces even though it’s never worked out (Gelderloos)
https://itsgoingdown.org/the-invasion-of-ukraine-anarchist-interventions-and-geopolitical-changes/
The Downward Spiral of Militarism (Sinclair)
https://historyiswhat.noblogs.org/post/2025/07/16/the-downward-spiral-of-militarism-2025/
Anarchist Organization in Times of War and Crisis in Ukraine (Kaluža)
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Kolchenko regurgitates fascist Azov propaganda
https://theins.press/en/politics/251492
Myths and the truth about the enemies of our enemies, on Petrovichev and others (Lukáš Borl)
https://libcom.org/article/myths-and-truth-about-enemies-our-enemies
Best friend of Petrovichev says his friend was part of the right-wing movement in Russia
https://graniru.org/War/m.285949.html
Resistance Committee tribute to the fallen Russian fascist Petrovichev where they admit he was a member of a right-wing group in Russia but without mentioning it was right-wing
https://web.archive.org/web/20220909135036/https://t.me/theblackheadquarter/297
Interview with the Russian fascist Alexey Makarov of the Resistance Committee
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_keZb-0Y5_0
How America is sometimes in line with the “struggle against power everywhere” and why a Russian fascist in Ukraine should be honoured with a moment of silence because anti-fascist values are secondary to anarchist coalitions (Gillis)
https://c4ss.org/content/59554
Switzerland panel with moment of silence for dead soldiers, including the fascist Petrovichev, along with whining about reverse racism against white European anarchists
Resistance Committee tribute to Roman Legar of the fascist Azov Brigade
Łaniewski on how he prefers the militant fascists of Azov to principled anarchists
Rundo, White Rex Kapustin, Active Clubs and Azov
https://time.com/5926750/azov-far-right-movement-facebook/
https://www.propublica.org/article/robert-rundo-denis-nikitin-hooligans-europe-hate-group
https://www.vice.com/en/article/neo-nazi-fight-clubs-how-the-far-right-uses-mma-to-spread-hate/
Oleskiw advertises Native land as free for Ukrainian settlers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Oleskiw
Paul Yuzyk entry at the Canadian Encyclopedia
https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/paul-yuzyk
Royal 22e commander in Ukraine training soldiers on how to fight against Indigenous peoples
https://www.thesudburystar.com/2016/05/01/tim-arsenault-making-a-difference-in-ukraine
Canadian soldiers engage in white supremacy in Somalia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somalia_affair
Officer with Ukrainian unit linked to neo-Nazis received military training in Canada (David Pugliese)
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/officer-ukrainian-unit-linked-neo-080020744.html
Freeland and her Nazi grandpa Chomiak
https://breachmedia.ca/chrystia-freelands-denials-grandfather-complicit-nazi-genocide/
CBC blurs out Ukrainian’s army trainer’s Nazi tattoo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uevoW6Z5LOE
Roshel armoured vehicles from the battlefields of Ukraine to the streets of Minneapolis and Portland
https://bsky.app/profile/dmbmeg.bsky.social/post/3mdbahkestc2s
https://bsky.app/profile/inlovewthemooon.bsky.social/post/3mksw6vlv5223
Militians, Yes! But Soldiers, Never! (Spanish anarchist militias)
https://historyiswhat.noblogs.org/2022/05/31/militians-yes-but-soldiers-never-1936/
The Durruti Column Responds to the Militarization Decree (Durruti)
Against Militarism (Malatesta)
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/errico-malatesta-against-militarism
Ukraine votes to continue strangling the people of Cuba
Zelensky meets the president of the UAE
https://x.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/2037807460845502619
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/75956
https://www.middleeasteye.net/explainers/why-uae-involved-sudans-bloody-civil-war
Ukraine arms Myanmar
https://www.justiceformyanmar.org/stories/ukraine-is-arming-the-myanmar-military
Zelensky meets with the son of the Shah, twice
https://kyivindependent.com/zelensky-meets-iranian-opposition-reza-pahlavi/
https://kyivindependent.com/zelensky-meets-exiled-iranian-opposition-figure-reza-pahlavi/
Zelenksy meets Zedillo of the Acteal Massacre and The Elders
https://interfax.com/newsroom/top-stories/82294/
Fourth Shore: Italian Colonization of Libya, 1974, pg. 22 on the return to Ancient Roman territory (Segrè)
https://search.worldcat.org/title/1451115
Omar al-Mukhtar (Wikipedia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_al-Mukhtar
Italo-Soviet Pact (Wikipedia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italo-Soviet_Pact
Those Who Make War Possible, from Spain and the World
Act of restoration of the Ukrainian state, in which the OUN pledges to work with Hitler then does pogroms
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Act_of_restoration_of_the_Ukrainian_state
How Britain Rules Africa (Padmore)
https://search.worldcat.org/title/How-Britain-rules-Africa/oclc/883985
The Right of Peoples to Determine Themselves (Solidaridad Obrera)
Originally published at https://historyiswhat.noblogs.org/post/2026/06/15/fascism-militarism-and-anarchism-a-tale-of-three-ukrainians-k-c-sinclair-2026/
https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=34057 #anarchist #europe #fascism #makhno #militarism #russiaUkraineWar #ukraine -
