Essay , | 03/24/2026 : Ukrainian Anarchism: The Legacy of Nestor Makhno

The region has seen its share of tragedies: brutal German occupation during World War I and World War II, starvation during the Holodomor, and the loss of nearly its entire Jewish population during the Holocaust. By now, even those last insubordinate, free-thinking residents have been evacuated or fled, while the unluckiest have lost their lives. What they leave behind in Huliaipole is their memories, lives, property, and a shrine to the region’s most famous historical resident, Nestor Makhno. 

More than 90 years after his death, Makhno remains a prominent figure in the anarchist movement worldwide. Nevertheless, anarchism in Ukraine did not begin with Makhno. The ideological foundations of Ukrainian anarchism were laid by an array of people, most prominently Mykhaylo Drahomanov and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Theirs was an anarchism rooted in the ideas of federalism, communalism, and ethical socialism. At certain points in the twentieth century, many of these ideas attained mainstream acceptance. Drahomanov’s ideas, for instance, were visible in the programs of many political movements during Ukraine’s fight for independence, although they were admittedly stripped of his more radical anarchist vision.

The history of anarchism in Ukraine: the Zaporizhian host

Anarchism was alive and well in Ukraine even before these philosophical thoughts and political theories were established among the educated elite. As Makhno himself said, his movement was only possible because of its deep connection with the Cossack history of southern Ukraine. Many historians similarly link the broad support for Makhno’s anarchist ideas in the region at the time to the Cossack culture and heritage. In the sixteenth century, hundreds of years before Makhno’s birth, there was a semi-nomadic peasant population in southern Ukraine that eventually formed what is known as the Zaporizhian Host. The area was loosely controlled by Cossacks, a population known for being good warriors who were able to maintain their independence from both the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Ottoman Empire. Their skills were also economically useful: they regularly raided nearby settlements and were mercenaries for anyone who was willing to pay. The governing structure of the Zaporizhian Host was one of flat hierarchies: all leaders of Cossack formations were referred to as one and decision-making was done on a consensus basis trusting that local leaders would implement the agreed-upon policies. Compared to the strict hierarchies of the surrounding imperial monarchies, the Zaporizhian Host was more inclusive.

Russian Tsarina Catherine II opposed the regional self-regulation and autonomy of the Cossack warriors. She dismantled the Zaporizhian Host in 1775, imposing serfdom on southern Ukraine and creating deeper class divisions. The consequences of Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 1792 along with the end of the Russo-Turkish war included a stricter division of land in southern Ukraine and forced enserfment. Some peasants joined uprisings against the Russian imperial forces while others scrambled and fled to southern Russia or Bessarabia to avoid being forced into serfdom. Michael Palij notes that “antipathy towards serfdom was constantly alive among the peasants” and that serfdom was never as widespread in southern Ukraine as it was in other regions. 

The first uprising, 1905 to 1910

In 1905, peasants and workers began to rise up against Tsar Nicholas II and the ruling class in the First Russian Revolution. Poor economic conditions, a lost war against Japan, high unemployment, and authoritarian laws targeting minorities and trade unions were some of the factors that led to the mass protests. In the Ukrainian parts of the Russian Empire, the peasant population was deeply dissatisfied with official agrarian policy because it kept them poor, dependent and, in bad years, nearly starving. Some peasants sought work in the cities, others revolted by disobeying the government or looting nobles’ homes. As Huliaipole industrialized in the mid-1800s, the region was left with an explosive mix of disenfranchised industrial and agricultural labourers, many of whom still remembered their autonomy. 

During that tumultuous period, Voldemar Antoni founded the Union of Poor Peasants in his hometown of Huliaipole. Antoni was an educated man and started out as the group’s ideological leader, writing and educating his followers (including the young Nestor Makhno) on anarcho-communism. As the civil unrest in the Russian Empire continued, Antoni and his comrades helped organize the first workers councils (soviets) and strikes in Ukraine’s industrial centres. Other members began targeting the empire itself by stealing money and assassinating police officers.

After Antoni’s arrest and exile to Belgium, he continued to write anarchist literature and smuggle weapons to his comrades. Antoni himself emphasized the Cossack spirit that was evident among the anarchists. He started most of his revolutionary operations with the phrase “Great honour and glory to you, the sons of the great people, grandsons of Zaporizhian Cossacks”. This spirit held for the second revolution, during which Makhno described the mood during gatherings in Huliaipole by saying that, “These were the meetings of the real Zaporizhian Host — the ones we now only read about in history books”. 

