Part Two: Nestor Makhno: Anarchist Warlord and Book Club Aficionado

Robert is joined again by Jamie Loftus to continue to discuss Nestor Makhno. Happy Holidays!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome back, go ho, Merry Christmas Holiday, Happy day. Oh
my god today, Actually it might actually be Christmas when
this episode drops. I don't I don't know to Christmas
episodes this year. So you Christmas it is Christmas Eve
when this is dropping. I have well, happy motherfucking Christmas Eve.
You fucking trash goblins. I know, I'm sorry. I love it.

(00:26):
What is it? It's Nail. It's this death wish coffee
and two cups, and I'm fucking ripped to the gills.
Oh my god, I need to start. I don't think
I've been I don't think I've been this high on
stimulants since that time I took math amphetamine to fill
up a hundred and twenty gallons of gasoline. I think
that it should. I need to start being more. We're
just gonna let that slide, are we? I think? Unless

(00:51):
you Unless you don't, are you eating an egg? M hmm?
What does happened? Robert? It's Christmas? No, not that fucking
the seventeen I'm eating a chip. But I ate on
this show once two years ago, and I still get
messages about it. As you should, I can't. I was like,

(01:14):
I want to be openly hostile to my podcast listening audience.
But people will get mad at me if I eat
a goddamn chip. I say kill them all and let
God sort them out, which is my normal attitude towards
my audience. I honestly think that I'm gonna watch the
last episode of The Jinks Christmas Morning just to get
into the right energy, into the right vibe. Yah. Hell yeah,

(01:37):
hell yeah, Well Jamie, yet us we are, we are
all enjoying when I'm I'm sure will be a wonderful
holiday season of hiding alone in our homes from a murderous,
rampaging plague. Um, very very exciting. Um. Hopefully no one

(01:57):
gets evicted. Um, but if you do get evicted, I
hope there's a Nestor mac Now out there too. Um.
Bill barricades and uh and fight the cops on your behalf.
There will be I think there will be. And I
thought there these days. That's I would love to make

(02:18):
a Baby Einstein style show, Little Nesters. That's nice. There
was a fun thing happened in Portland recently where a
family was getting evicted and several hundred people built multiple
layers of defensive barricades and like cow trips to destroy
vehicles that tried to drive through and created such a
formidable defense that the city back down, and then the

(02:38):
city government voted a week later to extend the eviction
moratorium until July. That was fucking thrilling to witness from Afar.
I allow me to say it was very We were
not as successful here when when there were abrupt, intense
evictions for reclaimed houses, and so seeing seeing it where

(03:00):
can work out in Portland was very exciting. Yeah. Yeah,
Nestor would have been would have been proud. Although again,
if he were alive today, he would be in prison
for the rest of his life. Um so, but you
know he would still be sending dispatches out. Yeah, No,
he'd be writing, he'd be he'd be shooting some fire. Yeah.

(03:20):
So we ended our last episode on a very positive note,
but of course that was never going to last. This
is behind the Bastards, and even our holiday episodes about
a historic hero are legally required to be bleak. Now.
I appreciate the I appreciate that you cut it off.
All things were nice. You know, it's kind of like
it reminds me of the two vhs is in the

(03:40):
movie Titanic we're at the end, You're like, oh, things
could get bad or I could just stop watching. Yeah,
at the end of last episode, everybody's free, wearing colorful clothes,
strapped with guns and dancing and fucking in the streets.
It's lovely. Um that does not last. So at the time,
Nestor is kind of helping to turn and helping his

(04:00):
neighbors to turn Gulia Polly into something of an anarchist
wet dream h. Russia is in a real, real, not
good stage, the revolutionary equivalent of puberty. The technically the
country was again technically governed by a guy named Kerensky
and a kind of moderate quasi socialist democratic e socialist regime. Um.
There were workers councils and soviets and stuff all over

(04:23):
the country making attempts to redress inequality. But at the
same time, a lot of the people who had political power,
the social democratic types, you know, they didn't like the regime,
but they felt that rich people should still get to
stay rich, and landowners should keep owning most of their
land and all that stuff. Um. Now, they were also Bolsheviks,
who are very powerful in this period, and they want
to tear all of that ship down, but they also

(04:44):
want to institute a pretty strict hierarchy, a dictatorship of
the proletariat of their own um. And the Bolsheviks are
very powerful and very organized, and opposed to them are
monarchist forces who wanted the czar back um and what
some of the monarchists are. So basically the there's the Bolsheviks,
there's the Democratic Socialists, and then there's the White Russian armies.

(05:04):
And the Whites are anti Bolshevik, and they all kind
of are different. Some of them are monarchists, some of them,
you know, are just nationalists. They all kind of advocate
for they're not they're not like unified ideologically, but they're
all very anti Bolsheviks. Some of them are basically Nazis
and do a lot of massacreing Jewish people. Some of
them are like vaguely democratic. They're complicated. Ship the Russian

(05:26):
Civil War is incredibly complicated and nightmarishly bloody. Nine million
people die. It is a bad time. Yeah, yeah, that's all.
It's good to know what the yardstick for a bad
time is. Yeah. Yeah. And again to put that into perspective,
nine million people die in the Russian Civil War. Another
nine million had died because of World War One, which
the Czar got the country into. So like people being

(05:46):
like the revolution was worse. No, it wasn't like the
revolution happened because there's are got nine million people killed
and another nine million people died because everyone was so
angry and violent and neared to death at that point
that they kept killing. Like but to be air Robert,
he was a white, a wife guy, so you know,
loved his wife, mind loved his wife so much. So

(06:07):
Makno and his anarchists were at this point very far
from the center of ship happening in Russia. You know,
Ukraine is considered a backwater by Russians, who were pretty
racist against Ukrainians by and large, not comprehensively, but a
lot of them. Now, in October of nineteen seventeen, there'd
been a Bolshevik Kutta which had been followed by an
anti Bolshevik rebellion led by Don Cossacks, and this counter

(06:28):
revolution had spread to Ukraine in the form of a
Ukrainian Nationalist uprising. Now, the Ukrainian nationalists were anti Russian,
so they didn't want any of these white or Bolshevik
Russian forces to be in charge of Ukraine, but they
were also traditionalists, and after throwing out the Russians, they
wanted to reverse all the progressive social changes and basically
reinstitute something similar to serfdom. But all the rich people

(06:48):
back in charge. So anti Russian also still sucks. Um Now,
when the Ukrainian nationalists attacked the forces of the new government,
Makno was put in an awkward position. Is he did
not like the government because he's Nestor mak No, But
at the same time, yeah, the government was like, you
guys are allowed to do what the thing that you're doing,

(07:10):
And the Ukrainian nationalists like, no, no, no, no, no,
you guys don't get to have this land you took
from the rich people. That's the rich people's land. So
mak No writes quote, as anarchists, we must, paradox or
no paradox, make up our minds to form a united
front with the governmental forces, keeping faith with anarchist principles,
we will find a way to rise above all these contradictions,
and once the dark forces of reaction have been smashed,

(07:32):
we will broaden and deepen the course of the revolution
for the greater good of an enslaved humanity. So He's like,
we gotta fight these guys, and working with the government
is the only way to do it, because they're worse
than the government, but also funk the government. And you know,
it's a tough position to be and there's no good
there's no good choice to make at this point. I
can't please everyone in how you you tow this line.

