Part 2, Chapter 7 : The Fate of Makhno and Some of His Comrades. Epilogue

Chapter 7. The Fate of Makhno and Some of His Comrades. Epilogue

By way of an epilogue, certain details about the final repression and also about the personal fate of certain Makhnovist militants would be in place here.

The third and last war of the Bolsheviks against the Makhnovists was also, obviously, a war against the entire Ukrainian peasantry.

Their aim was not only to destroy the Insurrectionary Army, but also to subjugate this entire rebellious mass, removing from it any chance to take up arms again and give a new birth to the movement. Their aim was to root out the very seeds of rebellion.

The Red Divisions went systematically through all the villages of the insurgent region, exterminating large numbers of peasants, frequently on the basis of information provided by rich local peasants (kulaks).

Hundreds of peasants were shot in Gulyai-Polye, Novo-spasovka, Uspenovka, Malaya Tokmachka, Pologi and other large villages of the region.

In various places the Chekists, thirsting for murder, shot the women and children of the insurgents.

This “repressive” campaign was directed by Frunze, commander-in-chief of the Southern Front. “We have to finish off the Makhnovshchina by the count of two,” he wrote in an order to the Army of the Southern Front before unleashing this action. And he carried himself as an old warrior, treating “this mob of muzhiks” in the manner of a conqueror, a new nobleman, sowing death and desolation around him.

And now we will give some brief notes on the personal fate of some of the participants in the Ukrainian popular movement.

Simon Karetnik was a peasant from Gulyai-Po