Maria Nikiforova

Maria Nikiforova (or Marusya; 1885– 1919) was an anarchist partisan leader whose activities in the Ukrainian War of Independence influenced the Ukrainian revolutionary Nestor Makhno.

Quotes

 * The anarchists are not promising anything to anyone. The anarchists only want people to be conscious of their own situation and seize freedom for themselves.


 * The workers and peasants must, as quickly as possible, seize everything that was created by them over many centuries and use it for their own interests.


 * Cossacks, I must tell you that you are the butchers of the Russian workers. Will you continue to be so in the future, or will you acknowledge your own wickedness and join the ranks of the oppressed? Up to now you have shown no respect for the poor workers. For one of the tsar's rubles or a glass of wine, you have nailed them living to the cross.
 * Speech to cossack cavalry loyal to the White movement.


 * The property of the estate owners (pomeshchiks) doesn't belong to any particular detachment, but to the people as a whole. Let the people take what they want.
 * In discussion with Ivan Matveyev, insisting on the redistribution of property from the wealthy to the poor.


 * Don't think badly of me.–M. Nikiforova
 * Written on the back of a photograph. Intended recipient unknown.

Quotes about Nikiforova

 * I had heard that she was a beautiful woman... Marusya was sitting at a table and had a cigarette in her teeth. This she-devil really was a beauty: about 30, gypsy-type with black hair and a magnificent bosom which filled out her military tunic.
 * Raksha, speaking of a meeting with Nikiforova in 1918.


 * The speeches of the Left Bloc representatives seem so pale in comparison with the speeches of the anarchists and, in particular, with the speech of M. Nikiforova.
 * Alexandrovsky onlooker, in response to Nikiforova's speech to the cossacks.


 * She is simply a bandit operating under the flag of Soviet power.
 * Georgy Pyatakov


 * One more pillar of anarchist has been broken, one more idol of blackness has been crashed down from its pedestal... . Legends formed around this "tsaritsa of anarchism". Several times she was rounded, several times her head was cut off but, like the legendary Hydra, she always grew a new one. She survived and turned up again, ready to spill more blood... . And if now in our uyezd the offspring of the Makhnovshchina, the remnants of this poisonous evil, are still trying to prevent the rebirth of normal society and are straining themselves to rebuild once more the bloody rule of Mkno, this latest blow means we are witnessing the funeral feast at the grave of the Makhnovshchina.
 * Alexandrovsky Telegraph newspaper announcement of Nikiforova's death.