Listen to Episode

Read Episode Transcript

Hey, Robert here. It's been like two months since I had LASIK and I'm still seeing 2020. All I had to do was go in for a consultation, then go in for a maybe 10 minute procedure and then my eyes have been great ever since. You know, I healed up wonderfully. It was very simple, couldn't have been a better experience. So if you want to explore LASIK plus I can't recommend it enough. They have over 20 years experience in the industry and they performed more than two million treatments right now if you want to try getting LASIK plus you can get $1000 off of your surgery when you're treated in September, that's $500. Of per eye, just visitmylasikoffer.com to schedule your free consultation. Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried true crime. And if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams. Let's breaker handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Hey there, it's Ebony Monet, your co-host for the San Diego Zoo's Amazing Wildlife podcast. In this special episode, we're speaking with Doctor Jane Goodall about the fascinating journey that led to her impactful behavioral discoveries on chimpanzees. It wasn't until one of the chimpanzees began to lose his fear of me, but I began to really make discoveries that actually shook the scientific world. Listen to amazing wildlife on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back. Go ho. Merry Christmas. Holiday. Happy day. Oh my God. Today. Actually, it might actually be Christmas when this episode drops. I don't. I don't know what we're doing 2 Christmas episodes this year, so you ******* should be grateful this Christmas Eve and this is dropping. I have a well happy ****** ******* Christmas Eve. You ******* trash goblins. I love Jesus. I know. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's this. What is it? It's ******* it's this death wish. Coffee. 2 cups and I'm. Ripped to the gills. Oh my God, I need to start. I don't think I've been. I don't think I've been this high on stimulants since that time I took methamphetamine to fill up 120 gallons of gasoline. I think that it should. I I need to start being more. We're just going to let that slide. With that slide, I think unless you unless you don't, are you eating an egg? What has happened, Robert? It's Christmas. No, it's not ******* the 17 Christmas egg. I'm eating a chip. But I ate on this show once two years ago and I still get messages about it, as you should. I was like, I want to be openly hostile to my podcast listening audience, but people would get mad at me if I eat a *** **** chip. I say kill them all and let God sort them out, which is my normal attitude towards my audience. I honestly think that I'm going to watch the last episode of The Jinx Christmas morning just to get into the right energy, into the right vibe. Hell yeah, hell yeah. Hell yeah. Well, Jamie Loftus we are. We are all enjoying what I'm I'm sure will be a wonderful holiday season of hiding alone in our homes from a murderous rampaging plague. Very, very exciting. Hopefully no one gets evicted. But if you do get evicted, I hope there's a Nestor machno out there to build barricades and and fight the cops on your behalf. There will be, I think there will be, and I think there will be these days. That's I would love to make a a baby Einstein style show that will nesters. That's nice. There was a fun thing happened in Portland recently where a family was getting evicted and several 100 people built multiple layers of defensive barricades and like caltrops to destroy vehicles that tried to drive through and created such a formidable defense that the city backed down and then the city government voted a week later to extend the eviction moratorium until July. That was *******. The rilling to witness from afar, I allow me to say it was very we were not as successful here when when there were abrupt, intense evictions for reclaimed houses. And so seeing, seeing it work and work out in Portland was very exciting. Yeah, yeah. Nestor would have been, would have been proud. Although, again, if he were alive today, he would be in prison for the rest of his life. So we know he would still be sending dispatches out. Yeah. No, he'd be writing. He'd be. He'd be shooting some fire. Yeah. So we ended our last episode on a very positive note. But of course, that was never going to last. This is behind the ********. And even our holiday episodes about a historic hero are legally required to be bleak now when we left. I appreciate that you cut it off while things were nice, you know, it's kind of like, and reminds me of the the two VHS's in the movie Titanic. We're at the end. You're like, oh, things could get bad or I could just stop watching. Yeah. At the end of last episode, everybody's free, wearing colorful clothes, strapped with guns and dancing and ******* in the streets. It's lovely. That does not last. So at the time, Nestor is kind of turned, helping to turn and helping his neighbors to turn gullapalli into something of an anarchist wet dream. Russia is in a real, real, not good stage. The, the revolutionary equivalent of puberty. The technically, the. Country was again technically governed by a guy named Karinsky and a kind of moderate, quasi socialist democratic socialist regime. Umm, there were workers councils and Soviets and stuff all over the country making attempts to redress inequality. But at the same time, a lot of the people who had political power, the Social Democratic types, you know, they didn't like the regime, but they felt that rich people should still get to stay rich and land owners should keep owning most of their land and all that stuff. Umm, now there were also Bolsheviks who are very powerful in this. And they want to tear all of that. Shut down. But they also want to institute a pretty strict hierarchy, a dictatorship of the proletariat of their own. And the Bolsheviks are very powerful and very organized. And opposed to them are monarchist forces who wanted the czar back and what some of the monarchists are. So basically, there's the Bolsheviks, there's the democratic socialist, and then there's the White Russian armies, and the whites are anti Bolshevik. And they all kind of are different. Some of them are monarchists, some of them, you know, are just nationalists. They all kind of advocate for. They're not. They're not like unified ideologically, but they're all very anti Bolshevik. Some of them are basically Nazis and do a lot of massacring Jewish people. Some of them are, like, vaguely democratic. They're complicated ****. The Russian Civil War is incredibly complicated and nightmarishly bloody. 9 million people die. It is a bad time. Yeah, yeah, that's well, it's good to know what the yardstick for a bad time is. Yeah, yeah. And again, to put that into perspective, 9 million people die in the Russian Civil War. Another nine million had died because of World War One. Which the car got the country into. So, like, people being like, the revolution was worse. No, it wasn't like the revolution happened because this car got 9 million people killed and another 9 million people died because everyone was so angry and violent and neared to death at that point that they kept killing like. But to be fair, Robert, he was a white, a wife guy, so, you know, loved his wife, loved his wife so much. So Mocno and his anarchists were, at this point very far from the center of **** happening in Russia. You know, Ukraine is considered a backwater. By Russians who are pretty racist against Ukrainians by and large. Not comprehensively, but a lot of them now. Uh, in October of 1917 there'd been a Bolshevik coup d'etat, which had been followed by an anti Bolshevik rebellion led by Don Cossacks. And this counter revolution had spread to Ukraine in the form of a Ukrainian nationalist uprising. Now the Ukrainian nationalists were anti Russian, so they didn't want any of these white or Bolshevik Russian forces to be in charge of Ukraine. But there were also traditionalists. And after throwing out the Russians, they wanted to reverse all the progressive social changes. They basically reinstitute something similar to serfdom but all the rich people back in charge. So anti Russian also still sucks. Now, when the Ukrainian nationalists attacked the forces of the new government, Mocno was put in an awkward position because he did not like the government, because he's Nestor Machno. But at the same time, the yeah, the government was like, you guys are allowed to do what? The thing that you're doing and the Ukrainian nationalists like, no, no, no, no, no. You guys don't get to have this land you took from the rich people. That's the rich people's land. So Machno writes, quote, as anarchists, we must, paradox or no paradox, make up our minds to form a united front with the governmental forces. Keeping faith with anarchist principles, we will find a way to rise above all these contradictions. And once the dark forces of reaction have been smashed, we will broaden and deepen the course of the revolution for the greater good of an enslaved humanity. So he's like, we got to fight these guys, and working with the government is the only way to do it because they're worse than the government, but also **** the government. And you know, it's a tough position to be in. There's no good. There's no good choice to make at this point. Can't please everyone in how you you tow this line. I respect his approach. Yeah. Now. On January 4th his area formed an 800 man detachment of fighters to come to the government's aid, close to half of whom were nesters, anarchists. His older brother, Sava commanded the unit, and Mocno stayed behind to head up an investigation into imprisoned military officers who'd conspired against the revolution. He found the former prosecutor who'd hired his case in like, 19 whatever, and handed him the guy who had put him in solitary confinement. And Mocno had this guy sent to the same cell under identical conditions in order to like. He gets a little ************. