During the years of the Civil War, the territory of modern Ukraine turned into a battlefield between the most politically polar forces. Supporters of the Ukrainian national statehood from the Petliura Directory and the White Guards of the Volunteer Army of A.I. opposed each other. Denikin, advocating the revival of the Russian state. The Bolshevik Red Army fought with these forces. Anarchists from the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Nestor Makhno entrenched themselves in Gulyaipole.
Numerous fathers and chieftains of small, medium and large formations kept apart, not obeying anyone and entering into alliances with anyone, only for their own benefit. Almost a century later, it happened again. And yet, many rebel commanders of the Civil cause, if not respect, then significant interest in their personas. At least, in contrast to modern "princes-atamans", among them there were really ideological people with very interesting biographies. What is one legendary Marusya Nikiforova worth.
The general public, with the exception of specialists - historians and people who were closely interested in the Civil War in Ukraine, the figure of "atamansha Marusya" is practically unknown. She may be remembered by those who carefully watched The Nine Lives of Nestor Makhno - actress Anna Ukolova played her there. Meanwhile, Maria Nikiforova, as Marusya was officially called, is a very interesting historical character. The mere fact that a woman has become a real chieftain of the Ukrainian rebel detachment is a rarity even by the standards of the Civil War. After all, Alexandra Kollontai, and Roza Zemlyachka, and other women - participants in revolutionary events, still did not act as field commanders, and even insurgent detachments.
Maria Grigorievna Nikiforova was born in 1885 (according to other sources - in 1886 or 1887). At the time of the February Revolution, she was about 30-32 years old. Despite the relatively young years, even the pre-revolutionary life of Marusya was eventful. Born in Aleksandrovsk (now Zaporozhye), Marusya was a countrywoman to the legendary old man Makhno (although the latter was not from Aleksandrovsk itself, but from the village of Gulyaipole, Aleksandrovsky district). Marusya's father, an officer in the Russian army, distinguished himself during the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878.
Apparently, with courage and disposition, Marusya went to her father. At the age of sixteen, having neither a profession nor a livelihood, the officer's daughter left her parents' house. Thus began her adult life full of dangers and wanderings. However, there is also a point of view among historians that Maria Nikiforova could not really be an officer's daughter. Her biography in her younger years seems too dark and marginal - hard physical labor, living without relatives, the complete absence of mention of the family and any relationship with her.
It is difficult to say why she decided to leave the family, but the fact remains that the fate of the officer's daughter, who would eventually find a worthy groom and build a family nest, Maria Nikiforova preferred the life of a professional revolutionary. Having settled down at a distillery as an auxiliary worker, Maria met her peers from the anarcho-communist group.
At the beginning of the twentieth century. anarchism was especially widespread in the western outskirts of the Russian Empire. Its centers were the city of Bialystok - the center of the weaving industry (now - the territory of Poland), port Odessa and industrial Yekaterinoslav (now - Dnepropetrovsk). Aleksandrovsk, where Maria Nikiforova first met anarchists, was part of the "Ekaterinoslav anarchist zone." The key role here was played by anarcho-communists - supporters of the political views of the Russian philosopher Pyotr Alekseevich Kropotkin and his followers. Anarchists first appeared in Yekaterinoslav, where propagandist Nikolai Musil (pseudonyms - Rogdaev, Uncle Vanya) who arrived from Kyiv managed to lure an entire regional organization of the Socialist-Revolutionaries to the position of anarchism. Already from Yekaterinoslav, the ideology of anarchism begins to spread to the surrounding settlements, including even the countryside. In particular, its own anarchist federation appeared in Aleksandrovsk, as well as in other cities, uniting working, artisan and student youth. Organizationally and ideologically, the Aleksandrov anarchists were under the influence of the Yekaterinoslav Federation of Anarchist-Communists. Somewhere in 1905, a young worker, Maria Nikiforova, turned out to be anarchist.
Unlike the Bolsheviks, who preferred painstaking propaganda work in industrial enterprises and mass action-oriented factory workers, the anarchists tended to acts of individual terror. Since the vast majority of anarchists at that time were very young people, on average 16-20 years old, their youthful maximalism often outweighed common sense and revolutionary ideas in practice turned into terror against everyone and everything. They blew up shops, cafes and restaurants, first-class carriages - that is, places of increased concentration of "people with money".
It should be noted that not all anarchists were inclined towards terror. So, Peter Kropotkin himself and his followers - the "khlebovitsy" - treated individual acts of terror negatively, like the Bolsheviks, focusing on the mass workers' and peasants' movement. But during the years of the revolution of 1905-1907. much more noticeable than the "khlebovoltsy" were representatives of the ultra-radical trends in Russian anarchism - the Chernoznamentsy and the Beznachal'tsy. The latter generally proclaimed unmotivated terror against any representatives of the bourgeoisie.
Oriented to work among the poorest peasantry, laborers and loaders, day laborers, the unemployed and tramps, the beznachalists accused the more moderate anarchists - the "bread-willers" of fixing on the industrial proletariat and "betraying" the interests of the most disadvantaged and oppressed sections of society, whereas it was precisely they, and not the relatively prosperous and financially secure specialists, are most in need of support and represent the most pliable and explosive contingent for revolutionary propaganda. However, the "beginners" themselves, most often, were typical radical students, although there were also frankly semi-criminal and marginal elements among them.
Maria Nikiforova, apparently, turned out to be precisely in the circle of unmotivated people. During the two years of underground activity, she managed to throw several bombs - on a passenger train, in a cafe, in a store. The anarchist often changed her place of residence, hiding from police surveillance. But, in the end, the police managed to get on the trail of Maria Nikiforova and detain her. She was arrested, charged with four murders and several robberies ("expropriations"), and sentenced to death.
However, like Nestor Makhno, Maria Nikiforova had the death penalty replaced with indefinite penal servitude. Most likely, the verdict was due to the fact that at the time of its pronouncement, Maria Nikiforova, like Makhno, had not reached the age of majority, according to the laws of the Russian Empire, which came at the age of 21. From the Peter and Paul Fortress, Maria Nikiforova was transferred to Siberia - to the place of departure of hard labor, but managed to escape. Japan, the United States, Spain - these are the points of Mary's journey before she was able to settle in France, in Paris, where she was actively involved in anarchist activities. During this period, Marusya took part in the activities of anarchist groups of Russian emigrants, but she also collaborated with the local anarcho-bohemian environment.
Just at the time of the residence of Maria Nikiforova, who by this time had already adopted the pseudonym "Marusya", in Paris, the First World War began. Unlike most domestic anarchists, who spoke from the standpoint of "let's turn the imperialist war into a class war" or generally preached pacifism, Marusya supported Pyotr Kropotkin. As you know, the founding father of the anarcho-communist tradition came out with "defensive", as the Bolsheviks said, positions, taking the side of the Entente and condemning the Prussian-Austrian military.
But if Kropotkin was old and peaceful, then Maria Nikiforova was literally eager to fight. She managed to enter the Paris military school, which was surprising not only because of her Russian origin, but, to an even greater extent, because of her gender. Nevertheless, a woman from Russia passed all the entrance tests and, having successfully completed a military training course, was enrolled in the army in the officer rank. Marusya fought as part of the French troops in Macedonia, then returned to Paris. The news of the February Revolution that took place in Russia forced the anarchist to hastily leave France and return to her homeland.
