Atamansha: The Story of Maria Nikiforova, the Anarchist Joan of Arc 0973782706, 9780973782707

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1 ► The Story of Maria Nikiforova

- t~e Anarchist Joan of Arc

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,4 T,4~,4N~f4,4 The Story of Maria Nil:?iforova, the Anarchist Joan of Arc

by Malcolm Archibald

BLACK CAT PRESS Edmonton, Alberta

First publ is h ed 200 7 Copyright © 2007 Bl ack Cat Pvess

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication: Atamansha : the Story of Maria Nikiforova, the Anarchist Joan of Arc by Mal colm Archibald. ISBN 978-0-9737827-0-7

1. Nikiforova, Marusia, 1885- 1919. 2. Anarchists- Ukraine- Biography. 3. Revolutionaries-Ukraine- Biography. 4. Ukraine- History- Revolution, 1917- 1921 . 5. Soviet Union- History- Revolution, 1917- 1921. DK265 .8.U4 A78 2007

947 .7/0841 22

C2007-906923- 1

BLACK CAT PRESS 4508 118 Avenue Edmonton, Alberta Canada TSW 1A9

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Contents Introducti on ... ....... ......... .... .... .. ........ ... 1 The Young Terrorist. ........... .................. 3 The Grand Tour ......... ........................... s Revolut ionary Days in Petrograd .......... 7 Marusya - the Person and the Activist. ... 8 Alexandrovsk & Gulai -Polye ............... 1 O The October Revolution in Ukraine ..... 15 The Cossack Threat ............................ 17 The Free Combat Druzhina ................ 20 The Battles of Yelizavetgrad .............. 23 The Long Retreat ................... ..... ....... 29 Trial in Taganrog ............................... 32 Trial in Moscow ................................. 36 Return to Gulai-Polye ........................ 38 Return to Underground Terror ............ 39 The Last Trial ............... ..................... 41 The Legend Continues ............ ....... ..... 43 Appendix .......................... ... ......... .... 45 B1' bl .1ograp hy .................................... . 47

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Introduction The Ukrainian anarchi st Maria Nikiforova (1887-1919) has sometimes been compared to Joan of Arc. Like Joan she started fron1 humble origins and, improbably, became a ferociou s military commander who was captured and executed by he r sworn enemies. And , like Joan, she was a fanatic w ho pursued her goa ls in a vio len t, ruthless fashion . But there is no cult of Maria Nikiforova . There are no shelves of books devoted to her life in any language. Although she played a prominent role in the Ru ssian Revolu tions of 1917 and the subsequent Civil War, she was virtuall y expunged from Sovie t histories of the period . A biographical dictionary of the Russian Revolution published in the Soviet Union which includes hundreds of nan1es does not mention her, indeed mentions only a couple of dozen women. There are entries on the Bolshevik heroines Alexandra Kollontai, Larissa Reissner, and Inessa Armand but none of these women held independent military commands like Nikiforova . There is no scholarly biography of Maria Nikiforova, no historiography of her life which only needs to be updated and possibly reinterpreted. Partly this is because she spent most of her life in the underground: she joined an anarchist terrorist group at age 16 and was really only " above ground " for two years (1917-1919). So there are very few documents to trace her activities and almost no photos. Recogni tion can be fatal for a terrorist and so it was for Nikiforova in the end . Such accounts of her life which t'\tst are usuall y found in memoir literature or fi ction . l\1ost of these accounts are hostile to Nikiforov ,1 and tend to depict her as repul sive and evil. Nikiforova wa s a Ukrc1inian ,1nd her ,1etivitil'S in the

