What did the scandalous anarchist dad Makhno remember: Legendary Muse, treasures of gold and poetic talent and not only

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Considering the incredible destinies of politicians and the military, we often learn that they, like famous artists and poets, also had Muses who inspired them to state affairs and feats of arms. The infamous anarchist dad Makhno also had such a Muse, and even so, that into the fire, into the water and into prison after him. About the last love, about treasures with gold buried all over Ukraine, about poetic talent Nestor Makhno and much more later in the review.

More than gold, Makhno loved women

Nestor Makhno did not succeed either in height or appearance, but women loved him - for his crazy temperament, courage and adventurism. In the wives, combat friends and mistresses of the famous dad, there were many women who selflessly loved him, deified him and at the same time subordinated him to their will. Read more about the love affairs of Nestor Ivanovich: Fighting friends, wives and mistresses of the legendary chieftain Nestor Makhno.

However, the most outstanding, who could easily compete with the fame of her husband in the field of politics and war, was Galina Kuzmenko, the last companion of the ataman's life. For her, marriage to Makhno turned into military campaigns, escapes, prisons and camps.

Galina

Galina (from birth Agafya) Kuzmenko was born into the family of a gendarme clerk. At the age of 15, the girl graduated from six classes of a female gymnasium. By that time, her father was expelled from the service for drunkenness, and he took his family to the village of Peschaniy Brod in the Aleksandrovsky district. The village life was a burden for a recent schoolgirl, and if she herself decided to go to the novice of the Krasnogorsk nunnery, if she was there from the will of her parents, now it is impossible to know for sure. But she did not manage to become a nun: the young baron noticed the young beauty, fell passionately in love, hastily proposed to the young peasant woman and took her to the estate to meet her parents.

Of course, the old baron and his wife didn’t want to hear about such a daughter-in-law, and the girl, not eating well, had to return to the monastery. Of course, the abbess could not stand such a scandal and sent the negligent novice home. Galina returned to her father's house, entered the seminary, graduated with a gold medal and went to teach. By the way, she turned out to be a good zemstvo teacher.

First meeting

In 1916, according to the distribution of the zemstvo council, she went to work in a two-year school in the village of Gulyaypole. It was there, two years later, that Makhno met her, who was five years older than her and by that time had already been married twice.

Acquaintance with Nestor, over the years, overgrown with many legends and fictions, radically turned Galina's whole life. According to one version, they met in the school library. Old Man, having heard about the new beautiful teacher of the local school, came to ask for an abstruse book in order to impress her with his education. The explosion of emotions was not long in coming - the dad was seething … And the girl, unable to withstand the pressure, threw the book at his feet, - Makhno ordered calmly. - answered the girl even more calmly. Nestor immediately drew his pistol, cocked the trigger and pointed it at the young teacher. He probably would have shot, this was not the first time for him, but he was dumbfounded when he saw fearless devils jumping in her eyes. Such one will die, and not submit …

Together and into fire, and into water, and to hell with horns

They got married in 1918. Makhno fell in love with Galina with all his heart and was her caring and faithful husband. And she became his Muse, and secretary, and right hand, and companion, and friend. She kept herself perfectly in the saddle, shot accurately and participated on an equal footing with the Makhnovists in bloody battles, was a member of the military court in Makhno's army. It featured the educational program of the Makhnovist Republic, which lasted a little over a hundred days. Galina went with her betrothed all the hardships of life along the roads of the civil war, and later with him, risking her life, fled abroad, and also served her first prison sentence in Poland with Makhno.

What is noteworthy, outwardly, Galina and Nestor were the complete opposite of each other: she is tall, beautiful, intelligent - he is short, nondescript, rude and unrestrained. The imperious character, extraordinary willpower, independence in the judgments of a woman almost immediately struck down not only dad. Her, a former modest teacher and novice of the monastery, his comrades-in-arms and soldiers respectfully called her "mother" and even the most frostbitten thugs of the Makhnovist army were afraid.

According to eyewitnesses, Galina, having become atamanshe, personally repaired the massacre more than once. So, they say that she hacked to death with her own hands a woman who betrayed her father to the Bolsheviks. And she personally sent several Makhnovists to the next world for the rape of local women. True, later Galina flatly denied all these facts, and said that on the contrary, she always quarreled with her husband because of all the atrocities and atrocities that his fighters committed.

Escape abroad

In August 1921, Nestor Makhno with his wife and a small detachment of 78 people, pursued by the Red Guards, swam across the Dniester. Breaking through the border with Romania, a stray bullet nevertheless caught up with the dashing chieftain. She hit the back of the head and came out through the right cheek, disfiguring Nestor's face. The injury was quite serious, but Galina was leaving her husband. A little later they moved to Poland, where they were arrested, accused of preparing an uprising in Galicia.

In the Warsaw prison, a daughter, Elena, was born to Makhno and Kuzmenko. But soon the Polish court acquitted Makhno and Galina, and the whole family moved first to Germany, and later settled in France. The family had to huddle in a tiny apartment in the suburbs of Paris. And now Nestor Ivanovich had a chance to work as a turner, a carpenter, a painter, a shoemaker and even a handyman. The family lived in poverty, despite the fact that in Ukraine Batka Makhno had countless treasures that were hidden throughout the territory of the Yekaterinoslav province.

