Article contents
The Makhaevists and the Russian Revolutionary Movement
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2008
Extract
By the early years of the twentieth century, the two major socialist parties in Russia, the Social Democrats and the Socialist-Revolutionaries, had taken shape. But these two parties did not win the adherence of all of Russia's revolutionary activists. There existed in addition a series of small extremist groups that formed what might be called the “militant fringe” of the revolutionary movement. These groups differed among themselves on programs, methods and ultimate objectives, but they all rejected the leading parties as insufficiently committed to revolution or too slow-moving in their tactics to achieve it. Although they never attained the numerical or organizational strength of the SD's and SR's, they remained a significant element in the revolutionary movement and left their mark on Russia's political life. The three main components of the militant fringe were the anarchists, the SR Maximalists, and the Makhaevists. Of these the Makhaevists are almost unknown today, although they formed organizations in several cities and rivalled the Maximalists and anarchists for the allegiance of the revolutionary extremists. An account of their program and activities will help to shed light on a segment of the Russian political spectrum whose insight into Russia's social and political condition has been underestimated, and on the revolutionary role of its smallest but in many ways most original element.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1970
References
page 236 note 1 Several accounts of Machajski's life and thought are now available, and therefore only a summary of his main doctrines is given here. For further details see Nomad, Max, Aspects of Revolt (New York, 1959), pp. 96–117Google Scholar; Avrich, Paul, “What Is “Makhaevism’?” in: Soviet Studies (07, 1965), pp. 66–75Google Scholar; Shatz, Marshall, “Jan Waclaw Machajski: The ‘Conspiracy’ of the Intellectuals”, in: Survey (01., 1967), pp. 45–57.Google Scholar The most extended treatment of Machajski's ideas, relating them primarily to his early formative experiences in Poland, is D'Agostino, Anthony, “Intelligentsia Socialism and the ‘Workers’ Revolution': The Views of J. W. Machajski”, in: International Review of Social History, XIV (1969), pp. 54–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar As the present paper is intended to show, although some aspects of Machajski's thought may have had their roots in the Polish situation, Makhaevism as a revolutionary movement developed in direct response to Russian social and political conditions.
page 237 note 1 Machajski himself never spelled this out clearly. His widow maintained that he never denied the value of socialism, and that he regarded socialization of the means of production as a necessary but not a sufficient condition for emancipating the workers. Vera Machajska [née Roza Levin], “Machajski's Views”, unpublished manuscript in Russian, Max Nomad Archive, formerly in New York City, now housed in the Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis, Amsterdam. (For a Polish translation of this manuscript, see Machajska, Wiera, “Życie i poglady Wacława Machajskiego”, in: Wiadomości (London), 04 4, 1962, p. 2.Google Scholar) I would like to express my gratitude to Mr Nomad for his generosity in making his archive available to me when it was in his possession, as well as for his encouragement and his reminiscences.
page 238 note 1 Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick, Selected Works in Two Volumes (Moscow, 1955), I, p. 140.Google Scholar
page 238 note 2 Vol'skii, A.[Jan Waclaw Machajski], Umstvennyi rabochii (Geneva, 1904–1905), Part I, p. 21;Google Scholar also ibid., pp. 70–71.
page 238 note 3 Machajski, [Jan Waclaw,] Burzhuaznaia revoliutsiia i rabochee delo (St Pet., 1906; first pub. Geneva, 1905), pp. 40–41.Google Scholar
page 238 note 4 Umstvennyi rabochii, Part III, sec. i, p. 10.
page 239 note 1 Machajski, [Jan Waclaw,] Bankrotstvo sotsializma XIX stoletiia (Geneva, 1905), p. 27.Google Scholar See Marx, The Class Struggles in France, Marx and Engels, Selected Works, I, p. 162.Google Scholar
page 239 note 2 Umstvennyi rabochii, Part III, sec. i, p. 11.
