Although the war against the Whites was to all intents and purposes finished, peace had yet to come to the Ukraine. The Bolshevik's campaigns against private property and methods of forced requisition of food to feed the starving cities guaranteed that most of the countryside was in revolt by the end of 1920. Peasants all over Russia and the Ukraine armed themselves with pitchforks, axes and hoes and rose up spontaneously to destroy government authority in many areas. Rural discontent translated into urban unrest and strikes, so that martial law had to be declared in the cities too. In March 1921 the entire Baltic Fleet based in Kronstadt rebelled. There were also still very strong nationalist revolts underway in the Caucasus and Siberia. Even Lenin later admitted that the peasant wars of 1920-21 posed a greater threat to his government than the Whites ever had. The war in the countryside soon assumed the characteristics of a typical guerrilla conflict: the Red Army troops send to suppress the revolts had no way to tell peasant from rebel and were constantly ambushed. Many soldiers even joined the rebels, since it was easier to survive in the countryside. It appeared that the cause of peasant self-rule, or at least resistance to central authority, that Makhno championed was gaining the potential to destroy the Bolshevik government. And, as head of the largest, best organized and most effective military force outside the Red Army, he posed the greatest and most immediate threat to that government. Within two weeks of Wrangel's withdrawal from the Crimea, the Bolsheviks tried to wipe the RIA out in a final act of treachery. On 23 November, Mikhail Frunze, commander of the Southern Front, sent an order to Makhno saying that since the Whites had been defeated the RIA was no longer necessary, and ordering him to disband the Army as a separate force and transfer its units to the Red Army. In fact, neither Makhno nor his staff ever actually received this order, for it was simply a pretext for what followed and was eventually published in the Bolshevik newspapers as "proof" three weeks later. The staff of the Crimean Makhnovist Army (that is, that part that remained in the Crimea: most of Makhno's troops were on their way back to Gulyai-Polye) was invited to a military conference, there to be arrested by the Cheka (secret police) and shot. Simultaneously, the Makhnovist troops in the Crimea were ambushed. the 42nd Division of the Red Army launched a surprise attack on Gulyai-Polye, and in Kharkov there were mass arrests of Anarchists who had gathered for a congress. Makhno reacted to this betrayal with his usual improvisational skill. He assembled a scratch force of 1,000 cavalry and 1,500 infantry and counterattacked at Gulyai-Polye, routing the 42nd Division and taking 6,000 prisoners. About 2,000 prisoners joined him and he set the rest free (though most of them were quickly rounded up by Cheka detachments and pressed back into Red service). This was an encouraging start, but as the Bolsheviks poured more troops into the area - eventually two cavalry and two infantry armies would be detailed to eliminate him - Makhno realized that it would be a victory if the RIA simply managed to maintain its existence. He broke out of an encirclement to the northeast of Gulyai-Polye and headed south and east with a core of 2,000 troops. Other detachments of the Army headed north towards Poltava and Kharkov. In mid-March Makhno was twice wounded in engagements near Melitopol and could no longer ride a horse, but he continued to direct activities from a tatchanka. The remnants of the RIA continued to evade the Red Army for several more months, but it was only a matter of time. Makhno moved further east and even sent raids across the Volga and Don; however the severity and number of his wounds convinced him the time had come to leave Russia and seek medical treatment abroad. At the beginning of August 1921, he re-crossed the Ukraine and on 28 August crossed the Dniester River into Romania. The remaining detachments of the RIA were hunted down and destroyed one by one, together with the other peasant rebel bands. The Red Army used aircraft, artillery, poison gas and concentration camps to suppress the revolts - one estimate is that over 15,000 peasants were shot and another 100,000 imprisoned or deported. Like so many other Russians forced into exile, Makhno wandered throughout Europe. After spending time in Romania, Poland, and Danzig, he eventually moved to Paris. He worked as a factory worker and died in 1935 of alcoholism and tuberculosis. Conclusion In the military sphere, Makhno was undoubtedly a great tactical innovator with his use of tatchanka-borne infantry and machine gunners, and few military leaders of the time could rival his good use of mobility, surprise, and deception. It was also obvious that he had a genius for quick improvisation and tactical flexibility to get himself out of tight spots. It is for these reasons that he should be numbered among the greatest guerrilla leaders, and even such great irregular cavalry leaders as the Confederates Mosby and Forrest. However, in the final analysis, Makhno's mind was an untrained one. He was no strategist: as clever as he may have been at exploiting opportunities that arose in his path, he was never very good at creating them. Makhno remained a folk hero in the Ukraine for many years both as a fighter for the desire of the Russian peasant to be left alone and as the man who almost succeeded in creating a popular, workable libertarian society that was implacably opposed to the "total state machine" Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin worked to build in the 1920s. This is his real legacy. Bibliography Arshinov, Peter. History of the Makhnovist Movement, 1918-21. Detroit: Black and Red Books, 1974. Callan, Andy. "The Russian Civil War." Wargames Illustrated #20 and #21 (April and May 1989). Figes, Orlando. A People's Tragedy: the Russian Revolution 1891-1924. Penguin Books, 1998. Guerin, Daniel. Anarchism. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970. Jackson, Robert. At War with the Bolsheviks. London: Tandem Publishing, 1972. Kedward, Roderick. The Anarchists. London: Purnell and Sons, 1971. Neufeld, Dietrich. A Russian Dance of Death (translated by Al Reimer) Winnipeg: Hyperion Press, 1977. Rodrigues, Spain. "Nestor Makhno." Anarchy Comics #1 (1978). Seaton, Albert and Joan. The Soviet Army: 1918 to the Present. New York: New American Library, 1988. Serge, Victor. Memoirs of a Revolutionary. New York: Writers and Readers Publishing Cooperative, 1984. Spence, Richard. "The Russian Civil War 1918-22," Strategy and Tactics #57 (July-August 1976). Tatchanka (Ukraine: 1919-21) Jim Bumpas Games, 1977. More Russian Civil War in the Ukraine Introduction The Civil War Begins The Whites Advance The Whites Retreat Betrayal An Anarchist Army? Armies of the Russian Civil War Summons (poem) Back to Cry Havoc #32 Table of Contents Back to Cry Havoc List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2000 by David W. Tschanz. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com