(07:55):
I respect his approach. Yeah, Now, on January four, his
area formed an eight hundred man detachment of fighters to
come to the government's side, close to half of whom
were Nestor's anarchists. His older brothers Sava commanded the unit
and Makno stayed behind to head up an investigation into
imprisoned military officers who had conspired against the revolution. He
found the former prosecutor who had hired his case in

(08:16):
like nineteen whatever and handed him the guy who had
put him in solitary confinement, and Makno had this guy
sent to the same cell under identical conditions in order
to like he gets a little motherfucker. Yeah, yeah, there's
a very nice line, and yeah, it's fun. There's a
nice little line in Anarchy's Cossack that describes this as
an irony of history that should give all who bear

(08:38):
the responsibility for repression good pause for thought. So a
nice little line. So Makno also took advantage of the
fact that the government under Kerensky needed his help and
support to hold on. He used his position to demand
and secure the release of workers and peasants still incarcerated
under the new government. Some of these men had been
arrested by the Bolsheviks, who had been worried that they'd
revolt against them. Nestor all. He used his position to

(09:00):
seize money from the local bank in order to fund
the activities of his communes, and to set up an
orphanage for war orphans, which he located in the former
home of the Superintendent of police. So still some cool
ship going on. I was like, I'm still I'm still
vibing with him. Yeah, it's hard not to. I'm like
trying not to scroll down in his Wikipedia because I'm like, Wow,
he's like a hot, nice guy who goes to prison

(09:23):
Alize it's pretty hot. Yeah. Now, in the middle of
all this politicking, a detachment of Cossacks suddenly wrote up
from the front line where they've been fighting the Germans
to help nationalist forces attack the new government. Nestor took
command of an attachment of anarchist fighters and ambushed the Cossacks,
inflicting enough punishment that they'd surrendered, which brought Macno and
his comrades a whole pile of exciting new weapons. They

(09:45):
get like their first machine guns and stuff during this period,
and they're very excited about that. Now, so many books
at this point. Yeah, but maybe that's like once you've
read like a hundred books in the book club, you
get your you get your a machine gun. That's good,
that makes sense. You gotta you gotta kill a bunch
of Cossacks first, but yeah, then you get their machine guns. Yeah,

(10:08):
there are barriers to entry, but it's not impossible. So
as the spring of nineteen eighteen dawns, things are going
pretty well for Nestor and the people of Gouldyaipoli. But
on March third, the new new government, which by this
point was dominated by the Bolsheviks, there's like an election ship.
It's very complicated. The Bolsheviks are in charge. At this point,
they signed an armistice with the German's, putting an into

(10:29):
official Russian participation in World War One. This agreement was
considered a stab in the back to Ukrainians like Makhno
though as basically the only entire terror so the government.
The new government signs in a groom with the Germans,
ending the war the Breslato Treaty, and part of that
agreement is that Germany and Austria Hungary get Ukraine. Um

(10:49):
so mak is like you, motherfucker's we just defended you
by like fighting, and now you've given us up to
the fucking Germans like you fucking dicks and the Red Guards.
The Bolshevik army are ordered to go through and either
evacuate or disarm Makhno and his partisans before like the
Austro Hungarian Empire moves in to occupy the regions. So

(11:13):
kind of lame, I'm gonna quote from anarchy's cossack here,
guided by their local allies and bringing in their wake
the former great estate owners thrown out the year before
by the revolutionary peasantry. Almost a million Austro German troops
occupied the territories seated by brest Latowski. The extractions and
repression of the occupiers and of the Ukrainian oligarchy quickly
triggered a popular resistance movement. Dozens of local insurgement detachment

(11:35):
detachment sprang up to harry enemy troops engaging in a
savage war of national liberation. Now Nestor had not been
ready for this, He did not expect the government to
betray him. And after a which he probably should have
been fairness and after a decent youthful optimism, I guess now,
after a decent amount of fighting, he found his forces

(11:56):
routed and he himself was stuck in a railroad marshaling yard,
where he learned that Guya Poli had been occupied by
Austro Hungarian forces. All the members of the local Soviet
the Revolution Committee in the anarchist group were arrested, many
of them were executed. Communes were broken up, and the
land was given back to the wealthy men who had
owned it before. And again a bunch of Nestor's friends
get murdered. So this brings us to the uncomfortable subject

(12:19):
again of the Ukrainian Mennonites. Now, to this day, Makno
is considered a war criminal by a number of Mennonite
communities on the allegation that his forces massacred peaceful Mennonite settlements.
Newver Episode one. You know that Mennonites were not pacifists
in Ukraine, and a major tenant, you know, a major
tenant a Mennonite belief is supposed to be the avoidance
of the sword, but this was not consistently obeyed prior

(12:40):
to the revolution, and in the spring of nineteen eighteen
they just gave up entirely. And I'm gonna quote from
a write up in libcom dot org from the spring
of nineteen eighteen, Mennonite colonies, though not all individual believers,
abandoned any pretense of fascism and of pacifism sorry, and
began to establish an armed force, which they referred to
as the soap Schultz for those who participated in their descendants,
this resort to violence presents a problem of conscience. For

(13:02):
four years, through various persecutions and martyrdoms, Mennonites had and
to an extent at least renounced the sword. Now gangs
of men armed themselves and zealous support of the invading
Austro German armies. It is worth observing as sort of
logical contortions that were necessary to defend this course of action.
It was thus argued by Heinrich John's and Erin Twebbs
for example, that one must differentiate between the principles of

(13:23):
the Kingdom of God and the principles of this worldly kingdom.
Matters of the former one one must remain non resistant,
of course, but with respect to the latter one, one
is obligated to support law and order. So the Mennonite,
the rich Mennonites again are like, no, no, no, non
violence only means to the Kingdom of God. We don't.
We don't use violent resistance to the Kingdom of God.

(13:43):
When it comes to supporting law and order, we can
shoot people. That's like again, I want to emphasize the
rich Ukrainian Mennonites, right. So understandably, Mennonite memorists and historians
have expended much energy justifying the self Scholtz, or at
least emphasizing the desperate horrors in response to which it emerged. B. J. Dick,

(14:04):
for example, who's a Mennonite historian, worried that those readers
of his Yeah, worried that those readers of his account
born decades after those terrible events would struggle to understand
fully the Mennonite situation, to emphasize with their anguish, and
to judge the matter fairly. The temptation to form an
emergency selped Shultz. He states, did not arise suddenly overnight,
but grew gradually through months of unbearable and catastrophic experiences

(14:26):
and unprecedented terror. And that is broadly fair to say.
I don't really sympathize with wealthy landowners who held thousands
of peasants in bondage, but it would be fair to
say that those wealthy landowners suffered unprecedented terror in this period.
All throughout Ukraine and Russia, there were stories that were
documented of peasant mobs burning down landowners at homes, often
with the landowner in their family inside, shouting, all of

(14:48):
this belongs to us, you know, right, that's scary. Yeah,
that sounds scary. But I just can't get there in
terms of radical empathy. I'm sorry. I had to go
back to Did you say the man wrote the history
was named B. J. Dick, a Mennonite historian. Yeah, it
was b J. Dicks? Did wait dick like d I
X no no d I c K. Yeah, it's spelled

(15:10):
like a dick, Jamie, It's spelled like a dick. But
and then to use the name by before it, I'm
just saying I know, I know, I know, Jamie, I
change you could You don't have to go by b
J if your last name is Dick. He had a
lot of options, and he made a choice, and he
really yeah, he made a choice, Okay, just like the
wealthy Mennonite landowners made a choice to have a militia

(15:31):
dedicated to massacring the peasants trying to secure their own freedom.
That said, yes, that's true, that's the larger issue at hand. Yeah,
So obviously, again, there were real reasons for them to
be terrified, because terrifying things happen to landowners in this period,
and rather ironically, Guy Poldy was one of the places
where this mostly did not happen. When mak known as people,

