On November 27, 1918, Nestor Makhno proclaimed Gulyaipole the capital of his revolutionary insurgent detachment. In fact, from that moment began the history of a bizarre experiment, an attempt to establish an anarchist peasant freemen. The center of Volnitsa has always been Makhno's native Gulyaipole, but at certain moments there were significant territories under the control of the Makhnovists.

Nestor Makhno, being one of the most colorful participants in the Civil War, gave rise to a whole movement, which in Soviet times was called the Makhnovshchina - spontaneous peasant anarchism. The most bizarre legends still circulate about Old Man Makhno himself and his Free Territory. Some of them depict the father as a cruel monster, a pogromist and a drunkard, while others as a defender of the interests of the poor peasantry and a true Robin Hood. Life figured out where the truth is in these stories, and where is fiction, and how his famous freemen functioned.

Nestor Makhno

To better understand the essence of the phenomenon, it is necessary to understand its inspirer. Nestor Makhno was born into the family of a Gulyai-Polye peasant who seriously abused alcohol. Makhno was the youngest of five brothers. None of them survived the Civil War, three of the brothers joined the Makhno detachment and died at the hands of the Reds and the Austrians. One remained on the sidelines of the war, but also died when he was beaten by whites, trying to find out where his brother was.

Makhno's father died shortly after his birth. The most serious and thorough of the brothers, Polycarp, who was 20 years older than Nestor, became the eldest in the family. Makhno graduated from a two-year zemstvo school, after which he worked as an auxiliary worker. Obviously, with such an education, he did not have any bright future, most likely, all his life he would have remained a worker and lived from paycheck to paycheck.

But then the revolution of 1905 began. 17-year-old Makhno joined a local anarchist cell. Anarchists were then divided into theorists, which included high-browed intellectual thinkers like Kropotkin, who were engaged in the theoretical justification of anarchism, and into practitioners who were engaged in robberies of the bourgeoisie. Among this category of anarchists there were a lot of ordinary criminals for whom anarchism was just a convenient cover. One had only to declare that the robbery was not a robbery, but a noble act of expropriation, as one could count on the support of a caring public and the best political lawyers.

Makhno, who finished only two classes and had difficulty reading, of course, could not be a theoretician and joined the practitioners. He became a member of an anarchist gang engaged in expropriations and political terror. Soon he was detained for the attempted murder of two guards (the rural analogue of the police), but he was released due to his infancy and lack of evidence. After some time, he took part in the murder of a local government official. His accomplices were caught and sentenced to death, Makhno, due to his minority, escaped the death penalty and was sentenced to hard labor.

In hard labor, his mentor was Pyotr Arshinov, who was a member of the Yekaterinoslav terrorist group of anarchists who were engaged in blowing up police stations. Arshinov took it upon himself to explain to the semi-literate Makhno the theoretical subtleties of anarchism.

Makhno was released by the February Revolution, which opened the doors of prisons. After almost 10 years in hard labor, Nestor returned to his native Gulyaipole, where he turned out to be almost the only political prisoner and, as a "victim of the regime", was considered a local celebrity.

He created the anarchist detachment "Black Guard", was elected chairman of the local council of workers and peasants and began to put into practice his ideals, taking away land from landowners and large owners and reducing the entire population to agricultural communes.

After the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk by the Bolsheviks, the territory of modern Ukraine was occupied by German and Austrian troops. Makhno left for Moscow to negotiate with his comrades-in-arms and seek support from the Bolsheviks. It is known that Lenin himself received him personally.

In the summer of 1918, he returned to Gulyaipole and gathered a small detachment of a couple of dozen people. Later, the detachment merged with the anarchist detachment of Fyodor Shchus, already operating in the district, who became the leader of the detachment. They were mainly engaged in robberies and murders of local landowners and the bourgeoisie, since the forces of the detachment were too small to confront the Germans, although skirmishes with small detachments did occur. Gradually, Makhno managed to push Shchus out of command, and by the time the Germans left, the detachment already unquestioningly obeyed this little man (Makhno was only 160 centimeters tall).

anarchist republic

On November 27, 1918, Makhno's detachment entered Gulyaipole, proclaiming it their capital. The organization of the headquarters began. Now the main opponent of Makhno and his anarchists were the Petliurists. Both of them fought for the same audience - the peasants, only the Petliurists tried to appeal to the national feeling, which was very weak among semi-literate peasants, and Makhno offered anarchist freemen, free land and the absence of a state.

However, in reality they were not competitors. Makhno never went far from his capital and did not dream of extending his power to the entire territory of the country. The Petliurists, on the other hand, were not averse to expanding their power to these fertile lands, but they considered the Bolsheviks to be the main enemy and concentrated all their efforts on fighting them.

Makhno spared no effort to strengthen his base. He knew how to win over the peasants. Detachments of Makhno carried out raids on cities and villages within their radius of action, where they imposed "indemnity" on the bourgeois either in money or in property and food. The money and valuables received by the Makhnovists were brought to Gulyaipole, where Makhno personally gave away part of them to local peasants. Of course, after this, the peasants gladly recognized Makhno as a "father", and took personal part in some raids.

The economy of the Makhnovist freemen functioned very bizarrely. Most of the factory owners fled or were killed, so workers' self-management was introduced in the factories, that is, the factories were completely controlled by the workers. At the same time, they were not paid salaries, Makhno's ideal was the complete withering away of commodity-money relations and private trade. Therefore, instead of buying and selling, natural exchange was used. The peasants had to change with the workers: the peasants gave them food, the workers in exchange created the agricultural implements they needed. Obviously, in such conditions, the normal functioning of the economy was simply impossible, production chains were destroyed or became confusing and inefficient due to improvisation on the ground.

It cannot be said that Makhno was greatly disturbed by this. In the end, although formally he was considered an anarcho-communist, in fact he was a representative of spontaneous and chthonic peasant anarchism with the corresponding worldview (my village is the whole universe, and the rest simply does not interest). Makhno saw the ideal of an anarchist peasant republic, in which all peasants work together and without coercion in communes and help each other. Makhno did not understand cities and did not like them, when a delegation of workers once came to him complaining that they had not received money for a long time, Makhno cursed them as freeloaders and Denikin's aftermaths and expelled them. Do not forget that Makhno was a man who lived 2/3 of his life in the village and spent one third in hard labor. Of course, in prison, his comrades explained to him the essence of anarchism and gave him smart books to read, but reading them is one thing, and understanding them is quite another. The peasant Free Territory seemed to him an ideal peasant kingdom, in which everything is arranged by itself at the expense of the consciousness of the inhabitants.

Until now, legends about the existence of the Makhnovist rubles, which he allegedly printed, are still popular. Sometimes there are even photographs of banknotes with skulls and bones. In fact, this is a legend, not a single banknote printed in Gulyaipole could be found, and all modern photographs are fakes. On the territory of the Makhnovist Republic, all the banknotes that were in use in neighboring territories, from the pre-revolutionary "Kerenki" to the currency of the Petliurists, circulated simultaneously.

As in all other territories controlled by all kinds of atamans, Makhno was both power and law. He made the rules, he made the judgment. True, unlike the rest, Makhno sometimes observed some democratic rituals for the sake of decency. On minor issues, decisions were allowed to be made by the Soviets, and some were even taken by a simple peasant vote. But, as already mentioned, these questions were mostly secondary, and if Makhno did not like some decision, he reserved the right not to comply with it or cancel it. And if it was really necessary, he generally dispensed with conventions and was very quick to punish, as happened with the executions of his political opponents.

Makhno was very vigilant in his ranks so that no strong competitor would appear in his ranks who would want to challenge the power of the father. For example, one of the field commanders of the Makhnovists, Polonsky, was shot along with his cohabitant and a group of closest associates without any trial or investigation, which outraged even Makhno's closest associates. In his defense, he stated that Polonsky allegedly plotted against him and planned to poison him either with moonshine or with potatoes. In fact, there was no serious evidence against Polonsky, and the father, apparently, was afraid of increasing his popularity, especially since things were not going well with the Makhnovists at that moment and some former comrades-in-arms could grumble.

Especially for the consideration of all "political" cases, the Anti-Makhnovist Affairs Commission was created, which was something like revolutionary tribunals for the Reds and courts-martial for the Whites.

Also, following the example of the Reds and Whites, he organized counterintelligence, which combined the functions of military intelligence and the punitive functions of the Soviet Cheka, identifying anti-Makhnovist sentiments, as well as agents of the Bolsheviks (in those periods when the Makhnovists were at enmity with them). It is worth noting that, unlike similar structures among the Reds and Whites, which were systematized and well organized, among the rebels it was chaotic and not centralized, with rare exceptions. Almost every rebel unit had its own counterintelligence, often in no way connected with the higher one.

Makhno also had his own counterintelligence, which combined the functions of his personal protection - the so-called. "Black Hundred", which included the most devoted to the father of the rebels.

Makhno and the Bolsheviks

Makhno's relations with the Bolsheviks were very complicated. The parties either entered into an alliance, or broke it off, after which Makhno was declared an outlaw bandit. In 1917, even before the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks considered the anarchists as temporary allies and attracted them to revolutionary actions.

After the seizure of power, the anarchists became a hindrance and serious competitors. The Bolsheviks, with the help of populist slogans, seized the popularity of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, and now the anarchists, with their even more populist slogans, were already intercepting influence from them. The number of the "Black Guard" - the armed detachments of anarchists, grew steadily. In 1918, the persecution of anarchists began, however, the Bolsheviks assured that they were prosecuting only criminals posing as anarchists, and ideological comrades enjoyed immunity.

The Bolsheviks badly needed the support of all kinds of Batek-atamans (of which there were many in the southern peasant regions) against Denikin's army and offered Makhno an alliance. His detachment, as a combat unit, joined the Zadneprovskaya division of the Red Army. She was joined by another father, ataman Grigoriev, who by that time had already managed to serve the Petliurists and be an independent father.

However, the Batek romance with the Red Army was short-lived. Their detachments, accustomed to the lack of strict discipline, could hardly endure their stay in the Red Army, and the atamans themselves, accustomed to being unquestioned power, could hardly put up with the need for subordination. Soon Grigoriev rebelled, and then Makhno left the front line, outlawed for this.

Both chieftains entered into an alliance, but the two bears were crowded in one lair, each of them was very suspicious of the other, in addition, Grigoriev was a direct competitor of Makhno in the struggle for the sympathy of the peasants. In the end, Makhno and his associates lured Grigoriev into a conversation and killed him under the pretext that he was trying to enter into relations with the whites. Some of Grigoriev's people joined Makhno's detachments.

Makhno's army

In 1919, Makhno began the formation of an insurgent army. The word army sounds loud, it is obvious that his units were not at all similar to the army. Although some sources indicate its number at almost one hundred thousand people, this is a clear exaggeration. The core of the army, that is, its more or less permanent composition, consisted of several thousand people. Peasants from outside could join them to participate in separate raids. The Makhnovists did not have a constant and clearly fixed number, just as there was no military uniform of the established pattern.

Makhno's army had all the typical shortcomings of such organizations: low discipline, the ability to operate only in a narrowly limited space - within a radius of several tens of kilometers from their native villages, very poor theoretical and practical military training. Therefore, the combat value of the Makhnovists as front-line troops was very low. His rebels could not withstand direct confrontation with regular enemy military formations, which is why all their successes were associated with guerrilla tactics.

