November 7 (October 26) 1888, 130 years ago, was born Nestor Ivanovich Makhno - one of the most controversial and controversial figures during the Civil War. For someone a ruthless bandit, for someone - a fearless peasant leader, Nestor Makhno most fully personified that terrible era.
Today Gulyaypole is a small town in the Zaporozhye region of Ukraine, and at the time, which will be discussed below, it was still a village, albeit a large one. Founded in the 1770s to protect against attacks by the Crimean Khanate, Gulyaypole developed rapidly. Gulyaypole was inhabited by different people - Little Russians, Poles, Jews, Greeks. The father of the future leader of the anarchists, Ivan Rodionovich Makhno, came from enslaved Cossacks, worked as a shepherd for different owners. Ivan Makhno and his wife Evdokia Matveyevna, nee Perederiy, had six children - daughter Elena and sons Polycarp, Savely, Emelyan, Grigory and Nestor. The family lived very poorly, and the next year after the birth of Nestor, in 1889, Ivan Makhno died.
Nestor Makhno spent his childhood and adolescence in deep poverty, if not poverty. Since they fell during the heyday of revolutionary sentiments in Russia, then revolutionary propaganda also fell on the natural dissatisfaction with their social position and the established order of things.
In Gulyaypole, as in many other settlements of Little Russia, a circle of anarchists appeared. It was headed by two people - Voldemar Antoni, a Czech by birth, and Alexander Semenyuta. Both of them were slightly older than Nestor - Anthony was born in 1886, and Semenyuta in 1883. The everyday experience of both "founding fathers" of Gulyaypole anarchism was then more abrupt than that of the young Makhno. Anthony managed to work at the factories of Yekaterinoslav, and Semenyuta managed to defect from the army. They created in Gulyaypole the Union of Poor Farmers - an underground group that proclaimed itself anarchist communists. The group eventually included about 50 people, among whom was the unremarkable peasant boy Nestor Makhno.
The activities of the Union of Poor Farmers - Gulyaypole peasant group of anarchist communists fell on 1906-1908. These were the "peak" years for Russian anarchism. Gulyaypole anarchists took an example from other similar groups - they were engaged not only in propaganda among peasant and artisan youth, but also in expropriations. It was this activity that brought Makhno, as they would say now, “under the article”.
At the end of 1906 he was arrested for the first time - for illegal possession of weapons, and on October 5, 1907, he was again detained - this time for a serious crime - the attempt on the life of the village guards Bykov and Zakharov. After spending some time in the Aleksandrovskaya district prison, Nestor was released. However, on August 26, 1908, Nestor Makhno was arrested for the third time. He was accused of the murder of an official of the military administration and on March 22, 1910, by the Odessa military court, Nestor Makhno was sentenced to death.
If Nestor had been a little older at the time of the crime, he could have been executed. But since Makhno committed a crime as a minor, the death penalty was replaced by indefinite hard labor, and in 1911 he was transferred to the convict department of the Butyrka prison in Moscow.
The years spent on the "rooftop" became a real life university for Makhno.
It was in prison that Nestor took up self-education under the guidance of his cellmate, the famous anarchist Pyotr Arshinov. This moment is shown in the famous TV series "The Nine Lives of Nestor Makhno", but only there Arshinov is depicted as an elderly man. In fact, Pyotr Arshinov was almost the same age as Nestor Makhno - he was born in 1886, but, despite his working background, he knew literacy, history, and the theory of anarchism well. However, while studying, Makhno did not forget about the protests - he regularly clashed with the prison administration, ended up in a punishment cell, where he contracted pulmonary tuberculosis. This disease tormented him for the rest of his life.
Nestor Makhno spent six years in Butyrka prison before he was released in connection with the general amnesty for political prisoners that followed the February Revolution of 1917. Actually, the February Revolution opened the way for Nestor Makhno to all-Russian glory. Three weeks after his release, he returned to his native Gulyaypole, from where the gendarmes took him away by a 20-year-old boy, already an adult man with a nine-year prison term behind him. The poor greeted Nestor warmly - he was one of the few surviving members of the Union of Poor Farmers. Already on March 29, Nestor Makhno headed the steering committee of the Gulyaypole Peasant Union, and then became the chairman of the Council of Peasant and Soldier's Deputies.
Quite quickly, Nestor managed to create a combat-ready detachment of young anarchists, which began to expropriate the property of wealthy fellow villagers. In September 1917 Makhno carried out the confiscation and nationalization of the landowners' lands. However, on January 27 (February 9), 1918, in Brest-Litovsk, a delegation of the Ukrainian Central Rada signed a separate peace with Germany and Austria-Hungary, after which they turned to them for help in the fight against the revolution. Soon, German and Austro-Hungarian troops appeared on the territory of the Yekaterinoslav region.
Realizing that the anarchists from the Gulyaypole detachment would not be able to resist the regular armies, Makhno retreated to the territory of the modern Rostov region - to Taganrog. Here he disbanded his detachment, and he went on a trip to Russia, having visited Rostov-on-Don, Saratov, Tambov and Moscow. In the capital, Makhno held several meetings with prominent anarchist ideologists - Alexei Borov, Lev Cherny, Juda Grossman, and also met, which was even more important for him, with the leaders of the government of Soviet Russia - Yakov Sverdlov, Leon Trotsky and Vladimir Lenin himself. Apparently, even then the Bolshevik leadership understood that Makhno was far from being as simple as it seems. Otherwise, Yakov Sverdlov would not have organized his meeting with Lenin.
