the province, but his efforts were blocked by the Provisional Government. However, the Kornilov affair had resulted in the Provisional Government losing its control over Katerynoslav and the Makhnovists becoming the dominant force in the region. They subsequently resolved to implement land reform directly, without waiting for the Provisional Government's consent. On , the Huliaipole Congress of Soviets announced that it would be confiscating all land owned by the nobility and bringing it under common ownership, leading many landlords to flee the region. Attempts to bring the region back under the control of the Provisional Government met with resistance, both from the armed anarchist detachments led by Maria Nikiforova and from a series of strike actions by sympathetic industrial workers. On 7 November 1917, the Central Council declared the autonomy of Ukraine, which brought Katerynoslav back within its borders. Although the Central Council safely controlled right-bank, its new territorial claims in the left-bank were met with indifference from the more ethnically mixed population. By December 1917, Eastern Ukraine had come under Soviet influence, with the First All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets establishing the Ukrainian People's Republic of Soviets in Kharkiv. Unable to reconcile their differences, a civil war soon broke out between the forces of the People's Republic and the new Soviet Republic. Before the outbreak of the October Revolution, the Makhnovists had already established "soviet power" in Katerynoslav, implementing initiatives of workers' control and self-management. So when the Bolsheviks seized power under the slogan of "all power to the soviets", the Ukrainian anarchists initially supported it, while remaining critical of political and economic centralisation. As the Makhnovists desired to bring the region under Soviet power, they declared themselves against the new Ukrainian nation state, establishing armed detachments to combat both the forces of the Ukrainian People's Army and the Don Cossacks. An anarchist detachment led by Savelii Makhno aided in the capture of Oleksandrivsk and the reestablishment of Soviet power in the city. By January 1918, Southern Ukraine had largely come under the control of the Soviet Republic, which established revolutionary committees as its local organs of power. In Huliaipole, the local revolutionary committee included members of the Ukrainian Socialist-Revolutionary Party and the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, alongside the anarchists. The rapid capture of territory by the Soviet Republic culminated on 8 February 1918, when the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv was captured by Mikhail Muravyov's Red Guards. War of independence (February–November 1918)