It should be noted that evidence of Marusya's appearance describes her as a masculine, short-haired woman with a face that reflects the events of a turbulent youth. Nevertheless, in French emigration, Maria Nikiforova found herself a husband. It was Witold Brzostek, a Polish anarchist who later took an active part in the anti-Bolshevik underground activities of the anarchists.
Having appeared in Petrograd after the February Revolution, Marusya plunged into the turbulent revolutionary reality of the capital. Having established contacts with local anarchists, she conducted propaganda work in naval crews, among workers. In the same summer of 1917, Marusya left for her native Alexandrovsk. By this time, the Alexander Federation of Anarchists was already operating there. With the arrival of Marusya, the Aleksandrov anarchists are noticeably radicalized. First of all, a millionth expropriation is carried out from the local industrialist Badovsky. Then contacts are established with the anarcho-communist group of Nestor Makhno operating in the neighboring village of Gulyaypole.
At first, there were obvious differences between Makhno and Nikiforova. The fact is that Makhno, being a far-sighted practitioner, allowed significant deviations from the classical interpretation of the principles of anarchism. In particular, he advocated the active participation of anarchists in the activities of the Soviets and generally adhered to a tendency towards a certain organization. Later, after the end of the Civil War, in exile, these views of Nestor Makhno were formalized by his colleague Pyotr Arshinov into a kind of “platformism” (after the name of the Organizational Platform), which is also called anarcho-bolshevism for the desire to create an anarchist party and streamline political activity anarchists.
Unlike Makhno, Marusya remained an adamant supporter of the understanding of anarchism as absolute freedom and rebellion. Even in her youth, the ideological views of Maria Nikiforova were formed under the influence of the anarchists-beginners - the most radical wing of the anarcho-communists, who did not recognize rigid organizational forms and advocated the destruction of any representatives of the bourgeoisie only on the basis of their class affiliation. Consequently, in everyday activities, Marusya showed herself to be a much greater extremist than Makhno. In many ways, this explains the fact that Makhno managed to create his own army and put the whole area under control, and Marusya never stepped further than the status of field commander of the rebel detachment.
While Makhno was strengthening his positions in Gulyaipole, Marusya managed to visit Aleksandrovka under arrest. She was detained by revolutionary policemen, who found out the details of the expropriation of a million rubles from Badovsky and some other robberies committed by the anarchist. However, Marusya did not stay long in prison. Out of respect for her revolutionary merits and at the request of the "broad revolutionary public", Marusya was released.
During the second half of 1917 - early 1918. Marusya participated in the disarmament of military and Cossack units passing through Aleksandrovsk and its environs. At the same time, during this period, Nikiforova prefers not to quarrel with the Bolsheviks, who received the greatest influence in the Aleksandrov Soviet, and shows herself to be a supporter of the “anarcho-Bolshevik” bloc. On December 25-26, 1917, Marusya, at the head of a detachment of Alexander's anarchists, participated in assisting the Bolsheviks in seizing power in Kharkov. During this period, Marusya communicates with the Bolsheviks through Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko, who led the activities of the Bolshevik formations on the territory of Ukraine. It was Antonov-Ovseenko who appointed Marusya the head of the formation of cavalry detachments in the Steppe Ukraine, with the issuance of appropriate funds.
However, Marusya decided to dispose of the money of the Bolsheviks in her own interests, forming a Free Combat Squad, which was actually controlled only by Marusya herself and acted on the basis of her own interests. Marousi's free fighting squad was a rather remarkable unit. Firstly, it was entirely staffed by volunteers - mostly anarchists, although there were also ordinary "risk guys", including the "Chernomors" - yesterday's sailors who had been demobilized from the Black Sea Fleet. Secondly, despite the "partisan" nature of the formation itself, its uniforms and food supply were put on a good level. The detachment was armed with an armored platform and two artillery pieces. Although the financing of the squad was carried out, at first, by the Bolsheviks, the squad performed under a black banner with the inscription "Anarchy is the mother of order!"
However, like other similar formations, the Marousi detachment acted well when it was necessary to carry out expropriations in occupied settlements, but turned out to be weak in the face of regular military formations. The offensive of the German and Austro-Hungarian troops forced Marusya to retreat to Odessa. We must pay tribute to the fact that the squad of the "Black Guards" showed itself no worse, and in many ways better than the "Red Guards", bravely covering the retreat.
In 1918, Marusya's cooperation with the Bolsheviks also came to an end. The legendary woman commander could not come to terms with the conclusion of the Brest peace, which convinced her of the betrayal by the Bolshevik leaders of the ideals and interests of the revolution. From the moment the agreement was signed in Brest-Litovsk, the history of the independent path of the Free Combat Squad of Marusya Nikiforova begins. It should be noted that it was accompanied by numerous expropriations of property both from the "bourgeois", which included any wealthy citizens, and from political organizations. All governing bodies, including the Soviets, were dispersed by Nikiforova's anarchists. The predatory actions repeatedly became the cause of Marusya's conflicts with the Bolsheviks and even with that part of the anarchist leaders who continued to support the Bolsheviks, in particular, with the detachment of Grigory Kotovsky.
On January 28, 1918, the Free Combat Squad entered Yelisavetgrad. First of all, Marusya shot the head of the local military registration and enlistment office, overlaid shops and enterprises with indemnities, organized the distribution of goods and products confiscated in stores to the population. However, it was not worth rejoicing at this unheard-of generosity for the inhabitant - Marusya's fighters, as soon as the stocks of food and goods in stores ran out, switched to ordinary inhabitants. The revolutionary committee of the Bolsheviks operating in Elisavetgrad nevertheless found the courage to stand up for the population of the city and influence Marusya, forcing her to withdraw her formations outside the settlement.
However, a month later the Free Combat Squad again arrived in Elisavetgrad. By this time, the detachment consisted of at least 250 people, 2 artillery pieces and 5 armored vehicles. The situation of January was repeated: the expropriation of property followed, not only from the real bourgeoisie, but also from ordinary citizens. The patience of the latter, meanwhile, was running out. The point was the robbery of the cashier of the Elvorti plant, which employed five thousand people. The indignant workers raised an uprising against the anarchist detachment of Marusya and pushed him back to the station. Marusya herself, who initially tried to appease the workers, appeared at their meeting and was wounded. Retreating to the steppe, the detachment of Marusya began to shoot the townspeople from artillery pieces.
Under the guise of fighting Marusya and her detachment, the Mensheviks were able to take political leadership in Elisavetgrad. The Bolshevik detachment of Alexander Belenkevich was driven out of the city, after which detachments from among the mobilized citizens went in search of Marusya. An important role in the "anti-anarchist" uprising was played by former tsarist officers who took over the leadership of the militia formations. In turn, the Kamensky Red Guard detachment arrived to help Marusa, who also entered into battle with the city militia. Despite the superior forces of Elisavetgrad, the outcome of the war that lasted several days between the anarchists and the Red Guards who joined them, and the front of the townspeople, was decided by the armored train "Freedom or Death", which arrived from Odessa under the command of sailor Polupanov. Elisavetgrad was again in the hands of the Bolsheviks and anarchists.