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. There's a very nice line and ****. Yeah, it's fun. There's a nice little line in Anarchies Cossack that describes this as an irony of history that should give all who bear the responsibility for repression. Good pause for thought. So nice little line. So Macnow also took advantage of the fact that the government under Krinsky needed his help and support to hold on. He used his position to demand and secure the release of workers and peasants still incarcerated under the new government. Some of these men had been arrested. The Bolsheviks, who'd been worried that they'd revolt against them. Nestor also used his position to seize money from the local bank in order to fund the activities of his communes and to set up an orphanage for war orphans, which he located in the former home of the Superintendent of police. So still some cool **** going on. Like, I'm still, I'm still vibing with him. Yeah, it's hard not to. I'm, like, trying not to Scroll down in his Wikipedia because I'm like, wow, he's like a hot, nice guy who goes to prison a lot. He is pretty hot. Yeah. Now, in the middle of all this politicking, a detachment of Cossacks suddenly rode up from the frontline where they'd been fighting the Germans to help nationalist forces attack the new government. Nester took command of an attachment of anarchist fighters and ambushed the Cossacks, inflicting enough punishment that they'd surrendered, which brought Mocno and his comrades a whole pile of exciting new weapons. They get, like, their first machine guns and stuff during this. And they're very excited about that now as the spring of yeah, good for them. So many books at this point. Yeah, maybe that's like. Read like, 100 books in the book club. You get your you get your machine gun. Hmm, that's good. That makes sense. You gotta, you gotta kill a bunch of Cossacks first. But yeah, then you get their machine guns. Yeah, there are barriers to entry, but it's not impossible. So as the spring of 1918 dawns, things are going pretty well for Nestor and the people of Gullapalli. But on March 3rd, the new, new government, which by this point was dominated by the Bolsheviks, there's like an election ship. It's very complicated. The Bolsheviks are in charge at this point. Signed an Armistice with Zingermans, putting an end to official Russian participation in World War One. This agreement was considered a stab in the back to Ukrainians like Machno, though as basically the only entire territory. So the government, the new government signs an agreement with the Germans ending the war, Brett, the breast Litovsk Treaty. And part of that agreement is that Germany and Austria, Hungary get Ukraine so machines like you *************. We just defended you by like, fighting and and now you've given us up to the ******* Germans like. You ******* ***** and the Red guards the Bolshevik army are ordered to go through and either evacuate or disarm Mocno and his partisans before, like the Austro Hungarian empire, moves in to occupy the regions so kind of lame. I'm going to quote from Anarchies Cossack here. Guided by their local allies and bringing in their wake the former Great estate owners thrown out the year before by the revolutionary peasantry, almost a million Austro German troops occupied the territory, seeded by breast litovsk the extractions and repression of the occupiers end of the Ukrainian. Oligarchy quickly triggered a popular resistance movement. Dozens of local insurgent attachment detachment sprang up to hairy enemy troops engaging in a savage war of National Liberation. Now, Nestor had not been ready for this. He did not expect the government to betray him, and after a which he probably should have in fairness and after a decent, yeah, yeah, youthful optimism, I guess. Now, after a decent amount of fighting, he found his forces routed, and he himself was stuck in a railroad marshalling yard where he learned that Gulyai Polye had been occupied by Austro Hungarian forces. All the members of the local Soviet, the Revolution Committee and the anarchist group were arrested. Many of them were executed. Communes were broken up. And the land was given back to the wealthy men who had owned it before. And again, a bunch of nesters friends get murdered. So this brings us to the uncomfortable subject again of the Ukrainian Mennonites. Now. To this day, Mocno is considered a war criminal by a number of Mennonite communities on the allegation that his forces massacred peaceful Mennonite settlements, never episode one. You know that Mennonites were not pacifists in Ukraine. And a major tenant, you know, a major tenant of Mennonite belief, is supposed to be the avoidance of the sword. But this was not consistently obeyed prior to the revolution. And in the spring of 1918 they just gave up entirely, and I'm going to quote from a write up in libcom.org from the spring of 1918, Mennonite colonies, though not all individual believers, abandoned any pretense of fascism and or of pacifism. Sorry, and began to establish an armed force which they referred to as the soaked Schultz. For those who participated in their descendants, this resort to violence presents a problem of conscience. For 400 years, through various persecutions and martyrdoms, Mennonites had, and to an extent at least, renounce the sword. Now gangs of men armed themselves and zealous support of the invading. Austro German armies it is worth observing a sort of logical contortions that were necessary to defend this course of action. It was thus argued by Heinrich Johns and Aaron Tweebs, for example, that one must differentiate between the principles of the Kingdom of God and the principles of this worldly Kingdom and matters of the former. 11 must remain non resistant, of course. But with respect to the latter, 11 is obligated to support law and order. So the Mennonite, the rich Mennonites again, are like no, no, no. Nonviolence only means to the Kingdom of God. We don't, we don't use. Violent resistance to the Kingdom of God. When it comes to supporting law and order, we can shoot people. Jesus. So that's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Again, I want to emphasize the rich Ukrainian Mennonites, right? So understandably, Mennonite memorious and historians have expended much energy justifying the self Schultz, or at least emphasizing the desperate horrors in response to which it emerged. BJ **** for example, who's a Mennonite historian, worried that those readers of his. Yeah, worried that those readers of his account born decades after those terrible events, would struggle to understand fully the Mennonite situation, to emphasize with their anguish and to judge the matter fairly. The temptation to form an emergency, selph Schultz, he states, did not arise suddenly overnight, but grew gradually through months of unbearable and catastrophic experiences and unprecedented terror. And that is broadly fair to say. I don't really sympathize with wealthy land owners who held thousands of peasants and ******* but it would be fair to say that those wealthy landowners suffered unprecedented terror in this. All throughout Ukraine and Russia there were stories that were documented of peasant mobs burning down land owners homes, often with the landowner and their family inside shouting. All of this belongs to us, you know? Right. That it was scary. Yeah, that sounds scary, but I just can't get there in terms of radical empathy. I'm sorry, I have to go back to did you say the man who wrote the history was named BJ ****? Amen, Anite historian? Yeah, I was BJ *****. Debt? Wait. ****? Like Dix? No. No. DIC. K? Yeah. It's spelled like * **** Jamie. Yeah, it's spelled like * ****. But. And then to use the name before it. I'm just saying. I know. I know. I know. Jamie, I you could. You don't have to go by. BJ, If your last name is ****. He had a lot of options, and he made a choice. And he really. Yeah, he made a choice. OK. Just like the wealthy Mennonite land owners made a choice to have a militia dedicated to massacring the peasants, trying to secure their own freedom. That said, yes, that's true. That's the larger issue at hand. Yeah. So obviously, again, there were real reasons for them to be terrified, because terrifying things happen to land owners in this. And rather ironically, Gulyai Poggi was one of the places where this mostly did not happen. When Macnow and his people handled appropriations from the rich, they demanded itemized lists of everything the land owners owned. The Soviet, which was like a governing body made-up of peasants, would then divide the land so that the formerly wealthy people had the same resources as the peasants. This was still terrifying. A lot of rich people, because they suddenly found themselves laboring in the fields next to men and women they'd whipped, beaten and mocked for years. But during this. The areas under mock novelist control, like anarchist control deaths, particularly among Mennonites, and this. Were