Ukrainian anarchist revolutionary (1888-1934)"Makhno" redirects here. For other uses, see Makhno (disambiguation).

Nestor Ivanovych Makhno (Ukrainian: Не́стор Івáнович Махно́, ; November 8::1888 – July 25, 1934), also known as Bat'ko Makhno (Ukrainian: Бáтько Махно́; , "Father Makhno"), was a Ukrainian anarchist revolutionary and the commander of the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine from 1917 to 1921.

Makhno was the namesake of the Makhnovshchina (loosely translated as "Makhno movement"), a predominantly peasant phenomenon that grew into a m* social movement. It was initially centered around Makhno's hometown Huliaipole but over the course of the Russian Civil War came to exert a strong influence over large areas of southern Ukraine. Makhno and the movement's leadership were anarcho-communists and attempted to guide the movement along these ideological lines. Makhno was aggressively opposed to all factions that sought to impose their authority over southern Ukraine, battling in succession the forces of the Ukrainian People's Republic, Central Powers, White Army, Red Army, and other smaller forces led by various Ukrainian atamans. He is also credited as the inventor of the tachanka—a horse-drawn carriage with a mounted heavy machine gun. Makhno and his supporters attempted to reorganize social and economic life along anarchist lines, including the establishment of communes on former landed estates, the requisition and egalitarian redistribution of land to the peasants, and the organization of free elections to local soviets (councils) and regional congresses. However, the disruption of the civil war precluded a stable territorial base for any long-term social experiments.

Although Makhno considered the Bolsheviks a threat to the development of an anarchist "free territory" within Ukraine, he entered into formal military alliances twice with the Red Army to defeat the White Army. In the aftermath of the White Army's defeat in Crimea in November 1920, the Bolsheviks initiated a military campaign against Makhno. After an extended period of open resistance against the Red Army, Makhno fled across the Romanian border in August 1921. In exile, Makhno settled in Paris with his wife Halyna and daughter Olena. During this period, Makhno wrote numerous memoirs and articles for radical newspapers. Makhno also played an important role in the development of platformism and the debates around the 1926 Organizational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists (Draft). Makhno died in 1934 in Paris at the age of 45 from tuberculosis-related causes.

Contents

• 1 Early life
• 2 Revolutionary activity
  • 2.1 Imprisonment
  • 2.2 Agrarian activism
  • 2.3 Journey to Moscow
• 3 Leader of the Makhnovist movement
  • 3.1 Commander in the Red Army
  • 3.2 Against the White Army
  • 3.3 Anti-Bolshevik rebellion
• 4 Exile
  • 4.1 Eastern Europe
  • 4.2 Paris
• 5 Personal life
• 6 Legacy
  • 6.1 In popular culture
  • 6.2 In Ukraine
• 7 See also
• 8 Notes
• 9 References
• 10 Bibliography
• 11 Further reading
• 12 External links

Early life

On November 8::1888, Nestor Makhno was born into a poor peasant family in Huliaipole, a town in the Katerynoslav Governorate of the Russian Empire (now Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Ukraine). He was the youngest of five children born to Ivan Mikhnenko and Evdokia Makhnovka, former serfs who had been emancipated in 1861.

Nestor Makhno in 1906

Unable to feed his family on their small plot of land, following Nestor's birth, Ivan Mikhnenko went to work as a coachman for a wealthy industrialist. When Nestor was only ten months old, his father died, leaving behind an impoverished family. Nestor was briefly fostered by a more well-off peasant couple, but he was unhappy with them and returned to his family of birth. At only seven years old, the young Nestor was put to work tending livestock. When he turned eight years old, he began his education in a local secular school as a model student before becoming increasingly truant. One day, while ditching school to go ice skating, Nestor fell through the ice and nearly drowned. His walk home in frozen clothes contributed to the beginning of his breathing problems. After returning to his studies, he went to work on the estate of a kulak, bringing home 20 rubles over the course of the summer. His brothers also worked as farmhands to support the family.

When Nestor returned to school, he again proved to be a gifted student, excelling in arithmetic and reading. However, that school year proved to be his last, as his family's extreme poverty forced the ten-year-old Nestor to begin working in the fields full-time, which led him to develop a "sort of rage, resentment, even hatred for the wealthy property-owner". Nestor's aversion to the landlords only increased over time, nurtured by stories his mother told him of her time in serfdom and tales of the Zaporozhian Cossacks. In the summer of 1902, when Nestor was twelve, he observed a farm manager and the landlord's sons physically beating a young farmhand. He quickly alerted an older stable boy "Batko Ivan", who attacked the *ailants and led a wildcat strike action against the landlord. After the affair was settled, Ivan told Nestor: "if one of your masters should ever strike you, pick up the first pitchfork you lay hands on and let him have it..." The following year, Nestor quit working in the fields and found a job in a foundry. At this time, his older brothers had left home and started their own families, leaving only the young Nestor and Grigory with their mother. Nestor moved between jobs, quitting his job at a wine merchants' within months of starting, which began his life-long distaste for alcohol, according to Alexandre Skirda. He started to focus his work on his mother's land, occasionally returning to employment to help provide for his brothers.

Revolutionary activity

When the 1905 revolution broke out, the seventeen-year-old Makhno quickly joined the revolutionary fervor. He distributed propaganda for the Ukrainian Social Democratic Labor Party before affiliating with the Union of Poor Peasants, an anarchist group in his hometown that instilled in him a deeply held anti-authoritarianism. Despite the political climate, which included Tsarist repression of revolutionaries, the dozen-strong Union continued to meet weekly and inspired Makhno to devote himself to the revolution.