However, after a short time, Marusya’s detachments nevertheless left the city. The next place of activity of the Free Fighting Brigade was the Crimea, where Marusa also managed to commit a number of expropriations and come into conflict with the detachment of the Bolshevik Ivan Matveev. Then Marusya is announced in Melitopol and Aleksandrovka, arrives in Taganrog. Although the Bolsheviks assigned Marusya the responsibility of protecting the Azov coast from the Germans and Austro-Hungarians, the anarchist detachment arbitrarily retreated to Taganrog. In response, the Red Guards in Taganrog managed to arrest Marusya. However, this decision was met with indignation by both her combatants and other left-wing radical formations. Firstly, an armored train of the anarchist Garin arrived in Taganrog with a detachment of the Bryansk plant of Yekaterinoslav, who supported Marusya. Secondly, Antonov-Ovseenko, who had known her for a long time, also spoke in defense of Marusya. The revolutionary court acquitted and released Marusya. From Taganrog, the Marusya detachment retreated to Rostov-on-Don and neighboring Novocherkassk, where at that time the retreating Red Guard and anarchist detachments from all over Eastern Ukraine were concentrated. Naturally, in Rostov, Marusya was noted for expropriations, defiant burning of banknotes and bonds, and other similar antics.
The further path of Marusya - Essentuki, Voronezh, Bryansk, Saratov - is also marked by endless expropriations, demonstrative distributions of food and seized goods to the people, growing hostility between the Free Combat Brigade and the Red Guards. In January 1919, Marusya was nevertheless arrested by the Bolsheviks and transferred to Moscow to the Butyrka prison. However, the revolutionary court to the legendary anarchist was extremely merciful. Marusya was given on bail to anarcho-communist Apollon Karelin, a member of the Central Executive Committee, and her old friend Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko. Thanks to the intervention of these prominent revolutionaries and the past merits of Marusya, the only punishment for her was the deprivation of the right to occupy leadership and command positions for six months. Although the list of acts committed by Marusya drew on an unconditional execution by the verdict of a military court.
In February 1919, Nikiforova showed up in Gulyaipole, at Makhno's headquarters, where she joined the Makhnovist movement. Makhno, who knew the temperament of Marusya and her tendency to overly radical actions, did not allow her to be placed in command or staff positions. As a result, for two months the fighting Marusya was engaged in such purely peaceful and humane affairs, such as the creation of hospitals for the wounded Makhnovists and the sick from among the peasant population, the management of three schools and social support for poor peasant families.
However, soon after the ban on Marusya's activities in the leadership structures was lifted, she began to form her own cavalry regiment. The real meaning of Marusya's activity lies elsewhere. By this time, finally disillusioned with the Bolshevik government, Marusya hatches plans to create an underground terrorist organization that would start an anti-Bolshevik uprising throughout Russia. Her husband Witold Brzostek, who arrived from Poland, helps her in this. On September 25, 1919, the All-Russian Central Committee of Revolutionary Partisans, as the new structure under the leadership of Kazimir Kovalevich and Maxim Sobolev dubbed itself, blew up the Moscow Committee of the RCP (b). However, the Chekists managed to destroy the conspirators. Marusya, having moved to the Crimea, died in September 1919 under unclear circumstances.
There are several versions of the death of this amazing woman. V. Belash, a former associate of Makhno, claimed that Marusya was executed by whites in Simferopol in August-September 1919. However, more modern sources indicate that the last days of Marousi looked like this. In July 1919, Marusya and her husband Witold Bzhostek arrived in Sevastopol, where on July 29 they were identified and captured by the White Guard counterintelligence. Despite the war years, the counterintelligence officers did not kill Marusya without trial. The investigation lasted for a whole month, revealing the degree of guilt of Maria Nikiforova in the crimes against her. On September 3, 1919, Maria Grigorievna Nikiforova and Witold Stanislav Bzhostek were sentenced to death by a military court and shot.
This is how the legendary ataman of the Ukrainian steppes ended her life. What is difficult to refuse to Marusa Nikiforova is personal courage, conviction in the rightness of her actions and the well-known "frostbite". Otherwise, Marusya, like many other field commanders of the Civil War, rather suffered suffering for ordinary people. Despite the fact that she posed as a defender and intercessor of ordinary people, in reality, anarchism, in the understanding of Nikiforova, was reduced to permissiveness. Marusya retained that youthful infantile perception of anarchy as a realm of unlimited freedom, which was inherent in her during the years of participation in circles of “beginners”.
The desire to fight the bourgeoisie, petty bourgeoisie, state institutions resulted in unjustified cruelty, robberies of the civilian population, which actually turned the Marusya anarchist detachment into a semi-bandit gang. Unlike Makhno, Marusya was unable not only to lead the social and economic life of any region or settlement, but also to create a more or less large army, develop her own program, and even win the sympathy of the population. If Makhno personified rather the constructive potential of ideas about a stateless way of social order, then Marusya was the embodiment of a destructive, destructive component of anarchist ideology.
People like Marusya Nikiforova easily find themselves in the fire of battles, on revolutionary barricades and in the pogroms of captured cities, but they turn out to be completely unsuited to a peaceful and constructive life. Naturally, there is no place for them even among the revolutionaries, as soon as the latter turn to questions of social arrangement. What happened to Marusya - in the end, with a certain amount of respect, neither the Bolsheviks, nor even her associate Nestor Makhno, who prudently removed Marusya from participating in the activities of his headquarters, wanted to have serious affairs with her.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
||
Who was Marusya Nikiforova - a man or a woman? The vivid biography of the "black anarchist" resembles an adventurous super action movie. During his 34 years, he (a) managed to: serve time in the Peter and Paul Fortress with Kollontai and other revolutionaries, escape from prison twice, visit Japan, work as a journalist in America, Britain, be a student of the sculptor Rodin, and also become the only woman accepted into the French legion. She staged dozens of terrorist acts, created "black brigades" of unmotivated people, terrified everyone without exception - the police, the bourgeoisie, workers and peasants. Even Nestor Makhno could not stand her radicalism: he drove Marusya out of his armored train, throwing a wad of money at her half a million rubles. She immediately used this money for a failed assassination attempt on Lenin, Trotsky and Denikin. An amazing fate worthy of a film adaptation.
According to the official version, Maria Grigoryevna Nikiforova was born in 1885 in the city of Aleksandrovsk (present-day Zaporozhye) in the family of a staff captain, a hero of the Russian-Turkish war and a holder of many military awards. However, later Marusya told (in particular to Nestor Makhno) that she had to work as a laundress in her early youth, and that at that time she was raped. Why the daughter of a retired staff captain had to work as a laundress, a nanny, a dishwasher at a vodka factory is not known. Although, according to some historians, Marusya ran away from home at the age of 16 and earned her own living - but this version is not supported by any documentary evidence.
