Maria Nikiforova

)

, allegiance =
Ukrainian People's Republic of Soviets
Makhnovshchina
, branch =
, serviceyears = 1914-1919
, rank = Atamansha
, unit =
, commands =
, battles =
World War I
* Macedonian front
Ukrainian War of Independence
* Oleksandrivsk uprising
, mawards =
, footnotes =

Maria Hryhorivna Nikiforova ( uk, Марія Григорівна Нікіфорова; 1885–1919) was a Ukrainian anarchist partisan leader that led the Black Guards during the Ukrainian War of Independence, becoming widely renowned as an atamansha.

A self-described terrorist from the age of 16, she was imprisoned for her activities in Russia but managed to escape to western Europe. With the outbreak of World War I, she took up the defencist line and joined the French Foreign Legion on the Macedonian front before returning to Ukraine with the outbreak of the 1917 Revolution.

In her home city of Oleksandrivsk, she established an anarchist combat detachment and subsequently attacked the forces of the Russian Provisional Government and the Ukrainian People's Republic. After the October Revolution escalated into a civil war, she joined the side of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, leading her ''druzhina'' in capturing Taurida and Yelysavethrad from the Ukrainian People's Army.

When Ukraine was invaded by the Central Powers, she was forced to flee to Russia, where she was prosecuted for insubordination by the nascent Bolshevik government. When she returned to Ukraine, she briefly participated in the civilian activities of the Makhnovshchina but before long she had returned to terrorism. She aimed to assassinate the leaders of the White movement (Anton Denikin and Alexander Kolchak) but was caught and executed.

Biography

Early life and exile

Born in Oleksandrivsk in 1885, Maria's father had been an officer during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878. At the age of 16, she left home and became a wage laborer, working first as babysitter, then as a retail clerk, and ultimately as a factory worker, washing bottles in a vodka distillery.

Shortly after starting work, she joined a local anarcho-communist group, which had been established in the lead up to the 1905 Revolution. Following a period of political probation, Nikiforova became involved in the group's campaign of "motiveless terrorism", during which she staged a number of bombings and expropriation missions, including armed robberies. When Nikiforova was captured, she attempted to commit suicide by blowing herself up, but the bomb failed and she was imprisoned. In 1908, her trial for murder and armed robbery resulted in Nikiforova being sentenced to capital punishment, although this was later commuted to life imprisonment with hard labor, due to her young age. She served part of her sentence in the Petropavlovsk prison in St. Petersburg before being exiled to Siberia in 1910.

After staging a prison riot, she escaped via the Trans-Siberian Railway to Vladivostok and subsequently went on to Japan. A group of Chinese anarchists secured her passage to the United States, where she briefly stayed with other exiled Russian anarchists and published articles in their Russian language newspapers. In 1912, she joined the anarchist movement in Restoration Spain and participated in a bank robbery in Barcelona during which she was wounded and forced to clandestinely seek treatment in Paris. Herself an intersex woman, Nikiforova also reportedly underwent a medical intervention while being treated.

In the cafes of the French capital, Nikiforova met a number of exiled Russian artists and politicians, one of which was the Ukrainian Social-Democrat Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko, and even became an artist herself, specializing in painting and sculpting. During this time, she also entered into a marriage of convenience with a Polish anarchist named Witold Brozstek, retaining her last name. Towards the end of 1913, she attended an anarchist conference in London, signing her name as "Marusya", a Slavic diminutive form of "Maria". With the outbreak of World War I, she sided with Peter Kropotkin's anti-German position, in favor of the Allied powers. She joined up with the French Foreign Legion and subsequently graduated as an officer from a military college. Nikiforova served on the Macedonian front before the outbreak of the 1917 Revolution convinced her to quit the front and return home.

Return to Oleksandrivsk

When Nikiforova arrived in Petrograd, she found the city in a situation of " dual power", with both the Provisional Government and the local soviet vying for control while the anarchists mostly acted as shock troops of anti-government unrest. Nikiforova organized and spoke at pro-anarchist rallies in Kronstadt, where she convinced thousands of sailors to participate in an uprising against the Provisional Government, although the lack of Bolshevik support ultimately led to its suppression. Nikiforova narrowly escaped the subsequent government crackdown in Petrograd and fled back to her home city of Oleksandrivsk, finally arriving in July 1917 after eight years in exile. Shortly after arrival, together with the city's 300-strong Anarchist Federation and supported by local factory workers, Nikiforova carried out the expropriation of the local distillery, donating part of the seized money to the local soviet. She soon established a 60-strong anarchist combat detachment and started accumulating armaments procured from attacks on police stations and warehouses, with which she hunted down and executed many of the city's army officers and landlords.