When it was necessary to arrange a raid on unprotected rear areas, rush through the whirlwind and burn everything on the way, and then quickly retreat, this Makhno had no equal. But one on one, his army was weaker than any opponent. The Makhnovists could successfully operate precisely in the conditions of confusion and chaos of the Civil War, when several forces simultaneously acted on a small territory at once: the Reds, the Whites, the Petliurists, the Greens, who then made alliances with each other, then again began to fight. Father Makhno's strength was in the weakness of his army. Neither the Reds nor the Whites considered his irregular peasant formations to be their primary enemy, and looked at them through their fingers, preferring to first deal with each other.

Under these conditions, Makhno was constantly faced with the task of deciding with whom and against whom to fight. It is obvious that none of the forces was interested in Makhno and there would be no place for him either in the independent Ukrainian project of Petlyura, for whom he was a competitor in the struggle for the peasantry, or in the project of the whites, for whom Makhno was a bandit who, by a strange quirk, got carried away politics, nor in the Soviet project, which provided for the dictatorship of one party on behalf of the proletariat, and not at all the peasantry.

Makhno himself reasoned simply: the whites are bourgeois, and the reds are revolutionaries, but wrong. You have to fight the bourgeoisie, but you can negotiate with the revolutionaries. However, he did not take into account that it would not be possible to outwit Lenin. This man had behind him a quarter of a century of sophisticated political struggle, party intrigues, factional splits, and people like Makhno Lenin cracked like nuts.

While he could bring some benefit in the war with the whites, Makhno pointedly hinted that the Bolsheviks were not against the anarchists, and maybe even Makhno would be allowed to experiment in Gulyaipole. As soon as the Whites were finally defeated (the Makhnovists participated in the Crimean operation as allies of the Reds, having made an alliance with them for the second time) and Makhno was no longer needed, he was declared a bandit and an entire army was thrown into liquidation.

Makhno rushed through the forests for several months, lost the entire army and a significant part of his associates, and in the end, in the summer of 1921, Makhno with 78 associates (all that was left of his army) crossed the Romanian border. The Bolsheviks demanded his extradition, so he moved to Poland and then to France, where he changed his surname to Mikhnenko and lived the rest of his life. The once almighty dad made a living by weaving home slippers, finding shelter with the bourgeoisie he hated so much. Makhno died in 1934 from bone tuberculosis at the age of 45.

In Soviet times, Makhno was portrayed in books and films exclusively as a negative hero, a pogromist and a drunkard. With the collapse of the USSR, Makhno's personality gained new popularity. He became the most famous hero of the third force of the Civil War - the "greens", being the most colorful of all peasant batek chieftains, because, unlike most other similar characters, he had a clear political platform and even tried to put it into practice, although it is clear to many that the program this could be implemented within the framework of one village, but not the whole country.

Revolution under black banners

There is no more mysterious and legendary person in the history of the Civil War than Nestor Makhno. For many years in the USSR, he - "a thunderstorm of Chekists and commissars" - was represented as a half-crazy robber and bandit. However, the surviving historical documents refute this assessment.

Nestor Makhno was born on October 26, 1888 in a small village with the epic name Gulyai-Pole. His childhood, as he himself said, was overshadowed by severe need and deprivation. In 1903, Nestor became a laborer at an iron foundry. At his leisure, he was engaged in a theater circle and carried out "expropriations of expropriators" in a revolutionary anarchist organization. In March 1910, Nestor Makhno and his comrades "belonging to a malicious gang formed to carry out robbery attacks" were sentenced to death by hanging. In his youth, the "Stolypin tie" was replaced by him with indefinite hard labor. In March 1917, the revolution freed him from the Butyrka prison. Without delay, Nestor Makhno went home.

Gulyai-Polye Republic

In Gulyai-Pole, everyone was interested in what would happen to the land. Nestor had a prepared answer: “Land to the peasants!” Moreover, if the Bolsheviks and Social Revolutionaries considered this as a slogan, then Makhno - as a guide to action. When he was elected chairman of the peasant union, the first thing he did was to offer the landowners documents for land ownership. No, he did not threaten them with a Mauser and did not burn their estates. But something flickered in the convict's eyes, which made his words seem very convincing. By the way, one of his cellmates was Dzerzhinsky. Do you remember his heavy look during his work as chairman of the Cheka? Nestor Makhno had a much heavier look. And in terms of strong-willed qualities, he surpassed the “iron Felix” by a head.

What do you think he did with the documents? Just burned it. And then he distributed the landlords' land fairly. He did not offend the landowners either, leaving them just enough land so that they could cultivate it on their own. On the basis of two or three estates, the owners of which neglected physical exercises in the fresh air, he organized agricultural communes. The land issue was resolved.

Workers also reached out to Nestor Makhno, electing him chairman of the trade union of metalworkers and woodworkers. Makhno immediately demanded that the owners of the factories double the wages of the workers. They suggested increasing it by 50%. The workers rejoiced, and Makhno was outraged to the core that the breeders did not believe in the ideals of anarchism. He was about to implement the principle "Factories for the workers!", but the breeders, citing errors in the calculations, agreed with the demands of the trade union. As is customary among "serious boys", they were punished for their sluggishness. On October 25 (the day of the Bolshevik coup in Petrograd), on the initiative of Makhno, the trade union board decided: “To oblige the owners to carry out work in three shifts of 8 hours, accepting the missing workers through the trade union.” Unemployment in Gulyai-Pole was eliminated.

The last step remains: "All power to the Soviets!" Makhno also understood him literally. Everything is said, so everything. Accordingly, the Bolshevik decrees from Moscow and the resolutions of the Central Rada from Kyiv, not to mention the directives from the provincial Yekaterinoslav (now Dnepropetrovsk) and the county Alexandrovsk (now Zaporozhye), did not operate on the territory controlled by Nestor Makhno. Rather, they acted, but on the condition that they were approved by the Gulyai-Polye Council. In turn, the decisions of the council were accepted for execution only when the citizens agreed with them at the gatherings. Makhno himself, when, for example, he needed money for public needs, first turned to the council, and only then went to the bank. The Gulyai-Polye bankers turned out to be very responsive people and immediately gave him the required amount, and with such an air as if they secretly dreamed about it, but were embarrassed to offer it.

By the spring of 1918, in Gulyai-Pole and the areas closest to it, thanks to the efforts of Nestor Makhno, the anarchist ideas of Bakunin and Kropotkin were perfectly combined with the age-old traditions of the Zaporizhian-Haidamak freemen, forming something very reminiscent of the Zaporozhian Sich. Any attempt on the independence of the "free republic" Nestor Makhno perceived as a personal insult and even, speaking in modern jargon, as a hit-and-run. The first to understand this were the Don Cossacks, whose echelons, without agreement with the Gulyai-Polye Soviet (!) went through Aleksandrovsk to General Kaledin. Then Makhno personally led the operation to dismantle the rails and disarm the Cossacks. As a result, the Cossacks returned to the Don with whips alone.

Welcome or hands off!

But on April 22, 1918, according to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk concluded by the Bolsheviks, German troops entered Gulyai-Pole. Realizing that he alone would not be able to disarm the 600,000-strong army, Makhno went to Russia in search of, to use the jargon again, "roofs." He met with anarchists, including the elderly P. Kropotkin, but was unable to put them under arms. He turned to the Bolsheviks, trying to captivate Lenin with the ideas of anarchism, but did not find understanding. Makhno had to act at his own peril and risk. Later, the Germans scrupulously calculated that he made 118 raids, causing considerable damage to the German army. The people even said that the Germans preferred to get out because of Makhno. On December 27, the father, as Makhno began to be called, defeated Petliura, who captured, again without the consent of the Gulyai-Polye Soviet, Yekaterinoslav. Then the Red Army arrived. So that no one would doubt who defeated the Petliurists, Makhno was appointed division commander, having received the Order of the Red Banner of Battle for No. 4.

Ataman Grigoriev, who controlled the south of Ukraine and occupied Odessa, was also appointed commander of the division. And with this ataman, Makhno had his own scores. In the literature, one can often find descriptions of the "eternally drunk" Makhnovists, in whose clothes "colored ladies' stockings and panties coexisted next to rich fur coats." In fact, this is how the “fighters” of Ataman Grigoriev looked like, often posing as Makhnovists. As for the soldiers of Makhno's rebel army themselves, they outwardly resembled the characters in Repin's painting "The Cossacks write a letter to the Turkish Sultan" - in wide trousers, belted with red sashes, in long knitted or woven sweatshirts. And they didn’t “use” it in the service, since in the Makhnovist army drunkenness was considered a crime and was punishable by death.

Having captured Odessa, the "revolutionary general", as Grigoriev liked to call himself, requisitioned the valuables of the Odessa State Bank: 124 kg of gold bullion, 238 poods of silver and over a million rubles in gold coins of royal minting. Sitting on a sack of gold, this character from The Wedding in Malinovka wrote to the Makhnovists: “What kind of commander is your father Makhno, how much gold does he have?” Makhno really did not have a “gold reserve” - breaking into Yekaterinoslav under black anarchist banners, he declared: “I declare in the name of the partisans of all regiments that all sorts of robberies, robberies and violence will in no case be allowed at the moment of my responsibility to the revolution and they will be nipped in the bud by me.” When Makhno found out about the negotiations between Grigoriev and Denikin, he shot the ataman-"bespredelschik" at the next "strelka", that is, I beg your pardon, at the "congress of the rebels of Yekaterinoslav, Kherson and Tavria".

But that was later, and in the spring of 1919 the All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets decided to nationalize the land, that is, to transfer it to the ownership of the proletarian state. Commissars appeared in Gulyai-Pole and announced a surplus appraisal. We met them, to put it mildly, unfriendly. But Nestor Makhno warned: “If Bolshevik comrades come from Great Russia to Ukraine to help us in the difficult struggle against the counter-revolution, we must tell them: welcome, dear friends! If they are coming here to monopolize Ukraine, we will tell them: hands off!”

Under these conditions, the Revolutionary Military Council, headed by Trotsky acted very cleverly. He stopped supplying the Makhnovist units with ammunition. Apparently, Makhno posed a greater danger to the proletarian revolution than Denikin. The Commander-in-Chief of the Volunteer Army did not fail to take advantage of this. On May 17, General Shkuro's cavalry cut through the front at the junction of the Makhno brigade and the 13th Army of the Southern Front. How did Trotsky act? Maybe he ordered to restore the supply of the Makhnovist units? No, he ordered them to be liquidated, and Makhno himself to be brought to trial by the Revolutionary Tribunal. In response, Makhno renounced the dubious honor of being a division commander in the Red Army and disappeared. Nobody dared to liquidate its parts - they continued to restrain Denikin until the front finally collapsed.

"Long live Nestor!"

Denikin did not take into account the experience of his predecessors. The invasion of the territory of the Makhnovist Republic and the unceremonious treatment of its citizens cost him dearly. Denikin had already captured Orel and was preparing for a decisive assault on Moscow, but Makhno met Petlyura in Zhmerinka, and they shook hands. On September 27, the combined forces of Ukraine attacked Denikin's army. In the area of ​​​​the village of Peregonovka near Uman, a general battle took place between the Makhnovists and Petliurists and the Whites. As a result, about 15% of the entire personnel of Denikin's army was destroyed in one day. After that, the Makhnovists moved east, to their "indigenous" regions. They captured Krivoy Rog, Nikopol, Aleksandrovsk, Melitopol, Yuzovka (Donetsk), Berdyansk, Mariupol, Yekaterinoslav. Makhno, in the literal sense of the word, ripped open the belly of the Volunteer Army, cutting off the channels of its supply of food and ammunition. The offensive of the Volunteer Army on Moscow was thwarted. Makhno, in fact, saved the Bolsheviks from inevitable defeat.