At the age of 18, Maria joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party and became fascinated with the theory of individual terror. It was the era of the great terrorists - Gershuni, Azef, Savinkov, Kalyaev. But in 1904, Marusya got acquainted with the ideas of anarchism - and they seemed to her closer and dearer. A society based on private property must be destroyed. The state as an instrument of violence has no right to exist. Marusya interpreted these truths in her own way. She joined the most radical wing of the anarchists - the so-called "non-motivators". The “non-motivators” threw bombs and fired not only at high-ranking officials and politicians, but simply wealthy people, the bourgeoisie, representatives of the middle strata of the population, the intelligentsia, and even workers, as the main force helping the capitalists to earn money, became the objects of their hunting. The most famous terrorist attacks involving Marusya were the explosion of the Libman cafe and a haberdashery store in Odessa, as well as the explosion of a first-class carriage on a train near Nikopol. A little later, the administrator of one plant was killed by a bomb thrown by Marusya, and the plant itself was stopped for two weeks.
In 1907, in Kherson, the police attacked her trail. Marusya tried to commit suicide by detonating a bomb, but the explosion failed. Marusya appeared before the court. She was accused of a number of expropriation acts and four murders. On these charges, she received a term - 20 years of hard labor with a preliminary serving of a sentence in the Peter and Paul Fortress.
Here we are faced with the first mystery of Marusya Nikiforova. Ekaterina Nikitina, her cellmate in Novinsky Prison, recalled: “A very young, angular woman, short, stocky, brace-haired with shifty brown eyes. A drunken boyish face, in which, despite her youth, there was something senile. We have not yet seen such a political type. She told her cellmates that she had been sentenced for the murder of a bailiff to death, which she was replaced by 20 years of hard labor when she was young. She acted strangely. She alternately called herself either an anarchist or a socialist-revolutionary, but she herself did not understand even the basics of revolutionary theories. I haven't read the books."
Soon the prisoners began to prepare an escape. They did not particularly trust Marusa, therefore, in order to find out about her, they sent a note to freedom, and also asked her “comrades” in the Butyrki process. The answer came: they confirmed from the outside that they know Marusya as an honest and decent comrade, although she lied about the death penalty. Opinions of political convicts about Marusya were divided. Some wanted to demand that the administration transfer her to another cell. Others - older and more compassionate - offered to take her with them to escape. But then “special circumstances” began to appear in the behavior of Marusya, which were hinted at by her accomplices. In the cell, they began to suspect that she was a man, there were several reasons for this: firstly, she never took off her top shirt in front of other women, and secondly, she never went to the bathhouse with everyone.
In the same cell sat Natasha Klimova, an aristocratic beauty, the civil wife of the famous dashing terrorist and bank robber Sokolov-Medved, who later became the mistress of Boris Savinkov. And now Maruska began to stick to this luxurious woman with her love, cry, suffer, roll scenes of jealousy. A prominent terrorist, Fanya Itkind, who was in the same cell, said that if the information that Marusya is a man is confirmed, then she herself will “bang” her personally.
The cellmates eventually decided that the most prominent and elderly convict should have called Marusya to a frank conversation and find out what gender she was. Such a conversation took place, and the elder of the cell, Anna Pavlovna, spreading her arms, said: “Indeed, a man, or rather, a boy. My name is Volodya. But the story is very special: he participated in the murder of the bailiff, then he hid in a woman's dress and was convicted in a woman's dress. I sat in solitary confinement in Chernihiv. Then he went by stage to Moscow and everywhere he was mistaken for a woman. In general, the infrequent asks him to understand and for God's sake to regret. Crying."
The camera gasped! It is clear, although he lies a lot, but this is obviously boyish ... You can’t send him away to criminals - they will immediately inform you, leave him in a cell - he will fail them and himself, because he behaves more stupidly than a stupid one. In the end, they decided that Manya would remain Manya, they didn’t care whether she was a boy or a man. They will put a side bed for her by the window, forbid her to sing, jump, go to the doctor and go to the bathroom when someone is there, and she will have to leave the cell only accompanied by authoritative political convicts. Manka, when she was informed of the decision, burst into tears, blew her nose, and after a while she sang at the top of her voice in a strong boyish viola "At Poltavi on the market."
This testimony is very valuable. There is other evidence that Marusya Nikiforova was in fact either a transvestite or a hermaphrodite.
The escape from the Novinsky prison, in the preparation of which the young Vladimir Mayakovsky participated, was successful. However, Marusya was arrested again, sent by stage to Siberia. There she organized a secondary escape, got to Vladivostok, from there, using forged documents, to Japan, and then to the USA, where for some time she worked in the editorial offices of anarchist newspapers. Here her journalistic gift was opened - she wrote articles on the topic of the day and sharp feuilletons.
In 1913, Marusya moved to Europe, lived in Spain and France. In Paris, she took sculpture and painting lessons from Auguste Rodin. Old Rodin considered her one of his most talented students. Anarchist Artemy Gladkikh claimed in 1918 that he had seen Marusya in Paris, and she sometimes wore a man's suit, posing as Vladimir Nikiforov. He also claimed that in Paris Marusya performed a sex change operation and a transplant of female hormonal glands. Although for the beginning of the twentieth century, this information was something from the realm of fantasy.
At least in 1914, Marusya, as a woman (and the only woman at that), joined the French Foreign Legion and studied at an officer's school. In 1916, she was sent to Greece, to the area of the city of Thessaloniki, to fight the Turks. But with the beginning of the revolution in Russia, Marusya deserted and, having made her way through several front lines, appeared in Petrograd in April 1917.
Here she was greeted as a heroine - the revolution granted amnesty to all political prisoners. She spoke at rallies, urging the people not to stop at the revolutionary successes achieved and to complete the holy cause of the anarchist revolution. In July - after the Provisional Government cracked down on a demonstration of leftist forces - Marusa had to flee Petrograd. Her closest friend Alexandra Kollontai ended up in jail. Marusya herself returned to her homeland, to Aleksandrovsk, which is under the jurisdiction of the Central Rada.
Marusya was perceived as the recognized leader of the anarchist movement in southern Ukraine. She created working Black squads in Aleksandrovsk, Yekaterinoslav, Odessa, Nikolaev, Kherson, Kamensk, Melitopol, Yuzovka, Nikopol, Gorlovka. As historian Viktor Savchenko writes, “these detachments began to disorganize and terrorize the state structures of the Provisional Government of Republican Russia, and from November 1917, the young power structures of the Ukrainian People's Republic. To arm and support the Black Guard Free Fighting Brigade, Marusya expropriated one million rubles from the Alexander breeder Badovsky. Marusya gave part of the money to the Alexander Council as a gift. A lot of money was requisitioned by her detachment from the landlords of the Yekaterinoslav province.
In September 1917, Marusya was arrested by order of the Commissar of the Provisional Government in the city of Aleksandrovsk. The next day, all the enterprises of Aleksandrovsk stopped work. The authorities were forced to make concessions. Marusya was simply carried out of prison in her arms. She turned into a folk heroine!
At the same time, she met Nestor Makhno, the new leader of the anarchists. If Marusya was a product of the urban anarchist element, then Makhno was a peasant anarchist. And very soon, Makhno's organizational talents began to dominate Marusya's authority. Although the anarchist leaders did not have serious contradictions. Moreover, some biographers of Makhno claim (without reference to sources) about the alleged affair between Marusya and Nestor.
