The Life and Times of Anatoly Zhelezniakov: Part 2, the Russian Civil War

A couple of months ago, I posted about an anarchist sailor, Anatoly Zhelezniakov, whose story in 1917 exemplified the growing political divisions during the Russian Revolution.

His story would continue until July 1919, when he was killed fighting against White counter-revolutionaries.

In many ways, the end of the story is more remarkable than its first part, and has the ability to shed light on what might sometimes seem an impossibly tangled episode in Russia’s History: the Russian Civil War.

Anatoly Zhelezniakov

Context

The Russian Civil War is usually dated 1918-1921 (although Jon Smele has recently argued its dates should actually be 1916-1926). In many ways, in fact, this was an overlapping series of “Civil Wars”, in which, to quote Smele, “Russians fought Russians, Russians fought non-Russians, republicans fought monarchists, socialists fought socialists, Christians fought Muslims, towns fought the countryside, family fought family, and brother fought brother.”

How to make sense of this mess?

At a recent 6^th Form event in Bristol, Geoff Swain, author of a volume on the Russian Civil War, offered a workable approach. The Russian Civil War, he argued, was fundamentally a three-way struggle between Reds (Bolsheviks and their allies), the “Democratic Counter-Revolution” (non-Bolshevik socialists), and Whites (anti-Bolsheviks and anti-socialists).

Although this approach might overlook many of the social and ethnic intricacies of the Civil War, it has the advantage of making the military and political aspects of the conflict approachable for students (and of course, teachers). And Analtoly Zhelezniakov’s life after 1917 sheds light on it as well as any other life could.

 

The Start of the Civil War

We left Zhelezniakov’s story last time just after the Second Congress of Soviets, in October 1917, where, as a representative of Kronstadt’s sailors, he had backed the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks and their radical-left allies.

As an anarchist, Zhelezniakov was in a rather strange position. Anarchists opposed not just capitalism, but also government in general. As such, the October Revolution and seizure of power by a militant left-wing faction begged the question, could a(nother) revolutionary government, one which professed to bring about the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, be supported?

Russian anarchists split broadly two ways – some continued to oppose all government and rejected the idea of a Bolshevik-led government and dictatorship; others, known widely as “Soviet anarchists”, chose with some reservations to support Soviet Power under Bolshevik leadership. Zhelezniakov belonged to the “Soviet anarchist” camp. His position would make him instrumental in bringing about, and conducting, Russia’s Civil War.

In January 1918, as the Constituent Assembly – the body elected to choose Russia’s future government – finally met, Zhelezniakov was one of the guards posted by the Bolsheviks to oversee proceedings. The Bolsheviks had claimed fairly consistently to support the Constituent Assembly up to the October Revolution, yet by this point it had become a rather serious headache. Having seized power in October 1917 and then established their own revolutionary government, Sovnarkom, the Bolsheviks now found themselves as a minority in the Constituent Assembly, with just under a quarter of the votes, well behind the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, which had gained over one-third.

Even on its first day, it was clear the Bolsheviks would not tolerate a Constituent Assembly under its opponents’ leadership. At the end of a long and fraught day, Zhelezniakov announced to the delegates “The guard is tired”. The delegates were sent away, and the Constituent Assembly was dissolved.

 

Fighting With (and Without) the Reds

The closing of the Constituent Assembly pushed Socialist-Revolutionaries and other moderate socialists into an anti-Bolshevik camp, arguably setting in motion the Civil War’s first phase, in which the “Democratic Counter-Revolution” would challenge the Bolshevik “Reds” for power. Soon, openly counter-revolutionary and anti-socialist “Whites” would join the fray, launching military assaults against the Reds across Russia.

Zhelezniakov threw himself into the action, taking command of a Red Army flotilla and then an armoured train. He participated in campaigns against the White Don Cossack forces in the south west of Russia and against White generals, Krasnov and Denikin.

Yet the splits between Zhelezniakov, the anarchist, and the Bolshevik Red Army command soon became apparent in the spring of 1918 when Trotsky ordered the re-establishment of traditional military authority to better conduct the war against the Whites. For Zhelezniakov, like a great many anarchists and other radical left-wing socialists, Trotsky’s order smacked of old-school militarism. He protested, says his English-language biographer Paul Avrich, “vigorously… For this the Bolsheviks outlawed him, as they outlawed the anarchist Black Guards in Moscow and [anarchist commander] Nestor Makhno in the [sic] Ukraine.”

Unwilling to let the matter go, Zhelezniakov secretly travelled to Moscow to discuss his concerns with the Yakov Sverdlov, chairman of the Soviet Executive Committee. Here, Sverdlov offered Zhelezniakov a high-ranking military position in the Red Army, which he declined. Returning to Odessa, in Ukraine, he resumed the fight against the Whites as part of non-Bolshevik but anti-White forces.

This situation exemplified the confused and chaotic nature of Civil War enmity and alliance, in which Reds fought Whites and non-White moderate socialists, non-Reds including anarchist “Blacks” fought Whites (and sometimes the Reds as well), some moderate socialists fought Whites and/or Reds, and so on.

 

Winning the Civil War (?)

In 1919, the Bolsheviks, recognising Zhelezniakov’s military skill, again offered him a position in the Red Army. This time, with battle lines hardened and a growing White counter-revolutionary threat, Zhelezniakov accepted. Still an anarchist, he was also now a formal Bolshevik ally once again. He took command of an armoured train in battles against the White general Anton Denikin, in the south of Russia. Denikin was evidently impressed by his adversary’s command, so much so that he placed a reward of 400,000 roubles on his head.

Civil War against the Whites would rage on into 1920, when White counter-revolutionary armies were all-but destroyed, their remnants pushed to the peripheries, and then out, of the Russian empire. By the start of 1921, the Bolsheviks had won the military conflict, but faced a growing social movement of rebellious peasants, workers, and sailors – the latter including many of Zhelezniakov’s old comrades in Kronstadt, who staged a short-lived and ultimately doomed uprising against the Bolshevik dictatorship.

Zhelezniakv saw none of this. He had fought bravely for the Red Army throughout the first half of 1919, commanding his armoured train until, on July 26, he was killed by an artillery shell fired by Denikin’s forces. He was 24 years old.

In his memory, the Bolsheviks (now renamed Communists) erected a statue in Kronstadt, a monument to a remarkable, and remarkably ambivalent, figure in their campaigns to seize power in 1917 and keep it in the ensuing Civil War.

Further Reading

Paul Avrich, Anarchist Portraits, Princeton University Press (1988), chapter 6 (“Stormy Petrel: Anatoli Zhelezniakov”)

Jonathan D. Smele, The “Russian” Civil Wars 1916-1926: Ten Years That Shook the World, Oxford University Press (2016)