Analysis of the Spanish and Ukrainian Anarchist Revolutions of the early 20th Century

The Spanish Anarchist Revolution did not succeed long enough to draw a final conclusion about internal drift towards oligarchy before being destroyed from without. The same was true in Ukraine. The main examples of mass revolutionary organisation on anarchist lines in the early 20th century seem to suggest that outside forces will generally nix it before internal drift can. This puts me, personally, in mind of the saw about which aspects of teleporting to Mercury would kill one first. It seems that the heat would kill one first, but that lack of oxygen would eventually represent a problem...

Similarly, while it is natural for the Anarcho-Syndicalists and Anarcho-Communists themselves to regard the collapse of their Revolution as the result of deliberate malice on the part of various Statist actors, I believe that the situation is easier to understand if compared to the flow of surrounding air into a pocket of vacuum. Yes, real Statists flowed into that vacuum, which was itself comprised of real Anarchs, but I prefer to take a broader and more abstract view of the matter because the naked process -- and understanding it from as distilled a point of view as possible -- is as important as remembering those living, breathing human beings. (Most people forget the ideas; I will try not to make the same mistake from reverse, but at the same time think that ideas have fewer champions.)

Well, these are not final thoughts but exploratory ones, and it is to be regretted that neither the Catalonia nor Ukraine test runs ran for longer . While not an anarchist, that ideology has an extremely useful body of history and thought in terms of a touchstone for one who is wishing to understand oligarchy, the legion of various forms it can take, and its exact role in relation to civil wars and revolutions. The touchstone is simply that the node of anarchism-- as a sort of plasmic or intermediate form -- sets the States into sharp relief. 

My intention is to process ideological material of the most various kind and abstract general principles from it, this being a mode of inquiry which feels very natural: most of the ideological material in question -- be it history or theory -- is known mainly by the relevant partisans... and people like me who read the work of those who would rip one another to shreds if they found themselves in the same room.