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The Makhnovist Counterintelligence (: Makhnovsʹka Kontrrozvidka) was an organization of cells that functioned as the primary intelligence and security service of the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine, from the creation of the first kontrrozvidka in 1919, to the fall of the Free Territory in 1921. The Military Section of the Makhnovist Kontrrozvidka was subordinate to the Operations Section of the army, which was in turn supervised by the Military-Revolutionary Soviet, and, from the summer of 1920, by the Soviet of Revolutionary Insurgents of Ukraine (Makhnovist). Due to his leadership position in the army, Nestor Makhno exercised a large amount of power over the Counterintelligence, though decisions surrounding subjects such as summary executions in theory first had to be approved by the Nabat Confederation of Anarchist Organizations. Unapproved actions from the side of Nestor Makhno were a recent source of discussion between him and the Nabat, with actors such as Volin playing a large role in the opposition to what they perceived as hierarchical control of the apparatus of espionage.

The kontrrozvidka followed a heavily decentralized form of organization, being divided into two sections, the Civilian Section and the Military Section of the Makhnovist Kontrrozvidka. The members of the kontrrozvidka, known as kontrrozviks (from kontrrozviki ), were well-known for their skill in disguising themselves, most operatives of the counterintelligence sections fought as part of the normal units of the Insurrectionary Army, in the case of the military section, or took up work in the newly liberated cities, in the case of the civilian section. When larger cities were occupied, smaller, civilian groups of operation were organized within the city. The military section's work included gathering of military intelligence, as well as finding spies belonging to the White movement within the Insurrectionary Army, where the civilian section instead focused on expropriating of private property, as well as carrying out executions of White movement collaborators, spies, and bourgeoisie, on command of Nestor Makhno. As the Russian Civil War progressed further, and the Red Army went on the offensive towards the Insurrectionary army, the Cheka became involved in multiple mass executions of Kontrrozvidka forces, as well as the more uncommon reverse scenario. The Kontrrozvidka de facto ceased to exist when the Free Territory fell to Red Army forces in 1921.

As the Kontrrozvidka was lacking in conventional hierarchical leadership, other than under Nestor Makhno, who at times commanded them directly as part of the Insurrectionary Army, the positions of power in the counterintelligence are hard to pin down. It is known that an otherwise unidentified Ukrainian anarchist by the name of Chernyak was the founder and leader of one of the largest regional branches of the organization, and Lev Zadov, both of which were at times heads for local branches of the organization, with the second one being a close friend of Makhno and large influences on the operation of the group.

Background


The Kontrrozvidka had its background mainly in the Moscow Organization of The Anarchists of the Underground, a terrorist organization active in the fall of 1919, and similar anarcho-terrorist groups, known as bezmotivniks (from bezmotivniki (безмотивники)), "those [who engage in terror] without a cause"). Contrasted with other forms of anarchist terrorism such as propaganda of the deed or insurrectionary anarchism, which had a goal to teach through action, the motive of bezmotivnik terrorism was fund-raising for spreading of the word of the anarchist cause. These deeds were not too different from those carried out by Argentinian and Spanish anarchist groups under the name of expropriative anarchism. Bezmotivnik terrorism was widespread in Russia, with almost 20,000 acts being carried out between January 1908 and May 1910, though this estimate includes anarchists motivated by the propaganda of the deed. This was where the first foundations of an anarchist intelligence service were found, as, for example, bank robberies necessarily had an element of intelligence in the way they were carried out.

In what would later become the Free Territory, the Guliya-Poliye Union of Poor Peasants, an anarcho-communist group which Nestor Makhno was a member of, had been engaging in intelligence work since 1908, including involvement in the assassination of multiple policemen. Veterans from this group made up a large amount of the members of the early Kontrrozvidka. The most prominent of these members were G. Vasilevsky, A. Lepechenko, and I. Lyuty, the first two being bezmotivniks with great knowledge in intelligence gathering, and Lyuty acting as the bodyguard of Nestor Makhno. Lyuty, on Makhno's commands, acted out some of the first actions of the newly formed Kontrrozvidka, in the arrest of regional political commissars imposed on the Makhnovist Brigade by the bolsheviks.