very uncommon. There is one case in January of 1918 where people who might have been magnevist killed a family of five. And again, not great. But also let's provide some context to why this was happening. We also don't know if it came on mock nose. Orders, because again, he's got hundreds and hundreds of like militiamen roaming around the territory, angry and terrified, whose friends have been are being murdered too. So it's like, yeah, it's it's a war. Bad things happen. Quote, there are good reasons to suspect that the executioners were magnevist. First, the Schonfeld region was near to Macnow's hometown of Gulyai Polye. Second, it contains some of the most prosperous estates in the whole region. These estates were not part of the original Mennonite colonies, but were built on land purchased in the mid 19th century from Azaris officer who had won it in a game of cards. In the years before World War One, it was a region of such prosperity that several people owned chauffeured automobiles and one man even bought a private airplane. So again, the people who are rich enough that in 1918 they had, some of them had private plane money. So, yeah, there's some murdering that gets happening that happens to these, you know, sometimes when you owning a private plane is a decision that, you know, sometimes there's, there's a price, there's a price on owning a price, there might be a price, especially if you're also funding. Militia that's murdering poor people? Yeah, like, **** ***. One of my favorite hobbies is every time like a a huge, huge, huge celebrity posts about global warming to just look up if they own a private plane. 100% of the time they do and it's like, OK, you're just OK. So you know what's really funny, Jamie, is to get on flight radar 24 or I mean a DSB exchange used to be the best place, but now it doesn't work as well. But get on one of the plane tracking apps, figure out the in numbers, which is the basically the plane license plate number. And figure out the numbers of rich people's private jets and see how often they take their private jet from one airport to another in the same city. Happens all the time. Lot of JFK to La Guardia, flights from rich foot people in ******* New York who were there. ******* *******. Oh my God. Because they wanna skip traffic. Ohh. I want to Oh my God. OK, that's like the, you know the scene from scanners where the head explodes? That's. ****. Great stuff. So there is again, yeah? But again, I don't know that Nestor had anything to do with this. There's certainly no evidence that he had anything to do with this, this murder. Also, though, when you found a large band of armed revolutionaries who occupy a big chunk of territory, some of them are going to do horrible things because it's a war, and every single military force and every single war in history has had atrocities tied to its name. You can't not do it, and it's true of the machinists, and we shouldn't forget that or pretend it didn't happen. But also if you compare them to all of the other actors in the Russian Civil War. They're of the like, like, like, like in a similar way to, you know, sort of the SDF like lower on the war crimes totem pole. Yeah, yeah. Lower on the war crimes totem, totem pole, not no war crimes. And again, Nestor, one of the things. So like, Nestor is a a a very outspoken opponent of anti-Semitism. He grew up with a lot of Jewish friends and he was very much, like constantly haranguing his troops not to do horrible things to Jewish people. Also anti-Semitism, very common in Ukraine. And there were times when machinists ******* murdered Jewish people. And it's terrible when you've got 55,000 traumatized militiamen. Sometimes horrible things happens and he punished. He executed a lot of warlords who were responsible for pogroms against Jewish people. It was a horrible, bloody civil war, and there's no walking out of it with your hands clean, you know? Not to like, write over that, but he does. He gives a lot of speeches being like, don't be ******* racist against Jewish people. What's wrong with you? I mean, he does his best. Yeah. Yeah, he does his best. OK. So this is like, you know, taking it, taking it turns is where things get morally complex. He's fighting a war now, and there's been doing that and keeping your hands clean. Again, he's not ordering programs, but he's he's building an army. And some of those soldiers do bad things, not just like to Mennonites to like, there's bad things that the machinists do. We'll also talk about what the people they're fighting do, which is on a completely different scale of mass murder. So yeah, yeah, there's there's anyway. So the Austro Hungarians come in, they invade, basically, and their arrival empowers the reactionary forces Mocno had been beating up until then people who wanted to reestablish the old status quo. No matter who was in charge, the Mennonite militia the shoots fought with the invading foreign soldiers to reclaim land and property that had been collectivized. BJ **** that Mennonite historian that Jamie is a big fan of, describes the occupation as breathing space sent by God, and he's describing that on behalf of the rich men. Rights. But the invading go by any other name. I know, I know he had options. He could go by the beach or go by the J, but like by putting them together, he's horrible. It's horrible. J implies that he made a choice. I know he did. It's just interesting. Yeah, the invading troops that the sub shoots fought alongside were as brutal as invading troops tend to be. We have one account from a guy named John Zeus who was a Russified Greek and a capitalist who lived in Odessa at the time of the occupation. So not an anarchist, not a socialist like. Be a capitalist guy. This is him reporting on what happened when these troops move in and wealthy land owners get to take their revenge on the peasants quote. The reprisal expeditions were marked by hangings and shootings. Executions dispensed with any sort of proceedings. The venom of the landlords cared not a jot for it, and the German officers gladly washed their hands of any show of a trial. They shot and hanged without any pretense of trial, often not even bothering to check the identity of the defendant. The landlord or his agent had merely to declare that such and such a peasant. Have been involved in confiscation of his estates for the culprit to be summarily executed. This happens on a scale of 10s of thousands. So one school year policy was occupied. Mr Mockney's mother was punished in this way. Her house was burned down. I don't think she lives through this. Nestor's brother Emilian, who had been disabled in the war, was executed in front of his children all over Ukraine. Thousands were shot or hanged, many for the crime of being anarchists. Others were beaten to death in the street by soldiers or reactionaries, including the men of the self. I should note here that the violence was heavily class based. This Mennonite militia worked with German soldiers to execute and beat peasants. They retreat, receive training to help the occupiers suppress dissent. But the fighters doing this and the men funding the self shoots were rich or at least well off. There were a lot of poor Mennonites who they killed and some of these Mennonites took part in Macy's revolutionary, other revolutionary activity. And I want to note that when we're talking about, you know, these different ethnic groups, Mennonites, Russians, Germans, there are poor members of all of these groups who are fighting. Against, like, this forces of reaction and stuff, right? Of course, yeah. And and that's a big thing Mocno tries to emphasize is that, like, we're not angry at the Russians or the Germans or the Jews, we're angry at rich people who are murdering us. Like, that's the problem. A few solid common enemy, yeah. Elaine Enns, a Mennonite historian, writes about this. Many landless Mennonites became servants on wealthy Mennonite estates, and some became so disillusioned that they joined the communists and anarchists to fight for a more just society. So the same social fault lines that led to the Russian Revolution ran right through my grandmother's yard. In most cases, our people were not targeted because they were Mennonite, but because they were wealthy. So again. Very complicated issue, but is primarily breaking down on class. Now some of the people who are committing murders are doing it based on race, which is like a thing that Mocno tries to prevent. But it does happen and that's that's terrible. It's generally a terrible war. Now Nestor Machna was forced to flee N to Moscow after his town has taken over and he meets with Linen who basically is like hey buddy, you're on your own and I'm going to read. There's a good write up in his yeah so he sorry just to clarify he so his whole family is dead. A lot of his family, and not all of them, but every bunch of almost everyone, OK? Yeah, and he doesn't really know. Like he loses his wife and child in this. He never even learns if they're killed or not. Like it's this guy who deals with some ****. So there I'm gonna read from a write up in history today about his meeting with Lenin. Machno conscience of his youth and crudeness was embarrassed by linens, magnetism and authority. He found himself beginning to venerate the man most responsible for the persecution of the anarchists. He was unable to find the words and arguments he needed. At the end of the interview, Lennon gave instructions that his return to the Ukraine should be assisted by the