(15:51):
handled appropriations from the rich, they demanded itemized lists of
everything the landowners owned. The Soviet, which was like a
governing body made up of peasants, would then divide the
land so that the formerly wealthy people had the same
resources as the peasants. This was still terrifying for a
lot of rich people because they suddenly found themselves laboring
in the fields next to men and women they'd whipped, beaten,
and mocked for years. But during this period. The areas

(16:13):
under mack Noivist control. Like anarchist control, deaths, particularly among
men and knits in this period were very uncommon. There
is one case in January of nineteen eighteen where people
who might have been Macknivis killed a family of five
um and again not great, but also let's provide some
context to why this was happening. We also don't know

(16:35):
if it came on Makno's orders, because again he's got
hundreds and hundreds of like militiamen roaming around a territory,
angry and terrified whose friends that are being murdered too,
So it's like, yeah, it's it's a war. Bad things happen. Quote.
There are good reasons to suspect that the executioners were Magnivists. First,
the Shoonefeld region was near to Makno's hometown of Gulai Poli. Second,

(16:56):
it contains some of the most prosperous estates in the
whole region. These estates were not part of the original
Mennonite colonies. But we're built on land purchased in the
mid nineteenth century from a Czarist officer who had won
it in a game of cards. In the years before
World War One, it was a region of such prosperity
that several people own chauffeur to automobiles and one man
even bought a private airplane. So again, the people who
are rich enough that in nineteen eighteen they had some

(17:18):
of them had private plane money. Um, so there's some
murdering that gets happening that happens to these you know,
is sometimes when you own, owning a private plane is
a decision that you know, sometimes there's there's a price.
There's a price on owning. There might be a price,
especially you're also funding a militia that's murdering poor people. Yeah,

(17:40):
like funk Off, One of my favorite hobbies is every
time like a huge, huge, huge celebrity posts about global warming,
to just look up if they own a private plane
at the time they do, and it's like okay, you're
just okay. So you know what's really funny, Jamie is
to get on flight Radar twenty four or I mean
a D S B exchanged to be the best place,

(18:00):
but now it doesn't work as well. But get on
one of the plane tracking apps, figure out the in numbers,
which is basically the plane license plate number UH and
figure out the end numbers of rich people's private jets
and see how often they take their private jet from
one airport to another in the same city. It happens
all the time, a lot of JFK to LaGuardia flights
from rich people in fucking New York who were bucket asshole,

(18:27):
Oh my god, because they want to skip traffic. Oh
I wanna, Oh my Okay, that's like you know the
scene from Scanners where the head explodes. That's fuck oat stuff.
So there is again yeah again. I don't know that
Nestor had anything to do with this. There's certainly no

(18:49):
evidence that he had anything to do with this, this
murder um. Also, though, when you found a large band
of armed revolutionaries who occupy a big chunk of territory,
some of them are going to do horrible things because
it's a war, and every single military force in every
single war in history has had atrocities tied to its name.
You can't not do it. And it's true of the Macnivists,
and we shouldn't forget that or pretend it didn't happen.

(19:11):
But also, if you compare them to all of the
other actors in the Russian Civil War, there of the
like like like in a similar way to you know,
sort of the SDF like lower on the war crimes,
totem pole, Yeah, yeah, lower on the war crimes. Totem
totem pole, not no war crimes. And again Nestor one
of the things like Nestor is a a very outspoken

(19:34):
opponent of anti Semitism. Um. He grew up with a
lot of Jewish friends, and he was very much like
constantly haringing his troops not to do horrible things to
Jewish people. Also, anti Semitism very common in Ukraine, and
there were times when Macknivists fucking murdered Jewish people. And
it's terrible. Um, when you've got fifty five thousand uh,
traumatized militiamen, sometimes horrible things happens. And he punished. He

(19:58):
executed a lot of war lords who were responsible for
programs against Jewish people. It was a horrible, bloody civil
war and there's no walking out of it with your
hands clean, you know. Um, not to like right over that,
but he does. He gives a lot of speeches being like,
don't be fucking racist against Jewish people. What's wrong with you? Um?
He does his best yeah, yeah, he does his best. Okay,

(20:21):
so this is like you know, taking it, taking a turn.
This is where things get morally complex. He's fighting a
war now, and there's doing that and keeping your hands clean. Again.
He's not bordering programs, but he's he's building an army,
and some of those soldiers do bad things, not just
like to Mennonites too, Like there's bad things that the
Macnivists do. Um, we'll also talk about what the people

(20:43):
they're fighting do, which is on a completely different scale
of mass murder. So yeah, uh yeah, there's there's anyway.
So the Austro Hungarians come in, they invade basically, and
their arrival empowers the reactionary forces Makno had been beating
up until then, people who wanted to re establish the
old status quot. No matter who was in charge the
Mennonite militia, the Salts should fought with the invading foreign

(21:06):
soldiers to reclaim land and property that had been collectivized. B. J. Dick,
that Mennonite historian that Jamie is a big fan of,
describes the occupation as breathing space sent by God. And
he's describing that on behalf of the rich Mennonites, but
the invading like any other names. I know, I know
he had options. He could go by the B, go
by the J, but like by putting them together, he's horrible.

(21:28):
It's horrible. B J implies that he made a choice.
I know he did. It's interesting the invading troops that
the selp Shoulds fought alongside were as brutal as invading
troops tend to be. We have one account from a
guy named John Zidius, who was a rucified Greek and
a capitalist who lived in Odessa at the time of
the occupation, so not an anarchist, not a socialist, like

(21:48):
a capitalist guy. This is him reporting on what happened
when these troops move in and wealthy landowners get to
take their revenge on the peasants. Quote. The reprisal expeditions
were marked by hangings and shootings, executions dispensed with any
sort of proceedings. The venom of the landlords cared not
a jot for it, and the German officers gladly washed
their hands of any show of a trial. They shot

(22:10):
and hanged without any pretense of trial, often not even
bothering to check the identity of the defendant. The landlord
or his agent had merely to declare that such and
such a peasant had been involved in confiscation of his
estates for the culprit to be summarily executed. This happens
on a scale of tens of thousands, so one school
Yepoe was occupied. Mr. Makno's mother was punished in this way.

(22:31):
Her house was burned down. I don't think she lives
through this. Nestor's brother, Emilian, who had been disabled in
the war, was executed in front of his children. All
over Ukraine, thousands were shot or hanged, many for the
crime of being anarchists. Others were beaten to death in
the street by soldiers or reactionaries, including the men of
the Selt shuts Um. I should note here that the

(22:51):
violence was heavily class base. This Mennonite militia worked with
German soldiers to execute and beat peasants. They retreat received
training to help the occupy suppressed descent. But the fighters
doing this and the men funding the self shoots were
rich or at least well off. There were a lot
of poor Mennonites who they killed, and some of these
Mennonites took part in Machno's revolutionary other revolutionary activity. And

(23:12):
I want to note that, like when we're talking about,
you know, these different ethnic groups Mennonites, Russians, Germans, there
are poor members of all of these groups who are
fighting against like the forces of reaction and stuff. Yeah,
and and that's a big thing Makno tries to emphasize,
is that, like, we're not angry at the Russians or
the Germans or the Jews, were angry at rich people

(23:32):
who are murdering us. Like that's the problem that a
solid common enemy. Yeah. Elaine Ends, a Mennonite historian, writes
about this period, many landless Mennonites became servants on wealthy
Mennonite estates, and some became so disillusioned that they joined
the communists and anarchists to fight for a more just society.
So the same social fault lines that led to the

