An Inconvenient Diary: Retrieving Halyna Kuzmenko’s Voice From Makhnovist Historiography

The historiography of the Ukrainian Civil War’s Makhnovist movement has a long and controversial history. One source of enduring debate is Nestor Makhno’s partner, Halyna Kuzmenko. She has been variously depicted as an anarchist, a nationalist, a defender of women, and a cruel bandit’s wife. In many ways, she has remained as historically enigmatic and alluring as Makhno himself. In late 1920, the Bolshevik press reported that “the diary of Makhno’s wife” had been captured by the Red Army. Its entries were quickly weaponized by Bolshevik propaganda to craft an image of Makhno as a violent and irrational drunkard. Denounced as a forgery by Makhno in exile, unresolved questions surrounding the diary’s provenance and authenticity have, nonetheless, haunted it for over a century. Working from the original diary and other writings by Kuzmenko, this presentation explored how her life and writings have been consistently considered inconvenient and in need of revision by both friend and foe alike. The result has been to co-opt and largely silence Kuzmenko’s unique voice. The presentation highlighted this exceptional woman's agency as an independent historical actor and an important diarist of the Ukrainian Civil War.    

 

 

Sean Patterson is a Ph.D. candidate in History at the University of Alberta, where he researches the Civil War-era Ukrainian Makhnovist movement. Patterson is a recipient of the 2022-2023 Neporany Doctoral Fellowship, offered by the Canadian Foundation for Ukrainian Studies. He is the author of Makhno and Memory: Anarchist and Mennonite Narratives of Ukraine’s Civil War, 1917–1921 (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2020).