Bolshevik organization in charge of illegal frontier crossings. Machna was given false papers and set out by the appointed date he was hiding with the peasant friends some 15 miles from Gulyai Polye. So he meets with Lyndon. Lyndon helps him sneak back in. But it's like, we can't really help. And it's kind of the way that this talk is described lines like, it's weird. Yeah, you anarchists are kind of full of **** but I like you. And, like, I want you to fight the occupiers of Ukraine, which I I'm partly responsible for Ukraine being occupied. But like, you know, this is. Yeah. Men are so weird. So yeah, he's like, Oh well, you know, you got to hand it to him. He's a really charismatic. There's, like a couple of where he's, like, anarchists. ****. But, like, you're an exception. You're alright, Nestor, like, but look at that mustache on you he like, yeah, I guess in fairness to linen on the whole giving Ukraine to the Austro Germans. If you're in charge of Russia in late 1918 or in early 1918, there are no good options, right? Like, everything is **** because the czar left you at a like there. Lennon didn't have a lot of good things he could have done there. Like, it's understandable that mock know and his friends are furious, but like, I don't know how you get out of World War One if you just take over Russia. At the end of 1917, like, yeah, there's no win. Good. OK, so the boys are vibing, you know? Yeah, sure. We have a little bit, sure. Yeah. Persecuting your comrades. But, like, we're vibing here. We're vibing. I'm going to help you sneak back into Ukraine to fight the Austro Germans. So Macnow sneaks back in and he starts building up bit by bit, like running around at night and, like, dressing as a woman. Sometimes he, like, gathers up all of these sort of like bandits and stuff together, these anarchists who have like, yeah, very, very Robert Durst. Yes. Wow. So he's he builds up a little. Artisan army. And they start raiding landlords, homesteads, you know, killing landlords. And in this case they did not do that initially. After the landlords come back and start mass murdering their friends, they start shooting some landlords, which at this point it's kind of self-defense. It's like we we tried to do this peacefully. The level, the level of restraint, honestly, with this group seems like there's a lot of restraint at play. If it took them this long. We tried to do this peacefully and you started murdering us as soon as you had a chance. So now we're going to kill some of you. And they do that. They don't kill everybody. But they start murdering some people. They steal their **** they get guns. They start carrying out ambushes on Austro Hungarian patrols and like killing small patrols of soldiers and taking their weapons and building up their forces. His partisans showed no quarter. When they beat a group of like, foreign soldiers, they would kill them all. Their slogan was death to all, who, with the help of German Austrian bayonets, take away from peasants and workers the conquests of their revolution. That's a bit long, but it's a bit long. But long again. Could barely read. I'm just saying, you know, you Ukrainian novelty T-shirt industry is going to struggle to get that. That's a hard T-shirt to make for sure. That's difficult, you know, like maybe I killed them all, of course, just to keep pulling inspiration. So, bit by bit, Mocno attracted followers and acquired weapons. He began experimenting with guerrilla warfare and, in fact, innovating. At first, the most his men could do was carry out strikes on small, isolated patrols of soldiers and their allies, including the self Schultz that Mennonite militia, as his band and his resources grew nesters. Pain began to open to new militant possibilities. See, there were these carts, these horse drawn carts called Net, net net chankas, and they were basically again like the horse drawn equivalent of a pickup truck. So it's a horse drawn cart with the big flatbed in the back. This would have been similar to the thing he would have bought as a young man to help on his brother's farm. So these are very common. There's tons of these carts all over the place and they do have access to a good number of horses. And his partisans start capturing a bunch of heavy machine guns which were great weapons for carrying out ambushes, but are heavy and they're slow to set up. So they're not great for a a like a partisan militia because it's hard to move with them. So Nestor hits upon the brilliant idea of bolting these machine guns to the flatbeds of these, uh, these horse drawn carts and using them, driving them around and using them to shoot people and move very quickly. And he invents the first technical in world history like these are, you see this all over the Middle East now, trucks with machine guns in the bed. This is how that all starts. They're called, yeah, they're called tachankas and. Yeah. So he uses them both because you can move them into position quickly and immediately start shooting. And if you wind up like, biting off more than you can, true. While you're retreating because the gun is in the bed, the horse can be moving away from the enemy and you can still be shooting them like it's awesome. I just, I just. I remember when horses were trucks, Robert. Yeah. Horses are trucks and nesters, like trucks. We should get a machine gun involved in this action. We gotta get these horses ******* strapped, babe. Everyone is strapped in their stores. Oh my God. So the horses are trucks and the trucks are ******* strapped. The straps have Gatling gun type thing. Well, Maxim guns on them. Yeah. OK. So Mack knows forces come to rely so heavily on to chankas for mobile firepower that one of his soldiers starts referring referring to the anarchist militia as a Republic on to chunky. Basically like a a mobile Republic of gun trucks. Like that's that's what we have now. They took away our town, so now we're like a traveling Republic of machine guns. Umm, yeah, nice, yeah. So in those early days, Magnos growing anarchist horde was, yeah, basically a moving Republic. It was September of 1918 before he finally attacked and recaptured Gulyai Polye, but his forces were pushed out again by an Austrian LED counterattack. Machno led his men in a tactical retreat as he was able to recognize his opponents had overextended themselves. And a few days after this, 80 miles away from his hometown, he surrounded, attacked, and wiped out a force of 2000 Austrian soldiers and their allies. And this brought his army their first artillery and heavy weapons. By December the Austrians had withdrawn entirely, their puppet leaders had been overthrown, and mocno's anarchists were for a brief time the undisputed protectors of a widening cordon around Gullapalli. Mocno intended this core of free territory to constantly expand, bringing a new egalitarian social and economic order to an ever expanding chunk of eastern Ukraine. By nineteen 1900s of thousands of people were engaged in experiments with a new anarchist social order, the first time something like this. Have been done on such a scale. And there was a pamphlet that Mocno had published during this time called what are the mock novelists and what are they fighting for? This wasn't actually like 819 twenty, but similar stuff was going around in 1918. And yeah, one of the notes on that, like in terms of explaining their beliefs to new people who wound up in their area. What do we mean by emancipation? The overthrow of the monarchist coalition, Republican and Social Democratic, Communist, Bolshevik party governments, which must give place to a free and independent Soviet order of Toilers. Without rulers and their arbitrary laws. For the true Soviet order is not the rule of the Social Democratic communist Bolsheviks which now calls itself the Soviet power, but a higher form of anti authoritarian and anti statist socialism, manifesting itself in the organization of a free, happy and independent structure for the social life of the toilers, in which all individual toilers, as well as society as a whole, can build by themselves their happiness and well-being according to the principles of solidarity, friendship and equality. OK, this is good. What is, sweetie? Yeah, I I think that we should start calling ourselves toilers again. Yeah. Yeah, it's an accurate way of of of, you know, splitting up society in a meaningful way. Yeah, yeah. Haves and have nots is over. It's toilers and non toilers. By December the Austrians had withdrawn entirely from Ukraine like the war ends and their side loses and they don't get to keep Ukraine anymore. Their puppet leaders were overthrown and mock knows anarchists. There for a brief time, like in charge of this **** so Umm macnow his territory was not perfectly consistent to his values. Obviously the white forces were growing in strength and it was clear that if they reoccupied the now anarchist territories of eastern Ukraine, mass slaughter would follow. To prevent this in army was needed and general mobilization was the only real way to build an army. Peasant and workers councils voted to mobilize, but the fact that the end result was close to conscription has to be acknowledged, like compromises are made from their ideal social order for the fact that they need. As many fighters as possible, right? You know, these fighters also had like famously high morale. So it does suggest that the vast majority of these people, again, who mostly had family members killed by reactionaries, saw military services necessary