Maria the Implacable

When I was a child, my grandmother told me about a female otaman named Marusia whose detachment fought in the Vinnytsia region during the Civil War. Later, when I was researching this period of Ukrainian history for my work, I discovered that there were several female otamans with this popular Ukrainian name. It will be no exaggeration to say that they were real modern-day Amazons, women who had assumed military, purely masculine, powers. Putting their lives at risk, they would plunge into hellish battles together with their troops, wield the saber as ably as men, if not better than them, and develop their units’ operational strategy and tactic in extremely difficult situations. At the same time, the women who fought in the bloody and merciless Civil War were capable of putting on refined manners and demonstrating their command of foreign languages, genuine erudition, and striking beauty.

One of them was Maria Nykyforova, commander of an anarchist detachment and an ally of Nestor Makhno.

TERRORIST, POLITICAL PRISONER, EMIGRE

There is contradictory information about Nykoforova’s early years. Some sources state that she was born in 1887 in Oleksandrivsk (now Zaporizhia) into an officer’s family. Others indicate that she came from a poor peasant family living in Starodub district, Chernihiv gubernia. There is also evidence that Maria worked for a time as a dishwasher at a local wine distillery. But whatever the case, it is an undeniable fact that early in life Nykyforova began to fight against the existing political system, and this period in her biography resembles the beginning of Makhno’s revolutionary life story.

Sources say that in 1907 Maria fired a fatal shot from her revolver at a tsarist police officer, was arrested by the tsarist police, tried, and handed down a death sentence, later commuted to life in prison because she was underage. Nykyforova served her term in the dreary dungeons of the Peter and Paul Fortress and later in Siberia, from where she managed to escape in 1910. Maria fled abroad — first to Japan and later to the United States and Western Europe (Great Britain, France, Germany, and Switzerland).

The revolutionary terrorist did not waste any time in exile and began a course of self-education. She studied European languages (she had a good command of several) and graduated from two educational institutions: a sculpture and painting school and an officers’ school. There is no doubt that acquiring two entirely different professions was a well-conceived action fully in line with her idea of life. If there had been peace in the world, the former political prisoner would have been a sculptor or painter, and perhaps art specialists would be writing article and books about her artistic oeuvre. But in the grim war years, the knowledge obtained at the school for officers could very well come in handy. Indeed, her military education served her well.

MAKHNO’S ALLY

Soon after the February Revolution, Maria the Implacable (Nykyforova acquired this nickname in Europe because of her political radicalism) returned to Ukraine and settled in the town of Polohy, where her mother lived. Naturally, a visit to her mother, whom she had not seen for many years, was not the only reason why she went there. Not far from this town, in the glorious village of Huliai-Pole the anarchist and communist Nestor Makhno had touched off a violent wave of revolution. Nykyforova, an anarchist-terrorist by persuasion, had high hopes that he would be able to build a genuine anarchist society.

In fact, Maria had no great liking for the revolutionary “order” in Huliai-Pole. She believed that Makhno and his comrades were wasting their time with all sorts of “counterrevolutionaries” (Maria attached this label mostly to the well-off classes) and, contrary to the classic canons of anarchism, were establishing their own dictatorship here. Here I must emphasize that no matter how much the local rich hated Makhno’s anarchists, they would have considered it a veritable heaven if the ultra-radical Nykyforova had come to power in Huliai-Pole. The rich and the well-to-do would have been destroyed and their property confiscated. It cannot be ruled out that in other historical conditions Maria the Implacable would have fought against Makhno and his men no less ruthlessly than she did her many other enemies.

The new anarcho-communist practices in Huliai-Pole required the formation of a viable armed force. Many young people wanted to serve in the Black Guard anarchist units, but there was a lack of weapons in Makhno’s native village. Nykyforova gave Makhno a piece of good advice: there was a battalion of the Preobrazhensky Regiment stationed nearby, in the town of Orikhove, so why not get some weapons from there?

