[18] The town's poor peasants and anarchists resolved to intervene in the conflict,[19] dispatching an 800-strong detachment, led by Savelii Makhno, towards Oleksandrivsk in order to join up with the Red Guards and fight against the forces of the Central Council.

[35] Afterwards, the anarchists executed the local police chief and passed out propaganda to the conscripted troops, urging them to mutiny and launch revolutions of their own back home, before releasing them in different directions.

[41] In a surprise attack, the two small insurgent bands positioned themselves on either side of the enemy camp and opened fire on the unarmed troops, forcing them into a panicked retreat, pursued by local peasants armed only with farming tools.

With their officers having apparently abandoned them to the insurgents, the captured Ukrainian troops were shot, while the remaining Austrian soldiers were fed and released with some provisions, stripped of their kepis (symbolically demilitarizing them).

[43] The insurgents subsequently carried out a series of attacks against the Germans and their Ukrainian collaborators, with Makhno and Shchus infiltrating a White Russian meeting on a landowner's estate and blowing up their hosts with a bomb.

By the end of 1918, the entirety of Eastern Ukraine was experiencing revolts against the Central Powers, growing to such an extent that the German high command in Alexandrovsk even conceded to insurgent demands of amnesty for their prisoners of war.

[52] The insurgent high command, which included Shchus and Karetnyk alongside Makhno, was almost wiped out not long after it was constituted, being encircled by occupation forces at Synelnykove and only narrowly saved by reinforcements.

Efforts were made to avoid opening up a western front against the Ukrainian nationalists, with the insurgent commander Oleksiy Chubenko negotiating a truce between the two parties in order to effectively oppose Denikin.

Despite seizing 20 machine guns, 4 artillery cannons and substantial ammunition, the Makhnovists were unprepared for street fighting in an urban environment, taking many more days to clear out the remaining nationalist forces from the city.

[64] The insurgents fell back to Huliaipole, where Viktor Bilash began preparations for a congress to reorganize the Don front, which was still made up of largely disconnected and poorly-supplied partisan detachments.

Units of the Insurgent Army and the rural districts of the Makhnovshchina sent 100 delegates, largely made up of Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and Maximalists, who sought to strengthen the front-lines with veterans of World War I and secure the release of peasant conscripts from the White Russian and Ukrainian nationalist ranks.

In one case, the insurgents seized 100 wagons of grain (1,467 tons) from the White movement, which they immediately shipped to Moscow and Petrograd, in an independent action that drew hostility from the Bolshevik command.

[78] The Congress then turned its attention to the issue of the Communist Party's authority over the soviets, with the delegate from Novopavlovsk displaying marked frustration on the matter:[79] The Ukrainian provisional government stood by, first in Moscow and then in Kursk, until the workers and peasants of Ukraine had liberated the territory of enemies.

...We are non-party insurgents, and we have revolted against all our oppressors; we will not countenance a new enslavement, no matter the quarter whence it may come!In defiance of the Bolsheviks, the Congress thus passed a resolution declaring the establishment of "freely elected, anti-authoritarian soviets", which would be independent of any political party.

It also resolved to elect a Military Revolutionary Council, which would act as the executive power of the Makhnovschina between congresses; established a supply section to distribute equipment throughout the frontlines; and ordered a "voluntary" and "egalitarian" mobilization to ensure the continued functioning of the wartime economy.

This resentment was intensified when the Bolsheviks' pledged material support did not manifest, with the insurgents receiving 3,000 poorly-made rifles and 100,000 rounds of ammunition, but none of the machine guns or artillery cannons which the Red Army command had promised.

[86] Despite the hostilities between the Soviet factions, the insurgents continued to aid the offensive against the Whites in Crimea, even pushing as far as Denikin's headquarters in Taganrog before abruptly halting due to their lack of arms and ammunition, equipment which they then attempted to seize from a French detachment at Mariupol.

Makhno further elaborated on the material shortages that the insurgents were suffering and bemoaned the problems caused by the 9th Soviet Reserve Division, which he described as "prone to panic", claiming that "its command's sympathies lay with the Whites.

[94] The following day, Antonov-Ovseenko sent a message to Christian Rakovsky, in which the commander-in-chief praised the insurgents and categorically refuted the allegations of an anti-Soviet conspiracy, requesting the Ukrainian Soviet government to put an immediate end to the "senseless punitive measures" against the anarchists.

[96] Antonov-Ovseenko was thereafter criticized for his anarchist sympathies by Leon Trotsky, who urged him to focus their resources on the White offensive in Donbas, to which he responded by reiterating his defense of the Makhnovists and criticising the Red Army's high command in Moscow for their lack of understanding of the military situation in Ukraine.

After the initial pleasantries, disagreements soon erupted when the Bolsheviks demanded the Military Revolutionary Council be abolished, a proposal which the insurgents could not accept as it was "created by the masses and on no account could it be disbanded by any authority at all."

[107] Following a tactical error by a Bolshevik-led division, the Kuban Cossacks led by Andrei Shkuro managed to breach through the soviet lines and captured Yuzovka, taking numerous Bolsheviks and Makhnovists as prisoners and having them hanged.

[116] Trotsky concluded his remarks by calling for repression to be carried out against any "atamans and straw commanders" in Ukraine and openly declaring his intention to abolish "the independent anarchist republic of Huliaipole", even to the extent of prioritizing the neutralization of the Makhnovists over fighting the White offensive against Kharkiv.

They soon came upon a White attack against Alexandrovsk, with the local leader of the Bolsheviks attempting to enlist their aid, but the insurgents refused due in part to a lack of manpower and the continuation of their status as outlaws.

[131] With the Bolsheviks having quit Eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was liquidated and the Red Army fell back to the right-bank of the Dnieper, purging their ranks of any remaining Makhnovists in the process.

But despite Dybets' best efforts, the Red Army command had decided to quit the Ukrainian front entirely and fall back to Central Russia, as the White movement had begun to move against Moscow.

In just over a week, the insurgents had occupied a vast territory in southern and eastern Ukraine, including the major cities of Kryvyi Rih, Yelisavetgrad, Nikopol, Melitopol, Aleksandrovsk, Berdiansk, Mariupol and the Makhnovist capital of Huliaipole.

As the Whites had now been cut off from their supply lines, the advance on Moscow was halted only 200 kilometers outside of the Russian capital, with the Cossack forces of Konstantin Mamontov and Andrei Shkuro being diverted back towards Ukraine.

The Makhnovists themselves were greatly concerned with their own conduct in the captured areas, aiming not to interfere with renewed soviet democracy and stressing that they would not commit "violence or looting, nor questionable searches" against the local populations.

[171] Led by Semen Karetnyk, the insurgents then played a key role in the battle for Crimea, defeating the Whites and bringing an end to the Southern Front of the Russian Civil War.