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Russian Revolution and Civil War took place mostly in Ukrainer11 but she has been largely ignored by Ukrainian historians. She was anti-nationalist and, like the Ukrainian anarchist movement in general, she couldn t be assimilated to a nationalist historical perspecti ve Even writers sympathetic to anarchism have as a rule, neglected her. Although she was closel y as~o1.·1a ted with the famous peasant anarchist Nestor Makhnn books about Makhno scarcely mention her. And yet in 191 8 Nikiforova was already famou s as c.1 n anarchist atamansha (military leader) throughout Ukraine, while Makhno was still a rather obscure figure operating in a provincial backwater. She is absent from the works of Peter Arshinov, Voline, and Paul Avrichr21• Alexandre Skirda's book on Makhno mentions her but only devotes one paragraph to her in a work of 400 pages.r3i Exceptions to the rule are Makhno himself and his former adjutant Victor Belash. ln his memoirs (which only cover 22 months of revolution and civil war) Makhno provides eye-witness accounts of a number of dramatic incidents in which Nikiforova played a leading role. Belash, whose work was rescued from the files of the Soviet secret police, also presents primary source material about her. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union there has been tremendous interest in Russia and Ukraine in filling in the "white patches" in their history. Makhno and Nikiforova have benefited from this interest with many books on Makhno being published and a few essays on Nikiforova . The archives ha ve yielded some solid informc1tion; 1 Under the Ru ssian Empire which t>nded 111 1917 Ukr,11ne wa\ not a political entity but a collecti on of provinces oft en referred to as "Sou th Russia" or "li ttle Russ1c1''.

2 Arshinov, P., History of the Makhnovist Movement 1918- 1921 (London, 2006); Valine, The Unknown Revolution (Mo11tr~c1I, 2004); Avnch, P, The Russian Anarchists (Oakland, 2005) 3 Skirda, A., Anarchy'sCossack (Oakland, 2004) This boo!.. was first published in France in 1982. Skirda's English translat or confuses Nik1torova with a Bolshevik commissar.

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!or example, Nikiforova 's service record exists since she wa s once a member of the Red Arm y. Gradually a clearer picture of her life is coming to light and it is possible to es tabli sh a reasonabl y reli able narrative although many ambi g uities remain . The follow ing sketch o f Nikiforova 's life is based mainly on second ary sources p u blished in Ru ssian and Ukrairuan in the last two d ecades .

The Young Terrorist Accord ing to tradi tion, Mc1ri,1 G rigorcv na N ikiforova wa s b orn in the U kr,1ini,1n city o f Alexa ndrovskr4 l in 1885, the d a u ghter o f an officer w ho ha d been c:i he ro o f the last Ru sso-Turkish War. Altho ugh th is s to ry mig ht he lp to explain her later martial a rd o ur, it seem s unlike ly . For even the d a ughter of a n impoverished officer w ould be unlikely to leave hom e a t 16 to earn a liv ing on our own as Maria did. At the turn o f the 19 th century, Alexandrovsk was a rap idly industrializing city wi th a large and militant w orking class population. Under the conditions of the time there w as little paid work for women, but Maria was able to find employ ment as a baby sitter, sales clerk and, finall y, a bottle washer in a vodka distillery. Around the same time she became a factory worker, Nikiforova also joined a local group of anarcho-cornmunists. This political tendency was distinguished from other left-wing groups, including other anarchists, b y the belief that human society had already reached a level that could allow an immedia te transition to con1munism . Anarchocommunist organizers first appeared in Ukrai ne in 1903 4 Today Zaporizhzhia.

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and enjoyed considerable success among the working class youth of industrial centres. During tbe revolutionary events of 1905-07 there were as man y c1~ 90 anarcho-communist groups in Ukraine, more n un1ernus and betterorganized than their counterparts in Hus~,1d Many of these groups, including the one Maria belonged to, espoused moti ve less terror (bezmot,vny lerror) which advocated the necessi ty of a ttackin g agents of economic repression based solely on the class position they occupied . This economic terrorism was a change from earlier varieties of Russian terrorism in which the targets of the terrorists were political tyrants. After serving some kind of probation, Maria became a full-fledged militant (boevik), empowered to take part in expropriations (to raise money for the cause) and terrorist ac ts. Our age has also not lacked "motiveless terror" but it is important to try to see the Ukrainian anarchist terrorists in the context of their own times, not ours. The early years of the 20 th century created pent-up frustrations among the lower classes of the Russian Empire because of the failure of revolutionary activity to change the country's socio-political order in any meaningful way. This was an empire headed by a monarch who was an honorary member of the "Union of the Russian People", an organization roughly equivalent to the Klu Klux Klan. Under prevailing conditions it was not just the anarchists who resorted to terror against the regime. All the socialist groups used terror. In fact, even middle class liberals endorsed the use of terror against tsa ri st repression. And although the Russian anarchists never numbered more than a few thousand, the ranks of their sympathizers were many times larger. Maria participated in a bomb attack on a passenger train. No one was hurt but some wealthy passengers were terrified . Another bomb killed a plant manager, ca using the plant to shut down for a n ex tended period. An attack on