self-defense. Now, up to the spring of 1919, the Soviet press had portrayed Machno in his peasants as heroes. But when the the Central Powers retreated from Ukraine and the Red Army started to seep down into the territory, that line changed. The core of the Bolshevik movement had been workers from Russia's industrialized cities, whereas the machinist movement was made-up of peasants. So right? The Soviets are workers. The Ukrainians are not considered workers. They're peasants. They're not laboring in factories and stuff. There's not a lot of factories in Ukraine, you know, they're farmers and **** but they're toilers, are they not toilet? That's how Machno sees it, but that's not how an awful lot of people in the Soviet chunks of of of the Union see it. The anarchists were seen to them as temporary allies against reactionaries, but not trustworthy, and people who eventually needed to be brought, like beaten by June, though a white Army general named Dennis. Had amassed a potent force and was in the process of reconquering huge chunks of Ukraine and putting them back in the hands of their ancestral oppressors. Now, this started happening at the same time as the Red Army and the machinists began to integrate, because while the Red Army didn't like the machinists, they didn't like deneken more, and they needed to defend like themselves against. It's a confusing time to read about Trotsky. During this time signs an order like Trotsky's in charge of the Red Army, and he signs an order forbidding the peasant councils that Mocno has formed and ordering him to hand over command of his militia. He may have ordered Machno arrested, we don't really know, but in any case, Machno ignores Trotsky's orders. He takes a handpick force of cavalry into Chankas, and he heads West to battle the whites on his own, all the while ordering his other soldiers to stay embedded with the Red Army for the time being. Now this really ****** *** Trotsky. Yeah, this is off Trotsky, but the summer of 1919 was a disaster for the Reds and their allies, and he couldn't really do anything about it. Denikin and his white forces advanced constantly and they smashed the Red Army multiple times. Macnow's forces at the same time conducted like a very confusing war, because in the East mock knows Cavalry army is fight or magnos army is fighting alongside the Red Army. But in the rest in the West, Macnow and his handpicked force are fighting with both the Red Army and the whites. Gives a ******* confusing as civil war, so very, very messy. One of the things they do is when they occupy villages that the Red Army had occupied, they murder commissars and secret police officials because those people are murdering anarchists. It's a very messy. Now, late in the summer, the Red Army in the east collapses completely, the whites just shatter them to pieces. Trotsky retreats back into Russia, and Mocno orders his remaining embedded forces to pull out and to retreat to a place called Kirovograd, where they meet up again with Machno and his cavalry. So the Red Army is kicked out of Ukraine, and Mocno is the only force fighting the the the the whites left in Ukraine at this period of time, or at least the only like organized force. Meanwhile, the dinner chemists had conquered Guliyev. For you yet again. And their army was huge. More than 50,000 well armed and battle hardened troops. So, yeah, we're, we're, we're we've come up to like a a kind of cliffhanger point. So you've got the Red Army has to leave. They get, they get beaten out of Ukraine. Nestor has the largest force still fighting the White Army and they are badly outnumbered. His home village has been taken over by the whites and he's just got this roaming bandit army of like gun trucks and horsemen with short barreled rifle, horse, horse ***** with machine truck. Yeah. Gun, horse, horse, gun. It seems like a pretty. I mean, he's in a series of impossible situations. He's in a bad position to be in. Yeah, but you know who's not in a bad position to be in? Jamie? Paul, Hawking products and services, I'm assuming that's a great position to be in. Yeah, check out products. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for none of that. For anyone who hates their phone Bill, Mint Mobile offers premium wireless for just $15.00 a month, Mint mobile will give you the best rate. Whether you're buying one or for a family, and it meant family start at 2 lines. All plans come with unlimited talk and text, plus high speed data delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your own phone with any mint mobile plan and keep your same phone number along with all your existing contacts. Just switch to Mint mobile and get premium wireless service starting at 15 bucks a month. Get premium wireless service from just $15.00 a month and no one expected plot twists at mintmobile.com/behind. That's mintmobile.com/behind. Seriously, you'll make your wallet very happy at mintmobile.com/behind. Now, a word from our sponsor better help. If you're having trouble stuck in your own head, focusing on problems dealing with depression, or just, you know can't seem to get yourself out of a rut, you may want to try therapy, and better help makes it very easy to get therapy that works with your lifestyle and your schedule. A therapist can help you become a better problem solver, which can make it easier to accomplish your goals no matter how big or small they happen to be. So if you're thinking of giving therapy a try, better help is a great option. It's convenient, accessible, affordable, and it is entirely online. You can get matched with a therapist after filling out a brief survey, and if the therapist that you get matched with doesn't wind up working out, you can switch therapists at any time. When you want to be a better problem solver, therapy can get you there. Visit betterhelp.com behind today to get 10% off your first month. That's better helpp.com. Slash behind betterhelp.com/behind this fall on revisionist history. Is there anything that we haven't talked about or or I should have asked you or you'd like to add that seems relevant? You should have asked me why I'm missing fingers on my left hand. A story about sacrifice. I think his suffering drove him to try to alleviate suffering. And the shocking discovery I made where I faced the consequences of writing a book I thought would help people? Isn't that funny? It's not funny at all. It's depressing. Very depressing. Revisionist history is back with more. Listen to revisionist history on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I've never seen less enthusiasm for a great idea in my life. O before we tell the rest of this story, it's probably worth explaining the kind of world that Denikin and his white army, which did include a lot of Mennonite militia were fighting for, included a lot of just like local reactionary forces. So I'm going to quote again from libcom.org talking about what the dentists do in the areas they retake in Ukraine. Insofar as the dinner chemists had a political program, it was based on the restoration of landlords and the reestablishment of a single Russian state. Incorporating Ukraine. This brought them into conflict with the local population and even one of their own commanders, General Rangel described pillage and speculation, debauchery, gambling, ****** looting, violence and arbitrary acts. Otherwise sympathetic chroniclers are scathing about the white Army's abuses in Ukraine. Richard Luckett, somewhat carelessly in the context, describes something near to anarchy. Bemoaning the casual brutalities of the Cossacks, the regular pogroms, and other appalling acts of barbarism, they issued proclamations encouraging Russo, Ukrainians. To rise up against the Jew communists, and we're responsible for hundreds of pogroms and the deaths of 10s of thousands of Jews. Many of their victims were beaten, mutilated, raped, hanged, burned and dumped into wells or thrown from rooftops. And buried alive are shanov states that in the former free territory peasants were plundered, violently abused and killed. Almost all the Jewish women of Gulyai Polye were raped. So this is the white army. These are the people that Mester is fighting against. And to the extent that he is brutal to them, you kind of have to understand why. Yeah, yeah. They're pretty bad. Yeah, yeah. A member of Denikin special counsel, his his leadership cast stated that the main features of the Deneken regime were violence, torture, robberies, drunkenness, odious behavior. The counterintelligence service carried its activities to an unlimited wild arbitrariness. Creating, as dinner can put it, a painful mania all over the country. According to General Rangel, at this time the White Army hunted down anybody suspected of any contact with opposition groups, even if that. Contacted but involuntary, a policy he denounced as insane and cruel, they especially victimized the wives and girlfriends of known insurgents. According to Diaries attributed to Mocno's partner Galina Kuzmenko, in summer in 1919, the Dennis victims included the wife of Mocno's elder brother, Sava. They beat her, stabbed her with their bayonets, cut off one of her breasts, and only then did they shoot her. Since revolutionaries at yeah, yeah, 10s of thousands of people are tortured and killed this way, it is a ******* nightmare. And again. There is brutality from the magnevist, but it is not on this ******* scale, and it is generally in response to this. Yeah, yeah. This is like a ******* Peckinpah movie. Yeah, it's