The figure of Nestor Makhno is an extraordinary one, a peasant born Anarchist revolutionary leader who fought both Whites and Reds with great success and ingenuity. Makhno and his movement have many similarities with Emiliano Zapata and his peasant movement of the Mexican civil war, yet while Zapata is seen as a Mexican hero, Makhno is virtually unknown outside of histories of the Revolution and Civil War and Anarchist groups who claim Makhno and the Makhnovshchina as forebears. Many myths and false claims have been made about Makhno, some are due to the confusion of the civil war while others are pure fabrication. Indeed Makhno has been the subject or featured in works of fiction, even during his own lifetime. The purpose of this chapter is to look at some of the myths surrounding Makhno and his use in fiction, and to answer why he is such an attractive figure for writers and folklore.

During the Civil war, many stories about Makhno grew up on all sides, British forces in the Black sea reported him as being an ex-sailor robber chief, confusing him with Fyodor Shchus Makhno’s cavalry commander who served in the Russian navy on board the mine layer ‘Ioann Zlatoust’, and wore a sailors peakless cap or ‘Beskozirka’.

Some reports and writers say that Makhno was originally a school teacher in Gulyai-Pole this is untrue, Makhno did however travel on false papers given to him in Moscow describing him as a school teacher and this is were the confusion arises from.

The White armies also believed that due to his successes he must have professional officers serving in his staff which is also untrue. Makhno’s early has also been reported differently, the Anarchist Emma Goldman who met Nestor’s wife claimed he was arrested for the attempted assassination of a Tsarist spy, while most sources say his arrest followed his involvement in the death of a Policeman and activities involving the Gulyai-Pole anarchist group. The historian W.E.D. Allen in his 1940 history of the Ukraine is scathing of Makhno and extremely inaccurate he describes him as being exiled to Siberia for the murder of a policeman and on returning to the Ukraine;

"he had been cunning enough to assume a deep red colouration".

Allen also claims that in Paris Makhno earned his livelihood as a ‘Cinema studio figurant’ (extra). None of this is correct, Makhno was imprisoned in the Butyrki prison, Moscow, his politics were sincere (his interest in Anarchist ideas began before his imprisonment) and he was a committed activist for most of his life.

In Makhnovist controlled areas Makhno acted on his Anarchist convictions, he opened and then destroyed the prisons , granted all political organisations and parties freedom to operate but prevented them from imposing their views or seizing political power and issued money which stated on the back that no one would be prosecuted for forging it. Makhno’s political writings while in exile show his Anarchy was no mere camouflage for a bandit . Other sources say while in Paris he worked as a house painter and in rail yards plus various other jobs, though I have found no other reference to him working as a film extra. During the civil war many stories circulated about Makhno and his activities, Alexander Berkman recorded in his diaries a conversation with Petrovsky Chairman of the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee in July 1920 after Makhno had been outlawed by the Bolsheviks;

"Many legends have grown around his name, and to some he appears almost a heroic figure. But here in the Ukraina you will learn the truth about him. Just a robber ataman, that’s all he is. Under the mask of anarchism he conducts raids upon villages and towns, destroys railroad communications, and takes a fiendish delight in murdering commissars and communists".

Many stories told about Makhno and the Makhnovists activities are similar to those told about Robin Hood and Pugachev, sharing captured wealth with the peasants, capturing towns and enemy soldiers by stealth and cunning. While there is certainly truth behind some of these stories (his capture of Ekaterinoslav using a commuter train full of soldiers for example), others are likely to be pure invention. Arshinov in his ‘History of the Makhnovist Movement 1918-1921’, draws comparisons between Makhno and Pugachev the leader of a Cossack rebellion in the 18th century. While both Michael Malet and Orlando Figes quotes Russian Material that tells of folk verses at weddings that concerns Makhno, and mothers threatening their children with his name;

"If you don’t go to sleep, Batko Makhno will be coming here this minute; he’ll give it to you".

The truth, stories, mistakes and both positive and negative propaganda surrounding Makhno have been mixed up and have led to varying reports of Makhno all of which claim to be the truth.

Such a ‘colourful’ (sic) figure as Makhno, a peasant Anarchist who led a Cossack army against both White and Red attracted many writers of fiction during Makhno’s lifetime. Issaak Babel who had served with the Russian First Cavalry Army as a Bolshevik news service correspondent in both the Ukraine and Poland wrote several short pieces dealing with the civil war. In ‘Italian Sunshine’, a delirious soldier mixes up his memories of the civil war and the role of Anarchists within the Bolshevik government with a book he has just read about the Vatican;

"And only Volin is still there. Volin dons the sacerdotal vestments and climbs up for anarchy to the Lenins. Awful. And the Batko listens to him, strokes his dusty and wiry locks and emits from between his decayed teeth the long snake of his moujik’s sneer".