By the way, after the escape, the Makhno spouses had only one ring left, which the bodyguard of the father Leva Zadov handed over to the chieftain as the only precious thing in the detachment. There was even a moment when Makhno fell into a deep depression and tried to commit suicide.

Divorce and death

It's scary to even think how much the Makhno couple had to endure together during the war and in the camps, but in peacetime they could not keep their marriage. Nestor, finding himself out of hostilities, lost the meaning of life, began to mope, and soon his tuberculosis worsened altogether. Galina, fearing for the health of her baby, by that time had moved away from her husband, and having finally cooled to him, moved to another apartment, and, if possible, did not miss an opportunity to let go of a cruel joke or irony towards the former dashing warrior. Thus, reminding him of what he was and what he is now. And this drove Nestor to despair.

In 1927, the couple finally divorced. In the following years, Makhno, living alone, was seriously ill, tuberculosis spread from the lungs to the bones, and numerous combat wounds and traumas made themselves felt. The Parisian doctors, examining the patient, stated in horror that there was no living space on him. Before his death, he saw his Galina for the last time, who, without a shadow of compassion, came to visit him. Nestor silently looked at her, and tears rolled from his eyes…. Fearless and invulnerable, the commander of a large army cried. It was indeed a pitiful sight. Galina's heart did not flinch, she loved not such a Nestor so passionately and selflessly …

Makhno died of pulmonary tuberculosis in a hospital for the poor in Paris in 1934 and rests in the Pere Lachaise cemetery. He was not even 46.

From Paris to Soviet camps

Galina all the years spent in emigration, as best she could, tried to survive with her little daughter in her arms. The grocery store she tried to open in Paris only dragged her into debt. I had to earn my daily bread as a cleaner, a laundress, a cook. And she lost her health, lived on a small allowance. During World War II, she and her daughter moved to Berlin.

In 1945, Soviet troops entered Germany, and Galina and her daughter were arrested. Then they were taken to Kiev and put on trial. Makhno's wife and daughter were accused of participating in the struggle against Soviet Power during the Civil War and anti-Soviet activities in exile. Galina was given ten years in the Mordovian Dubravlag, her daughter, who was born abroad and did not know about her father's past - five years of exile in Dzhambul.

After serving eight years in prison, Galina was amnestied. After her release, it was scary to look at her: from a stately beautiful woman she turned into a hunched-over old woman. She lived out her life in Dzhambul with her daughter, worked at a cotton mill. Shortly before her death, she went to Gulyaypole: this was the biggest dream of her life.

It so happened, for as much as forty years the ataman was outlived by his Muse, who in recent years often remembered Nestor. She had already forgotten that she herself destroyed their family and left him. But only this extravagant, hot-tempered, and at the same time ardent and passionate person loved her. And more than 84 years of life, there was nothing in her life, if you think about it.

Makhnovskoe Zolotishko

This gold was often recalled by Nestor Makhno, living in poverty abroad. And he saved it over the years of the war, attacking with his lads on rich estates, banks, pawnshops and convoys of opponents. The fabulous accumulations had to be hidden "until better times", which never came. The ataman himself died in poverty, but he hid the stolen treasures more reliably than in a Swiss bank, burying his treasures throughout eastern Ukraine. Moreover, eyewitnesses claimed that Makhno himself was not a greedy or greedy person. For example, he could easily pour a full cap of gold to the first boy he met, and in general generously distribute some of the captured goods to the local poor, or, fleeing the chase, scatter gold after him, so that the pursuers rushed to collect it, forgetting about the chase.

Historians are sure that these treasures really exist, and the total amount is not even estimated in billions - trillions. Only now they are hidden safely. More than one generation of treasure hunters went out in search of gold and did not find it. In folk legends, many places are mentioned where the Makhnovist riches are supposedly buried. So, in search of "Makhnov's gold" they dug up and down the Dibrovsky forest; near Starobelsk, believing in folk legends, where the largest treasure is supposedly hidden, descendants of the Makhnovists who settled in Canada and the United States still travel. They are looking for the cherished gold both in the village of Gavrilovka and in a deep oak forest near Gulyaypole. And the old-timers of Velikomikhaylovka even claim that the real treasures of Nestor Makhno have been lying on the swampy bottom of the Volchya Balka for a century already. There is also information that they are hidden in the vicinity of the Stone Tomb.

However, most official sources testify that a significant part of the treasures was flooded by the waters of the Kakhovskoye reservoir, and the sea took away the mystery of the Makhnovist gold forever. However, this version stops few people, and attempts to find the legendary gold of Makhno do not stop even now. His heirs, as well as the descendants of the Makhnovists, and ordinary black diggers still do not lose hope.

Poetic gift of the legendary chieftain

Many will be surprised, but this unique person with a lot of talents, despite the cruel and explosive nature, was a subtle lyricist at heart. The poetic gift manifested itself in him in his youth, and later tempered and matured on the roads of war, splashed into a rather talented "freedom-loving lyrics". In his poems - machine guns, carts, checkers, defeated enemies - white and red, in a word, everything that was the meaning of the life of the great chieftain, who left his deep mark in the history of mankind.

Below you can watch an archived video of the ataman-anarchist, his associates and Makhnovist detachments going to the front.

Read also: What really was Nestor Makhno - one of the odious heroes of the Civil War.