Most people know the Russian Civil War as a clash between Red and White armies. Somewhere on the chaotic steppe of southern Ukraine, however, a third force emerged — a scrappy, peasant-led anarchist movement that tried to build a stateless society in the middle of total war. At its center stood Nestor Makhno: short, intense, chain-smoking, and absolutely unwilling to bow to tsarists, nationalists, or Bolsheviks.
For a few brief, brutal years, his “free territory” on the left bank of the Dnipro River – the Makhnovshchina – became one of the most radical political experiments of the 20th century.
From Poor Village Boy to Prison Radical
Nestor Ivanovich Makhno was born on October 27, 1889, in the village of Huliaipole in southeastern Ukraine. His childhood was defined by poverty. His father died young, leaving the family struggling to survive in a social order where peasants had almost no way to move up.
That experience hardened him early. By his late teens, Makhno had joined a tiny anarchist group in Huliaipole. In 1906, he and his comrades plotted attacks on agents of the Russian Empire. One of those actions – killing a policeman – led to his arrest and a life sentence in Moscow’s notorious Butyrka prison.
Prison didn’t break him; it sharpened him. Behind bars he met Peter Arshinov, a veteran anarchist thinker. The two spent years debating theory, writing, and planning for a future revolution. When the tsarist regime fell in the February Revolution of 1917, Makhno walked out of prison with a clear idea of what he wanted to build.
He went straight home.
Soviets, Land, and the Promise of a Different Ukraine
Back in Huliaipole, Makhno threw himself into organizing peasants and workers. Across the collapsing Russian Empire, local councils – soviets – were springing up to demand land reform, political power, and self-determination. Makhno helped run the soviet in his hometown.
His goals were blunt and radical:
- Break the power of big landowners
- Redistribute land to peasants
- Put local workers and peasants in charge of their own affairs
Industrialization had hit parts of Ukraine hard in the late 19th century, exposing workers to socialist and anarchist ideas. In the Huliaipole region, much of the wealth was in the hands of families from the Mennonite community – German and Dutch Anabaptists invited to settle there in the 18th century. To Makhno, their estates symbolized the injustice of the old regime. His soviet targeted these holdings for redistribution.
Politically, he despised authoritarianism in every form. He opposed Lenin’s idea of a centralized revolutionary dictatorship, but he was initially willing to cooperate with other leftists against the old order. That willingness would be tested as the First World War collapsed into civil war.
In 1918, when the Central Powers invaded Ukraine, Makhno’s local movement organized peasant resistance around Huliaipole. He himself traveled to Moscow to seek support, hoping to tie his local struggle to the wider revolutionary wave.
A New Ukraine, Many Revolutions
Beyond Huliaipole, a different revolution was unfolding.
In March 1917, Ukrainian activists formed the Central Rada, a national council based in Kyiv. Led by the historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky, it brought together Ukrainian socialists, Russian social democrats, Jewish parties, Polish representatives, and other groups. At first, many wanted autonomy within a democratic Russia. After the Bolsheviks seized power in Petrograd in October 1917, the Rada moved toward full independence and declared the Ukrainian People’s Republic.
Their vision was a social-democratic state with equal rights, universal suffrage, a revived Ukrainian language, and a national army. But they were operating in a political minefield.
The Bolsheviks rejected Ukrainian independence and ordered the Red Army to seize Kyiv. The Rada’s forces were pushed out. They could only return when German and Austrian troops marched into Ukraine, not to create a free republic, but to stop Bolshevik expansion and secure food supplies. Soon, the Central Powers set up their own puppet regime – the Hetmanate under General Pavlo Skoropadsky.
Resistance exploded again. Peasants, nationalists, and various partisan bands rose against the Hetman. In and around Huliaipole, Makhno’s supporters attacked Austrian units and disrupted their control. In April 1918, Skoropadsky was toppled by forces loyal to Symon Petliura, but instead of peace, Ukraine slid into full-scale civil war.
Building the Makhnovshchina: Anarchism on the Steppe
In this chaos, Makhno and his comrades tried to turn theory into reality.
From a base in Huliaipole, they began carving out a broad territory on the left bank of the Dnipro River. This zone – later known as the Makhnovshchina – was run according to anarchist principles:
- Land was seized from big landowners and shared among peasants.
- Local councils were elected and ran their own affairs.
- A peasant militia, the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine, defended the region.
Makhno surrounded himself with other prominent anarchists and organizers: Fedir Shchus, Volin (Vsevolod Eichenbaum), Vasyl Kurilenko, Peter Arshinov, and others. Together, they tried to build a bottom-up society while fighting off multiple enemies.
They supported the idea of Ukrainian self-determination but rejected Petliura’s revived Ukrainian People’s Republic as too nationalist and too bourgeois. Instead, they imagined a federation of free, self-governing communities.
When the armistice of November 1918 sent German and Austrian troops home, Ukraine’s power vacuum turned into a black hole. The Makhnovists moved quickly to expand their territory. They clashed with Petliura’s nationalists and with White Russian forces trying to restore a centralized Russian Empire.
Makhno, who now carried the nickname Batko (“uncle” or “little father”), was a charismatic commander. His forces were famous for daring raids, sudden strikes, and the inventive use of cavalry and machine guns. They also became experts at playing larger powers against each other, switching alliances as needed to keep their autonomy.
A Radical, Multinational Experiment
The Makhnovshchina was remarkable for its time.
