Under the Blows of the Counterrevolution: April-June 1918

Nestor Makhno (1888-1934) was a peasant anarcho-communist who organized an experiment in anarchist values and practice in southeast Ukraine during the Russian Revolution and Civil War (1917-1921). This is the second volume of his memoirs, originally published in France in 1936 and published in English here for the first time. Under the Blows of the Counterrevolution describes Makhno's odyssey through revolutionary Russia in the spring of 1918. Driven from his Ukrainian village by a German invasion, he wandered through a nation torn by civil war, encountered various remarkable personalities, and survived hair-raising adventures. This volume has interested historians mainly because of Makhno's account of his interview with Lenin, but it also contains valuable eyewitness information about a period of Soviet history that was later almost completely rewritten in officially sanctioned accounts.