HOW WESTERN LEFTISTS AND ANARCHISTS FOUND ‘CONVENIENT’ VOICES FROM EASTERN EUROPE ~ Nikita Ivansky ~ Debates on anti-militarism continue to shake the anarchist movement in the western part of the world. Often in these debates we can see some organisations from Ukraine or Russia show support for the ‘no war but class war’ position. Three and a half years since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the anarchist movement is extremely divided. Previous strategies of ‘listening to local voices’ have mostly failed for those who were not interested in the first place. With more scandals certain to come in the future, it’s important to understand how we came to this point. More than 10 years ago, Russia annexed Crimea and occupied part of eastern Ukraine. Even then, the Kremlin cited various reasons for the occupation depending on the political views of its target audience. For the leftist/anti-fascist movement, Russian propagandists prepared a narrative that a fascist regime in Kyiv had seized power illegally. The 2014 invasion was presented as an anti-fascist action. Most anarchists and anti-fascists in the region had developed immunity to such lies over many years of propaganda. But for some Western anti-fascists and leftists, the presence of fascist flags during the Maidan protests was so shocking that they believed the story of a far-right coup without further facts.  Many anarchists in Ukraine at the time believed that to fight the Russian Empire, it was enough familiarise oneself with the situation in order to understand what was occurring in the country, and to provide facts what was happening. In Belarus, we had a similar idea of how to work with comrades in the West in the fight against Russian propaganda. This was: the truth speaks for itself, and those who insist on Putin’s position are just people who, for some reason, have not been reached by the facts. But, even then, we encountered people who knew better about what was happening in your own house. I still remember how, at one presentation, an anti-authoritarian activist from Ukraine talked about Maidan and the situation after the protests, and a German expert responded by talking about how Kyiv was simply occupied by fascists. Attempts to prove him wrong were useless in that moment. Russian propaganda had already done its job. Back then, sitting at a presentation about Ukraine, it didn’t even occur to me that we were incredibly naive in our belief in critical thinking within the anarchist and leftist milieu… After the full-scale invasion, I was one of those who insisted on the need to hear the voices of anarchists from Ukraine in order to understand the war and what we could do in this situation, depending on our capabilities. In my mind, such calls turned into the formation of permanent contacts between Western groups and activists from Ukraine/Belarus/Russia. And for a while, that’s what happened as people became interested, researched, and listened. But it didn’t last long. Soon after, self-proclaimed fighters with militarism within the anarchist movement appeared on the horizon. For them, the messages of Ukrainian and Russian anarchists were unacceptable. Instead of organising in solidarity, some Western leftists and anarchists decided to look for groups within Belarus/Ukraine/Russia that would fully correspond to their dogmatic perspectives on the war and the role of Western countries in it. In Russia, such allies were found relatively quickly. For anti-militarists, the Russian organisation KRAS-MAT’s positions was easily integrated into the Western mothballed analysis of wars. They turned the Kremlin’s attack on Ukraine into a clash between the ruling elites of both countries. Texts calling on Ukrainian society to lay down their arms and start fighting their own government began to spread across various anarchist and left-wing websites. The leftists and anarchists were not particularly interested in the criticism of KRA-MAT by other groups within the affected regions. The ideological proximity of the Western left to KRAS-MAT was more important than any political problems with the syndicate of academics, which had long since ceased to try to participate in the workers’ movement in Russia. However, KRAS-MAT’s position was relatively weak even in the eyes of Western anarchists. After all, the organisation exists within the aggressor state, where resistance to the war is almost completely absent. In this situation, some left-wing pacifists and anti-militarists began to chaotically search for allies in Ukraine and Belarus who could confirm their political analysis of the region. In 2022-2023, some pacifists and anti-militarists found the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement (UPM). The UPM has never declared its commitment to any leftist views, and a mixture of right-wing and left-wing ideas can often be found on the organisation’s information platforms. Moreover, Western leftists were not particularly bothered by the fact that one of the leaders of the organisation is the pro-Russian blogger Ruslan Kotsaba who was was expelled from the organisation in 2023. Nine months later he became part of the right-wing pro-Russian organisation ‘Another Ukraine.’ During the same period, European anarchists and leftists also discovered Assembly, another Ukrainian organisation. However, it was not the leftists who flocked to Assembly, but rather the authors of Assembly who, with the help of automatic translations, broke into leftist platforms such as libcom, completely filling the information field about Ukraine. The collective’s texts, often written in a sensationalist style, fit well with the old political analyses of leftists and some anarchist organizations in the West. For most activists, Assembly can be understood from this excerpt, which begins the story of resistance to mobilisation in Ukraine: “Throughout the territory of the Gulag darkness in the middle of Europe, a people’s war against war is spreading. The heirs of the freedom-loving Zaporozhye Cossacks, Makhnovists, and rebels of Karmalyuk and Dovbush are responding with their own violence to the violence of the heirs of the NKVD, Gestapo, and Pinochet’s death squads. And we are only on the threshold of a full-scale round-up of conscripts, which is expected after July 16.” In essence, Assembly does not write anything special. Rather, it collects discontent within Ukrainian society such as: the fight against corruption, resistance to mobilisation, the lawlessness of local officials. All of which is written about by the Ukrainian media and in social networks. The lack of criticism of the Russian regime and their attempts to put Russia and Ukraine on an equal political footing show, at least, Assembly’s unwillingness to understand the Russian world. The relative popularity of Assembly in Western circles has only reinforced the dogmatism of the group, which is completely removed from any anarchist organisations in the region. The only exception being their active cooperation with the aforementioned KRAS-MAT. Activists from Ukraine and Belarus tried unsuccessfully to draw attention to the inadequacy of the Assembly. But, once again, they came up against an ideological wall. Assembly, like other organisations, proved to be much more convenient for Western anti-militarists than the objective truth, which requires much greater effort in constant research, discussions, and even trips to war-torn countries. The situation in Belarus was even more complicated for the Western left than with Ukraine. After the 2020 crackdown on dissent and protests, there were only a few anarchist organisations left in Belarus and the leftist movement was largely absent and uninteresting. Belarusian anarchist organisations immediately condemned the war and called for resistance to Russian aggression. There were no equivalents of the Assembly or KRAS-MAT in the country. However, somewhere in the vastness of the internet and NGO business, the German left dug up Olga Karach with her project ‘Our Home,’ which since 2022 has been trying to sell stories to the West about mass resistance to compulsory military service in Belarus. Belarusian youth do indeed resist militarism, but this did not begin in 2022. It has existed for many decades. Websites and forums with information on how to avoid military service appeared in the early 2000s. But for Western activists, Olga Karach’s story seemed very plausible. Yet, the ideology of ‘Our Home’ can be described as… money. The project has been around for a long time and, during its existence, has managed to secure sufficient funds from European and American foundations for the development of democracy and human rights. But Olga Karach’s problems began after 2020, when Svetlana Tikhanovskaya appeared on the scene and dozens of new liberal organizations emerged to compete with ‘Our Home’s projects. For some time, Karach tried to fight Tikhanovskaya for leadership of the opposition, but she had relatively little chance, given that everyone within the opposition knew who Karach was. In November 2022, Pramen published an article about Karach with information that Western pacifists had begun to raise money for her projects. I personally had to communicate with some German leftists on this matter, but information about “Our Home” was largely ignored. Over many years in the NGO environment, Olga has become very skilled at selling the right messages to different political groups and seems to have become