(23:53):
Russian Revolution ran right through my grandmother's yard. In most cases,
are people were not targeted because they were Mennonite, but
because they were wealthy. So again, very complicated issue, but
is primarily breaking down on class. Now some of the
people who are committing murders are doing it based on race.
Which is like a thing that Makno tries to prevent,
but it does happen, and that's that's terrible. It's generally

(24:15):
a terrible war. Now, Nestor Makna was forced to flee
north to Moscow after his town is taken over, and
he meets with Lennon, who basically is like, hey, buddy,
you're on your own. Um and I'm gonna read there's
a good write up in his Yeah, so he sorry,
just to clar he is, so his whole family is dead,
not all of them, almost everyone, okay, Yeah, and he

(24:39):
doesn't really know, like he loses his wife and child
in this period. He is he never even learns if
they're killed or not. Um. Like, it's this guy who
deals with some ship. Um. So I'm gonna read from
a write up in History Today about his meeting with Lenin. Makno,
conscious of his youth and crudeness, was embarrassed by Lenin's
magnetism and authority. He found himself beginning to venerate the

(25:00):
man most responsible for the persecution of the anarchists. He
was unable to find the words and arguments he needed.
At the end of the interview, Lennon gave instructions that
his return to the Ukraine should be assisted by the
Bolshevik organization in charge of illegal frontier crossings. Makno was
given false papers and set out by the appointed date.
He was hiding with the peasant Friends some fifteen miles
from guy Poy, So he meets with Lennon. Lennon helps

(25:22):
him sneak back in, but it's like, we can't really help.
And it's kind of the way that this talk has described.
Lennon's like, you anarchists are kind of full of ship,
but I like you and like I want you to
fight the occupiers of Ukraine, which I'm partly responsible for
Ukraine being occupied, but like, you know, this is yeah,
men are so weird. He's so yeah. He's like, oh, well,

(25:43):
you know, you gotta hand it to him. He really cares.
There's like a couple of where he's like anarchists or ship,
but like you're an exception. You're all right, nestor like
but look at that mustache. Yeah, I guess in fairness
to Lennon on the whole giving Ukraine to the austro Germans,
if you're in charge of Russia. In late nineteen eighteen,

(26:04):
or in early nineteen eighteen, there are no good options, right,
Like everything is shipped because the czar left. You would
have been like there, Lynnen didn't have a lot of
good things he could have done there. Like it's understandable
that Makno and his friends are furious, but like, I
don't know how you get out of World War one
if you just take over Russia at the end of
nineteen seventeen, Like, yeah, there's no win. God, Okay. So

(26:26):
the boys are vibing, you know, yeah, yeah, persecuting your comrades,
but we're vibing here, we're vibing. I'm gonna help you
sneak back into Ukraine to fight the austro Germans. So
mak No sneaks back in and he starts building up
bit by a bit, like running around at night and
like dressing as a woman. Sometimes he like gathers up

(26:46):
all of these sort of like bandits and stuff together,
these anarchists who have yeah, very very Robert Durst. Yes. Um.
So he builds up a little part as an army,
and they start raiding landlords homesteads, killing landlords. And in
this case they did not do that initially. After the
landlords come back and start mass murdering their friends. They
start shooting some landlords, which at this point it's kind

(27:09):
of self defense. It's like, we we tried to do
this peacefully, the level of the level of restraint, and honestly,
with this group seems like there's a lot of restraint
at play. If I took them this long. We tried
to do this peacefully, and you started murdering us as
soon as you had a chance. So now we're going
to kill some of you. And they do that. They
don't kill everybody, but they start murdering some people, They
steal their ship, they get guns, they start carrying out

(27:32):
ambushes on Austro Hungarian patrols and like killing small patrols
of soldiers and taking their weapons and building up their forces.
His partisans showed no quarter when they beat a group
of like foreign soldiers, they would kill them all. Uh.
Their slogan was death to all who, with the help
of German Austrian bayonets, take away from peasants and workers
the conquests of their revolution. It's a bit long, bit

(27:55):
long again, he could barely read. I've been saying, you know,
you're crating a novelty t shirt industry is going to
struggle together. That's a hard T shirt to make for sure.
That's difficult, you know, like maybe I killed them all
of course, to keep pulling inspiration. So bit by bit,
Makno attracted followers and acquired weapons. He began experimenting with

(28:16):
guerrilla warfare and in fact innovating. At first, the most
his men could do was carry out strikes on small,
isolated patrols of soldiers and their allies, including the salts
that men and I militia. As his band and his
resources grew, Nestor's mind began to open to new militant possibilities. See,
there were these carts, these horse drawn carts called nitty
nit chankas, and they were basically again like the horse

(28:38):
drawn equivalent of a pickup truck. So it's a horse
drawn cart with a big flat bed in the back.
This would have been similar to the thing he would
have bought as a young man to help on his
brother's farms. These are very common. There's tons of these
carts all over the place, and they do have access
to a good number of horses. And his partisans start
capturing a bunch of heavy machine guns, which were great
weapons for carrying out ambushes, but are heavy and they're

(28:58):
slow to set up, so they're not great for a
a a like um a partisan militia because it's hard
to move with them. So Nestor hits upon the brilliant
idea of bolting these machine guns to the flat beds
of these uh, these horse drawn carts and using them
driving them around and using them to shoot people and
move very quickly. And he convinced the first technical in

(29:19):
world history, like these are you see this all over
the Middle East now, trucks with machine guns in the bed.
This is how that all starts. They're called Yeah, they're
called tachankas um and yeah, so he uses them both
because you can move them into position quickly and immediately
start shooting. And if you wind up like biting off
more than you can true while you're retreating because the
gun is in the bed, the horse can be moving

(29:40):
away from the enemy and you can still be shooting them.
Like it's awesome. I just I just I remember when
horses were trucks. Robber horses are trucks. And Nestor's like,
we should get a machine gun involved in this action.
We got a these horses fucking strapped, babe. Not everyone

(30:03):
is strapped. And oh so those sources are trucks, and
the trucks are fucking strapped. The strumps have gatling gun
type thing, well maxim guns on them. Yeah, okay, So
Macno's forces come to relie so heavily onto chankas for
mobile firepower that one of his soldiers starts referring referring

(30:24):
to the anarchist militia as a republic onto Chunky, basically
like a mobile republic of gun trucks. Like that's that's
what we have. Now. They took away our town, so
now we're like a traveling republic of machine guns. Um. Yeah, yeah,
So in those early days, mock No's growing anarchist horde
was yeah, basically a moving republic. It was September of

(30:45):
nineteen eighteen before he finally attacked and recaptured Gohougyapoly, but
his forces were pushed out again by an Austrian lad counterattack.
Mock No led his men in a tactical retreat as
he was able to recognize his opponents had over extended themselves,
and a few days after this, eighty miles away from
his hometown, he surrounded attacked and wiped out a force
of two thousand Austrian soldiers and their allies, and this

(31:07):
brought his army their first artillery and heavy weapons. By December,
the Austrians had withdrawn entirely, their puppet leaders had been overthrown,
and Machno's anarchists were, for a brief time the undisputed
protectors of a widening cordon around Ghuyaipoli. Makno intended this
core of free territory to constantly expand, bringing a new
egalitarian social and economic order to an ever expanding chunk

