The Writer Against the Anarchist: History of “Makhno and His Jewess” by Joseph Kessel
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Bibliographic record
Abstract
DOI: 10.47632/2786-717X-2025-4-209-226 УДК 94(477)”19”(092):821.133.1’06.09 How to Cite: Tetiana Portnova, The Writer Against the Anarchist: History of “Makhno and His Jewess” by Joseph Kessel, Ukrainian Historical Review / Український історичний огляд, ІV | 2025, 209–226. Tetiana Portnova The Writer Against the Anarchist: History of “Makhno and His Jewess” by Joseph Kessel The article analyzes “Makhno and His Jewess” (1926) by Joseph Kessel, the first and the most influential Western-European literary text, devoted to the leader of the peasant insurgent movement Nestor Makhno. Relying upon arbitrary unchecked sources, Kessel presented the anarchist to French readers as a bloody bandit and antisemite pogromist. “Makhno and His Jewess” can be read as a revealing example of sensational mass journalism, when the proposed image of Makhno completely fit the readers’ expectations as a recognizable figure of the “Russian bandit”. The text became particularly topical because shortly after its publication, Samuel Schwartzbard assassinated Symon Petliura and drew exceptional attention to the problem of anti-Jewish pogroms in Ukraine in 1918–1921. The article examines the history of the conflict between Joseph Kessel and Nestor Makhno, with the support of the French anarchist press, over the authenticity of the image created by the writer, including the public debate between them at the Club du Faubourg in June 1927. Very limited in his actions as a political emigrant, Makhno, despite his efforts, was unable to bring Kessel to justice for slander. Translated into several languages and actively republished, “Makhno and His Jewess” significantly contributed to a broader campaign of Makhno’s discreditation. The article also analyzes Mikaël Hirsch’s 2021 novel “L’assassinat de Joseph Kessel” (“The Assasination of Joseph Kessel”) – a contemporary rethinking of the conflict between the military leader and the writer who distorted his biography, seen first of all as a conflict between literary fantasy and reality. References Aldanov, Mark. Vzryv v Leontievskom pereulke // Mark Aldanov. Bolshaia Lubianka. Moskva 2002, s. 173–202. Allison, Charlie. No Harmless Power. The Life and Times of the Ukrainian Anarchist Nestor Makhno. Oakland 2023. Arshinov, Piotr. History of the Makhnovist Movement 1918–1921. Detroit – Chicago 1974. Aunoble, Eric. La figure de Nestor Makhno, ou les tribulations d’un héros révolutionnaire // Le Retour des héros: la reconstitution des mythologies nationales à l’heure du postcommunisme / ed. Korine Amacher et Leonid Heller. Louvain-la-Neuve 2010, p. 35–51. Avrich, Paul. Nestor Makhno. The Man and the Myth // Paul Avrich. Anarchists Portraits. Princeton 1988, p. 111–124. Eyries, Alexandre. L’imaginaire de la guerre dans l’oeuvre de Joseph Kessel. Paris 2008. Goncharok, Moshe. Vek voli. Russkii anarkhizm i evrei. ХІХ–ХХ vek. Ierusalim 1996. Hirsch, Mikaël. L’assassinat de Joseph Kessel. Paris 2021. Jourdain, Édouard. Makhno. L’épopée d’une Ukraine libertaire. Paris 2024. Kessel et son assassin: réalité et fiction de la littérature. Mikaël Hirsch s’entretient avec nous à l’occasion de la publication de son roman L’assassinat de Joseph Kessel (01.11.2021) // D-Fiction (https://d-fiction.fr). Linkès, Serge. Dans l’atelier de Joseph Kessel. Essai de critique génétique. Paris 2022. Linkès, Serge. Introduction // Joseph Kessel. Romans et récits, vol. I. Paris 2020, p. IX–XLII. Makhno, Nestor. The Makhnovshchina and Anti-Semitism // Nestor Makhno. The Struggle against the State and Other Essays / ed. A. Skirda. Edinburg – San Francisco 1996, p. 32–38. Malet, Michael. Nestor Makhno in the Russian Сivil War. London – Basingstoke 1982. McGeever, Brendan. Antisemitism and the Russian Revolution. Cambridge 2019. Menzies, Malcolm. Makhno. Une épopée. Paris 2017. Nestor Makhno. Krestianskoe dvizhenie na Ukraine. 1918–1921: Dokumenty i materialy / pod. red. V. Danilova i T. Shanina. Moskva 2006. Peters, Victor. Nestor Makhno: The Life of an Anarchist. Winnipeg 1970. Pogroms. Anti-Jewish Violence in Modern Russian History / ed. by John D. Klier and Shlomo Lambroza. Cambridge 1992. Ranwez, Alain D. Joseph Kessel // Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 72: French Novelists, 1930–1960. Detroit 1988, p. 251–256. Rocker, Rudolf. Aus den Memoiren eines deutschen Anarchisten. Frankfurt (am Main) 1974. Semanov, Sergei. Mahno. Podlinnaia istoria. Moskva 2001. Skirda, Alexandre. Nestor Makhno – Anarchy’s Cossack. The Struggle for Free Soviets in the Ukraine 1917–1921. Edinburg – Oakland – London 2004. The Assassination of Symon Petliura and the Trial of Scholem Schwarzbard 1926–1927: A Selection of Documents / ed. Engel David. Göttingen 2016. Thierry, Ozwald. Makhno et sa juive // Joseph Kessel. Romans et récits, vol. I. Paris 2020, p. 1701–1707. Tibaudat, Jean-Pierre. Sur les traces de “Makhno l’egorgeur” // Liberation, 25 décembre 2003 (https://www.liberation.fr). Voline. The Unknown Revolution 1917–1921. Detroit – Chicago 1973.
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Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it