Talk:Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine/Archive 1

Merge proposal
There is a great deal of overlap between the articles Free Territory, Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine, Nestor Makhno, Left-wing uprisings against the Bolsheviks and Makhnovism. I propose that the latter article in particular be merged here. Skomorokh 12:39, 3 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep Makhnovism is a currently very studied movement on anarcho-communist schools. It isn't the same than the army. --FixmanPraise me 20:17, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep Makhnovism as stub, but move away all the off-topic rambling to the proper articles. It accounts for 90% of text. Makhnovism ought to be about a school of thought. That is not a story of military actions, not a story of Makhno's live, etc. Same as you, I'm tired of people adding random "interesting" text whether or not it actually belongs in the article, and without checking if it has already been covered in some other article in great detail. Which is usually the case. Ugh. --Kubanczyk (talk) 18:22, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Schnell/Ab Imperio
I deleted the section that says "The peasant Ataman, or Green, armies in Ukraine during the Russian Civil War of 1917-21, the largest and best documented of which was that led by Makhno, exhibited a culture of extreme violence, which was more than just a by-product of the fighting but became a central feature of life and even the essence of the band's existance. Schnell (2008) argues that Makhno's ideology was purely negative, directed against towns and anything that represented the old regime, Bolshevism, or the nonpeasant world in general. His use of violence, both to maintain a semblance of discipline in what was essentially a marauding band constantly on the move and to use against outsiders such as Jews and Germans, built on existing social and ethnic tensions and hatreds but was essentially directed at maintaining Makhno's charismatic authority and social cohesion among his followers.[20]" - unfortunately I can't access the article here, but it seems highly dubious and I would like to see what sources it references. The Makhnovists went to great lengths to demonstrate that they were not anti-semites. If necessary a section dealing with the propagandistic accusations of anti-semitism by Trotsky and their rebuttals should be created, but this paragraph should be tagged on at the end, incongruously.Oblivioid (talk) 20:30, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

The same section exists in the Makhno article, it also doesn't fit in the section 'red and white army attacks'. By the way it is extremely easy to demonstrate that Makhno's ideology wasn't purely negative, or directed against towns, and that violence wasn't particularly used against outsiders but rather against rich peasants and invading forces. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Oblivioid (talk • contribs) 21:23, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Potential Source
L J van Rossum presents a significant analytical commentary in the introduction to "Documents: Proclamations of the Machno Movement, 1920" International Review of Social History 13:2 1968: 246–268. Editors may find referencing this scholarly source useful for article improvement. Fifelfoo (talk) 06:45, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Army flag
It's not the real flag of the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army. Makhno himself said that "…it doesn't belong to the Makhnovist movement". RS (in Ukrainian & Russian): 1) Н. Махно., Дело Труда, № 23-24, апрель-май 1927, 8-10 p. 2) Яланський В. Верьовка Л. Нестор і Галина, розповідають фотокартки, Київ-Гуляйполе: «Ярмарок», 1999. 544 pp. — ISBN 966-95615-0-7 3. Кравец Ю.П. Знамена повстанческой армии Н. Махно. 1918 – 1921 гг // Музейний Вісник No 7. – Запоріжжя, 2007. – 190 p. 94.140.212.107 (talk) 05:33, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

This flag, which was previously used on this page, is a misspelled approximation of. The correct spelling, which is visible on the referenced flag, is, in Russian, "Смерть насильникам трудящихся." The incorrect spelling of the approximate flag was, смерть насиПьникам трудяШихся (inconstancies are capitalized in bold). Source for the correct spelling: Kharkiv Historical Museum (the source is in Ukrainian, but the flag slogan is described in Russian). Batko nestor (talk) 19:25, 10 October 2018 (UTC)
 * The spelling has been fixed Thespündragon 17:26, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

rape of women
1. Volin: ''The second fault of Makhno and of many of his intimates -- both commanders and others -- was their behaviour towards women. Especially when drunk, these men let themselves indulge in shameful and even odious activities, going as far as orgies in which certain women were forced to participate. It goes without saying that these acts of debauchery produced a demoralising effect on those who knew about them, and Makhno's good name suffered from this.''

2. THE FATE OF MENNONIT ES IN UKRAINE AND THE CRIMEA DURING SOVIET COLLECTIVIZATION AND THE FAMINE (1930-1933) COLIN PETER NEUFELDT: ''malaria, cholera. and typhus, Makhno's troops infected the Mennonite women that they raped and the Mennonite families from whorn they demanded food and lodging. ''

3. An uptodate master thesis: The Makhnos of Memory: Mennonite and Makhnovist Narratives of the Civil War in Ukraine, 1917-1921 by Sean David Patterson. It discusses a lot about the anarchist rapes ''In hand with reports of murder and torture were the reports of rape. The rape of Mennonite women in particularly is stated as a motivating factor for joining the Selbstschutz. Indeed, Makhnovist raids became synonymous with rape. By 1920 some 100 women and girls were being treated for syphilis in Chortitza alone.66 Apologists for the Makhnovists may suggest that a whole host of armies equally guilty of horrendous atrocities were present at various times in the colonies, but for the women who suffered the attacks there is no doubt as to their rapists’ identity. Furthermore, the accounts given all correspond with the known periods of Makhnovist occupation.67 ''

4. Rempel, David G.; Carlson, Cornelia Rempel (2003). A Mennonite Family in Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union

How, they wondered, could God have permitted the murder of so many innocent people, the rape of defenceless women, and the commission of so many other acts of unconscionable brutality?