Makhno (bottom left) sitting with other members of the Union of Poor Peasants in 1907

After six months in the Union of Poor Peasants, Makhno had thoroughly educated himself on the principles of libertarian communism and became a formal member. The group distributed anarchist propaganda among the peasantry, carried out a campaign of "Black Terror" against the Tsarist autocracy, and expropriated from local businessmen. The money they stole was used either to print more propaganda or to purchase weapons and explosives. When the Stolypin reform abolished community *emblies (obshchina), the landowning peasant kulaks grew even wealthier, leading the group to begin setting fire to the property of wealthy landowners. Makhno was arrested in September 1907 but was released without charges after ten months of interrogation in prison. As the rest of the group's members had been outlawed, Makhno founded another anarchist study group in a neighboring village, where two dozen members gathered on a weekly basis to discuss anarchist theory.

Nestor Makhno in 1909

This new group quickly found themselves infiltrated. Two spies were executed and the Okhrana broke up one of the study group's meetings. The group managed to escape after a shootout with the police but one member was killed in the clash. The group plotted to execute the provincial governor in retaliation, but their attempts failed and Makhno was arrested following another shootout. One of the group's members confessed during interrogations, leading to 16 group members being arrested and the others fleeing into exile.

Imprisonment

On March 26, 1910, Makhno was sentenced to be hanged, refusing to seek appeal. Makhno's sentence was commuted to a life sentence of hard labor, due in part to his young age. Makhno grew severely ill in prison, contracting an almost fatal bout of typhoid fever, before his eventual recovery and return to work in chains. He was moved to the prison in Luhansk, where he was briefly visited by family before being moved again to the prison in Katerynoslav. On August 2, 1911, he was transferred one final time to Butyrskaya prison in Moscow, where over 3,000 political prisoners were being held. Through the other prisoners he became well-read on Russian history and political theory, taking a particular interest in Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution by Peter Kropotkin. Makhno's behavior in prison earned him the nickname "Modest", due to his frequent boasting to fellow prisoners, sometimes even antagonising the guards and landing him in solitary confinement. Due to the conditions of the punishment cells, he quickly fell sick again, this time being diagnosed with Tuberculosis, which kept him returning to the prison hospital throughout his sentence.

It was in Butyrskaya prison that Makhno met the anarcho-communist politician Peter Arshinov, who took the young anarchist under his wing as a student. But during this time, Makhno also became disillusioned with intellectualism after he noticed the differences between how the prison guards treated the intellectual prisoners and those inmates from the lower cl*es. As the years p*ed, Makhno began to write his own works and distributed them among his fellow prisoners, starting off with a poem *led Summons that called for a libertarian communist revolution. Prison did not break his revolutionary zeal, with Makhno vowing that he would "contribute to the free re-birth of his country". Although influenced by the ideas of Ukrainian nationalism, Makhno nevertheless remained hostile to nationalism, taking the internationalist position during World War I and even circulating an anti-war pe*ion around the prison. When the prison doors were flung open during the February Revolution of 1917, Makhno was released from bondage for the first time in eight years, even finding himself off-balance without the chains weighing him down and in need of sungl*es after years in dark prison cells. He remained in Moscow for three weeks, briefly getting involved with an anarchist group in Moscow's Lefortovo District until March 23, when he was finally convinced to return to Huliaipole by his family.

Agrarian activism

Makhno in 1918

Following nine years of imprisonment, on March 24, 1917, the 27-year-old Makhno finally returned to Huliaipole, where he was reunited with his mother and elder brothers. At the station, he was greeted by many of the town's peasants, as well as his comrades from the Union of Poor Peasants, which had mostly been dedicating itself to the distribution of propaganda. Clashing with the propagandists of the group, Makhno proposed that libertarians take the role of a revolutionary vanguard in order to ignite m* action among the peasantry, but found his position a minority within his old group. He instead led the establishment of a local Peasants' Union on March 29 and was elected as its chairman, which quickly came to represent the majority of Huliaipole's peasantry and even those from the surrounding region. Carpenters and metalworkers also formed their own industrial unions and elected Makhno as their Chairman. By April, Makhno had brought Huliaipole's Public Committee, the local organ of the Provisional Government, under the control of the town's peasantry and anarcho-communist activists. It was during this period of rising anarchist activity in Huliaipole that Makhno met Nastyenka, who would become his first wife, but his activism kept him too busy to focus on his marriage.

Makhno quickly became a leading figure in Huliaipole's revolutionary movement, aiming to sideline any political parties that sought to seize control of the workers' organizations, and justifying his leadership as only a temporary responsibility. As a union leader, Makhno led workers in strike actions against their employers, demanding wages be doubled and vowing the continuation of work stoppages in case of their refusal, eventually resulting in the establishment of workers' control over all industry in Huliaipole. Makhno subsequently disarmed and minimized the powers of local law enforcement, before carrying out the seizure of property from local landlords and equally redistributing the lands to the peasantry, in open defiance of the Provisional Government. All this gave him an image of social banditry, as peasants compared him to the Cossack rebel leaders Stenka Razin and Yemelyan Pugachev, rallying around the slogan of "Land and Liberty". As Huliaipole's delegate to the regional peasant congress in Oleksandrivsk, he called for the expropriation of large estates from landowners and their transfer to communal ownership by the peasants that worked them, becoming infamous throughout the region. However, he quickly became disillusioned with the long debates and party politics that dominated the congress, considering Huliaipole to have "advanced beyond what the congresses were merely talking about, without the constant wrangling and jockeying for position."

Although he had achieved success at home, Makhno was disappointed to discover a generalized state of disorganization among the wider Ukrainian anarchist movement, which largely dedicated itself to propaganda activities. Despite its large size, the anarchist movement found itself unable to compete with the established political parties, as it had yet to establish a coordinated organization capable of playing a leading role in the revolutionary movement. Following news of an attempted coup against the Provisional Government, Makhno led the establishment of a "Committee for the Defense of the Revolution" in Huliaipole, which organized armed peasant detachments against the local landlords, bourgeoisie and kulaks. Makhno called for the local bourgeoisie to be disarmed and their property expropriated, with all private enterprise to be brought under workers' control. Peasants withheld rent and took control of the lands they worked, and large estates were collectivized and transformed into agrarian communes, with Makhno personally organizing communes on former Mennonite settlements. Himself living on a commune with his companion Nastia, Makhno worked twice a week, helping out with the farming and occasionally with fixing the machines. According to Alexandre Skirda, at this time Makhno's "responsibilities were enormous but his power small", taking on a more advisory role than a commanding one, with his advice often being challenged in the local Soviet, defense committee and even in the anarchist group.