"Nestor Ivanovych Makhno (1888–1934) was a pivotal figure in the Russian Civil War, leading the Makhnovshchina, a peasant anarchist movement in southern Ukraine from 1918 to 1921. Influenced by Pyotr Kropotkin’s mutual aid and Mikhail Bakunin’s insurrectionism, Makhno’s ideology diverged from William Godwin’s pacifist rationalism by embracing militant direct action, shaped by the violent context of war and his Zaporozhian Sich-inspired peasant ethos. Makhno fought both Bolshevik centralism and White Guard restorationism, positioning his movement as a 'third force' defending peasant interests against exploitation. His alliances with the Bolsheviks were tactical, collapsing over their authoritarian policies like prodrazvyorstka (grain requisition). Despite executing pogromists, his movement faced accusations of anti-Semitism, complicating its legacy. Makhno’s philosophy, forged in prison discussions with Peter Arshinov and encounters with Kropotkin, emphasized immediate revolutionary action over theoretical purity, blending Ukrainian anti-imperialism with anti-state ideals. In exile, his memoirs defended Makhnovshchina as a peasant liberation struggle, critiquing Bolshevik 'state capitalism.' Compared to Godwin’s gradualism, Bakunin’s collectivism, and Kropotkin’s scientific anarchism, Makhno’s praxis was uniquely agrarian and militarized, proving anarchism’s revolutionary potential but also its vulnerability to organized power. His failure to sustain a stateless society underscores the challenges of anarchist governance amidst civil war. Makhno’s legacy endures as a symbol of anti-authoritarian resistance, reflecting the tensions between revolutionary ideals and practical realities, with lasting influence on anarchist thought and peasant movements."
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"Nestor Ivanovych Makhno (1888–1934) was a pivotal figure in the Russian Civil War, leading the Makhnovshchina, a peasant anarchist movement in southern Ukraine from 1918 to 1921. Influenced by Pyotr Kropotkin’s mutual aid and Mikhail Bakunin’s insurrectionism, Makhno’s ideology diverged from William Godwin’s pacifist rationalism by embracing militant direct action, shaped by the violent context of war and his Zaporozhian Sich-inspired peasant ethos. Makhno fought both Bolshevik centralism and White Guard restorationism, positioning his movement as a 'third force' defending peasant interests against exploitation. His alliances with the Bolsheviks were tactical, collapsing over their authoritarian policies like prodrazvyorstka (grain requisition). Despite executing pogromists, his movement faced accusations of anti-Semitism, complicating its legacy. Makhno’s philosophy, forged in prison discussions with Peter Arshinov and encounters with Kropotkin, emphasized immediate revolutionary action over theoretical purity, blending Ukrainian anti-imperialism with anti-state ideals. In exile, his memoirs defended Makhnovshchina as a peasant liberation struggle, critiquing Bolshevik 'state capitalism.' Compared to Godwin’s gradualism, Bakunin’s collectivism, and Kropotkin’s scientific anarchism, Makhno’s praxis was uniquely agrarian and militarized, proving anarchism’s revolutionary potential but also its vulnerability to organized power. His failure to sustain a stateless society underscores the challenges of anarchist governance amidst civil war. Makhno’s legacy endures as a symbol of anti-authoritarian resistance, reflecting the tensions between revolutionary ideals and practical realities, with lasting influence on anarchist thought and peasant movements."
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Oh, I'm not brave enough for politics!
https://piefed.social/c/tankiejerk/p/1728110/oh-i-m-not-brave-enough-for-politics
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Oh, I'm not brave enough for politics!
https://piefed.social/c/tankiejerk/p/1728110/oh-i-m-not-brave-enough-for-politics
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Voline
@Voline(Interview) Ignacio de Llorens biography of the Russian anarchist Volin, a key figure in the creation of the first soviet and later persecuted by the Bolsheviks
https://freedomnews.org.uk/2026/01/08/stalinism-is-a-marxist-invention-to-save-lenin-and-trotsky/The Unknown Revolution 1917-1921
https://libcom.org/article/unknown-revolution-1917-1921-volin -
Voline
@Voline(Interview) Ignacio de Llorens biography of the Russian anarchist Volin, a key figure in the creation of the first soviet and later persecuted by the Bolsheviks
https://freedomnews.org.uk/2026/01/08/stalinism-is-a-marxist-invention-to-save-lenin-and-trotsky/The Unknown Revolution 1917-1921
https://libcom.org/article/unknown-revolution-1917-1921-volin -
Very short video from Kings & Generals (from YT). All anarchist should be in the public domain, so ... enjoy.
"Explore the Makhnovshchina, a fascinating anarchist territory in southeast Ukraine from 1917-1921. 🚩 Led by Nestor Makhno, this movement was organized into autonomous, directly democratic communes. They first fought the Whites in the Russian Civil War, then allied with the Bolsheviks. The alliance eventually broke down, and the Bolsheviks destroyed the Makhnovshchina. It remains one of the few examples of a long-surviving anarchist society."
