this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2021
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so one of the problems is a lack of primary sources. we have Makhno's words himself, and we have what the newly founded Soviet Union who crushed them said. there is not any primary source that anybody is going to call 'unbiased' and so, you can find things which portray Makhno as a bandit piece of shit who actually wanted to kill all the jews in Ukraine, and you can find things about being a staunch defender of the liberty of the peasants of Ukraine.
I'll play my cards and say that I am a Marxist Leninist, and so quite obviously a fan of the Soviet Union in this era. I do think that in the long term the soviet union was far more stable than a roving peasant army which failed to build many institutions in a time of crisis, but it's no secret that Trotsky got a lot of people killed unnecessarily for quite flimsy reasons where negotiations could very much have far lessened the bloodshed if not avoided it outright.
history is not an outright 'these are the good guys who did nothing wrong, and these are the bad guys who were 100% evil'
Thank you for the response!
it's a difficult topic to talk about because, as I said, a total lack of solid sources. everything is heavily biased to one side or the other. and, not to sound like a centrist, but sometimes truly the history is somewhere in the middle. many of those under Makhno really did see themselves as the true embodiment of peasant liberty, as did Trotsky at the head of the Red Army. I do not think Mahkno was a 'bad' person, I think he truly saw himself as a revolutionary, I do not think he was equipped to carry out that revolution. I think it is always a tragedy when leftists turn on one another in sectarian violence, especially in such a revolutionary moment when every person matters so much more to defend that revolution. to me, the answer of what was best, to leave them alone or to some how gain control of Ukraine? has to be that the Ukrainian anarchists never would have held off counter revolution or foreign intervention like the Red Army had to time and time again.