The main movie antagonists were agrarian anarchists, some may argue they were Ukrainian nationalists as well. While the Red Army image is idealized and softened there, the image of their opponents is significantly softened too, it's a comedy after all. If you read, for instance, Mikhail Bulgakov's (the same guy who wrote "Master and Margarita") "The White Guard" it has some pretty unappetizing details of what those did, Bulgakov knew how it was, being in Ukraine during the Russian Civil War. They also fought both sides, sometimes allied with one or another, in the aforementioned book Ukrainian nationalists, mostly upraised peasants, fight the White Army, i.e. the counter-revolutionary army, which held Kiev and at the end it's briefly described how they were forced to leave Kiev by the Red Army. A lot of anarchists of those times were actual bandits or at least shady guys, though those mostly were city anarchists. Consider Popandopulo, that funny guy who sings an amusing song how he met a pretty girl in pink stockings on the sea sand, how they parted and later she kisses another and "bites" him, if you know the Russian 20th century folk music you recognize the genre which later got known as "Russian chanson" or criminal music at once (some of those songs are actually funny and sometimes even cute), probably you recognize it even if you don't know the Russian music, since it's said that he and Marusya parted because he had to flee from cops. Also consider this song from another Soviet movie of 60ss, "The optimistic tragedy" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDu_0bza1aw note how glad the female commissar is to meet them :3), this time it's those anarchists who served the Red Army, the song ("...let we have vodka, and a throat to drink it, and we don't care of anything, let we have a jacket with a brunette inside...") isn't fully authentic but it's likely based on some authentic material and nowadays is often sung as a part of "The fried chicken" which is a real anarchist song of that time (it's about how some guy is getting arrested). Speaking of the agrarian anarchists, a few of those were peasants who disliked that they were forced to give away their bread, mostly by the Red Army (before you begin to blame the Red Army, they tried to stop the looming hunger in the main cities, also the notorious Ukraine famine "holodomor" was 10 years later and is a result of collectivization, it's a different matter whatsoever). It didn't stop those peasants from hanging Jews by their genitalia (pardon) and stuff though. It's a tragic matter by itself too, one Soviet poet, Eduard Bagritsky, wrote a surprisingly, for that time, sympathetic poem "The lay of Opanas" about one Ukrainian peasant who fled from one such Red food gathering command hoping to become a farmhand, but was caught by Makhno (a known peasant anarchist leader) and forced to join his band, later forced to execute his former Jewish commander (he tried to save him, but he refused to flee seeing no chance to succeed) and when he was eventually captured he basically committed a suicide by telling the Reds how he shot that Jew guy and was executed too. But it's better don't to watch the movie through that kind of glass, it's just a comedy...
Review of Wedding in Malinovka