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Very short video from Kings & Generals (from YT). All anarchist should be in the public domain, so ... enjoy.
"Explore the Makhnovshchina, a fascinating anarchist territory in southeast Ukraine from 1917-1921. 🚩 Led by Nestor Makhno, this movement was organized into autonomous, directly democratic communes. They first fought the Whites in the Russian Civil War, then allied with the Bolsheviks. The alliance eventually broke down, and the Bolsheviks destroyed the Makhnovshchina. It remains one of the few examples of a long-surviving anarchist society."
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Atamansha. Das Leben von Marusya Nikiforova
Die ukrainische Anarchistin Maria Nikiforova (1885 - 16. September 1919) wird manchmal mit Jeanne d'Arc verglichen. Wie diese stammte sie aus bescheidenen Verhältnissen und wurde auf unwahrscheinliche Weise zu einer grausamen Militärführerin, die von ihren eingeschworenen Feinden gefangen genommen und heute vor 103 Jahren hingerichtet wurde. Und wie Jeanne war sie eine Fanatikerin, die ihre Ziele auf gewalttätige und rücksichtslose Weise verfolgte.
Aber es gibt keinen Kult um Maria #Nikiforova. Es gibt keine Bücherregale in irgendeiner Sprache, die ihrem Leben gewidmet sind. Obwohl sie in den russischen Revolutionen von 1917 und dem anschließenden #Bürgerkrieg eine herausragende Rolle spielte, wurde sie aus der sowjetischen #Geschichtsschreibung dieser Zeit praktisch getilgt. In einem in der #Sowjetunion veröffentlichten biografischen Wörterbuch der Russischen #Revolution, das Hunderte von Namen enthält, wird sie nicht erwähnt, sondern nur ein paar Dutzend #Frauen. Es gibt Einträge zu den bolschewistischen Heldinnen Alexandra #Kollontai, Larissa #Reissner und Inessa #Armand, aber keine dieser Frauen hatte ein unabhängiges militärisches Kommando wie Nikiforowa.
Es gibt keine wissenschaftliche Biografie über Maria Nikiforowa, keine #Geschichtsschreibung über ihr Leben, die nur aktualisiert und möglicherweise neu interpretiert werden müsste. Das liegt zum Teil daran, dass sie die meiste Zeit ihres Lebens im #Untergrund verbrachte: Sie schloss sich mit 16 Jahren einer anarchistischen Terrorgruppe an und war eigentlich nur zwei Jahre lang (1917-1919) "über der Erde". Daher gibt es nur sehr wenige Dokumente, die ihre Aktivitäten belegen, und fast keine Fotos. Für einen Terroristen kann es tödlich sein, erkannt zu werden, und so war es auch für Nikiforova am Ende. Die Berichte über ihr Leben, die es gibt, finden sich in der Regel in der #Memoirenliteratur oder in der #Belletristik. Die meisten dieser Berichte sind feindselig gegenüber Nikiforova und stellen sie als abstoßend und böse dar.
Nikiforowa war Ukrainerin und ihre Aktivitäten in der Russischen Revolution und im Bürgerkrieg fanden größtenteils in der #Ukraine statt, aber sie wurde von ukrainischen Historikern weitgehend ignoriert. Sie war #antinationalistisch und konnte, wie die ukrainische anarchistische Bewegung im Allgemeinen, nicht in eine nationalistische #Geschichtsperspektive eingeordnet werden.
Selbst Autoren, die mit dem #Anarchismus sympathisieren, haben sie in der Regel vernachlässigt. Obwohl sie eng mit dem berühmten Bauernanarchisten Nestor Makhno verbunden war, wird sie in Büchern über #Makhno kaum erwähnt. Dabei war Nikiforowa 1918 bereits als anarchistische #Atamansha (militärische Anführerin) in der ganzen Ukraine berühmt, während Makhno noch eine eher obskure Figur war, die in einem provinziellen Hinterland agierte. In den Werken von Peter #Arshinov, Volin und Paul Avrich kommt sie nicht vor. Alexandre #Skirdas Buch "Nestor Makhno, le cosaque libertaire" erwähnt sie zwar, widmet ihr aber nur einen Absatz in einem Werk von 400 Seiten. Ausnahmen von der Regel sind Makhno selbst und sein ehemaliger Adjutant Victor #Belash. In seinen Memoiren (die nur 22 Monate der Revolution und des Bürgerkriegs umfassen) berichtet Makhno als Augenzeuge von einer Reihe dramatischer Ereignisse, bei denen Nikiforova eine führende Rolle spielte. Belash, dessen Arbeit aus den Akten der sowjetischen Geheimpolizei gerettet wurde, präsentiert ebenfalls Primärquellenmaterial über sie.
