Uploaded December 2021 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
This video is a history of the free territorry in Ukraine during the russian civil war, which is sometiems called Makhnovia or Makhnovtchina. It was an anarchist region in Uraine that was defended by the Black army and supposedly lead by Makhno. I explain the civil war that lead to it's formation, the way Makhno took over,how the territorry oraganised itself and eventually what caused it's destruction at the hands of the Bolsheviks.
Patreon: patreon.com/viki1999
Second channel: youtube.com/channel/UCtXcyUuCaUMY2GGU_8iM1hg
Subreddit: reddit.com/r/viki1999
Twitter: twitter.com/Viki1999Yt
E-Mail Address: viki1999mail@gmail.com
The song in the outro was produced by 08 (who gave me no way to credit them), you can listen to the whole remix on my second channel: youtu.be/jZOrMsIOZh0
Background image: reddit.com/r/Viki1999/comments/hddrtc/newest_version_of_the_background_poster_added_blm
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
1:58 The civil war
6:40 The black army
10:25 How Makhnovia worked
19:49 How Makhnovia failed
24:45 Outro
This is a 5 person discord invite. After 5 people use it it becomes invalid. Hit the bell to catch it under the next video! And please only use it if you willbe active on the server, otherwise leave it for others: discord.gg/XfhPHE3Cvt
Transcript:
Hello everybody, today we are talking about Makhnovia, or Makhnovshchina if you want it to be harder to pronounce. It was a … movement that controlled substantial areas in Ukraine during the Russian civil war. What makes this….group unique is that they were one of the only attempts to establish practical anarchism with socialist features in history, and arguably the first one if you are willing to brand the Paris commune as counterrevolutionary bad guys.
In this video we will go over how the Russian civil war and the treaty of Brest-Litovsk lead to the conditions for Makhnovia to form, the way Makhno, the guy who it is named after, became the sort ruler of an anarchist society that was definitely made to not have rulers, I will explain how the region organised itself, how the economy worked and how it defended itself before explaining what ultimately lead to its demise.
Naturally since we are going to talk about an anarchist movements it’s not always easy to use the right words. Because they were a collection of loosely organised communes words like “government”, “state”, “nation” and even “leader” depending on how you use it, are just wrong so I will try to avoid them as best as I can. If I make mistakes, please gently inform me about it in the comment section.
If you want to know all the things about Makhnovia I had to cut for time, I recommend you watch my content creator stream on the second channel which is linked in a pinned comment. And if you would like to learn more about political and historical topics from a leftist point of view, I recommend you subscribe because I upload videos like that every Sunday. With the exception of next week, because you can’t make me make videos when I have 3 Christmas celebrations to attend within one week.
As with about half of my recent videos the story here begins once again during the first world war and the Russian revolution. Almost as If these events determined the future of leftism around the world or something. Basically, the Russian empire was in world war one and they arrested socialists and anarchists but then the middle class overthrew the tsar but the government they set up didn’t end world war one so then the Bolsheviks and friends overthrew the new government, establishing the Russian socialist federative republic and later soviet union.
Naturally there were many people in the former Russian empire that did not like the new Bolshevik government. Chiefly the so-called white army that had so many different leaders and goals I can’t even oversimplify their general believes besides that they really didn’t like Lenin and his party and started a civil war to overthrow them.
For the sake of not meeting the same fate as the government Lenin just overthrew, he decided to end Russian involvement in world war one, which was of course also because Lenin needed his armies in the civil war and couldn’t expend energy fighting the Germans. So they singed to treaty of Brest-Litovsk which made Russia give up huge amounts of lands, chiefly in Ukraine and Belarus.