5. Playground of Violence: Mennonites and Makhnovites in the Time of War and Revolution Mikhail Akulov The Kazakh-British Technical University, Almaty, Kazakhstan ''What ensued, however, was the reign of semi-indiscriminate terror. Extensive is the dolorous panoply of the Makhnovite murder scenes: Eichenfeld, where more than 80 colonists were shot, Orlovo with 44 victims, Hochfeld with 19, etc. (Venger, 2011, p. 10). 22 To those executed must be added the uncounted victims of rape theft, physical and moral abuse. Typhus brought into colonies by the infected Makhnovite armies further decimated the villagers, cementing the Mennonite impression of facing the Satan himself and giving rise to the narrative of martyrdom (Patterson, 2013, p. 25).

can we add something?Αντικαθεστωτικός (talk) 10:23, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

There is a relavant discussion on Nestor Makno's Talk Page. As I have pointed out over there, these are not works/sources that deal with RIAU but are telling the story of Mennonites. We need sources that deal with RIAU to avoid WP:UNDUE and WP:OR- synthesis. I removed the added text you have inserted do to these concerns, plus there was much sensationalism (ie the word "rape" in title section) Cinadon36 (talk) 13:11, 6 April 2019 (UTC)


 * i think its obvious censorship. But i wont do anything. Αντικαθεστωτικός (talk) 13:15, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

Libertarian vrs Anarcho-communist
I understand Libertarian communist is synonymous with Anarcho-Communist. Recently, a changes were made referring to, for example, Nestor Makhno as a Libertarian Communist. The argument was the "term Libertarian communist was used back then instead of Anarcho-communist". I believe back then the prevailing term used in the Revolution in Ukraine was Anarchist. For example, there are materials from The Nestor Makhno Archive. I find most examples from the period use Anarchist. Case in point,  The Russian Revolution in Ukraine (March 1917 - April 1918). In Chapter 1: My Liberation "The eight years and eight months I spent in prison, during which I was shackled hand and foot (as a 'lifer') and suffered from a serious illness, failed to shake my belief in the soundness of anarchism. For me anarchism meant the struggle against the State as a form of organizing social life and as a form of power over this social life. On the contrary, in many ways my term in prison helped to strengthen and develop my convictions. Because of them I had been seized by the authorities and locked up 'for life' in prison.

Convinced that liberty, free labour, equality, and solidarity will triumph over slavery under the yoke of State and Capital, I emerged from the gates of Butyrki Prison on March 2, 1917. Inspired by these convictions, three days after my release I threw myself into the activities of the Lefortovo Anarchist Group right there in Moscow. But not for a moment did I cease to think about the work of our Gulyai-Pole group of peasant anarcho-communists. As I learned through friends, the work of this group, started over a decade earlier, was still on-going despite the overwhelming loss of its leading members."

There are counterexamples, but I find few. For example, THE ORGANIZATIONAL PLATFORM OF THE LIBERTARIAN COMMUNISTS, Delo Truda - 1926,(Makhno, Mett, Arshinov, Valevski, Linski) occasionally uses the term Libertarian but even here the term anarchist is more prelevant. While I am sure there are other examples from the period using "libertarian", I can find more using "anarchist". So is there a scholarly source that states unequivocally the term "libertarian" was the prevailing term used by the revolutionaries in the Ukraine?---- Work permit (talk) 20:02, 14 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I just saw the messages, so here is my answer. If you understand that Libertarian communist is synonymous with Anarcho-Communist, then may I ask why you reverted it with the currently used term? I'm not disputing that the word Anarchist was used more in revolutionary Ukraine than the term Libertarian. What I'm saying is that from what I've seen (although I could be mistaken), the term Anarcho-Communist wasn't used by Makhno and his Anarchists during that time period. Yes, this is what historians and book authors could currently describe him, but the term "libertarian" had a completely different meaning during those times. This is why I replaced all of the words "Anarcho-Communist" with "Libertarian communist" instead. I think this confusion is a matter of a difference in modern translations. In "The Struggle Against the State and Other Essays", which is mostly a compilation of Makhno's entries in the magazine Dyela Truda, this specific English translated version has no mention of the word "anarcho-communist" and instead includes "libertarian communist" 22 times, "anarcho-syndicalist" 4 times, and anarchist(s) 130 times. (If the original magazine this was translated off of has no mention of the word libertarian communist, then I agree to not take this further.)
 * Chapter 2: "It was in those days, when all seemed lost, that the revolutionary peasants, united around the libertarian communist group in Gulyai-Polye and dispersed in numerous groups and detachments, also retreated towards Russia, where, they reckoned, the revolution was still on course and might help them recover the strength they needed to tackle the counter-revolutionary invaders again..."
 * Chapter 11: "The fact that we libertarian communists or anarcho-syndicalists failed to anticipate the sequel to the Russian revolution and that we failed to make haste to devise new forms of social activity in time, led many of our groups and organizations to dither yet again in their political and socio-strategic policy on the fighting front of the Revolution."
 * Also the Russian Wikipedia article on Libertarian socialism lists Makhno as one of the key figures for that ideology. SkoraPobeda (talk) 01:22, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Expansion in progress
I'm currently undertaking to expand this article, building on Skirda's Anarchy's Cossack as a foundation. As such, I'm provisionally adding a one source tag to the lede, until such a time as I'm able to add more citations from sources such as Malet (1982), Palij (1986) and Darch (2020). I will also be removing primary sources such as Arshinov's History, in favor of the above-mentioned secondary sources, per Wikipedia policy on the matter. If anybody is able to lend a hand in finding additional citations as the article is expanded, I would very much appreciate that. Regards. --Grnrchst (talk) 15:33, 28 January 2022 (UTC)