Following the October Revolution, Makhno bore witness to the rising hostilities between the Ukrainian nationalists and the Bolsheviks, even finding himself resolving a dispute between the two factions at a provincial congress in Katerynoslav. With the outbreak of the Soviet–Ukrainian War, Makhno advised anarchists to take up arms alongside the Red Guards against the forces of the Ukrainian nationalists and the White movement. After dispatching his brother Savely to Oleksandrivsk at the head of an armed anarchist detachment, Makhno was brought onto the local revolutionary tribunal, from which he oversaw the prosecution of counterrevolutionary army officers, even placing the man who had prosecuted him in the same cell that he had been imprisoned in a decade earlier. Makhno also oversaw the release of still imprisoned workers and peasants, successfully defended Huliaipole against a Don Cossack raid, and expropriated 250,000 rubles from a bank to fund the activities of the local soviet.

Journey to Moscow

Following the invasion of Ukraine by the Central Powers, Makhno quickly formed a volunteer detachment to resist the occupation, joining up with the Red Guards in Oleksandrivsk. But in their absence, he learnt that Ukrainian nationalists had seized control of Huliaipole from the Soviet, inviting forces of the Austro-Hungarian Army to occupy the town. Unable to return home, Makhno and his detachment retreated to Taganrog, where a conference of Huliaipole's exiled anarchists was held. Setting July 1918 as the date for returning to retake Huliaipole, Makhno set off on a tour of Russia to rally support behind the Ukrainian anarchist cause. On May 4, Makhno departed from Rostov-on-Don on an artillery train, ahead of the German advance on the city. Travelling via Tik*tsk, Makhno delivered a speech to woodworkers during an unscheduled stop, before finally arriving at Tsaritsyn. Here he was briefly reunited with a number of his comrades from Huliaipole, including a heavily pregnant Nastyenka, who Makhno helped secure with lodgings at a nearby farm. But due to his tight schedule, combined with the repression against "non-party military detachments" brought by the arrival of Kliment Voroshilov's 10th Army to the area, Makhno was forced to leave Nastyenka in order to continue his tour.

As he continued his travels, he witnessed confrontations between revolutionary partisans and the newly established Cheka, which was undertaking to disarm any autonomous units and shoot those that disobeyed their decrees. This conflict between the m*es and the "ins*utional revolutionaries" caused Makhno to consider whether "the revolution is not destined to perish by the very hand of revolutionaries". In Saratov, Makhno arrived to a tense situation, with the Cheka in conflict with the local Maximalists and a non-party military detachment from Odesa, spurring him to hastily leave the city on the first boat he could. In Astrakhan, Makhno found himself working for the local Soviet's propaganda department and giving speeches to Red soldiers bound for the front, before boarding a train north towards Moscow at the end of May.

Peter Kropotkin in his studio

While aboard an armored train to Moscow, Makhno prevented a Red Guard company he was travelling with from being captured by Don Cossacks, using a performative artillery exercise to disentangle the train from the Cossack advance. After spending a few days in the Volga region, Makhno finally arrived in Moscow, which he dubbed "the capital of the paper revolution", due to the local anarchist intellectuals' focus on writing slogans and manifestos rather than taking any action. Here he again made contact with Peter Arshinov and others in the Muscovite anarchist movement, many of whom were under surveillance by the Bolshevik authorities, and came into contact with the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, who were beginning to turn against the Bolsheviks. He also discussed the situation in Ukraine with the anarcho-communist theorist Peter Kropotkin, who wished Makhno well, parting ways with him after declaring that "their is no sentimentality about our struggle. But selflessness and strength of heart and will on our way towards our goal will conquer all."

Vladimir Lenin and Yakov Sverdlov at a rally in Moscow

Satisfied with his time in Moscow, Makhno resolved to return to Ukraine, but required forged iden*y papers in order to cross the border. He thus applied to the Kremlin, where he was engaged by Yakov Sverdlov, who immediately arranged Makhno an interview with Vladimir Lenin himself. In their meeting, Lenin showered him with questions about the situation in Ukraine, which Makhno answered, even as Lenin bemoaned that the country's peasantry had been "contaminated by anarchism". Makhno staunchly defended the Ukrainian anarchist movement from charges of "counter-revolution", criticising the Red Guards for sticking to the railways while peasant partisans fought on the front lines. Despite his criticisms of the anarchist movement for idealism and his erroneous description of Ukraine as "South Russia", Lenin expressed his admiration for Makhno and admitted his mistakes regarding the revolutionary conditions in Ukraine, where anarchists had already become the predominant revolutionary force. After a long conversation, Lenin p*ed Makhno on to Volodymyr Zatonsky, who fulfilled his request for a false p*port. On June 29, the young Ukrainian finally departed for the border, content that he had "take the temperature of the revolution".

Leader of the Makhnovist movement

Main articles: Makhnovschina and Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine

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On July 1, 1918, Makhno arrived at Kursk and prepared to make his journey through the Ukrainian front lines on foot. Disguised as an officer of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, he crossed the border back into Ukraine and was reunited with some Jewish comrades, who informed him of the situation in Huliaipole. The German occupying forces had shot, tortured and arrested many of the town's revolutionaries. Mistaken for Nestor, Emilian Makhno had been shot, while Savely Makhno was arrested and his mother's house was destroyed. Nestor himself was being hunted by the imperial German authorities, forcing him to take a number of precautions to evade capture. To avoid recognition while aboard the crowded train carriages, he changed at Kharkiv and Synelnykove, ultimately deciding to walk the final 27 kilometers to Rozhdestvenskoye after his train was searched by police. From Rozhdestvenskoye, he dispatched letters to comrades in his hometown of Huliaipole, but they discouraged him from returning there, fearing he would be caught by the authorities.