In 1918, the first kontrrozvidka was organized by a commander by the name of Chernyak, for one of the staffs of the Southeast Front of the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army. Chernyak remains a mysterious figure to this day. One of the most important primary sources on the Makhnovschina, Dorogi Nestora Makhno (The Paths of Nestor Mahkno), that mention the functioning and activities of the kontrrozvidka, makes multiple references to different Chernyaks, and at times mix them up with multiple other, unrelated, Cherednyaks. Lacking differentiation, the early life of the man and his activities before his partaking in the social revolution in Ukraine is unknown.

The early Kontrrozvidka


In March 1919, Chernyak organized a Special Group for carrying out what was deemed to be revolutionary tasked in newly liberated cities by the Makhnovist 3rd Brigade, such as requisitioning private property. The acts of this Special Group would determine the common activities of the soon-to-be Civilian Section of the Makhnovist Kontrrozvidka, which was proposed to Makhno by Chernyak using the Special Group as the predecessor. By April, Chernyak and Zadov had formed the first independent civilian sections of the Kontrrozvidka, in the cities of Mariupol and Berdyansk. Their function was mainly provisioning the Insurrectionary Army, doing such through taxing the civilian population or expropriating capitalist industries and workplaces.

The Kontrrozvidka has a relatively low level of direct influence from Makhno during the early stages of its creation, and assumed a more centralized form only when it was on the move in military units. By the autumn of 1919, there was a network structure throughout the entirety of the kontrrozvidka, with decentralized command, spread out over the four corps of the Insurrectionary Army. The heads of the corps-sized levels of the Military Section of the Kontrrozvidka, at this point of time, was Lev Zadov (based in Alexandrovsk) for the 1st Donetsk Corps, Golik (based in Nikopol), an otherwise unknown anarchist, for the 2nd Azov Corps. The leaders for the kontrrozvidka for the 3rd Yekaterinoslav and 4th Crimean Corps are unknown. During this time, the leadership of the corps reported directly to the Operations Section of the Shtarm, the army headquarters for the Insurrectionary Army.

The first action of the kontrrozvidka was in the city of Berdyansk, where Lev Zadov was the appointed commander, and took place on March 15, 1919. In request for aid in the form of clothing and other unspecified supplies, the counterintelligence would aid the Soviet army group from the north, commanded by Pavel Dybenko, to track down Austro-German and White agents who had once lived in Gulai-Polye. The head of the smaller group of the purely military kontrrozvidka, Lev Golik, a bezmotivnik before 1919, warned Nestor Makhno that his spies had noticed an apparent plan for his assassination planned by Dybenko during a planned meeting of theirs, potentially saving the life of the Bat'ko.

Workers in Berdiyansk, one of the cities on the border of the Free Territories, had also in March begun the organization of the local Cheka, one of the organizations judged as repressive by the Nabat, which was also leading to worrying on the side of Nestor Makhno. Despite the local commissars claiming that the Cheka self-organized as a defense against the Makhnovist organizations, Makhno ordered the kontrrozvidka to break it up. Under the leadership of Chernyak, the Cheka group was liquidated and the Red influence on Berdiyansk weakened.

The early era of the Makhnovschina ended when the first uneasy Makhnovist truce with the Red Army ended, and was replaced by open hostility. As the shaky relationship between Makhno and the commanders of the Red Army was weakened yet again, and the 1st Insurgent Division was formed from the Makhnovist units within the Red Army on the 16th of May 1919, Makhno resigned as commander of the 1st Insurgent Division. The division's staff was purged by Voroshilov, including the core of the kontrrozvidka existing within it, which, to a large extent, ceased to exist within that formation following the purge.