Seit dem Zusammenbruch der Sowjetunion besteht in #Russland und der Ukraine ein großes Interesse daran, die "weißen Flecken" in ihrer Geschichte zu füllen. Makhno und Nikiforova haben von diesem Interesse profitiert: Es wurden viele Bücher über Makhno und einige Aufsätze über Nikiforova veröffentlicht. Die Archive haben einige solide Informationen geliefert; so gibt es zum Beispiel Nikiforowas Dienstakte, da sie einst Mitglied der Roten Armee war. Allmählich zeichnet sich ein klareres Bild ihres Lebens ab, und es ist möglich, eine einigermaßen zuverlässige Erzählung zu erstellen, auch wenn viele Unklarheiten bestehen bleiben.
Die folgende Skizze von Nikiforovas Leben basiert hauptsächlich auf Sekundärquellen, die in den letzten zwei Jahrzehnten auf Russisch und Ukrainisch veröffentlicht wurden.
Mehr in Meiner Übersetzung der Broschüre Atamansha: The Story of Maria Nikiforova, the Anarchist Joan of Arc (Black Cat Editions, Canada 2007) ===> Atamansha. Das Leben von Marusya Nikiforova
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Atamansha. Das Leben von Marusya Nikiforova
Die ukrainische Anarchistin Maria Nikiforova (1885 - 16. September 1919) wird manchmal mit Jeanne d'Arc verglichen. Wie diese stammte sie aus bescheidenen Verhältnissen und wurde auf unwahrscheinliche Weise zu einer grausamen Militärführerin, die von ihren eingeschworenen Feinden gefangen genommen und heute vor 103 Jahren hingerichtet wurde. Und wie Jeanne war sie eine Fanatikerin, die ihre Ziele auf gewalttätige und rücksichtslose Weise verfolgte.
Aber es gibt keinen Kult um Maria #Nikiforova. Es gibt keine Bücherregale in irgendeiner Sprache, die ihrem Leben gewidmet sind. Obwohl sie in den russischen Revolutionen von 1917 und dem anschließenden #Bürgerkrieg eine herausragende Rolle spielte, wurde sie aus der sowjetischen #Geschichtsschreibung dieser Zeit praktisch getilgt. In einem in der #Sowjetunion veröffentlichten biografischen Wörterbuch der Russischen #Revolution, das Hunderte von Namen enthält, wird sie nicht erwähnt, sondern nur ein paar Dutzend #Frauen. Es gibt Einträge zu den bolschewistischen Heldinnen Alexandra #Kollontai, Larissa #Reissner und Inessa #Armand, aber keine dieser Frauen hatte ein unabhängiges militärisches Kommando wie Nikiforowa.
Es gibt keine wissenschaftliche Biografie über Maria Nikiforowa, keine #Geschichtsschreibung über ihr Leben, die nur aktualisiert und möglicherweise neu interpretiert werden müsste. Das liegt zum Teil daran, dass sie die meiste Zeit ihres Lebens im #Untergrund verbrachte: Sie schloss sich mit 16 Jahren einer anarchistischen Terrorgruppe an und war eigentlich nur zwei Jahre lang (1917-1919) "über der Erde". Daher gibt es nur sehr wenige Dokumente, die ihre Aktivitäten belegen, und fast keine Fotos. Für einen Terroristen kann es tödlich sein, erkannt zu werden, und so war es auch für Nikiforova am Ende. Die Berichte über ihr Leben, die es gibt, finden sich in der Regel in der #Memoirenliteratur oder in der #Belletristik. Die meisten dieser Berichte sind feindselig gegenüber Nikiforova und stellen sie als abstoßend und böse dar.
Nikiforowa war Ukrainerin und ihre Aktivitäten in der Russischen Revolution und im Bürgerkrieg fanden größtenteils in der #Ukraine statt, aber sie wurde von ukrainischen Historikern weitgehend ignoriert. Sie war #antinationalistisch und konnte, wie die ukrainische anarchistische Bewegung im Allgemeinen, nicht in eine nationalistische #Geschichtsperspektive eingeordnet werden.
Selbst Autoren, die mit dem #Anarchismus sympathisieren, haben sie in der Regel vernachlässigt. Obwohl sie eng mit dem berühmten Bauernanarchisten Nestor Makhno verbunden war, wird sie in Büchern über #Makhno kaum erwähnt. Dabei war Nikiforowa 1918 bereits als anarchistische #Atamansha (militärische Anführerin) in der ganzen Ukraine berühmt, während Makhno noch eine eher obskure Figur war, die in einem provinziellen Hinterland agierte. In den Werken von Peter #Arshinov, Volin und Paul Avrich kommt sie nicht vor. Alexandre #Skirdas Buch "Nestor Makhno, le cosaque libertaire" erwähnt sie zwar, widmet ihr aber nur einen Absatz in einem Werk von 400 Seiten. Ausnahmen von der Regel sind Makhno selbst und sein ehemaliger Adjutant Victor #Belash. In seinen Memoiren (die nur 22 Monate der Revolution und des Bürgerkriegs umfassen) berichtet Makhno als Augenzeuge von einer Reihe dramatischer Ereignisse, bei denen Nikiforova eine führende Rolle spielte. Belash, dessen Arbeit aus den Akten der sowjetischen Geheimpolizei gerettet wurde, präsentiert ebenfalls Primärquellenmaterial über sie.
