was overthrown by the Directorate and the Ukrainian People's Republic was reestablished, while the region of Pryazovia quickly fell under the control of the Makhnovshchina. On 27 November, the Makhnovshchina's capital of Huliaipole was definitively retaken by the insurgents, who reestablished the local Soviet and reorganized the town's trade unions. Before long the Makhnovshchina's territory had expanded as far west as Katerynoslav, as far north as Pavlohrad, as far east as Yuzivka and as far south as the Sea of Azov. Free soviet power (November 1918 – June 1919) The end of the imperial occupation and the fall of the Ukrainian State allowed the Makhnovshchina to shift its emphasis from military campaigns towards political concerns, transforming the movement "from a destructive peasant uprising to a social revolutionary movement". In order to restart the construction of a libertarian communist society, the Makhnovists convened a Regional Congress of Peasants, Workers and Insurgents, which would act as the supreme authority of the Makhnovshchina. The Congress declared its intention to create "a society without ruling landowners, without subordinate slaves, without rich or poor", and called on workers and peasants to begin building this society themselves, "without tyrannical decrees and orders, and in defiance of tyrants and oppressors throughout the world." Under the direction of the democratically elected Military Revolutionary Council (VRS), the Makhnovshchina began to establish a new system of education, redistributed land and set up a number of agricultural cooperatives. The Ukrainian Soviet Army commander Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko reported that the Makhnovists had established a number of schools, hospitals and "children's communes", which had transformed Huliaipole into "one of the most cultured centres of Novorossiya." The VRS also instituted adult educational programs and extended a number of civil liberties to the population, including freedom of speech, press and association, even allowing the Bolsheviks to agitate amongst the local populace. During this period, the peasants of the Makhnovshchina implemented a system of common ownership where "land belongs to no one, and only those who work it may use it." The largest of the peasant communes was one named after the Polish communist Rosa Luxemburg, which, in May 1919, counted 285 members and 125 hectares of land. While in the Ukrainian Soviet capital of Kharkiv, the insurgent commander Viktor Bilash met with the Nabat and requested they begin producing anarchist propaganda for the Makhnovshchina, securing the passage of numerous Russian anarchist intellectuals to Ukraine, including Peter