[2] Initially written by Nestor Makhno and other libertarian communists from Huliaipole, in August 1919, the Russian intellectual Volin was commissioned as editor and spent the following month polishing its writing style.

[9] In November, Makhno elaborated on its theses at the Oleksandrivsk Congress, where it was criticised by participating delegates from the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionary Party, who supported the reconstitution of the Constituent Assembly.

[11] Following the defeat of the Makhnovshchina in August 1921, the exiled Nestor Makhno and Peter Arshinov expanded upon the foundations laid by the Draft Declaration, eventually devising the organizational theory of platformism, which they hoped would help put an end to the "theoretical confusion" and "chronic disorganization" of the anarchist movement.

[17] It then covered how Ukraine had fallen under the successive rule of the Hetmanate and the Directorate, the excesses of which it claimed had cultivated a sentiment of anti-authoritarianism within Ukrainians, leading to the rise of the Revolutionary Insurgent Army.

[21] It went on to declare that the intention of the Revolutionary Insurgent Army was to "serve and protect" the social revolution, which it believed would naturally gravitate towards communism through workers' self-management, without the need for any leadership to impose those ideals.

[23] The Draft Declaration called for the establishment of a network of workers' councils and popular assemblies, which would then federate together into a system of "free soviets", in order to organize the economy and society at a large scale.

After blaming the lack of supplies on the ongoing power struggle between various parties, it declared again that the issue would be resolved through workers' self-management and the unification of the proletariat with the peasantry, which could together restart production and introduce a new system of resource distribution.

[31] Again criticizing the Bolsheviks' nationalization policy, the Draft Declaration called for the means of production to be immediately transferred to workers' control, which it believed would revitalize the industrial economy and end the rising inflation.