Revolutionary Unity by Nestor Makhno

Read the full essays here:

http://nestormakhno.info/english/revdisc.htm

http://nestormakhno.info/english/struggle.htm

http://nestormakhno.info/english/newplatform/introduction.htm

 

Nestor Makhno (1888-1934) was a Ukrainian revolutionary anarchist, military leader, and writer. He led the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine during the Russian Revolution, which helped defeat the tsarist forces and establish the Ukrainian Free Territory (1917-1921). Because the anarchist project in Ukraine threatened the Bolsheviks' monopoly on power following the Russian Revolution, Lenin and Trotsky instructed the Red Army to destroy the Free Territory and murder or imprison anarchists. Makhno went into exile, eventually settling in Paris, France. He joined the Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad and published writings about anarchism and the Russian Revolution.

These three essays are glimpses of Makhno's theories on revolutionary praxis. Along with other members of the Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad, he developed platformism, the anarchist philosophy that says that revolutionaries should adopt unified ideologies, strategies, and tactics to ensure the success of anarchist revolutions. Makhno believed that the splintered anarchist movement ensured that anarchism of any stripe would never succeed. Instead, he proposed the Organizational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists to address the lack of unity between individual anarchists, national anarchist movements, and the international struggle against the state and capitalism. The platform suggests that anarchists must try to agree upon a united set of goals and principles to destroy the state, tactics to achieve those goals, and strategies to organize society after the state is abolished.