The mass social movement of 1905 was short-lived, ending with Tsar Nicholas’ October Manifesto promising elections and other democratic reforms, which satisfied Russian liberals. Peasants in southern Ukraine, on the other hand, kept their momentum going and continued their struggle against the state in pursuit of more extensive policy changes.

The interim, 1910 to 1917

For the political elites in the Ukrainian regions of the Russian Empire, this first Russian revolution created a division on the national question between integration into larger political entities and the struggle for Ukrainian independence (republicans). The developing anarchist movements in southern Ukraine were distanced from these discussions and continued focusing on regional autonomy and self-determination. The Union of Poor Peasants focused their violent resistance on the tsarist police. Another Huliaipole anarchist, Oleksandr Semenyuta, led the resistance from Katerynoslav (known today as Dnipro) and Belgium. Economic life in the Russian Empire did not improve following the October Manifesto, and the peasants’ movement spread. The imperial police force set out to quash all anarchist movements within the empire. The Union of Poor Peasants was infiltrated, and in 1910 Makhno was arrested along with other movement figureheads.

While he was in prison, Makhno connected with anarchists from the Russian anarchist movement. This would lead to new and problematic considerations on Makhno’s part, although these critical questions or ideological shifts hardly affected the Ukrainian anarchist movement as a whole. The communist and anarchist intellectual considerations from Russia planted seeds of scepticism about Ukrainian self-determination. There, Makhno was influenced by Russian anarchists, some of whom shared xenophobic stereotypes with other Russian political movements. This time may have  increased his acceptance of violent and coercive tactics within the movement in opposition to the otherwise democratic and pluralistic tradition of Ukrainian anarchism. 

During Makhno’s absence, the political underground in Ukraine remained active. Emancipation from the Russian monarchy was a common point of reference for most people in Ukraine at the time, but the political landscape remained fragmented. Although Ukrainian anarchists were also in dialogue with various Ukrainian socialist movements, there was no strong impetus to join together. The struggle for freedom against an absolutist state, in line with their Cossack heritage, fed mistrust of any national movement no matter how progressive. 

The Ukrainian war of independence, 1917 to 1921

In the middle of World War I and just over a decade after the First Russian Revolution, the February Revolution began in 1917. The chaos in Russia continued and new political institutions were formed throughout the crumbling empire, each with their own connection to political ideology and armed groups. A first step toward Ukrainian independence was taken in March 1917 with the creation of the Ukrainian Central Rada by the Marxist Ukrainian Social-Democratic Labour Party and left-populist Ukrainian Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries with the goal of political autonomy and, later, independence.

Ukraine’s partial sovereignty as a federal unit within Russia was frostily tolerated by the government in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg), although liberal and social elites — and particularly Russian nationalists — strongly opposed an autonomous or independent Ukraine. The relatively quiet dissatisfaction in Petrograd took a violent turn with the October Revolution and the new Bolshevik government’s declaration of war on Ukraine. The Russian army crossed the border with the intention of occupying the newly formed Ukrainian People’s Republic, marking the beginning of the Ukrainian War of Independence.

While Makhno remained behind bars in Russia, representatives of the Ukrainian People’s Republic met with the Central Powers during the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk. Fear of the encroaching Bolsheviks led the newly formed Central Rada to strike a deal with Germany and Austria-Hungary to provide agricultural supplies in return for military assistance. Operation Faustschlag removed Russian Bolshevik operations in large swaths of Ukraine, and in turn, German forces started abusing, repressing, and extorting Ukrainian peasants. Insurgent Ukrainian communist and anarchist peasants (particularly in the south and east of the country) refused to accept the occupation by the Central Powers. 

The German overthrow of the Central Rada in April 1918 was the final straw. A dizzying array of insurgencies emerged throughout Ukraine, but the divisions within the Makhno movement also grew, even after he returned to Ukraine and joined them after his release from prison in the summer of 1918. The largest groupings in Ukraine were, on one side, the republicans and independent communists, who supported Ukrainian independence; the Russian Bolsheviks and the White Volunteer Army, both of which attempted to maintain Moscow’s control over Ukraine, albeit with drastically different ideologies; and the Makhnovshchina (as the Makhno movement came to be called), which fought against all the statist forces.

In this period, the Makhnovshchina cemented itself as a radical self-governance movement in the spirit of the Cossacks. All positions were elected, and while the official Makhnovite press was entirely in Russian, the movement allowed communities to choose their own language of education and the local press, which meant that Ukrainian was adopted almost everywhere as the language of the non-political press and communications. Local peasant and worker councils were free to decide many policies for themselves, even while there was a strong sense of political pressure against those who were deemed “bourgeois”. This is why party democracy never took hold in Huliaipole, as parties were seen as stepping stones for forming political programmes and structured statist movements. 