page 240 note 1 Vol'skii, A., ed., Rabochii zagovor (Geneva), No 1, 09.-10., 1907, pp. 69–74.Google Scholar Machajski himself wrote all the articles in this journal except the third. No further issues were published. On Machajski's rejection of what he considered the “pacified” strata of the working class, the members of trade unions and socialist organizations, see also his unpublished work, “An Unfinished Essay in the Nature of a Critique of Socialism”, Slavonic Collection, New York Public Library, pp. 44–45.Google Scholar Machajski wrote this essay in 1910 or 1911. The manuscript (photocopy) is a Russian translation, made by Machajski's wife, of the Polish original.
page 240 note 2 Bakounine, Michel, Oeuvres, , ed. by Max Nettlau and James Guillaume (Paris, 1895–1913), V, p. 135.Google Scholar
page 241 note 1 Bakunin, M. A., Gosudarstvennost' i anarkhiia, Bakunin, A. I., ed., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (St Pet., 1906), II, pp. 220–21.Google Scholar
page 241 note 2 Bakounine, , Oeuvres, II, pp. 293–307.Google Scholar
page 241 note 3 Bakunin, , Gosudarstvennost' i anarkhiia, pp. 49–50, 72.Google Scholar
page 241 note 4 Ibid., pp. 256–58. For a stimulating discussion of the concept of the “social bandit” see Hobsbawm, E. J., Primitive Rebels (New York, 1965), chap. 2.Google Scholar
page 242 note 1 Umstvennyi rabochii, Part I, p. 36.
page 242 note 2 Burzhuaznaia revoliutsiia, p. 100.
page 242 note 3 Rabochii zagovor, p. 77.
page 243 note 1 Burzhuaznaia revoliutsiia, pp. 72–74.
page 243 note 2 Ivanov-Razumnik, , Ob intelligentsii (2nd ed., St Pet., 1910), pp. 86–88.Google Scholar
page 243 note 3 Earlier in his career it had been explicit as well. When he was arrested in 1892 he was carrying copies of a manifesto, which he had written himself, to the striking workers of Łódź, urging them to oppose the troops sent against them with street barricades, bullets, and bombs. Perl, Feliks [Res], Dzieje ruchu socjalistycznego w zaborze rosyjskim (Warsaw, 1958; first pub. 1910), pp. 420–21.Google Scholar
page 243 note 4 In a more romantic vein, Evgenii Lozinskii, the chief popularizer of Makhae-vism, developed the image of the “hooligan”. As Lozinskii pictured him, the hooligan was an unemployed vagrant whose home was the street and who lived by shady, if not actually criminal, means. He was the outsider par excellence, a man who owed nothing to society and was therefore free from its conventions and prejudices. Lozinskii regarded him as a fresh, healthy force whose mission was to purify Russian life by sweeping away its outworn “bourgeois” culture. “And there … onto the historical stage has come the frenzied, dirty, outcast figure of the fighting ‘hooligan’. Amid an ever growing chorus of timid or indignant ‘oh's’ and ‘ah's’ from all of educated society (including even the most revolutionary socialists), this ‘hooligan’ is beginning little by little to occupy the main arena of the historical struggle, not – oh, horrors! – as an enemy or rival to his ‘employed’, i.e., laboring comrades, but as an independent fighter against the whole exploiting world, who has decided to repay the latter savagely for his unnatural, wasted life.” His arrival on the scene, Lozinskii wistfully suggested, “may be the beginning of the end of all our barbaric culture and civilization, all our hypocritical, cannibalistic progress.” Gde vykhod? (St Pet., 1909), pp. 14–15.Google Scholar See also his Itogi i perspektivy rabochego dvizheniia (St Pet., 1909), pp. 350–53.
