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Insurgent Makhnovists

Comrade in the Red Army! You were sent by your commissars and commanders to capture the insurgent Makhnovists. Following orders from your chiefs, you will destroy peaceful villages, search, arrest and kill people you don’t know but whom they have pointed out to you as enemies of the people. They tell you that the Makhnovists are bandits and counter-revolutionaries.

They tell you; they order you; they do not ask you; they send you; and, like obedient slaves of your leaders, you go to capture and kill. Whom? For what? Why?

Think about it, comrade Red Army Man! Think about it you toiling peasant and worker, taken by force into the cabal of the new masters, who claim the stirring title of worker-peasant authority.

We, the revolutionary insurgent Makhnovists, are also peasants and workers like our brothers in the Red Army. We rose against oppression; we are fighting for a better and brighter life. Our frank ideal is the achievement of a non-authoritarian labourers’ society without parasites and without commissar-bureaucrats. Our immediate goal is the establishment of the free soviet order, without the authority of the Bolsheviks, without pressure from any party whatsoever. For this the government of the Bolshevik-Communists sends punitive expeditions upon us. They hurry to make peace with Denikin, with the Polish landlords, and other white guard scum, in order to crush more easily the popular movement of revolutionary insurgents, who are rising for the oppressed against the yoke of any authority.

The threats of the white-red high command do not scare us.

We will answer violence with violence.

When necessary, we, a small handful, will put to flight the legions of the bureaucratic Red Army. For we are freedom-loving revolutionary insurgents and the cause we defend is a just cause.

Comrade! Think about it, who are you with and who are you against?

Don’t be a slave – be a man.

Insurgent Makhnovists

[June 1920]

Comrades in the Red Army!

Insurgent Makhnovists

Comrades in the Red Army!

Your commanders and commissars are frightening and convincing you that we Makhnovists are murdering captured Red Army men.

Comrades! This infamous lie has been concocted by your leaders only so that you, like slaves, would defend the interests of the commissars, so that you would not let yourselves be taken prisoner by us Makhnovists and so you would not learn the truth about our worker-peasant Makhnovist movement.

We, comrades, have risen against the oppression of all tyrants. For three years our blood has been flowing on all fronts. We drove out the Austro-German tyrants, smashed the Denikinist hangmen, fought against Petliura; now we are fighting the domination of the commissar authority, the dictatorship of the Bolshevik-Communist Party: it has laid its iron hand on the entire life of the working people; the peasants and workers of the Ukraine are groaning under its yoke. We will also mercilessly exterminate the Polish landlords who come to stifle our revolution and to deprive us of its achievements.

We are fighting against all authority and oppression, no matter what its origin. Our deadly, implacable enemies are the landlords and capitalists of all nationalities, the Denikinist generals and officers, the Polish landlords and Bolshevik commissars. We are punishing and killing them all mercilessly as enemies of the revolution of the working people.

But we consider you, comrades in the Red Army, our blood brothers, together with whom we would like to carry on the struggle for genuine liberation, for the true soviet system without the pressure of parties or authorities.

Captured Red Army men are immediately set free wherever they choose, or we invite them into our ranks if they consent to this.

We have already freed thousands of Red Army men captured in numerous battles and many of the prisoners are now selflessly fighting in our ranks.

So do not believe, comrade Red Army men, your commanders’ cock and bull stories that the Makhnovists are murdering Red Army men. It’s an infamous lie.

When they send you to fight against the Makhnovists, do not steep your hands, comrades of the Red Army, in fraternal blood. When the fight begins, kill your leaders yourselves and, without using your weapons, come over to us. We will greet you as our own brothers and together we will create a free and just life for the workers and peasants and will struggle against all tyrants and oppressors of the working people.

Long live the Brotherly union of the Revolutionary Insurgent Makhnovists with the Peasant and Worker Red Army Men!

Insurgent Makhnovists

June 1920

To the young people

Insurgent Makhnovists

Why, comrades, are you sitting at home? Why are you not in our ranks?

Or are you waiting for the arrival of the commissars with punitive detachments to draft you by force? Don’t fool yourselves that they won’t find you, that you will hide, escape. The Bolshevik authority has already shown that it will stop at nothing: they will arrest your family and relatives, they will take hostages, if necessary, they will fire upon the entire village with artillery – and in some way or another, you and your comrades, who are presently still at liberty, will sooner or later be drafted by the government.

And then they will send you, with weapons in hand, to kill your brother peasants and workers – the revolutionary insurgent Makhnovists.

We, Makhnovist insurgents, are not sitting at home, although each one of us also has a family and relatives and loved ones from whom we do not wish to be separated. But we are revolutionaries. It is not possible for us to look on indifferently as the working people are once again thrown into slavery, as new despots lord it over us, unchecked, under the mask of the socialist-communists, under the banner of worker-peasant authority. Three years of revolution have clearly shown that every authority is counter-revolutionary, without exception, whether it be the authority of Bloody Nicholas or of the Bolshevik-Communists. We Makhnovists raise the banner of revolt for a total socialist revolution, against every authority, against every oppressor; we are fighting for the free Soviets of the working people.

Follow us, comrades! Let the faint-hearted self-seeker and coward remain at home near someone’s skirts – we do not need sissies. But you, honest peasants and workers, your place is with us, among the revolutionary insurgent Makhnovists. We will take no one by force. But remember: the Bolshevik government, through its own brutal violence to the Makhnovists, compels us also to merciless battle.

And so, decide, comrades! Drafted by the commissars, you will be sent against us, and we will be compelled to treat you as hostile and an enemy of the revolution. With us or against us – choose!

Insurgent Makhnovists

June 1920

(Nestor Makhno archive)