The anarchist peasant commander who fought Bolsheviks, Whites, Germans, and nationalists in succession
Kremlin, June 1918. Lenin told Makhno, "If anarchists were like you, we'd gladly work together." Two years later, Makhno would be betrayed by the Bolsheviks twice.
Ukrainian anarcho-communist revolutionary. Led a peasant army and built the Free Territory, an experiment in anarchist self-governance. Allied with the Red Army twice to defeat the Whites, and was betrayed each time. Exiled in 1921, he wrote his memoirs in Paris.
Career Timeline
- 1906Joins Huliaipole anarcho-communist 'Union of Free Grain-Growers'; begins expropriations
- 1910Sentenced to death, commuted to life hard labour; educated in anarchist theory by Arshinov in Butyrka prison
- 1917–1918Amnestied, returns to Huliaipole as soviet chair; organizes Black Guard; confiscates landlords' land
- 1919.2–6Allies with Red Army, commands 3rd Brigade, 1st Zadneprovsk Division; breaks when Trotsky declares him an outlaw
- 1919.7–10Commander-in-chief of the RPAU; 600-km raid through Denikin's rear disrupts White advance on Moscow; proclaims Free Territory
- 1920.10–11Re-allies with Red Army against Wrangel, fights in Crimea; Red Army surrounds and destroys his units after victory
- 1921–1925Retreats across Romania, Poland, and Danzig to exile in Paris
- 1925–1934Active in anarchist circles in Paris exile; writes memoirs; dies of bone tuberculosis
Related historical events
The Organizational Platform and Platformism
In June 1926, during his Paris exile, Makhno co-founded the journal Delo Truda with Peter Arshinov and published the Organizational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists (Draft). The document traced the anarchists' defeat in the Russian Revolution to chronic disorganization and proposed forming a "General Union of Anarchists" founded on three principles: theoretical unity, tactical unity, and collective responsibility. It urged anarchists to work within existing trade unions and mass organizations to raise class consciousness and, in a revolutionary situation, to build free soviets as organs of self-management. In his March 1926 article "The Problem of Organization and the Notion of Synthesis," Makhno sharply criticized Volin's "anarchist synthesis" as incoherent and defended the Platform's call for a disciplined, theoretically coherent organization.
The Platform ignited fierce debate across the international anarchist movement. Volin, Alexander Berkman, and others denounced it as a "Bolshevization" of anarchism that risked creating a centralist party, while Sébastien Faure argued it was unsuited to French conditions. Makhno countered that the Platform consciously rejected coercion and preserved decentralization, but the controversy split the movement into "platformists" and "synthesists." Nevertheless, the Platform became a lasting reference point for organized anarchism: from the Friends of Durruti during the Spanish Revolution to the French Libertarian Communist Federation of the 1950s and Latin America's especifismo movement. Makhno defended the Platform until his death in 1934; his funeral brought a temporary reconciliation between the two camps.