General Slashchev's corps and Shkuro's cavalry were sent against the Makhnovists from the front. "So that I no longer hear the name Makhno!" Denikin ordered. For 10 days of fighting, Shkuro units lost half of their composition, but did not achieve any noticeable success. “The Makhnovist “troops” differ from the Bolsheviks in their combat readiness and stamina,” said Colonel Dubego, chief of staff of the 4th division of the Slashchevites.

Makhno's army was superior to its opponents in all respects. It was Makhno who first widely used spring carts, landing infantry on them. That is why his army of up to 35 thousand people with 50 guns and 500 machine guns moved at a speed of up to 100 km per day, while according to all military regulations, even cavalry had a pace of 35 km per day. Makhno developed tactical operations that entered the annals of military art. For example, on November 11, 1920, in the Crimea, near Karpova Balka, the Makhnovists, with the support of units of Mironov's 2nd Cavalry Army, demonstrated their famous "reception of imitation of a counter attack." During a short-lived battle with the use of 250 machine guns, Barbovich's cavalry corps (4,500 sabers) was completely destroyed. Upon learning of this, Wrangel issued an order to disband his army.

Nestor Makhno himself was wounded (in total during the years of the Civil War he received 14 gunshot and saber wounds) and therefore did not participate in the defeat of Wrangel. On November 15, he held the last meeting of the Gulyai-Polye Soviet, and a week later, the Bolsheviks, violating the agreement with Makhno, deployed three armies against him, not counting Dzerzhinsky's punishers and the ubiquitous "internationalists". For another nine months, Nestor Makhno carried out endless raids, mercilessly slaughtering Chekists and commissars. It is surprising that at the same time he could still write poetry:

I threw myself into battle with my head, Not asking for mercy from death, And it's not my fault that I remained alive in this whirlwind. We shed blood and sweat, We were frank with the people. We have been defeated. Only now our idea was not killed!

In August 1921, Nestor Makhno, at the head of a small detachment, was forced to cross the Romanian border and lay down his arms. Lenin he was very worried about this: “Our military command shamefully failed, releasing Makhno, despite the gigantic superiority of forces and the strictest orders to catch!”

On April 12, 1922, the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee announced a general amnesty for those who fought against the Reds, with the exception of Skoropadsky, Petlyura, Makhno, Ataman Tyutyunnik, Baron Wrangel, General Kutepov and Savinkov. And in May, the Supreme Tribunal of Ukraine recognized Makhno as a "bandit and robber." But neither Romania nor Poland handed him over to the Soviet government. Nestor Ivanovich Makhno died in 1934 in a Parisian hospital for the poor. He was buried in the Pere Lachaise cemetery. The author of the book "Carts from the South" V. Golovanov said that he found three inscriptions in this cemetery: Oskar Wilde forever! (Oscar Wilde forever!), Jim Morrison (Jim Morrison, frontman of the rock band The Doors) and Viva Nestor Mahno! (Long live Nestor Makhno!).

EVGENY KOKOULIN

This man's life is divided into three parts. The first - from birth to imprisonment for anarchist activities, the second - four years of continuous battles, campaigns and treatment for numerous wounds, and the third - a thirteen-year stay in a foreign land.

Nestor Makhno was born on October 26, 1888 in Gulyai-Pole in the family of a former serf, groom. Eyewitnesses claimed that during the christening, the priest's cassock caught fire, and he exclaimed in his hearts that the baby would grow up "a robber that the world has never seen." If we take into account all these components, there is nothing strange in the fact that an unsurpassed master of cavalry raids and battles came out of the boy.

Studying at the zemstvo school was short-lived, and at the age of 10 Nestor began to work - first, as a father, with horses, and then as a laborer. Subsequently, his fate was influenced by the revolution of 1905, which caused a rather tangible wave of enthusiasm for the ideas of anarchism. Young workers, disappointed in the activities of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Bolsheviks, joined the ranks of the anarchist movement, the center of which was Yekaterinoslav (Dnepropetrovsk).

The guy did not have long to be a member of the anarchist "Union of Poor Grain Growers" in Gulyai-Pole. Revolutionary activities needed money, so the opposition to the tsarist regime got it with the help of expropriations - armed robbery of enterprises, banks, post offices and the bourgeoisie in general. After the police and postmen were killed, Nestor was arrested in August 1908, and he was awaiting a death sentence. The mother of the revolutionary wrote a letter to the mother of Tsar Nicholas II, Maria Feodorovna, with a request to reconsider the case, since Nestor was then considered a minor - he was not yet 21 years old.

The young man served hard labor in the Moscow Central Prison - Butyrka. Among the political prisoners there were many teachers and students, in political disputes with whom he formed his worldview. In the cell, the young prisoner received the nickname "Modest", because his comrades repeatedly heard from him: "I will become a great man!" He spent seven years in Butyrka prison and was released by the February Revolution of 1917.

In March, Nestor returned to his native village - Gulyai-Pole. He headed the local council and the trade union of metalworkers and woodworkers, became a co-founder of the Peasant Union and organized a detachment of peasant self-defense. And in 1918, the "Free Gulyai-Polish Republic" had its own rebel army. Makhno and his brothers-in-arms fought with everyone who came to conquer the Zaporozhye steppes - the Austro-German army, Hetman Skoropadsky, Denikin and Wrangel, the Bolsheviks, the Entente and the Directory. And not only with them.

Having taken Ekaterinoslav, Nestor Ivanovich, together with his staff, got very drunk to celebrate, and then began to amuse himself in the city park. Namely: the Makhnovists, sitting on swings and carousels, began to shoot at the city dwellers, who had the misfortune of being dressed in a non-proletarian way and walking that day in the park. Well, others staged a pogrom in the city. Then the sober Makhno shot several dozen of the most malicious pogromists. Of course, not from his environment.

The first steps of the new republic were interrupted by the heavy clatter of the Austro-German army, which Skoropadsky invited to fight the Bolshevik detachments advancing from the north. At the end of April, after Makhno was kicked out of Ukraine, he reached Moscow via Rostov, Saratov and Samara. There he met Sverdlov and Lenin, whom he made a great impression on (more than Lenin on Makhno). The fact of the meeting was hushed up by Soviet historians for a long time. There was no constructive conversation. Nestor was interested in Lenin's attitude towards anarchism, and Lenin was interested in how anarchists could be used in the fight against the Germans and Skoropadsky.

Makhno was more impressed by his meeting with the anarchist theorist Pyotr Kropotkin. He answered all the questions of interest and said parting words that Nestor remembered for the rest of his life: “Dedication, firmness of spirit and will on the way to the intended goal win everything.” Secretly returning to Gulyai-Pole, Makhno began an armed struggle against the hetman's punitive detachments and German troops. Peasants came to him, dissatisfied with the return of the landowners, the liquidation of democratic institutions, and the requisition. After one victorious battle on October 10, 1918, the rebels called their thirty-year-old commander "father."

Makhno won thanks to original tactics and ingenuity. He was the first to guess to put a machine gun "Maxim" on the spring cart of the German colonists, familiar from childhood. So the legendary "cart" was born. With a pivoting front axle and drawn by four horses, she was a formidable force in battle. The military science of that time did not know such oncoming cavalry attacks: cavalry flew towards the enemy, followed by hundreds of machine-gun carts. Instantly, on command, the cavalry went to the sides - and the enemy ran into a wall of machine-gun fire. Machine-gun regiments proved to be quite effective in the fight against the Don and Kuban cavalry of Denikin and Wrangel.

Twice in the fight against them, Old Man (Batko) Makhno was an ally of the Red Army. And on June 4, 1919, Klim Voroshilov even granted Nestor the Order of the Red Banner No. 1 in Gulyai-Pole. Twice he was outside the law, and his troops tried to destroy. Defending the peasants, he opposed the surplus appraisal, the self-will of the "check" and the commissars. The document, adopted at the congress of peasant representatives in Gulyai-Pole, said: “The Soviet government, by its orders, is trying to take away their freedom from local soviets ... Commissars not elected by us monitor the activities of the soviets and mercilessly crack down on those who are undesirable. The slogan of the dictatorship of the proletariat in practice means the monopoly of one party.

In the autumn of 1919, the number of Makhno's detachments under black flags reached one hundred thousand people. It was then that he made an alliance with Petlyura, and his blow in the back of Denikin's army to a large extent sealed the fate of the White movement. A year later, he helped the Bolsheviks take the Crimea: the Makhnovists were the first to cross the Sivash, and immediately after that the Red Army began a war against them. Over the next ten months, Makhno carried out military campaigns in the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov, the Don and the Volga region, losing most of his troops.

With the defeat of Denikin and Wrangel, the Red Army threw all its might against the Makhnovists. Having experienced defeat, on August 28, 1921, Makhno crossed the Dniester to Romania with the remnants of his army - a detachment of 77 people. He lived in Bucharest, then in Warsaw, and there, in September 1923, he was arrested on charges of preparing an uprising in Western Ukraine, but was acquitted by the court. After wandering in Poland and Germany, he lived in Torun, and in April 1925 he moved with his wife and daughter to Paris, where he worked as a turner, printer, and shoemaker while he had strength.

Nestor Makhno died in Paris on July 25, 1934. His body was cremated and buried in the Pere Lachaise cemetery, in the wall of the columbarium, at number 6686 - next to the Parisian Communards.

For a long time, Makhno was molded into a cinematic ataman, unrestrained in rage, unpredictable, capable only of senseless acts, in no way connected with the people. Who was he really? Bandit? Then why did he have such support from the local population?

