Sean Patterson | Book Launch | "Makhno and Memory: Anarchist and Mennonite Narratives of Ukraine’s Civil War, 1917–1921"

Nestor Makhno has been called a revolutionary anarchist, the Ukrainian Robin Hood, a mass-murderer, a pogromist, and a devil. These epithets had their origins in the Revolution and Civil War (1917–21) that engulfed Imperial Russia, where the military forces of Nestor Makhno and Mennonite colonists in southern Ukraine came into conflict. In autumn 1919, Makhnovist troops and local peasant sympathizers murdered more than eight hundred Mennonites. In this presentation, the origins of the 1919 tragic events are investigated and a reinterpretation of Nestor Makhno and his movement is offered by examining narratives of justice, vengeance, and violence found in Mennonite and Makhnovist sources.

Sean Patterson is a PhD student in history at the University of Alberta. He graduated from the University of Manitoba and University of Winnipeg’s joint masters program, where he was awarded the W.L. Morton Gold Medal for outstanding research. Patterson’s current research, which is being funded by a Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship, explores historical memory in Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region across the twentieth century.