Maria Hryhorivna Nikiforova (; 1885–1919) was a Ukrainian anarchist partisan leader who led the Black Guards during the Ukrainian War of Independence, becoming widely renowned as an atamansha. A self-described terrorist from the age of 16, she was imprisoned for her activities in Russia before managing to escape to western Europe. With the outbreak of World War I, she took up the defencist line and joined the French Foreign Legion on the Macedonian front before returning to Ukraine with the outbreak of the 1917 Revolution.
In her home city of Oleksandrivsk (today Zaporizhzhia), she established an anarchist combat detachment and subsequently attacked the forces of the Russian Provisional Government and the Ukrainian People's Republic. After the October Revolution escalated into a civil war, she joined the side of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, leading her druzhina in capturing Taurida and Yelysavethrad (today Kropyvnytskyi) from the Ukrainian People's Army.
When Ukraine was invaded by the Central Powers, she was forced to flee to Russia, where she was prosecuted for insubordination by the nascent Bolshevik government. When she returned to Ukraine, she briefly participated in the civilian activities of the Makhnovshchina before returning to terrorism. She aimed to assassinate the leaders of the White movement (Anton Denikin and Alexander Kolchak) but was caught and executed.
Biography
Early life and exile Born in Oleksandrivsk in 1885, Nikiforova's father had been an officer during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878. She left home at the age of 16, having fallen in love with an "adventurer" who quickly abandoned her in the slums of Oleksandrivsk. To make ends meet, she became a wage laborer, working first as babysitter, then as a retail clerk, and ultimately as a factory worker, washing bottles in a vodka distillery.
Shortly after starting work, she joined a local anarchist communist group, which had been established in the lead up to the 1905 Revolution. Following a period of political probation, Nikiforova became involved in the group's campaign of "motiveless terrorism", during which she staged a number of bombings and expropriation missions, including armed robberies. When Nikiforova was captured, she attempted to commit suicide by blowing herself up, but the bomb failed and she was imprisoned. In 1908, her trial for murder and armed robbery resulted in Nikiforova being sentenced to capital punishment, although this was later commuted to life imprisonment with hard labor, due to her young age. She served part of her sentence in solitary confinement in St. Petersburg's Petropavlovsk prison, before being exiled to Siberia in 1910.
After staging a prison riot, she escaped via the Trans-Siberian Railway to Vladivostok and subsequently went on to Japan. A group of Chinese anarchists secured her passage to the United States, where she briefly stayed with other exiled Russian anarchists and published articles in their Russian language newspapers. In 1912, she joined the anarchist movement in Spain and participated in a bank robbery in Barcelona during which she was wounded and forced to clandestinely seek treatment in Paris. Herself an intersex woman, Nikiforova also reportedly underwent a medical intervention while being treated.
In the cafes of the French capital, Nikiforova met a number of exiled Russian artists and politicians, one of which was the Ukrainian Social-Democrat Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko, and even became an artist herself, specializing in painting and sculpting. During this time, she also entered into a marriage of convenience with a Polish anarchist named Witold Brozstek, retaining her last name. Towards the end of 1913, she attended an anarchist conference in London, signing her name as "Marusya", a Slavic diminutive form of "Maria". With the outbreak of World War I, she sided with Peter Kropotkin's anti-German position, in favor of the Allied powers. She joined up with the French Foreign Legion and subsequently graduated as an officer from a military college. Nikiforova served on the Macedonian front before the outbreak of the 1917 Revolution convinced her to quit the front and return home.
Return to Oleksandrivsk When Nikiforova arrived in Petrograd, she found the city in a situation of "dual power", with both the Provisional Government and the local soviet vying for control while the anarchists mostly acted as shock troops of anti-government unrest. Nikiforova organized and spoke at pro-anarchist rallies in Kronstadt, where she convinced thousands of sailors to participate in an uprising against the Provisional Government. As the Bolsheviks withheld their support from the uprising, it was ultimately suppressed. Nikiforova narrowly escaped the subsequent government crackdown in Petrograd and fled back to her home city of Oleksandrivsk, finally arriving in July 1917 after eight years in exile. Shortly after arrival, together with the city's 300-strong Anarchist Federation and supported by local factory workers, Nikiforova carried out the expropriation of the local distillery, donating part of the seized money to the local soviet. She soon established a 60-strong anarchist combat detachment and started accumulating armaments procured from attacks on police stations and warehouses, with which she hunted down and executed many of the city's army officers and landlords.