Everything is still a mystery. If you manage to unravel the mystery of Nestor Makhno, then another key to

"A novel on a cart"
Dmitry Minchenok

To be honest, I doubted for a long time whether or not to place this article on the pages of our site. After reading it, I think you will understand the reasons for my doubts, but nevertheless, in the end, I decided to include this article in the list of publications about Nestor Ivanovich Makhno. I leave the following to the conscience of the author of this article.<С.Ш.>

80 years of the tachanka - the legendary "bandura" on wheels, harnessed by four horses and "decorated" at the back with an easel machine gun. Few people know that its inventor was one of the most famous fighters for the Cossack freemen, Old Man Makhno. Everyone presents the leader of the anarchists one-sidedly, like a reveler and a psycho. However, few people realize how deep and, I would say, a demon-possessed person was. The black banner of the anarchists and the cart are only one side of the coin. There was still a completely unique love story in his life, more precisely, three love stories that make the dad, if not great, then at least a very significant person in historical terms.
In the early morning of April 14, 1924, in the Polish resort town of Torun, on the second floor of a cozy house, lying in bed, Nestor Ivanovich Makhno picked up a razor and slashed his throat...
His death was mourned in dozens of miserable apartments in Paris, Constantinople, Belgrade, Berlin and Prague, which sheltered Russian emigrants. Under the guitar busting, the former comrades-in-arms of Old Man Makhno sang a hymn, allegedly composed by the former head of the Makhnovist counterintelligence, Leva Zadov: "Roasted chicken, steamed chicken, chicken also wants to live ..." And again, black banners proudly, but not for long, fluttered in the foreign wind of three continents.
In Moscow, his former friend and associate, and now the Red Chekist Lyova Zadov, having learned about this, wept like a little child. However, the message sent to all telegraph agencies in Europe turned out to be a duck.
In the distant city of Paris, the father's wife Galina Kuzmenko was washing clothes ... and his one-year-old daughter Lenochka was sleeping in a crib when there was a knock on their door. Galina reluctantly opened the door and screamed out loud. Her resurrected husband stood on the threshold - greatly changed, in a short gray jacket, dusty boots, but with the same wild, hypnotizing gaze of a demon who still had no rest anywhere. How Nestor Ivanovich survived, why he tried to commit suicide at all, remained a mystery. Only since then did they begin to talk about the immortality of the father.
Few then understood and still understands what the phenomenon of Makhno's attraction is. He was not strong physically. Didn't have the noticeable looks or charm of a hero-lover. The only thing that distinguished him from the rest was the constant, desperate rage that did not subside for a second. They say that the reason for this is the red planet Mars, which rose above the Gulyai-Pole horizon at the time of Nestor's birth - October 27, 1889. The children of Mars are said to have indomitable energy.
Few people were found on earth who could withstand the look of the father. Outwardly, this man did not fit the role of a warrior. "Small, thin, with an effeminate face, with black locks of hair falling over his shoulders, Makhno made a terrible impression thanks to his piercing eyes with the fixed gaze of a maniac and the hard crease around his mouth on his haggard, pale face," - this is the opinion of the enemy - one of Denikin's officers, whom the father accepted into his detachment, and then shot.
And here is the description of Makhno, left by the Gulyai-Polye teacher Marina Sukhogorskaya, a close friend of his last wife, mother Galina.
“At first I thought that only I was afraid when he looked at me with his gray, cold, steely, really kind of hypnotizing eyes, but then it turned out that the most inveterate robbers of the Makhnovists could not stand this look and began to tremble. at every gaze of the father."
He knew how to feel the mental field of the crowd that surrounded him. It does not matter who this crowd consisted of - from admirers or subversives. Somehow, together with his friend Leva Zadov, who was the head of his counterintelligence, and in 1924 he went over to the side of the Reds and, just as he used to hang the Reds, now hanged the Whites and the "Yellow-Blakyt", he was surrounded by Budyonny's cavalry. It was the most critical moment in the father's career. By all logic, he should have been killed. They were in the same house when the village was quietly surrounded by the red horsemen of Budyonny. The orderly of the father noticed the red patrol approaching too late. In a panic, he ran into the hut and only managed to shout: "Budyonnovtsy!" The old man immediately ordered everyone to jump into the cart. And shortly before this, it is not clear why a machine gun was removed from this cart. But instead of hastily installing it, he ordered Leva to throw all sorts of junk from the looted chests into the cart and drive with all his might. The pursuers, of course, noticed this cart. They set off in pursuit. It seemed that they would inevitably be overtaken and cut into pieces. From all sides the cart was surrounded by enemies. And then the old man made a maneuver that could only be done by a person who did not think, did not guess, namely, penetrating into the unconscious soul of the crowd.
He shouted to Leva, who was sitting next to him, only one phrase: "My cash desk!" And Lyova understood him without words. He opened the father's chest and began throwing handfuls of gold coins at the Budenovites, throwing expensive shawls from the chests, precious cups under the horses' feet. Seeing the gold, the attackers began to sharply rein in the horses and pick up the abandoned valuables from the ground. Instantly some of the pursuers fell behind. A gap was formed, into which Makhno's cart slipped.
Later, talking about that incident, many recalled that at that moment Nestor Ivanovich heard a voice that told him that he had to save himself not with weapons, but with money. It was then that he appeared as a man who decided on what he was mortally afraid of - namely, to abandon the Force, that is, from the Bullet - and rely on his own insight, which overcame his fear because it was prescribed so by the Voice, which he finally began to hear .
For many years his intuition, or his Voices, guarded and helped him. True, sometimes they became extremely cruel to those who loved Makhno, and tried to tear the father away from his Idea with their love. He, as history has shown, always remained faithful only to the Voices.
His first marriage can be called a tragic love story of a young ataman and a Ukrainian maiden, Nastya Vasetskaya. No other woman could get from the wild dad what Nastya achieved. The archives have not preserved her photographs. In March of the seventeenth year, returning from prison, Father Makhno suddenly married this very girl. They were connected only by a thin thread of correspondence from Butyrka to his native Ukraine. The portrait of the girl can only be restored from the meager memories of the father's subordinates. Clear and bottomless eyes, which Gogol's panenki probably had in Viya, made Nastya hypnotically attractive in her own way. In general, their relationship can be called mysterious. They fell in love with each other in absentia, without seeing faces, only through letters. It is not known what emotions they experienced when they first met. The fact is that as soon as the dad returned from prison, he literally immediately married Nastya Vasetskaya.
Makhno's friends noticed that immediately after the marriage, the father changed dramatically. Which, in fact, caused fear among his entourage. Dad's rage was gone. He became quiet and peaceful. The struggle for the Cossack freemen became only a dream. And that's when his entourage intervened. Unnoticed by Nestor Ivanovich, secret threats rained down on Nastya from all sides. She was threatened with hanging, drowning or burning if she did not leave her father alone. But all threats seemed useless. Nastya soon became pregnant and gave birth to Nestor Ivanovich's first child - a boy. The powerful ataman was in seventh heaven with happiness. And suddenly, under strange circumstances, his son dies. A seven-month-old boy was found suffocated in a cradle. Makhno's friends immediately began to whisper to the father that Nastya had overlooked it. Makhno at first became furious at these accusations, and then gradually believed. Nastya was mortally silent, and instead of explaining, she wept softly in the corner.
Then the companions told her that either she would disappear or the father would be killed. It is difficult to understand why Nastya did not tell her husband about everything. Most likely, the fact that the patriarchal customs that prevailed among the Cossacks did not contribute to a sincere relationship between husband and wife played a role. The whole strategy of intimacy between spouses was limited to the formula "food, bed, and everything else is none of your woman's business."
In short... one fine day, Nestor found his hut empty: no greetings, no note from Nastya - she disappeared like a ghost. He took it as a betrayal. The person he loved left him. Since then, he finally lost faith in women.
In general, distance from women is not uncommon, especially among people of the shaman type, although this is much less common for people of the leader type. Despite the numerous gossip that circulated in Paris about the allegedly unbridled sexual temperament of Nestor Ivanovich, it was hard to imagine that he was leading a normal sex life, like, for example, his opponents - the red leaders Budyonny, Frunze, or his associates such as Ataman Grigoriev. The true passion of Nestor Ivanovich was, of course, the Idea of ​​the Cossack Freemen. We can say that he could be either only under the power of a woman, or only under the power of an Idea. Which was basically the same for him. The idea is always feminine.
Yes, and the behavior of his friends is understandable. And the point here is not at all, as I think, in the meanness of their characters. It is more likely to assume that, in the view of the father's associates, there could not be a married Makhno, because then he ceased to be Makhno. And his associates, just like himself, who were under the power of the Idea, felt this especially well.
It can even be said that he did not control his army, but the army controlled them. He did only what those many thousands and thousands of ordinary people who stood under his banner unconsciously wanted. And that is what made the father psychologically attractive and mysterious. Therefore, in the eyes of his "brothers" he was a certain kind of shaman, hypnotist, semi-deity.
Knowing how to hate strongly, Nestor Ivanovich knew how to love strongly, joke and treat life like a holiday. At times, when the Voices left him alone, he turned into the most ordinary person, in a way cowardly, in a way funny. About this completely worldly trait of his character, which very rarely awakened in him, I want to tell.
His next, after the unfortunate Nastya, passion was Marusya Nikiforova - the legendary anarchist, a Cossack woman, with whom Makhno gloriously walked around the Ukrainian steppes. Marusya Nikiforov could hardly be called a woman in the truest sense of the word. She spent almost her entire life riding a horse and dressed as a man. No, she didn’t become less of a woman because of this, but she couldn’t be more either. Rather, it can be called a daredevil in a skirt. The story of her love for her father is full of anecdotal situations, which, with various comments and conjectures, quickly spread in the closed world of Parisian emigration. Being the same Scorpio as Makhno, Marusya did not tolerate anyone's power over herself. And even more so the power of a loving husband. In fact, that's why this story happened.
And it would be even more correct to say that there would be no history at all if it were not for our Russian weather.
This was the time for the beginning of the novel between the father and Marusya. At the same time, Marusa liked a young anarchist Cossack named Golik. And she herself liked the Makhnovist favorite Theodosius Shchus. He harassed her in the most unpretentious way - he blackmailed her, promised to watch and rape her. A long scar across Theodosius's face prevented Marusa from seeing in his "insides" a kind and sympathetic soul. Yes, and his revolver interfered, which by itself incessantly fired, even while in a holster.
Somehow, the old man with his personal guards went from Gulyaipole - the center of the insurgent movement - to the neighboring village of Voronya. The path was not that close, but not far. Suddenly feeling lonely, Marusya called Golik to her. The chance was enticing. They locked themselves together in a white hut, on the walls of which the paint of shame does not show through, curtained the windows and lay down in bed.
The fact that the old man had left was known not only to Marusya Nikiforova, but also to the rest of the Gulyai-Polye freemen. Theodosius Shchus, seeing the horse backsides of the father's guard, immediately headed for Marusya's mud hut. He knocked exactly at the moment when Marusya was hotly kissing the naked Golik. A demanding knock on the door instantly sobered the woman up. At first she thought not to open it - to sit it out, but Shchus, who probably knew that she was at home, did not think to back down. Frightened that Theodosius would attract the attention of his neighbors with his impudent harassment, Marusya said: “Why the hell are you scaring people?” - leaned out the window. Shchus, seeing her bare shoulders, completely ignited and even more desperately began to drum on the door, demanding to open it. If Marusya had a saber, she would have cut him down, had a revolver, and shot him. But at that moment she had nothing but naked Golik. And she backpedaled, entered into negotiations with the scoundrel. I only feel that it was necessary. He immediately felt a woman's weakness and began to press on Marusya even more. He promised to disgrace her in front of the father so that she would never wash off. He reminded of the fate of Nastya Vasetskaya and said that an even worse fate awaited her.
His threats worked. Marusya decided to open it. But where to put Golik? He had to urgently climb into the chest, standing in the upper room of the father.
Marusya took Shchus himself to her room, where a minute before that there was an unfortunate Cossack. Here Marusa faced the most difficult thing - to prevent Theodosius from putting himself into an open bed. What tricks she did not go to. What only topics of conversation did not start. And about the dead, and about the treasure, allegedly buried by her near Poltava. And absolutely unprecedented - she promised to tell Shchus the secret of her father's immortality. For better or worse, for an hour she held him at arm's length from her chest. And when there was not a single story left in her imagination that could interest Theodosius even for a short time, there was a knock at the door. Marusya looked out the window and froze. Dad was standing on the doorstep. It looks like there really wouldn't be any history if it weren't for the Ukrainian weather there. By the end of Marusya's tales, the rain that had been dripping since morning turned into a real downpour. Which made the old man turn his horses halfway and return back to his residence.
What did Marusya experience here? Two men in the house. One - in the upper room of the father, the other - in the upper room of Marusya. And both - in the stage of pestering. Marusya trembled, convulsively looking for a way out of the situation.
She didn't have a moment to think. It happens that the Lord at such moments gives his signs of mercy. Marusya looked at her father, looked at Shchus - she figured that first they would start killing each other, then her, and she said to the crooked Cossack: “Calm down. hell, with the words: "I'll get to you, you bastard!" After that, without paying the slightest attention to the father, approach your horse, sit down and gallop away at full speed. Do what I tell you, otherwise the father will chop."
Shus from such a charade was stunned. But there was no way out. Old Man was already nervous at the door.
Theodosius snatched his saber, ran to the door, opened it wide open with one kick of his foot, and ran out into the street. His teeth gnashed, his eyes flashed with thunder and lightning, in addition, he brandished his saber so that he almost blew off his father's head. "Well, wait! I'll get you yet!" Shchus yelled. Old Man was even dumbfounded. "Just get caught by me," Shchus continued, as if not noticing anyone. He followed the window as Shchus jumped on his horse and, shaking his saber, sped away somewhere in the distance ...
"Why did he want to kill me?" - Dad asked Marusya dumbfounded. At that moment, he was not up to Marusya and not up to her answers to the question why she had not opened for so long.
Marusya regretfully twisted her finger at her temple: “Oh, dad, I don’t know. Henbane, perhaps, overeat? He burst into the house, almost killed me and your orderly Golik. She saved him by force.”
- Golik? And what about Golik?
- Yes, go and take it apart ... I went out into the yard, pick up sorrel, smoke, half-seed seeds, suddenly I see a rider rushing at full speed right to our hut. He drove up to the house, opened the gate, ran up to me, at my feet - bang. I look, Lord God, and this is your orderly Golik.
- What happened, kid? - I ask.
- Shchus wants to chop me, - he answers. - Save!
- Yes, for what? I ask him.
- Yes, I stepped on his corn, and he became so furious that he swore to cut off my head, he is chasing me. Save Marusya!
I see - the guy is not lying. She let him into the hut and hid him in your chest in your room. I just hid it, as Shchus drove up and straight to me: "Where is Golik?" I say, what are you, what kind of Golik is here?
Why is his horse here?
“But he left him and ran on,” I say. - Look for the wind in the field!
- No, - he answers, - you are deceiving me. - Well, let me go to the house. I'll take a look myself. He burst into our hut and let's fumble in all corners. If not for you, I would definitely have found Golik and cut him to pieces. Thank God you came.
- So what about Golik? So it sits in my chest? - Dad suddenly asks with a laugh.
- So it sits, - answers Marusya.
- Well, show me! - requires Makhno.
Marusya leads him to the upper room, opens the chest, and Golik is sitting there - neither alive nor dead. Makhno clutched his sides with laughter: “How are you,” he says, “I’ve stepped on my corn, that now he’s chasing you? Well, fun! Don’t be afraid! I’ll intercede for you!”.
Marusya immediately brought vodka. A cup - dad, a cup - Golik, and escorted him out of the yard. And Shchus, as he realized what was the matter, bit his tongue. So this story was hidden from the father. The people were resourceful.
... The third love and the last one, which went down in history under the name of Mother Galina, was different than Marusya or Nastya. An exact copy of the father. Strong-willed, with steel in her eyes - beautiful with cold, satanic beauty, able to order even the most rabid Batkov friends, she came from a completely different world than Nastya Vasetskaya. Medium height, slender, according to the recollections of people who saw her, she was in no way inferior to European beauties. Galina was a rural teacher in Gulyaipole. Old Man laid eyes on her in his third, last period of the struggle with the Whites and Reds. It can be seen that his tormented soul was tired of loneliness and bored with a fleeting refuge on a random female breast.
It was reliable with Galina, and he asked her to become his wife. She officially began to be called the title "mother". With her, he shared all the hardships of his Polish captivity and Parisian exile.
Nestor Ivanovich liked to dress up as a woman. Many of his contemporaries noted in him this trait sitting like a splinter. With long flowing hair, often ruddy, he gave the impression of a regimental squire.
His passion for travesty was no doubt no mere ruse. Perhaps the desire to dress up lived in him as an opportunity to achieve physical transformation into his own Ideal.
They say how once a quiet village on the shores of the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov, occupied by the soldiers of General Denikin, was awakened in the morning by the ringing of bells and reckless songs. The bewildered soldiers jumped out into the yard and saw a chaise drawn by a train rushing along the main street. A huge fellow with a scar across his face was sitting on the goats, and behind him were a trio of guys in multi-colored caftans, with dashingly broken caps and forelocks protruding picturesquely from under them. Closely squeezed between them sat a girl in the white robe of a bride. The carriage stopped at the headquarters building, and the whole company, shouting: "Let the pan officer marry us," rushed inside the house. The girl showed her tongue to the lieutenant who jumped out to meet him and tried to kiss him. The officer smiled and relaxed. The calmed down security just let the company inside the house without hindrance. There, the girl threw off her huge shawl, and everyone noticed that she was pregnant. "To the health of the bride!" - shouted the groom and climbed to kiss the betrothed, not allowing the officers to examine her more closely. Grinning officers climbed for a bottle of moonshine. The bride started to dance. The pop of bursting bottles of champagne sounded so convincing that none of the guards standing next to the open door even bothered. Only the lieutenant, who looked into the bride's face, began to slowly slide down to the floor. There was surprise in his eyes. Instead of a bride, an elderly man stood in front of him with a gun in his hands. It was Father Makhno. There were a few more dry pops inside the house. A minute later, the whole company fell out into the street and opened heavy fire on the soldiers standing there. They shot every single one. After that, they calmly pulled out all the weapons and ammunition from the hut, loaded it onto a britzka and quickly rushed away from the village ...
In 1934, Nestor Makhno died quietly in a Parisian hospital on Rue Daru. As quiet as old pensioners usually die.

