Nestor Makhno, the great Ukrainian anarchist revolutionary, is the baddest of the badasses. By the time he was a young teen, he had already killed numerous police and landlords. When his anarchist reading circle (which funded themselves by home invasions of the rich) was caught as a result of being betrayed by two of their own members, Makhno was only 17 years old. He was tortured for two solid days and, in a letter written by the prefect of police, he says that Makhno hadn’t said a single word; that Makhno looked like “just another stupid peasant” but that Makhno was – at the age of 17 – the most dangerous man the prefect had ever met.
Makhno watched his friends taken away one by one and hanged. His mother came to visit him and begged Makhno to ask the judge for leniency, that she was sure the judge would commute the death sentence because of Makhno’s young age if he asked. Makhno – who had been tortured for days and watched his friends hanged, remember – laughed and said, “I want nothing the State can give me, not even mercy.”
Despite refusing to ask for mercy, the judge sentenced Makhno to life in prison with hard labour and no parole instead of having him hanged. The shackles were welded to Makhno’s hands and feet because they were never expected to be removed. (They were so heavy that when they were eventually removed, Makhno had to learn how to walk all over again.) He spent the next 15 years in a Russian prison doing hard labour.
After the Soviet revolution, Makhno was released from prison as part of the general amnesty for political prisoners. Lenin had given Ukraine to the Germans at the Treaty of Brest-Livosk, so Makhno returned to Ukraine, recruited 30 men, and got his hands on one gun. His men wanted to hide in the woods, but Makhno convinced them this would be the perfect time to attack the occupying Germans, since no one would expect it. Under cover of darkness, Makhno and his men crept into a nearby town square where a thousand German troops had bivouacked, set up his gun on the back of a wagon, and opened fire on the sleeping soldiers. He killed all 1000. The few Germans who escaped were hunted down by townspeople with gardening implements and killed.
As one, the country rose with Makhno after this. He organized the Makhnovshchina, the Black Army of the Ukrainian anarchists, and began waging guerilla warfare against the Germans. Despite having no more than 50,000 men at its largest and no equipment other than what they could capture from the enemy, the Makhnovshchina drove 600,000 German soldiers out of Ukraine and liberated the country. Makhno was a military and tactical genius, entirely self-taught, and invented many of the modern techniques of terrorism used to this day.
There’s a story about Makhno and his men capturing a group of German officers on their way to a party in their honour by Ukrainian landlords who had welcomed the invaders. Makhno executed the officers and took their uniforms, with he and his men attending the party in the officers’ place. All evening the people at the party talked about the dreaded anarchist Nestor Makhno and, at the end of the evening, they offered a toast to his capture. Makhno drank off the toast and announced, “I am Nestor Makhno.”
In the silence and horror which followed, Makhno tossed a bomb into the room and he and his men escaped out the windows before it exploded.
After driving out the Germans, the White Army – military forces loyal to the Russian Czars – invaded Russia from Europe. Makhno and his army cut off their supply lines, preventing them from reaching Moscow and saving the whole Soviet Union. Trotsky’s thanks for this was to order the Makhnovshchina to surrender and lay down their weapons. Makhno’s response was to have the Bolshevik messenger shot.
The Soviets invited the Makhnovshchina’s officers to the Crimean for peace talks. Makhno didn’t trust them and told the officers not to go. They went anyway. The Soviets had them all machinegunned when they arrived, and only a single man managed to escape on horseback to tell Makhno what had happened. Then millions of soldiers from the Soviet Red Army invaded Ukraine.
For four years Makhno held out against the Soviets, but in the end he was forced to flee to France. He had simply run out of men. Yet despite the fact that Makhno rode out at the head of his army, pistol in one hand and cavalry sabre in the other, Makhno himself could not be killed. Makhno was a small man, but in battle he was said to fight like a madman and, despite being seriously wounded more than 20 times, no one could bring down Makhno. He would throw himself into the thickest part of the battle and fight until he had only a single bullet left. Then he would sit down with the gun under his chin and wait to see who got to him first, since he could not afford to let himself be captured. His men knew that he did this, so they would launch crazed, fanatical counter-attacks to get to Makhno and rescue him.
Stalin was so afraid of Makhno that he killed 10 million Ukrainians – a third of the population – to keep the Makhnovshchina from reforming. Makhno died broken-hearted at the age of 42 in exile. He was one of the greatest heroes of the 20th century, and one of the toughest, smartest, most brilliant military leaders who ever lived. There is no one more badass than Nestor Makhno.