Seit dem Zusammenbruch der Sowjetunion besteht in #Russland und der Ukraine ein großes Interesse daran, die "weißen Flecken" in ihrer Geschichte zu füllen. Makhno und Nikiforova haben von diesem Interesse profitiert: Es wurden viele Bücher über Makhno und einige Aufsätze über Nikiforova veröffentlicht. Die Archive haben einige solide Informationen geliefert; so gibt es zum Beispiel Nikiforowas Dienstakte, da sie einst Mitglied der Roten Armee war. Allmählich zeichnet sich ein klareres Bild ihres Lebens ab, und es ist möglich, eine einigermaßen zuverlässige Erzählung zu erstellen, auch wenn viele Unklarheiten bestehen bleiben.
Die folgende Skizze von Nikiforovas Leben basiert hauptsächlich auf Sekundärquellen, die in den letzten zwei Jahrzehnten auf Russisch und Ukrainisch veröffentlicht wurden.
Mehr in Meiner Übersetzung der Broschüre Atamansha: The Story of Maria Nikiforova, the Anarchist Joan of Arc (Black Cat Editions, Canada 2007) ===> Atamansha. Das Leben von Marusya Nikiforova
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We Carry a Free Territory in Our Hearts: How Wikipedia Fabricated an Anarchist State
#ukraine #History #Anarchism #makhnovshchina #makhno
https://www.thecommoner.org.uk/we-carry-a-free-territory-in-our-hearts/ -
"Anarchism may be a popular political brand in Ukraine today, but it’s not anarchism as we know it."
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/anarchism-in-makhnos-homeland-adventures-of-red-and-black-flag/
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Colin Darch's book Nestor #Makhno & Rural #Anarchism in #Ukraine, 1917-1921 is a fascinating #history on the anarcho-communist experiment known as makhnovshchina in southeast Ukraine (partly where the Russo-Ukraine war is being fought). They fought German colonizers, the Whites, & the Red Army, before being driven into exile. They supported regional #peasant #autonomy & the election of #military officers (unlike the Bolsheviks). Highly-recommended.
https://www.plutobooks.com/9781786805270/nestor-makhno-and-rural-anarchism-in-ukraine-1917-1921
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Colin Darch's book Nestor #Makhno & Rural #Anarchism in #Ukraine, 1917-1921 is a fascinating #history on the anarcho-communist experiment known as makhnovshchina in southeast Ukraine (partly where the Russo-Ukraine war is being fought). They fought German colonizers, the Whites, & the Red Army, before being driven into exile. They supported regional #peasant #autonomy & the election of #military officers (unlike the Bolsheviks). Highly-recommended.
https://www.plutobooks.com/9781786805270/nestor-makhno-and-rural-anarchism-in-ukraine-1917-1921
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What a revelation! :pride:
Micro Zoe: *Femboy Nestor Makhno*
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What a revelation! :pride:
Micro Zoe: *Femboy Nestor Makhno*
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Zoe's new Micro channel delivers :)
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#ukraine #makhno - Ils et elles se battent à l’extérieur contre l’invasion poutinienne, à l’intérieur contre la politique antisociale de l’État ukrainien. Ils et elles sont syndicalistes, libertaires, féministes, écologistes… Nestor Makhno leur est une référence toujours vivante. Un documentaire est en cours de tournage pour leur donner la parole. Une souscription est ouverte pour financer sa réalisation.
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The state often makes use of its former opponents once they are safely dead and no longer the threat they were in life. The Ukrainian state and its media have done this with the legendary anarchist communist Nestor Makhno.
Makhno, a native of Huliaipole in the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine, was a lifelong anarchist revolutionary. The son of poor peasants, he joined his local anarchist communist group in 1906, subsequently spending nine years in prison for his involvement with the killing of a district police officer. Whilst in prison he developed his politics and when liberated by the Provisional Government in 1917, he returned to his home town and was elected chair of the local carpenters and metal workers union and the local Soviet of Peasants and Workers Deputies and threw himself into the maelstrom of the Russian revolution in Ukraine. He has become most well known for leading the Revolutionary Insurgent Army, also known as the Black Army. This politico-military force combatted the White counter-revolutionary armies and, eventually the Red Army. But it also vigorously fought Ukrainian Nationalists, a faction of whom had murdered Makhno’s brother, Omelian. Makhno was no friend of any sort of nationalism – neither Ukrainian or Russian. The ‘Makhnovist’ movement attempted to create free territory based on self-managed communes. The largest of these was named after Rosa Luxemburg, the Polish Marxist of Jewish descent. Hardly the actions of Ukrainian nationalists!
But that hasn’t stopped Makhno being claimed as a Ukrainian patriot, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Whilst this started before the Russian invasion, it has increased during the war with many fighters claiming to be in the tradition of Makhno and with nationalists using imagery associated with the Makhnovists. This took an interesting turn with the destruction of the Huliaipole Museum on August 23rd this year, following a Russian missile attack. This local museum centres Huliaipole’s most famous son and the movement associated with his name, with displays and permanent exhibitions. The exhibits, however, were moved into central State storage facilities for safekeeping away from the frontline town the day before the attack.
