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M
Machajski, Jan Waclaw
(1866-1926)
revolutionary theorist
Machajski was born into a lower-middle-class
Polish family in Russian-occupied Poland. As a
youth he was influenced by the ideas of Polish
nationalism and revolutionary socialism. In
1892 he became a Social Democratic agitator. He
was arrested soon after and banished to Siberia.
He escaped to western Europe in 1903. While in
Siberia (1898), he wrote a series of highly influ-
ential essays that were published in Geneva in
1905 in a book entitled
Umstvennyi rabochii
(The
Intellectual worker). In these essays, Machajski
argued that the development of capitalism had
brought forth a new class of intellectual work-
ers—the intelligentsia—and that socialism was
the class ideology of this intelligentsia rather
than of the working class. He further argued that
the victory of socialism (as well as anarchism),
either through revolutionary or parliamentary
means, would lead to the creation of a system in
which capital owners would be replaced by
administrators, who would continue to exploit
the working classes through their educational
advantages and expertise. As an alternative,
Machajski proposed a “Workers' Conspiracy,” a
secret group of revolutionaries organized along
Bakuninist lines. Through agitation, direct
action, and a general strike, this Workers' Con-
spiracy would ultimately help bring about a truly
proletarian revolution and a classless society.
Many socialists and anarchists were attracted to
what became known as Machaevism. Machajski
returned to Russia during the 1905 Revolution
and found several organizations of followers. In
1907 he produced a single issue of a paper,
Rabochii zagovor
(
Worker's Conspiracy
). He was
again arrested in 1911 and fled to western
Europe. He returned to Russia in 1917, and
while he accepted the Bolshevik Revolution, he
called for a more far-reaching worker revolu-
tion. In 1918 he published a short-lived newspa-
per,
Rabochaya revolyutsiya
(Worker revolution).
He worked as a technical journalist during his
final years.
Makarenko, Anton Semyonovich
(1888-1939)
educator
Makarenko was a schoolmaster whose work in
the 1920s with homeless children and juvenile
delinquents brought him great, some would
claim excessive, acclaim in the Soviet Union.
The son of a railway painter, Makarenko
attended teacher education courses in Kre-
menchug, Ukraine (1905), taught in provincial
schools, and graduated from the Poltava Teach-
ers Institute in 1917. During the civil war he was
appointed director of a colony for juvenile delin-
quents in Poltava, then in 1920 of the “Maksim
Gorky” colony near Kharkov. During the 1920s
his reputation grew for his work with homeless
orphan children (
besprizorniki
), a legacy of the
upheaval of revolution and civil war. Makarenko
tried to base his relations with his charges on a
humane approach, stressing the necessity of
trust and mutual respect, and also of collective
work. Gradually, strict discipline, conformity,
and collectivist slogans became more distinctive
in Makarenko's work. Initially, with many
Soviet educators influenced by the “progressive”
ideas of John Dewey and other American edu-
cators, Makarenko came in for criticism. But
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