turning back around and leading an attack against the General Command of the Armed Forces of South Russia. After the Battle of Peregonovka, the tide turned against the Whites as the Makhnovists pushed them back into Katerynoslav, which was brought back under the control of the Makhnovshchina on 11 November 1919. Apex (October 1919 – January 1920) The Makhnovist advance brought with it a second period of reconstruction, during which a system of libertarian socialism was once again implemented throughout the territory of the Makhnovshchina, with all enterprises being directly transferred to workers' control. Wherever the insurgents captured, the locals were invited to elect their own trade union delegates and Soviets, which would then convoke a regional congress that would form the decision-making body for the region. Regional workers' conferences were subsequently held in Oleksandrivsk between 27 October and 2 November, bringing together 180 peasant delegates, 20 worker delegates and 100 delegates from left-wing political organizations and insurgent units. Volin, the chair of the congress, proposed that they adopt the anarchist thesis of establishing "free soviets", outside of political party control, throughout the Makhnovist territory. This proposal was objected to by 11 delegates from the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionary Party, who still desired the reestablishment of the Constituent Assembly and walked out of the congress. Further objections were made by a Bolshevik delegate, who rejected calls for anarchy. By December 1919, the Makhnovshchina was struck by an outbreak of epidemic typhus, which incapacitated the Makhnovist forces, allowing the White movement to briefly recapture Katerynoslav and the Red Army to invade the region. Red Terror (January–October 1920) By the end of January 1920, the territory of the Makhnovshchina had been overrun by the Red Army. The Cheka set about disarming the local populace, taking villagers hostage while their troops set about searching homes, killing the hostages if they found any unreported weaponry. Petro Grigorenko would later state that "there was no end of bloodshed", drawing attention to reports of one massacre in the Makhnovist town of Novospasivka, where the Cheka had "shot down one in every two able-bodied men". In what Alexandre Skirda described as an act of "outright genocide", an estimated 200,000 Ukrainian peasants were killed during the Red Terror. The Bolshevik government implemented war communism in Ukraine, introducing a strict system of rationing and food requisitioning, which confiscated agricultural produce and livestock from the peasantry, and even forbade them