It was multiethnic and multireligious. Ukrainians, Russians, Jews, Greeks, and others lived and fought in the territory. Officially, there were no distinctions of rank or rights based on ethnicity or religion. Jews served in the Insurgent Army and in the movement’s leadership, which helped keep antisemitism – common elsewhere in the region – relatively muted in Makhno’s ranks.
Russian anarchists were also welcomed, even though the movement was rooted in Ukrainian peasant society.
The exception was the Mennonite communities. Because many Mennonites were prosperous landowners, they were often treated as class enemies, and some suffered violent attacks from Makhnovist fighters and local peasants. The line between social revolution and revenge could be thin, especially in villages that had suffered generations of exploitation.
Friends, Enemies, and a Deadly “Alliance”
As White armies pushed into Ukraine from the south and east, Makhno found himself squeezed between multiple hostile forces. To survive, he tried to build alliances – most notably with the Bolsheviks and a warlord called Nykyfor Hryhoriv.
For a time, the Revolutionary Insurgent Army cooperated with the Red Army against shared enemies. But the partnership quickly soured. The Bolsheviks’ secret police, the Cheka, repressed local soviets and independent activists. Makhno’s libertarian socialism clashed with Moscow’s drive for centralized control.
Hryhoriv, meanwhile, revealed himself as an antisemite responsible for pogroms. That crossed a line for Makhno. In 1919, during a Makhnovist Regional Congress, the Bolsheviks denounced the movement as traitors. White forces broke through Red lines and attacked Makhnovist territory. Under pressure from all sides, Makhno’s army was forced to retreat across the Dnipro to the town of Uman.
Yet the movement refused to die. In July 1919, Makhnovist troops assassinated Hryhoriv, eliminating a dangerous rival. They even struck a temporary deal with Petliura’s forces to hit the Whites together. In November 1919, they recaptured Huliaipole, re-establishing their stronghold – at least for a while.
Peak Power and Typhus
Late 1919 and early 1920 marked the high point of the Makhnovshchina.
White general Anton Denikin’s Army of South Russia was driven back across much of Ukraine. In areas reclaimed by Makhnovist forces, businesses and farms were returned to worker and peasant control. Local soviets resumed their work. Volin, now chair of the Military Revolutionary Council, pushed for maximum autonomy for every soviet in the region.
On paper, it looked like a glimpse of a different revolution: one without a single party or centralized state.
Reality, though, was harsher. By the end of 1919, a devastating typhus epidemic swept the territory. The disease tore through exhausted peasants and soldiers, weakening the movement just as the Red Army regrouped.
The Bolsheviks’ Red Terror – a brutal campaign of repression – hit Ukraine hard, killing an estimated hundreds of thousands of peasants. Much of what Makhno had built was destroyed. Still, geopolitical necessity forced yet another twist: when White forces under Baron Pyotr Wrangel advanced from Crimea and the Polish Army, alongside Petliura’s troops, moved on Kyiv, the Reds needed Makhno again.
The Starobilsk Agreement created another short-lived alliance. Makhnovist and Red forces together pushed back the White offensive, inflicting serious damage on Wrangel’s army and helping to end the last major White threat in the south. In return, Makhno regained a degree of autonomy and re-established control over a large swath of territory between the Dnipro and the Azov Sea.
Betrayal and Exile
Once the Whites were defeated, the Bolsheviks no longer needed their anarchist allies.
Lenin demanded that Makhnovist forces join the Red Army’s planned invasion of Poland. Makhno refused. His movement had always been rooted in defending Ukrainian peasants, not serving as cannon fodder in Moscow’s foreign wars.
The response was swift. The Cheka and Red Army units moved to dismantle independent soviets and disarm the Insurgent Army. Makhnovist units resisted, but they were outgunned, undersupplied, and worn down by years of continuous war.
By now, the peasants of the region were deeply tired. They had supported land reform and local democracy, but their villages had been marched through by armies, devastated by disease, and stripped of resources. With no powerful allies and no fresh reserves, the Makhnovshchina could not hold.
Makhno and a small circle of comrades retreated westward, fighting a guerrilla war as they went. They crossed into Romania, then eventually made their way to Poland and finally to France. In Paris, Makhno lived in poverty, working odd jobs and writing about his experiences. He died there in 1934, far from Huliaipole and the steppe he had fought so hard to free.
What Makhno’s “Free Territory” Left Behind
Bolshevik War Communism swept away most traces of the Makhnovshchina. Grain and resources were seized from the countryside to feed the cities and the Red Army. Even Lenin’s later New Economic Policy, which relaxed some controls, kept far more centralization than Makhno or his comrades would ever have accepted.
And yet, the Makhnovshchina left a mark.
- It showed that peasants and workers could, for a time, run their own councils, seize land, and organize defense without a centralized state.
- It offered a radical alternative to both tsarist monarchy and Bolshevik one-party rule.
- It proved resilient, surviving multiple invasions, epidemics, and betrayals over several years.
Ultimately, the experiment was crushed by overwhelming military force, international isolation, and sheer exhaustion. No foreign power backed Makhno. No major state recognized his “free territory.” In a world of nation-states and empires, a stateless enclave was always going to be vulnerable.
Still, Makhno’s story echoed through later decades. Anarchist movements from Spain to Latin America drew inspiration from his brief, fiery attempt to build a society “without masters” in the middle of a civil war.
For most people, the Russian Civil War is still about Reds and Whites. But on the Ukrainian steppe, for a short, wild moment, there was also black – the color of anarchism – flying over villages where peasants tried to live without tsars, generals, or party bosses telling them what to do.