On 29 August 1917, she met with the peasant leader Nestor Makhno in the anarchist-controlled town of Huliaipole, where she gave a speech advocating for an insurrection against the rule of the newly-established Central Council of Ukraine, warning of a potential counter-revolution. Partway through Nikiforova's speech, the anarchists received news from Petrograd of an attempted coup by Lavr Kornilov and resolved to form a Committee for the Defence of the Revolution (CDR). The CDR began making plans to seize weapons from the local bourgeoisie but Nikiforova countered with a plan of her own: to raid the nearby garrison at Orikhiv. By 10 September, she had pulled together 200 fighters, armed only with only a few dozen weapons, and set out for Orikhiv by train. Upon arrival, the anarchist detachment surrounded and captured the Russian Army regiments. Nikiforova ordered the execution of all officers and disarmed the rank-and-file soldiers before letting them return to their homes. She delivered the captured weapons back to the CDR in Huliaipole, then returned to Oleksandrivsk herself.

Huliaipole subsequently began to receive threats from the local organ of the Provisional Government in Oleksandrivsk, which was disturbed by the rising anarchist influence in the region. Makhno responded by traveling to the city with Nikiforova as a guide and speaking directly to the local workers' organizations. After Makhno left the city, the authorities swiftly arrested and imprisoned Nikiforova. News of her arrest quickly spread; a delegation of workers demanded her release the next day. After being rebuffed by the Provisional Government, the workers forcibly brought the leader of the soviet to the prison and secured her release, following which Nikiforova gave a speech to the crowd, calling for anarchy. Anarchists from Huliaipole, who had been dispatched to attack Oleksandrivsk and force Nikiforova's release, celebrated upon hearing that their work had already been carried out.

During the subsequent election to the Oleksandrivsk soviet, the composition of the new body was distinctly more left-wing and included a number of anarchist delegates.

Battle for Oleksandrivsk

Maria Nikiforova welcomed the outbreak of the October Revolution as another step towards the "withering away of the state". She set about establishing armed detachments known as the "Black Guards" in Oleksandrivsk, preparing an organized anarchist response for a conflict that was rapidly escalating into civil war. In November 1917, the Oleksandrivsk Soviet voted 147 to 95 in favor of joining the Ukrainian People's Republic and refused to recognize the authority of the newly-proclaimed Russian Soviet Republic. Nikiforova responded by allying with the local revolutionary socialists, securing a clandestine shipment of weaponry and the support of the local detachment of the Black Sea Fleet. On 12 December, they launched their uprising, managing to overthrow the Soviet and reconstitute it with delegates from the Bolsheviks, Left SRs and anarchists.

On 25 December, Nikiforova and her detachment went to Kharkiv while also expropriating goods from the local shops and redistributing them to the population. A few days later, she led Black Guards into battle against the haydamaks at Katerynoslav, capturing the city for the Soviets and personally disarming 48 soldiers. Civil war became an inevitability following the dissolution of the Russian Constituent Assembly by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, as the Bolsheviks began to look towards the anarchists around Nikiforova as a necessary base of support in Ukraine. While she had been away, her home city of Oleksandrivsk had fallen again under the control of the Central Council of Ukraine after three days of fighting, forcing the local anarchist detachments to withdraw. On 2 January 1918, the city was again recaptured after the arrival of Red Guards from Russia and Black Guards from Huliaipole, forcing the haydamaks in turn to retreat to right-bank Ukraine. Two days later, a revolutionary committee (Revkom) was constituted as the center of soviet power in Oleksandrivsk. Nikiforova was elected as its deputy leader.