The destruction of the museum, seen as a direct attack upon Ukrainian and Zaporozhzian culture, has been used to whip up patriotic sentiment and Makhno’s memory, reimagined as a national hero – a sort of national anarchist – has been used to mobilise support for war at a time when resistance to conscription is at its highest point since the beginning of the conflict.
Added to this, the Huliaipole’s statue of Makhno, which was partially destroyed by a Russian attack on May 23rd, has recently been replaced with fanfare with the addition of a Ukrainian national flag in the hand of a man who never would have held it in real life. The replacement has hoped to raise morale in a town where the only civic building still fully functioning was the museum. Since May 2023 no ATMs, no doctors, with only 1 shop open 2 hours per day accepting only cash, and only 600 civilians remaining from a pre-war 14,000.
Odessa based historian, Vyacheslav Azarov gives some background to attempts to co-opt Makhno to the nationalist cause:
“The first campaign to privatise Makhnovism by nationalists began during the “orange” demonstrations of 2004 and the subsequent rule of Victor Yushchenko. The organizers of the first Maidan tried to compare their political technology events with the people’s liberation of Huliaipole, and the patriotic grant activists led by Oles Doniy actively called for the “posthumous Ukrainisation” of Makhno. They did not hide the fact that the appropriation of Makhnovist heritage was necessary for the purpose of promoting nationalist ideology in the territories of the South-East, which was hostile to the Banderist movement. The peak of this campaign was the ceremonial installation of the monument to the Batko in Huliaipole, which was organized by the then Minister of Internal Affairs Yuriy Lutsenko with the financial support of a well-known oligarch from Zaporozhye. The monument is certainly good – but the fact that the police minister stood behind it, who then dropped the phrase: “if you want, call me a racist!”, gave the events an absurd character. This political privatisation has been seen at the Independence Day with Makhno festival, which was held in Huliaipole for several years in a row under the patronage of the same Lutsenko. Banderist flags were flying over the concert venue, anti-Semitic and xenophobic slogans were heard from the stage, the organizers forbade performing Russian-language songs and generally speaking Russian on stage – the native language for the absolute majority of Huliaipole residents. Uncommitted guests of the Makhnofest noted the dominance of nationalists and reactionary rhetoric – suffice it to say that the cult Odessa Nazi Maxim Chayka took part in it. And all this completely contradicted the ideas and views of the outstanding Ukrainian anarchist.”Sad and bitter days in the birthplace of Makhno.
Source: Anarchist Communist Group
#anarchist #europe #makhno #russiaUkraineWar #russianRevolution #ukraine
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Nestor Makhno died on July 25th, 1934. A committed anarchist communist all of his life, he suffered prison, where he contracted the TB that finally killed him, many wounds which left his body scarred in many places, and exile and poverty, yet he stuck to his ideas.
“The freedom of any individual carries within it the seed of a free and complete community without government, a free society that lives in organic and decentralised totality, united in its pursuit of the great human goal: Anarchist Communism!” Nestor Ivanovych Makhno.
Speech given on July 17th, 1921, to the defeated Makhnovist forces before they withdrew over the border to Romania : “The communism to which we aspire assumes that there is individual freedom, equality, self-management, initiative, creativity and plenty. We have spelled out our thoughts in our ‘Declarations.’ We have had the chance and we have striven to build a society on the libertarian principles of non-violence, but the Bolsheviks have not allowed us to proceed with this. They have turned the clash of ideas into a struggle against men. Not only has the entire State apparatus, despised by the people, with its functionaries and its prisons and so on, not been liquidated, but it has simply been re-cast. The Bolsheviks have proclaimed might as their only right.
The foundations of the society that the Bolshevik-Communists have laid, after eliminating all other parties and rivals, have nothing to do with communism. They amount to a closed, semi-military sect of ‘soldiers of Marx, blindly disciplined and with pretensions to infallibility, rejecting any quibbles and in hot pursuit of the goal of a totalitarian State which grants neither freedoms nor rights to its citizens and which peddles a novel brand of ideological racism. It breaks the people up into ‘their own ‘ and ‘the rest.’ In many respects, it is an absurdity. They deprive the toilers of all their dreams of a better life and they are building the most wretched, most unfair police society from which the joys of labor, creativity and the spirit of enterprise are to be banished.
Their experiments will be pointless and they will co-opt folk of the same outlook, authority will be extended through the conjuring up of unanswerable demagogues and dictators. They will rule and, by means of prisons and coercion, they will compel the toilers to work themselves to death for a glass of buttermilk … They will tear everything down and eliminate all who are not to the Party’s taste or ideologically in tune with it … They will devise an astronomical schedule of punishments …People’s sole preoccupation will be with survival in such frighteningly oppressive conditions. But it cannot continue forever. The strengthening of authority will inevitably lead to a complete psychological and ideological breakdown between those in charge and the toilers.
Comrades!