Babel’s ‘Discourse on the Tatchanka and other Matters’, deals with Makhno’s use of the peasant carts and the advantages of manoeuvre they gave him over regular troops;

"This Makhno is as many-sided as nature herself. Hay-carts, disposed in battle array, took towns; a wedding procession approaching the headquarters of a district executive opened a concentrated fire; and a meagre little monk, waving above him the black flag of anarchy, ordered the authorities to hand over the middle-classes, the proletariat, wine and music".

Babel while working with the first cavalry army came into contact with soldiers who had fought against Makhno and former Makhnovist partisans now with the Red Army. So his work may have been informed by conversations with them. Babel saw little difference between the Cossacks who fought for the Red Army and those who were with other armies. Babel describes the Cossacks as anti-Semitic (Babel was a Jew though he attempted to hide this fact by using a false Russian name, Lyutov while with the army). Babel’s portrayal of Makhno may of been coloured by contact with men who had fought with or against the Makhnovshchina. Joseph Kessel’s book ‘Makhno et sa Juive’ published by Eos in 1926, depicts Makhno as an Anti-Semite charges that Makhno strenuously denied claiming that Kessel had based his novel on work by Colonel Gerassimenko a former White officer who was convicted of being a Bolshevik spy by the Czechoslovakian courts, indeed Kessel credits Gerassimenko in his introduction. Other writers contemporary to Makhno wrote stories around him including Bulgakov’s ‘White Guard’. Unfortunately like Kessel’s ‘Makhno et sa Juive’, I have been unable to find English translations and have had to rely on what little I could translate from Kessel using a French-English Dictionary, with some unusual results;

"le trahit et l’assasine, massacre les Juifs, les bourgeois, les officiers, les commissaires, bref, pendant deux anees, terrorise l’Ukraine".

translated as;

"The traitor and assassin, massacred the Jews, the bourgeois, the officers, the commissars, briefly, while two donkeys terrorised the Ukraine".

It is unusual to see writers base works of fiction on living people, but Makhno had few supporters and no option of legal action against such writers due to his poverty while in exile in Paris.

Makhno has also been used by modern writers, the most famous novelist to use him as a character is Michael Moorcock who has written about him not only in historical novels set during the Russian Civil War but also in his works of fantasy. In ‘Byzantium Endures’, set in the Ukraine during the civil war Moorcock’s character ‘Pyat’, finds himself in the Anarchist region ‘the only territory where peace reigned’, after a rather dull encounter with Makhno ‘Pyat’, finds his childhood sweetheart who is working with the Makhnovist Cultural-Education section. Moorcock portrays Makhno as a rapist an allegation made by Bolsheviks and by Voline;

"Makhno? He saved my life, she said. It was not much of a rape. It was a token. His wife knows what he does. She tries to stop him. He Feels bad afterwards. He’s drunk".

Moorcock paints a sympathetic picture off Makhno and his movement despite the portrayal as a drunken rapist, and in the books introduction he thanks Leah Feldman who he interviewed for the book, Feldman who was possibly the last survivor of Makhno’s army always denied that Makhno was a rapist;

"Did he change when he became a railway worker in Paris?...Who in Russia is he supposed to have raped? His wife was always riding on a horse beside him, and she would soon have put a stop to that".

While in his book set during the Civil War, Moorcock bases his descriptions of the Makhnovists on research and interviews in his fantasy’s he uses Makhno as he would a purely fictional character. Michael Moorcocks ‘Jerry Cornelius’ stories which he started in 1965, experiment with non-linear techniques of narrative and alternative histories, comment on the hypocrisies of liberal Bourgeoisie of the time. Moorcock’s work began in the 1960’s and 1970’s while he was involved with the alternative press ( he edited ‘New Worlds’ magazine) and experimental music projects (with the rock band ‘Hawkwind’). In ‘The Entropy Tango’, Moorcock portrays an alternative 20th Century where Russia is controlled by the inheritors of Kerensky’s Provisional Government and Makhno succeeded in liberating the Ukraine. Makhno turns his energies to other countries;

"Leaning against the damp draining board Una read the ‘Manchester Guardian’, she had bought at Croydon. Makhno’s ‘insurgent army’, consisting predominantly of Ukrainian settlers, indians, metis (pushed out of their homelands), and some disaffected scots and french, had won control of rural Ontario".

Moorcock portrays Makhno as a romantic revolutionary figure, a man driven by his political ideals and a committed internationalist;

"There are lots of anarchists in Scotland now, said Una. You know the one I mean. Makhno should still be there, I’d like to look him up. He’s getting on now, you know. Must be at least eighty".

Michael Moorcock’s interest in Nestor Makhno may well come from his political outlook, many of his books show sympathy for anarchist ideas and his time spent editing ‘New Worlds’, at a time of political radicalism and experimentation may well have introduced him to Makhno and the Makhnovist movement via the Anarchist movement which revived during the same period.

