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.

[6] Following a period of political probation,[7] Nikiforova became involved in the group's campaign of "motiveless terrorism",[8] during which she staged a number of bombings and expropriation missions, including armed robberies.

[9] In 1908,[10] 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,[11] due to her young age.

[20] 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 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.

[23] She soon established a 60-strong anarchist combat detachment and started accumulating armaments procured from attacks on police stations and warehouses,[24] with which she hunted down and executed many of the city's army officers and landlords.

[25] 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.

[26] 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).

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.

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.

[38] 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.

[39] 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.

[42] 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.

[44] 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.

While the core of the group was personally loyal to Nikiforova, including a number of experienced veterans of the Black Sea Fleet, the larger section around them participated in the unit on a more ephemeral basis.

[50] Travelling in echelon formations, which the Left SR politician Isaac Steinberg compared to the mythical Flying Dutchman, the Druzhina advanced against the forces of the White movement and the Ukrainian nationalists.

While occupying the city, she assassinated a Russian officer, expropriated local stores and redistributed basic necessities to the population, and established a barter economy for non-essential goods, all in open defiance the Bolshevik-controlled Revkom.

[52] Nikiforova accused the Revkom of being too tolerant towards the bourgeoisie and having constituted a new ruling class, even threatening to disperse the organ and shoot its chairman, due to her opposition to all forms of government.

[61] Under heavy bombardment, the Druzhina fell back to Znamianka, where they were reinforced by more Red Guards under the command of Mikhail Muravyov, fresh from their victory in the Battle of Kyiv.

While the Ukrainian nationalists held off Nikiforova's advance from the north, Andrei Polupanov [ru] led an assault against the largely undefended south, forcing the city to capitulate.

After leaving Yelysavethrad, the Druzhina stooped in Berezivka, where they came into conflict with another anarchist detachment led by Grigory Kotovsky, after Nikiforova had attempted to extort money from the town's inhabitants.

[72] Upon Nikiforova's arrival in Taganrog, she was immediately arrested on charges of looting and desertion, while the Druzhina was finally disarmed,[73] in an operation overseen by the Ukrainian Bolshevik leader Volodymyr Zatonsky.

[77] Other anarchists joined Nikiforova's Druzhina, but the continued German offensive forced them to retreat to Rostov-on-Don, where they looted the local banks and burned all the bonds, deeds and loan agreements they found in a public bonfire.

[83] Almost immediately following the trial, Nikiforova set out for Huliaipole, now the center of an autonomous anarchist republic known as the Makhnovshchina, as part of an agreement between Nestor Makhno's Revolutionary Insurgent Army and the Ukrainian Bolsheviks.

[86] Nikiforova's anti-Bolshevik attitude became an immediate problem for the Makhnovists, who were more focused on fighting the White movement, with Makhno himself physically removing her from a stage after she publicly denounced the Bolsheviks during a Regional Congress.

[93] After meeting Makhno and touring the city, Kamenev was impressed with Nikiforova, and upon returning to Katerynoslav, he telegraphed Moscow officials with an order that her sentence be reduced to half of its original term.

[94] Following news of the reduction of her sentence, Nikiforova moved to Berdiansk and began work on establishing a new detachment of Black Guards, bringing together a number of former Makhnovists and anarchist refugees, including her husband Witold Brzostek.

She sent one group to Siberia, where they were ordered to assassinate Alexander Kolchak, the Supreme Ruler of the Russian State, but they were ultimately unable to locate him and instead decided to join the anti-White partisans.

[101] On 11 August,[102] the couple were recognized by a White officer in Sevastopol and arrested, forcing the rest of the group to quit Crimea and flee to the Kuban People's Republic, where they joined the region's anti-White partisans.

[114] In 1919, a 25-year-old Ukrainian nationalist school teacher adopted the name Marusya Sokolovska and took command her late brother's cavalry detachment, before she was captured by the Reds and shot.