[The Spunk Archive]
[Spunk Home Page] [Subject Catalog] [Directory Catalog] [Up a level]
[The struggle against the state and other essays by Nestor Makhno]

5. TO THE JEWS OF ALL COUNTRIES

Jewish citizens! In my first "Appeal to Jews", published in the French
libertarian newspaper, Le Libertaire, I asked Jews in general, which is to
say the bourgeois and the socialist ones as well as the 'anarchist' ones
like Yanovsky, who have all spoken of me as a pogromist against Jews and
labeled as anti-Semitic the liberation movement of the Ukrainian peasants
and workers of which I was the leader, to detail to me the specific facts
instead of blathering vacuously away: just where and just when did I or the
aforementioned movement perpetrate such acts?

I had expected that Jews in general would answer my "Appeal" after the
manner of people eager to disclose to the civilized world the truth about
these blackguards responsible for the massacres of Jews in the Ukraine, or
indeed that they might attempt to base their shameful anecdotes about me
and the Makhnovist movement upon fairly authentic data in that they involve
me in them and peddle them to public opinion.

Thus far, no such evidence advanced by Jews has come to my attention. The
only thing that has appeared thus far in the press generally, certain
Jewish anarchist organs included, regarding myself and the insurgent
movement I led, has been the product of the most shameless lies and of the
vulgarity of certain political mavericks and their hirelings. Moreover,
revolutionary fighting units made up of Jewish workers played a role of
prime importance in that movement. The cowardice of slanderers washes over
me, for I have always dismissed it for what it is. Jewish citizens may be
assured of this if they note that I said not one single word about the
travesty from the pen of one Joseph Kessel, entitled Makhno and his Jewess,
a novel written on the basis of misinformation regarding myself and the
movement connected with me organizationally and theoretically. The nub of
that travesty is lifted from the writings of a lick spittle lackey of the
Bolsheviks, one Colonel Gerassimenko, recently convicted by the Czech
courts of spying on behalf of a Bolshevik military organization.

The novelette is also based upon articles by a bourgeois journalist, one
Arbatov, who unashamedly credits me with all manner of violence perpetrated
against a troupe of "performing dwarves." An invention from start to
finish, of course.

In his novel which simply hives with falsehoods, Kessel contrives to
portray me in such an odious light that, at least in those passages where
he borrows from the writings of Gerassimenko and Arbatov, he should have
named his sources! To the extent that falsehood plays the main role in this
novel and that the sources are inconsistent, silence was the only response
open to me.

I take a quite different view of the slanders emanating from Jewish
societies, which seek to create the impression in their co-religionists
that they have diligently scrutinized the despicable and screamingly unjust
acts perpetrated against the Jewish population in the Ukraine and whose
perpetrators these societies seek to denounce.

A little while ago, one of these societies, which by the way has its
headquarters in the kingdom of the Bolsheviks, has issued a book,
illustrated with photographs, about the atrocities committed against the
Jewish population in the Ukraine and( Belorussia, this on the basis of
materials amassed by 'comrade' Ostrovsky, which patently means: of
Bolshevik provenance. In this 'historical' document there is nowhere any
mention of the anti-Jewish pogroms carried out by the much-vaunted First
Red Army Cavalry when it passed through the Ukraine en route from the
Caucasus in May 1920. By contrast, the same document does mention a number
of pogroms and alongside prints the photographs of Makhnovist insurgents,
though it is not clear what they are doing there, on the one hand, and
which, in point of fact are no even Makhnovists, as witness the photograph
purporting to show 'Makhnovists on the move' behind a black flag displaying
a death's head: this is a photo that has no connection with pogroms and
indeed and especially does not show Makhnovists at all.

An even more significant misrepresentation, targeting myself and the
Makhnovists alike, can be seen in the photographs showing the streets of
Alexandrovsk, allegedly laid waste following a pogrom mounted by
Makhnovists, in the summer of 1919. This crude lie is unforgivable in the
Jewish society responsible for publication, for it is common knowledge in
the Ukraine that at the time in question the Makhnovist insurgent army was
far from that region: it had fallen back into the western Ukraine. Indeed,
Alexandrovsk had been under Bolshevik control from February to June 1919,
and then been in Denikinist hands until the autumn.

With these documents, the Bolshevik-inclined Jewish society has done a
great disservice to me and to the Makhnovist movement: unable to find
documentary evidence with which to arraign us - for the benefit of its
sponsors - on charges of anti-Jewish pogroms, it has resorted to blatant
faking of evidence that has no connection either with me or with the
insurgent movement. Its perfidious approach is even more glaringly apparent
when it reproduces a photograph - "Makhno, a 'peaceable' citizen" when in
fact the person shown is someone absolutely unknown to me.

On all these grounds I regarded it as my duty to address myself to the
international Jewish community in order to draw attention to the cowardice
and lying of certain Jewish associations in thrall to the Bolsheviks, in
charging me personally and also the insurgent movement which I led, of
anti-Jewish pogroms. International Jewish opinion must scrupulously examine
the substance of these infamous allegations, for the peddling of such
nonsense is scarcely the best way of establishing, in the eyes of all, the
truth about what the Ukraine's Jewish population endured, not forgetting
the fact that these lies serve only to misrepresent History completely.

                           Dyelo Truda No 23-24, April-May 1927, pp. 8-10.

Previous Chapter | Table of Contents | Next Chapter

1. Great October in the Ukraine
2. On the 10th Anniversary of the Makhnovist Insurgent Movement in the
Ukraine
3. On Defense of the Revolution
4. A Few Words on the National Question in the Ukraine
5. To the Jews of All Countries
6. The Makhovshchina and Anti-Semitism
7. In Memory of the Kronstadt Revolt
8. The Idea of Equality and the Bolsheviks
9. The Paths of "Proletarian" Power
10. "Soviet" Power - Its Present and Its Future
11. The Struggle Against the State
12. The First of May: Symbol of a New Era in the Life and Struggle of the
Toilers
13. Anarchism and Our Times
14. Our Organization
15. On Revolutionary Discipline
16. The ABC of the Revolutionary Anarchist
17. Open Letter to the Spanish Anarchists
18. On the History of the Spanish Revolution of 1931 and the Part Played by
the Left and Right-Wing Socialists and the Anarchist
19. Bibliographical Afterword

Published by:
 [Image]
AK Press