a regular contributor to the German anarcho-pacifist newspaper Graswurzel Revolution (Grassroots Revolution). At the moment, I doubt that discussions or presentations can lead to a greater understanding of what is happening among the ‘skeptics’ of the struggle against the ‘Russian world’. Further, in many ways three years of discussions about the war in Ukraine have once again shown my own naivety and belief in anarchists. For example, somewhere in the past we lost track of the pro-Russian Stalinist organisation “Borotba” from Ukraine, which for many years reinforced myths about the Ukrainian fascist regime, and no amount of texts or public speeches could eradicate this myth. Borotba’s ties to the Kremlin went largely unnoticed by Western leftist structures, and the damage done by the organization to the anti-fascist movement in Ukraine and beyond remains significant. For me, the situation in the anarchist movement is very reminiscent of something that happened to me in Greece. During one of my trips around the country, I had the good fortune to find myself in the same car as some Greek anti-fascists. It was a long journey, and I fell asleep quite quickly. Half an hour later, I was awakened by Russian Nazi rap. When I asked the Greek anti-fascists where they got such music, they replied that it was a gift from their anti-fascist friends in Donbas. When I told them that it was Nazi rap, they simply dismissed my comment. Fortunately, the Greek anti-fascists did not insist that we continue listening to the music of their friends from Donbas. Examples from three countries with different political groups shows that the concept ‘needing to listen to voices from the region’ does not work in cases of ideological dogmatism. Western leftists and some anarchists are willing to work with openly fraudulent organisations, just to preserve old ideological principles. With this approach, and in an atmosphere of information warfare, it becomes relatively easy to find a person or a group who will repeat slogans that are convenient and completely ignore a significant part of the organised anarchist movement. The post The anti-militarism of fools appeared first on Freedom News.

DEDICATION AND TRAUMA AMID THE UNEXPLODED REMNANTS OF WAR ~ Josie Ó Súileabháin ~ “If people are tired of this war, tell them to come and join the fight. People are fighting and struggling here, and people need help. This is not a video game”.—Joy (Marcy–Yusef) In a darkness demanded for survival, an old man speaks to volunteers in Kupyansk, Kharkiv Oblast following the retreat of the Russian army. “They attacked here, first with airstrikes, bombing the area”, he says. “They dropped bombs here—I still have some in my garden”. “And did the animals survive?” the volunteers ask. “You see you were putting yourself at risk…” “I let them go when the Russians forced me to evacuate at gun point… a missile hit the yard, and the garage and the barn burnt down. The ducklings burnt to death… but the chickens managed to survive… people left everything behind. Many people lost their legs because of the ‘Lepestok’ mines”. “Clearing the gardens of mines?” he is asked. “Sometimes by accident”, he replies. “Most of them lost their legs and a lot of de-miners blown themselves up here”. The ‘Lepestok’ (PFM) mine is a scatterable munition that is identifiable by its green, petal shape and timed to explode. Ukraine has inherited millions of these small mines from the Soviet Union and destroyed at least half of them under efforts lead by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. During the full-scale invasion, the Russian occupation has been documented using them around hospitals and in residential areas. “I remember these petals scattered all over the hospital”, a medical worker at Izyum Central Hospital told Human Rights Watch (HRW). During the Russian occupation of Izyum, the Russian army set up a field hospital in the basement within the central hospital to treat their own wounded. At one point, there were only seven members of staff for Ukrainian patients. “I heard a slam in the sky”, a neighbour to the hospital reported to HRW. “Previously I knew that if a cluster munition explodes above our heads, the submunitions would go over us because of inertia. Because of where they were, I understood they would fall on us. So I told my wife and we went to hide in the basement”. “But there was no explosion. And our neighbour said: ‘Have a look, a petal on the ground.’” Burial site outside Izyum When the Russians retreated from Izyum, they detonated the PFM mines around the hospital with their rifles to form a path of escape. Outside of the major urban centres, the situation is much worse with almost no access to medical care. Ksenia