As always, Russia's writers were as sensitive to the social changes occurring around them as her revolutionaries, and the outcasts of urban life began to make their appearance in Russian literature in the early twentieth century. Probably the best-known work on this theme is Gorky's play The Lower Depths. Even more striking in this respect, however, is another play, Leonid Andreev's Tsar Hunger (1907). With its description of the most downtrodden of the industrial workers joining forces with the city's criminal elements to raise a revolt of the hungry against the privileged classes – and their defeat by the forces of modern science – Andreev's play reads almost like a scenario for a Makhaevist revolution.
page 244 note 1 Umstvennyi rabochii, Part III, sec. i, p. 16.
page 244 note 2 Burzhuaznaia revoliutsiia, pp. 48–49.
page 244 note 3 Ibid., pp. 49–50.
page 245 note 1 Ibid., p. 77.
page 245 note 2 On the significance of this element in the urban labor force, and its outlook, see Pankratova, A. M., “Proletarizatsiia krest'ianstva i ee rol' v formirovanii promyshlennogo proletariata Rossii (60–90–e gody XIX v.)”, in: Istoricheskie zapiski. No 54, 1955, pp. 194–220Google Scholar; Laue, Theodore Von, “Russian Peasants in the Factory, 1892–1904”, in: Journal of Economic History, 03, 1961, pp. 61–80;CrossRefGoogle ScholarHaimson, Leopold, “The Problem of Social Stability in Urban Russia, 1905– 1917”, I, in: Slavic Review, 12, 1964, pp. 619–42Google Scholar; Ulam, Adam, The Unfinished Revolution (New York, 1960), chaps. 3, 4.Google Scholar
The interest of the Makhaevists in this element was recognized by the Soviet historian of the movement, L. Syrkin, who otherwise tried to minimize his subject's social relevance. Syrkin applied the usual Soviet interpretation of anarchism – that it appealed to the obsolescent victims of industrial progress – to Makhaevism, and labelled it the ideology of the “declassed petty bourgeoisie”. He included in this category, however, not only “ruined artisans” but also the new industrial workers fresh from the countryside, certainly a highly significant social force in the Russian context. Syrkin, L., Makhaevshchina (Moscow-Leningrad, 1931), pp. 62–65.Google Scholar
page 246 note 1 Umstvennyi rabochii, Part I, pp. 84–88.
page 246 note 2 Burzhuaznaia revoliutsiia, p. 67.
page 246 note 3 Ibid., pp. 75–77; also Umstvennyi rabochii, Part III, sec. i, p. 4.
page 247 note 1 Rabochii zagovor, pp. 12–13.
page 247 note 2 Burzhuaznaia revoliutsiia, p. 97.
page 247 note 3 Ibid., pp. 77–78; also Rabochii zagovor, p. 26.
page 248 note 1 Rabochii zagovor, p. 63; also Burzhuaznaia revoliutsiia, p. 111.
page 248 note 2 Umstvennyi rabochii, Part I, p. 30.
page 248 note 3 Ibid., pp. viii, xxiv. Only once more did he mention a dictatorship, but in a very ambiguous context, for the same passage also advocates the policy of pressuring rather than seizing the government. Umstvennyi rabochii, Part II, p. 55.
page 249 note 1 Rabochii zagovor, pp. 80–82. Evgenii Lozinskii declared that the form of government was a matter of indifference to the working class, and that in some cases the workers might find that absolutism defended them better against the bourgeoisie than did parliamentary government. E. L., , “Sotsializm i egalitarizm”, in: Protiv techeniia (St Pet.), No 3, 05 8, 1907, p. 11Google Scholar; Lozinskii, Evgenii, Itogi parlamentarizma (St Pet., 1907), pp. 56–57.Google Scholar
page 249 note 2 Gorev, B. I., “Apoliticheskie i antiparlamentskie gruppy”, in: Martov, L. et al. , ed., Obshchestvennoe dvizhenie v Rossii v nachale XX–go veka (St Pet., 1909–1914), III, p. 530;Google ScholarR[aev]skii, M., in: Burevestnik (Paris), 03–04, 1908, pp. 31–32.Google Scholar Lest Machajski be thought uniquely lacking in political wisdom, it should be recalled that in 1917 some of the most sophisticated socialists in Russia attempted to apply a policy very similar to his in relation to the Provisional Government.