Again, as Viktor Savchenko writes, “with her “Black Guard” detachment, Marusya participates in the establishment of Soviet power in the Crimea, in battles with detachments of the Crimean Tatars. The Black Sea sailors passed a resolution on the wholesale extermination of the bourgeoisie and moved from words to deeds. More than 500 people were brutally killed in Sevastopol and Feodosiya alone. Together with the anarchist detachment of Japaridze, the detachment of Nikiforova broke into Yalta. The Livadia Palace was plundered and several dozen officers were shot. Further, Marusya's path lay in Sevastopol, where, according to her, eight anarchists languished in a local prison, who were arrested for throwing bombs into the crowd from a hotel balcony. The Sevastopol Bolsheviks, fearing a clash with Marusya's detachment, released the arrested without waiting for the ataman's arrival. It is interesting that Marusya, who appeared for several days in Feodosia, was immediately elected to the Executive Committee of the county peasant council and managed to organize a local anarchist detachment of the Black Guard. And already on January 28, 1918, the detachment of Nikiforova arrived in Elisavetgrad (Kirovograd) to establish the power of the Soviets. At that time, the Ukrainian reserve regiment and the cavalry hundred of the Free Cossacks of Ukraine (900 fighters in total) were in the city. Anarchists, together with a detachment of Bolsheviks, dispersed the local garrison of the Central Rada, arrested representatives of the Ukrainian authorities. Marusya herself shot the local military commander, Colonel Vladimirov, for refusing to give the anarchists the keys to the military depots. Residents of the county Elisavetgrad for a long time remembered Marusya's "combatants", who terrorized the city for several days, robbing and killing the "bourgeois".
In Elisavetgrad, Marusya came into conflict with the local council and, with the support of her friend, the Bolshevik sailor Polupanov, ordered that the council be shot with cannons. This was the first dispersal of Parliament in this manner. Later, such a method of combating parliamentarianism will become a reliable and tested tool.
In Yekaterinoslav (Dnepropetrovsk), which Marusya raided, shops and shops were destroyed. She herself robbed mainly confectionery and lingerie stores.
In April 1918, under the blows of the German and Austrian troops, Nikiforova with her Black squad had to retreat outside Ukraine. In Taganrog, she was arrested by the Bolsheviks. Marusya was accused of looting, cruelty and robbery. The accuser demanded that Nikiforova be shot. Vladimir Zatonsky headed the court. After the anarchists present threatened to revolt, the court acquitted Marusa.
And she began to act again - now on the territory of Russia. Voronezh, Bryansk, Saratov, Rostov ... Here and there the cheerful Marusya appeared. R. Roshal wrote: “A carriage is rushing along the street at breakneck speed. Casually lounging in it, a young brunette sits in it, wearing a kubanka daringly put on to one side, next to him, hanging on the footrest, a broad-shouldered guy in red hussar breeches. The brunette and her bodyguard are hung with weapons.”
At the end of 1918, the Bolsheviks again arrested Marusya. She spent some time in Butyrka, and later appeared before the court, which banned her from holding command positions for a period of six months. Despite this, she secretly organized - with the support of the Ukrainian Bolsheviks, primarily Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko - a partisan cavalry detachment. But at the very beginning of 1919, this detachment, having carried out several operations against the supporters of Simon Petliura, joined the army of Nestor Makhno in full force.
In early June 1919, relations between Makhno and the Bolsheviks broke down. The anarchists were outlawed, some of the representatives of the Makhnovist headquarters, headed by Ozerov, were shot. At the same time, Marusya breaks off relations with Nestor Ivanovich. She demanded radical action against the Bolsheviks, Makhno considered this madness and took a wait-and-see attitude. As a result, Makhno threw Marusya out of his armored train and threw a pack of 100 (or even 500) thousand rubles at her.
Marusya immediately proceeded to the formation of groups that were supposed to organize revolutionary terror. The first group, led by Marusya herself and her husband, the Polish anarchist Witold Brzostek, were to go to Moscow to liquidate Lenin and Trotsky. The second group - led by Max Chernyak - went to Siberia to organize the assassination of Admiral Kolchak.
In Moscow, Marusya created the All-Russian Insurgent Committee of Revolutionary Partisans, which included more than 40 people - mostly anarchists. She began to carry out expropriation actions, thus collecting more than 4 million rubles (“For the world revolution,” she explained). The plans included the destruction of the entire top of the Bolshevik Party, as well as the explosion of the Kremlin.
On September 25, 1919, in the building of the Moscow Committee of the RCP (b) in Liteiny Lane (the building now houses the Embassy of Ukraine in the Russian Federation), a plenum of the MK RCP (b) was to be held. Lenin and Trotsky were to speak at the plenum. After the beginning of the work of the plenum, a deafening explosion thundered. 12 people were killed - including the leader of the Moscow Bolsheviks, Zagorsky. Nikolai Bukharin and Yemelyan Yaroslavsky were wounded. Lenin and Trotsky were simply late for the opening of the plenum and remained unharmed.
During the attempted bombing of the Kremlin, virtually the entire anarchist organization was uncovered. Many members of the underground group are arrested. Marusya and her husband managed to escape from Moscow to the Crimea.
Here Nikiforova undertook to plan an assassination attempt on General Denikin. She wanted to blow up the commander of the White troops along with his headquarters, and then go to Poland to organize an anarchist revolution. But - according to the official version - some White Guard identified her, and Marusya was arrested. In September 1919, she and her husband, Witold Brzostek, were hanged in the courtyard of the Sevastopol prison - and the husband was executed for not informing the authorities about his wife. However, not a single document testifying to the execution of Marusya remained.
There is another version: that Marusya secretly went to work in the Cheka and was sent first to Poland, and then to France. In 1919-1920, to create reliable legends of this kind, fake obituaries in the press were provided to agents. Perhaps the obituaries for Marusa Nikiforova in the anarchist press are also a cover? At the very least, there is unconfirmed evidence that it was Marusya Nikiforova who prepared Schwartzbard for the murder of Simon Petliura. This version was quite common between the First and Second World Wars.
Born in the city of Aleksandrovsk (Zaporozhye). The daughter of an officer who became famous in the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878. As a teenager, she began working helping her family as a dishwasher at a vodka factory. She joined the revolutionary work at the age of 16. In her early youth, she became close to the anarchist groups in her city. For terrorist acts in 1904 - 1905, she was sentenced to death, replaced by indefinite hard labor. She served in St. Petersburg, in the Peter and Paul Fortress. In 1910. transferred to Siberia, from where she escaped to Japan. She moved from Japan to the USA, lived in France, England, Germany, Switzerland. She was fluent in many European languages. An active participant in the socialist European congresses, an obstinate, rebellious nature. In Paris, she studied sculpture and drawing with Auguste Rodin himself. During World War I, she graduated from a military school in France and received the rank of officer. By conviction - an anarcho-terrorist. An excellent orator and organizer of expropriation and terror. In 1917, she returned from emigration to the Pologi station of the Aleksandrovsky district, where her mother lived. On the ruins of an anarchist group, she created a strong terrorist organization in southern Russia. In May 1917, she expropriated a million rubles from the Aleksandrovsky breeder Badovsky. Organizer and commander of the Black Guard. She had great authority among the sailors of the Kronstadt garrison. The ideologist of "unmotivated" terror, the destruction of state institutions, not excluding Soviet ones. Merged with her detachment ("Free combat squad") into the Insurgent Army of Makhno. She fought with the Petliurites and Denikinists, for which she received compliments from the Red Army command. The Bolsheviks were frankly afraid of her. The commander of the Ukrainian Red Front, V. Antonov-Ovseyenko, said that instead of attempting to disarm "the detachment of the anarchist Maria Nikiforova, I would recommend creating such combat units." In 1917, "Marusya" with her speeches to the Cossacks of the Central Rada was able to prevent spontaneous Jewish pogroms. Makhno, who devoted many pages to Nikiforova in his memoirs, says that she, speaking to thousands of soldiers, managed to arouse in them such a sense of shame for the intention to "pogrom the Jews" in the Yekaterinoslav region, that many failed pogromists cried like children, taking off their hats. Nikiforova hated anti-Semites and Ukrainian nationalists to death, called them "chauvinists" and exterminated them with her own hands at the first opportunity, as well as White Guard officers, and often in the most brutal ways.