Kozeniuk, a volunteer with Solidarity Collectives, explains the situation. “Six or seven villages, I think, we’ve visited and the situation is really upsetting because these people are living extremely difficult conditions”, Ksenia says. “We were in Kupyansk, delivering food for an elderly woman who has about 40 cats under her care”. “We walked with the cats”, the elderly woman tells volunteers outside of her home in Kupyansk. “The neighbours have little kids; they went to Poland and abandoned their pets. Just as they left, a missile hit the house. And my house was hit by a missile – the roof was blown off over there, and here the roof was torn off. The gas was cut off, the water was cut off, the sewage was cut off, and then they fixed the gas but not the sewage. No one will fix it”, the woman says. “In 2022, the frontline passed through the villages of Kharkiv and Donetsk regions, and they were completely destroyed”, Ksenia says. “Now the locals are slowly starting to return despite the fact that conditions are terrible because they have to rebuild their homes almost from scratch”. A volunteer asks a young child holding a cat; “did you come back here with your mother or did you never leave?” “I came back here”, the child replies in the darkness. “And your going to stay here, right?” the volunteer asks. “Well, yes, we live here now”, the mother replies. “We have repaired the house a little; it was my fathers house. Our house is destroyed. We lived on Kamianska street, there’s just a foundation left, and this house remained. I put a glowing bracelet on his arm”, the mother says, showing her sons arm. “And only by it when it’s dark I can tell where my child is”. “UKRAINE IS A SHIELD NOW” Darkness is required to move within a ‘zero’—an active battlefield—with drone flights and other Russian aircraft threatening death from above. Light is needed to see the Unexploded Remnants of War (URW) and other unexploded ordinance that literally is designed to imitate nature in order to kill. These humanitarian trips are described by Solidarity Collectives volunteer Serhiy Moychan as building long term connections with the community beyond war, “so that in the future we can fight together with them for… social rights and guarantees”. “Social and economic justice is the basic core, the basic principle by which we fight”, Serhiy asserts. The work of Solidarity Collectives in supporting anti-authoritarian armed resistance against Russian occupation has spilled over to directing aid to civilians living on the front. “The armies of authoritarian regimes, they’re always stronger than those of some ‘democratic’ countries. They spit on people’s rights and freedoms and invest in specific interests, in this case war. And when there’s this fragmentation of opinions or the set phrase ‘not everything is so clear’—it all fragments and gets complicated”, says Lastivka, an anarchist, feminist, activist and squatter and commander of a UAV drone unit. Lastivka interviewed by Solidarity Collectives “I haven’t heard of European anarchists ever taking a stance on this war”, Lastivka continues, “I hope they don’t have to face the hardships that Ukrainian activists have had to. But that depends on us too”. “How so?” Solidarity Collectives ask. “I really do fully support the idea that Ukraine is a shield now”. It appears that despite many declarations affirming the basic principles of armed resistance to occupation and mutual aid with those struggling to survive, some among the anti-authoritarian fighters in Ukraine still perceive a lack of international solidarity from western anarchists. Resistance against imperialist occupation has led to the deaths of comrades on the front line, as well as the imprisonment and torture of others. The comrade Joy—quoted at the top of this story—would have been 36-years-old in March this year if he was not killed by the Russian occupation in 2022. Vladyslav Yurchenko ‘Pirate’, Ruslan Tereschenko ‘Skrypal’ and Roman Legar were all killed in the last year fighting the Russian invasion. Ihor, Kolyah ‘Vagon’ and Atton – all members of the Kharkiv Hardcore Group were also killed. Still missing-in-action are comrades Cooper Andrews, Finbar Cafferkey and Dimitri Petrov who were last seen alive on the “road of life” after fighting in the battles around Bakhmut. These internationalists brought together perspectives from different struggles as praxis for resistance. Finbar brought the ideas of Rojava, Dimitri brought together movements in Europe, Ukraine, Russia and Syria, and Cooper brought the ideas of black autonomy in the U.S. for the fight against Russian occupation. There are 17,000 Ukrainian prisoners of war held either in the 20% of Ukrainian territory that Russia occupies, or