it. The ******* Russian Civil War is one of the worst things that ever happens in history. Yeah, not that the Czarist regime was, was good or shouldn't have been overthrown, but it's a horrible war. And by the way, these guys were talking about, the whites are the guys that the US and Britain are supporting. They're not communists. Well, they're not. Yeah, they're they would never. This day, because the whites try to ally with mocno at a couple of points because, like, hey, you hate the Bolsheviks. He's like, no, **** you guys. And he does go to the West. And he's like, look, like, these people you're supporting are even worse than the Bolsheviks. Like, support us. We won't **** with you. Like, we're not going to go to war with the West. We just want to live in Ukraine and not, like, have bosses like, but of course they don't. They don't listen to that either, because there's not. And so they. The British sent a bunch of guns to the rape gangs. Umm, yeah, good stuff, good on the sight of angels. So for months, Dinkins whites seemed unstoppable. Mocno and his forces retreated W for weeks, followed by a constant stream of 10s of thousands of refugees running from the white advance. For obvious reasons, Macnow and his men fought running battles with Dinkins forces as well as with the Bolshevik 14th Army, who had been fleeing British naval bombardment in Odessa. So again, they're fighting both the Reds and the whites. It periods of time. And yeah, because again, the left is kind of always been the same. So there were few victories during this time, including the capture of a warlord named Grigorov, who had ordered the pogroms of a lot of Jewish people. So Machno has this guy executed. He does this whenever he can. And by September, Mocno's army had been pushed back 600 kilometers from Gulyai Polye. So they've they have been fleeing for like 400 miles of solid retreat, which is exhausting now. There was a scholar named Arkanov. Was with mock Novast forces at this time, and he chronicles the retreat, he later wrote. The Magnevist retreat had covered more than 400 miles and had lasted close to four months. It had been unimaginably difficult. The insurgents lacked clothes and shoes through torrid heat, enveloped by clouds of dust. Under a hail of bullets and shells, they went further and further away from their own region towards an unknown destination. But they were all animated by the idea of victory over the enemy, and they valiantly endured the rigors of the retreat. Only occasionally that the least patient among them cry out turn around toward the kniper. But implacable necessity kept pushing them further and further from the sniper, which is a river. In their birthplace, their proud region, with an inexhaustible patience with their will, stretch to the limit. They rallied around their leader under continual enemy fire. It was impossible to go anywhere else, but Machno recognized, so they're like, this is about as bad a situation as you can get in a military force, and people are like, why aren't we turning around and fighting? But Mocno keeps saying no, no, keep retreating, keep retreating, keep retreating. And eventually he gets to a point where Mocno realizes that the enemy has finally overextended their supply lines. They've been drunk on months of victory, and they had neglected to protect themselves. Properly. So he rouses his exhausted fighters by telling them, hey, guys, this whole retreat has just been a play to overextend deniken's men, and now they're in a position where we can **** him up. So he orders his soldiers to face the enemy. He leads them in a cry of liberty or death. And I'm going to quote Antonov again, for what happens next is a very famous battle. On the evening of September 25th, the Magnevist troops, who until then had been marching westward, suddenly turned all their forces eastward and marched straight to the main forces of Denny's army. The first encounter took place. Late in the evening, near the village of Krukow, where the Magnevist first brigade attacked a Dennis unit, Dinkins troops retreated to take up better positions than to draw the Magnus after them, but the Magnevist did not pursue them. This misled the vigilance of the enemy, who concluded that the insurgents were still moving westward. However, in the middle of the night, all the machinist forces stationed in several villages began marching eastward. The enemy's principal forces were concentrated near the village of Paragon, Monica. The village itself was occupied by the machinists. The fighting started between 3:00 and 4:00 AM. It kept mounting in intensity and reached. Reached its peak by 8:00 AM and a hurricane of machine gun fire on both sides. Mocno himself, with his cavalry escort, had disappeared at nightfall, seeking to turn the enemy's flank. During the whole battle that ensued, there was no further news from him. By 9:00 in the morning, the outnumbered and exhausted Magnevist began to lose ground. There were already fighting on the outskirts of the village from all sides. Enemy enforcements brought new bursts of fire to bear on the machinists, the staff of the insurrectionary army, as well as everyone in the village who could handle the rifle arm themselves and joined in the fighting. This was the crucial. But when it seemed that the battle, and with it the whole cause of the insurgents, was lost, the order was given for everyone, even the women, to be ready to fire on the enemy in the village streets. All prepared for the supreme hour of the battle and of their lives. But suddenly the machine gun fire of the enemy and their frantic cheers began to grow weaker and then to recede into the distance. The defenders of the village realized that the enemy was retreating and that the battle was now taking place some distance away. It was mocno who, appearing unexpectedly at the very moment when his troops were driven back and were preparing to fight in the streets, had decided the fate of the battle. Covered with dust and fatigue from his exertions, he reached the enemy flank through a deep ravine. Without a cry, but with a burning resolve fixed on his features, he threw himself on the Dunnican asset full gallop, followed by his escort, and broke into their ranks. All exhaustion, all discouragement disappeared from among the machinists. Batco is here, batco is here, fighting with his Saber, could be heard everywhere, and with redoubled energy they all pushed forward, following their beloved leader, who seemed doomed to death. A hand to hand combat of incredible ferocity. A hacking, as the Magnus called it, followed. However brave the whites may have been, they were thrown into retreat, at first slowly and in an orderly manner, trying to halt the impetus of the magnevist, but then they simply ran. The other regiments, seized by panic, followed them, and finally all of Denikin's troops were routed and tried to save themselves by swimming across the Sinuka River. So there's this big battle machno disappears at the start of it, and at the very end, like it's a ******* Gandalf moment. Like, as they're about to be overwhelmed, he charges into the enemy's rear music. Yeah, and they've got like he charges machine guns with a sword and just starts stabbing the **** out of people. And it ******* they all run like the ******* whites break and it's yeah, it's ******* awesome. This, it's just, I like it is a Gandalf moment that's so bizarre. Like is that it sounds like that couldn't possibly be true. It happens and he gets shot a bunch of times because it worked like it was the only thing that could have worked. Like he had one chance to win and it was sneak a force behind them and in panic them. Right. And it works. Unity comes once in a lifetime. That's what talking heads song is about. So I was thinking that about lose yourself, but that works. Yeah, I was gonna lose yourself too. So in situations like this, panic is contagious, and with their most elite regiment shattered, the rest of Denny's forces began to break and run. Hundreds were slain on the banks of the Sinuka River. Corpses stretched out from miles. Mocno captured all of the captures, thousands and all of the off. He kills all of the officers he captures, but he he lets the enlisted men live and has a lot of them. Join them. Activist army after this. So this would turn out to be one of the most consequential battles of the entire 20th century. Because if the white forces under Deniken had beaten mocno, they would have reinforced the white army at the north which was marching on Moscow, and might well have beaten the Red Army they were winning at that point. Soldiers on the ground at the time understood this administ officer named Sakovich, who survived, later wrote in a sky blanketed in autumn cloud. The last puffs of artillery smoke exploded. Then all was silent. All of us ranking officers sensed that something tragic had just occurred. Though nobody could have had an inkling of the enormity of the disaster which had struck, none of us knew that at that precise moment. Nationalist Russia had lost the war. It's over, I said. I know not why to Lieutenant Rossoff, who was standing alongside me. It's over, he confirmed somberly. Wow, so this battle is why the whites don't take Moscow, at least. A lot of people will argue that now. Magnevist had advanced 400 miles E in just 11 days and one of the most rapid counterattacks in the history of warfare. They recaptured town after town, smashing white regiments that hadn't even been informed of Dinkins defeat. Deniken