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Title: Nikiforova, Marusya, 1885-1919 Author: Nick Heath Date: June 19, 2006 Language: en Topics: biography, Russian Revolution, Ukraine Source: https://libcom.org/history/articles/18-1919-marussia-nikiforova
Born at Alexandrovsk, (now Zaphorozhye)in 1885 Maria Grigorevna
Nikiforova was a worker, who had jobs as a baby sitter, sales clerk, and
finally as a bottle washer in a vodka distillery.As a member of a local
anarchist-communist group she was condemned to death for armed attacks
on the Czarist authorities in 1905, commuted to twenty years hard labour
and imprisonment. She spent part of the sentence in the Petropavlovsk
prison in Petrograd. Transferred to Siberia, she organised a riot in the
Narymsk prison and escaped in 1910, passing like Bakunin, from Japan, to
the USA. A group of Chinese anarchists living in Japan helped with her
passage to the USA. In New York she made contact with the large number
of anarchist exiles there and apparently wrote articles for the
anarchist press. Around 1912 she moved to western Europe, and settled in
Paris.She spent some time in Spain and was involved in armed actions
with the local movement.
She married the Polish anarchist Witold Bzhostek there. She attended a
conference of Russian anarchist communists in London at the end of
1913.With the outbreak of war, she adopted the position of Kropotkin and
others in supporting the allies.Arriving in Russia with the revolution,
she addressed the Kronstadt sailors on several occasions alongside I. S.
Bleikhman during the July Days and it was partly thanks to her that
thousands of them marched in Petrograd during this period of
near-revolution.
She returned in July 1917 to Alexandrovsk . There the anarchists were
all manual or intellectual workers. They were divided into anarchist
communists and anarchist individualists, but according to Ukrainian
anarchist guerrilla leader Nestor Makhno, this was pure form, and in
reality they were all revolutionary anarchist communists. They created
an Anarchist Federation in early June and began to carry out an intense
activity among the workers.
In August 1917 she and her armed detachment robbed a military storehouse
at Orikhiv station, then attacking a regiment in the town, capturing it
and dispersing it, and executing all captured officers. Part of the arms
and ammo captured were passed over to the Makhno band.
She spoke to a meeting of peasants chaired by Makhno at Guyai Polye on
29th August 1917. She accompanied Makhno and Antonov of the Gulyai Polye
anarchist communist group on a visit to the Alexandrovsk factories over
the course of several days in 1917 to expose the counter-revolutionary
activity carried out in the workers’ name in the villages by the
Kerensky regime. She was secretly arrested on the third night by the
Socialist Revolutionary Popov and the governmental commissar Mikhno, for
having accompanied the Gulyai Polye anarchists without having been
mandated by the peasants. Their agents found where she was living,
seized her and took her by car to prison.
The following morning the Alexandrovsk workers found out about the
arrest, stopped work and marched in formation, banners flying, to the
Soviet of Workers and Peasants Deputies. They seized the social-democrat
Motchalyi, the president of the Soviet, elected a commission and made
Motchalyi go to the prison with them to free Nikiforova. On her release
the workers passed her from group to group, carrying her in triumph to
the Soviet. None of the commissars dared speak on the platform there.
Nikiforova in her powerful voice called on the workers to take up
struggle against the government, for the Revolution and for a society
free of all authority.
Her intense revolutionary activity won her a commendation in 1918 from
the Bolshevik General Antonov-Ovseenko!
Again in January 1918 she used her great talents as an orator. When
detachments of Don Cossacks were about to join the counter-revolutionary
White Army of Kaledin, they were intercepted by revolutionary forces
including those of Nikiforova. They surrendered en masse.
Following this, they were addressed by anarchists, including by
Nikiforova, who explained their role under the old regime and the
possibilities that they could grasp with a free society. Many Cossacks
began to cry like children. Some intellectuals heard listening to the
speech remarked “My God, how pale and pitiful the speeches of the
Revolutionary Committee and the political parties alongside the speeches
of the anarchists and above all that of Mariussa Nikiforova”. Thanks to
this, quite a few Don Cossacks established a long correspondence with
the anarchists and subscribed to the anarchist press. The armed
detachment she formed hunted down Army officers and landlords.
She later moved to Elizavetgrad organising another armed detachment-the
Free Combat Druzhina- which fought against all invaders including the
Germans and Denikin and engaged in two weeks of street fighting with
reactionary elements in the town. She linked to the Makhno movement in
1919. Judged too turbulent by Moscow she was banned from exercising
responsibilities for a year, in January 1919, cut to 6 months by Kamenev
after his visit to Makhno at Gulyai Polye in May 1919 (She had been
previously put on trial by the Bolsheviks in Taganrog in April 1918 for
similar charges of insubordination and pillage, from which she was
acquitted). Peaceful tasks not satisfying her, she took up armed
struggle again. She then went to Berdyansk and organised a new armed
detachment which included her husband. She and Bzhostek was finally
apprehended by the Whites in Sevastopol whilst preparing for an attack.
They were tried on September 16th 1919, and shot.