Despite the discouragement, after weeks in hiding, Makhno clandestinely returned to Huliaipole. In a number of secret meetings, he began to lay plans for an insurrection and started to organize peasant partisans together, advocating that they build support by attacking the estates of large landowners, while also counselling against individual acts of terrorism and forbidding anti-semitic pogroms. From the outset, Makhno emphasised tactical and theoretical unity, advocating a generalized insurrection only once the conditions were ripe for it. But before long his presence was discovered and he was forced to retreat after a bounty was placed on him by the authorities, only narrowly escaping capture. In Ternivka, Makhno revealed himself to the local population and established a peasant detachment to lead attacks against Hetmanate positions. In coordination with partisan groups in Rozhdestvenskoye and after securing weapons from former soldiers of the defunct Ukrainian People's Army, Makhno resolved to decisively reoccupy Huliaipole and establish it as a permanent headquarters for the insurgent movement. He began carrying out a series of raids against Austrian positions, seizing weapons and money, leading to the intensification of the insurrection. While disguised as a woman, Makhno even briefly returned to Huliaipole, where he planned to blow up the local command center of the occupation forces, but called off the attack due to the risks of killing innocent civilians.

On September 22, 1918, Makhno moved to decisively reoccupy Huliaipole. In disguise as a captain of the National Guard, he encountered an actual National Guard contingent and ordered them to lay down their arms. After learning from them the whereabouts and strength of the local occupation forces, he revealed himself to be Nestor Makhno and shot them when they tried to run away. He and his comrades reached Huliaipole within a few days, where he discovered that the German occupation forces had been spreading misinformation about him, claiming he had robbed the local peasantry and ran away with the money to buy a dacha in Moscow. After beating the Austrian occupation forces in Marfopol:, Makhno produced a letter that was translated into the German language, encouraging the conscripted troops to mutiny, return home and launch revolutions of their own. While his comrades scattered themselves throughout the region to rouse the peasants to revolt, Makhno went to Huliaipole and prepared proclamations for when the region was under insurgent control. When the occupation forces counterattacked, Makhno decided to evacuate Huliaipole and retreat, rather than digging in. His tactical decisions were challenged by his comrades that wanted to hold the town, but as conditions proved his decisions to be the most viable, they gradually fell into line behind him.

Makhno with Fedir Shchus in 1919

Upon linking up with the forces of Fedir Shchus, Makhno warned of a coming invasion by the White movement and issued a rallying cry to resist it. When their force was ambushed in Dibrivka:, Makhno's tactics prevented their immediate defeat. He subsequently gave a speech, encouraging the insurgents to attack the far larger enemy force, resulting in the local peasantry giving him the *le of Bat'ko. With only a small force, Makhno led the surprise counterattack and successfully routed the local Austrian forces.

Makhno subsequently led a series of attacks against the occupation forces, White Russians and their Ukrainian collaborators. However, Makhno still remained opposed to indiscriminate attacks against wealthy Ukrainians, preferring instead to prosecute a "social war" that targeted their money, rather than their lives. The Bat'ko also focused much of his energies on agitating the peasantry, stopping in villages to give imp*ioned speeches against his enemies, gathering much support wherever he went. Despite being wounded and almost dying during a Hungarian attack on Temirivka:, Makhno's position at the head of the insurgent movement grew more powerful, with the German high command even resolving to directly meet a number of Makhno's demands. At a regional insurgent conference, Makhno proposed that they open up a war on four fronts: simultaneously against the Hetmanate, Central Powers, Don Cossacks and White movement. He argued that in order to prosecute such a conflict, it would be necessary to organize an insurgent army along a federal model, directly answerable to him as commander-in-chief. Not long after taking command, Makhno was almost killed on two separate occasions, with rumours even circulating of his death at the hands of the White movement. From that point onwards, Makhno fought "day and night in the front lines and without rest", even being forced to miss a number of important congresses due to his preoccupation with the war.

Commander in the Red Army

Pavel Dybenko (left) with Makhno (right)

During the insurgent attack against the nationalist-held city of Katerynoslav, Lenin sent Makhno a dispatch that confirmed him as commander-in-chief of the Soviet forces in the Katerynoslav Governorate, but this offer was rebuffed by Makhno, who personally stood in the way of the Bolsheviks' attempts to seize control of the city. When a nationalist counteroffensive forced Makhno to retreat to Huliaipole, he undertook a complete reorganization of insurgent forces on every front, eventually culminating with their integration into the Ukrainian Soviet Army as the 3rd Trans-Dnieper Brigade, with Makhno subordinating himself to the command of Pavel Dybenko. On February 12, 1919, Makhno was finally able to extricate himself from the front to attend a regional congress in Huliaipole, where he was elected honorary chairman, himself rejecting official chairmanship due to the situation at the front requiring his attention. At the congress, he declared his support for "non-party soviets", in open defiance of his Bolshevik commanders.