page 250 note 1 Burzhuaznaia revoliutsiia, p. 115.
page 250 note 2 Ivanov-Razumnik, , Ob intelligentsia pp. 135–44.Google Scholar Lozinskii tried to argue that the very fact of having revealed the intelligentsia's true character absolved the Makhaevists from guilt by association and proved their sincere adoption of the proletariat's cause. Chto zhe takoe, nakonets, intelligentsiia (St Pet., 1907), p. 145.
Whether Machajski continued to harbor the notion of a seizure of power remains a moot point. Max Nomad has written that in 1934 Vera Machajska told him quite frankly that she and her husband had been thinking all along in terms of seizing power (Dreamers, Dynamiters, and Demagogues (New York, 1964), pp. 203–04). There is nothing in Machajski's writings, however, to confirm this. In addition, it should be pointed out that his adherents, including as astute an observer as Nomad himself, apparently did not doubt his sincerity.
page 00h note 3 Besides a general similarity of political views, at least some anarchists showed an interest in the same social stratum as the Makhaevists. The anarchist “bez-nachal'tsy”, for instance, declared their intention of working among “the unemployed, vagabonds, migrants”, and other outcasts from society. gruppa, Zagranichnaia“Beznachalie”, “Zaiavlenie”, in: Beznachalie (Paris-Geneva), No 1, 04, 1905, pp. 1–2.Google Scholar See also Avrich, Paul, The Russian Anarchists (Princeton, 1967), pp. 49–54.Google Scholar Iosif Genkin claimed that the beznachal'tsy included former Makhaevists, but this is not confirmed elsewhere (I. Genkin, Po tiur'mam i etapam (St Pet., 1922), pp. 287–88). Genkin's memoirs of his encounters with Makhaevists are often illuminating, but some of his statements regarding Mak-haevist groups and the careers of their individual members are based on hearsay and find no corroboration in other sources.
page 251 note 1 “An Unfinished Essay”, pp. 17–18; Umstvennyi rabochii, Part III, sec. i, pp. 35–53. Despite his borrowing of the anarcho-syndicalist device of the general strike, Machajski saw little value in the work of the anarcho-syndicalists themselves. He criticized them for their adherence to anarchist doctrines, and he expressed the belief that their efforts would lead only to the legalization of trade unions. “An Unfinished Essay”, pp. 13–14; Umstvennyi rabochii, Part III, sec. i, p. 49, and sec. ii, p. 5.
page 252 note 1 Machajska, Vera, “Machajski's Life to 1903”, unpublished manuscript in Russian, Max Nomad Archive. A Polish translation of this manuscript is included in Wiera Machajska, “Życie i poglady Wacława Machajskiego”, in: Wiadomości (London), 03 4, 1962. p, 2.Google Scholar The translation, however, omits the names of Machajski's Siberian followers which are given in the original.