(31:29):
of eastern Ukraine. By nineteen nineteen, hundreds of thousands of
people were engaged in experiments with a new anarchist social order,
the first time something like this had been done on
such a scale. And there was a pamphlet that Makno
had published during this time called what are the Machnovists
and what are they fighting for? This wasn't actually like
a nineteen twenty, but similar stuff was going around in

(31:49):
nineteen eighteen, and yeah, one of the notes on that like,
in terms of explaining their beliefs to new people who
wound up in their area, what do we mean by emancipation?
The o the throw of the monarchist coalition, Republican and
social democratic Communist Bolshevik party governments, which must give place
to a free and independent Soviet order of toilers without

(32:09):
rulers and their arbitrary laws. For the true Soviet order
is not the rule of the social democratic Communist Bolsheviks,
which now calls itself the Soviet Power, but a higher
form of anti authoritarian and anti status socialism, manifesting itself
in the organization of a free, happy and independent structure
for the social life of the toilers, in which all
individual toilers as well as society as a whole, can

(32:30):
build by themselves their happiness and well being according to
the principles of solidarity, friendship and equality. Okay, this is good,
what is sweetie? Yeah? I think that we should start
calling ourselves toilers again. Yeah. Yeah, it's an accurate way
of of of you know, splitting up society in a

(32:51):
meaningful way. Yeah, haves and have nots of toilers and
non toilers. By December, the Austrians had withdrawn entirely from Ukraine.
Like the war ends and their side loses and they
don't get to keep Ukraine anymore. Their puppet leaders were overthrown,
and Makno's anarchists were for a brief time like in
charge of this ship. So Um, Maknoah's territory was not

(33:12):
perfectly consistent to his values. Obviously, the White forces were
growing in strength, and it was clear that if they
reoccupied the now anarchist territories of eastern Ukraine, mass slaughter
would follow. To prevent this, an army was needed, and
general mobilization was the only real way to build an army.
Peasant and workers councils voted to mobilize, but the fact
that the end result was close to conscription has to

(33:33):
be acknowledged, like compromises are made from their ideal social order,
for the fact that they need as many fighters as
possible right um. Now, these fighters also had like famously
high morale, so it does suggest that the vast majority
of these people, again who mostly had family members killed
by reactionaries, saw military services necessary self defense. Now, up

(33:54):
to the spring of nineteen nineteen, the Soviet press had
portrayed makno and his peasants as heroes. But when the
the Center powers retreated from Ukraine and the Red Army
started to seep down into the territory that line changed.
The core of the Bolshevik movement had been workers from
Russia's industrialized cities, whereas the Maknivus movement was made up
of peasants. So right, the Soviets are workers. The Ukrainians

(34:14):
are not considered workers. They're peasants. They're not laboring in
factories and stuff. There's not a lot of factories in Ukraine.
You know, they're farmers and ship but their toilers are
they not to That's how Makno sees it. But that's
not how an awful lot of people in the Soviet
chunks of of of the Union see it. Um The
anarchists were seen to them as temporary allies against reactionaries,

(34:35):
but not trustworthy and people who eventually needed to be
like beaten. By June, though, a White Army general named
Denikin had amassed a potent force and was in the
process of reconquering huge chunks of Ukraine and putting them
back in the hands of their ancestral oppressors. Now this
started happening at the same time as the Red Army
and the Machnivists began to integrate. Because while the Red
Army didn't like the Machnivists, they didn't like Denikin more,

(34:57):
and they needed to defend like themselves against its confusing
time to read about um. Trotsky during this time signs
an order like Trotsky's in charge of the Red Army,
and he signs an order forbidding the peasant councils that
Makno has formed and ordering him to hand over command
of his militia. He may have ordered Makno arrested Um,
we don't really know, but in any case, Makno ignores
Trotsky's orders. He takes a handpick force of cavalry into

(35:20):
Chankas and he heads west to battle the Whites on
his own, all the while ordering his other soldiers to
stay embedded with the Red Army for the time being.
Now this really piste off Trotsky. Yeah, this is off Trotsky.
But the summer of nineteen nineteen was a disaster for
the Reds and their allies, and he couldn't really do
anything about it. Dinnikin and his White forces advanced constantly
and they smashed the Red Army multiple times. Makno's forces

(35:43):
at the same time conducted like a very confusing war
because in the east mak No's cavalry army is fighting,
or Makno's army is fighting alongside the Red Army. But
in the rest in the west, Makno and his handpicked
force are fighting with both the Red Army and the Whites.
Gives a fucking confusing s C ofvil war, so very
very messy. One of the things they do is when

(36:03):
they occupy villages that the Red Army had occupied, they
murder commissars and secret police officials because those people are
murdering anarchists. It's a very messy period. Now, late in
the summer, the Red Army in the east collapses completely.
The Whites just shatter them to pieces. Trotsky retreats back
into Russia and Makno orders his remaining embedded forces to
pull out and to retreat to a place called Kirova Grad,

(36:26):
where they meet up again with Makno and his cavalry.
So the Red Army is kicked out of Ukraine and
Makno is the only force fighting the the the Whites
left in Ukraine at this period of time, um or
at least the only like organized force. Meanwhile, the Dinnichanists
had conquered Guapolia, yet again, and their army was huge,
more than fifty thousand well armed and battle hardened troops.

(36:48):
So yeah, we're we're, we're, We've come up to like
a a kind of cliffhanger points. So you've got the
Red Army has to leave, they get they get beaten
out of Ukraine. Nestor has the largest force still fighting
the White Army, and they are badly outnumbered. His home
village has been taken over by the Whites, and he's
just got this roaming banded army of like gun trucks
and horsemen with short barreled rifle, horse horse asses with

(37:11):
machine truck gun, horse horse gun. It seems like a
pretty I mean, he's in a series of impossible situations.
He's in a bad position to be in, um, But
you know who's not in a bad position to be
in Jamie people hawking products and services. I'm assuming that's
a great position to be in, so check out products.

(37:41):
So before we tell the rest of this story, it's
probably worth explaining the kind of world that Dinnikin and
his White Army, which did include a lot of Mennonite militia.
We're fighting for included a lot of just like local
reactionary forces. So I'm gonna quote again from lipcom dot
org talking about what the Dinnickanists do in the areas
they retake Ukraine. Insofar as the Dinniicanists had a political program,

(38:04):
it was based on the restoration of landlords in the
re establishment of a single Russian state incorporating Ukraine. This
brought them into conflict with the local population and even
one of their own commanders, General Wrangel, described pillage and speculation, debauchery, gambling, orgies, looting,
violence and arbitrary acts. Otherwise sympathetic chroniclers are scathing about
the White Army's abuses in Ukraine. Richard Lukat, somewhat carelessly

(38:27):
in the context, describes something near to anarchy, bemoaning the
casual brutalities of the Cossacks, the regular pagrams, and other
appalling acts of barbarism. They issued proclamations encouraging Roussou Ukrainians
to rise up against the Jew communists, and we're responsible
for hundreds of programs and the deaths of tens of
thousands of Jews. Many of their victims were beaten, mutilated, raped, hanged,

(38:48):
burned and dumped into wells or thrown from rooftops and
buried alive. Are Shanov states that in the former Free Territory,
peasants were plundered, violently, abused, and killed. Almost all the
Jewish women of ghulia I Poly were raped. So this
is the White Army. These are the people that Nestor
is fighting against, and to the extent that he is
brutal to them, you kind of have to understand why. Yeah,

(39:11):
they're pretty bad. Yeah yeah. A member of Dinnikan's Special
Counsel his his leadership casts stated that the main features
of the Dinnikin regime were violence, torture, robbery's, drunkenness, odious behavior.
The counter Intelligence Service carried its activities to an unlimited, wild, arbitrary,
and as creating, as Dinnakin put it, a painful mania

(39:31):
all over the country. According to General Wrangel, at this time,
the White Army hunted down anybody suspected of any contact
with opposition groups, even if that contact had been involuntary,
a policy he'd denounced as insane and cruel. They especially
victimized the wives and girlfriends of known insurgents. According to
diaries attributed to Makno's partner Galina Kuzmenko in summer nineteen nineteen.
The Denniicanists victims included the wife of Makno's elder brother Sava.

