On 3 March 1855 Alexander II “the Liberator” took the throne as the Emperor of the Russian Empire after the death of his father Nicholas I. He ascended in the midst of the Crimean War, a devastating conflict for Russia, and at a time when change was desperately needed for his country to survive.…

Prominent Russians: Nestor Makhno

Nestor Ivanovich Makhno was the leader of revolutionary anarchism, a fierce relentless fighter known for both his cruelty and his acute sense of justice.

His name is the fourth on the list of the people awarded by the Order of The Red Flag, one of the highest Soviet honors, but it is also covered with a thick layer of black ink. In Soviet history books Makhno was an indisputable evil. To this dayhe is still a figure who stirs hot social debate.

Nestor Makhno (or Mikhno, or Mikhnevich) was born in the village of Gulyay Pole in the Ekaterinoslav Region in 1888 into the family of a very poor coachman. He was the youngest of five siblings. There’s a legend that the clothes of the priest baptizing young Nestor caught fire, which popular superstition said was a clear sign that a great troublemaker had been born. In the paperwork his father wrote that the boy was born in 1889 – a little trick that was often used to postpone early conscription, which later saved Nestor’s life.

Makhno’s father died early. “Five of us, orphaned brothers, one smaller than the other, were left in the hands of our poor mother, who had nothing