History of the Cossacks
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The History of the Cossacks spans several centuries.
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[edit] Early Cossack history
The origins of the first Cossacks are uncertain. The traditional historiography dates the emergence of Cossacks back to the 14-15th centuries. The non-mainstream researchers ascribe their earlier existence to as the early as the tenth century[1] specifically mentioning 948 as the year when the inhabitants of the Steppe under the leader named Kasak or Kazak routed the Khazars from the area of modern Kuban and organized a state called Kazakia or Cossackia.
Most historians agree that the Cossacks people where of mixed ethnic origins: the people descended from Turks, Tatars, Russians, Ukrainians and others who settled or passed through the vas Steppe that stretches from Asia to southern Europe.[2]
After 1400s Cossacks as an established and identifiable group emerged in all historical accounts. Rulers of Muscovite Russia and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth have employed the Cossacks as the mobile guards against the Tatar raids from the sourth in the territories of the present-day south-western Russia and southern Ukraine. Those early Cossacks seemed to have included a significant number of Tatar descendents judging from the records of their names. From mid-15th century the Cossacks are mosrtly mentioned with Russian and Ukrainian names.[3]
In all historical records of that period Cossack society was described as a loose federation of independent communities, often merging into larger units of a military character, entirely separate from, and mostly independent of, other nations (such Poland, Russia or Tatars).
In the 16th century these Cossack societies created two relatively independent territorial organisations:
- Zaporizhia (Zaporozhie), on the lower bends of the river Dnieper, between Russia, Poland and the Tatars of the Crimea, with the center, Zaporizhian Sich;
- The Don Cossack State, on the river Don, separating the then weak Russian State from the Mongol and Tatar tribes, vassals of Ottoman Empire.
[edit] Cossacks in Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
Numerous historical documents of that period contain refer to the Cossacks as sovereign nations with a unique warrior culture, for which raids and pillaging conducted against their neighbours were important sources of income. They were renowned for their attacks on the Ottoman Empire and its vassals (like the Tatars), although they did not shy from pillaging other neighbouring communities. Their actions increased the tension at the southern border of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Kresy), which resulted in almost constant low-level warfare in those territories for almost the entire existence of the Commonwealth.
In 1539 Czar Vasili The Third asked the Ottoman Sultan to curb the Cossacks and the Sultan replied: "The Cossacks do not swear allegiance to me, and they live as they themselves please." In 1549 the famous Tsar of Russia, Ivan the Terrible, replied to a request of the Turkish Sultan to stop the aggressive actions of the Don Cossacks, stating, "The Cossacks of the Don are not my subjects, and they go to war or live in peace without my knowledge." Similar exchanges passed between Russia, Ottomans and the Commonwealth, each of which often tried to use the Cossacks' warmongering for its own purposes. The Cossacks for their part were mostly happy to plunder everybody more or less equally, although in the 16th century, with Commonwealth dominance extending south, the Zaporoijan Cossacks were mostly, if tentatively, regarded as subjects of the Commonwealth.
The Cossacks' numbers expanded with peasantry immigration from Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Szlachta attempts to turn Zaporozhian Cossacks into serfs eroded the Cossacks' formerly quite strong loyalty towards the Commonwealth. The Cossack attempts to be recognized as equal to the szlachta were constantly rebuffed and plans for transforming the Two-Nations Commonwealth (Polish-Lithuanian) into Three Nations (with Cossacks/Ruthenian people) were limited to a small minority of forward-thinking men, although the Zaporozhian Host was formally recognized as a nation in 1649. Dissipating loyalty and the arrogance of many from the szlachta in treating proud Cossacks as peasants resulted in several uprisings against the Commonwealth in the early 17th century. The largest of them was the Chmielnicki Uprising, which together with The Deluge is considered to be one of the events which brought an end to the Golden Age of the Commonwealth. This uprising freed Cossacks from the Commonwealth sphere of influence, only to make them subject to the Russian Empire under the Treaty of Pereyaslav (1654), and established their realm as Left-bank Ukraine in 1667 under the Treaty of Andrusovo, and the Eternal Peace Treaty of 1686.
[edit] Ukraine and Muscovy
After this point, the Cossack nation of the Zaporozhian Host was divided into two semiautonomous republics of Muscovy: the Hetmanate on the Dnieper's left bank, and the more independent Zaporozhia to the south. A Cossack organization was also established in the Muscovite colony of Sloboda Ukraine.
These organizations gradually lost their independence, and were abolished by Catherine II by the late 18th century. The Hetmanate became the governorship of Little Russia, and Sloboda Ukraine the Kharkiv province. After having its capital, the Sich as well as Baturyn, destroyed and relocated more than once, Zaporozhia was absorbed into New Russia.
The Cossacks that wanted to continue their lifestyle moved to the Kuban, where they live to date (see Kuban Cossacks)
[edit] Cossacks in Imperial Russia
This section derives originally from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
In the Russian Empire the Cossacks constituted 11 separate Cossack voiskos, settled along the frontiers: the Don Cossacks, Kuban Cossacks, Terek Cossacks, Astrakhan Cossacks, Ural Cossacks, Orenburg Cossacks, Siberian Cossacks, Semiryechensk Cossacks, Baikal Cossacks, Amur Cossacks, and Ussuri Cossacks. Also, there was a small number of the Cossacks in Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk, who would form the Yenisey Cossack Host and Irkutsk Cossack regiment of the Ministry of the Interior in 1917. The stanitsa, or village formed the primary unit of this organization. Each stanitsa held its land as a commune, and might allow non-Cossacks (excepting Jews) to settle on this land for payment of a certain rent. The assembly of all householders in villages of less than 30 households, and of 30 elected men in villages having from 30 to 300 households (one from each 10 households in the more populous ones), constituted the village assembly. This assembly resembled the mir, but had wider attributes: it assessed the taxes, divided the land, took measures for the opening and support of schools, village grain-stores, communal cultivation, and so on, and elected its ataman (leader) and its judges, who settled all disputes up to an amount that the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica gives as "£10" (or above that sum with the consent of both sides).
