Siberian Makhnovschina - Siberian Anarchists in the Russian Civil War (1918-1924)

The Russian Civil War (1918-1924) in Asiatic Russia was like the American Wild West as one regime after another tried to establish its rule over the freedom-loving peasants and miners of the West Siberian plains and mountains. A key role in this struggle was played by the partisan armies put together by anarchists, which fought first against the Whites, then against the Reds. Like the better known Ukrainian peasant movement led by Nestor Makhno- known as the Makhnovshchina - the Siberian anarchists aimed to establish free federations of rural communes and worker-managed industrial enterprises. Long ignored or stigmatized as bandits by Soviet historians and their nationalist successors, the Siberian anarchist-partisans are rescued from oblivion in this pioneering study.