Maria Nikiforova

"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."

"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."

"Don't think badly of me.–M. 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."

"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."

"She is simply a bandit operating under the flag of Soviet power."

"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."