“One of Our Own among Strangers and a Stranger among Our Own”: The Surprising Destiny of General of the Yugoslav People’s Liberation Army Fedor Makhin

1 The research was conducted within the framework of the Fundamental Research Program of the National Research University Higher School of Economics.This article is devoted to the remarkable fate of the Russian officer and Yugoslav general Fyodor Makhin. He was born in the family of an Orenburg Cossack exiled to penal servitude, later returned home, managed to get a brilliant education, including graduating from Nicholas military Academy, participated in the First World War, and in 1918 was embedded in the Red Army as a secret agent of the Socialist Revolutionary Party and became commander of the 2nd Soviet Army on the Eastern Front. In the summer of 1918, while carrying out a secret mission, he surrendered Ufa to the anti-Bolshevik forces, went over to their side, and then became one of the military leaders of the People’s Army of the Committee of Members of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly. Later, without recognizing the military coup in Omsk, as a result of which Admiral Alexander Kolchak came to power in the anti-Bolshevik camp, Makhin at the end of 1918 took part in a conspiracy of Socialist Revolutionaries and adherents of the Bashkir national movement against Kolchak and his supporter Orenburg Cossack chieftain Alexander Dutov, but the conspiracy was revealedy. Makhin was sent abroad. After that, he continued his work as a Socialist-Revolutionary activist. In particular, he supported the rebellious sailors in Kronstadt in 1921. Later, he lived in Prague and Belgrade, focusing on working for Zemgor (United Committee of the Zemstvo and City Unions), which helped Russian emigrants. In the early 1930s, Makhin was recruited by Soviet intelligence as a secret agent. By the same period, he was actively supporting the USSR in the event of a possible war (despite the fact that many military emigrants, on the contrary, were waiting for a new war, as a result of which they hoped external enemies would eliminate the communist regime). Makhin later joined the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. During the Second World War, he participated in the resistance. He joined the partisans of Iosip Broz Tito and became one of his close associates, receiving the rank of lieutenant General of the People’s Liberation Army of Yugoslavia. In 1944, a quarter of a century after he left his homeland, Makhin visited the USSR with the Yugoslav delegation. At the end of his military career in Yugoslavia, he served as a head of the Yugoslav Military Archives. Makhin passed away in June 1945, shortly after the victory of the Red Army in the Great Patriotic War and was considered one of the Yugoslav heroes. However, due to political changes, his name was forgotten.