On the one hand, support for anarchism and the spread of Makhno’s power (although the “power” of Makhnovshchina “rule” should not be understood in the same way as centralist movements) grew significantly during this time. On the other hand, the growth of the movement meant more infighting, and the chaos of the world around it put a lot of pressure on the movement’s political figureheads. The Makhnovshchina continued to fight on multiple fronts to realize its vision of local autonomy, but outside pressure from other warring parties was pushing the movement to its breaking point, and internal strife was leading to a rift. 

The main division was between the anarchist intellectuals and the Ukrainian peasantry itself. Although their preferred future was in a free and autonomous, locally organized, non-state structure, the intellectuals sympathized with soviet communism and the peasants with Ukrainian republicanism. The so-called Free Territories under the “control” of the anarchists were faced with the hard reality that their local self-rule may be coming to an end, and they were left with two choices for cooperation. 

Makhno were that, as a leader at the regional level, he could not find real allies at the pan-Ukrainian level, which is in fact why his movement was condemned to defeat from the very beginning”. Despite his reservations, the rest of the Makhnovshchina united with the left-wing Ukrainian People’s Republic for a brief period in 1919. This coalition brought with it a short-term “Ukrainization” of Makhnovshchina leadership and opened the way for negotiations with the socialist-republican forces of the UPR. The republicans proposed complete autonomy for the realization of an anarchist project in the region controlled by Makhno as part of the Ukrainian state.

The alliance between Ukrainian Independent Communists and Makhno led to the creation of the first two Ukrainian-language Makhnovist newspapers: Anarchist-Insurgent and Road to Freedom. In late 1919, Anarchist-Insurgent published an article titled “Independent Ukraine and Anarchists” in which the Makhnovist movement, under the heavy pressure from Ukrainian peasants, adopted federalism and a demand for national self-governance. In the fusion of Drahomanov and Makhno’s ideas, the newspaper proposed the creation of the “Self-Governed Labour Federation of Ukraine”. This group met with resistance from more orthodox Makhnovist intellectuals, many of whom still saw themselves as part of the all-Russian movement of anarchists but, as before, with sympathies for soviet communism. 

By 1920, the Bolsheviks were advancing in Ukraine and Makhno’s health was deteriorating. The ideological divide within the Makhnovshchina put the army in a difficult position as the southern Ukrainian steppe was being enclosed. Makhno now let the army decide if it would reconsider its alliances, and in 1920 it narrowly voted for an alignment with the Red Army command. It did not take long for members to regret this decision. In July 1921, Red Army general Mikhail Frunze ordered the liquidation of anything that was left of the Makhnovshchina, putting an end to both the anarchist insurgency and the Ukrainian war of independence and beginning centralist Soviet rule in Ukraine. 

Makhno and his remembrance after 1921

Makhno’s last few dozen followers attempted to save his life, fleeing with him to a few countries before he finally found himself in Western Europe. History would unfold in Ukraine without him or an armed anarchist movement. Makhno remained in exile, but in close contact with other well-known anarchists, and he continued to write about the history of the war of independence and his political views in the journal The Cause of Labour. He died of tuberculosis in Paris in 1934.

In the early Soviet Union after the defeat of the Makhnovshchina, many members were arrested or shot, and purges of active anarchists continued until 1938 when 40 Makhno loyalists were arrested in Huliaipole alone. Other members of the movement assimilated into the Communist Party and Soviet structures. Public remembrance of the Makhnovshchina or support for anarchism in general remained dangerous. It represented a threat to Bolshevism because anarchism was left-wing alternative that offered more freedom than the stifling centralized Soviet system. 

In official histography in the later Soviet Union, the image of the anarchist insurgency was entirely negative: the movement was described as counter-revolutionary and sadistic, and Makhno was presented as an anti-hero, a criminal, and a bandit. Makhno’s memory was preserved in Soviet Ukraine, where oral history carried on his values and a version of history that was closer to the truth. Nevertheless, Makhno’s memory in Ukraine was somewhat distorted both during the Soviet era and in the 1990s, when Makhno was seen as a faultless Cossack Robin Hood. 

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union and with the onset of Ukraine’s renewed independence, dozens of versions of Makhnovshchina history began to emerge. With more academic freedom, Ukrainian historians began researching and writing more about Makhno’s movement and ideology and about the Ukrainian War of Independence in general. This led to Makhno’s resurgence in public memory, sometimes with odd connotations. 