Nestor Makhno, pictured during his command within the 1st Zadneprovsk Ukrainian Soviet Division

Makhno justified the integration of the insurgent forces into the Red Army as a matter of placing the "revolution's interests above ideological differences", but he was nevertheless open about his contempt for the new order of political commissars, with some complaining he had treated them "with sarcasm". The Bolshevik interference in front-line operations even led to Makhno arresting a Cheka detachment, which had directly obstructed his command. He also engaged in debates with Josef Dybets, an anarcho-syndicalist turned Bolshevik, during which Makhno reiterated his intention to establish a self-governing "Anarchist Republic", after the defeat of both the White movement and the Bolsheviks. Despite his hostility to the Bolsheviks, Makhno still respected freedom of the press, authorizing Bolshevik newspapers to be distributed in Huliaipole, Berdiansk and Mariupol, even as the papers published violent denunciations of the Makhnovists. By April 1919, the newspaper Pravda was publishing glowing reports of Makhno's activities, praising him for his opposition to Ukrainian nationalism, his successful *ault against Katerynoslav and his continued successes against the White movement, while also detailing Makhno's widespread support amongst the Ukrainian peasantry. However, this did not stop Pavel Dybenko from declaring the insurgents' subsequent regional congress to be "counter-revolutionary", outlawing its participants and ordering Makhno to prevent future congresses from taking place, despite Makhno himself being preoccupied at the front-lines.

Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko, commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Soviet Army

To resolve the dispute, Makhno invited Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko to visit Huliaipole, enthusing the Ukrainian commander-in-chief enough to reject a Bolshevik request for Makhno's removal from command. Upon arrival, Makhno informed Antonov-Ovseenko of the situation at the front, introduced him to members of the local Soviet and reunited him with his "old acquaintance" Maria Nikiforova. As news came in of the insurgents' successful capture of Mariupol, Makhno proceeded to promise further successes at the front, provided that the insurgents received the necessary equipment. Makhno further elaborated on the material shortages that the insurgents were suffering and bemoaned the problems caused by the 9th Soviet Reserve Division, which he described as "prone to panic", claiming that "its command's sympathies lay with the Whites." Following another discussion with Makhno about the newly established Hungarian Soviet Republic and the situation at the front-lines against the Whites, the two shook hands as Makhno promised to prevent any counter-revolutionary activity and continue their war against the "bourgeois generals".

Upon his return, Antonov-Ovseenko openly praised Makhno and the insurgents, criticising the Bolshevik press for publishing misinformation about Makhno and requesting the Makhnovists be supplied with the necessary equipment. However, his attempts proved unsuccessful and he was later removed from command. His reports quickly attracted Lev Kamenev to himself visit Huliaipole the very next week. He too was greeted by Makhno, who gave him a tour of the town, making sure to show off a tree where he had personally lynched a White army officer. Despite disagreements between the two over the autonomy of the insurgent movement, Kamanev bade farewell to Makhno with an embrace and warm words. Kamenev immediately published an open letter to Makhno, praising him as an "honest and courageous fighter" in the war against the White movement. However, in a private telegram sent to Lenin that same day, Kamenev proposed only a "temporary diplomatic with Makhno's army". After a Bolshevik-backed **ination attempt against Makhno was thwarted, some anarchists like Peter Arshinov began to wonder if the visit to Huliaipole had actually been a reconnaissance mission to prepare a Red Army offensive against the insurgents. Makhno himself was warned by sympathetic Soviet functionaries not to travel to the cities of Katerynoslav and Kharkiv, fearing a trap would be laid for him there.

Nikifor Grigoriev (left), ataman of the green army in Kherson, who would be **inated during a meeting with Makhno, on charges of counter-revolutionary activities and antisemitism

After Nikifor Grigoriev revolted against the Bolsheviks, Kamenev sent a telegram to Makhno, asking him to condemn Grigoriev, or else face a declaration of war. Grigoriev had previously attempted to form an alliance with Makhno against the Bolsheviks, but this proposal went unanswered. Makhno responded to Kamenev's request by reaffirming his commitment to the struggle against the White movement, which he worried would be endangered by opening conflict with Grigoriev. In a direct telegram to Kamenev, Makhno declared his loyalty to the "worker and peasant revolution", while also stating that he would continue to oppose the actions of the Cheka and any other "organs of oppression and violence". In an insurgent military congress on May 12, Makhno expanded on this anti-authoritarian position with a denunciation of the Bolsheviks, criticizing them for their implementation of bureaucratic collectivism and political repression, which he compared to the Tsarist autocracy. After Makhnovist emissaries uncovered evidence of Grigoriev's participation in pogroms, Makhno openly denounced him for his displays of antisemitism and Ukrainian nationalism, going on to blame the Bolsheviks for the rise of Grigoriev, claiming it was their political repression that had caused the uprising.

The Red Army high command responded by attempting to reign in Makhno's influence over his detachment, with his commander Anatoly Skachko: even declaring that "he is to be liquidated". By the end of May 1919, the Revolutionary Military Council had pronounced Makhno to be an outlaw, issuing a warrant for his arrest and for him to be tried before a revolutionary tribunal. On June 2, Leon Trotsky published a diatribe against Makhno, attacking him for his anarchist ideology and even labeling him as a "kulak".

A few days later, Makhno learnt that while he had been preoccupied at the front, Huliaipole had been captured by the Kuban Cossacks, forcing him to retreat from his positions. In an attempt to appease Trotsky, so that the insurgents wouldn't be caught in a pincer between the Red and White armies, Makhno resigned his command of the insurgent army. Despite a rebuff from Trotsky, he again attempted to offer the Bolsheviks his resignation on June 9, reaffirming his commitment to the Revolution and his belief in the "inalienable right of workers and peasants". Makhno thus relinquished command of the 7th Division and was replaced by Alexander Krusser:, with Makhno declaring his intention to wage a guerrilla war against the Whites from the rear. Trotsky then ordered Kliment Voroshilov to arrest Makhno, but sympathetic officers reported the order to him, thus preventing his capture by the Cheka. Makhno even led the rescue of Voroshilov's detachment from a White encirclement, despite knowing the intentions of his "would-be executioner". Despite having broken with the Red Army, Makhno still considered the White movement to be the Makhnovists' "main enemy" and insisted that they could settle their scores with Bolsheviks after the Whites were defeated.

