The Revolutionary Called Nestor (no not Makhno, the other one)

 

The Russian revolution catapulted a Ukrainian peasant to world fame. Nestor Makhno the anarcho-communist military leader whose campaigns in Ukraine secured the survival of a federation of collectives across a territory large than England, and a population estimated in the millions. This federation became known as the Free Territory and its been an inspiration and a warning to many revolutionary minded groups and individuals ever since.

This is not that story. No, this is instead a commentary on the other Nestor active during the Russian revolution, Nestor Alexandrovich Kalandarishvili, born in Georgia on the 8th of July 1876, and killed in an ambush on the 6th of March 1922. Nestor Kalandarishvili isn't as well known as Nestor Makhno, but he is not totally forgotten. Wikipedia has an article about his life in several languages, including English. And the Anarchist historian Nick Heath included a short biographical sketch of him in a three part series on former Anarchists who joined the Bolsheviks. 

It was Nick Heath's work where I first discovered this other Nestor. I think his life is deserving of a wider recognition as it may have strong relevance for the movement today. Nestor Kalandarishvili seems to have been a bit of a `joiner` as over a period of 22 years he moved from one revolutionary group or party to another. He appears to have become active in the revolutionary underground of the Russian Empire in 1900 when resuming his studies after completing military service. Initially he fell under the Social Revolutionary party, and then later joined the Georgian Socialist-Federalist Revolutionary Party, before moving onto Anarchism after taking part in Batumi revolt, a local Georgian uprising that was part of the unrest during the 1905 Russian Revolution. Kalandarishvili also took part in an uprising in 1907 in the Gurian republic which was crushed by the Tsar during a campaign to roll back the gains of the 1905 Revolution. Kalandarishvili was imprisoned in Siberia, he would remain in Siberia for the rest of his life.

In 1917 when the February Revolution succeeded in toppling the Tsar an amnesty for political prisoners freed both Nestor Makhno and Nestor Kalandarishvili. Kalandarishvili built a small military unit of Anarchists which defeated a local counter revolutionary force made up of land owners and minor nobility. His forces grew to the equivalent size of a division and was recruited mainly from local peasants and workers and anarchists who had been exiled to Siberia for political crimes. During the civil war Nestor Kalandarishvili's forces operated throughout Siberia, and battle White Army forces led by Semenov, Kappel and Baron Ungern. His many victories made him famous under the nickname Grandpa, though a defeat in late 1918 forced him once to retreat into Mongolia with several hundred men. He was such a thorn that Admiral Kolchak the nominal leader of the White Army put a bounty of 40,000 roubles on his head. In 1919 as Nestor's band moved to the vicinity of Irkutsk and attack White forces in the area local Bolsheviks approached him with offers of an alliance. 

By 1920 this alliance had driven the White Army and their Japanese support out of Irkutsk and established a Soviet administration with the creation of the Far Eastern Republic. In 1921 Nestor Kalandarishvili was invited to a meeting with Vladimir Lenin. After the meeting Kalandarishvili publicly renounced Anarchism and became a Bolshevik, he was at the same time given supreme military command of the Far East Republic with the power to appoint or dismiss officers of the units under his command. He also became head of the Korean War Council, a body that was supposed to be the supreme body for Korean revolutionary fighting groups. He clashed with Korean Anarchist fighting units when they refused to accept officers he had promoted to lead them, including former officers of the White army.

He used his influence to impede and disarmed units that wouldn't accept his authority until his death in an ambush in 1922 while fighting the Yakut rebels, one of the last actions of the civil war. After his death he was elevated into a hero of the Soviet state, many streets and factories and collective farms were named after him.

This ends the brief biography of the life and death of Nestor Kalandarishvili, a fuller account can be found with Nick Heath. 

So, to come back to the present day, I believe that the life and death of Nestor Kalandarishvili is a useful demonstration of the dangers of the popular talking point "Left unity" in practice. Much of the modern discourse at the state of what's commonly called the "left" is a lamentation that unlike the enemies in the right, the left just can't put its differences aside and unite against a common foe. This argument mostly rests on assumptions that have little foundation. For a start I don't believe the right are as united as is commonly believed, the civil war in Austria between the Fascist and Nazi parties, the bloody feud between the Romanian monarchy and the Iron Guard, and the bitter presidential campaigns between Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour are just a few brief examples. Furthermore I don't really see how much of the left as its commonly understood can actively work together in a way that doesn't mean many of the constituent parts give up fundamental elements of their theory and practice.

Nestor Kalandarishvili represents this. Its easy to read his conversion to Bolshevism as motivated purely by opportunism, it did coincide with funding, gifts and praise and awards from the Bolshevik government. But even if it was a genuine change in convictions, the effect was the same. This was a conflict where the Anarchists and Bolsheviks had co-operated for over a year, and yet as soon as one faction moved to establish itself as the government in the area it quickly provoked conflict where previously there seemed to have been accord. By appointing Nestor Kalandarishvili supreme commander and establishing military bodies like the Korean War Council all other military organisations lost their autonomy and were functionally rolled into the Bolshevik military and political program. Units that had fought effectively for years against the counter revolution were denied the right to choose their own staff and were expected to accept the promotion of former enemies without complaint. The unity of the Russian revolutionaries effectively died in Siberia the moment the Bolsheviks gained enough strength to assert dominance a phenomena that happened in Ukraine and Georgia at the same time and has been repeated since in Spain, the Greek underground and the post war Hungarian and Czechoslovakian states.

If unity between different groups for a common good is the true desire then I don't believe we would see this clear pattern, that groups in common only seem to be viable while no one group is strong enough to assert itself over the others and once that happens either a civil war erupts as happened in Kronstadt or the other groups cease to function in a way that matters and are subsumed and replaced by the dominant force as happened in the Popular Front government where the other forces were either liquidated or converted with the sole exception being several CNT columns who were too big to risk an open conflict over their continued acts of resistance like giving membership cards to POUM members.