The impact Machajski's views made on the exiles was quite remarkable. See, for example, “Listy Jana Strożeckiego do Kazimierza Pietkiewicza”, in: Dzieje Najnowsze (Kwartalnik Instytutu Pamiçci Narodowej), Vol. I, Part I (01.-03, 1947), pp. 133–35.Google Scholar Strożecki had been a schoolmate of Machajski and reported reading his pamphlets in Siberia. They also reached Trotsky in his place of exile (Trotskii, L., “Vospominaniia o moei pervoi sibirskoi ssylke”, in: Katorga i Ssylka, No 5 (1923), pp. 91–95).Google Scholar An account based on the reminiscences of Machajski's fellow-exiles describes how the exiles of Viliuisk cooperated to reproduce Machajski's first essay: “they recopied it, proof-read it, and forwarded it to all the exile colonies. On many people it made an enormous impression. Not a few exiles became ‘Makhaevists’ under its influence.” Lur'e, G., “lakutskaia ssylka v devianostye i deviatisotye gody”, in: Braginskii, M. A., ed., 100 let iakutskoi ssylki. Sbornik iakutskogo zemliachestva (Moscow, 1934), p. 183.Google Scholar From Siberia, Machajski's views were carried to the rest of the Russian revolutionary movement. Lenin, for instance, learned of them from Trotsky when the two met in London in 1902 (Trotskii, L., Moia zhizn': opyt avtobiografii (Berlin, 1930), I, p. 167).Google Scholar
page 253 note 1 On the Irkutsk group see Shetlikh, A., “Pamiati V. K. Makhaiskogo”, in: Izvestiia, 02 24, 1926, p. 6Google Scholar; Machajska, Vera, “Machajski's Life to 1903”; Garvi, P. A., Vospominaniia sotsialdemokrata (New York, 1946), pp. 287–318.Google Scholar
page 253 note 2 Genkin, , Po tiur‘mam i etapam, pp. 287–88.Google Scholar On the frictions in the Odessa Social-Democratic committee, see Garvi, , Vospominaniia, pp. 107–12Google Scholar, and Wildman, Allan K., The Making of a Workers' Revolution: Russian Social-Democracy, 1891–1903 (Chicago and London, 1967), pp. 110–12.Google Scholar
page 253 note 3 Vera Machajska named two individuals, Bronisław Mitkiewicz and a Chuprina as belonging to both groups. Vera Machajska, “Machajski's Life to 1903”, and Letter to Max Nomad, July 25, 1932, Max Nomad Archive. According to Genkin, some SR's were also members, but no other sources mention them (“Sredi preemnikov Bakunina”, in: Krasnaia letopis', No 1(22), 1927, p. 190).Google Scholar
page 253 note 4 Belostochanin, , “Iz istorii anarkhicheskogo dvizheniia v Belostoke”, in: Al'manakh. Sbornik po istorii anarkhicheskogo dvizheniia v Rossii (Paris, 1909), I, p. 7.Google Scholar
page 253 note 5 Vera Machajska to Max Nomad, July 25, 1932; “Ocherk anarkhicheskogo dvizheniia v Odesse”, in: Buntar' (Paris), No 1, 12 1, 1906, pp. 30–32Google Scholar; Znamenskii, Mikhail, “Tiuremnye vpechatleniia”, in Al'manakh, pp. 149–55.Google Scholar It was no coincidence that Odessa was also one of the main arenas of Zubato-vism, a calculated effort by the authorities to exploit the frictions that had developed between the revolutionaries and the workers. Closely parallelling many of Machajski's views – though obviously from an anti-revolutionary perspective – Zubatov's agents in Odessa concentrated especially on the accusation that the socialists were preoccupied with political objectives to the neglect, or even the detriment, of the workers' economic interests. See the documents in Bukhbinder, N. A., “Nezavisimaia evreiskaia rabochaia partiia. Po neizdannym arkhivnym dokumentam”, in: Krasnaia letopis', No 2–3, 1922, pp. 208–84;Google Scholar and N. A. Bukhbinder, “O zubatovshchine”, ibid., No 4, 1922, pp. 289–335.
page 254 note 1 “Tovarishchu i drugu”, in: Buntar', No 1, 12 1, 1906, pp. 32–34;Google ScholarNovomirskii, D. I., “Anarkhicheskoe dvizhenie v Odesse”, in: Borovoi, A. A., ed., Mikhailu Bakuninu, 1876–1926 (Moscow, 1926), p. 248.Google Scholar Other militants, it appears, left Makhaevism for much the same reasons. See Genkin, , “Sredi preem-nikov Bakunina”, p. 191.Google Scholar
page 255 note 1 Mikhailova, E., “Iz kommentariev k ‘Chto delat”. Gruppa samoosvobozhdeniia rabochego klassa”, in: Krasnaia letopis’, No 1(12), 1925, pp. 239–48Google Scholar, which includes the group's manifesto, originally published in London in 1899; Paialin, N. P., Zavod imeni Lenina, 1857–1918 (Moscow-Leningrad, 1933), pp. 78–80.Google Scholar Lenin included this group in his denunciation of Economism in What Is to Be Done?New York, 1943), pp. 44–45.
