During the 1905 Revolution, a wave of anarchist activity erupted throughout Ukraine, with strike actions and soviets being organized in major cities, while militant groups such as the Black Banner carried out acts of terrorism against the Russian Empire.

But with the defeat of the revolution and the institution of reforms by the Russian prime minister Pyotr Stolypin, anarchists in the small southern Ukrainian town of Huliaipole began to consider a violent struggle against the Tsarist police to be their most immediate task.

[3] In 1906, a Ukrainian Czech teacher called Voldemar Antoni began to share his anarchist political philosophy with former schoolmates in his hometown of Huliaipole, going on to establish a local anarcho-communist group: the Union of Poor Peasants.

5 September] 1906, the group carried out its first robbery against a local merchant known as Pelshchiner, during which three armed members surrounded his house and forced him to hand over his cash and jewellery.

13 November] 1906, they carried out their third robbery against the local industrialist Mark Kerner,[9] who was robbed of his cash and a silver ingot by seven group members, some of whom he reported had been shaking with nerves.

[9] During the night, four armed group members broke into his house and demanded money, identifying themselves as anarcho-communists, but Gurevich's nephew cried out for help, forcing them to escape without any loot.

10 April] 1908, Ivan Levadny and Naum Altgauzen led a raid on Bogodarovsk [uk], robbing a merchant named Levin of his cash and gold.

The anarchists managed to escape into the night, but Prokip Semenyuta had been wounded in the leg and decided to shoot himself, in order to not slow down his fleeing comrades.

[20] Makhno and Oleksandr Semenyuta subsequently attempted a number of attacks against the provincial governor, but these were all aborted and the group members fled in shoot-outs with the police.

[23] During their interrogation, Levadny broke under pressure and informed the police of the group's entire history, while Altgauzen also confessed to participating in a number of robberies, for which he was later accused by Makhno of being an agent provocateur.

On the first day of the February Revolution, the group led a procession of black flags to the graves of their fallen comrades, including Prokip and Oleksandr Semenyuta.

Makhno struggled to persuade many of the group's members on his organizational tactics, as many of them still wished to focus on the distribution of propaganda, but he quickly won them over to his plan.

[42] When the local organ of the Russian Provisional Government, known as the Public Committee, held elections in early April, it was brought under the control of member and sympathisers of the Peasant Union.

[43] This accelerated the pace of the revolution in Huliaipole, as local peasants and workers seized control of land and industry,[44] establishing a network of agricultural communes throughout the region.

Makhno attempted to heal the divisions by setting up a joint commission of both anarchists and nationalists, but this alienated younger group members, who saw it as a compromise with "counter-revolutionaries".

[59] When an alliance with the Bolsheviks was first proposed in January 1919, it was opposed by the Union of Poor Peasants, with one of their delegates to an anarchist congress in Yelyzavethrad displaying marked anti-Bolshevism.

The Union of Poor Peasants then started to disappear from the historical record, as it was no longer able to effectively and openly work under occupation by the Armed Forces of South Russia.

[59] The Union of Poor Peasants was mostly made up of young people, with their age ranging from 15 to 25 years old, and was an ethnically diverse mix, reflecting the makeup of the local population.

[2] In the March 1910 trial, the members of the group that were implicated in the activities of the "illegal subversive association" included:[63] Other members included: the Ukrainian Levadny, who died of typhus in the infirmary according to official reports, although Makhno claimed he was strangled by another anarchist inmate; the Jewish Kshiva, who was executed on 17 June 1909 for murdering an agent provocateur; and the Ukrainian Nazarii Zuichenko, a police informant who allegedly contracted typhus before he could stand trial.

He declared that he was determined to jettison the group's old insurrectionary tendencies and isolated position, in favour of forging closer ties with the peasant masses and making preparations for an organized armed struggle.

[64] Following the February Revolution, Nestor Makhno was released from prison and returned to Huliaipole, where he was elected as Chairman of the local soviet and went on to lead the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine (RIAU).

After decades of exile in South America, Voldemar Antoni eventually returned to Ukraine as a "soviet patriot", visiting Huliaipole for the 50-year anniversary of the October Revolution.