Free Territory

High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Free Territory (Ukrainian: Vіl'na teritorіya, vilna teritoriia), Russian: svobodnaya territoriya, svobodnaya territoriya; or Makhnovia (Mahnovschina, Makhnovshchina) (January 1918 - 1921) was a territory of operation by free soviets and libertarian communes under the protection of the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Nestor Makhno where an attempt was made to form a stateless anarchistsociety in part of the territory of modern Ukraine during the Ukrainian Revolution. The area of the Free Territory was inhabited by roughly seven million people. After the fall of the Hetman regime in the Ukrainian State the territory was occupied by the Russian forces of Anton Denikin, forming a temporary government of Southern Russia. By 1920 Denikin's forces were eliminated from the territory by the Red Army in cooperation with forces of Nestor Makhno whose units were conducting a guerrilla warfare behind the enemy lines.