On 29 August 1917, she met with the peasant leader Nestor Makhno in the anarchist-controlled town of Huliaipole, where she gave a speech advocating for an insurrection against the rule of the newly established Central Council of Ukraine, warning of a potential counter-revolution. Partway through Nikiforova's speech, the anarchists received news from Petrograd of an attempted coup by Lavr Kornilov and resolved to form a Committee for the Defence of the Revolution (CDR). When the CDR began making plans to seize weapons from the local bourgeoisie, Nikiforova countered with a plan of her own: to raid the nearby garrison at Orikhiv. By 10 September, she had pulled together 200 fighters, armed only with only a few dozen weapons, and set out for Orikhiv by train. Upon arrival, the anarchist detachment surrounded and captured the Russian Army regiments. Nikiforova ordered the execution of all officers and disarmed the rank-and-file soldiers before letting them return to their homes. She delivered the captured weapons back to the CDR in Huliaipole, then returned to Oleksandrivsk herself. In recognition of Nikiforova's help, Makhno named one of his commando brigades "Marusya" after her.
Huliaipole subsequently began to receive threats from the local organ of the Provisional Government in Oleksandrivsk, which was disturbed by the rising anarchist influence in the region. Makhno responded by traveling to the city with Nikiforova as a guide and speaking directly to the local workers' organizations. After Makhno left the city, the authorities swiftly arrested and imprisoned Nikiforova. News of her arrest quickly spread; a delegation of workers demanded her release the next day. After being rebuffed by the Provisional Government, the workers forcibly brought the leader of the soviet to the prison and secured her release, following which Nikiforova gave a speech to the crowd, calling for anarchy. Anarchists from Huliaipole, who had been dispatched to attack Oleksandrivsk and force Nikiforova's release, celebrated upon hearing that their work had already been carried out.
During the subsequent election to the Oleksandrivsk soviet, the composition of the new body was distinctly more left-wing and included a number of anarchist delegates.
Battle for Oleksandrivsk
Nikiforova welcomed the outbreak of the October Revolution as another step towards the "withering away of the state". She set about establishing armed detachments known as the "Black Guards" in Oleksandrivsk, preparing an organized anarchist response for a conflict that was rapidly escalating into civil war. In November 1917, the Oleksandrivsk Soviet voted 147 to 95 in favor of joining the Ukrainian People's Republic and refused to recognize the authority of the newly proclaimed Russian Soviet Republic. Nikiforova responded by allying with the local revolutionary socialists, securing a clandestine shipment of weaponry and the support of the local detachment of the Black Sea Fleet. On 12 December, they launched their uprising, managing to overthrow the Soviet and reconstitute it with delegates from the Bolsheviks, Left SRs and anarchists.
On 25 December, Nikiforova and her detachment went to Kharkiv, where they collaborated in the establishment of the Ukrainian People's Republic of Soviets while also expropriating goods from the local shops and redistributing them to the population. A few days later, she led Black Guards into battle against the haydamaks at Katerynoslav, capturing the city for the Soviets and personally disarming 48 soldiers. Civil war became an inevitability following the dissolution of the Russian Constituent Assembly by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, as the Bolsheviks began to look towards the anarchists around Nikiforova as a necessary base of support in Ukraine. While she had been away, her home city of Oleksandrivsk had fallen again under the control of the Central Council of Ukraine after three days of fighting, forcing the local anarchist detachments to withdraw. On 2 January 1918, the city was again recaptured after the arrival of Red Guards from Russia and Black Guards from Huliaipole, forcing the haydamaks in turn to retreat to right-bank Ukraine. Two days later, a revolutionary committee (Revkom) was constituted as the center of soviet power in Oleksandrivsk. Nikiforova was elected as its deputy leader.
As the haymadaks fled, cossacks were already beginning to return from the external front in order to join up with Alexey Kaledin's Army, and Oleksandrivsk was in the path towards their home regions of the Don and Kuban. With the Black Guards scrambling to rally their defenses, a failed assault by the first wave of Cossacks ended in their disarmament by the Revkom. While the disarmament took place, the city politicians' speeches, attempting to rally the Cossacks to the cause of socialism, were largely ignored and even mocked. When Nikiforova spoke, calling on the "butchers of the Russian workers" to renounce the old ways of Tsarism, many of the Cossacks began to display humility; some openly wept and others maintained contact with the local anarchists. When the Cossacks departed, Makhno and Nikiforova returned to their duties in the Revkom. After a dispute between the two regarding the sentencing of the prosecutor that had overseen Makhno's own imprisonment, Makhno decided to renounce his position and return to Huliaipole, leaving Nikiforova in place as the sole commander of Oleksandrivsk's Black Guards.
The Free Combat Druzhina
In a joint operation together with the Huliaipole anarchists, Nikiforova launched another raid against the garrison in Orikhiv, seizing a cache of arms and sending them on to Huliaipole, rather than handing them over to her nominal commander Semyon Bogdanov. As Nikiforova's Black Guards had helped to establish Soviet power in the eastern Ukrainian cities of Kharkiv, Katerynoslav and Oleksandrivsk, she enjoyed the unqualified support of the Ukrainian Soviet commander-in-chief, Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko, who gave her funds to upgrade her detachment, which became known as the .