within the empire itself. The anti-authoritarian journalist Maksym Butkevych was recently released as part of a prisoner exchange from the occupied Luhansk Oblast. Maksym reports that both soldiers and civilians are being held in these prisons and urges those outside to not forget them. “I witnessed torture, humiliation, beatings, electrocutions, starvation”, Maksym reports, “and other methods to humiliate people, undermine their health, and break their morale”. Some like Denys Matsola and Vladyslav Zhuravlov are still in prison after three years with no sign of release. Denys and Vlad were fighting together in the 505 Battalion when they were captured in Mariupol. Denys was placed in solitary confinement in the Ivanovo Region of Russia. Vlad is also in Russian captivity and at risk of torture, but his whereabouts are unknown. “The start of the war was worse”, says Lastivka, “but at the start of the war we knew absolutely nothing and it was only fear… if you’re talking about how we saw missions then we were like helpless kittens… the scariest missions are when you are in unknown territory, when you feel how weak and vulnerable you are, with no control over your own life, with destruction all around you…” “… we didn’t know where the enemy was”, Lastivka says. “I’m so happy that I’m not alone. There are people with whom I can share this experience. I can’t imagine how hard it is when a person finds themselves somewhere alone, isolated. That’s scary too. Although I like to criticise everyone and everything and say that the worst is yet to come, in reality my imagination carries me forward”. “Doing our job wasn’t the hardest thing”, said Dr Yuri Kuznetsov, one of the last surgeons working at Izyum hospital during the occupation, “the hardest thing was just staying alive”. “Several weeks ago, my office door opened, and the man came in and said ‘doctor, do you remember me? I’m alive!’ We have all had moments when we thought of fleeing. We’ve all had meltdowns and periods of depression, but its moments like that and the solidarity of my colleagues that have kept me here”, says Yuri. “People helped us lot. You know, to put it mildly”, Yuri reflected, “there was nothing to eat, people looted shops and pharmacies. What they didn’t need, they brought to us. Every day bags were brought and left under the door”. Yuri’s shift at the occupied hospital lasted four months and a half. Dr Yuri Kuznetsov at Izyum Central Hospital in the Kharkiv Oblast, Ukraine The slashing of USAID funding under the Trump Administration has consequences for both military and healthcare operations in Ukraine, including the funding of clinics for recovery from trauma and amputations associated with war. Two projects have suspended funding to a healthcare system that has endured over a thousand separate and direct Russian military attacks to health infrastructure and workers in Ukraine. Black Flag Medical have been supplying both frontline fighters and civilians with medical mutual aid. Solidarity Collectives supports those fighters who are injured and need recovery. 100,000 amputations have been performed in Ukraine since 2022 and Izyum hospital has treated over 400 patients with injuries directly from mines like PFM. It is predicted to take decades to clear the area of this ordinance. How long does it take to recover from trauma? Against the Janus face of nationalist humanitarianism from the U.S. and imperialist occupation from Russia, our power is solidarity. Instead of debating conspiratorial geopolitical madness to hide defeatist political inaction—we must learn from our comrades east. Solidarity begins by listening. From collectives in Czech Republic that teach anti-authoritarian fighters how to contruct, program and deploy drones as a means of community defence—to events across Europe that have raised money for equipment in the fight against Russian imperialism, “you do not win a race by running alone”, Solidarity Collectives write to European anarchists, “you only run alone like an idiot”. Anti-authoritarian fighters on the front line in Ukraine. Solidarity Collectives “Strength comes from connection, from solidarity, from collective struggles. Solidarity with the people’s who resist is a political gesture which we can’t let be manipulated into a threat to gain benefits”, Solidarity Collectives write. “Anti-fascism is not contemplation but action”. “Some people turn their eyes from the war”, said Lastivka, “how much more of that can I stand? Some people are just tired and want to live normal lives but in order to live normal lives, and for you not to be bothered by news of war…you have to do something about it”. The post Ukraine: On the ground with Solidarity Collectives appeared first on Freedom News.