Ataman.,·l,a

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th e bus iness office of 'il t'm L 1ie11d.ir,. 1he Russ1,111 c.1I endar was synchro111 zed with the rest of th e world 111 Febru,1ry 1() 18

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Having recently arrived in Russia, Marusya was one of the anarchists who went to Kronstadt. She gave a series of speeches on the huge Anchor Square to crowds as large as 8,000 to 10,000 sailors, urging them not to stand aside from their brothers in the capital. Partly thanks to her efforts many thousands of sa ilors went to Petrograd to march in the demonstrations of July 3 and 4 which almost toppled the Provisional Government. Although some Bolshevik organizations supported the demonstration s, tha t Party's leadership rejected the uprising as " prem atuu. •", dooming it to failure . The governmen t began hunting down the Bolsheviks and anarchists. Some of the Bolsheviks, including Ma rusya's friend Alexandra Kollontai, ended up in p r ison while others escaped to nearby Finland . Bleikhman w as given sanctuary by the Kronstadt sailors who protec ted him from arrest. Marusya decided it was a good time to return to Ukraine and help revive the anarchist movement there. In July 1917 she arrived back in Alexandrovsk, after an eightyear odyssey which had taken her around the world.

Marusya - the Person and the Activist At this point in her biography it seems appropriate to take up the perplexing question of Marusya' s sexuality. According to some published sources, adn1ittedly written after her death by people who were hostile to her, Marusya wa s what would now be called an " intersex" person. This view is reflected in severa l physical descriptions, for exampl e the former Makhnovist Chudnov writes of meeting her in 1918: "This w,1s a wmnan of 32 - 35, mediwnheight, with an emacia ted , prematurel y aged face in which there was something of a eunuch or hermaphrodite. Her hair

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was cropped short in a circle." The Bolshevik agitator Kiselev writes in his memoirs about meeting her in 1919: " Around 30 years old. Thin with an ema cia ted face, she produced the impression of an old maid type. Narrow nose. Sunken cheeks. She wore a blouse c, nd s kirt and a small revolver hung from her belt." Kiselev goes on to accuse her of being a cocaine addict. Most of th e Bol shevik descriptions of Marusya are at thi s level. An exception is the Bolshevi k Raksha who met Marusya in the spring of 1918: "I had heard that she was a beautiful woman ... Marusya was sitting at a table and had a cigarette in her teeth. This she-devil really was a beauty: about 30, gypsy-type with black hair and a magnificent bosom which filled out her military tunic. " Another description from the summer of 1918: "A carriage flew down the street at a mad speed. Carelessly sprawled in it was a young brunette wearing a kubanka f61 at a rakish angle. Standing on the footboard was a broad-shouldered chap wearing red cavalry britches. The brunette and her bodyguard had all sorts of weapons hanging from them." Generally the physical descriptions fall into these two camps, one emphasizing attractiveness, the other repulsiveness. One suspects the Bolshevik n1emoirists, finding her ideology unattractive, tried to n1c1ke her external appearance ugly c1 s well. What we do know for certain is that Marusya was ,, charis mc1ti c individual who made~ strong impression on people she met c1nd was capable ot influenci ng them purel y on the strength of her personality. Her comrades-in-arms were fiercel y loyal to her and she 6 Kubanka: Cossack fl eece hat.

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returned their loya lty in ki n d . Ma rusya's politica l v iews a re well known fro m he r n umerous speeches. Priso n, ha rd labo ur, ~ n~ ht.·r g lob.1I wa nde rings onl y s treng thened th e con vic tion s of her yo uth . She frequentl y sa id : "The a na rch is ts a re no t p romising c1 n y thing to anyone . The a na rchi s ts o n ly ~'"mt peop le to be consciou s of thci r ow n si tu c1 tion and ~v v freedo m for the m selves." Her credo, w hi ch she cxprt.'S'- l vcr c1 nd over agc1i n , was tha t "The wo rker~ a nd p c 1~,1n ts must, as quickl y as p ossi ble, seize eve rything th ,11 , d..., crea ted by them over m a ny centur ies and u) We)\ rl ht'ro o l tht' l IVII w,)I who~t' ft'l l..it'\\ .1d ventlm ~111 ex tP1H lt>d wt>II 1111 0 lilt' ')ovit~t ~'rd I IP trrt' d I() ,t' I up ,1 µt~r , orMI , ,1tr,1µy 111

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