Olena Makhno

Elena Nestorovna Mikhnenko was the daughter of the Ukrainian anarchist revolutionaries Nestor Makhno and Halyna Kuzmenko. Born in exile, she spent her early life in France, where she was living at the outbreak of World War II. Following the occupation of France, Mikhnenko was captured and conscripted into forced labour in Nazi Germany. She was subsequently arrested by Soviet state security, which first imprisoned her for "anti-Soviet agitation" and then exiled her to the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. She lived and worked in Kazakhstan for the rest of her life.