It was with the assistance of the Bolsheviks that Nestor Makhno returned to Ukraine, where he began organizing partisan resistance to the Austro-German invaders and the Central Rada regime they supported. Quite quickly, Nestor Makhno from the leader of a small partisan detachment turned into the commander of an entire rebel army. Detachments of other anarchist field commanders joined the formation of Makhno, including the detachment of Theodosius Shchus, an equally popular anarchist "batka" at that time, a former naval sailor, and the detachment of Viktor Belash, a professional revolutionary, leader of the Novospasov group of anarchist communists.
At first, the Makhnovists acted using partisan methods. They attacked Austrian patrols, small detachments of the hetman's Warta, and robbed landlord estates. By November 1918, the number of Makhno's insurgent army had already reached 6 thousand people, which allowed the anarchists to act more decisively. In addition, in November 1918, the monarchy fell in Germany, and the withdrawal of the occupying troops from the territory of Ukraine began. In turn, the regime of Hetman Skoropadsky, relying on Austrian and German bayonets, was in a state of complete decline. Having lost external support, members of the Central Rada did not know what to do. This was used by Nestor Makhno, who established control over the Gulyaypole district.
The number of the insurgent army by the beginning of 1919 was already about 50 thousand people. The Bolsheviks hurried to conclude an agreement with the Makhnovists, who needed such a powerful ally in the conditions of the activation of the troops of General A. I. Denikin on the Don and the Petliura offensive in the Ukraine. In mid-February 1919, Makhno signed an agreement with the Bolsheviks, according to which, on February 21, 1919, the insurgent army became part of the 1st Zadneprovskaya Ukrainian Soviet Division of the Ukrainian Front in the status of the 3rd Zadneprovskaya brigade. At the same time, the Makhnovist army retained internal autonomy - this was one of the main conditions for cooperation with the Bolsheviks.
Nevertheless, Makhno's relationship with the Reds did not work out. When in May 1919 the Whites broke through the defenses and broke into the Donbass, Leon Trotsky declared Makhno “outlawed”. This decision put an end to the alliance of the Bolsheviks and the Gulyaypole anarchists. In mid-July 1919, Makhno headed the Revolutionary Military Council of the United Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine (RPAU), and when his rival and adversary ataman Grigoriev was killed, he took over as commander-in-chief of the RPAU.
Throughout 1919, Makhno's army fought against both the Whites and the Petliurists. On September 1, 1919, Makhno proclaimed the creation of the "Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine (Makhnovists)", and when Yekaterinoslav was occupied by him, Makhno began building an anarchist republic. Of course, Batka Makhno's experiment can hardly be called successful from a socio-economic point of view - in the conditions of the Civil War, incessant hostilities against several opponents, it was very difficult to deal with any economic issues.
But, nevertheless, the social experiment of the Makhnovists became one of the few attempts to "materialize" the anarchist idea of a powerless society. In fact, there was certainly power in Gulyaypole. And this power was no less tough than the tsarist or the Bolsheviks - in fact, Nestor Makhno was a dictator who had extraordinary powers and was free to act as he wanted at a particular moment. Probably, it was impossible otherwise in those conditions. Makhno tried as best he could. to maintain discipline - severely punished subordinates for looting and anti-Semitism, although in some cases he could easily give the estates to plunder to his soldiers.
The Bolsheviks were able to take advantage of the Makhnovists once again - when liberating the Crimean peninsula from the Whites. By agreement with the Reds, Makhno sent up to 2,500 of his men to storm Perekop under the command of Semyon Karetnik, one of his closest associates. But as soon as the Makhnovists helped the Reds break through to the Crimea, the Bolshevik leadership quickly decided to get rid of the dangerous allies. Machine-gun fire was opened on Karetnik's detachment, only 250 fighters managed to survive, who returned to Gulyaypole and told the dad about everything. Soon, the command of the Red Army demanded that Makhno redeploy his army to the South Caucasus, but the dad did not obey this order and began to retreat from Gulyaypole.
On August 28, 1921, Nestor Makhno, accompanied by a detachment of 78 people, crossed the border with Romania in the Yampol region. All Makhnovists were immediately disarmed by the Romanian authorities and placed in a special camp. At that time, the Soviet leadership unsuccessfully demanded that Makhno and his associates extradite from Bucharest. While the Romanians were negotiating with Moscow, Makhno, along with his wife Galina and 17 associates, managed to escape to neighboring Poland. Here they also ended up in an internment camp, met with a very unfriendly attitude from the Polish leadership. Only in 1924, thanks to the connections of the Russian anarchists who lived abroad at that time, Nestor Makhno and his wife received permission to travel to neighboring Germany.
In April 1925, they settled in Paris, at the apartment of the artist Jean (Ivan) Lebedev, a Russian émigré and an active participant in the Russian and French anarchist movement. During his stay with Lebedev, Makhno mastered the simple craft of weaving slippers and began to earn a living by doing this. Yesterday's rebel commander, who kept the whole Little Russia and Novorossiya in fear, lived practically in poverty, barely earning his living. Nestor continued to suffer from a serious illness - tuberculosis. Numerous wounds received during the Civil War also made themselves felt.
But, despite his health condition, Nestor Makhno continued to maintain contacts with local anarchists, regularly participated in the events of French anarchist organizations, including May Day demonstrations. It is known that when the anarchist movement intensified in Spain in the early 1930s, the Spanish revolutionaries called Makhno to come and become one of the leaders. But health did not allow the Gulyaypole daddy to take up arms again.
July 6 (according to other sources - July 25) 1934 Nestor Makhno died in a hospital in Paris from bone tuberculosis. On July 28, 1934, his body was cremated, and an urn with ashes was walled up in the wall of the columbarium of the Pere Lachaise cemetery. His wife Galina and daughter Elena subsequently returned to the Soviet Union, lived in Dzhambul, Kazakh SSR. Nestor Makhno's daughter Elena Mikhnenko died in 1992.
