[1] The series is a historical biographical drama about the life of Nestor Makhno, a Ukrainian anarchist who was the commander of the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine (Makhnovshchina).
His first steps were to organize communes in the Huliaipole region, later forming rebel detachments, which eventually grew into the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine and played an influential role in the Russian Civil War.
She particularly lauded Derevyanko's "soulful" performance, in which he "conveys Nestor's inner feelings, his passion, his pain, his eternal protest through gestures, intonations and glances.
"[4] On the other hand, the Russian Marxist Boris Kagarlitsky gave the series a negative review, criticizing the show's lack of narrative coherence as "events simply drag on one after the other in chronological order, without any internal connection, without any logic."
[5] Sergey Varshavchik for the Russian Journal was also critical of the series, pointing out its historical inaccuracy in respect to a fabricated sequence where Fedir Shchus murders Nestor's first wife Nastia, going further to attack it for its incoherent narrative and illogical set design, while also poking fun at the direction of the battle scenes.