(39:55):
They beat her, stabbed her with their bayonets, cut off
one of her breasts, and only then did they shoot her.
Since revolutionaries, yeah yeah, uh, tens of thousands of people
are tortured and killed this way. It is a fucking nightmare.
And again there is brutality from the Macknivists, but it
is not on this fucking scale. Um, And it is
generally in response to this. Yeah, yeah, this is like

(40:18):
a fucking pecking pal movies. Yeah, it's it's the fucking
Russian Civil Wars. One of the worst things that ever
happens in history. Um. Not that the Czarist regime was
was good or shouldn't have been overthrown, but it's a
horrible war. And by the way, these guys were talking
about the whites are the guys that the US and
Britain are supporting mhm because they're not Communists. Well they're not.

(40:40):
Yeah there, they would never to this day because the
whites try to ally with Makno at a couple of
points because they're like, hey, you hate the bullshe because
he's like, no, fuck you guys, and he does go
to the Western he's like, look, like, these people you're
supporting are even worse than the Bolsheviks, like support us.
We won't funk with you, Like, we're not going to
go to war with the West. We just want to

(41:00):
live in Ukraine and not like have bosses like But
of course they don't. They don't listen to that either,
and so they the British send a bunch of guns
to the rape gangs. Um, yeah, good stuff on the
side of angels. So for months, Denikin's Whites seemed unstoppable.

(41:23):
Makno and his forces retreated west for weeks, followed by
a constant stream of tens of thousands of refugees running
from the White advance for obvious reasons. Makno and his
men fought running battles with Denikins forces as well as
with the Bolshevik fourteenth Army, who had been fleeing British
naval bombardment in Odessas. So again they're fighting both the
Reds and the Whites at periods of time. Um and yeah,

(41:44):
because again the left is kind of always been the same.
So there were few victories during this time, including the
capture of a warlord named Grigorrev who had ordered the
pugroms of a lot of Jewish people. So Makno has
this guy executed. He does this whenever he can um
And by September Makno's army had been pushed back six
hundred kilometers from Guglia Polly. So they've they have been
fleeing for like four hundred miles um of solid retreat,

(42:08):
which is exhausting. Now. There was a scholar named Archanov
who was with mak Novus forces at this time, and
he chronicles the retreat. He later wrote the Maknovs retreat
had covered more than four hundred miles and had lasted
close to four months. It had been unimaginably difficult. The
insurgents lacked clothes and shoes. Through torre it heat, enveloped
by clouds of dust, under a hail of bullets and shells,

(42:28):
they went further and further away from their own region
towards an unknown destination. But they were all animated by
the idea of victory over the enemy, and they valiantly
endured the rigors of the retreat. Only occasionally that the
least patient among them cry out turn around towards the niper,
but implacable necessity kept pushing them further and further from
the niper, which is a river and their birthplace, their

(42:48):
proud region. With the inexhaustible patients, with their will stretched
to the limit, they rallied around their leader under continual
enemy fire. It was impossible to go anywhere else. But
Makno recognized, so they're like, this is about as bad
as situation as you can get in a military force.
And as people are like, why aren't we turning around
and fighting, but Makna keeps saying no, no no, no, keep retreating,
keep retreating, keep retreating, And eventually he gets to a

(43:10):
point where Makno realizes that the enemy has finally overextended
their supply lines. They've been drunk on months of victory
and they had neglected to protect themselves properly. So he
rouses his exhausted fighters by telling them, hey, guys, this
whole retreat has just been a play to overextend Denikin's men,
and now they're in a position where we can funk
them up. So he orders his soldiers to face the enemy.

(43:31):
He leads them in a cry of liberty or death.
And I'm gonna quote Antonov again for what happens next
is a very famous battle. On the evening of September twenty,
the Magnifus troops, who until then had been marching westward,
suddenly turned all their forces eastward and marched straight to
the main forces of Denikin's army. The first encounter took
place late in the evening near the village of Krutenko,

(43:51):
where the Maknivus first brigade attacked to Denikanist unit. Denikins
troops retreated to take up better positions and to draw
the Magnifus after them, but the Magnifus did not pursue them.
This misled the vigilance of the enemy, who concluded that
the insurgents were still moving westward. However, in the middle
of the night, all the Macnivist forces stationed in several
villages began marching eastward. The enemy's principal forces were concentrated

(44:11):
near the village of Peregovnica. The village itself was occupied
by the Macknivists. The fighting started between three and four am.
It kept mounting in intensity and meached It reached its
peak by eight am, in a hurricane of machine gun
fire on both sides. Makno himself with his cavalry escort,
had disappeared at nightfall, seeking to turn the enemy's flank.
During the whole battle that ensued, there was no further
news from him. By nine in the morning, the outnumbered

(44:33):
and exhausted Macnivists began to lose ground. They were already
fighting on the outskirts of the village. From all sides,
enemy enforcements brought new bursts of fire to bear on
the Macnivists. The staff of the insurrectionary army, as well
as everyone in the village who could handle a rifle,
armed themselves and joined in the fighting. This was the
crucial moment when it seemed that the battle and with it,
the whole cause of the insurgents, was lost. The order

(44:53):
was given for everyone, even the women, to be ready
to fire on the enemy in the village streets, all
prepared for the supreme hour of the attle end of
their lives. But suddenly the machine gun fire of the
enemy and their frantic cheers began to grow weaker and
then to recede into the distance. The defenders of the
village realized that the enemy was retreating and that the
battle was now taking place some distance away. It was
Makno who, appearing unexpectedly at the very moment when his

(45:16):
troops were driven back and were preparing to fight in
the streets, had decided the fate of the battle. Covered
with dust and fatigued from his exertions, he reached the
enemy flank through a deep ravine without a cry, but
with a burning resolve fixed on his features. He threw
himself on the dinnic and ass at full gallop, followed
by his escort, and broke into their ranks. All exhaustion,
all discouragement disappeared from among the Macnivists. But Coo is here,

(45:38):
But Coo is here. Fighting with his saber could be
heard everywhere, and with redoubled energy, they all pushed forward,
following their beloved leader, who seemed doomed to death. A
hand to hand combat of incredible ferocity, a hacking, as
the Magnifs called it, followed. However brave the Whites may
have been, they were thrown into retreat, at first, slowly
and in an orderly matter, trying to halt the impetus
of the magnivists, but then they simply ran. The other

(46:00):
regiments seized by panic, followed them, and finally all of
Dinnikins troops were routed and tried to save themselves by
swimming across the Sinukia River. So there's this big battle.
Macnow disappears at the start of it, and at the
very end, like it's a fucking Gandolf moment, like as
they're about to be overwhelmed, he charges into the enemy's
rear music, Yeah they've got like he charges machine guns

(46:22):
with a sword and just starts stabbing the ship out
of people and it fucking they all run like the
fucking whites break and it's yeah, it's fucking awesome. It's
just like it is a Gandolf moment that's so bizarre,
Like is that it sounds like that couldn't possibly be.
It happens and he gets shot a bunch of times

(46:45):
because it worked, like it was the only thing that
could have worked, Like he had one chance to win,
and it was sneak a force behind them and panicked
them right, and it soon as he comes. Once in
a lifetime, Yeah, that's what that talking heads is about.
So I was thinking that about lose yourself, but too so.

