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.
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 6th 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)
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