She did not make a significant difference in her attitude towards the Black Hundreds and the Bolshevik punitive detachments - she dealt with the ChON and food contractors no less fiercely. In Soviet historiography, from the beginning of the 20s, it was not called anything other than a "bandit", and in the memoirs Dybetsa was called a "degenerate".
The wife of a famous Polish anarcho. terrorist V. Bzhostek. Participant of the first congresses of the Soviets and the Makhnovist movement. In the summer of 1919, she penetrated to establish underground work in the areas of action of the whites in the south. Identified, captured and hanged in Simferopol (August-September 1919) by the White General Slashchev, a famous punisher.
Nikiforova's husband, Witold Brzostek, is a Pole, an anarchist terrorist since 1907. Active organizer of the underground. The anarchist detachment of Marusya and Vitold in the summer of 1919 was divided into three parts, and each had a grandiose task: one part, led by Nikiforova herself, left for the Crimea, from where she was supposed to travel to Rostov and blow up Denikin's headquarters there; the second group (about 25 people), headed by Kovalevich, P. Sobolev and Glasgon, left for Kharkov to release the arrested Makhnovists who were sitting in the cellars of the Cheka - in case of failure, the Glasgon group was supposed to blow up the Kharkov branch of the Cheka; the third group, led by Max Chernyak (Cherednyak, see above about him), went to Siberia to blow up Kolchak's headquarters. Knowing the determined nature of the terrorist couple, there was no doubt that all three events would have been successful. But at the end of July of the same 1919, Brzostek, passing along with Marusya through the Crimea on his way to Rostov to blow up Denikin's headquarters, was accidentally identified on the street. Arrested, interrogated and hanged with his wife by General Slashchev.
Maria Grigorievna Nikiforova was born in 1885 in the city of Aleksandrovsk (present-day Zaporozhye) in the family of a staff captain, a hero of the Russian-Turkish war and a holder of many military awards. Marusya told Nestor that she had been raped.
According to the official version, Maria Grigoryevna Nikiforova was born in 1885 in the city of Aleksandrovsk (present-day Zaporozhye) in the family of a staff captain, a hero of the Russian-Turkish war and a holder of many military awards. However, later Marusya told (in particular to Nestor Makhno) that she had to work as a laundress in her early youth, and that at that time she was raped. Why the daughter of a retired staff captain had to work as a laundress, a nanny, a dishwasher at a vodka factory is not known. Although, according to some historians, Marusya ran away from home at the age of 16 and earned her own living - but this version is not supported by any documentary evidence. At the age of 18, Maria joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party and became fascinated with the theory of individual terror. It was the era of the great terrorists - Gershuni, Azef, Savinkov, Kalyaev. But in 1904, Marusya got acquainted with the ideas of anarchism - and they seemed to her closer and dearer. A society based on private property must be destroyed. The state as an instrument of violence has no right to exist. Marusya interpreted these truths in her own way. She joined the most radical wing of the anarchists - the so-called "non-motivators". The “non-motivators” threw bombs and fired not only at high-ranking officials and politicians, but simply wealthy people, the bourgeoisie, representatives of the middle strata of the population, the intelligentsia, and even workers, as the main force helping the capitalists to earn money, became the objects of their hunting. The most famous terrorist attacks involving Marusya were the explosion of the Libman cafe and a haberdashery store in Odessa, as well as the explosion of a first-class carriage on a train near Nikopol. A little later, the administrator of one plant was killed by a bomb thrown by Marusya, and the plant itself was stopped for two weeks. In 1907, in Kherson, the police attacked her trail. Marusya tried to commit suicide by detonating a bomb, but the explosion failed. Marusya appeared before the court. She was accused of a number of expropriation acts and four murders. On these charges, she received a term - 20 years of hard labor with a preliminary serving of a sentence in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Here we are faced with the first mystery of Marusya Nikiforova. Ekaterina Nikitina, her cellmate in Novinsky Prison, recalled: “A very young, angular woman, short, stocky, brace-haired with shifty brown eyes. A drunken boyish face, in which, despite her youth, there was something senile. We have not yet seen such a political type. She told her cellmates that she had been sentenced for the murder of a bailiff to death, which she was replaced by 20 years of hard labor when she was young. She acted strangely. She alternately called herself either an anarchist or a socialist-revolutionary, but she herself did not understand even the basics of revolutionary theories. I haven't read the books." Soon the prisoners began to prepare an escape. They did not particularly trust Marusa, therefore, in order to find out about her, they sent a note to freedom, and also asked her “comrades” in the Butyrki process. The answer came: they confirmed from the outside that they know Marusya as an honest and decent comrade, although she lied about the death penalty. Opinions of political convicts about Marusya were divided. Some wanted to demand that the administration transfer her to another cell. Others - older and more compassionate - offered to take her with them to escape. But then “special circumstances” began to appear in the behavior of Marusya, which were hinted at by her accomplices. In the cell, they began to suspect that she was a man, there were several reasons for this: firstly, she never took off her top shirt in front of other women, and secondly, she never went to the bathhouse with everyone. In the same cell sat Natasha Klimova, an aristocratic beauty, the civil wife of the famous dashing terrorist and bank robber Sokolov-Medved, who later became the mistress of Boris Savinkov. And now Maruska began to stick to this luxurious woman with her love, cry, suffer, roll scenes of jealousy. A prominent terrorist, Fanya Itkind, who was in the same cell, said that if the information that Marusya is a man is confirmed, then she herself will “bang” her personally.
Historians are still arguing about who the woman named Marusya Nikiforova was. And was she really a woman? And what was her fate? Very short life. Lots of mysteries...
The cellmates eventually decided that the most prominent and elderly convict should have called Marusya to a frank conversation and find out what gender she was. Such a conversation took place, and the elder of the cell, Anna Pavlovna, spreading her arms, said: “Indeed, a man, or rather, a boy. My name is Volodya. But the story is very special: he participated in the murder of the bailiff, then he hid in a woman's dress and was convicted in a woman's dress. I sat in solitary confinement in Chernihiv. Then he went by stage to Moscow and everywhere he was mistaken for a woman. In general, the infrequent asks him to understand and for God's sake to regret. Crying."
The camera gasped! It is clear, although he lies a lot, but this is obviously boyish ... You can’t send him away to criminals - they will immediately inform you, leave him in a cell - he will fail them and himself, because he behaves more stupidly than a stupid one. In the end, they decided that Manya would remain Manya, they didn’t care whether she was a boy or a man. They will put a side bed for her by the window, forbid her to sing, jump, go to the doctor and go to the bathroom when someone is there, and she will have to leave the cell only accompanied by authoritative political convicts. Manka, when she was informed of the decision, burst into tears, blew her nose, and after a while she sang at the top of her voice in a strong boyish viola "At Poltavi on the market."