page 255 note 2 Rabochaia mysl', for instance, voiced the following reservation about student-revolutionaries: “It must never be forgotten that while they are revolutionaries today, tomorrow they will be procurators, judges, engineers, factory inspectors, in short, the officials of the Russian government” (“Zametki”, No 4, 10, 1898, p. 4).Google Scholar Machajski referred to the students as “the future administrators, directors, engineers, judges, procurators” of the proletariat (Umstvennyi rabochii, Part III, sec. i, p. 23).
page 255 note 3 Levitskii, V., Za chetvert' veka (Moscow-Leningrad, 1927), Vol. I, Part 2, p. 172.Google Scholar On the relations between workers and intellectuals in the Social-Democratic movement in Ekaterinoslav, see Wildman, , Making of a Workers' Revolution, pp. 103–07.Google Scholar
page 255 note 4 Genkin, Po tiurmam i etapam, pp. 288–90.
page 256 note 1 Gel'man, S. and Kudrin, N., “Pamiati Romanovtsa M. V. Lur'e”, in: Katorga i Ssylka, No 56, 07 1929, p. 155.Google Scholar
page 256 note 2 Eidel'man, B. L., “Imeniny Rossiiskoi Kommunisticheskoi Partii”, in: K dvadtsatipiatiletiiu pervogo s”ezda partii (1898–1923) (Moscow-Petrograd, 1923), pp. 35–37.Google Scholar
page 256 note 3 Gel‘man, and Kudrin, , “Pamiati”, p. 160.Google Scholar At least one member of Lur's;e's Group of Worker-Revolutionaries actually did turn up in the Makhaevists' ranks in 1905 (Eidel'man, “Imeniny”, p. 37). On Lur'e's Social-Democratic activities, see Wildman, , Making of a Workers' Revolution, pp. 192–206.Google Scholar
page 256 note 4 Mention should be made of Daniil Novomirskii [la. Kirillovskii], an anarcho-syndicalist who, while never a Makhaevist, was strongly influenced by Machajs-ki's views on the intelligentsia. See his Iz programmy sindikal'nogo anarkhizma (n. p., 1907); Chto takoe anarkhizm (New York, 1919; first pub. 1907), pp. 57–63; and his newspaper Novyi mir (Paris), No 1, October 15, 1905. See also Avrich, Russian Anarchists, pp. 110–12. Novomirskii, it should be noted, was active in Odessa.
page 257 note 1 [Evgenii Lozinskii], Podolianin, “Nasushchnye voprosy sovremennoi revoliut-sionnoi strategii”, in: Sbornik statei. Vypusk I (Moscow, 1908;Google Scholar article dated August, 1904), pp. 44–61; “K voprosu o sile i nasilii v revoliutsionnoi bor'be”, ibid, (article dated June, 1904), pp. 19–30.
page 257 note 2 On the “ustinovtsy” see Liudvig Kul'chitskii [Ludwik Kulczycki], Anarkhizm v sovremennom sotsial'no-politicheskom dvizhenii v Rossii (St Pet., 1907), p. 83; and Gorev, , “Apoliticheskie i antiparlamentskie gruppy”, p. 512.Google Scholar Although both Kulczycki and Gorev pointed out the links between this group and the Makhae-vists, neither seems to have been aware that Ustinov was actually Lozinskii. Confirmation of his identity can be found in his writings by following the long trail of pseudonyms he left behind him. See also Masanov, I. F., Slovar' psev-donimov russkikh pisatelei, uchenykh i obshchestvennykh deiatelei (Moscow, 1956–1960), III, p. 186.Google Scholar
page 257 note 3 Vol'nyi diskussionnyi listok (Paris?), No 1, May 1, 1905; No 2, June 10, 1905; No 3, July 5, 1905.
