Nestor Makhno (1888–1934) was a Ukrainian anarchist revolutionary and the commander of the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine during the Ukrainian Civil War. Born into a poor peasant family in southern Ukraine, Makhno became involved in the local anarchist movement and was imprisoned for his activities. Following the 1917 Revolution, he returned to his hometown and became a local revolutionary leader, spearheading anarchist resistance to Ukrainian nationalists and the White movement. Upon defeating his enemies in battle, he established the Makhnovshchina, a mass movement by the Ukrainian peasantry to establish anarchist communism in Ukraine, coming to control much of the southern and eastern part of the country. After he collaborated with the Bolsheviks to defeat the Whites, his former allies turned on him, and he was wounded and driven into exile in 1921. He died in Paris from tuberculosis. (Full article...)