200 members. The first commune, named after Rosa Luxemburg, was highly successful. Though only a few members actually considered themselves anarchists, the peasants operated the communes on the basis of full social equality, including gender equality. They accepted Kropotkin's principle of mutual aid ("from each according to their ability, to each according to their need") as their fundamental tenet. Land was held in common, with shared meals also being eaten in communal kitchens, though members who wished to cook separately or to take food from the kitchen and eat it in their own quarters were allowed to do so. The work was collectively self-managed, with work programs being voluntarily agreed upon through consensus decision-making at general assemblies, and those who were unable to work could notify their neighbors in order for a replacement to be found. Many commune members considered communal life to be the "highest form of social justice", with some former landowners even voluntarily adopting the new lifestyle. The father of Victor Kravchenko was one of the promoters of a commune called the "Tocsin", which counted 100 families on an estate made up of 200 hectares of wheat fields and orchards. The estate had been divided up and supplied by the local soviet, with many former industrial workers flocking to the new commune due to the promise of "well-being for everybody", while others were driven to communal life by their own ideological commitments. Some peasants even made fun of the urban communists that had joined the commune, although Kravchenko insisted that "such teasing was without malice", as the peasants still undertook to help the unskilled industrial laborers. However, this commune eventually dissolved, "with commune workers quitting one after another". Industry While the Makhnovshchina was a primarily agrarian society, efforts were also made to organize the industrial economies in the cities which the Makhnovists briefly occupied, despite the pervasive lack of understanding that the (largely peasant) insurgents had for large-scale industry. Upon the occupation of cities, the Makhnovists organized workers' conferences with the intention of restarting production under a system of workers' self-management. When urban workers asked for the payment of their wages, still in arrears following the end of the White occupation, the Makhnovists responded by proposing they extract payment directly from their customers, albeit exempting the Insurgent Army from such payment. Railroad workers in Oleksandrivsk took the first steps in organising a self-managed economy in 1919. They