This book is about the tragic events of the civil war - about the speeches of the peasants of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, who fought for the power of free local councils, against mobilization, surplus appropriation, and requisitions. For more than seventy years of Soviet power, their leaders - the Cossack atamans - were called bandits, robbers and pogromists, kulak degenerates. But without ideology, without conscience, tens of thousands of peasant boys would not have followed the bandits voluntarily to die. What were they really like - civilian atamans?