IN AN INTERVIEW, KSUSHA LOOKS FORWARD TO “DRONE COOPERATIVES, REHABILITATION OF THE WAR INJURED, CULTURAL PROJECTS, SQUATS FOR REFUGEES” ~ Cristina Sykes ~ An anarchist based in Kyiv has responded to questions from Kapinatyöläinen magazine in Finland about the activities of anti-authoritarian networks in Ukraine today. Ksusha described anarchists’ networked presence in the military units and involvement in civil support for the front line and their . In terms of future projects, she looks forward to “drone cooperatives, rehabilitation of the war injured, cultural projects, squats for refugees”. To “comrades in Finland, the Baltics or Poland” she recommended “first aid skills and attending public defense courses, building drones, as well as many other civilian hobbies”. According to the interview, the anti-authoritarian volunteer unit sponsored by Yuri Samoilenko “got stuck due to the attitude of the higher army management” and anarchists now “have people at different levels of the army, connections, understanding of war operations and how to work with people in the army. An understanding has been formed about what kind of things can be developed and what can be dangerous”. With this combination of understanding and experience, anarchists are developing practices that are “viable under wartime conditions”, while starting “small projects, sowing the seeds of anti-authoritarian cooperation methods in their own locations”. Previously in Kharkiv, Ksusha related she had been involved with renovations of a squat for war refugees and “joined an eco-anarchist group that worked against construction projects and deforestation, took action to stop fur production and organized free markets”. When the full-scale war started in 2022, she joined Operation Solidarity, described as a civic action platform organised to support comrades from the anti-authoritarian left who went to the front lines. “We supported socialists, anarchists, punks, hard core subculturers, anti-fascists, feminists – anyone united by some kind of progressive leftist views”. Later reorganising as the Solidarity Collectives, this “mutual aid network” now supports 80-100 “anarchists, anti-fascists, punks, eco-anarchists, feminists, squatters, LGBT+ people and union activists” with clothes and first aid equipment as well as “walkie-talkies and night vision devices, as well as tablets, laptops, cars, and even expensive airplanes and drones”. Organised as a decentralised network, the Collectives also aid those affected by the war, in house repairing projects and by supplying laptops for teaching use, while their media group works to make these activities visible and “be in contact with our comrades”. They emphasise work with unions which are “in danger of being suppressed” in order to help them “influence workers’ rights and disrupt the neoliberal reforms that are now so popular in Ukraine”. She emphasised that anarchist activity in Ukraine had only stared in the last decades, against a distrust of anything labelled as “Leftist” because of the Soviet past. “Everything had to be started from a scratch, and it was not possible to lean on any background, institutions that would have already been in operation for a long time.When we start projects in the military or in the civil society, we face demonization of our ideas”. The full interview is has been translated into English on Takku.net The post Ukraine: Solidarity Collectives & anarchists in the ranks appeared first on Freedom News.

THIS WARTS-AND-ALL BIO OF NESTOR MAKHNO IS FOLKSY AND REFRESHING ~ bob ness ~ I’m an old-fashioned guy, a romantic, even. In my heart of hearts what I really, really want to do is to ride down capitalism with cavalry and lop off its head with our sabres. We tried that already, but it didn’t work. When something doesn’t work, we try something else. We’re still trying. Over the years, there has been a lot of talk among anarchists about why cavalry didn’t work against capitalism. Failure often illuminates more than success. The anarchists’ historic retreat across Ukraine in the summer of 1919 was a thing of grief and glory. Some things that happened there had effects that never went away. Consider tachankas. These highly mobile weapons transformed cavalry warfare. This played a dramatic role in the Russian Civil War. Their evolution forked. One fork evolved into the sound truck, which strikes fear in the hearts of riot cops. The other fork evolved into the technical, a (usually light) pickup truck with a heavy machine gun in the back. They cast Makhno’s shadow far and wide. There’s even a war named after them. They called it the “Toyota War”. Look it up. Many reliable sources trace the invention of this vital piece of improvised military hardware to Makhno himself. This alone is enough to cement his name in the annals of military history. Then there was his renowned tactical prowess. But he was more than an inventor who knew how to fight. What anarchists like best about him were his politics. They are legendary. We