Anarchists of the Underground


While the core of the kontrrozvidka by this point was made up of those who had fled along with Makhno, including most of those that had came from the Guliya-Poliye Union of Poor Peasants, there existed a smaller group which saw it as their own task to end the Civil War using the insurgent terrorism that, in part, had allowed anarchism within Ukraine to develop to its current point. These groups were made up by experienced bezmotivniks, and were earlier under the leadership of Maria Nikiforova.

The propaganda of the deed carried out by the groups took the form of attempted strikes against Anton Denikin's and Alexander Kolchak's military staffs, in Rostov and Siberia respectively. The first group, 20 people led by Maria Nikiforova, joined the Green armies, after Nikiforova's arrest and subsequent execution in Sevastopol in July. The second group, 15 people led by Chernyak, crossed the Urals and joined the resistance against Kolchak. Sources point to the second group being purged with a larger SR-anarchist liquidation in early December 1919.

Another group, 25 people led by a Kovalevich, was sent to free the then-imprisoned staff of the Makhnovist militants that were being held in Kharkov. By the time they arrived, the staff was already executed, leading them to instead seek revenge against the Bolshevik movement on a larger scale. They joined forces with a SR group in Moscow, and created The Pan-Russian Insurgent Committee of Revolutionary Partisans - The Anarchists of the Underground, or as they were more commonly known, the OAP, from the Russian short version of "Anarchists of the Underground". Having branches in dozens of cities across Russia, Ukraine, and in some places in Latvia, they fought a long and bloody war from the underground, with the most combat being in the Cheka attempts to purge regional branches, longer shootouts ensuing in places such as Kraskovo, the Moscow OAP's local print shop and chemical library.

The most known act of the OAP was carried out by the Moscow local group, with an attempted assassination of the Bolshevik leadership, planting a self-crafted bomb at the Moscow Committee of the RKP(b), which was supposed to go off at a meeting at which, among others, Vladimir Lenin, Nikolai Bukharin, and Lev Kamenev would be present. Causing large damage to the meeting hall, the bomb didn't kill any of the meeting participants, as the meeting had earlier been postponed. The local group also planned to blow up the Kremlin using one tonne of pyrolyxin, but didn't manage to gather the required materials before their liquidations at the hands of the Cheka.

To combat the OAP, which was widely, and according to most historians, correctly, viewed as a branch of the Military Section of the Kontrrozvidka, the Cheka created the Special Strike Group of the VCHK for the Struggle with Banditism. Engaging in liquidations of anarchist groups all over Russia, they were often seen as merciless in their approach, which was not unlike the means with which the kontrrozvidka waged their insurrection against the Bolshevik authorities. By the new year of 1920, the Cheka had reduced OAP presence to a negligible state.

The Black Sotnia


As an all-army meeting for the political organization of the Insurrectionary Army was called, the new organization of the kontrrozvidka started to take form. Under the leadership of Gavryusha Troyan, Makhno formed his own kontrrozvidka of 500 men at horseback, equipped with 10 machine-guns. Formed from the ranks of the most well-trained insurgents and going by the name of the Black Sotnia, it earned a reputation for its obsession with ideological purity among not only the civilian population, but within the general command structure as well. Other than the internal purges, they were, according to some sources, responsible for the liquidation of Nikifor Grigoriev, who was charged with negotiations with Denikists and pogroms.

As the army in its retreat approached the positions of the Ukrainian People's Republic (, often abbreviated to the UNR because of its Ukrainian initials) led by Symon Petliura, negotiations were began for an alliance between the UNR and insurgent armies. During these events, the kontrrozvidka was in part responsible for revealing Petliura's simultaneous discussions with Denikin. Wishing to, according to the documents the kontrrozvidka uncovered, "bleed the Red and Black armies dry", any further alliance with him was for the Makhnovists out of the question. According to Chop, Nestor Makhno himself was at times an undercover spy investigating the staff of the 1st Brigade of the Ukrainian Galician Army, a military formation of the West Ukrainian People's Republic, where he met a White Army colonel who he got into a short fight with. The results of these developments was that most attempts to arrange any diplomatic agreements between the Insurgents and the Republics failed, as they were seen as cooperators with the White forces and untrustworthy. Even so, a peace treaty was signed between Volin on the Makhnovist side, and Petlyura on the UNR side. The idea was to work together out of necessity, as the Black Army faced large pressure from white forces in the area.