Nestor Makhno is an extremely colourful character, in a bloody civil war he stands out as a leader of extraordinary capacity, he built an army from the peasants of his home region using machine guns on peasant carts ‘tatchankas’, to fight German, Austrian and Hungarian invaders and their Ukrainian lackeys, Nationalists, White Russian, Bolsheviks and western interventionist armies. Makhno was only twenty seven when at the height of his career and had almost no formal education. His political beliefs which motivated his actions and influenced the movement that bore his name were Anarchist, seeking total freedom from all authority.

For modern writers such as Moorcock, Nestor Makhno offers a revolutionary hero untainted by Leninism or the spectre of Bolshevik oppression. His followers peasant inheritors of Cossack traditions and deserters from both Whites and Reds also are attractive to writers who were involved in the politics and culture of the sixties and seventies, W. Bruce Lincoln describes the Makhnovists as;

"Armed to the teeth and dressed in wildly outlandish clothing gathered from the closets of lords and the shelves of tradesmen, the Guliai Pole peasants resembled their boisterous Cossack forebears of the Zaporozhian Sich".

Novelists contemporary with Makhno used him in their fiction for two reasons, within the Soviet Union fictional accounts of Makhno’s life could be used to help discredit him, and help glorify the role of the Red Army in his destruction, though Babel’s stories attack the Makhnovists there is also I believe grudging admiration for his exploits and tactics, possibly due to Babel’s own contact with ex-Makhnovists. Writers working in the west did not have the same motives as those in the Soviet Union, unless like Colonel Gerassimenko they were working for the Bolsheviks seeking to destroy the reputation of a possible enemy. Makhno as a former ally of the Bolsheviks and a vehement enemy of the counter-revolutionary Whites, might carry some credibility in his criticism of the communists. So the Bolsheviks would encourage western anti-Makhnovist writings. Joseph Kessel however had no links with the Bolsheviks, his book ‘Makhno et sa Juive’, was based on information on the Makhnovists available to him in 1926 most of which was either produced by the Bolsheviks or the Whites. Arshinov’s sympathetic history was published in 1923 in Russian but I do not know if Kessel would have had access to a French edition. Makhno claimed that most of Kessel’s information came from the work of Gerassimenko, in which case it would be influenced by Bolshevik propaganda. Kessel’s book was written in 1926, the same year that Arshinov published in Paris his ‘Organisational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists: Draft’, which caused great controversy throughout Anarchist circles. The ‘Platform’, called for a general Union of anarchists with a central executive committee to co-ordinate policy and action. Its detractors accused Arshinov of abandoning Anarchism for Bolshevism by calling for a strict party structure. The only prominent Anarchist to support Arshinov was Makhno, it is possible that Kessel’s interest was aroused by the debate over the ‘platform’. When writing about the Civil war whether in fiction or in fact, the Ukraine was the central battlefield for all sides, Makhno was certainly the most colourful leader in that conflict and the Makhnovist forces fought all sides and changed the course of the war on several occasions. A novel set in the Civil war is likely to cover Makhno even if only in passing. Moorcock’s use of him in fantasy owes some thing to the writers background in the alternative publishing and rock music scene of the sixties and seventies. Though in Moorcock’s ‘Jerry Cornelius’, books that deal with the collapse of civilisation what better supporting characters to have than the anarchist revolutionary Makhno and his unruly peasant followers.

The folk tales and legends that have grown around Makhno owe much to stories told about previous peasant rebels most noticeably Pugachev, indeed Berkman reports the comparison being made between Makhno and Pugachev, and Arshinov makes the comparison in his history of the movement;

"The following legend about Pugachev is told among the peasants of Great Russia. After his uprising he fell into the hands of the authorities. He told the noblemen sitting around him ; ‘in this uprising I only gave you a foretaste. But wait: soon after me will come the real broom- it will sweep all of you away’. Makhno showed himself to be this historic broom of the people".

For the Makhnovists drawing comparisons to a folk hero like Pugachev could help win sympathy and support from the peasants who had grown up with stories about his peasant revolt. The Makhnovists peasant form of Anarchism based in an area were Cossack traditions of freedom were respected also helped them to draw comparisons with the Zaphorozhian Sich. With the destruction of the Makhnovists and the entrenchment of Bolshevik authority in the Ukraine, government censorship made folk stories and songs were one of the few ways that the Makhnovists could be remembered. Many of the stories about the Makhnovists and Makhno are invention either for propaganda purposes or exaggeration, while others came through the confusion of the situation in the Ukraine during the civil war. While the Makhnovists remain largely forgotten, swamped by the victory of the Bolshevik’s in Russia some writers who have come across their story have used it in works of fiction. Because they lost in the end and that almost all traces of them were destroyed that authors have been able to use them without fearing criticism from Makhnovist supporters. The lack of evidence surrounding the movement also makes it far easier to simply imagine the actions of the Makhno without having to research huge amounts of research material.