Some groups claimed him as a Ukrainian hero, successfully fighting against the Russian monarchists and Soviet Communists. Right-wingers in Ukraine have also tried to claim him for the same reasons, conveniently misrepresenting his ideology and actions. Some view Makhno as a Russian sell-out because of his cooperation with the Red Army. Others unjustly claim he was an antisemite, despite the fact that the vast majority of pogroms against Ukrainian Jews were committed outside of the Free Territories to the west of the Dnipro River by the National Army, the White Army, or later by the Bolsheviks as well. (Although this is not to say the Makhnovshchina was entirely free of antisemitism.) 

Generally speaking, however, Makhno has become a mainstream figure, although the political landscape in modern Ukraine does not necessarily paint a very progressive picture. Acceptance of Cossack history as something particularly Ukrainian, celebrated by all parts of Ukrainian society and particularly connecting the southern and eastern regions of the country with Ukrainian national identity, helps explain how Makhno gained a certain degree of social acceptance. Beyond that, the correct description of Makhno as a freedom fighter who opposed authoritarianism and corrupt centralist leadership and, importantly, Russian rule solidified his position as an important political and historical symbol and role model. 

Anarchism in Ukraine today 

The most obvious and logical link to the Makhnovshchina and historical Ukrainian anarchism is visible in the broad Ukrainian left today. In modern Ukraine (post-1991), many of the Ukrainian left’s struggles have focused on expanding rights for industrial and agricultural workers in direct opposition to a centralized and corrupt political and economic elite. Distrust of state institutions in Ukraine in the 1990s and 2000s along with the necessity of community networks for survival meant that anarchism was not much of a stretch for progressive Ukrainians. Add the historical memory of the Cossacks and pride in self-determined practices, and the result is many leftists who did not fall under the spell of Soviet nostalgia finding themselves at home with anarchist ideology and direct action. Although sentiment towards the Ukrainian state has improved a bit since the Maidan Revolution, trust in state intuitions has remained low in Ukraine (this was especially true before the full-scale invasion), and anarchism remains an ideology ingrained in the broad Ukrainian left. 

After the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022, the vast majority of Ukrainian leftists supported armed resistance against imperial rule, authoritarianism, and Russian nationalism. Many anarchists and other socialists have taken up arms themselves — some on their own terms, others by mobilizing within the ranks of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Other anarchists support their left-wing comrades on the front line by providing them the aid they need, for example through Solidarity Collectives. 

Certain political circles abroad voice their criticism of Ukrainian anarchists today quite loudly in an attempt to delegitimize the consensus on the Ukrainian left in support of armed resistance. Although many of these perspectives are undoubtedly influenced by Russian propaganda, other anarchists have raised some critical questions that at least follow a logical structure. 

The main focal point of that critique is anarchists’ decision to bind themselves to state structures, especially a state that is well established as part of the capitalist world order (after all, the word anarchism comes from the Greek term ἀναρχία, meaning “without ruler”). Ukrainian leftists reply that, for anarchists who are willing to take up arms against Russia, there is no viable alternative to joining the Ukrainian Armed Forces. There is no third or fourth army, as there was during the Ukrainian War of Independence, and even the semi-autonomous structures that existed during the “anti-terror operation” in the Donbas after 2014 have all been dismantled or integrated into the Ukrainian Armed Forces. This does not necessarily diminish Ukrainian anarchists’ general critique of the state generally or actions of the Ukrainian government specifically; some describe their outlook as a matter of putting their critique “on hold” until the emergency at hand is resolved (although it is important to note that their struggles continue nonetheless, even amid war and martial law). 

The leftists who are not currently fighting on the front but rather doing support work for their comrades maintain anarchist ideals in the ways they group together, organize, and supply aid and weaponry (primarily drones). They function entirely independently of the state and the larger military industrial complex. Many anarchists, such as those organized around the Radical Aid Force, risk their own lives to bring life-saving aid to front line communities that are otherwise beyond the reach of conventional aid organizations. They do this on their own, without bureaucracy, no questions asked, financed by their own fundraising efforts. They also help people evacuate, regardless of the language they speak, the colour of their skin, or their political convictions. 

Another point of discontent, especially in Western leftist circles, is the question of pacifism and an inability to fathom a modern leftist taking up arms at all. The disbelief of “peace activists” is matched by the incredulity of Ukrainian leftists, most of whom maintain that this perspective only makes sense from a place of privilege. The leftist heritage in Ukraine includes the Makhnovshchina’s fight for anarchist values and local autonomy, the fight against German occupation and Nazism in the context of the Red Army during World War II, and street fights against skinheads and protests against state discrimination and violence in post-Soviet Ukraine. This is not to say that no aspects of pacifism are represented in Ukraine at all, but violent means in the struggle against authoritarian rule and for self-determination have been used in multiple phases of Ukrainian history and are not so easily forgotten. Willingness to take up arms is perhaps more comprehensible if we take an honest view of its counterpart: the war that has violently occupied parts of Ukraine since 2014. This is a bigger threat to the existence of leftist movements and anti-authoritarian protest than anything else. Proteste.

