Nevertheless, the Russian language had a notable prevalence in left-bank Ukraine. Since the 1905 Revolution, the Ukrainian anarchist movement's publications had largely been in the Russian language, and the predominance of the Russian language in anarchist literature continued following the emigration of Russian anarchists to the territory of the Makhnovshchina. But driven by a small number of Ukrainian intellectuals, led by Halyna Kuzmenko, the Makhnovshchina increasingly started to use the Ukrainian language in both its propaganda and educational activities, leading to a notable Ukrainization of the Makhnovist movement. In late 1919, the Makhnovists began to publish a Ukrainian language edition of The Road to Freedom () in Katerynoslav, and set up a new publication called Anarchist Rebel () in Poltava. But this would prove to be the extent of the Makhnovist movement's Ukrainian language publications, as they still lacked editors and proofreaders that were competent in the written Ukrainian language, and sometimes had no access to printing presses that carried the Ukrainian alphabet.