So naturally the Germans and Austrians started to occupy the region militarily to get the grain there because the central powers were blockaded by the entente at this point and they ran out of food. The occupation immediately caused lots of armed uprisings against them. There were ukranian nationalists, Bolshevik loyalists, anarchists, left socialists and of course the anti-Bolshevik white armies which didn’t even recognise the treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
This video is a history of the free territorry in Ukraine during the russian civil war, which is sometiems called Makhnovia or Makhnovtchina. It was an anarchist region in Uraine that was defended by the Black army and supposedly lead by Makhno. I explain the civil war that lead to it's formation, the way Makhno took over,how the territorry oraganised itself and eventually what caused it's destruction at the hands of the Bolsheviks.
Patreon: patreon.com/viki1999
Second channel: youtube.com/channel/UCtXcyUuCaUMY2GGU_8iM1hg
Subreddit: reddit.com/r/viki1999
Twitter: twitter.com/Viki1999Yt
E-Mail Address: viki1999mail@gmail.com
The song in the outro was produced by 08 (who gave me no way to credit them), you can listen to the whole remix on my second channel: youtu.be/jZOrMsIOZh0
Background image: reddit.com/r/Viki1999/comments/hddrtc/newest_version_of_the_background_poster_added_blm
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
1:58 The civil war
6:40 The black army
10:25 How Makhnovia worked
19:49 How Makhnovia failed
24:45 Outro
This is a 5 person discord invite. After 5 people use it it becomes invalid. Hit the bell to catch it under the next video! And please only use it if you willbe active on the server, otherwise leave it for others: discord.gg/XfhPHE3Cvt
Transcript:
Hello everybody, today we are talking about Makhnovia, or Makhnovshchina if you want it to be harder to pronounce. It was a … movement that controlled substantial areas in Ukraine during the Russian civil war. What makes this….group unique is that they were one of the only attempts to establish practical anarchism with socialist features in history, and arguably the first one if you are willing to brand the Paris commune as counterrevolutionary bad guys.
In this video we will go over how the Russian civil war and the treaty of Brest-Litovsk lead to the conditions for Makhnovia to form, the way Makhno, the guy who it is named after, became the sort ruler of an anarchist society that was definitely made to not have rulers, I will explain how the region organised itself, how the economy worked and how it defended itself before explaining what ultimately lead to its demise.
Naturally since we are going to talk about an anarchist movements it’s not always easy to use the right words. Because they were a collection of loosely organised communes words like “government”, “state”, “nation” and even “leader” depending on how you use it, are just wrong so I will try to avoid them as best as I can. If I make mistakes, please gently inform me about it in the comment section.
If you want to know all the things about Makhnovia I had to cut for time, I recommend you watch my content creator stream on the second channel which is linked in a pinned comment. And if you would like to learn more about political and historical topics from a leftist point of view, I recommend you subscribe because I upload videos like that every Sunday. With the exception of next week, because you can’t make me make videos when I have 3 Christmas celebrations to attend within one week.
As with about half of my recent videos the story here begins once again during the first world war and the Russian revolution. Almost as If these events determined the future of leftism around the world or something. Basically, the Russian empire was in world war one and they arrested socialists and anarchists but then the middle class overthrew the tsar but the government they set up didn’t end world war one so then the Bolsheviks and friends overthrew the new government, establishing the Russian socialist federative republic and later soviet union.
Naturally there were many people in the former Russian empire that did not like the new Bolshevik government. Chiefly the so-called white army that had so many different leaders and goals I can’t even oversimplify their general believes besides that they really didn’t like Lenin and his party and started a civil war to overthrow them.
For the sake of not meeting the same fate as the government Lenin just overthrew, he decided to end Russian involvement in world war one, which was of course also because Lenin needed his armies in the civil war and couldn’t expend energy fighting the Germans. So they singed to treaty of Brest-Litovsk which made Russia give up huge amounts of lands, chiefly in Ukraine and Belarus.
So naturally the Germans and Austrians started to occupy the region militarily to get the grain there because the central powers were blockaded by the entente at this point and they ran out of food. The occupation immediately caused lots of armed uprisings against them. There were ukranian nationalists, Bolshevik loyalists, anarchists, left socialists and of course the anti-Bolshevik white armies which didn’t even recognise the treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