From its signing, the Kultprosvet, the anarchist propaganda ministry, had started working on propaganda for the purpose of joining soldiers of the UNR to the side of the Free Territories. As well as the Makhnovist units for conventional warfare being strengthened by the propaganda, groups of Petlyurist atamans joined the ranks of the kontrrozvidka, declaring themselves anarchists and opposed to the Petlyurist regime. Their ideological commitment and plans were first clarified by agents of the kontrrozvidka. Vyacheslav Azarov lists "Matyasha, Melaschko, Gladchenko, and Ogyia", as well as others, among these men. Defecting officers from the Petlyurist Army that had proved their loyalty were also granted high-ranking positions in the Free Cossack Independent Group of the Yekaterinoslavschina, whereas those sentenced for pogroms and other antisemitic violence were executed.

While the discussions and espionage were going on, another group emerged to a point of short-lived importance. Made up of Halyna Kouzmenko (the wife of Nestor Makhno and president of the Union of Teachers), as well as the relatively high-ranking commanders Schcus and Shpota, their goals were the merging of the Insurrectionary Army and the Petliurist Army of the UNR, as well as the removal of Makhno from his position of power. The emergence of the movement is mainly seen as possible because of the disorganization during the Makhnovist retreat: the Nabat, the influential cultural-educational group that strived towards becoming an umbrella organization for all anarchist organizations in Ukraine, was forced underground in many cities, letting new, UNR-backed groups come to power. The antisemitic and Ukrainian nationalist values espoused by these groups are by some historians claimed to be the reason for the rise in pogroms in the Free Territory in the autumn of 1919 in Ukraine. Ceasing in activity as a result of the proof presented by the kontrrozvidka, the group centered around Kouzmenko failed to gain in power, instead remaining on the fringe of the anarchist political spectrum during the course of the insurrection.

These developments led to the kontrrozvidka being ordered to prepare the assassination of Symon Petliura, in the case that he would betray the uneasy peace that existed between the Makhnovist forces and the Petliurist army. The assassination attempt, under the front of a meeting between Makhno and Petliura in Uman, was supported not only by kontrrozvidkists, but also a cavalry brigade in order to destroy the Petliurist garrison forces. Petliura, however, was alerted to the attempt, and left by train before any of the anarchists had a chance to take his life. The forces of the kontrrozvidka were forced to take cover in a small building, while heavy fire from the Petliurist group rained down on them. Only a handful of anarchists managed to escape. Despite avoiding death at the hands of anarchists during the Russian Civil War, Petliura met his fate at the hands of Sholom Schwartzbard, a Jewish-Ukrainian anarchist with ties to Makhno, in 1926.

Criticism


The rule of the Kontrrozvidka had been described in a Russian publication of 1923 as follows: "not a day passed without shootings and bodies of the executed thrown in the Dnieper", as "dozens of corpses stuck out of the water, washed ashore by the waves". The legacy of what had come to be known as the Black Terror, as well as the Bolsheviks wishing to capitalize on the "crowning disgrace of the Makhnovist movement", fell out of the attention of the public eye, other than a Soviet anti-anarchist piece of propaganda, being reduced to a footnote in many publications, despite the at-times dependence of the entire Insurrection on its operations. Most documentation and discussion persists as being negative, and an amount of anarchists have criticized the organizations due to it not meeting what is perceived to be anarchist ideological standards.

The Civilian Section of the Kontrrozvidka, and its agents among the civilian population, who worked as unpaid volunteers informing the Kontrrozvidka of anti-Makhnovist activities, were also often accused of pillaging and looting. Gutman specifically accuses them of theft of the property of liquidated targets of the secret police, of which the largest group were those who had connections to the police or punitive organs of the Denikists: specifically officers, police, prison guards, and spies. These actions, while supervised by Makhno himself, was, however, never encouraged from above, and Makhno took actions in order to crack down on looting among the group. All liquidations were first reviewed by the secretariat of the Nabat, the Gulai-Polye Union of Anarchists, or the VRS, and regarded as a form of Black Terror, justified by the circumstances in which the Makhnovschina had to operate.