Although the haymadaks had fled, Cossacks were beginning to return from the external front in order to join up with Alexey Kaledin's Army, and Oleksandrivsk was in the path towards their home regions of the Don and Kuban. With the Black Guards scrambling to rally their defenses, a failed assault by the first wave of Cossacks ended in their disarmament by the Revkom. While the disarmament took place, the city politicians' speeches, attempting to rally the Cossacks to the cause of socialism, were largely ignored and even mocked. But when Nikiforova spoke, calling on the "butchers of the Russian workers" to renounce the old ways of Tsarism, many of the Cossacks began to display humility; some openly wept and others maintained contact with the local anarchists. When the Cossacks departed, Makhno and Nikiforova returned to their duties in the Revkom. But after a dispute between the two regarding the sentencing of the prosecutor that had overseen Makhno's own imprisonment, Makhno decided to renounce his position and return to Huliaipole, leaving Nikiforova in place as the sole commander of Oleksandrivsk's Black Guards.

The Free Combat Druzhina

In a joint operation together with the Huliaipole anarchists, Nikiforova launched another raid against the garrison in Orikhiv, seizing a cache of arms and sending them on to Huliaipole, rather than handing them over to her nominal commander Semyon Bogdanov. But as Nikiforova's Black Guards had helped to establish Soviet power in the eastern Ukrainian cities of Kharkiv, Katerynoslav and Oleksandrivsk, she enjoyed the unqualified support of the Ukrainian Soviet commander-in-chief, Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko, who gave her funds to upgrade her detachment, which became known as the .

Reinforced by extra troops, the Druzhina was supplied with artillery cannons, armored cars, tachankas, warhorses and even an armored train, which they decorated with a number of anarchist flags, leaving them better-equipped than even the units of the Red Guards. The militants of the Druzhina also largely rejected uniform, in favor of their own individual senses of fashion. While the core of the group was personally loyal to Nikiforova, including a number of experienced veterans of the Black Sea Fleet, the larger section around them participated in the unit on a more ephemeral basis.

Travelling in echelon formations, which the Left SR politician Isaac Steinberg compared to the mythical Flying Dutchman, the Druzhina advanced against the forces of the White movement and the Ukrainian nationalists. The Druzhina pushed as far as Crimea, where they captured Yalta, sacked Livadia Palace and liberated anarchist political prisoners in Sevastopol. Having participated in the establishment of the Taurida Soviet Socialist Republic, Nikiforova was elected to head the Peasant Soviet in Feodosia and used her new position to establish more detachments of the Black Guards.

Battle for Yelysavethrad

The Druzhina then moved on to the central Ukrainian city of Yelysavethrad, bloodlessly capturing the city from the Ukrainian nationalists and establishing a revolutionary committee to oversee its transition to Soviet power. While occupying the city, she assassinated a Russian officer, expropriated local stores and redistributed basic necessities to the population, and established a barter economy for non-essential goods, all in open defiance the Bolshevik-controlled Revkom. Nikiforova accused the Revkom of being too tolerant towards the bourgeoisie and having constituted a new ruling class, even threatening to disperse the organ and shoot its chairman, due to her opposition to all forms of government. The Revkom responded by ordering her to leave the city, which she did a few days later, but only after looting the city's military college of all their weapons, leaving behind a newly-established local detachment of Black Guards.

The Central Council of Ukraine responded to the rapid Soviet advance by signing a treaty with the Central Powers. With the support of the Ukrainian haydamaks, the Austro-Hungarian Army and Imperial German Army launched an invasion of Ukraine, pushing the Soviet lines back again. When the German forces arrived at Yelysavethrad, the Revkom immediately evacuated, leaving a power vacuum in the city. While the occupying powers attempted to recruit men to its side, even conscripting the local peasantry into service, the Druzhina returned to occupy Yelysavethrad, taking over the local railway station and regularly touring the city to expropriate money from the bourgeoisie. After days of tense peace between the city's official government and the anarchists, a conflict broke out between the anarchists and local factory workers, giving the government forces an opportunity to move against the Druzhina. Although the anarchists managed to defend themselves against the assault, they were far outnumbered, forcing them to withdraw to Kanatovo, where they discovered that a number of their soldiers had been taken prisoner.