Be vigilant and do not cast aside your weapons for they will soon serve you again! Do not trust the Bolsheviks! We part with the feeling that we have done our revolutionary duty. Long live solidarity and unity of the toilers! Long live the third social revolution! My thanks to all of you for everything!”https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2024/07/26/commemorating-death-of-nestor-makhno/
#anarchist #europe #makhno #russianRevolution #socialRevolution #ukraine
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In honor of the dead, 90 years ago of Ukrainian anarchist hero Nestor Makhno. :makhno: 🏴
#NestorMakhno #Makhno #RussianRevolution #anarchism #Ukraine
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In honor of the dead, 90 years ago of Ukrainian anarchist hero Nestor Makhno. :makhno: 🏴
#NestorMakhno #Makhno #RussianRevolution #anarchism #Ukraine
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Heute in der Geschichte der #Arbeiterbewegung 4. Juni 1919: Trotzki verbietet den 4. Ukrainischen Kongress der Freien Sowjets mit seinem Befehl Nr. 1824. Er schickte auch Truppen, um die Rosa-Luxemburg-Kommune bei Provkovski zu zerstören, und erklärte den ukrainischen anarchistischen Aufständischen Nestor #Makhno zum Geächteten. Das Freie Territorium in der #Ukraine, auch bekannt als Makhnovia (nach Nestor Makhno), dauerte von 1918 bis 1921. Es war eine staatenlose, anarchistische Gesellschaft, die von Makhnos Revolutionärer Aufstandsarmee (auch bekannt als Schwarze Armee) verteidigt wurde. Etwa 7 Millionen Menschen lebten in diesem Gebiet. Die #Bauern, die dort lebten, weigerten sich, Pacht an die #Grundbesitzer zu zahlen, und beschlagnahmten die Ländereien und den Viehbestand der kirchlichen, staatlichen und privaten Grundbesitzer, gründeten lokale Komitees, um sie zu verwalten und unter den verschiedenen Dörfern und Gemeinden des #Freistaats aufzuteilen.
#Arbeiterklasse #Arbeitergeschichte #Anarchismus #Ukraine #Nestormakhno #Revolution #sowjetisch #kommunistisch #Trotzki #Aufstand #SchwarzeArmee #Bauern #Kommune #Anarchismus
From: @MikeDunnAuthor
https://kolektiva.social/@MikeDunnAuth[email protected]@[email protected]/112558794740801654 -
Heute in der Geschichte der #Arbeiterbewegung 4. Juni 1919: Trotzki verbietet den 4. Ukrainischen Kongress der Freien Sowjets mit seinem Befehl Nr. 1824. Er schickte auch Truppen, um die Rosa-Luxemburg-Kommune bei Provkovski zu zerstören, und erklärte den ukrainischen anarchistischen Aufständischen Nestor #Makhno zum Geächteten. Das Freie Territorium in der #Ukraine, auch bekannt als Makhnovia (nach Nestor Makhno), dauerte von 1918 bis 1921. Es war eine staatenlose, anarchistische Gesellschaft, die von Makhnos Revolutionärer Aufstandsarmee (auch bekannt als Schwarze Armee) verteidigt wurde. Etwa 7 Millionen Menschen lebten in diesem Gebiet. Die #Bauern, die dort lebten, weigerten sich, Pacht an die #Grundbesitzer zu zahlen, und beschlagnahmten die Ländereien und den Viehbestand der kirchlichen, staatlichen und privaten Grundbesitzer, gründeten lokale Komitees, um sie zu verwalten und unter den verschiedenen Dörfern und Gemeinden des #Freistaats aufzuteilen.
#Arbeiterklasse #Arbeitergeschichte #Anarchismus #Ukraine #Nestormakhno #Revolution #sowjetisch #kommunistisch #Trotzki #Aufstand #SchwarzeArmee #Bauern #Kommune #Anarchismus
From: @MikeDunnAuthor
https://kolektiva.social/@MikeDunnAuth[email protected]@[email protected]/112558794740801654 -
Monument to anarchist Nestor #Makhno was destroyed by the russian rocket strike in #Huliaipole.
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Monument to anarchist Nestor #Makhno was destroyed by the russian rocket strike in #Huliaipole.
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I fucking hate #Wikipedia lol. The "Free Territory" supposedly coined by #Makhno and his "Black Army" (or #Bolshevik historians, depends on what you read I guess) was never real :koishtare:
https://www.thecommoner.org.uk/we-carry-a-free-territory-in-our-hearts/
#Anarchy #Anarchism #Ukraine #Russia #RussianCivilWar #BlackArmy #NestorMakhno #History #HistoricalRevisionism #AnarchistHistory -
I fucking hate #Wikipedia lol. The "Free Territory" supposedly coined by #Makhno and his "Black Army" (or #Bolshevik historians, depends on what you read I guess) was never real :koishtare:
https://www.thecommoner.org.uk/we-carry-a-free-territory-in-our-hearts/
#Anarchy #Anarchism #Ukraine #Russia #RussianCivilWar #BlackArmy #NestorMakhno #History #HistoricalRevisionism #AnarchistHistory -
Also don't you try bringing up #Makhno to defend your #entryism. The Black Army's circumstances were unique; they were literally fighting everyone else in the Russian civil war and most anarchist thinking at the time wasn't remotely considering the possibility of doing away with the armies and "revolution".
