Today, we in the west struggle to tell the stories of former Soviet peoples outside of
Russia.
Trust me, Russia wants it that way.
In 1917, the Russian Revolution triggered a civil war that ravaged, not just Russia,
but a lot of the people in these former Soviet countries.
In Ukraine, one man with his band of rebels fought the forces of the tsar and the communist
bolsheviks alike.
And what was the cause they fought for?
Well… freedom.
Anarchist Communist freedom.
However, what happens to such a cause when in order to fight it you must give up a little
of the very thing you fought for?
This is the story of Nestor Makhno, and the Ukrainian Black army.
Nestor Makhno was not a former prince, nor a lifelong philosopher.
He was born between 1888 and 89 to a poor peasant family in what today we call Ukraine.
Ukraine today borders Russia, but in this period, it was part of a larger Russian empire.
That said, Ukrainians have a distinct culture and language.
At barely a year old, Nestor’s father died and he and his seven siblings lived lives
working farm labour for the other peasants.
He eventually found himself as a worker in a foundry when at the age of 17, Makhno joined
an anarchist group called Gulyai-Polye.
One year later, he became the leader of an anarchist Robin Hood-like group and gained
a lot of local notoriety.
Back then, Anarchists weren’t exactly the peace-loving folk they are today and quickly
Nestor found himself on trial for participating in a terrorist attack that killed a police
officer.
He was sentenced to death by the noose, but because he was so young, they commuted him
to an indefinite prison sentence in Moscow.
Nestor was an awful prisoner.
He often bristled against the discipline of prison life.
Often he’d be placed in irons or put in solitary confinement.
His anarchist ideology grew under the mentorship of an older prisoner named Peter Archinov.
He taught Makhno about the work of prominent anarchist philosophers like Mikhail Bakunin
and Peter Kropotkin.
His mind grew, and his anger swelled until he ran right smack into the tides of history.
In March of 1917, massive protests, street battles with police, and mutinous soldiers
challenged the legitimacy of the rule of Russian Tsar Nicholas II.
Reluctantly, to prevent a complete collapse of the country, Nicholas abdicated the throne
to his brother Mikhail, who declined it, suddenly ending centuries of rule by the Romanov dynasty
over Russia rather abruptly.
A hastily organized provisional government came to power and quickly tried to make major
reforms to keep Russia together.
They brought about elections and got rid of legal oppression based on religion, family,
or nationality.
They allowed freedom of speech and protest for the first time, and important for this
story, gave amnesty to all political prisoners and exiles.
Makhno was free, and just in time for the provisional government to fall, and the real
beginning of what we know of as the Russian Revolution.
In Ukraine, anarchist activity was enjoying a new life.
Nestor Makhno, the legend himself returned to Ukraine and became commander of an anarchist
army referred to as the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine.
Often we refer to this group today as the Ukrainian Black Army, but many at the time
referred to them as the Makhnovshchyna.
The army ran a guerilla campaign against monarchist forces, also known as white russians.
He’s credited for pioneering ramshackle technologies in this fight such as the techanka,
which is a horse drawn platform for mounting a machine gun.
Often, historians refer to these “makhnovists” as bandits or sometimes even associate them
with a local right wing Kulak movement.
I think it might be prudent to point out that stories of this period are contradictory,
and without any actors lacking a vested interest in placing a verdict on Makhno.
Here is where we find one of the first big historical controversies about this black
army.
Around the same time, the chaos of the revolution resulted in a number of anti-Jewish pogroms,
a Russian word for random acts of violence, often used to refer to attacks on Jewish communities.
To this day, several authors claim that Makhno organized massacres of Jewish Ukrainians.
This is a tough claim to verify.
Ukraine was a pretty chaotic place in this period, and there is a vested interest by
SOMEONE to make a connection between Ukrainian independence and anti-semitism.
Many Soviet historians after these attacks also seem unable to find this link.
However, this doesn’t completely clear Makhno.
There’s just a lot of uncertainty, and we should be aware that for all his philosophies
on egalitarianism and liberty, Makhno was a pretty violent person.