(47:09):
In situations like this, panic is contagious, and with their
most elite regiment shattered, the rest of dinnikins forces began
to break and run. Hundreds were slaying on the banks
of the Sinyukia River. Corpses stretched out for miles uh
mak No capture all of the captures, thousands and all
of the off He kills all of the officers he captures,
but he lets the enlisted men live and has a

(47:30):
lot of them joined the Mocknovist army after this. So
this would turn out to be one of the most
consequential battles of the entire twentieth century, because if the
White forces under Dennikin had beaten mak No, they would
have reinforced the White army at the north, which was
marching on moscow Um, and might well have beaten the
Red army they were winning at that point. Soldiers on
the ground at the time understood this. A Dinnachanist officer

(47:51):
named Sakovich, who survived, later wrote, and a sky blanketed
in autumn cloud, the last puffs of artillery smoke exploded,
then all was silent. All of ranking officers since that
something tragic had just occurred. Though nobody could have had
an inkling of the enormity of the disaster which had struck,
none of us knew that at that precise moment, Nationalist
Russia had lost the war. It's over, I said, I

(48:11):
know not why to Lieutenant Rozov, who was standing alongside me.
It's over, he confirmed somberly. So this battle is why
the Whites don't take Moscow. At least a lot of
people will argue that now Maknivis had advanced four hundred
miles east in just eleven days, and one of the
most rapid counter attacks in the history of warfare. They

(48:33):
recaptured town after town, smashing White regiments that hadn't even
been informed of Denikin's defeat. Denikin was forced to withdraw
troops from his northern front who were advancing on Moscow
to protect their headquarters in Ukraine. Max nomad Uh, an
Austrian bolshevik and educator, declared Makno the bandit who saved Moscow. Now,
the reconquest of eastern Ukraine by Makno came with a reckoning.

(48:55):
Hundreds and probably thousands were executed Makno ordered his intelligence
forces to track down and killed every soldier and local
leader responsible for anti Jewish programs and for massacres of leftists,
ban and peasants. Bandits who'd stolen from peasants were killed,
and so were all white officers who were captured. Collaborators
and suspected collaborators were killed in revenge for the tens
of thousands who've been murdered by denikins men. It is again,

(49:17):
a pretty fucking ugly war. Um And Yeah, some of
those people would have been innocence. That's war. It's terrible,
it's the worst thing. It's awful. Um. Also, not a
lot of good options. Yeah, No, there's no perfect in
a war that's already killed millions of people. Um And Yeah.
What separated Makno from the rest of the war lords

(49:38):
and bandits rampaging through Russia in this period were his goals,
the world he wanted to establish, and his sense of accountability.
Makno took complaints against his forces seriously. We have one
account by guy named Volin of a student delegation who
approached Makno to complain that one of his intelligence units
had flogged an intellectual and suspicion of being a Denickanist spy. Quote.

(49:58):
The student recalled approaching Makno's office with trepidation and being
surprised at Makno's friendly and attentive audience. After explaining that
no Machnivus should ever use the lash for his army
either shot people or release them unharmed, Makno promised to
look into the matter personally. In this discussion, he also
confessed the difficulties he experienced and preventing abuses by those
who professed allegiance to his command. Similarly, the report of

(50:20):
his intelligence services abuses led the Alexandrov's Congress to pass
Resolution number three establishing an investigative committee. So he's you know,
acknowledges like, yeah, sometimes you can't fucking stop your your
banded army from murdering the wrong people. It's a real problem. Fair,
fair point, It's an issue. I mean, he's not wrong,

(50:44):
you know, it's it's this falls under the category. It's
it's quite complicated, isn't it. There's no perfect when you're
fighting a war that again kills nine million people. Um, yeah,
you have to judge him by his opponents. In a
lot of case is um now. When the fighting with
the whites was over, Maknivst forces controlled most of Eastern Ukraine,

(51:06):
an area encompassing seven million people. Peasant and worker councils
created a document by popular consent that spelled out civil liberties,
rights and duty in the region. The document advocated for
freedom of speech, for freedom of the press, of conscience,
of worship, of assembly and of organization. Bolshevik newspapers which
criticized Makno and advocated Bolshevik conquest of the region were

(51:26):
allowed to continue publishing um This is some of the
last freedom of speech that Ukraine will have for quite
a while now. Throughout late nineteen nineteen, in early nineteen twenty,
the bones of a remarkable society were established in eastern Ukraine.
This passage from Anarchy's Cossack gives you an idea of
what was being attempted. Literacy classes were laid on for
a literate adults, followed by courses in politics and economics

(51:50):
given by insurgent peasants and workers who had some grounding
in the subjects. Here it is interesting to look at
their syllabus political economy, history, the theory and practice of socialism,
and anarchism, the history of the French Revolution, the history
of the revolutionary insurgent movement in Russian. In the Russian Revolution,
not that cultural activities were neglected. Daily there were shows
staged in the local theater. The insurgents and their women

(52:11):
folk took part in these, not only as spectators and actors,
but also as dramatists, narrating episodes from recent local events
and from the insurgent struggle for all too short a time. Yeah,
it's nice, They're like, okay, So you know, there were
a lot of losses, but we did get really into
community theater. We got some was it a wash? That's sweet?

(52:33):
I like that. So at his peak in nineteen twenty,
Makno's army, which had started in nineteen seventeen with about
a hundred and fifty guys, numbered fifty thousand men. Um.
I'm gonna quote from history today here explaining how the
army worked. Makno, himself, creator and leader of the insurgent Army,
was a man of remarkable vitality. Tough as were his companions,
he could outride, outwork, and outfight any of them. He

(52:55):
never went to bed till his task was finished, and
two hours later would tap at the windows of his
sleeping have to bring them back to their jobs. He
lived like a peasant and always found time for his peasants.
He would talk with him, drink with them, take a
hand for an hour with a flail. Since hence his
enormous popularity. He grew ever more engrossed with military matters
and spent more and more time at the front. When

(53:15):
sicker wounded, he was carried in a cart with the
frontline troops, too well enough to ride a horse again.
He was daring, resourceful, persistent. He showed no signs of
nerves in any crisis. So interesting guy now again depending
on Oh yeah, before we, I guess talk more about
mack now and what happened that? Yeah, we should probably
we should probably talk about our next folk hero. The

(53:37):
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(53:58):
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that's the other guaranteed. Yeah, we're gonna get some pets killed,

(54:20):
are right, and we're back. So we're talking about mak
No a little bit here and kind of the height
of his revolution, And depending on who does the writing,
he was almost always a teetotaler or a heavy drinker. Uh.
There are stories of him doing some pretty terrible things
while drunk. Um. They're also stories by people who generally

(54:43):
allege things that seemed kind of impossible, like him hacking
thirteen people to death with a saber um for no reason.
I don't know, it's weird, it's it would not be
as surprising if a man is battered by war and violences,
mak No turned to drink and wound up doing terrible
things in a rage. It's not impossible. I feel like
that's yeah, that's at least of the Bastards episodes go

(55:06):
that way. But that said, the actually like the sources
who are not like clearly writing propaganda to demonize this
guy after he gets defeated. Don't talk about that stuff
the history today right up, which is very fair. Um,
it's paywall, but it's it's a pretty fair right up
that that is not at all written by anarchists, implies
that his rather than talking about his drinking being like