The money from the banks were not only used to support the army, however, and in Yekaterinoslav, the Black Army redistributed wealth towards the impoverished lower classes, including a funding of a million rubles for orphaned children. The main looting of the Makhnovschina took part in the cities, partially alienating the workers of the Makhnovschina, in favor of the much larger peasant population of the Free Territory.

On the subject of looting, the expropriation of credit unions and banks are cited as a, perhaps larger, reason for the resentment of the general population towards the Makhnovschina, as they were in charge of providing the army with clothes, money, and food. This expropriation, while carried out in an organized and legal manner in all the larger cities controlled by the Free Territory, had large potential for abuse. Belash claims that there was a more "aggressive system of contributions" imposed on the bourgeoisie of Ukraine. Despite this, the war-drained richer class could not satisfy the demands. Only around roughly one fifth of the amount that the Gubernatorial Committees had imposed levies for were actually received, leading to the Civilian Section turning to forced commandeering of shops for clothing, food and other necessities.

As winter came to the Free Territories, the Makhnovschina confiscated massive amounts of clothing, in order to win the most important war of all - that against the Russian Winter. The Mahknovist soldiers were, following this, in some cities referred to as "shubniks" ( - literally "creatures with coats"). However, it is almost virtually agreed upon that this was far from the cruelty imposed on the Ukrainian people by Denikist soldiers, and the White Movement in general. Even Gutman agrees on the last point, noting that there "was no wholescale pillaging under Makhno as there was under the Volunteers". Ibid also notes that clothing was so scarce, that even after the requisitions, they were forced to scavenge for it under enemy fire.

Agreed upon almost universally by both modern and contemporary historians is that the liquidations carried out by the Kontrrozvidka were on a much smaller scale than those that the White and Red armies carried out. Following the capture of Yekaterinoslav, only 70 bodies were found, reported by the Denikists as being shot by "Makhnovist extrajudicial organs". In comparison, close to 200 men were shot following a mutiny in Yaroslavl in July 1918, and, in Finland, where the White Movement stood victorious following the Finnish Civil War, around 10,000 Reds perished by the White Terror following their defeat, which turned into political cleansing.

The Red Terror, in Crimea alone, has death toll estimates of between 50,000 and 150,000 people.

On the way that the Insurrectionary army interacted with the peasants and workers of the newly liberated territories, Kolbjǫrn Markusson writes the following in To what extent was Makhno able to implement anarchist ideals during the Russian Civil War?:

"In the context of the Civil War on several fronts against numerous enemies, the Kontrrozvidka’s approach to logistics was not particularly abnormal; however, they were entirely inconsistent with anarchist principles of economic free association, mutual aid and non-coercion, being more characteristic of Bolshevik prodrazvyorstka (grain requisitioning)."

This sentiment is echoed in multiple academic publications, as well as accounts from the time itself, including criticism from within the Makhnovist movement. Vyacheslav Azarov, the author of Kontrrazvedka - The Story of the Makhnovist Intelligence Service and one of the founders of the Union of Anarchists of Ukraine in 1999, does not share this view. At times, he defends the actions of the Kontrrozvidka, together with the intelligence gathered by it, as one of the key reasons that the Makhnovschina managed to survive for the amount of time it did under extreme pressure from both the Red Army and the White Army, a position which is partially backed by participants in the movement, such as Peter Arshinov, though the defense of the organization itself is where Arshinov and Azarov differ. Azarov writes the following as the ending to his book:

"The Makhnovist Kontrrazvedka, the unique organ of defence of the emerging alternative future, shows better than any other anarchist structure how competent, sensible, composed, and resourceful people can be who are true to the anarchist ideal. May they rest in peace and may their memory live forever."