¹ Only six of the forty-three issues of the periodical Put'k svobode (The road to liberty) published by the Makhnovtsy between May 1919 and July 1920 are available in Western libraries.

² Skirda, Alexandre, Makhno, Nestor. Le Cosaque de l'Anarchie. La Lutte pour les Soviets Libres en Ukraine 1917–1921 (Paris, 1982);Google Scholar Malet, Michael, Nestor Makhno in the Russian Civil War (London, 1982);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Dahlmann, Dittmar, Land und Freiheit. Machnovščina und Zapatismo als Beispiele agrarrevolutionärer Bewegungen (Stuttgart, 1986).Google Scholar

Of these three authors, Skirda is the most politically committed, but the explicitly states the anarchist premises in his work, which is well-documented. Even so, his ‘libertarian’ approach was attacked in the best of 1917–21 traditions by the English marxist C. Darch. (See his review of Skirda, and Malet, in Economy and Society XIV (1985) nr. 4, p. 524–536.)Google Scholar

Dahiman's synthesis is the most balanced, but he acknowledges that his evidence for at least one item, is poor: “Aufgrund der mangelhaften Quellenlage und der sich oftmals widersprechenden Literatur bleibt nur die Möglichkeit, aus den Selbstzeugnissen und den angesprochenen Zielgruppen auf die soziale Struktur der Bewegung zu schlieïen” (p. 120). For the official Soviet historiographical position, see: Semanov, S.M., “Makhnovshchina i ee krakh”, Voprosy Istorii, 1966, nr. 9, p. 37–60.Google Scholar