Anarchist communism in the context of "Soviet democracy"

Nestor Ivanovych Makhno (Ukrainian: Нестор Іванович Махно, pronounced [ˈnɛstor iˈwɑnowɪtʃ mɐxˈnɔ]; 7 November 1888 – 25 July 1934), also known as Bat'ko Makhno (Ukrainian: Бáтько Махно́ [ˈbɑtʲko mɐxˈnɔ], lit. 'Father Makhno'), was a Ukrainian anarchist revolutionary and the commander of the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine during the Ukrainian War of Independence. He established the Makhnovshchina (loosely translated as "Makhno movement"), a mass movement by the Ukrainian peasantry to establish anarchist communism in the country between 1918 and 1921. Initially centered around Makhno's home province of Katerynoslav and hometown of Huliaipole, it came to exert a strong influence over large areas of southern Ukraine, specifically in what is now the Zaporizhzhia Oblast of Ukraine.

Raised by a peasant family and coming of age amid the fervor around the 1905 Revolution, Makhno participated in a local anarchist group and spent seven years imprisoned for his involvement. With his release during the 1917 Revolution, Makhno became a local revolutionary leader in his hometown and oversaw the expropriation and redistribution of large estates to the peasantry. In the Ukrainian Civil War, Makhno sided with the Soviet Russian Bolsheviks against the Ukrainian nationalists and White movement, but his alliances with the Bolsheviks did not last. He rallied Bolshevik support to lead an insurgency, defeating the Central Powers' occupation forces at the Battle of Dibrivka and establishing the Makhnovshchina. Makhno's troops briefly integrated with the Bolshevik Red Army in the 1919 Soviet invasion of Ukraine, but split over differences on the movement's autonomy. Makhno rebuilt his army from the remains of Nykyfor Hryhoriv's forces in western Ukraine, routed the White Army at the Battle of Perehonivka, and captured most of southern and eastern Ukraine, where they again attempted to establish anarchist communism.

The Makhnovshchina (Ukrainian: Махновщина, romanized: Makhnovshchyna, IPA: [mɐxˈnɔu̯ʃtʃɪnɐ]) was a mass movement to establish anarchist communism during the Ukrainian War of Independence of 1917–1921. Named after Nestor Makhno, the commander-in-chief of the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine, its aim was to create a system of free soviets that would manage the transition towards a stateless and classless society. It controlled territory in southern and eastern Ukraine.

The Makhnovist movement first gained ground in the wake of the February Revolution, when it established a number of agricultural communes in Makhno's home town of Huliaipole. After siding with the Bolsheviks during the Ukrainian–Soviet War, the Makhnovists were driven underground by the Austro-German invasion and waged guerrilla warfare against the Central Powers throughout 1918. After the insurgent victory at the Battle of Dibrivka, the Makhnovshchina came to control much of Katerynoslav province and set about constructing anarchist-communist institutions. A Regional Congress of Peasants, Workers and Insurgents was convened to organise the region politically and economically, with a Military Revolutionary Council being established as the movement's de facto executive organ.

Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin (9 December [O.S. 27 November] 1842 – 8 February 1921) was a Russian anarchist and geographer known as a proponent of anarchist communism.

Born into an aristocratic land-owning family, Kropotkin attended the Page Corps and later served as an officer in Siberia, where he participated in several geological expeditions. He was imprisoned for his activism in 1874 and managed to escape two years later. He spent the next 41 years in exile in Switzerland, France (where he was imprisoned for almost four years), and England. While in exile, he gave lectures and published widely on anarchism and geography. Kropotkin returned to Russia after the Russian Revolution in 1917, but he was disappointed by the Bolshevik state.

Sergei Gennadiyevich Nechaev (Russian: Сергей Геннадиевич Нечаев; 2 October [O.S. 20 September] 1847 – 3 December [O.S. 21 November] 1882) was a Russian anarcho-communist, part of the Russian nihilist movement, known for his single-minded pursuit of revolution by any means necessary, including revolutionary terror.

Nechaev fled Russia in 1869 after having been involved in the murder of a former comrade (Ivan Ivanov) [ru], who disagreed with some actions of Nechaevites. Complicated relationships with fellow revolutionaries caused him to be expelled from the International Workingmen's Association. Arrested in Switzerland in 1872, he was extradited back to Russia, where he received a twenty-year sentence and died in prison.

Authoritarian socialism, or socialism from above, is an economic and political system supporting some form of socialist economics while rejecting political pluralism. As a term, it represents a set of economic-political systems describing themselves as "socialist" and rejecting the liberal-democratic concepts of multi-party politics, freedom of assembly, habeas corpus, and freedom of expression, either due to fear of counter-revolution or as a means to socialist ends. Journalists and scholars have characterised several countries, most notably the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and their allies, as authoritarian socialist states.

Contrasted to democratic socialist, social democratic, anti-statist, and libertarian forms of socialism, authoritarian socialism encompasses some forms of African, Arab and Latin American socialism. Although considered an authoritarian or illiberal form of state socialism, often referred to and conflated as socialism by critics and argued as a form of state capitalism by left-wing critics, those states were ideologically Marxist–Leninist and declared themselves to be workers' and peasants' or people's democracies. Academics, political commentators and other scholars tend to distinguish between authoritarian socialist and democratic socialist states, with the first represented in the Soviet Bloc and the latter represented by Western Bloc countries which have been democratically governed by socialist parties - such as Britain, France, Sweden and Western social-democracies in general, among others. Those who support authoritative socialist regimes are pejoratively known as tankies.

Soviet democracy, also called council democracy, is a type of democracy in Marxism, in which the rule of a population is exercised by directly elected soviets (workers' councils). Soviets are directly responsible to their electors and bound by their instructions using a delegate model of representation. Such an imperative mandate is in contrast to a trustee model, in which elected delegates are exclusively responsible to their conscience. Delegates may accordingly be dismissed from their post at any time through recall elections. Soviet democracy forms the basis for the soviet republic system of government. A form of federalist council democracy is commonly supported among anarchist-communists and libertarian socialists, due to its emphasis on bottom-up self-administration.

In a soviet democracy, people are organized in basic units; for example, the workers of a company, the inhabitants of a district, or the soldiers of a barracks. They directly elect delegates as public functionaries, which act as legislators, government, and courts in one. Soviets are elected on several levels; at the residential and business level, delegates are sent through plenary assemblies to a local council which, in turn, delegates members to the next level. This system of delegation (indirect election) continues to a body such as the Congress of Soviets or the Supreme Soviet at the state level. The electoral processes thus take place from the bottom upward. The levels are usually tied to administrative levels. In contrast to earlier democratic models à la John Locke and Montesquieu, no separation of powers exists in soviet democracy.