all know at least the legend of the Makhnovists. It’s anarchist canon. At least we think know it. Even less do we know what really happened. For decades it was a major effort to find a book about him or even a book he was mentioned in. What could be found ranged from slander to hagiography. What we really need is a warts-and-all bio that includes an account of the people around him. To that end I recommend No Harmless Power. Allison really did his homework. He devotes a long chapter to very brief bios of anarchists that even I had never heard of but who all had Makhno-era links to Ukraine. Some were born in Ukraine and grew into anarchists there. Others came from as far as Japan, like Ōsugi Sakae. There is lots of fascinating trivia in this story. One anarchist cavalry commander had had both feet amputated in WWI. A cavalryman with no feet! Sometimes his battalion dismounted and fought as dragoons. His men wheeled him into battle in a wheelbarrow. That’s a story you don’t hear every day, not in the works of ableist historians anyway. Then there’s the gossip. Makhno really did drink too much sometimes (it’s not what killed him though; that’s a lie). Ida Mett thought his partner Galina was a gold digger… stuff like that. Who slept with who last and who owes who money have plagued our praxis forever. Somehow, we manage to work around it. Allison explains Makhno’s predilection for drag as having grown out of his school drama program. At first glance it does seem out of character. He was a pretty butch guy. Some of his feats smack of classical machismo. But he wasn’t afraid to be thought of as a harmless old woman sitting on a tree stump, munching on sunflower seeds within earshot of some enemy brass who were discussing strategy. To them, (s)he was as invisible as the stump (s)he sat on. That’s how disguises are supposed to work. That’s also how patriarchy works. Patriarchy is a scourge upon humanity, but on occasion it can be turned against its practitioners. Makhno wore other disguises, too. Sometimes he would dress as an enemy soldier of one sort or another. He had many enemies, and they wore different uniforms, which made them easy to deceive. It was in a Cheka uniform that he escaped into exile. This had been the idea of his righthand man, Lev Zinkovsky, the head of the anarchist intelligence service. I would have liked this book more if Allison had devoted more time to this part in the struggle. After all, a war without spies never happens. Anywhere. Ever. Fortunately, we have “Kontrrazvedka: The Story of the Makhnovist Intelligence Service”, by V. Azarov to flesh out this part of our story. There could have been a chapter devoted to another fascinating character, Maria Nikiforova. She played a much bigger role in the story of the Makhnovshchina than Sakae, which is not to denigrate Sakae in any way. Sakae was a shining example of anarchists in action, but he managed to get deported before he could even meet Makhno. Nikiforova, on the other hand, fought in the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine (on horseback with a sabre, and with a squadron of cavalry at her back and under her command). Fortunately, we have “Atamansha: The Story of Maria Nikiforova, the Anarchist Joan of Arc”, by Malcolm Archibald to fill us in. When Allison gets to the Platform, he goes deep into the machinations and personal interactions involved in the debate surrounding this document, but on the Platform itself he’s pretty neutral, at least in print. That’s wrong of him. The Platform was a colossal mistake; its adoption would have been an even bigger one. It needs to be condemned in no uncertain terms, and this needs repeating, even today. Emma Goldman herself spoke out against Platformism. Bolshevism without Bolsheviks?! Preposterous. They’d just become Bolsheviks, and we’d be back to square one. Besides, all states excel at decapitating frontal attacks. Only a decentralised movement is immune. It has no capit to decate. Why give it one? Despite these flaws, No Harmless Power is an excellent book. Its folksy style provides a refreshing counterpoint, for example, to Skirda’s more pedantic “Anarchy’s Cossack”, which is also an excellent book. Allison’s judicious use of snark and vernacular does much to make it accessible to modern sensibilities. It gives us moderns a look inside the anarchist movement as it used to be and to a certain extent still is today. It’s more about the people than it is about the ideology. Anarchism itself should be more about the people than the ideology. All anarchists would do well to read this book. We’d all do well to read all of anarchist history. Without history the wisdom of our ancestors eludes us. So does their folly. We need for that not to happen. So read history. Start today. No Harmless Power: The Life and Times of the Ukrainian Anarchist Nestor Makhno, by Charlie Allison; Illustrated by Kevin Matthews and N.O. Bonzo. PM Press, 2023. 256 pages The post Book review: No Harmless Power appeared first on Freedom News.