The two anarchist leaders carried out their plan brilliantly. Arriving in Orikhove, Makhno and Nykyforova’s gunmen instantly surrounded the regimental barracks. The troops of the Provisional Government offered no resistance, let themselves be disarmed, and then deserted, while Nykyforova summarily shot seven captured officers with her revolver.

Nykyforovahad a virtually irresistible desire to shoot on sight counterrevolutionaries of all hues. On Aug. 29, 1917, during General Kornilov’s counterrevolutionary insurrection, someone shouted at a big rally of Huliai-Pole workers and peasants that there were followers of Kornilov not only in Russia but in Huliai-Pole, and pointed to a former tsarist police officer. In a flash, this “ghost of the past” was face to face with Nykyforova, the uncompromising symbol of the revolution. She was armed as usual, and the encounter with her could have cost the (innocent) old tsarist soldier dearly. Makhno himself saved this “follower of Kornilov” from inevitable death, and this incident further underlined the differences in the approaches of these two revolutionaries to the rule of law.

Nykyforova did not spend all her time in Huliai-Pole. From May 1917 she was seen with increasing frequency in Oleksandrivsk, where she headed a group of equally relentless young people who were extorting huge “taxes” from the rich locals. For example, she extorted one million rubles from Badovsky, a local factory owner. Such actions were aimed at eliminating wealthy capitalists as a social group in Oleksandrivsk and forcing them to experience all the “pleasures” of penury. However, the local authorities chose to protect the interests of the Oleksandrivsk bourgeoisie. In late October 1917 Makhno learned that Nykyforova had been arrested by the Oleksandrivsk district commissar for unsanctioned requisitions. Makhno’s firm demand that she be freed produced no results.

The district commissar also promised to destroy the Huliai- Pole “hornets’ nest” in the nearest future. In response, Makhno sent 60 heavily-armed gunmen to Oleksandrivsk to liberate Nykyforova. It turned out that Makhno’s help was unnecessary because workers from Oleksandrivsk, practically unarmed, had already freed Nykyforova, who was popular with the workers. The Oleksandrivsk authorities did not dare oppose the anarchist and her followers: she was freed well after the Bolshevik coup in Petrograd, which had the approval of both Makhno and Nykyforova. In those days they could not imagine what difficult relations they would one day have with the communists.

Both the supporters and opponents of the Bolshevik coup were already feeling the sinister breath of civil war. On Jan. 2, 1918, 200 fighters led by Nestor and Savva Makhno and 250 of Maria Nykyforova’s men set off to Oleksandrivsk to help the local Bolsheviks, who were fighting Central Rada units. The town was quickly purged of the “yellow-and-blues” through a joint effort, and Nykyforova was appointed deputy head of the local Bolshevik-Socialist Revolutionary Committee.

Very soon Maria the Implacable showed that did not always agree with the practices of the new authorities. After some time she sanctioned a wave of searches, requisitions, and executions of people who were displeased with her activities, but when the Revolutionary Committee lodged a strong protest with Nykyforova over these actions, Marusia’s “boys” immediately disbanded the committee and established anarchist rule for a few days.

Later, Nykyforova’s anarchist detachment captured a number of towns and villages in southern Ukraine, most of which met with the same destiny. In March 1918 her fighters launched a bold attack and drove units of the Ukrainian National Republic from Yelyzavethrad, but the order established here by Nykyforova— requisitions and summary executions of disgruntled workers — led the city residents to rise up against anarchist rule. In the town of Berezivka Nykyforova ordered the residents to pay a colossal indemnity and warned that if they failed to comply with her demand, they would all be destroyed. It was only the presence of a large Red Army unit commanded by Hryhorii Kotovsky, a resolute opponent of requisitions, which saved the residents from looting.

Volodymyr Horak is a Candidate of Sciences (History.)

(To be concluded in the next issue)