The Bolshevik–Makhnovist conflict was a period of political and military conflict between the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Makhnovshchina, for control over southern Ukraine. The Bolsheviks aimed to eliminate the Makhnovshchina and neutralise its peasant base. In turn, the Makhnovists fought against the implementation of the Red Terror and the policy of war communism.
The conflict broke out after the Red Army returned to Ukraine in early 1920, following the defeat of the White advance on Moscow. It attacked the Makhnovshchina, which at the time occupied most of southern Ukraine, and carried out a sustained attempt to pacify the region. After a brief truce, in order to ensure the final defeat of the White movement, the Red Army again attacked the Makhnovshchina in November 1920, leading to a resumption of hostilities.
The conflict mainly consisted of guerrilla warfare, without conventional maneuvers or open battles. It was also highly mobile, with territory regularly changing hands between the two. The Bolsheviks largely maintained territorial control, while the Makhnovists were kept on the defensive. In this condition, the Makhnovists were not able to carry out offensives, instead mostly attacking isolated Red units.
Following the implementation of the New Economic Policy and the onset of fatigue due to the conditions of the war, support for the Makhnovist insurrection began to dwindle. Despite efforts by the Makhnovists to reorganise and carry out larger offensives, by August 1921, the Makhnovshchina had effectively been wiped out. Its core around Nestor Makhno fled into exile, while a low-level insurgency persisted throughout the 1920s.
Background The advent of the October Revolution caused the outbreak of civil war in Ukraine, as the forces of the Central Council and the Soviets struggled to take power in the country. When the Ukrainian nationalists seized control of Oleksandrivsk, the local Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries appealed for support from Ukrainian anarchists to reestablish Soviet power in the city. From the nearby town of Huliaipole, an 800-strong detachment of Black Guards, led by Savely Makhno, reinforced the Red Guards and retook the city for the Soviets. The gains of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic were lost after the Central Council signed a peace treaty with the Central Powers and invited them to invade Ukraine, with the Bolshevik government in Moscow later signing their own peace treaty with the Central Powers, formally ceding control of Ukraine. By April 1918, after months of fighting against the imperial advance, the anarchists lost control of Huliaipole and were driven out of Ukraine.
After regrouping their forces in Taganrog, the anarchists resolved to return to Ukraine and fight a war of independence against the Central Powers, with Nestor Makhno soliciting the aid of Vladimir Lenin himself in making their return. In July 1918, the Ukrainian anarchists ignited their insurrection against the Central Powers, defeating the Austro-Hungarian Army at Dibrivka and eventually retaking Huliaipole. By November 1918, the Central Powers had surrendered and subsequently withdrawn from Ukraine, leaving the region of Pryazovia under the control of the Makhnovshchina.
While the Makhnovshchina set about establishing libertarian communism in their captured territory and the anarchist armed forces fought on multiple fronts against the White movement, Don Cossacks and Directorate of Ukraine, the Bolsheviks finally broke the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and ordered the Red Army to invade Ukraine, with Christian Rakovsky proclaiming the establishment of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in Kharkiv. When a nationalist counteroffensive forced the Makhnovists to retreat to Huliaipole, they undertook a complete reorganization of their forces on every front, eventually culminating with their integration into the Ukrainian Soviet Army as the 3rd Trans-Dnieper Brigade, with Nestor Makhno subordinating himself to the command of Pavel Dybenko.
Despite the integration, tensions between the Bolsheviks and the Makhnovists heightened over time, as the autonomy of the Makhnovshchina was increasingly attacked by their Bolshevik commanders. Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko and Lev Kamenev attempted to resolve the dispute after Dybenko proscribed a Makhnovist conference. But after Nykyfor Hryhoriv mutinied against the Bolsheviks, tensions between the two factions culminated with the Makhnovists being declared outlaws and Makhno resigning his command within the Red Army.
The advance of the Armed Forces of South Russia subsequently forced the Makhnovists to retreat west to Kherson, while the Bolsheviks quit Ukraine entirely following the fall of Kharkiv. In Kherson, the Makhnovists reconstituted themselves as an independent force, the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine, and defeated the Volunteer Army at the Battle of Perehonivka, allowing them to capture most of southern Ukraine and halting the White advance on Moscow. While the Makhnovists were beset by epidemic typhus and attempting to hold off attacks by the White movement, the Red Army returned to Ukraine once again.
First phase (January–September 1920)
Under pressure by the advancing Makhnovists, on 30 December, Slaschov's White forces finally quit Katerynoslav province and retreated to Crimea, where they built a new base of operations. The remainder of White forces were split between Odesa and the Don, with their supply lines through Pryazovia cut off by the Insurgent Army. With the White movement falling into a retreat, the territories that had been cleared by the Insurgent Army were subsequently occupied by the Red Army. In the cities of Ukraine, the Bolsheviks began to carry out a political struggle against dissident communists, such as the national communists and the Group of Democratic Centralism, who they denounced as Makhnovists.