Vasily Golovanov

INCOMPARABLE PARTISAN

Magazine "Around the World", 2003, No. 1 (2748)

The name of Nestor Makhno is so odious that in itself it makes it difficult to determine the scale of his personality: whether he was an ordinary anarchist partisan, or a figure incomparably more significant, standing, if not in the first, then in the second row of participants in the Civil War so tragic for Russia . In other words, one of those who could influence its course.

Behind all the myths with which the name of Makhno has grown, it is most difficult to see that this is so. In any case, along with the leaders of the rebellious Kronstadt, Makhno, with his Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army, was the most outstanding representative of the "people's" opposition to Bolshevism.

If Kronstadt was crushed for a month, then Makhno held out in the ring of the Civil War for 3 years, having managed to make war with Hetman Skoropadsky's haidamaks, Germans, whites, reds - and still stay alive. He alone managed to achieve what no popular movement opposed to the Bolsheviks had achieved: in 1920, the Insurgent Army and the Council of People's Commissars of Ukraine signed an agreement on political loyalty, on freedom of speech and the press (within the "socialist" frequency band), as well as on free election to the councils of representatives of all socialist parties ... If Wrangel had held out in the Crimea a little longer, it may turn out that Makhno would have demanded from the Council of People's Commissars the territory for the creation of a "free Soviet system." Of course, for the mature Bolsheviks of the 1920 model, all the clauses of the agreement were just a tactical cunning and all the "free councils" would have been crushed the very next day after the whites laid down their arms. And yet ... The Bolsheviks never stooped to negotiations with the insurgent people, suppressing any uprisings with exceptional cruelty. Makhno forced the ruling party of the first totalitarian state of a new type in the 20th century to reckon with the people. For this alone he earned posthumous fame.

He was the fifth, youngest child in a poor family of a coachman who served with Mark Kerner, the owner of an iron foundry in Gulyai-Pole, a small town in the Azov steppe, the very name of which seems to be an echo of the epic Zaporozhye times. What is true: from the island of Khortitsa on the Dnieper, from where the Zaporizhzhya Sich squandered its liberty and robbery, to Gulyai-Pole is hardly fifty miles, and that the Cossacks walked here, and in the battles with the Krymchaks they laid their forelocks, in the place of which their villages later grew numerous descendants - no doubt.

In 1906, at the age of minority (17 years old), Makhno ended up in prison for hard labor, which, of course, was also due to the circumstances of the place / time. The seeds sown by Narodnaya Volya and the Socialist-Revolutionary Party sprouted in luxuriant growth. Russia raved about the revolution. In the history of the first Russian revolution, what is most striking is the self-forgetfulness with which people rushed "into terror", whom it is not so easy to imagine behind the stuffing of home-made bombs: some workers, high school students, employees of railways and post offices, teachers. Age-old tyranny demanded revenge. The explosion of the bomb was tantamount to the execution of the judgment of the Court of the Righteous. "Draught terror" in Russia in 1906-1907 has no analogues in world history. But from within itself, this phenomenon looks terrible and ordinary. And the activities of the Gulyai-Polye group of anarchists, which included young Makhno, did not go beyond this mediocrity: they got revolvers, made bombs, robbed, for starters, the owners of the iron foundry, where a good half of the group worked, then someone else from the local rich , then a liquor store ... During a raid on a mail coach, a bailiff and a postman were killed. They fell under the suspicion of the police. Arrested. Court. Sentence: 20 years. Moscow Butyrki.

Later, none of the participants in the amusements of carefree youth became either a close associate of Makhno, or just an ordinary participant in the movement. When the tectonic layers of History begin to move, the bandits wash their hands of it. Makhno alone accepted her formidable challenge.

There he met Pyotr Arshinov, an "ideological" anarchist, whom, even as a commander of the Insurgent, he continued to call his "teacher". Then - February 17th, the abdication of the king, a general amnesty ... In seething Moscow, Makhno did not find a place or a job for himself. He did not like at all, did not understand cities. Twenty-eight years old, having neither a penny nor a traveling profession, he moved south, to his native Gulyai-Polye. And then suddenly he turned out to be in demand by time: around the crowd, rallies, vague premonitions, resolutions, meetings - and he is savvy, he knows what to ask, what to demand. He is pulled apart by five committees - and nothing, he is not lost, he presides. Mother, Evdokia Ivanovna, being proud of her youngest, wants to arrange his life, like people do, finds a wife, the beautiful Nastya Vasetskaya. The wedding buzzed for 3 days. But before his wife was he?

Already in July 1917, power in Gulyai-Pole passed to the Soviet. Makhno naturally became chairman. Now he is preoccupied with the creation of detachments and the extraction of weapons, so that by the autumn he will begin to confiscate land from the landowners. Makhno sometimes still flirts in search of his "theme" in the revolution: then he goes as a delegate to the Provincial Congress of Soviets in Yekaterinoslav, from where he returns disappointed with the inter-party struggle. Then he goes to Aleksandrovsk, where, together with the detachment of the Bolshevik Bogdanov, he disarms the Cossack trains, rolling back from the front to their native villages, and so he gets 4 boxes of rifles, but unexpectedly for himself, he turns out to be the chairman of the revolutionary committee's judicial commission, designed to sort out the cases of "enemies of the revolution". In this paper and punitive position, he finally cannot stand it and explodes: he is turned away by the arrests of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries - yesterday's "fellow travelers" in the revolution, but especially by prison. His first prison, where he sat, waiting for a hard labor sentence. "I repeatedly had a desire to blow up the prison, but not once I managed to get enough dynamite and pyroxylin for this ... Even now, I told my friends, it is clear that ... it is not the parties that will serve the people, but the people - the parties" .