page 257 note 4 “Kak organizovat' revoliutsionnuiu kommunu?”, in: Kommuna (Paris?), No 1, December, 1905, pp. 5–7.
page 257 note 5 Ibid., p. 8.
page 258 note 1 Tag-in, E., Otvet Viktoru Chernovu (St Pet., 1906), p. 37n.Google Scholar; Gorev, , “Apoli-ticheskie i antiparlamentskie gruppy”, p. 473.Google Scholar For his part, Lozinskii was soon criticizing the Maximalists for their sympathetic attitude to the intelligentsia and the land-owning peasantry. See “Sushchnost' maksimalizma”, in: Protiv techeniia (St Pet.), No 2, March 22, 1907, pp. 10–13; and “Maksimalizm i intelligentsiia”, ibid., No 3, May 8, 1907, p. 12. Protiv techeniia was a Makhaevist newspaper, three issues of which were published. It was edited by Lozinskii and apparently written entirely by him, for every signed article in it bore his name, his initials, or one of his pseudonyms. To the uninitiated, however, he was able to pass himself off as an entire group.
page 258 note 2 Lozinskii gave Machajski little credit as the originator of these views, and relations between them were cold. But it was Lozinskii's books that were reviewed in the journals of the day, and it was largely through them that “makhaevshchina” became, if not exactly a household word, at least a familiar Russian political term.
page 258 note 3 Nomad, Dreamers, pp. 195–201.
page 258 note 4 This is strongly suggested by the careful efforts the Ustinov group made to differentiate itself from the anarchists. See Ustinov, E., Sovremennyi anarkhizm (Geneva, 1905), p. 2.Google Scholar
page 259 note 1 In 1906 a disciple of Machajski known as Abramek organized a group called “Zmowa Robotnicza” in Warsaw. The group's political commitment seems to have been quite weak, however, and it soon degenerated into little more than a bandit gang (Nomad, Aspects of Revolt, pp. 220–21). Genkin, (“Sredi preemnikov Bakunina”, p. 190)Google Scholar mentions a Makhaevist group in Vilna but gives no details.
page 259 note 2 Vera Machajska, Letter to Max Nomad, July 25, 1932.
page 259 note 3 Voitinskii, V., Gody pobed i porazhenii (Berlin, 1924), II, pp. 193–96.Google Scholar
page 259 note 4 Stanislaw Pigon, “Zygzaki przyjaźni. Machajski, J. W. – Zeromski, S.”, in: Miłe życia drobiazgi (Warsaw, 1964), pp. 385–86.Google Scholar
page 259 note 5 Voitinskii, Vladimir S., Peterburgskii sovet bezrabotnykh, 1906–1907 (New York: Russian Institute, Columbia University, 1969), p. 84.Google Scholar According to Voitinskii (p. 83), the anarchists and Maximalists were also active among the unemployed of St Petersburg.
page 260 note 1 “Iz zhizni partii”, in: Tovarishch (St Pet.), April 18, 1907, p. 4; June 23, 1907, p. 3; August 26, 1907, p. 4; September 11, 1907, p. 2; September 29, 1907, p. 4; October 17, 1907. p. 4.
page 261 note 1 Nomad, Dreamers, pp. 103–33. Machajski lived in Cracow at this time, under the name Jan Kiżło. Nomad was his most active propagandist.
page 261 note 2 Machajski to Max Nomad, September 28, 1916, and June 29, 1917, Max Nomad Archive. See also Zaremba, Zygmunt, Slowo o Waclawie Machajskim (Paris, 1967), pp. 88–95.Google Scholar At the outbreak of the revolution Machajski told friends, “It is not yet my revolution, but it is a revolution, and therefore I'm going to it.” (Zaremba, Słowo, p. 95.)
