Not only for the non-partisan peasants, but also for the political parties and organizations, force is the most important means in their struggle. Thus the anarchists and maximalists of Ukraine are daily and hourly facing the alternative whether to use force or to succumb in the struggle against counter-revolutionary generals, as well as against the bolsheviks. It has even gone so far that it has been spoken of in anarchist circles to conduct the struggle against the bolsheviks by means of terrorism, if the persecutions do not cease.
Machno
At the time when the peasants in all parts of Ukraine rose against Skoropadski, and against the Germans and the Austrians, there was one man who particularly distinguished himself among the leaders. This man later became famous and is still a hard nut to crack for the bolsheviks, a nut on which they time and again break off their teeth. This man is Machno.
The reason why the name Machno has acquired such an importance in Ukraine lies less in the prominence of Machno's personality than in the spirit of the Ukrainian peasants which is personified and symbolized in Machno.
Platon Machno was born in the village of Gulai-Pole in the gouvernement Alexandrovs. As a young man he came into the socialist movement. He was a partner publisher of the paper "Euro Vjestnik." Not yet 20 years old he shot a "Pristov," a member of the Russian czarist secret police. He was condemned to death, pardoned to penal servitude for life and banished to Siberia. The revolution of 1917 released him. He was over ten years in exile. Through the sufferings and hardships of prison life he became consumptive. He is a small man, suffering in the highest degree and often afflicted by violent hemorrhages which overwhelm him while walking or speaking. By extraction and in his habits of life he is a peasant. He calls himself an anarchist, but is more of an Ukrainian peasant than a theoretical anarchist. And it is this that connects him with the peasants and makes him so popular and loved among them.
But if Machno has his Ukrainian peasant extraction in common with the peasants, the latter have anarchism in common with Machno. The Ukrainian peasants are attached to the Machno brand of anarchism with the strongest ties. Machno is, properly speaking, nothing but the theoretical expression of this peasant anarchism. The anarchism of the Ukrainian peasants is not built on the theories of a Goodwin, a Proudhon or a Kropotkin, but the fact of the matter is that parts of the anarchist theories find expression in the tendencies and manifestations of the Ukrainian peasants.
The anarchist theories contain negative and positive parts. The negative parts are antimilitarism, decentralization and the negation of the state. The positive parts are the connection of the independent free communes into federative units, federalism, respect for the free personality in the necessary unification on the economic and political field.
The efforts of the Ukrainian peasants are covered by the negative parts of anarchism. The peasants do not want to recognize any government. Theoretically expressed we could say that they deny the state. They combat the functions of the state: they do not want to become soldiers, they hate and abhor officialdom and bureaucracy, do not want to pay any taxes, in short, they take a hostile stand towards all the functions of the state. They are anti-militarists when up against the militarism of the state, but they defend their own freedom with all means. But even if the negative parts of anarchism are the most prominent parts of the anarchism of the Ukrainian peasant movement ,this movement is not purely negative as a movement. The peasants are not theoretical but rather sentimental anarchists. They have also showed, on different occasions, that they are capable of regulating their affairs in consonance with their libertarian tendencies, and even in the sense of communism.