So back to the fighting.
Nestor began with a group of five men.
They stormed the house of a wealthy russian family, killed the residents, and stole rifles,
horses, and police uniforms.
Using these uniforms, they snuck into a ball for the local aristocratic gentry and killed
the participants.
With local support, and the stolen horses, they bounced around Ukraine performing similar
attacks on areas loyal to the Tsar.
The Tsarists responded by raising an army made up of retired Tsarist generals, armies
from the Caucasus, and strange semi-military organizations called Cossacks backed up with
material support from allies in Great Britain, The United States, Japan, France, and China.
The resistance Makhno led used creative, asymmetric warfare.
The Ukrainians called Nestor, the nickname of Batko, or little father as he was 5’4”.
Elsewhere in Russia, idealists began to write glowingly of Makhno, and offered him their
services.
At one point, Nestor’s army numbered from 30 to 50 thousand.
By 1920, the black army was in the crosshairs of the Bolsheviks in Moscow.
The commulist red army, led by Leon Trotsky, ordered assassinations of thousands of Ukrainian
villagers who had been loyal to the Makhnovists.
He even withdrew from fighting the tsarists in the region to increase the pressure on
Nestor’s troops.
When the Makhnovists ran a number of military victories,Trotsky offered a deal to work together
against the Tsarists.
Nestor agreed on the condition that any anarchist prisoners Trotsky was holding would be freed.
They were invited to a conference on the 25h or 26th of November, and all of Makhno’s
commanders were arrested and subjected to a firing squad.
A Red Wedding-esque level of betrayal.
Oh BLEEP spoilers.
Yech.
Ok, I need a small intermission here with some cats or something, as this story is really
dark.
You wonder why I don’t talk about war much on Step Back, and it's because of things like
this.
I mean, we got the story, but what do we learn from this bloodshed?
All I can think is that the lesson is that we avoid this again if at all possible.
War is bad kids, you heard it here first.
Nestor managed to escape from the conference.
The Bolsheviks had depressed the grass roots support Makhno relied on to function.
The Ukrainians were tired of war, and no one wanted to help him pick up the pieces of his
movement.
The black army was over.
In August of 1921, Nestor escaped Ukraine, sneaking across the border into Romania.
He eventually lived out the rest of his life in Paris as a poor taxi driver.
This is where Nestor Makhno’s story really ends.
He didn’t rally for another attack, and he died rather young at age 45 from tuberculosis.
Makhno’s story is a very interesting one to historians.
For a long time, western historians saw the Russian revolution as a predetermined march
towards Stalin and totalitarianism.
Nestor’s story shows that there was much more up for grabs, and that there was a powerful
libertarian, (not that type of libertarian), alternative to Lenin.
Others argue quite the opposite.
Many Soviet historians point to the Makhnovists’ abandonment of their ideals as a case against
anarchist politics.
Like many in the west, they see Anarchism as unsustainable.
And who knows what to think?
The story of Nestor Makhno is harrowing, and romantic, and dark, and violent, and always
surprising.
Like so many revolutionaries before and after him, Makhno said wonderful things while committing
atrocities.
It’s almost as if any movement born in violence, rules in violence, even if the goal is, as
Nestor said, universal human harmony.
Thanks for watching guys, if this is your first time here, be sure to subscribe and
click the bell icon to make sure you don’t miss the next video.
I also appeared in a video Mr. Beat did at Vidcon.
We asked some questions about history to attendees and overall had a pretty good time.
I want to thank everyone I met at Vidcon.
I had a great time, met a lot of awesome people, and got a lot of really useful advice.
I look forward to going again next year.
Before we go, I’d like to give a heartfelt thanks to these patrons as well as Don and
Kerry Johnson for their support.
I’d like to also highlight this comment on the video about the Raelians from TheZorkiel
about swastikas.
I certainly think TheZorkiel is onto something here, and talking about the long and strange
history of the swastika would be a great, if guaranteed to be demonetised video.
Maybe I’ll make it an unlockable stretch goal on Patreon.
Thanks for watching, and stay tuned for the next Step Back!