In January 1918, he announced his withdrawal from the Revolutionary Committee and left for Gulyai-Pole to make his own revolution. It was this time in Makhno's memoirs that is painted in lyrical tones: he tells about the first communes created in the former landowners' estates, about the first kindergartens in Gulyai-Polye...

Nobody will ever know; what was left outside this idyll, what was going on during these dark winter months in the remote districts of the steppe Ukraine. God knows what happened in the cities. In Kyiv, after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the first government of independent Ukraine was imprisoned, headed by a third-year student Golubovich. However, the power of the Central Rada did not extend to such cities as Kharkov or Yekaterinoslav: revolutionary committees ruled here, in which the Bolsheviks and the Left SRs squabbled. The commissar of the Black Sea Fleet, the Left Social Revolutionary Spiro, responded to the proposal of the German command to flood the fleet in Sevastopol by declaring the Crimea a separate independent republic and appointing the mobilization of people and horses ... True, he was soon arrested for arbitrariness.

It all ended unexpectedly quickly: in March 1918, the Germans occupied Ukraine, placing "on the board" the hetman Skoropadsky devoted to them. Several anarchist and Bolshevik fighting squads tried to resist the invasion, but they soon ended up in Rostov - on the territory of Russia "reconciled" with the Germans.

Another "failure" in Makhno's biography is a trip through Tsaritsyn to Moscow. True, he made several correct conclusions about the nature of the central government maturing in the capital and met with the "apostle of anarchy" P. A. Kropotkin. And besides, in search of housing, he accidentally wandered into the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, which was located in the Kremlin and distributed warrants for rooms. There Sverdlov intercepted him and, catching the southern dialect of his interlocutor, began to ask about the state of affairs in Ukraine. Makhno spoke as best he could. Sverdlov suggested that he come in the next day and tell the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars about everything in more detail. Fantasy! In what other country could the search for a room end with a meeting with the head of government? However, nothing can be done: this is how Makhno's meeting with Lenin took place.

Lenin asked quick, specific questions: who, where, how did the peasants react to the slogan "All power to the Soviets", did they rebel against the Rada and the Germans, and if so, what was missing for the peasant riots to result in a widespread uprising? Regarding the slogan "All power to the Soviets," Makhno diligently explained that he understands this slogan precisely in the sense that power belongs to the Soviets. To the people.

In this case, the peasantry of your localities is infected with anarchism, Lenin observed.

But is it bad? asked Makhno. - I don't want to say that. On the contrary, it would be gratifying, as it would hasten the victory of communism over capitalism and its power.

Lenin, apparently, was satisfied with that conversation: he considered the anarchism of the peasants a temporary and soon curable disease, which, however, gave a chance on the shoulders of a peasant uprising to break into Ukraine and establish a Bolshevik order there. Makhno immediately received a false passport to return to his homeland and a chain of underground Bolshevik appearances. I took my passport. I did not use turnouts.

In order to be a full-fledged leader, so that his image was filled to the right extent with the power of charm, he needed a woman. And the point is not at all that he literally lost his wife, the beautiful Nastya, at some junction on the way to Tsaritsyn . He needed a fighting girlfriend who would not disgrace his title of dad. Galina Andreevna Kuzmenko, a 24-year-old teacher of one of the Gulyai-Polye schools, seemed to him like that for a long time. Makhno decided to get married. "... She was teaching a lesson, and suddenly a man in military uniform, small in stature, comes in, sits down at a desk and looks at her. Then he got up, and the students are all looking, "Let's go," she says, "let's leave the class." She told the guys who will soon return and went out with him into the corridor. He had a gun, he dropped it on the floor:
- Pick it up.
She is standing:
- Yours, you take it.
Makhno took her to the school director Alexei Korpusenko and took her away: "Here, this will be my wife." - "But what about the exams?" was the only answer he could find.
She followed him for a minute and returned after 50 years, having gone through the war, exile, emigration, Kazakh camps and deportation to Dzhambul: maybe only to cry enough with the surviving relatives and tell the story of this matchmaking ...

Leaving Moscow on June 29, Makhno arrived at his native place when the situation was tense to the limit. The hetman's authorities restored all the pre-revolutionary order, roughly punishing the troublemakers of 1917. Makhno, disguised as a woman, went to look at his native village. Gulyai-Pole was occupied by a Magyar battalion under the command of Austrian officers. The occupiers burned Makhno's house, they shot two older brothers only for their surname, although both were in no way involved in the rebellion. Not a trace remains of the "communes". I had to start all over again. But if in the 17th the main thing was to "push the speech" incendiary, now - why? It was necessary to act. To avenge, to kill, to let a red rooster, to raise an uprising - and in this case, no cruelty seemed excessive.

Makhno tracked down old brawlers hiding in the villages - Chubenko, Marchenko, Karetnikov, eight in all. With axes and knives, they crawled into the estate of the landowner Reznikov at night and slaughtered the whole family - because it had four brother officers who served in the hetman's police. So they got the first 7 rifles, a revolver, 7 horses and 2 saddles. Makhno triumphed: weren't these officers who killed his innocent brothers? He took revenge. Did anyone then think how many brothers would have to avenge their brothers if the knot of hatred was untied? No. Then everyone who had a weapon felt in strength, and in the right, and in the truth.

On September 22, the Makhnovists, dressed in the uniforms of the sovereign Varta (police), met Lieutenant Murkovsky on the road. Makhno presented himself as the head of a punitive detachment sent from Kyiv by order of the hetman himself. Murkovsky, not sensing a dirty trick, said that he was going to his father's estate to rest for a day or two, to hunt for game and for seditious.

You, mister lieutenant, don't understand me, - the guard "captain" suddenly said in a voice breaking with excitement. - I am a revolutionary Makhno. Your surname seems to be fairly well-known?

The officers began to offer money to Makhno, but he contemptuously refused. Then the "hunters", like hares, rushed across the fields in all directions. They were shot at with a machine gun... Oh, Makhno loved provocation - classical, with desperate lies and masquerade - he was a hypocrite! He loved to see the horror in the eyes of his enemies when he suddenly announced his name to them. At that time, dozens or hundreds of tiny detachments, like particles of fiery phlogiston, circled around Ukraine, sowing fire and death everywhere. And only when the punishers, brutalized by partisan raids, began to burn villages, kill and torture peasants, the flame of popular anger flared in breadth. Detachments of several hundred people, armed with shotguns, pitchforks and "clubs", in fact, became the embryo of Makhno's Insurrectionary Army. But for this they had to be organized somehow.

JUNE 1919. BRIEF CHRONICLE OF EVENTS
June 4- The Ukrainian Front was abolished, Trotsky's order No. 1824 was issued, prohibiting the congress of the Makhnovist Soviets.
June 6- the call of the Presovnarkom of Ukraine to bring down the sword of red terror on the leaders of the kulak counter-revolution. On the same day, the White Cossacks broke through to the Gulyai-Pole area and, near Svyaodukhovka, cut down the regiment that had come out to meet them, led by Putilov B. Veretelnikov. The Bolsheviks are finally aware of the scale of the White Guard offensive.
June 7- Voroshilov and Mezhlauk leave for Makhno on the famous armored train "Rudnev" with a request "to hold on to the last." On the same day - Trotsky's order "Defectors to Makhno - execution."

When Viktor Belash, the future chief of staff of the army and one of Makhno's best strategists, arrived in Gulyai-Pole, occupied by the rebels, the first thing he did was to bring all the various detachments into normal regiments and convince their commanders of the need to follow the orders of the headquarters, because a new danger was approaching: from southeast, whites began to penetrate into the "free region". It was necessary to organize and hold the front. A real civil war was on the nose, but for the time being, under the canopy of night, one could find paintings that seemed to be written off from the Middle Ages. Let's say, near Orekhovo, Belash found a detachment of 200 people sitting around a fire. “In the middle, a stout middle-aged man squatted about. Long black hair hung down on his shoulders and fell over his eyes. “Lemons have scattered across the open field, get out, cadets, give us all!” he shouted.

This is our father Dermendzhi, - one of the rebels explained.

Suddenly machine guns and rifles crackled at the position. Two riders galloped all over the quarry and shouted "The Germans are advancing!".

"Father" shouted: "Well, sons, get ready ..."

"To the front, to the front, with an accordion!" the crowd roared. And they, stumbling and in a hurry, ran in disarray to the position.

Dermendzhi was a well-known person - he participated in the uprising on the battleship Potemkin. But detachments of personalities unknown to anyone were still spinning around - Zverev, Kolyada, Patalahi, Old Man-Pravda. Belash also saw the latter: he turned out to be a legless disabled person who, having entered the village on a cart, gathered people and shouted with half of his body: “Listen, guys!

It is surprising that out of all this half-drunken freemen, Makhno managed in a few months to create an absolutely disciplined and paradoxical in its maneuverability formation, which was noted by General Slashchev, whom Denikin instructed to conduct operations against Makhno.

Natalya Sukhogorskaya, who in 1919 unwittingly found herself in the epicenter of the Makhnovshchina, described Gulyai-Pole as follows: “When I was there, there were 3 gymnasiums, a higher primary school, a dozen parish schools, 2 churches, a synagogue, baths, many mills and oil mills, a cinema. Population "The overwhelming majority are Ukrainians. There are few Great Russians in Gulyai-Pole - more teachers and employees. On the contrary, there are a lot of Jewish merchants and artisans who live very friendly with the Ukrainian villagers."

Meanwhile, the situation changed again: no sooner had the news of the revolution in Germany reached Ukraine than another coup took place in Kyiv: the hetman fled, power passed to the Directory, headed by the very left-wing Ukrainian Social Democrat Vinnichenko, who, as a first duty, sent a delegation to Moscow to negotiate with the Bolsheviks about the world. By an evil irony of fate, while these negotiations were going on, the former Minister of War of the Directorate S. Petlyura seized power, and the Bolsheviks occupied Kharkov without any negotiations, where on January 4, 1919, Comrade Pyatakov, the first Prime Minister of Red Ukraine, received a military parade from the available forces. The trouble was that there were only 3 or 4 regiments of forces, because after the Brest Peace, when Germany, together with Ukraine, almost devoured half of Russia, none of the most courageous revolutionaries even thought that in an instant her omnipotence could collapse, and Ukraine will again "open up" to the revolution. However, it soon became clear that all the work on "clearing the territory" was carried out by Ukrainian partisans. No one knew what kind of people they were, they were afraid of them, suspecting them of nationalism, the kulaks, and in general, the devil knows what, but the well-known party freethinker V. A. Antonov-Ovseenko, who was put in command of the Ukrainian Front, was not afraid to bet on these parts. And, in general, this strategy justified itself. Shchors and Bozhenko took Kyiv from the Petliurists, Grigoriev recaptured Nikolaev and Kherson, where, after a 3-hour artillery duel, the Greeks and French were beaten by him, who started an intervention, after which he also took Odessa. Makhno held back the advance of the whites in the southeast and, although he did not achieve much success, the barrier seemed to put up a reliable one, asking, like all partisans, for only one thing: weapons. Viktor Belash, who had come specially to knock out rifles and cartridges in Kharkov, was treated kindly by Antonov-Ovseenko and left full of hope. Together with him, a group of anarchists of the Nabat federation went to Gulyai-Pole to organize the work of the cultural enlightenment department. Makhno, having received the brigade commissar Ozerov on the staff, became officially a red brigade commander, subordinate to the commander of the 2nd Ukrainian army, comrade Skachko. True, he honestly admitted that there were never other units in the army besides the Makhno brigade.