If anything the lesson that should be taken here is to not compromise with authority at all. -
Also don't you try bringing up #Makhno to defend your #entryism. The Black Army's circumstances were unique; they were literally fighting everyone else in the Russian civil war and most anarchist thinking at the time wasn't remotely considering the possibility of doing away with the armies and "revolution".
If anything the lesson that should be taken here is to not compromise with authority at all. -
Ivana Hoffman and Şevger Ara Makhno, two internationalist revolutionary fighters who fell in defense of the Rojava Revolution, were commemorated this month by their organizations. Ivana Hoffman fought under the banner to the MLKP and was their first internationalist martyr in the struggle. While Makhno fell in defense of Afrin fighting with the anarchist force Tekoşîna Anarşîst.
The MLKP held an event in Tel Temir to pay homage to the fallen comrade. Hoffman was a Black, feminist communist and was the first female internationalist fighter to die in the struggle. She stated that she “decided to come to Rojava because they are fighting for humanity here, for rights and for internationalism that the MLKP represents.” The MLKP acknowledged it was a great honor to commemorate her nine years after her passing. Tekoşîna Anarşîst, through their Twitter account, paid homage to fallen fighter Şevger Ara Makhno. Their whole statement is posted below:
Today marks 6 years since our comrade şehîd Şevger Ara Makhno gave his life in defense of Afrin against Turkish invasion, on a hill near the village Berbêne with two YPG comrades. We remember Ara with warmth and respect, and look up to him in our struggle. Şehîd namirin!
Ara was an anarchist from Turkey. Determined to find lessons for the anarchist movement, he came to Syria to defend the revolution with the peoples of this region. He sacrificed a lot with this decision. Today it can help us to reflect, as we choose our ways as militants.
Ara united people, made everyone laugh, lifted others up. His wicked smile and passionate heart are with us. Along with grief of his death, his contribution in Rojava brought determination for us to take our steps in the revolution in NE Syria as an anarchist organization.
https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2024/03/27/remembering-ivana-hoffman-and-sevger-ara-makhno/
#ivanaHoffman #makhno #mlkp #rip #rojava #tekosinaAnarchist #tribute #westAsia
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"אויטאָריטעט ביגעצץ פּאַראַזיטן,
לעבן זאָל אַנאַרכיע!"-מאַכנאָװיסטישער קלינגװאָרט
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[BD] Au pays de #Makhno - Mémoires ukrainiennes (1917-1921) - Brochure – PARTAGE NOIR https://www.partage-noir.fr/bd-au-pays-de-makhno-memoires-ukrainiennes-1917-1921-brochure
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Nestor #Makhno et la question juive - Brochure [PDF] – PARTAGE NOIR https://www.partage-noir.fr/nestor-makhno-et-la-question-juive-brochure-pdf
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Nestor #Makhno et la question juive - Brochure [PDF] – PARTAGE NOIR https://www.partage-noir.fr/nestor-makhno-et-la-question-juive-brochure-pdf
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Le 27 octobre 1889 (1888 ?), naissance de Nestor Ivanovitch MIKNIENKO dit #MAKHNO à Gouliaï-Polié, (Ukraine).
#Anarchiste #ukrainien, dirigeant d'une armée insurrectionnelle : la #Makhnovchtchina.
https://www.partage-noir.fr/bd-makhno-1888-1934-brochure -
CW: Krieg Ukraine keine gewalthaltigen Bilder.
Wenn Ihr mehr zu Nestor #Machno / #makhno und der #makhnovschina wissen wollt, ist der englische Wikipediartikel ein guter Einstieg. Auf Deutsch empfehle ich dieses Buch https://edition-nautilus.de/programm/erinnert-euch-an-mich-ueber-nestor-machno/
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CW: Krieg Ukraine keine gewalthaltigen Bilder.
Erinnert sich noch jemand an das neoliberale Geschwätz vom Ende der Geschichte? Aber dass 30 Jahre später in #Europa ein anti-kolonialer Kampf toben würde, in der Chechenen unter dem Banner der alten anarchistischen #Makhno-Armee für die #Ukraine gegen die russischen Invasoren kämpfen würden, - gerade haben sie einen wichtigen Frontabschnitt erobert -, das ist doch einfach völlig wild.
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Imprisoned socialist intellectual Alp Altınörs has published an article on the Makhno Movement in Capitalism Nature Socialism.
#Anarchism #Socialism #Makhno
@politicalscience https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10455752.2023.2165778?journalCode=rcns20 -
"#Huliaipole, famous for being the birthplace of #Ukrainian #anarchist revolutionary Nestor #Makhno, a missile strike on city hall about a month and a half ago killed the town’s deputy #mayor & one of his aides."
As a #diplomat covering political issues in #Zaporozhzhia, not least cos of its history, I paid especial attention to Huliapole, capital of Europe's only ever #anarcho-syndicalist republic. A state of 7m souls extinguished by Bolsheviks.
https://twitter.com/decodingtrolls/status/1549828997386829826?s=46&t=qciJQeMVEBfwp3Or0bsUXA
