Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Analect 2.651x



3 February 2010. Quiet street, low sky, shallow bowl of peanuts balanced on hot coffee glass. Preparations...

As with Nestor Makhno, in a desultory moment, the year being 1919. Neglamurnyj--that's what the Russian says. But who's looking for glamour in this legendary, charismatic Ukrainian anarcho-communist guerilla leader... Mounted on horseback, inventor of the tachanka (lightening fast horse-drawn machine-gun carriage)...and known as Batko ("father") to his 15,000 devoted followers...

Makhno's anarchist forces--the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine--allied with the Bolsheviks at the outset, and anti-nationalist to the core, but finally in favor of no state whatsoever, resulting in his defeat and exile... Romania, Poland, Danzig, Berlin and ultimately Paris, "...where he worked as a carpenter, a stage-hand at the Paris Opera, at film studios, and at the Renault factory."

"Free communities as the highest form of social justice..." 

Hopes and depredations...

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