Of course, none of the Bolsheviks expected such a fortunate combination of circumstances. While the partisans were fighting on the fronts, they could calmly increase their power, start a Cheka, send food detachments to the village and generally feel at home, while scolding the partisans and discussing whether it was time, say, to "remove" Makhno because of several unsuccessful battles ? In addition, on April 10, in Gulyai-Pole, the third congress of "free councils" incomprehensible to the Bolsheviks took place, which announced mobilizations for the Insurgent Army and ended with rather harsh political declarations: "Down with commissar power and appointees!" - "Down with the Chechens - modern secret police!" "Long live the freely elected Workers' and Peasants' Soviets!"

Kharkov "Izvestiya" - the main newspaper of red Ukraine - immediately reacted with the article: "Down with the Makhnovshchina!" Mentioning the Makhnovist congress, the author of the editorial demanded that an end be put to the "disgraceful things" that were happening in the "kingdom of Makhno," and for this, to send agitators, "wagons of literature" and instructors for the organization of Soviet power to the region. Although no one knew what was going on in the "kingdom of Makhno", because, of course, not a single newspaper clicker was there.

At this moment, Antonov-Ovseenko decided to pay an inspection visit to the "kingdom of Makhno". On April 29, at the Gulyai-Pole station, the front was met by a troika. In the village, troops lined up at the front broke out the "Internationale". "A short, youthful, dark-eyed man in a hat on one side, came out to meet Antonov. He saluted: brigade commander Batko Makhno. We are holding on successfully at the front. There is a battle for Mariupol." A face-to-face conversation followed, after which Antonov-Ovseenko sharply wrote to the editors of Izvestia: “The article is full of factual lies and is directly provocative ... Makhno and his brigade ... deserve not the swearing of officialdom, but the fraternal gratitude of all revolutionary workers and peasants".

Commander-2 Skachko - on the same occasion: "Allocate money for the brigade, uniforms, entrenching tools, at least half a staff of telephone equipment, camp kitchens, cartridges, doctors, one armored train on the Dolya-Mariupol line." Never before had Makhno been so interested in an alliance with the Bolsheviks as after the visit of Antonov-Ovseenko. Never with any of them had he established comradely relations on such a level. He was waiting for help, which would testify to one more thing: trust in him.

But absolutely nothing of what Antonov-Ovseenko asked for was done. The newspaper persecution of the Makhnovists did not stop. They did not receive weapons. What can you do? The Bolshevik strategists of Denikin's main attack were waiting for Tsaritsyn, but he struck at Makhno, rushed through the Ukraine straight to Moscow. And it was then that the morally beaten Commander-2 Skachko blabbed, justifying himself that he did not supply Makhno with weapons on purpose and, therefore, thousands of people were sent to the slaughter on purpose, thinking that it would do. Of course, all this double-dealing policy should have ended in disaster, but for the time being everything went well. Speaking on April 1 at the plenum of the Moscow Soviet, Trotsky assured the audience that the Southern Front would soon face decisive changes, which he painted in exceptionally rosy tones. Victory over the Whites seemed close and inevitable when a catastrophe broke out: Grigoriev's division, which had returned from Odessa, found mercilessly operating food detachments in their native villages and flared in revolt in half of Ukraine.

A telegram from Grigoriev to Makhno was intercepted: "Father! Why are you looking at the communists? Beat them! Ataman Grigoriev." Makhno did not answer. On May 17, Shkuro's cavalry cut through the front at the junction of the Makhno brigade and the 13th army of the Southern Front and in one day traveled about fifty kilometers. There was nothing to close the gap. In the reserve of the 2nd Army there was one "international" regiment of 400 bayonets. After a week of fighting, Skachko melancholy stated: "Makhno actually does not exist."

Indeed, the brigade, deprived of firearms, was turned into some kind of bloody scum, in which, however, the hooves of the horses of the Caucasian division Shkuro still continued to tangle. Makhno began to retreat, than his fate was decided: he was instantly ranked among the rebels, and on May 25, at the apartment of H. Rakovsky, the second red prime minister of Ukraine, a meeting of the Council of Workers 'and Peasants' Defense took place with the agenda: "Makhnovshchina and its liquidation." Note that nothing has happened yet. Moreover, the Makhnovists managed to literally stop the advance of the Whites with bayonet attacks. It would seem that a simple sense of self-preservation should have prompted the Bolsheviks that they should not fight Makhno's fictitious rebellion, but, on the contrary, support it! So no, and the sense of self-preservation is gone! Why? None of the Bolsheviks, apparently, had any idea what forces Denikin had concentrated on the front by that time. But on May 26, VUTsIK adopted a regulation on socialist land use, that is, on the socialization of land for state farms. And in this light, the Fourth Congress of "Free Soviets", scheduled for June 15, was completely unnecessary to the Bolsheviks.

Even when the Makhno brigade was formed, Italian rifles were given to it in such a way that, in which case, it would be possible to leave them without cartridges. For neither German nor Russian cartridges, which could be obtained in battle, were suitable for Italian rifles ...

To top it all off, Comrade Trotsky arrived in the Ukraine before the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic. Hurrying, on the train, in his personal newspaper "On the Road" he publishes the article "Makhnovshchina", reprinted on June 4 by the Kharkov "Izvestia". In it, all the failures of the Red Army are pushed onto Makhno. "Scratch a Makhnovist and you will find a Grigorievian. And more often than not, you don't even need to scrape: a frantic fist barking at the Communists or a petty speculator sticks out." It's in the trenches - kulaks and speculators?! The defensive remarks of Antonov-Ovseenko and Skachko were useless: the Ukrainian Front had 2 weeks left to exist, the 2nd Army was transformed into the 14th, Skachko was removed, Voroshilov took his place, who dreamed of "getting Makhno" in order to do revolutionary justice over him. ..

Makhno did not know what to do. He did not want to die and wanted to leave behind the place of a revolutionary. On June 9, from the Gaichur station, he sends two long messages to Trotsky (copies to Lenin, Kamenev), in which he asks to be relieved of his command: “I perfectly understand the attitude of the central government towards me. I am absolutely convinced that this government considers the insurgent movement incompatible with its state activities. She also believes that this movement is connected personally with me ... It is necessary that I leave my post. "

Suddenly, with a detachment of horsemen of several hundred people, mostly old rebels of 1918, Makhno appears in Aleksandrovsk and surrenders his command affairs, not responding to requests to protect the city. It passes to the right bank of the Dnieper and dissolves in the deserted spaces of the red rear.

On June 14, making sure that Makhno had left and it would not be possible to lure him into an armored train, the enraged Voroshilov ordered the execution of the commissar of the Ozerov brigade and the commander of the sapper units of the brigade, the "beautiful soul of the young idealist" Mikhalev-Pavlenko. Makhnovist units are poured into the 14th Army. On July 7, Trotsky wrote in the capital's newspaper Izvestia Narodnogo Commissariat for Military Affairs: "Denikin was on the verge of death, from which he could only be separated by a few days, but he correctly guessed the scum of boiling kulaks and deserters." The catastrophe of 1919 ended with the failure of the Red Front all the way to Tula. Comrade Trotsky did not want to take responsibility. Comrade Trotsky remained clean.

Meanwhile, at the Novopomoshchnaya station, Makhno waited for the development of events. The Reds, leaving Ukraine, bypassed him, fearing that some units, not wanting to part with their homeland, would "stick" to him. After the retreat from the Dnieper to the Novy Bug, the whole of his former brigade and some red units actually went over to Makhno. They were ready to fight to the end. After the front went north, the Whites formed 2 divisions against Makhno under the command of General Slashchev and decided to crush him. At this time, even the legend of Colonel Kleist, the German genius Makhno, was born among the whites. He, a German colonel, was not ashamed to lose battles, but the "partisans", the "rabid peasant" were ashamed. In early September, the Whites made their first attempts to knock Makhno off his positions: as a result, he almost occupied Yelisavetgrad, saved at the cost of a heroic officer counterattack. Perhaps the Makhnovists would have won the battle if they had ammunition. Only having rolled back under Uman and, by secret agreement, handed over the wounded to the Petliurists, they received a certain amount of ammunition in addition, which helped them to withstand the next battle. The Petliurists were afraid of the Whites and were ready to supply cartridges to anyone, just to delay the moment of meeting with Denikin's men. On September 25, Makhno suddenly announced that the retreat was over and that the real war would begin tomorrow morning. With some supernatural instinct, he determined that he had one chance to save the army: to attack the core of the pursuers and destroy it.

The Battle of Peregonovka is one of the strangest events of the Civil War. Several memoirs have been preserved about him (Arshinov, Volin, several White Guard officers), from which it is clear that you cannot call it a major military operation. It was just a furious, brutal battle, where they really fought not for life, but for death. And at the same time, the outcome of this battle influenced the entire further course of the war. Three and a half thousand partisans escaped from the encirclement. But it turned out that they escaped into the outer space of history.

The reconnaissance sent to Pyatikhatki, Yekaterinoslav and Aleksandrovsk did not find the enemy. The rear garrisons of Denikin were extremely weak: over the Dnieper, from Nikolaev to Kherson, there were no troops, in Nikolaev - 150 state guard officers. Naturally, in such an environment, Makhno resurrected like a Phoenix, once again flying to Guyai-Pole and Berdyansk. Having shattered the port through which the supply of the Volunteer Army went and shredded all the railways that came to hand, he actually paralyzed Denikin's rear. “This uprising, which took on such broad dimensions, upset our rear and weakened our front in the most difficult time for it,” A.I. admitted. Denikin. But Makhno, having secured the victory for the Reds, tried to his own ruin. True, he counted on something else: that his heroism would finally be judged according to their merits. He wanted to serve the revolution. He just could not be a meek executor of someone else's will. And that's why, like Oedipus, he was doomed to go from one disappointment to another. However, at first Makhno reveled in triumph. He again commanded the army and was the only owner of the vast territory on both sides of the Dnieper. Aleksandrovsk, late, but still warm autumn, solemn entry into the city: he is with "Mother Galina" in the sky-colored landau, accompanied by all his picturesque retinue ...

The surprise of the townsfolk: something will happen?

Announcement of liberties to the population ...

In Alexandrovsk, Makhno finally realized what he had dreamed of all his life: the Congress of Independent Free Councils of all the territory subject to him. Not long before the congress, Comrade Lubim from the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries came to see Volin.

An interesting conversation took place.

You are calling a congress of workers and peasants. It will make a huge difference. But what are you doing? No explanation, no propaganda, no list of candidates! And what will happen if the peasantry sends reactionary deputies to you who demand to convene a Constituent Assembly? What will you do if the counter-revolutionaries fail your congress?

Volin felt the responsibility of the moment:

If today, in the midst of the revolution, after everything that has happened, the peasants send counter-revolutionaries and monarchists to the congress, then - you hear - my life's work was a complete mistake. And I have no choice but to blow my brains out of the revolver that you see on the table ...

I'm serious, - Lubim began.

And I'm serious, - answered Volin.