was forced to withdraw troops from his northern front, who were advancing on Moscow to protect their headquarters in Ukraine. Mocks Nomad, an Austrian, Bolshevik, and educator. Declared mocno. The bandit who saved Moscow. Now the reconquest of eastern Ukraine by Mocno came with a reckoning. Hundreds and probably thousands were executed. Mocno ordered his intelligence forces to track down and kill every soldier and local leader responsible for anti Jewish pogroms and for massacres of leftists, ban and peasants. Bandits who stolen from peasants were killed and so were all white officers who were captured. Collaborators and suspected collaborators were killed in revenge for the 10s of thousands who've been murdered by Denkins men. It is again a pretty ******* ugly. 4. And yeah, some of those people would have been innocent. That's war. It's terrible. Yeah, it's the worst thing. It's awful. Also, not a lot of good options. Yeah. No, there's no perfect in a war that's already killed millions of people. And yeah, it it what separated mocno from the rest of the warlords and bandits rampaging through Russia in this. Were his goals, the world he wanted to establish, and his sense of accountability. Mocno took complaints against his forces. Seriously, we have one account by a guy named voline of a student delegation who approached Machno to complain that one of his intelligence units had flogged an intellectual and suspicion of being a dennick anist spy. Quote, The student recalled, approaching Mocno's office. With trepidation and being surprised at Mocno's friendly and attentive audience. After explaining that no magnevist should ever use the lash, for his army either shot people or release them unharmed, Mocno promised to look into the matter personally. In this discussion, he also confessed the difficulties he experienced in preventing abuses by those who professed allegiance to his command. Similarly, the report of his intelligence services abuses led the Alexandrov Congress to pass resolution #3 establishing an investigative committee. So he's, you know. Acknowledges like, yeah, you sometimes you can't ******* stop your, uh, your bandit army from murdering the wrong people. It's a real problem. Fair, Fairpoint, it's an issue. I mean, he's not. Wrong. You know, it's it's this falls under the category. It's it's quite complicated, isn't it? There's no perfect when you're fighting a war that again kills 9 million people. Yeah, you have to judge him by his opponents in a lot of cases. Now, when the fighting with the whites was over, magnevist forces controlled most of eastern Ukraine, an area encompassing 7 million people. Peasant and worker councils created a document by popular consent that spelled out civil liberties, rights, and duty in the region. The document advocated for freedom of speech, for freedom of the Press of conscience, of worship, of assembly, and of organization. Bolshevik newspapers, which criticized Machno and advocated Bolshevik conquest of the region, where allowed to continue publishing. This is some of the last freedom of speech that Ukraine. Will have for quite a while now. Throughout late 1919 and early 1920, the bones of a remarkable society were established in eastern Ukraine. This passage from Anarchies Cossack gives you an idea of what was being attempted. Literacy classes were laid on for illiterate adults, followed by courses in politics and economics given by insurgent peasants and workers who had some grounding in the subjects. Here. It is interesting to look at their syllabus, political economy, history, the theory and practice of socialism and anarchism, the history of the French Revolution. The history of the revolutionary insurgent movement in Russian, in the Russian Revolution. Not that cultural activities were neglected daily. There were shows staged in the local theater. The insurgents and their women folk took part in these, not only as spectators and actors, but also as dramatists, narrating episodes from recent local events and from the insurgent struggle for all too short a time. Yeah, it's nice. They're like, OK, so, you know, there were a lot of losses, but we did get really into community theater, but we got some ******* plays. Yeah. Was it a wash? Yeah, that's sweet. I like that. So at his peak in 1920, Mocno's army, which had started in 1917 with about 150 guys, numbered 50,000 men. I'm going to quote from history today here, explaining how the army worked. Mocno himself, creator and leader of the insurgent army, was a man of remarkable vitality. Tough as were his companions, he could outright outwork and outfight any of them. He never went to bed till his task was finished, and two hours later would tap at the windows of his sleeping staff to bring them back to their jobs. He lived like a peasant and always found time for his peasants. He would talk with them, drink with them, take a hand for an hour with a flail. Since uh, hence his enormous popularity. He grew ever more engrossed with military matters and spent more and more time at the front. When, sick or wounded, he was carried in a cart with the frontline troops to well enough to ride a horse again. He was daring, resourceful, persistent. He showed no signs of nerves in any crisis. So interesting guy now, again, depending on, Oh yeah, before we I guess talk more about mocno and what happened there, yeah, we should probably, we should probably talk about our next folk hero, the products and services that support this podcast. Wow. Merry Christmas, Raytheon. Merry Christmas, Raytheon. Uh, they've got a missile now that can go right down your chimney. Wow. And best of all, it's a scatter bomb that only takes out your family members and pets while leaving the valuable property unharmed. That's the Raytheon, but that's the beauty of Raytheon. That's good ****. That's just good ****. Protecting property by killing people. Pets you added there? Oh yeah, they're going to kill some pets, absolutely. I mean, there's always going to be some pets that are. That's the other guarantee. Yeah, we're going to get some pets killed. Right. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for none of that. For anyone who hates their phone Bill, Mint Mobile offers premium wireless for just $15.00 a month. Mint Mobile will give you the best rate whether you're buying. Or for a family. And it meant family start at 2 lines. All plans come with unlimited talk and text, plus high speed data delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your own phone with any mint mobile plan and keep your same phone number along with all your existing contacts. Just switch to Mint mobile and get premium wireless service starting at 15 bucks a month. Get premium wireless service from just $15.00 a month, and no one expected plot twists at mintmobile.com/behind. That's mintmobile.com/behind. Seriously, you'll make your wallet. Very happy at mintmobile.com/behind. Now a word from our sponsor. Better help. If you're having trouble, stuck in your own head, focusing on problems dealing with depression, or just can't seem to get yourself out of a rut, you may want to try therapy. And better help makes it very easy to get therapy that works with your lifestyle and your schedule. A therapist can help you become a better problem solver, which can make it easier to accomplish your goals, no matter how big or small they happen to be. So if you're thinking of giving therapy. Try better help is a great option. It's convenient, accessible, affordable, and it is entirely online. You can get matched with a therapist after filling out a brief survey, and if the therapist that you get matched with doesn't wind up working out, you can switch therapists at any time when you want to be a better problem solver therapy can get you there. Visit betterhelp.com behind today to get 10% off your first month. That's better helpp.com/behind. Betterhelp com behind this fall on revisionist history. Is there anything that we haven't talked about or or I should have asked you or you'd like to add that seems relevant? You should have asked me why I'm missing fingers on my left hand. A story about sacrifice. I think his suffering drove him to try to alleviate suffering. And the shocking discovery I made where I faced the consequences of writing a book I thought would help people? Isn't that funny? It's not funny at all. It's depressing. Very depressing. Revisionist history is back with more. Listen to revisionist history on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I've never seen less enthusiasm for a great idea in my life. And we're back. So we're talking about machno a little bit here, and kind of the height of his revolution. Now, depending on who does the writing, he was almost always a teetotaler or a heavy drinker. There are stories of him doing some pretty terrible things while drunk. There are also stories by people who generally allege things that seem kind of impossible, like him hacking 13 people to death with a Saber for no reason. I don't know. It's weird. It's it would not be as surprising. If a man is battered by war and violence as machno turned to drink and wound up doing terrible things in a rage, it's not impossible. I feel like that's yeah, that's at least 30% of the ******** episodes go that way. But that said, the act like the sources who are not like clearly writing propaganda to demonize this guy after he gets defeated. Don't talk about that stuff. The history today write up, which is very fair. It's paywalled, but it's it's a pretty