The anarchist press of Petrograd, Moscow and other large centers carried out massive agitation with the aim of creating free fighting squads of the "Black Guard".

As the newspaper Burevestnik, the organ of the Petrograd Federation, wrote: “Those gentlemen are cruelly mistaken, thinking that the real revolution is already over, that now all that remains is to consolidate those disgusting gains that went to the working people.

Nikiforova, a self-proclaimed terrorist, directed her unit of Black Guards to terrorize the Alexandrovsk local government in order to achieve the political change she desired.

[6] According to the Cheka, an anarchist action against the Bolsheviks was scheduled for April 18,[a] and therefore it was decided to launch a preemptive strike, disarming the Black Guard units.

[6] On the night of April 11, 1918, Felix Dzerzhinsky, director of the Cheka, had a force of approximately 5,000 Soviet troops attack the anarchist headquarters in Moscow.

The last stronghold of the Black Guard was the Zeitlin mansion, which was taken by 12 noon, and in general, the fighting between the forces of the Cheka and the anarchists stopped by 2 PM.

Leon Trotsky, who for two weeks had prepared the blow, and who had carried out in person, among the regiments, an unbridled agitation against the “anarcho-bandits”, had the satisfaction of being able to make his famous declaration: “At last the Soviet government, with an iron broom, has rid Russia of Anarchism.”[11]After the defeat of the Black Guard in Moscow, a search was carried out of the mansions seized from the anarchists, in some of which gold was found.

At the end of April, the Samara Black Guard "flying" detachment of Smorodinov (made up of 600 militants with armored cars) captured the city of Buguruslan.

Russian revolutionary writer Victor Serge, who was initially part of anarchist movement, believed that much of the Black Guards real capacities was "wasted on small and chaotic struggles.

On April 4, a request was received from the headquarters of the Black Guard to provide lists of all persons belonging to the Moscow Federation of Anarchist Groups.

[1] These detachments were created with the aim of “securing the conquests already taken from the teeth of the bourgeoisie who had gone underground and from the raids of the international gold monopoly in the White Guard uniform.”[1] These units were supposed to replace the militant groups accustomed to operating in tsarist Russia, whose usual practice was expropriation, terrorist acts against the police - "propaganda by the deed" - by forming permanent anarchist units.