The proportional strength of the different parties in Ukraine is at present difficult to indicate, as all parties, with the exception of the ruling Communist Party of the bolsheviks, are illegal. At the elections to the National Assembly, November, 1917, the social-revolutionaries obtained 62.77% of the total number of votes. The anarchists and the maximalists, being anti-parliamentarians, did not take part in the elections. The maximalists have a union. They do not call themselves a party, being as they are opposed to parties. The left social-revolutionaries, the barbists and the left social-revolutionary internationalists are also strongly represented. The anarchists have in Ukraine a special federation separated from the anarchists of Central Russia, which calls itself "Nabat," that is, "Alarm." In numbers this federation is hardly larger than the maximalists and the left social-revolutionaries. Still, the anarchists had a greater influence for the reason that they stood under the protectorate of their Little Father (Batkno) Machno, who gave more support to them than to any other parties. The anarchists have never identified themselves with the Machno movement, but make use of the Machno movement to the greatest possible extent and wanted to make it serve their purposes.
The bolsheviks arrested Wollin in Alexandrovsk in the beginning of January, 1920, after Machno had fled. As reason for his arrest they gave out that he was called the father of the Machno movement. But this was impossible. The Machno movement existed since the summer of 1918. But Wollin came first a year later to Machno, namely in the summer of 1919. The truth is that through Wollin the movement received a more distinct anarchistic character and won in depth and purity. Wollin himself is a deep, pure and noble man, and he succeeded in exerting a strong cultural influence on the Machno troops. But this was, of course, dangerous to the bolsheviks, because it made the movement more threatening to them.
Communism and the Peasantry
Through the preceding discussion we have elucidated the reasons why the peasants of Ukraine only with much difficulty can be brought under the common scepter of a central government. These reasons are less of an economic nature than of a political and national character. If we want to classify the refusal of the peasants to supply the government with provisions as an economic reason, then we have to concede that economic reasons play their part. But in addition there are racial peculiarities, which also exert some influence. Among an agricultural people in a fertile country there develops, as a result of the relative economic independence, in the people or in the race a certain sense of independence with which a centralist government is always bound to get into collision. A powerful state can never develop in such a country. The "free-from-Rome" tendencies will always give the government plenty to worry over. We need only remember the permanent anarchist tendencies in Spain and Italy.
The bolsheviks asserted that these instincts constituted anticommunist tendencies among the peasants. They pointed to the fact that the Ukrainian peasants did not have such a wide-spread mir-organization as the Russian peasants, that they did not have common forests, common pasture, and common fields to the same extent, and declare that the peasants are for private property and against the introduction of communism. They further say that the peasants who fight under Machno are Kulaks and fight for private property against the introduction of communism. But as quite large masses of the peasants, yes, the majority, are of that mind, even if it is only the most active part of them who flock to the Povstanzy, it would be foolish to force the ideas of bolshevikcommunism on them against their will. That would mean anything else but freedom. And it is freedom that the peasants want ; that is what they have been fighting for during half a decade. One can force people to everything but not to freedom, even if one were the most powerful on earth.