In the first week of January 1920, the 14th Red Army took the cities of Katerynoslav, Chaplyne, Mariupol, Oleksandrivsk, Huliaipole and Berdiansk, all without resistance. On 4 January, the Red commander Ieronim Uborevich split up his divisions: the 41st Division was quartered in the insurgent capital of Huliaipole, while the 45th Division was sent west towards Kherson, where they were ordered to wipe out any Insurgent detachments encountered and to disarm the local populace. The Makhnovists had underestimated the rapid advance of the Red Army, with Peter Arshinov later analyzing that a tactical error had been made by the insurgents in not establishing a front from Oryol to Poltava. Instead of reinforcing their northern front, the Makhnovists had diverted their attention towards the reconstruction of Ukraine along anarcho-communist lines, with their only resistance to the Red advance consisting of propaganda leaflets.
On 5 January, the commander of the 45th Division met with the insurgent commanders Nestor Makhno and Semen Karetnyk in Oleksandrivsk, culminating with the two sides holding a joint assembly, in which they agreed to join forces against the White movement. But despite the initial mutual amicability of the encounter, the Bolsheviks soon made it clear that they were hostile to any political negotiations. On 7 January, the Insurgent Army published a declaration To all Peasants and Workers of Ukraine!, calling for a "Pan-Ukrainian Congress of Workers and Peasants" to self-organize a new order in the country. In the declaration, the Makhnovists further proposed: the rescinding of all White edicts; the redistribution of private property and enterprise to the peasants and workers respectively; the establishment of "free soviets" outside of political party control; the institution of civil liberties; the abolition of state police; the dual use of both the Soviet ruble and Ukrainian hryvnia as currencies; and the construction of a barter economy. This proclamation was met with opposition by the Bolsheviks, who declared: "Long live the worldwide Bolshevik Communist Party! Long live the Third International! Down with anarchy!"
Bolshevik attack
On 8 January, Uboverich ordered the Insurgents to surrender and be integrated into the ranks of the 12th Red Army, in order to join the fight in the Polish–Soviet War. Beset by epidemic typhus and more inclined to fight on their home turf than in western Ukraine, the Insurgent Army responded with a categorical rejection of the order, just as the Bolshevik command had anticipated. The following day, the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee issued a decree against Makhno and the Insurgent Army, declaring them to be outlawed for insubordination. Before the decree had even been published, Estonian and Latvian Riflemen started disarming the Makhnovists that they encountered. The Bolsheviks also initiated an anti-Makhnovist propaganda campaign, de-emphasising the insurgent role in the defeat of the Whites and accusing them of having caused the earlier Soviet defeat in the battle for Donbas.
As hostilities with the Red Army resumed, the Military Revolutionary Council was disbanded and its members went underground, while other prominent anarchists, such as Volin, were arrested by the Cheka. By 15 January, the Red Army had occupied Nikopol, where 15,000 insurgents were sick with typhus, shooting the Makhnovist commanders stationed there and capturing large amounts of war material. Towards the end of January, the 13th Army attacked Huliaipole, during which they killed Savely Makhno, took 300 prisoners of war and captured a substantial amount of the insurgents' military equipment. Further attacks against the Makhnovists were carried out by divisions from Estonia, Latvia and China, due to their lack of ties to Ukraine, resulting in the perceived liquidation of the Insurgent Army. Following the capture of Huliaipole and the dispersal of the insurgent staff, the Southwestern Front declared victory over the Makhnovshchina on 9 February.
Red Terror With the insurgent army taken care of, the Bolsheviks turned their attention towards carrying out the Red Terror in Ukraine, with Leon Trotsky himself ordering that all supporters of the partisans be "mercilessly punish[ed]". The Cheka were moved into the villages, where they killed all the local Makhnovists and installed Communist Party officials in power. The Cheka then set about disarming the local populace, taking villagers hostage while their troops set about searching homes and killing the hostages if they found any unreported weaponry. Petro Hryhorenko would later state that "there was no end of bloodshed", drawing attention to reports of one massacre in the Makhnovist town of Novospasivka, where the Cheka had "shot down one in every two able-bodied men". In what Alexandre Skirda described as an act of "outright genocide", an estimated 200,000 Ukrainian peasants were killed during the Red Terror.
The Bolshevik government implemented war communism in Ukraine, introducing a strict system of rationing and food requisitioning, which confiscated agricultural produce and livestock from the peasantry, and even forbade them from fishing, hunting or collecting lumber. The attacks against the Ukrainian peasantry were justified under the policy of Dekulakization, despite the fact that, by this point in time, only 0.5% of the peasantry owned more than 10 hectares of land. The sovkhozes also collapsed, with the number of state-owned farms halving and their land area reducing to a third, over the course of 1920. Even the soviet historian noted that, to most of the Ukrainian peasantry, "the Soviet economy was a new and abhorrent form of rule ... which in reality had merely set the State in the place of the former big landowner."