Red Guards led by attempted to retake the city, but they were surrounded and wiped out within hours of arrival, prompting the city authorities to beginning executing their prisoners of war. Nikiforova subsequently led the Druzhina in an assault by rail, digging in at the suburbs, where they were met by thousands of well-armed troops, who began spreading rumours to the local population that depicted Nikiforova as a sacrilegious bandit leader. The battle descended into a war of attrition, with constant artillery and machine gun fire exchanged between the trenches over the course of two days. On 26 February, the Druzhina was reinforced by a detachment of Red Guards from , but these troops were largely ineffective against the city's defenses. Under heavy bombardment, the Druzhina fell back to Znamianka, where they were reinforced by more Red Guards under the command of Mikhail Muravyov, fresh from their victory in the Battle of Kyiv. Although the city's authorities had requested reinforcements from the Central Powers, none arrived, leaving the city vulnerable to a Soviet assault. While the Ukrainian nationalists held off Nikiforova's advance from the north, led an assault against the largely undefended south, forcing the city to capitulate. The city's authorities complied with the Soviet demands and released Nikiforova's imprisoned soldiers, with the city ultimately remaining in Soviet hands until 19 March, when an Imperial German assault forced the Soviet forces to evacuate.

Retreat

The forces of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic were ultimately unable to withstand the combined assault of the Central Powers, with only sporadic resistance delaying the offensive. After leaving Yelysavethrad, the Druzhina stooped in Berezivka, where they came into conflict with another anarchist detachment led by Grigory Kotovsky, after Nikiforova had attempted to extort money from the town's inhabitants. The Druzhina subsequently abandoned their train and reformed as a cavalry detachment, arranging their horses by fur colour, with Nikiforova herself riding at the head on a white horse.

The Druzhina rendezvoused with other Soviet forces at , finding the local estate in the hands of the Bolshevik commander . Nikiforova immediately set about seizing the estate's goods and redistributing them to the local population, to the annoyance of Matveyev, who she was still formally subordinated to. Matveyev resolved to disarm the Druzhina before any more anarchists arrived at the rendezvous. He called a general meeting in which the principles of unity and discipline were to be discussed, but when Bolsheviks started making complaints about the anarchists, Nikiforova immediately understood the true purpose of the meeting and signalled her partisans to leave, escaping the village on horseback before they could be disarmed.

The Druzhina subsequently moved towards Oleksandrivsk, hoping to defend it from the Central Powers, but upon arrival found the city's Red Guards were already organizing their retreat. On 13 April, the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen were able to capture the city, finding the dead body of a woman that they mistakenly believed to be Nikiforova. On 18 April, they were followed by the Imperial German Army, which forced out the remaining Soviet forces, with the Druzhina being one of the last Soviet detachments to leave. They subsequently linked up with Nestor Makhno's forces in Tsarekostyantynivka, where they found out that Huliaipole had also fallen to the Ukrainian nationalists. Nikiforova proposed a mission to rescue captured members of the town's revolutionary committee, but after a number of Red commanders refused to join and news came in of the continued German advance, she abandoned the plan and continued to retreat east.

Trials

Following the Soviet defeat in Ukraine, the Bolsheviks no longer saw the use in their anarchist allies and repressions against the Russian anarchist movement began to be carried out by the Cheka. Upon Nikiforova's arrival in Taganrog, she was immediately arrested on charges of looting and desertion, while the Druzhina was finally disarmed, in an operation overseen by the Ukrainian Bolshevik leader Volodymyr Zatonsky. The local anarchists and Left SRs demanded an explanation for Nikiforova's arrest, with Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko himself sending a telegram in support of the anarchists, while further arrivals of Ukrainian anarchists to the city began to make the situation untenable. In April 1918, a revolutionary tribunal was held by the Ukrainian Bolsheviks. With witnesses both for the prosecution and the defense in attendance, Nikiforova was confident that revolutionary justice would be upheld and she was ultimately acquitted on all charges.

