defeated, the entire force of the Red Army was commanded to fight Makhno and his troops. Surprisingly, soldiers sent to liquidate Makhno’s troops massively changed sides. Having gained some forces, Nestor Makhno launched bloody attacks and for a while even joined forces with the nationalist army of Semyon Petlyura, but the power now lay on the side of the Bolsheviks, and Makhno and his army were destroyed. With a small group of his supporters he first fled to Bessarabia in Romania, then moved to Poland. Here Nestor Makhno was imprisoned for a short term for anti-Polish activities. Later he moved to Paris, where he worked on anarchist leaflets and brochures, gave passionate speeches and lived mostly on money donated by European anarchist groups. When possible, he earned aliving as a carpenter, and even worked as a stagehand at the Paris opera and at film studios. But soon his health began to deteriorate.

Nestor Ivanovich Makhno died of acute tuberculosis in a hospital in Paris in 1934. Three days after his death he was cremated and buried at the famous Pere Lachaise Cemetery. Over five hundred people attended his funeral.