(55:28):
making him go into like superhuman murder rages, talks mainly
about the fact that it kind of made him unready
for what would become the eventual betrayal of the Magnatus
by the Bolsheviks. Like he's lost a lot, He kind
of gets messy and drunk, and he does not anticipate
things going as bad as they're going to go. So
the Red Army re enters Ukraine late nineteen nineteen, and

(55:50):
in early nineteen twenty they declaire Maknow in his movement
outside the law after he refused to take his forces
to the Polish frontier. They basically try to move him
in his army to Poland's that they can separate them
from the the peasants that support them, because they want
to make it easier to beat them later. Um. By
the mid of the year, Makno and his men were
engaged and often constant horrific battle with the Red Army

(56:11):
with Guglia Poe again changing hands multiple times, so the
Red Army invades and tries to fight them. Whenever Maknivist
towns and cities are retaken, the check at the Bolshevik
security Force carries out purges and massacres. Numerous attempts were
made to assassinate Makno, but all failed. The fighting went
back and forth until late September nineteen twenty, when the
Red Army made peace with Makno again because they needed

(56:32):
him to fight the Whites for them, so they signed
a treaty with Makno, this time promising peace and a
release of all arrested anarchists and Maknivists. But the treaty
also promised that peasants would be allowed to maintain standing
armies in Ukraine, and this was of course a lie.
Once the Whites were beaten again, the Red Army turns
on Makno again, and Nestor's final war with them last
from around uh late November nineteen to late August of nine.

(56:55):
It was brutal and grinding, but eventually the peasants of
Ukraine a pattern. Yeah it's bad um and eventually just
everyone is too exhausted to continue, mak No succeeds in
fighting his way to Poland with a small force of
his most loyal fighters, and he becomes an exile. Uh.
He winds up in Paris, where he would spend his
last years. And he was in poor health the entire time.

(57:17):
All the wars he'd fought him had left him battered
and broken and aged beyond his years. He'd been shot
at least six times in a three year period, including
one round through the cheek and another that pierced his
thigh and into his appendix. Um, so he's in bad shape,
and he was not happy. A friend of his rote
of his Yeah, it's hard to yeah. Uh, you know,

(57:38):
he's kind of a little bit of a celebrity in
Paris in this period among the left, but his a
friend of his rights that he's He expresses great difficulty
in adjusting himself to circumstances so very different from his
former way of life. The only thing that brings him
any joy in the end is going to horse races
and watching the horses run. Um, he just likes to
watch them run. Now. He was bitter and prone to

(57:59):
fits of depress, and he wrote some memoires, but the
fact that he could still barely write made this a
difficult task. He had a lot of intellectual friends who
offered to help, but these offers authors enraged him. Like
he was, he kind of took it as an insult
that people were offering to help him write his memoirs folks.
Eventually did um Ida met a young female writer met
him in Paris during this time and was his friend
for the last three years of his life. And it's

(58:20):
from her that we get some of the most intimate
glances into Nestor's inner life that were likely to see
quote from Ida. I remember mak No once telling me
of his dream. It was autumn n we were walking
in the Boa d Vincens. Perhaps the beauty of nature
put him in a poetic mood and made him inclined
to tell me his dream. The young mak No would

(58:40):
return to his hometown of Ghulla Poly, start work, lead
a quiet, clean life, and marry a young peasant girl.
He had a good horse and good gear. He and
his wife would return home in the evening after a
successful day at the market selling the fruits of the harvest.
They also bought presents there. Macno got so carried away
with the story that he completely forgot that he was
now in Paris and had neither land, nor house nor
a young wife. At the time, he and his wife

(59:02):
were living apart. They separated many times, only to reunite
and try to live together again. Heaven only knows why
it turned out that way. Makno's wife probably didn't love
him anymore, and who knows if she ever did. She
was a Ukrainian teacher, and her views were closer to
some of his opponent's camps. She never had anything in
common with the revolutionary movement. Makno told me in Paris
that at the time of his greatest power, people came

(59:23):
and toadied to him, and that he could have had
any woman he wished, but in reality he had no
time for a private life. Makno told me this to
debunk the myth about the drunken orgies he's supposed to
have taken part in. Makna was, in fact a clean man,
one could almost say chased. It seemed to me that
his attitude towards women combined to combine a kind of
peasant simplicity with a respect for the weaker sex characteristic
of Russian revolutionary circles around the turn of the century.

(59:45):
She's writing this in again nineteen you know, yeah, I did.
I do think it's funny that she she already frames
him as not being in a good frame of mind.
Is like, well, you know, we don't know how this,
like these accounts can be taken at face value. And
she's like that said, he told me he could have
sucked anyone he wanted he in then you know, I'd

(01:00:08):
find it sad, sad his dream that they just wanted
to go be a farmer back home, um, which he
could never do. Um. It's like what my uncle says
libertarians and plows. Yeah, it's a bummer, sick and almost alone.
And Ester Maknow died in July of nineteen, having lived

(01:00:29):
long enough to see the birth and ultimate success of
German fascism, as well as complete Stalinist domination of his
homeland and the starvation deaths of millions of Ukrainians. So God,
weak ass ending. Merry Christmas, faster ending, I know, and
then jingle bells just starts fading in. It's like, wow,

(01:00:50):
I think we all learned something today. Dashing through the
snow with a machine gun on a plow shoe eating
at the whites. Everyone is well, I don't know how
to finish that. I was like, there, I know, we
were good. We're in a good direction for a little while. There. Um,

(01:01:12):
we got a year. We can figure it out. We'll
figure it out for next year. Yeah. So that is
the story of Nestor Mack no problematic fame and a half. Yeah, yeah,
I guess that is a category I would put him in. Damn.
You know, an attempt was made. He did his best
to make something better out of the worst situation almost

(01:01:34):
anyone's ever been in, like Pete Peasants in Ukraine in
nineteen seventeen. Yeah, there was no happy ending, but he
gave it a real good shot. Yeah yeah, yeah, God,
all right, I'll pour one out for Nestor tonight, one
out for knock macknow, which he may or may not
have drank, depending on whose sources she listened to. Well,

(01:01:56):
he probably did at least at one point. Like's Nestor mugdo,
I would never not I would never be sober. What
I mean. Ida says he didn't really drink as an
older man, but also he was probably pretty ill, right,
Like you get older, your body changes. You've been shot
through the appendix, maybe you can face Yeah, yeah, like

(01:02:17):
who even knows? You know? I was about to say
something mean about old Nestor. No, he who knows? He
did his best. He did his best and he lived
in hard times. He didn't. Yeah, we can ask for
no more. Um. Yeah, well I feel festive. You feel festive.
You're gonna go attach a machine gun to a truck.

(01:02:39):
So festive, I'm going to just walk into traffic anyone. Yeah,
this comes out, Santa University comes out today. If it's
Robert's reprising his role as Second Amendment Santa. You've got
a song this year, so that's exciting, a good song.

(01:03:00):
You just demonstrated that you're up to the task. So
that was a mistake on your part. And and uh yeah,
you can listen to Alita podcast on Monday's. Um, and
that you're going to be coming out through January. So
those are those are night things. Woot woot in the boot.

(01:03:21):
All right, and we'll go and we'll be back with
this podcast the first week of January. We're taking we're
taking the last week off, guys, we're taking the last
week off. All right, let us have it got you
got to Christmas episodes, you've fucking filthy animals. We're tired.
You got damn pagans. And on that note, that's the

(01:03:45):
end of the end to end there