It takes an anarchist to know one. And it took Norman Nawrocki, Montreal playwright, musician, novelist and anarcho-artist-activist to create MARUSYA NIKIFOROVA: Ukraine’s legendary anarchist warrior. First mounted in 2023, at the 16th annual Montreal International Anarchist Theatre Festival, the one-act, 30-minute play is screening on YouTube until March 8, International Women’s Day, as a fundraiser for the Ukrainian resistance – feminists, environmentalists, anarchists and activists, working on the frontlines against Russian invaders and occupiers.

You can take in the teleplay on Nawrocki’s YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/Lv05Vd9n1iY and watch for the prompts in the show credits to donate to the Ukrainian resistance group Solidarity Collectives.

Maria Hryhorivna Nikiforova (1885–1919), better known as Marusya, was born in Oleksandrivsk — present-day Zaporizhzhia — a strategic location on the banks of the Dnieper River. Maryusa’s father had fought as an officer in the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878. After leaving home at 16, the androgenous teenager (actually intersex) found whatever work she could to support herself and wound up on a factory floor washing bottles in a vodka distillery. Taking up with a communist anarchist group, Maryusa engaged in terrorist acts against the Russian empire, including bombing, expropriation of property and armed robbery.

Imprisoned in 1908, she served time in exile in Siberia, incited a prison riot and once released, joined the international anarchist movement, saw action with anarchists in Spain, enlisted with the French Foreign Legion and fought on the Macedonian front against the Russian empire.

The outbreak of the 1917 Russian revolution forced Nikiforova back to Oleksandrivsk (Aleksandrovsk), where she took up active combat against the Bolsheviks, collaborating with other anarchist/soldiers to form the Ukrainian Peoples Republic of Soviets. She stole from the rich to support the poor, led armed militia into battle and was a chief resistor of and terrorist toward the Bolsheviks and later the White army. Nikiforova even accepted a mission to assassinate Alexander Kolchak, Supreme Ruler of Russia.

Maryusa’s heroic, ceaseless fight to defend Ukrainians against the Russian state stands as profound inspiration for the Ukrainian armed forces and the brave civilian resisters acting against the ongoing Russian assault on their country.

She and her Polish anarchist husband Witold Brzostek were arrested on August 11, 1919 in Crimea, where they had planned to assassinate the White army’s commander-in-chief Anton Denikin. Court-martialed and sentenced to execution by firing squad, they were both shot to death, Nikiforova first having tearfully bid her husband good-bye.

Nawrocki, himself of Ukrainian-Polish descent, has created a stirring, succinct, one-hander, employing an overhead voice as narrator and projections of archival photos to set the scene. His star, Ukrainian actor Mariya Hadubyak, a Montrealer since her immigration to Canada in 2022, performs with the Ukrainian troupe Sozhary. She gives life and soul to Maryusa under Nawrocki’s spirited direction. Vancouver-based musician and composer Vivian Nawrocki (Nawrocki’s sister) created the soundtrack. Producer Babushka Theatre is a Montreal theatre laboratory dedicated to the staging of Ukrainian-Canadian[1]Polish plays.

The YouTube run ends March 8; time enough to show our solidarity with the Ukrainian resistance.

MARUSYA NIKIFOROVA: Ukraine’s legendary anarchist warrior

Written and directed by Norman Nawrocki

Performed by Mariya Hadubyak

Soundtrack by Vivian Nawrocki

Produced by Babushka Theatre

Screening on YouTube until March 8 at https://youtu.be/Lv05Vd9n1iY

For more information about the Ukrainian resistance, go to https://www.solidaritycollectives.org/en/main-page-english

Photo: Mariya Hadubyak as Maryusa Nikiforova in Paris, 1912-13, where she met with international anarchists and Russian exiles.