Initially written by Nestor Makhno and other libertarian communists from Huliaipole, in August 1919, the Russian intellectual Volin was commissioned as editor and spent the following month polishing its writing style. Volin didn't insert any of his own work into the Draft, as he considered it to be an accurate expression of the Makhnovshchina's political philosophy, which led Makhno to conclude that it had contained nothing that contradicted anarchism.[3] The Draft Declaration had in fact drawn particularly heavily from the ideas of Mikhail Bakunin, which envisioned a transition towards anarchy through the direct elimination of the state and social inequality.[4]
The Draft Declaration itself was preserved in the Bulgarian language[10] by a 1921 edition published in Sofia and later archived by the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam.[11] Following the defeat of the Makhnovshchina in August 1921, the exiled Nestor Makhno and Peter Arshinov expanded upon the foundations laid by the Draft Declaration, eventually devising the organizational theory of platformism, which they hoped would help put an end to the "theoretical confusion" and "chronic disorganization" of the anarchist movement.[12] This became a source of criticism by the wider anarchist movement: for his shift to platformism, Makhno was accused of "Bonapartism",[13] while the Draft Declaration itself was accused of amounting to a constitution for a decentralized "Makhnovist state",[14] although these charges were denied by Makhno himself.[15]
Contents
Introduction
The Draft Declaration starts with a brief survey of the history of the Russian Revolution, recounting the "First Revolution" that overthrew the Tsarist autocracy and established a government of the bourgeoisie, followed by the "Second Revolution" that put the Bolsheviks into power.[16] It then charged the new Bolshevik government with hindering the social revolution, claiming that the Party's control over the economy and society had put the Bolsheviks in a privileged position, causing widespread discontent and even uprisings.[17]
It was in this context that the Draft Declaration concluded: no political party or state system was capable of reorganizing Ukraine's economy according to the needs of the working class. It thus declared the reignition of the "Third Revolution", with the intention of eliminating the concentration of political and economic power.[21] It went on to declare that the intention of the Revolutionary Insurgent Army was to "serve and protect" the social revolution, which it believed would naturally gravitate towards communism through workers' self-management, without the need for any leadership to impose those ideals.[22] It finally characterized the remainder of the Declaration to be advisory and insisted that people themselves decide whether or not to implement its suggestions.[23]
On the issue of justice, the Draft Declaration rejected all police, judiciaries and legal codes,[26] calling for their abolition and replacement with a form of workers' justice, one based on voluntary self-organization without formalized or specialized power structures.[27]
Economic policy
The Draft Declaration then turned to an issue with a matter of urgency: the need for an organized supply chain. After blaming the lack of supplies on the ongoing power struggle between various parties, it declared again that the issue would be resolved through workers' self-management and the unification of the proletariat with the peasantry, which could together restart production and introduce a new system of resource distribution.[28]
On the issue of agrarian reform, the Draft Declaration called for the voluntary reconstruction of the agricultural economy by the peasantry, while suggesting that this take the form of communism. It criticised the nationalization of land by the Bolshevik government as a form of state capitalism and called instead for land to be equally redistributed directly to the people that worked it, according to the will of the peasants themselves.[29] It also drew attention to the artels, which it considered to be the best step towards reconstructing agrarian society along cooperative lines.[30] It then concluded by calling for the eradication of "wage slavery" and the establishment of barter between industrial centers and agricultural collectives, declaring mutual aid to be the best solution to the agrarian problem.[31]
Again criticizing the Bolsheviks' nationalization policy, the Draft Declaration called for the means of production to be immediately transferred to workers' control, which it believed would revitalize the industrial economy and end the rising inflation.[32] It declared that only workers' self-management could meet this target and suggested the convocation of workers' congresses to address the issues at hand, including that of affordable housing for all workers.[33]
The Draft Declaration proclaimed the right of different nationalities to use their own language, live by their own customs and maintain their culture, whilst also denouncing separatism from the perspective of proletarian internationalism, instead considering the union of different nationalities under socialism to be the best path to satisfying national aspirations.[36] It then spoke of Ukrainian independence in terms of the self-determination of Ukrainian workers, aspiring to Ukraine's independence from all political power, including that of a native Ukrainian nation state.[37]
The Draft Declaration concludes by reaffirming its own advisory nature, desiring an open debate and freedom to experiment in the establishment of socialism, which it pledged to "defend with all our might". It once again affirmed the necessity of workers' self-management in the formation of a new society, and ended with a declaration that "by defending this entitlement to creative freedom with armed force [...] we shall win."[40]