Makhno opened the congress, but refused to preside. This surprised the peasants, but gradually they got used to it and in 3 days they gradually developed and approved the principles of the “free Soviet system”, which for Makhno sounded sweeter than the ode to “To Liberty”.

Meanwhile, the Whites came to their senses and decided to put an end to Makhno after all. As a result, the rebels were forced to leave Aleksandrovsk and move the "capital" of their republic to Yekaterinoslav, fenced off from the whites by the Dnieper and the front, stretched between the two bows of the Dnieper, like a bowstring. Slashchev, again moved against the partisans, realized that, having mastered the territory, Makhno had lost his main quality - maneuverability. Therefore, without dispersing his strength, he strikes in one place, along the Pyatikhatki-Ekaterinoslav railway. The front is breaking. The capital Makhno is in the hands of the Whites. From the suburban mud, the dad counterattacks eight times, trying to recapture the city - in vain! It ruins all his plans. He dreamed of meeting the Reds as the owner of an anarchist free republic with the capital in the largest city of eastern Ukraine, but once again he turned out to be the commander of a seditious partisan detachment, which was also fairly battered by the whites.

On January 1, the long-awaited meeting took place. A wave of joint victorious rallies swept through. On January 4, Commander-14 Uborevich issued a secret order to destroy all Makhno's bands. But to start open action against the rebels, a pretext was needed. He didn't have to wait long. On January 8, the Makhnovist headquarters in Aleksandrovsk received a categorical order to move the Insurgent Army to the Polish Front. The army did not obey either Uborevich or any red commander, either formally or in fact. The Reds knew about it. Moreover, they counted on the fact that the Makhnovists would not obey the order, which Uborevich let slip to Yakir.

But the Makhnovists not only disobeyed the order. The Revolutionary Military Council of the insurgents issued a Declaration, which the Bolsheviks could not perceive otherwise than as an attempt to snatch the political initiative from them. It was colossal audacity. A year before the Kronstadt rebellion, the declaration formulated all the basic postulates of the most hated heresy for the Bolsheviks - "For Soviets without Communists." In addition, as expected, the Makhnovists' refusal to go to the Polish front came to Uborevich's headquarters, primarily because "50% of the fighters, the entire headquarters and the army commander were ill with typhus."

The answer completely satisfied the Bolsheviks. On January 9, F. Levenzon's brigade and the troops of the 41st division, who, together with the Makhnovists, occupied Aleksandrovsk, made an attempt to capture Makhno's headquarters, located in the best hotel in the city. The headquarters cut through the city along with the "father's hundred", and Makhno himself, dressed in a peasant dress, left the city in a cart, unnoticed by anyone. The reward for him was another declaration of "outlaw" ...

From typhus and military failures Makhno moved away only in the spring of 1920. According to the detachment, one by one, the "army" gathered - this time a small, five thousand, detachment of well-armed people, certainly mounted. One of the bloodiest campaigns began, the mechanism of which, debugged in previous years, worked with depressing clarity.

Communists were killed. The communist organizations were destroyed. In one village, in another, in a third. Carts. Leaflets. Blood. There is nothing romantic about this. Moreover, there is no hope. But there is one undoubted truth in this - the truth of resistance.

"To die or to win - that's what is now facing the peasantry of Ukraine ... But we cannot all die, there are too many of us, we are humanity, therefore, we will win" - this is how Makhno experienced this feeling of immensity. 1920 is the year of continuous peasant uprisings, the last war of the peasantry for their rights. The peasants lost it. Lost on the fields of decisive battles, lost politically. And although the NEP - a kind of peace protocol - was signed, it seemed, with the interest of the peasantry, in the 29th, when they again began to take away land for collective farms, it turned out that everyone had completely lost. There is no one to defend the rights before the government, and there is no one to rise up in revolt.

Makhno was the last who tried to provide his descendants with at least some kind of “right”, which in a revolution is obtained only by force.

The peasantry did not want to live according to Bolshevik laws. They did not want to turn into an "agricultural proletariat". It, despite all the losses of the Civil War, was still too strong, too independent. It defended its rights before the whites with weapons in their hands. It was still huge and conscious of its immensity.

In June, Wrangel withdrew from the Crimea, and Russia's "last and decisive battle" broke out in the south of Ukraine for its future. The package of laws adopted by the Wrangel government would undoubtedly have become a healing medicine for the country in 1917, but in 1920 the pill had to be pushed through by force: so the battles were of such intensity that the Civil War had not known before. All summer Makhno's army dangled in the red rear, methodically destroying it: disarming units, destroying food detachments (which it succeeded in, food requisitioning in the "Makhnovist" areas was completely failed). And only in the fall, when a bullet shattered Makhno's ankle in the battle near Izyum, the army stopped for a whole month, occupying Starobelsk at the very border with Russia, where truly extraordinary things began to happen.

First, a representative of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries ("minority" - that is, those recognizing cooperation with the Bolsheviks) arrived at Makhno and hinted that in the face of such a counter as Wrangel, true revolutionaries should forget all differences and unite. The Makhnovists immediately realized that the messenger was choosing the opinion of certain Bolshevik circles. A meeting of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Army was held, at which even the most "red" among the Makhnovists, Kurylenko and Belash, spoke in the sense that the fight against the Bolsheviks should not be stopped.

Makhno did not resist: he adhered to the line of the most severe agrarian terror, which, after all, was also an argument in politics. He made it clear that this time you won't get off with talk about "reconciliation" - he found a scythe on a stone, and that if negotiations, then seriously - with seals, publicity and guarantees.

And in this his calculation turned out to be correct: only the fear that at the moment of a decisive attack on Wrangel the Insurgent Army would again move off and go to smash the red rear, forced the Bolsheviks to negotiate. In September, Ivanov, authorized by the RVS of the Yuzhfront, arrived in Starobelsk, no longer disguised as Left Socialist-Revolutionaries. On September 29, the Central Committee of the CP(b)U, represented by Rakovsky, confirmed the decision to negotiate with Makhno.

Question: What was Makhno counting on when concluding an agreement with the Bolsheviks? After all, he knew them well. No worse than they are. And yet he hoped that this time he had finished, and that they would have to reckon with him, at least in the face of Wrangel. Well, who knew that the "black baron" would be defeated so soon! Perekop fortifications were considered impregnable. And that the wind will drive water out of Sivash ...

On November 3, 1920, the Whites locked themselves in the Crimea. Already on November 5, Karetnikov's corps received an order from Commander Kork to cross the Sivash and take up positions on the Lithuanian Peninsula. Karetnikov was against the agreement with the Bolsheviks. He understood that the corps was being put on the rampage and tactfully refused, citing intelligence data. Only blood shed on equal footing could seal the cause in this alliance. Therefore, after waiting for the approach of the 52nd and 15th divisions, on the night of November 8, he goes with them to storm, surprisingly becoming the savior of the Reds, when General Barbovich's cavalry fell on them, entrenched on the edge of the Crimean coast. The Makhnovists used their usual maneuver: leaning towards the "lava", they suddenly went in different directions, leaving 200 carts with machine guns lashing with fire in the enemy's path. After the capture of Simferopol, Karetnikov's corps was withdrawn to the Evpatoria region. Bad rumors spread. There was no connection with Gulyai-Pole. Therefore, "summoned to a meeting" Karetnikov galloped - and was killed on the way. The corps, left without a commander, thanks to the sympathy of the red units, left the Crimea without loss. But on the mainland, fresh units that did not take part in the defeat of Wrangel were waiting for him, which practically destroyed him during the week-long battles.

On October 2, the agreement was signed. Unprecedented was not only its meaning, which implies, for example, an amnesty for anarchists and freedom of anarchist propaganda, but also the very formula of consent concluded by the Insurgent Army and the government of Ukraine. Apparently, Makhno himself was blinded by the results of his victory: after 8 months of damned banditry, the long-awaited peace came. His wound was treated by Moscow professors, his fighters rested up in full-time Red Army hospitals!

And most importantly, the army finally received a supply of weapons, which seemed to be the height of confidence. Makhno did not yet know that his elite units, the 5,000-strong “Karetnikov Corps,” would have to play almost the main role in forcing the Sivash. Which without weapons would hardly be possible. But as soon as Wrangel fell, everything was over: all the clauses of the "Agreement" were instantly annulled, the Makhnovist delegates were arrested in Kharkov, Makhno was "outlawed." He did not expect such a meanness. Now he had only one thing left to do - to wait for his best parts - the Krymchaks, in order to talk seriously with the traitors. The meeting was to be held on December 7 in the village of Kermenchik. Yellow frosty dust swirled in the air. Old Man saw two hundred exhausted horsemen. Marchenko galloped up to him with a crooked grin on his face:

I have the honor to report that the Crimean army has returned... Makhno was silent. Looking at the faces of his comrades, Marchenko concluded:

Yes, brothers, now I know what communists are...

Makhno's raids of 1921 are interesting to follow except for the historian: drawn on the map, they resemble the repetitive dance of some kind of insect. Obviously, this kind of interest was shown by Frunze's deputy R. Eideman, before he realized that Makhno was walking along strictly laid routes, changing horses here, leaving the wounded here, replenishing stocks of weapons here ... Having calculated the trajectory of the detachment, on June 21st Eideman for the first time, he abandons the tactics of pursuit and inflicts a counter blow on Makhno. And then there was just agony, which lasted another 2 months.

Makhno was doomed. He lived as early as 1919, and the year 1921 has already come. The revolution has won. The winners enjoyed its fruits with might and main. Learned new positions. Trying on new jackets. The ebullient, crazy time of NEP was approaching - the time of the market and the ephemeral luxury of being ...

Makhno, on the other hand, was banditry with a handful of the same, who had lost everything and were ready for anything partisans. What the war taught them was no longer needed by people and became dangerous for them. The Makhnovists had to disappear. The safest thing is to die. But Makhno could not reconcile himself. The war gave him everything - love, comrades, human respect and gratitude, power ... The war chained him to itself with revenge: it killed all his brothers, burned his home, accustomed his heart to indifference and ruthlessness ... He was left alone: ​​the war destroyed almost all of his friends. He knew why they fell, why they did not reconcile, he knew the law of battle: bow your head - they will put you on your knees. But he knew only his own truth, not wanting to know the truth of the changed time: during this time a new generation had grown up who wanted to live, not fight. For such is the law of youth, the law of life. And he, with his 19th year, in his heart became contrary to this law.

He was overstark and carried death in himself and was no longer needed. During the persecution of the last Makhnovists by armored cars, the peasants - for the first time in the entire war! - pointed out the direction to the extermination squads ... Looking at the haggard, half-mad faces of the rebels, the peasants also understood: uh-uh, but what good can you look for from these. Enough. Bad, naughty, cursed - nothing will come of them, except for anxiety and thinness ....

At the crossing over the Ingul, a bullet hit Makhno in the back of the head and exited his cheek, opening his face like a saber scar. This was his last, 14th, wound, which was supposed to put an end to his fate, similar to those that were placed in the fates of almost all of his comrades.

But Makhno survived. Probably, the Lord decided to test him to the end: to drag him through all the bitterness of loss and outcasts, emigration, betrayal of friends, poverty...

In 1934, the flu, superimposed on chronic tuberculosis, resolved him from earthly fetters in a provincial Parisian hospital. The incomparable partisan to the end drank the cup of earthly existence.