Machno needed 5 million cartridges. He had then about 50,000 men. According to Riefkin, the leader of the maximalists, even 70,000 men. They sent him only half a million cartridges, and instead of 5,000 rifles, only 300. They prolonged the negotiations, in order to gain time, and thereby 3 to 4 days were lost. In the meantime Denekin kept advancing. Machno had no munitions and had to retreat under terrible losses. Through the pressure the Red Army also was compelled to draw back. Machno's war committee wished to call a peasant conference, in order that they might take counsel in the situation. Even the second conference in Gulai-Pole was dissolved by the bolsheviks. One must not think that there were unified, distinctly marked fronts, but one front ran into the other. Thus it came that a part of the riding messengers, who were to announce the conference to the peasants in the villages, were picked up and arrested in the region where the Red Army had a firm footing. The conference thus came to naught, and seven of these messengers were shot in Charkov as members of the revolutionary war committee.
Trotzky was in Charkov and spoke on April 29, 1919 in a meeting against Machno. He called Machno a bandit and a robber and said that it would be better if the white guards took possession of Ukraine than to have it in the hands of Machno. For when the whites have come back, the peasants will call the bolsheviks back. But if Machno remains in power, then the middle peasants will retain the upper hand.
On the ground of these theories the bolsheviks decided to open the front at Josufka. At this place the Red Army was directly facing Denekin. The result was that Denekin's armies attacked Machno' in the back. Machno, without munitions, attacked in the front as well as from the rear, had to retreat, but was completely defeated and lost the largest part of his army. With a few thousand men he succeeded in saving himself by fleeing. He retreated to the Dnieper region in the Southwest.
But on this account the Red Army was also forced to retreat, and Denekin advanced still further. He took Charkov, penetrated into Central Russia, took Kursk and Orel, and even got as far as Tula.
The bolsheviks said that Machno had committed treason and they declared him outlawed. He was placed outside the law. His brother was discovered in a hospital, was taken for Machno and murdered. Machno', who was accused of treason against the Red Army, should have thus acted to the advantage of Denekin!
These were the hardest days, not so much for Machno as for the Red Army. The peasants again gathered around him. Gulai-Pole and the capitals Jekaterinoslav, Mariopol and Poltava fell into Machno's hands.
This was in the late summer and the fall of 1919. Machno became a danger to Denekin. Denekin's main army stood already in Russia; his rear guard was still in Ukraine. Machno cut the rear guard off from the main army and bound Denekin's transports of munitions and provisions up tightly in the South. Denekin was thus forced to retreat and the Red Army took to the offensive. Most experts and participants in these struggles were of the firm conviction that Denekin then would have come to Moscow had Machno not frustrated his plans.
Through this decisive blow in a critical situation Machno again found favor with the bolsheviks. The sentence hanging over his head was revoked, and he was no longer labeled a ''counterrevolutionary."
While the Red Army was pressed back by Denekin's victorious army, a new, reactionary czarist general made his appearance in Ukraine: Grigorjev. He fought against the bolsheviks and promised the peasants freedom and the soviet system, and he succeeded in gathering quite a large following.
Machno desired to know whose spiritual child Grigorjev was. He began negotiating with him. At one of these negotiations Machno killed him after he had learnt that Grigorjev was a reactionary. This also was counted in his favor by the bolsheviks.