The anarchists in Taganrog subsequently held a conference about the situation in Ukraine, during which Makhno and the Huliaipole anarchists decided they would return to southern Ukraine and carry out a campaign of guerrilla warfare against the Central Powers. Other anarchists joined Nikiforova's Druzhina, but the continued German offensive forced them to retreat to Rostov-on-Don, where they looted the local banks and burned all the bonds, deeds and loan agreements they found in a public bonfire. Here too, Nikiforova noticed that the Bolsheviks were closing in on them and decided to take the Druzhina north towards Voronezh, and over the following months they moved between a number of towns along the Ukrainian border. After the defeat of the Central Powers forced them to withdraw from Ukraine, the Ukrainian State was overthrown by the Directorate of Ukraine under Symon Petliura, making room for the Druzhina to finally return to the country in late 1918. In the subsequent power struggle, the Druzhina managed to seize Odesa from the White movement, demolishing the prison before an armed intervention by the Allied Powers forced them to quit the city.

The Druzhina then moved on to Saratov, where it was again disarmed and Nikiforova herself was again arrested. But the Cheka were reluctant to execute her without trial and had her transferred to Moscow, where she was briefly held in Butyrka prison. She was released on bail, posted by Apollon Karelin and Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko, and she was reunited with her husband, who had taken a job in the new Soviet government. After a spell of working for the artistic institution Proletkult, Nikiforova's trial by revolutionary tribunal began on 21 January 1919. She was presented with the same charges that the Taganrog tribunal had already acquitted her of, with Georgy Pyatakov accusing her again of looting and desertion. On 25 January, ''Pravda'' announced that she had been found guilty of insubordination, although she had again been acquitted on the charges of looting, and that her punishment was a ban on holding any public office for six months.

Activities in Huliaipole

Almost immediately following the trial, Nikiforova set out for Huliaipole, now the center of an autonomous anarchist republic known as the Makhnovshchina, as part of an agreement between Nestor Makhno's Revolutionary Insurgent Army and the Ukrainian Bolsheviks. Upon her arrival, Makhno had Nikiforova put in charge of the anarchists' hospitals, nurseries and schools, forbidding her from participating in military activities due to the terms of her sentence. Nikiforova's anti-Bolshevik attitude became an immediate problem for the Makhnovists, who were more focused on fighting the White movement, with Makhno himself physically removing her from a stage after she publicly denounced the Bolsheviks during a Regional Congress. When she briefly returned to Oleksandrivsk, any anarchists she met or stayed with were promptly arrested by the Cheka.

During the spring of 1919, Huliaipole was visited several times by a series of high-ranking Bolsheviks, during which Nikiforova acted as a hostess. Antonov-Ovseenko recalled meeting his "old acquaintance" on 28 April, while reviewing Makhno's troops and the city of Huliaipole. Seeking to clarify rumors of corruption and counter-revolutionary activity among Makhno's ranks and the soviet of the city, Antonov-Ovseenko wrote glowingly of his impression of Huliaipole. But Antonov-Ovseenko's attempts to lobby for military support for the anarchists faltered and his political power declined. Within weeks of his visit, he was replaced as commander-in-chief by Jukums Vācietis.

Nevertheless, Antonov-Ovseenko's reports quickly attracted Lev Kamenev to himself visit Huliaipole the very next week. Nikiforova met Kamenev and his entourage at the train station, and offered to escort them into the city. After meeting Makhno and touring the city, Kamenev was impressed with Nikiforova, and upon returning to Katerynoslav, he telegraphed Moscow officials with an order that her sentence be reduced to half of its original term.

Capture and death

Following news of the reduction of her sentence, Nikiforova moved to Berdiansk and began work on establishing a new detachment of Black Guards, bringing together a number of former Makhnovists and anarchist refugees, including her husband Witold Brzostek. But by June 1919, the Makhnovshchina had been outlawed by the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic and the Red Army had launched an offensive against the Makhnovist rear, forcing the Ukrainian anarchists to regroup. While Makhno moved towards consolidating his military force, Nikiforova returned to her old ways, deciding to carry out a campaign of terrorism against all enemies of the Ukrainian anarchists. When the pair reunited at Tokmak, Nikiforova asked Makhno for money to fund her terrorist campaign. The meeting quickly devolved into a Mexican standoff as the two drew guns on each other, but Makhno ultimately decided to give her some of the insurgent army's funds.

Nikiforova subsequently split up her detachment into three and dispatched them to different fronts. She sent one group to Siberia, where they were ordered to assassinate Alexander Kolchak, the Supreme Ruler of the Russian State, but they were ultimately unable to locate him and instead decided to join the anti-White partisans. The other group went to Kharkiv

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