A third point of critique stems from events that took place in Ukraine in 2014 and their misinterpretation. The presence of right-wing groups at the Maidan protests did prevent some anarchists from taking part in the blockade, however focusing on this fact alone erases the fact that the revolution was supported by a broad range of people with a variety of political ideas, including leftists. At the same time, some anti-Maidan protests in other cities also included anarchist groups, and the Soviet flag was a common symbol during the Russian intervention in Crimea and the Donbas. Yet none of this can obscure the widespread participation of Russian nationalists at those protests or the association of the Soviet Union with Russian greatness, as opposed to communist ideology. 

In 2015, Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko banned Nazi symbols while also beginning his de-communization campaign, which including banning Soviet symbols. This has been interpreted as equating Nazism with Communism. While Poroshenko is certainly no friend to the left and this move was subject to substantial criticism, the attacks on Soviet symbolism in Ukraine were clearly related to malicious Russian intentions rather than clamping down on leftist ideology. Similarly, banning the Communist Party of Ukraine was widely criticized abroad, but even the leftists in Sozialnyi Rukh had a more nuanced take in light of the CPU’s relationship to Russian imperialism. To put it lightly, the party was hardly a cherished institution among modern progressives, be they leftist activists or anarchists. 

All in all, interpreting these events in a certain way can feed the image pushed by the Kremlin that Ukraine is somehow led by a Nazi regime and that the Russian state — the legal successor to the Soviet Union — is a beacon of antifascism. Although leftists in Ukraine do not all agree on the intentions of either the Maidan revolution or the anti-Maidan protests, and while they certainly had different experiences during that period, this does not change the fact that there is now a broad consensus on the left that Putin’s Russia is neofascist and the Ukrainian war effort is justified from anti-imperialist, antifascist, legal, and democratic perspectives. 

A fourth critical point often heard from Western leftists is based on the view that Ukraine is simply stuck in a proxy war between empires and that only the capitalists and their industries (first and foremost the arms industry) can profit from it. The expectation of leftists — and especially anarchists — is that they should oppose all empires. As the Makhnovshchina had to do when they were faced with defeat in the Ukrainian War of Independence, Ukrainian leftists had to make a decision. When faced with the choice to continue fighting against capitalism, authoritarianism, and corruption and for democracy, socialism, autonomy, and freedom, Ukrainian leftists know very well their fight will be safer, easier, and more successful in the pluralist democracy of Ukraine, the home they have grown up in, than under occupation by the neofascist regime that is modern Russia. This consideration was easy for most, and now Ukrainian anarchists are fighting on the front lines, at their jobs, in their universities, and abroad against the threat of subjugation and occupation by a foreign imperial power. This will allow them to one day continue fighting for their anarchist values in a post-war Ukraine, and their participation in the resistance can legitimize and normalize leftist ideologies on the political scene. 

No trust in the government

Distrust of the current state is so widespread in Ukraine that it cannot only be attributed to those who claim to be anarchists or even leftists. The necessity to self-organize at a community or neighbourhood level did not begin with the full-scale invasion. Self-organisation and direct action have been common in Ukraine throughout its tumultuous history. Such was the case during the interwar and civil war period, during the Holodomor, during phases of food and commodity shortages in the Soviet Union and after the economic collapse and austerity in the 1990s. 

Scepticism of the state is not unique to Ukraine; this is reflected in the political apathy observed in Eastern Europe that is often linked to state socialism and the difficult capitalist transition. Low voter turnout is used to merit these claims, though this is a simplified argument. Nevertheless, in Ukraine the civil society remains strong and active and plays the role of the de facto opposition to the authorities, and the fight against corruption remains central in protest movements, even now despite martial law. Many western leftists see their states as an instrument or even partner to bring forward positive change. This point of view could be viewed as naïve in Ukraine, though there are also leftists who envision a strong welfare state. This is a unique political baseline for leftists in Ukraine, especially anarchists, to gain or maintain recognition by portions of society who do not otherwise associate themselves with the political left. The provision of social welfare is still expected by the state and active citizens fight for a fair distribution of wealth and resources, against abuse and corruption. Nevertheless, much in the Makhno tradition, self-organisation and reliance on community structures, general scepticism towards the state, and the willingness to fight for self-determination will not soon disappear in Ukraine.