There have been many interpretations of Nestor Makhno and his movement over the years. He has been depicted as an anarchist, bandit, peasant insurgent in the tradition of various peasant uprisings and finally as a Ukrainian nationalist. This new account does not examine these interpretations or even attempt to resolve them. Instead, it presents Makhno, his movement, and the events in which he and his followers were involved during Russia's Civil War mainly through Mennonite accounts, some almost contemporary with the situation but mostly written later. These are compared with anarchist sources also mostly written in exile for an audience largely sympathetic to the anarchist idea if occasionally bitterly divided on how to interpret Makhno and his movement.
The book is divided into three chapters. The first examines anarchist writings, the second much longer chapter covers Mennonite sources, and a third presents a detailed case study of one particular massacre in the Mennonite settlement of Eichenfeld. The author notes that anarchist literature does not identify Mennonites as such but includes them under the more general category of “Germans” or wealthy landowners. This absence is significant because, as Makhno mentions in his various autobiographical writings, he was born close to a Mennonite settlement and a young man worked for prosperous Mennonites landowners. Either there is no anarchist “memory” of Mennonites or their ethnic identity was too insignificant to mention.
The same cannot be said for most Mennonites who immigrated to Canada after the Civil War, for whom Makhno is a significant figure. Ironically perhaps, given later Mennonite experiences of persecution by the Soviet regime, these Mennonites agreed with later official interpretations of Soviet writers for whom Makhno and his followers were always described as bandits. In the Mennonite world view, Makhno and his forces were a manifestation of ultimate evil and they were its innocent victims. But a closer examination of circumstances, contexts, and Mennonite actions reveals a much more complex picture that the author tries to portray, sometimes more successfully than others.
Mennonites are a Christian group who from the end of the eighteenth century immigrated to New Russia as part of official policies to attract and settle foreign colonists in colonies. Mennonites proved to be one of the most successful of theses colonists and grew wealthy in comparison with most of their neighbors. Population pressures forced their administrators to establish new “daughter” colonies, usually on land purchased from landowning nobility. Later, mostly following the emancipation of the peasantry, Mennonite families began to purchase estate land privately, sometimes in groups, sometimes individually. A number established extremely large estates, others grouped together. They farmed extensively, using new technology and cheap labor mostly drawn from their largely disenfranchised peasant neighbors. This ultimately proved a recipe for disaster as law and order collapsed between 1917 and 1920. The author tells part of this story but not all. The events of the Civil War had deeper roots in the countryside than he understands.
The author appears to be more interested in reconstructing “what actually happened” instead of devoting attention to a close examination of what might be called “the rhetorical language of narration.” Little is said about anarchist literature's phraseology and choice of terms to describe the movement's people and events. The same is true for the Mennonite accounts or how the language of victimhood, if any, has changed over time. When in the early 1970s elderly Mennonites spoke to me about their experiences, it was unclear whether their stories, recounted over and over again among themselves had begun to merge. Memories can become simplified, reduced and often hazy. In the light of this it is a pity the author does not indicate exactly when many of his Mennonite sources were written down or recorded. Some he uses are from early publications such as newspapers, clearly close to the events they describe. Others were written within the first twenty years after the end of the Civil War following migration to Canada and Germany. A number were written much later from memories shaped by other forces after the Second World War when another wave of Mennonites escaped from the USSR and were united with their relatives.
Two important sources drawn upon, however, those by David G. Rempel and Victor Paters, witnessed events at first hand and later became historians. But they were of very different political persuasion. Rempel was a liberal, sympathetic to the cause of the peasantry; Peters was a conservative, although willing to admit that Makhno had a political agenda.
