---
title: <cite class="book">Nestor Makhno &mdash; Anarchy's Cossack</cite>
subtitle: The Struggle for Free Soviets in the Ukraine 1917&ndash;1921
author: Ben
type: quotes
date: -001-11-30T00:00:00+00:00
draft: true
url: '/?post_type=quotes&p=6708'

---
&#8216;The communism to which we aspire assumes that there is individual freedom, equality, self-management, initiative, creativity and plenty&#8230;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.&#8217;  
&#8211; Makhno, from \_Nestor Mackno&#8217;s Footsteps\_ p 570

&#8216;All the rest of the group&#8217;s militants being outlawed, it was decided that Makhno would adopt a &#8220;line of behavior&#8221; i.e., that he should remain within the law.&#8217;  
&#8211; pp 23-24

&#8216;Also he noticed the difference in treatment doled out by the administration in its dealings with intellectual and political &#8220;bigwigs&#8221; on the one hand and to mere workers and peasants on the other and likewise the attitude of the former lot of inmates towards the latter. Whereas the latter were frequently beaten, the intellectuals had no hesitation in shaking the hands of those responsible for such maltreatment; likewise, they had no problem in securing the privilege of not being oblige4d to carry their irons with them all the time. They worked in the workshops that were interesting and above all monitored the inmates&#8217; internal administration very closely, which meant that all help from the outside passed through their hands and that they shared out this booty as they saw fit. In this way Makhno grasped once and for all that &#8220;&#8230;such is the psychology of these intellectuals who seek from the socialist idea adn from their militancy only the means of ensconcing themselves as masters and governors. These gentlemen wind up unable to understand anymore that the offering of handshakes and the making of gifts in kind of in cash to torturers who, pocketing these gifts, go off to beat up the co-religionists of the very people who have just greeted them so amicably is intolerable.&#8221;&#8216;  
&#8211; pp 30-31

&#8216;All his life, Makhno was to regret the chronic disorganization of anarchists and its baneful impact, for all their numbers and good qualities, their inability to work to make hard and fast reality of their schemes of emancipation.&#8217;  
&#8211; p 37

&#8216;In short, his responsibilities were enormous but his power small. In that he was indeed the consistent libertarian militant.&#8217;  
&#8211; p 40
