“If an anarchist society can’t survive an imperialist onslaught then it’s not actually a realistic society” - which I kinda get but like you could make that argument for any minority governance structure…
The USSR didn’t survive an imperialist ondlaught because they internalized it. People were the thing they imperialised upon.
Oftentimes, even, the issue is that the anarchist society is not well-established - much smaller anarchist societies often put up a good fight against non-anarchist societies that are much larger - such as the Ukrainian anarchists fighting against the combined might of Russia’s former imperial holdings under the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War, and Anarchist Catalonia against (ultimately) all of Spain during the Spanish Civil War.
If they didn’t strangle these movements in the cradle, they might actually have to examine the ability of anarchist movements on their own merits.
My poor boy Makhno siding with Bolsheviks and later going “nah, screw them” to ally with Petlyura says a lot about Bolsheviks.
Makhno my love 😭
