Makhno’s Military Organisation and Capabilities

Abstract

As an ideological anarchist of long standing, Makhno had a deep distrust of all authority and political parties, summed up in the slogan ‘Beat the Whites until they’re Red, beat the Reds until they’re black’.¹ One might be tempted to think of him simply as the largest of the ‘Green’ forces, the otamany who roamed the countryside round their homes, but the Greens had neither the cohesiveness, the consistency, nor the scale of the Makhno movement. Only A. S. Antonov, as regards the first two factors, and Hryhoriyiv as regards the last, come near him, and neither lasted for such a length of time. Strategically, therefore, Makhno had a difficult choice as to whom, if anyone, he should ally with: the temptation was to fight independently, the often reluctant decision to join meantime with the lesser evil. This dilemma faced non-Bolsheviks on the left who wanted at all costs to avoid the restoration of the old regime.