[Director] “Mukola (Nikolai) Kaptan sees the main character of his film like this:
“Movies of the totalitarian era fulfilled not only a ‘sozc-zakaz’ [social orders], but also a very mighty ideological function. But for “ideologies” Makhno is a very inconvenient person…
I personally see Makhno’s anarchism as the “theory of minor [local] motherland.” In it, the main value for a human being is the fact that he lives in his native village, his native home, he has close friends that he sees on a regular basis, and noone must order them around, tell them when to sow, to whom and what to sell. For such a huge and mighty State as the USSR, such a position was highly dangerous, therefore in the old movies they found an ideal move — ridicule Makhno, make a characature out of his personality and with this to simplify, to level the main idea for which Makhno gave his life.
But our Makhno strives to be free. Free from State, from money-drive social relations, from the [pre-industrial] natural environment… [??, abcc]”
Source: Libcom forums