Makhno's small sotnia then linked up with other insurgent detachments that had mutinied against the Red Army, falling back to Kherson, where they met with Grigoriev's green army. Although Makhno initially sought an alliance with Grigoriev, due to the ataman's popularity with the local peasantry, revelations of Grigoriev's antisemitism and connections with the White movement led to the Makhnovists openly denouncing him. When Grigoriev attempted to shoot Makhno, he was gunned down in his place by Alexei Chubenko. Makhno began rebuilding his forces in Kherson, quickly pulling together 20,000 insurgents, many of whom had deserted the Red Army after its retreat from Ukraine. Red Army mutinies even became so bad that the Ukrainian Bolshevik leader Nikolai Golubenko: telephoned Makhno, begging him to again subordinate himself to Bolshevik command, to which Makhno refused.

Against the White Army

Yakov Slashchov, leader of the White movement in Ukraine until his defeat by Makhno during the Battle of Peregonovka

With the Bolsheviks having fled Ukraine entirely, the Makhnovists were left facing the White movement alone. As the Whites advanced on the Makhnovist positions at Voznesensk and Yelisavetgrad, reports by the White commander Yakov Slashchov depicted Makhno as a formidable adversary, crediting him for his tactical abilities and disciplinary command over his troops. The insurgents launched a number of attacks behind the White line, with Makhno himself commanding a cavalry *ault against Mykolaivka: that resulted in the capture of White munitions, equipment that the Makhnovists sorely needed. It was during one of these attacks that Nestor's brother Grigory Makhno lost his life. Following a successful White *ault that drove the insurgents back to Uman, Makhno was impressed by the bravery of the White cavalry, comparing them favorably to the Red cavalry.

Map depicting the advance on Moscow by the White movement, during the summer of 1919

During the Battle of Peregonovka, the tide of the battle turned in the insurgents' favor when Makhno led his sotnia in a flanking maneuver against the White positions, charging the much larger enemy force with sabres and fighting them in close quarters combat, which forced the Whites into a retreat. Makhno then led the pursuit of the retreating Whites, decisively routing the enemy forces, leaving only a few hundred survivors. The Makhnovists subsequently split up in order to capitalize on their victory and capture as much territory as possible, with Makhno himself leading his sotnia in the capture of Katerynoslav from the Whites on October 20. With southern Ukraine being brought almost entirely under insurgent control, the White supply lines were broken and the advance on Moscow was halted.

In Katerynoslav, Bolsheviks attempted to establish a revolutionary committee to take control of the city, proposing to Makhno that he confine himself exclusively to military activity. But Makhno no longer held any sympathy for the Bolsheviks, who he described as "parasites upon the workers' lives". He quickly ordered the revolutionary committee be shut down and forbade their activities under penalty of death, telling the Bolshevik officials to "take up a more honest trade". At a regional congress in Oleksandrivsk, Makhno called for the establishment of "free soviets" outside of political party control. When delegates from the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionary Party objected, due to their belief in the legitimacy of the dissolved Cons*uent *embly, Makhno denounced them as "counter-revolutionaries in cahoots with Denikin", causing them to walk out in protest. When he returned to Katerynoslav on November 9, the local railway workers looked to Makhno to pay their wages, which they had gone without for two months. He responded by proposing the workers take over the self-management of the railways and levy payment for their services directly from the customers. By December 1919, Makhnovist control of Katerynoslav was beginning to slip, as the city faced increasing attacks from the White Cossacks. On December 5, Makhno survived an **ination attempt by the Bolsheviks, who had planned to poison him and seize control of the city, after the plot was uncovered and the conspirators were shot.

Flag of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic

While White attacks forced the Makhnovists to abandon the city and retreat to their base in Huliaipole, many of the insurgents were beset by epidemic typhus, with even Makhno himself contracting the disease. By the time that the Bolsheviks invaded Ukraine, Makhno had slipped into a coma, which lasted for weeks. While still comatose, the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee declared Makhno to be an outlaw, to which the peasants of his hometown responded by providing him refuge and hiding him from the Cheka. Once he recovered, he immediately began to lead a campaign of guerrilla warfare against the Cheka and requisitioning units. He also implemented a discriminatory policy for dealing with captured Red Army units: commanding officers and political commissars would be immediately shot, while the rank-and-file soldiers would be given the choice to either join the insurgent army or be stripped of their uniforms and sent home. With the Makhnovists once again wreaking havoc on Bolshevik positions and with Red Army soldiers increasingly defecting to the insurgents, the Cheka began to resort to the use of agent provocateurs and informants in order to entrap Ukrainian anarchists. One anarchist that the Cheka attempted to bring under its wing was Fedya Glouschenko, who they commissioned to **inate Makhno on June 20, 1920. Despite Glouschenko immediately informing Makhno of the plot, he was shot the following day as a servant of the secret police.

Makhnovist commanders discuss plans to defeat the Army of Wrangel, in Starobilsk

On June 23, a member of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries attempted to convince the insurgents to form an alliance with the Bolsheviks, to which Makhno responded with skepticism, claiming that the Left SR's mission was "wholly Bolshevik inspired and without question they have set him very specific objectives." When the proposed alliance was brought up again in August, Makhno was in two minds about it, but ended up submitting himself to the decision of the Insurgent Army, which narrowly voted in favor. With the pact made, Makhno reaffirmed his distrust for his "irreconcilable enemies" in the Bolshevik Party, stating that the necessity of a military alliance with them should not be confused with a recognition of their political authority.