page 261 note 3 According to Max Nomad, Mitkiewicz ultimately became a Communist and was killed during the Civil War. Zaremba, , Słowo, pp. 103–04, 146.Google Scholar
page 261 note 4 Vol'skii, A., ed., Rabochaia revoliutsiia (Moscow), No 1, 06–07, 1918, pp. 1–2, 6.Google Scholar
page 262 note 1 Ibid., pp. 4–8.
page 262 note 2 Ibid., pp. 10, 22, 26.
page 263 note 1 Sorin, V., Rabochaia gruppa (“Miasnikovshchina”) (Moscow, 1924), pp. 63–64, 109.Google Scholar This book quotes extensively from the manifesto of the Workers' Group and other documents seized by the police.
page 263 note 2 “Vozzvanie gruppy ‘Rabochaia pravda’”, in: Sotsialisticheskii vestnik (Berlin), 01 31, 1923, p. 13.Google Scholar
page 263 note 3 On the rise and fall of the Workers' Group and the Workers' Truth against the general background of left-wing sentiment within the Communist Party, see Daniels, Robert, The Conscience of the Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), chaps. 7, 9.Google Scholar
page 263 note 4 At the end of 1922, however, Machajski did send Max Nomad, who was now in New York, an urgent request for a copy of his Bankrotstvo sotsializma XIX stoletiia, which apparently he could not locate in Moscow. He even asked Nomad to have a typescript made if he did not have an extra printed copy. Regrettably, he did not explain why he needed it. (Machajski to Max Nomad, December 6, 1922, Max Nomad Archive.)
page 264 note 1 Machajski to Max Nomad (in Polish), January 29, 1924, Max Nomad Archive.
page 264 note 2 Baturin, N. N., “Pamiati ‘makhaevshchiny’!”, in: Pravda, 03 2, 1926, p. 2Google Scholar; Shetlikh, A., “Pamiati V. K. Makhaiskogo”, in: Izvestiia, February 24, 1926, p. 6.Google Scholar Shetlikh had been won over to Machajski's views in Viliuisk. An extract from Umstvennyi rabochii was reprinted in an anthology called Nashi protivniki, ed. by Anderson, F. et al. (Moscow, 1928), I, pp. 142–60.Google ScholarSyrian's, L.Makhaevshchina, previously cited, appeared in book form in 1931 after being serialized in Krasnaia letopis', No 6(33), 1929, pp. 184–212Google Scholar, and No 1(34), 1930, pp. 117–45. Lozinskii also had a final word, publishing a little book in which he restated the essential elements of Makhaevism but carefully limited their application to the Social-Democratic parties of the Second International. He was suspiciously vague in regard to the intelligentsia's position under a “dictatorship of the proletariat”. Lozinskii, Evgenii, Revoliutsionnaia rol' prava i gosudarstva v epokhu proletars-koi diktatury (Kremenchug, 1928).Google Scholar
page 264 note 3 “O postanovke partiinoi propagandy v sviazi s vypuskom ‘Kratkogo kursa istorii VKP(b)”’, in: Pravda, November 15, 1938, p. 2; “Chto takoe ‘makhaevshchina’?”, ibid., November 18, 1938, p. 2.
page 265 note 1 Schapiro, Leonard, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (London, 1960), p. 438.Google Scholar See the speeches by Stalin and Zhdanov at the Eighteenth Congress urging a more positive attitude towards the new Soviet intelligentsia, XVIII s“ezd vsesoiuznoi kommunisticheskoi partii (b), 10–21 marta 1939 g., steno-graficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1939), pp. 36–37, 514–17. Stalin's speech is particularly interesting in that it contains almost the same wording as the Pravda article of November 15, 1938, although it omits mention of Makhaevism.
- 1
- Cited by