This testimony is very valuable. There is other evidence that Marusya Nikiforova was in fact either a transvestite or a hermaphrodite.
The escape from the Novinsky prison, in the preparation of which the young Vladimir Mayakovsky participated, was successful. However, Marusya was arrested again, sent by stage to Siberia. There she organized a secondary escape, got to Vladivostok, from there, using forged documents, to Japan, and then to the USA, where for some time she worked in the editorial offices of anarchist newspapers. Here her journalistic gift was opened - she wrote articles on the topic of the day and sharp feuilletons.
In 1913, Marusya moved to Europe, lived in Spain and France. In Paris, she took sculpture and painting lessons from Auguste Rodin. Old Rodin considered her one of his most talented students. Anarchist Artemy Gladkikh claimed in 1918 that he had seen Marusya in Paris, and she sometimes wore a man's suit, posing as Vladimir Nikiforov. He also claimed that in Paris Marusya performed a sex change operation and a transplant of female hormonal glands. Although for the beginning of the twentieth century, this information was something from the realm of fantasy.
At least in 1914, Marusya, as a woman (and the only woman at that), joined the French Foreign Legion and studied at an officer's school. In 1916, she was sent to Greece, to the area of the city of Thessaloniki, to fight the Turks. But with the beginning of the revolution in Russia, Marusya deserted and, having made her way through several front lines, appeared in Petrograd in April 1917.
Here she was greeted as a heroine - the revolution granted amnesty to all political prisoners. She spoke at rallies, urging the people not to stop at the revolutionary successes achieved and to complete the holy cause of the anarchist revolution. In July - after the Provisional Government cracked down on a demonstration of leftist forces - Marusa had to flee Petrograd. Her closest friend Alexandra Kollontai ended up in jail. Marusya herself returned to her homeland, to Aleksandrovsk, which is under the jurisdiction of the Central Rada.
Marusya was perceived as the recognized leader of the anarchist movement in southern Ukraine. She created working Black squads in Aleksandrovsk, Yekaterinoslav, Odessa, Nikolaev, Kherson, Kamensk, Melitopol, Yuzovka, Nikopol, Gorlovka. As historian Viktor Savchenko writes, “these detachments began to disorganize and terrorize the state structures of the Provisional Government of Republican Russia, and from November 1917, the young power structures of the Ukrainian People's Republic. To arm and support the Black Guard Free Fighting Brigade, Marusya expropriated one million rubles from the Alexander breeder Badovsky. Marusya gave part of the money to the Alexander Council as a gift. A lot of money was requisitioned by her detachment from the landlords of the Yekaterinoslav province.
In September 1917, Marusya was arrested by order of the Commissar of the Provisional Government in the city of Aleksandrovsk. The next day, all the enterprises of Aleksandrovsk stopped work. The authorities were forced to make concessions. Marusya was simply carried out of prison in her arms. She turned into a folk heroine!
At the same time, she met Nestor Makhno, the new leader of the anarchists. If Marusya was a product of the urban anarchist element, then Makhno was a peasant anarchist. And very soon, Makhno's organizational talents began to dominate Marusya's authority. Although the anarchist leaders did not have serious contradictions. Moreover, some biographers of Makhno claim (without reference to sources) about the alleged affair between Marusya and Nestor.
Again, as Viktor Savchenko writes, “with her “Black Guard” detachment, Marusya participates in the establishment of Soviet power in the Crimea, in battles with detachments of the Crimean Tatars. The Black Sea sailors passed a resolution on the wholesale extermination of the bourgeoisie and moved from words to deeds. More than 500 people were brutally killed in Sevastopol and Feodosiya alone. Together with the anarchist detachment of Japaridze, the detachment of Nikiforova broke into Yalta. The Livadia Palace was plundered and several dozen officers were shot. Further, Marusya's path lay in Sevastopol, where, according to her, eight anarchists languished in a local prison, who were arrested for throwing bombs into the crowd from a hotel balcony. The Sevastopol Bolsheviks, fearing a clash with Marusya's detachment, released the arrested without waiting for the ataman's arrival. It is interesting that Marusya, who appeared for several days in Feodosia, was immediately elected to the Executive Committee of the county peasant council and managed to organize a local anarchist detachment of the Black Guard. And already on January 28, 1918, the detachment of Nikiforova arrived in Elisavetgrad (Kirovograd) to establish the power of the Soviets. At that time, the Ukrainian reserve regiment and the cavalry hundred of the Free Cossacks of Ukraine (900 fighters in total) were in the city. Anarchists, together with a detachment of Bolsheviks, dispersed the local garrison of the Central Rada, arrested representatives of the Ukrainian authorities. Marusya herself shot the local military commander, Colonel Vladimirov, for refusing to give the anarchists the keys to the military depots. Residents of the county Elisavetgrad for a long time remembered Marusya's "combatants", who terrorized the city for several days, robbing and killing the "bourgeois".
In Elisavetgrad, Marusya came into conflict with the local council and, with the support of her friend, the Bolshevik sailor Polupanov, ordered that the council be shot with cannons. This was the first dispersal of Parliament in this manner. Later, such a method of combating parliamentarianism will become a reliable and tested tool.
In Yekaterinoslav (Dnepropetrovsk), which Marusya raided, shops and shops were destroyed. She herself robbed mainly confectionery and lingerie stores. How is Vysotsky? “A woman is like a woman - and why please her?”
In April 1918, under the blows of the German and Austrian troops, Nikiforova with her Black squad had to retreat outside Ukraine. In Taganrog, she was arrested by the Bolsheviks. Marusya was accused of looting, cruelty and robbery. The accuser demanded that Nikiforova be shot. Vladimir Zatonsky headed the court. After the anarchists present threatened to revolt, the court acquitted Marusa.
And she began to act again - now on the territory of Russia. Voronezh, Bryansk, Saratov, Rostov ... Here and there the cheerful Marusya appeared. R. Roshal wrote: “A carriage is rushing along the street at breakneck speed. Casually lounging in it, a young brunette sits in it, wearing a kubanka daringly put on to one side, next to him, hanging on the footrest, a broad-shouldered guy in red hussar breeches. The brunette and her bodyguard are hung with weapons.”
At the end of 1918, the Bolsheviks again arrested Marusya. She spent some time in Butyrka, and later appeared before the court, which banned her from holding command positions for a period of six months. Despite this, she secretly organized - with the support of the Ukrainian Bolsheviks, primarily Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko - a partisan cavalry detachment. But at the very beginning of 1919, this detachment, having carried out several operations against the supporters of Simon Petliura, joined the army of Nestor Makhno in full force.
In early June 1919, relations between Makhno and the Bolsheviks broke down. The anarchists were outlawed, some of the representatives of the Makhnovist headquarters, headed by Ozerov, were shot. At the same time, Marusya breaks off relations with Nestor Ivanovich. She demanded radical action against the Bolsheviks, Makhno considered this madness and took a wait-and-see attitude. As a result, Makhno threw Marusya out of his armored train and threw a pack of 100 (or even 500) thousand rubles at her.