Makhno hoped that victory over the Whites would oblige the Bolsheviks to honor his desire for soviet democracy and civil liberties in Ukraine, but he would later consider this to be a "grave error" on his part. Nevertheless, under the terms of the pact, Makhno was finally able to seek treatment from the medical corps of the Red Army, with physicians and surgeons seeing to a wound in his ankle, where he had been hit by an expanding bullet. He was also visited by the Hungarian communist leader Béla Kun, who greeted him as "fighter of the worker and peasant revolution, comrade Batko Makhno" and gave him gifts, including over 100 photographs and postcards depicting the Executive Committee of the Communist International. On October 22, the insurgents successfully reoccupied Huliaipole, driving the Whites out of the city for the final time. Back in his hometown, Makhno requested three days of rest and recuperation but this was rejected by the Bolshevik command, which ordered the insurgents to continue their offensive, under penalty of their alliance being nullified. While Simon Karetnik set off to lead the Makhnovist offensive against the Army of Wrangel, the still-wounded Makhno and his Black Guards stayed behind in Huliaipole. There he turned his attention towards reconstructing his vision of anarcho-communism, overseeing the reestablishment of the local soviet and a number of other libertarian projects.

Anti-Bolshevik rebellion

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On November 26, 1920, the 42nd Division and 2nd Cavalry Corps led a surprise attack against Huliaipole, placing the town under siege. Caught unprepared, Makhno rallied together 150 Black Guards to defend the town, but after spotting a gap in the Red lines, he and his detachment escaped. Makhno then led a counterattack that pushed the Red forces back to Novo-Uspenovka: and regrouped his own forces, with some Red soldiers even defecting to his ranks, before recapturing Huliaipole a week later. The Red Army command justified the attacks against the Makhnovists based on claims that Makhno had refused orders and intended to betray them, despite themselves having planned to break the alliance with the Makhnovists since before the offensive against Wrangel had even begun.

Makhno and his lieutenants in Berdiansk

The following week, Makhno was finally reunited with Karetnik's detachment in the village of Kermenchik:, finding only 1/5th of its original size and without its commander, who had been **inated by the Bolsheviks in Crimea. Despite orders directly from Vladimir Lenin for the Red Army in Ukraine to "liquidate Makhno", the insurgents were able to successfully prosecute a campaign of guerrilla warfare in the face of their encirclement. On December 3, Makhno led a detachment of 4,000 insurgents in an *ault against a Red Kirghiz brigade at Komar, Altai Krai, successfully routing them. In the following weeks, he recaptured Berdiansk and Andriivka from the Bolsheviks, defeating a number of Red divisions before an engagement with the remaining divisions at Fedorivka resulted in a stalemate.

Makhno had hoped that simply defeating a few Red divisions would halt the offensive, but found himself having to change tactics in the face of his encirclement by overwhelming numbers, consequently splitting up his contingent into a number of smaller detachments and sending them in different directions. Taking his own 2,000-strong detachment north at a pace of 80 kilometers each day, he derailed a Bolshevik armored train at Oleksandrivsk, before pushing deep into the provinces of Kherson and Kyiv, all the while pursued by Red divisions. One Red Army officer that survived one of Makhno's *aults was Pavel Ashakhmanov:, who compared Makhno's tactical capabilities to that of Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Julius Caesar and Napoleon. He spoke of Makhno's charismatic leadership in personally leading his own men into battle, his practice of lightning warfare and his close familiarity with the local geography. He also detailed Makhno's extensive knowledge of not just his enemy's positions, but also their commanders' personalities, and his ability to sow discord within the Red Army ranks.

Before long, Makhno's detachment found itself surrounded and under constant pursuit by the Red Cossacks, only able to advance slowly under heavy machine-gun fire and artillery bombardment. While still wounded, Makhno managed to lead his detachment all the way to the border with Galicia, before suddenly swinging around and heading back across the Dnieper, eventually heading north from Poltava to Belgorod, where they finally managed to shake off the pursuing Cossacks at the end of January. By this point he had travelled more than 1,500 kilometers, lost most of his equipment and half of his detachment, but he also found himself in a position to once again lead an offensive against the Red Army. Following the outbreak of the Kronstadt rebellion, Makhno dispatched a number of his detachments to various regions of Southern and Central Russia in order to foment insurrection, while he himself stuck to the banks of the Dnieper river. At this time, Makhno was wounded in the foot and had to be carried by a tachanka, but still managed to personally lead the detachment from the front. When they crossed back over to left-bank Ukraine, his detachment was ambushed at Melitopol, but they managed to slip away and get some rest before attacking a Red unit at the Sea of Azov. It was at this point that he decided to split his detachment up, sending one to stir up revolt against the Cheka in Berdiansk and Mariupol. Makhno's own contigent, consisting of 1,500 cavalry and two infantry regiments, continued along its path, routing a number of Red units and seizing their equipment. During one engagement, Makhno was wounded in the stomach and fell unconscious, having to be evacuated on a tachanka. Upon his resuscitation, he again divided his forces and sent them out in all directions, leaving himself behind with only his black sotnia remaining.

Makhno was unable to withdraw from the front and tend to his injuries, as his sotnia repeatedly came under attack by the 9th Cavalry Division. During one engagement, a number of Makhnovists sacrificed themselves just to ensure Makhno's escape. About a month later, Semyon Budyonny's own detachment fell into an encounter with Makhno's sotnia, during which the Red Cossacks were forced to flee in the face of the superior insurgent numbers, with Makhno calling Budyonny himself a "craven coward". Towards the end of May, Makhno attempted to organize a large-scale offensive to take the Ukrainian Bolshevik capital of Kharkiv, pulling together thousands of partisans before he was forced to call it off, due to the comprehensive Red defenses. Red Army command resolved to focus its efforts on Makhno's small 200-strong sotnia, deploying a motorized detachment to pursue them. Upon its arrival, Makhno led the ambush of one armored car, taking it for himself and driving it until it ran out of fuel. The subsequent pursuit of Makhno lasted five days and covered 520 kilometers, causing his sotnia heavy losses and almost running them out of ammo, before they were finally able to shake the armored detachment off their trail.

