Their fight is a struggle for their own independence. Whether they are in a position to regulate their own affairs according to libertarian principles, that is a question of the greatest historic significance. But this question cannot be answered, solved or decided through the different governments who wished, and still wish, to get a footing in Ukraine. It exclusively depends on the peasants.
The position of the Russian Soviet Government towards Ukraine and the rebellious peasants is conditioned by the character of the Soviet government in itself. Although the bolshevik party is a revolutionary party, it still is the representative of the Russian state. That it calls that state a proletarian state changes nothing in the fact that they judge everything from the point of view of the interest of this state, and must act in the interest of that state. The maintenance of that state requires a central control of all territory, and the subordination of all groups, unions and organizations under the central body which in Russia is the Council of the Peoples Commissars; in bourgeois democracies the parliaments. The Russian Soviet government must insist on the subordination of the Machno peasant movement if it does not want to sacrifice the fundamental principle of its being.
As the main thing is the maintenance of that principle, the question as to the means for that end is of a subordinate nature. I submit it to the conviction of each individual to approve of or reject the tactics of the bolsheviks against Machno. The defenders of the state idea cannot in principle reject any means which serve to support and keep up the state. They may reject the special tactics of the bolsheviks but, unless they are anti-state opponents of the bolsheviks, they reject these tactics only because it is the bolsheviks. But they have always proven to do the very same thing when they themselves have the power. Particularly the defenders of the bourgeois order of society, who precipitated the people of the earth into the valley of sorrow through the war, have no right to condemn the bolsheviks. For they have proven whither their world order leads: to the greatest misery that has ever come over man.
One of the things which runs against our taste and which is constantly being used by the defenders of the state, not only by the proverbial diplomat but also by all politicians, is lying. As a matter of fact, the bolsheviks can no more get along without this means than the capitalist state can. As an example, the bolshevik papers write that Gabrilenko, who was taken captive by the bolsheviks and imprisoned in Charkov, as well as Tschubenko, and other Machno men, had said that Machno was a bandit and that they did not want to have anything more to do with him. This was do<ne for the purpose of discrediting Machno with the population. When later, in October 1920, Gabrilenko was let out of prison and heard of this, he was terribly agitated and challenged them rather to kill him, for when he came to Machno, his men would do it anyhow, as they would consider him a traitor.
A second example. When the bolshevik papers in Ukraine wrote, in July, 1920, that Machno fought against the bolsheviks and worked together with Wrangel, then two Charkov anarchists, Joseph, the Emigrant, and Makrousov went to Rakovsky, president of the republic, and said that they held this untrue. They asked the permission of the government to send an anarchist delegation to Machno, in order to investigate the case. Rakovsky promised to do so. Makrousov was a brigade commander of the Red Army, and it was his division which drove the Poles out of Kiev. But when Makrousov, whom they respected for his military achievements (although he was an anarchist) was away, about twenty anarchists were arrested by the extra-ordinary commission of Charkov, because it was assumed that the anarchists who wished to go to Machno had connection with him. They were accused of conspiracy. Most of them had to be released for lack of evidence. But one of them, Josef, the Emigrant, was kept in prison. He went on a hunger strike and after eight days was released.