Neither Red nor White: The Makhnovshchina in the Russian Civil War

The Makhnovshchina is a topic that has long perplexed historians of Eastern Europe. Emerging under the leadership of Nestor Makhno in the wake of the Russian Revolution, the movement waged a brutal and ultimately unsuccessful struggle for survival in southern and eastern Ukraine throughout the duration of the Russian Civil War. Commonly viewed as adherents of anarchism, the true nature of the Makhnovists’ ideology has largely remained clouded, with disputes on the matter existing among both contemporary and modern scholars. Because nearly every extant political philosophy was represented in the geopolitics of revolutionary Ukraine, the present study examines the Makhnovshchina’s collective interactions with these various factions in order to illuminate the nature of the movement itself via an assessment of the practical applications of its beliefs in a contested environment. Through the use of this methodology, the author argues that ‘libertarian communism’ is in fact a more accurate label to apply to the Makhnovist program than anarchism. In this manner, it is hoped that deep-rooted academic questions surrounding the movement may be addressed and new inquiries brought to the forefront of scholarly attention.