Exile

On July 23, 1921, Mikhail Frunze demanded the "definitive liquidation" of the Makhnovist movement. Despite having suffered several wounds, Makhno continued to carry out raids in the Don river basin, even attacking Voronezh. But by August 13, Makhno's wounds had forced him to flee abroad for treatment, taking his wife and 100 loyalists with him in a retreat to Poland, leaving Viktor Belash in command of the Insurgent Army. With Red Army attacks following them, Makhno took a bullet in the neck on August 22 and a number of his old friends died in battle on August 26. After a scout was captured by the Reds, Makhno diverted his forces towards Romania. On August 28, the Makhnovists ambushed and disarmed the Soviet border guards, then after crossing the Dniester, they were in turn disarmed by the Romanian border guards and taken to an internment camp. Makhno and his wife were eventually released from the camp and granted permission to stay in Bucharest, under police surveillance, while Makhno recovered from his wounds.

Eastern Europe

In September 1921, Georgy Chicherin and Christian Rakovsky demanded that the Kingdom of Romania extradite Makhno back to Ukraine. The Romanian government of Take Ionescu did not accept their demand, as the two states had no extradition treaty, also pointing out that capital punishment had been abolished in Romania and reminding the Bolshevik diplomats of international law on the matter, but the Bolsheviks continued to push the subject. By this time, Makhno had come into contact with the exiled Ukrainian nationalists around Symon Petliura, themselves allies of both Romania and Poland. In the face of the conditions in Ukraine, Makhno called for an alliance between the Makhnovists and the Petliurists, which he believed could together reignite an insurgency in Ukraine.

Makhno, with his wife Halyna Kuzmenko, surrounded by other Makhnovists in Poland, 1922

With Romania still caught up in the extradition demands, Makhno decided to make a break for Poland, getting caught between the border before finally being shipped to a Polish internment camp on April 12, 1922. Makhno subsequently attempted to secure permission to move on to Czechoslovakia or Germany, but the Polish government refused, as they were attempting to force the dissolution of the Makhnovists into the Ukrainian nationalist movement. The Soviet government sent an agent provocateur to entrap Makhno, themselves attempting to force the extradition of Makhno from Poland, fabricating a Makhnovist plan to launch an insurgency in Galicia. Makhno and his wife were arrested by the Polish authorities and for over a year were held in pre-trial detention, where Halyna gave birth to their daughter on October 30, 1922. In prison, Makhno drafted his memoirs which he p*ed on to Peter Arshinov, who published them in his Berlin-based publication The Russian Messenger. Makhno also sent out open letters to exiled Don Cossacks and the Ukrainian Communist Party, and began to learn German and Esperanto, before the prison's conditions caused another resurgence of his tuberculosis.

Makhno received support from throughout the European anarchist movement, with Polish and Bulgarian anarchists even threatening violence in the event of extradition. At his trial in November 1923, Makhno was acquitted on all charges and given permission to stay in Poznań. The following month he and his family moved to Toruń, where he fell under close police surveillance, being arrested and interrogated a number of times in the wake of Vladimir Lenin's death. Unable to secure a visa to travel to Germany and facing a severe strain on his marriage with Halyna, on April 14, 1924, Makhno attempted suicide and was hospitalized by his injuries.

In July 1924, Makhno and his family were allowed to move to the Free City of Danzig, where he was struck again by tuberculosis and held in hospital by the police, before escaping and making plans to move on to Berlin before he could be recaptured. Leaving Halyna behind in Poland, he arrived in Berlin towards the end of 1924, where he was reunited with other Ukrainian anarchist exiles. With Volin acting as his interpreter, Makhno met with a number of prominent anarchists that were also living in the city, such as Rudolf Rocker and Ugo Fedeli:. After a botched attempt to kidnap Makhno, Soviet agents reported him to Prussian police, with Makhno again being imprisoned and falling sick. German anarchists managed to help Makhno escape from prison and clandestinely cross the border into Germany, before finally moving to Paris in April 1925.

Paris

Nestor Makhno circa 1925

Upon his arrival in Paris in April 1925, Makhno wrote that he had found himself "amongst a foreign people and political enemies whom I have so often declaimed against." He was reunited with his wife and daughter in the city, where French anarchists like May Picqueray provided the family with lodgings and healthcare. On June 21, 1926, they moved into an apartment at 18 Rue Jarry in Vincennes, before moving on to another apartment on Rue Diderot, in the same building as Peter Arshinov's family. Makhno attempted to find work at a local foundry and later at a Renault factory, but was forced to leave both jobs due to his health problems, with a bullet wound in his right ankle even threatening amputation. His health care was overseen by the anarcha-feminist Lucile Pelletier, who described his body as being "literally encased in scar tissue" and advised his family to move out, in order to prevent them from being infected with tuberculosis. His debilitating illness, combined with homesickness and a strong language barrier (due to his inability to learn the French language), caused Makhno to fall into a deep depression. According to Alexander Berkman, Makhno particularly despised living in a big city and dreamed of returning to the Ukrainian countryside, where he could "tak up again the struggle for liberty and social justice."

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Instead of manual labor, Makhno undertook to write his Memoirs, but the books sold poorly due to their high price. He also collaborated with other exiled Russian anarchists to establish the bi-monthly libertarian communist journal Dielo Truda (Russian: Дело Труда, English: The Cause of Labor), in which Makhno published an article in each issue over three years. His articles were apparently poorly-written and criticised as such by the journal's editor Arshinov, which greatly upset Makhno and exacerbated his anti-intellectualism. The theoretical developments of the journal eventually culminated in the publication of the Organizational Platform of the Libertarian Communists, which called for the reorganization of the anarchist movement into a more cohesive structure, based on the experiences of revolutionary Ukraine and the defeat by the Bolsheviks. The Platform attracted criticism from the synthesists, such as Volin, who regarded it as a Bolshevization of anarchism. On March 20, 1927, a meeting was held in L'Haÿ-les-Roses to discuss the Platform, attracting anarchists from Russia, Poland, Bulgaria, Italy and China. When the meeting was raided by police, Makhno was arrested and threatened with deportation, but this was prevented by Louis Lecoin a