Nestor Makhno was the leader of a libertarian peasant and worker army and insurrection in the Ukraine which successfully fought Ukrainian nationalists, the Whites, the Bolsheviks and the bourgeoisie and put anarchism into practice in the years following the Russian Revolution.
Makhno was a committed anarchist who had spent years in Russian prisons for his political activities. Released from jail by the February revolution he returned to his village of Gulai-Polye and threw himself into organising unions, communes and soviets.
During the Russian civil-war he proved himself to be a brilliant military commander, whose partisans saved the Red Army from crushing military defeat at the hands of the Whites. When the White threat had been removed, the Bolshevik State turned on the Machnovshchina and eventually defeated them and their revolutionary achievements.
The history of the Machnovshchina has been consistently distorted by the Soviet state and its apologists.
Nestor Makhno was born in 1888 and was brought up by his mother only. His father died in his early years. He went to school from ages 8-11. He worked partially as a shepherd from age 7 to 12, and from age 12-15 as an agricultural worker. From age 15 to 17 he worked in a local casting factory. He was part of the Revolutionary effort of 1905. He was sent to jail for murdering a police officer, and during his nine-year term is where he learned and first encountered anarchism. He studied anarchism in jail with Peter Arshinov. Prison was like school to him. He spent a whole lot of time in solitary confinement. He was condemned to death at age 17 but was given a long sentence because of his age.