As a prominent female figure within the Makhnovshchina, she became a "tireless defender" of women and their rights, reportedly having personally executed a number of Makhnovists that committed rape.

[21] This group encouraged a brief rapprochement between the Makhnovists and the Ukrainian People's Republic in September 1919, while also taking a decisive stance against the White movement and putting forward a libertarian approach to national liberation.

During the subsequent period of guerrilla warfare, the Soviet historian Mikhail Kubanin alleged that the influence of Kuzmenko's "chauvinistic group" increased, with the Makhnovshchina gravitating more towards Ukrainian nationalism, while many of its anarchist ideologues began to exit the movement.

[31] Following a tense period of negotiations between the Romanian and Ukrainian Soviet governments over the extradition of the Makhnovists, on 11 April 1922, they quit Romania and crossed the border into Poland.

However, these terms were met only with passivity from the Ukrainian Soviet government, which was attempting to entrap the Makhnovists into an anti-Polish conspiracy, hoping that this would subsequently lead to extradition.

[39] On 3 December 1923, the Makhnovists were finally released from custody and issued with residence permits, granting Makhno and Kuzmenko leave to remain in Toruń.

[41] The strain of life in exile, combined with their constant surveillance and occasional arrest by the authorities, led to a deterioration in Kuzmenko's relationship with Makhno.

[43] In 1927, the couple finally divorced, with Kuzmenko leaving Paris to join an organization of pro-Soviet Ukrainian exiles, within which she made repeated unsuccessful attempts to return to Ukraine.

[44] By March 1934, Makhno's health had completely deteriorated and Kuzmenko moved him to a hospital, visiting him regularly during his final days and standing by his side when he died.

[47] A few months later, she sent a letter to the anarcho-syndicalist journal Probuzhdenie, in which she defended her late husband from a defamatory article published in the nationalist paper Nova Pora, categorically denying a number of charges against him and writing a brief biography of him and the Makhnovshchina.

[49] Kuzmenko remained in France with her daughter until the outbreak of World War II, when they were captured by the Nazis and deported to Berlin, where they were used as forced labour.

Following the Battle of Berlin, they were arrested by the Soviets and extradited to Kyiv, where Kuzmenko was sentenced to eight years of hard labour in Mordovia, on charges of counterrevolutionary agitation.

[54] The document was found in Eidemanis' archives by the Soviet historian Mikhail Kubanin [ru],[55] who used it as a source in depicting a clash between violent peasant insurgents and urban officials.

She also claimed that the diary had been seized by Red cavalrymen, who had stopped her and Gaenko's wagon, and that it later appeared in a Soviet newspaper – directly disputing Arshinov's denials.

[61] As to the contents, Kuzmenko claimed that she did not remember what she had written and could not attest to the accuracy of the events depicted in the published version, specifically disputing the characterisation of Makhno as an alcoholic.