fair write up that that is not at all written by anarchists. Implies that his rather than talk about his drinking being like making him go into like superhuman murder rages talks mainly about the fact that it kind of made him unready for what would become the eventual betrayal of the machinists by the Bolsheviks. Like, he's lost a lot, he kind of gets messy and drunk, and he does not anticipate things going as bad as they're going to go. So the Red Army reenters Ukraine late in 1919, and in early 1920 they declared mocno in his movement outside the law after he refused to take his forces to the Polish. Tier they basically try to move him and his army to Poland so that they can separate them from the the peasants that support them because they want to make it easier to beat them later. By the mid of the year Mocno and his men were engaged and often constant horrific battle with the Red Army with guys polygen changing hands multiple times so the Red Army invades and tries to fight them. Whenever magnevist towns and cities are retaken. The checker, the the Bolshevik security force, carries out purges and massacres. Numerous attempts were made to assassinate Mocno, but all failed. The fighting went back and forth until late September in 1920, when the Red Army made peace with machno again because they needed him to fight the whites for them. So they signed a treaty with mocno, this time promising peace and a release of all arrested anarchists and machinists. But the Treaty also promised that peasants would be allowed to maintain standing armies in Ukraine, and this was of course a lie. Once the whites were beaten again, the Red Army turns on Macnab again, and Nestor's final war with them last from around late N1920 to late August of 1921. It was brutal and grinding. But eventually the peasants of Ukraine a pattern here. Yeah, it's bad, and eventually just everyone is too exhausted to continue. Machno succeeds in fighting his way to Poland with a small force of his most loyal fighters, and he becomes an exile. He winds up in Paris, where he would spend his last years, and he was in poor health the entire time. All the wars he fought him had left him battered and broken and aged beyond his years. He'd been shot at least six times in a three-year period, including one round through the cheek and another that pierced his thigh and into his appendix. So he's in bad shape and he was not happy, a friend of his wrote of his. Yeah, it's hard to yeah, yeah. You know, he he's kind of a little bit of a celebrity in Paris in this. Among the left, but he's a friend of his rights that he's he. He expresses great difficulty in adjusting himself to circumstances so very different from his former way of life. The only thing that brings him any joy in the end is going to horse races and watching the horses run. He just likes to watch them run now. He was bitter and prone to fits of depression. He wrote some memoirs, but the fact that he could still barely write made this a difficult task. He had a lot of intellectual friends who offered to help, but these authors authors enraged him like he was. He kind of took it as an insult, and people were offering to help him write his memoirs. Folks eventually did. Ida met a young female writer, met him in Paris during this time, and was his friend for the last three years of his life. And it's from a hurry that we get some of the most intimate glances into nester's inner life that we're likely to see. Quote from Ida. I remember Machno once telling me of his dream. It was autumn 1927. We were walking in the blood of vincens. Perhaps the beauty of nature put him in a poetic mood and made him inclined to tell me his dream. The young Machno would return to his hometown of Gulyai Polye, start work, lead a quiet, clean life, and marry a young peasant girl. He had a good horse and good gear. He and his wife would return home in the evening after a successful day at the market selling the fruits of the harvest. They also bought presents there. Mocno got so carried away with the story that he completely forgot that he was now in Paris. Had neither land nor a house nor a young wife. At the time he and his wife were living apart. They separated many times only to reunite and try to live together again. Heaven only knows why it turned out that way. Mock knows wife probably didn't love him anymore and who knows if she ever did. She was a Ukrainian teacher and her views were closer to some of his opponents camps. She never had anything in common with the revolutionary movement. Mocno told me in Paris that at the time of his greatest power, people came and towed to him and that he could have had any woman he wished, but in reality he had no time for a private life. Mocno told me this to debunk the myth about the drunken ******. Is supposed to have taken part in Magna was in fact a clean man one could almost say, chased. It seemed to me that his attitude towards women combined to combine a kind of peasant simplicity with a respect for the weaker sex characteristic of Russian revolutionary circles around the turn of the century. She's writing this. And again 19 like 27, you know. Yeah. Yeah, I do. I do think it's funny that she, she already frames them as not being in a good frame of mind is like, well, you know, we don't know how this, like, these accounts can be taken at face value. And she's like. Dad said he told me he could have ****** anyone he wanted. He said he didn't. Yeah. In them, you know, I find it sad, the things about sad, his dream, they just like, wanted to go be a farmer back home, which he could never do. It's like my uncle says, libertarians and plows. Yeah, it's a bummer. Sick and almost alone, Mr Macnow died in July of 1935, having lived long enough to see the birth and ultimate success of German fascism, as well as complete Stalinist domination of his homeland and the starvation deaths of millions of Ukrainians. So, God. Gas ending. Merry Christmas, ********. Ending I know and hate. Jingle Bells just starts fading in. It's like, wow, I think we all learned something today. Dashing through the snow with a machine gun on a plow, shooting at the whites. Everyone is. Yeah. I don't know how to finish this. I was like, this is me there. I know we were going. We were in a good direction for a little while there. We got a year we can figure it out. We'll figure it out for next year. Yeah. So that is the story of Nestor Machno. That is problematic. Phase 3 1/2. Yeah. Yeah. I guess that is a category I would put him in. Damn. You know, an attempt was made. He did his best to make something better out of the worst situation almost anyone's ever been. Like peasants in Ukraine in 1917. Yeah, there was no happy ending, but he he he gave it a real good shot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. God. Alright, I'll pour one out for Nestor tonight. One out for knock, knock. Know which he may or may not have drank, depending on whose sources you listened to. Well, he probably did. One point like ideas, Nestor Magno. I would never not. I would never be sober. Yeah. What? I mean, Ida says he didn't really drink as an older man, but also, he was probably pretty ill, right. Like, you get older, your body changes, you've been shot through the appendix. Maybe you can't handle things like you used to. Yeah. Yeah. Like, who even knows? You know? Yeah. I was about to say something mean about all Nestor. No, he who knows. He did his best. He did his best. And he lived in hard times. Yeah, we can ask for no more. Time well, I feel festive. You feel festive. You're going to go attach a machine gun to a truck bed and fight. I'm going to just walk into traffic. Do you have any lunch for us? Yeah, this comes at Santa University. Comes out today if it's Christmas Eve. Roberts reprising his role as Second Amendment Santa. You've got a song this year, so that's exciting. That song you just demonstrated that you're up to the task. So that was a mistake on your part. Ohh and and yeah, you can listen to Lolita podcast on Mondays and that is going to be coming out through January. So those are, those are my things. Yay, hey. Woot, Woot in the boot. Alright and well. And we'll be back with this podcast the first week of January. We're taking. We're taking the last week off guys. We're taking the last week off, alright. Have it. We're so you got you got 2 Christmas episodes, you ******* filthy animals. We're tired, you ******* pagans. And on that note and on that note, that was great. I looked in there. Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams. Let's break our handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Hey there, it's Ebony Monet, your co-host for the San Diego Zoo's Amazing Wildlife podcast. In this special episode, we're speaking with Doctor Jane Goodall about the fascinating journey that led to her social discoveries on chimpanzees. For four, oh, months, the chimps ran away from me. I mean, they take one look at this peculiar white ape and disappear into the vegetation. Bing wildlife on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts, sisters of the Underground is a podcast about fearless Dominican women who stood up against the brutal dictator Kapal Trujillo. He needs to be stopped. We've been silent and complacent for far too long. I am Daniel Ramirez, and as a Dominicana myself, I am proud to be narrating this true story that is often left out of the history books to read. Your has blood on his hands. Listen to sisters of the underground wherever you get your podcasts.