Marusya immediately proceeded to the formation of groups that were supposed to organize revolutionary terror. The first group, led by Marusya herself and her husband, the Polish anarchist Witold Brzostek, were to go to Moscow to liquidate Lenin and Trotsky. The second group - led by Max Chernyak - went to Siberia to organize the assassination of Admiral Kolchak.
In Moscow, Marusya created the All-Russian Insurgent Committee of Revolutionary Partisans, which included more than 40 people - mostly anarchists. She began to carry out expropriation actions, thus collecting more than 4 million rubles (“For the world revolution,” she explained). The plans included the destruction of the entire top of the Bolshevik Party, as well as the explosion of the Kremlin.
On September 25, 1919, in the building of the Moscow Committee of the RCP (b) in Liteiny Lane (the building now houses the Embassy of Ukraine in the Russian Federation), a plenum of the MK RCP (b) was to be held. Lenin and Trotsky were to speak at the plenum. After the beginning of the work of the plenum, a deafening explosion thundered. 12 people were killed - including the leader of the Moscow Bolsheviks, Zagorsky. Nikolai Bukharin and Yemelyan Yaroslavsky were wounded. Lenin and Trotsky were simply late for the opening of the plenum and remained unharmed.
During the attempted bombing of the Kremlin, virtually the entire anarchist organization was uncovered. Many members of the underground group are arrested. Marusya and her husband managed to escape from Moscow to the Crimea.
Here Nikiforova undertook to plan an assassination attempt on General Denikin. She wanted to blow up the commander of the White troops along with his headquarters, and then go to Poland to organize an anarchist revolution. But - according to the official version - some White Guard identified her, and Marusya was arrested. In September 1919, she and her husband, Witold Brzostek, were hanged in the courtyard of the Sevastopol prison - and the husband was executed for not informing the authorities about his wife. However, not a single document testifying to the execution of Marusya remained.
There is another version: that Marusya secretly went to work in the Cheka and was sent first to Poland, and then to France. In 1919-1920, to create reliable legends of this kind, fake obituaries in the press were provided to agents. Perhaps the obituaries for Marusa Nikiforova in the anarchist press are also a cover? At the very least, there is unconfirmed evidence that it was Marusya Nikiforova who prepared Schwartzbard for the murder of Simon Petliura. This version was quite common between the First and Second World Wars.
The difficult times of the Civil War in our country revealed many outstanding women. Some of them became revolutionaries, others went into gangs, sometimes even leading them. A special place in this list is occupied by the legendary ataman Marusya, whose life is worthy of a film adaptation - it can be the basis of an action-packed action movie.
From bobmists to bandits
Maria Grigorievna Nikiforova gained fame long before the start of the Civil War in Russia. At the age of 16, the girl left home, in a short time she changed many professions - from a nanny to a bottle washer at a distillery. Of course, such a fate was not the limit of her dreams, and soon Mary was swirled by the whirlpool of the anarchist movement, and in its most severe manifestation - the unmotivated. These people fought against all the rich, professing the principle: "Fight for the sake of fighting." Motiveless people exploded bombs in shops, restaurants, haberdashery shops.
Desperate Maria Nikiforova was considered the best of the bombers. On her account there were many successful terrorist attacks against the authorities in southern Russia. She has been caught many times. Once the girl was ambushed, but did not give up, but tried to undermine herself. However, the homemade bomb did not work. Maria was sentenced to life in hard labor, although the train of corpses that trailed behind her was so long that, in theory, she was threatened with hanging.
International terrorism
Maria, who by that time was simply called Marusya, escaped from hard labor in 1910. However, she did not stay in Russia, prudently crossing over to Japan, and then to the USA. In exile, Marusya unexpectedly revealed an epistolary talent. She took a job as a journalist for a Russian anarchist newspaper, while becoming a prominent figure in the Union of Russian Workers of the United States and Canada. But a quiet life was not for her.
Soon she moved again, this time to Spain. Her appearance in this European country was marked by large-scale robberies of shops and houses of wealthy inhabitants of Madrid. Not only that, the activist of the anarchist movement organized courses for novice bombers in Spain. But one day Marusya was wounded, and she was forced to flee to Paris. French political emigrants accepted her as their own. Marusya became friends with the revolutionary Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko and married the Polish anarchist Witold Brzostek.
Here she woke up a craving for art. Marusya began to take sculpting lessons from Auguste Rodin himself, who found her a talented student. At that moment, the First World War broke out. Marusya left her husband and went to courses for cavalry officers. The most incredible thing is that she really received the rank of French cavalry officer in 1916 and left for the Balkan front to smash the Turks.
Under the banner of revolution
The fate of Maria Nikiforova made the next sharp turn in February 1917, after she learned about the bourgeois revolution in Russia. Deciding to reckon with the authorities for her poor childhood and hard labor, Marusya left the service in the French army and miraculously made her way through the front lines and borders of countries to revolutionary Petrograd. Here, as an outstanding speaker, numerous rallies awaited her with calls to go and storm the Winter Palace.
At some point, Maria decided to visit her native Ukraine. And then her lucky star rose. The gang of anarchists created by her captured Alexandrov, and then joined the famous army of Makhno. A wild life began with robberies, executions and carousing.
With the help of a revolver and a checker, Ataman Marusya created her own “fair” court, in the form in which a professional terrorist could represent it. However, the commissar of the Provisional Government, who arrived from Petrograd, miraculously managed to arrest Marusya and imprison her in a local prison. True, not for long. The very next day, the prison was taken by anarchists by storm, and the legendary chieftain was literally carried out in her arms. After the October Revolution of 1917, Marusya's affairs went uphill. Her nominal boss, Father Makhno, as you know, was on good terms with the Bolsheviks. On their behalf, the armed units of the Red Army in Ukraine were commanded by Marusya's friend in Paris - Antonov-Ovseenko. Enlisting his support with the approval of Old Man Makhno, Maria Nikiforova formed her own anarchist cavalry units, calling them the Free Combat Squad of Ataman Marusya. The number of squads at different times ranged from 300 to 500 people, who, in addition to carts, even had their own armored car.
During the Civil War in Ukraine, a real panic arose among the German, Austro-Hungarian and Ukrainian military, as soon as they heard about the approach of combat detachments of ataman Marusya. Nevertheless, the cruelty of Maria Nikiforova fed up even with her associates.
In 1918, the Bolsheviks arrested her for robbing civilians and put her on trial. It is not known how much longer Marusya would have lived in this world, if not for the petition of Nestor Makhno. He personally urged the Bolsheviks to release the "old revolutionary", reinforcing his request with the force of a detachment of monarchists sent on an armored train to Taganrog to rescue the famous chieftain. Nikiforova was acquitted under pressure from Makhno's authority. For about a year, Marusya plundered Russian cities, until another arrest and a court in Moscow forbade her to hold command positions in the Red Army. This time Makhno did not dare to intercede for Marusya.
But the restless Nikiforova decided to start everything from the beginning and, together with her husband, went to Sevastopol to prepare explosions in the White Guard rear. In the city, white counterintelligence tracked her down. After a short trial in 1919, she was shot. The last words of the 34-year-old terrorist chieftain were "Long live anarchy!"