All Cossack males had to perform military service for 20 years, beginning at the age of 18. They spent their first three years in the preliminary division, the next 12 in active service, and the last five years in the reserve. Every Cossack had to procure his own uniform, equipment and horse (if mounted), the government supplying only the arms.
Cossacks on active service were divided into three equal parts according to age, and only the first third (approximately age 18-26) normally performed active service, while the rest effectively functioned as reserves, based at home but bound to march out at short notice. The officers came from the military schools, in which all Cossack voiskos had their own vacancies, or were non-commissioned Cossack officers, with officers' grades. In return for this service the Cossacks received from the state considerable grants of land for each voisko separately.
In 1893 the Cossacks had a total population of 2,648,049 (including 1,331,470 women), and they owned nearly 146,500,000 acres (593,000 km²) of land, including 105,000,000 acres (425,000 km²) of arable land and 9,400,000 acres (38,000 km²) under forests. Each stanitsa controlled a share of the land, divided up at the rate of 81 acres (328,000 m²) per each soul, with special grants to officers (personal to some of them, in lieu of pensions), and leaving about one-third of the land as a reserve for the future. The income which the Cossack voiskos received from the lands (which they rented to different persons), also from various sources (trade patents, rents of shops, fisheries, permits for gold-digging, etc.), as also from the subsidies they received from the government (about £712,500 in 1893), went to cover all the expenses of state and local administration. They had, besides, a special reserve capital of about £2,600,000. Village taxes covered the expenditure of the village administration. Each voisko had a separate general administration, and administrative structures differed within the different voiskos. The central administration, at the Ministry of War, comprising representatives of each voisko, discussed the proposals of all new laws affecting the Cossacks.
In time of war the ten Cossack voiskos had to supply 890 mounted sotnias or squadrons (of 125 men each), 108 infantry sotnias or companies (also 125 men each), and 236 guns, representing 4267 officers and 177,100 men, with 170,695 horses. In time of peace they kept 314 squadrons, 54 infantry sotnias, and 20 batteries containing 108 guns (2574 officers, 60,532 men, 50,054 horses). Altogether, on the eve of World War I the Cossacks had 328,705 men ready to take up arms.
As a rule, popular education amongst the Cossacks stood at a higher level than in the remainder of Imperial Russia. They had more schools and a greater proportion of their children went to school. In addition to agriculture, which (with the exception of the Ussuri Cossacks) sufficed to supply their needs and usually to leave a certain surplus, they carried on extensive cattle and horse breeding, vine culture in the Caucasus, fishing on the Don, the Ural, and the Caspian Sea, hunting, beekeeping, etc. The Cossacks mostly rented out rights to extract coal, gold and other minerals found on their territories to strangers, who also owned most factories.
The Tsarist authorities also introduced a military organization similar to that of the Cossacks into certain non-Cossack districts, which supplied a number of mounted infantry sotnias ("hundreds"). Their peace-footing on the eve of World War I comprised:
- Daghestan, six regular squadrons and three of militia.
- Kuban Circassians, one sotnia.
- Terek, eight sotnias.
- Kars, three sotnias.
- Batum, two infantry and one mounted sotnia.
- Turkomans, three sotnias.
In total, 25 squadrons and 2 companies.
[edit] The Russian Revolution and Cossacks
[edit] Cossacks in World War II
When the war broke out the Cossacks found themselves on both sides of the conflict. Most fought for the Soviet Union; however, some chose to settle old scores by collaborating with the Germans, especially after the Soviet Union's initial series of defeats, including the loss of much of the army of Ivan Kononov, a former Soviet major who defected to the Germans on the first day of war with some of his 436th regiment, and served around the German-occupied city of Mogilev, guarding lines of communications against Soviet partisans.
In the summer of 1942 the German armies entered territories inhabited by the Cossacks. There in the open steppe resistance was futile, but nevertheless many, despite their hatred of Communism, refused to collaborate with the invaders of their country. Whilst collaboration was inevitable, most of the leaders were former Tsarist officers who wanted to avenge their defeat by the Communists. On some occasions relatives separated by the Russian Civil War met each other again on different sides of the conflict and killed ruthlessly.
During the Battle of Stalingrad Cossacks were able to fully justify their reincarnation in 1936. Attacks, some led by the legendary Semyon Budenny, were able to keep the Germans from entering the Caucausus, where particularly the Terek and the Kuban Cossacks were able to prevent the Germans from taking the mountains.
Failing to overcome the Cossacks by their useless propaganda about an independent Cossack state, the Germans turned their attention to the indigenous mountain dwellers of the Caucasus. This violent ethnic instability was ended only when the Soviet Union deported entire populations of Karachevs, Balkars, Ingush and Chechens and the Cossacks were once again able to live in their native land.
From 1943 the Cossacks were kept mostly in the southern part of the front, where their use in reconnaisance and logistics proved invaluable. Many went on through Romania and into the Balkans during the final stages of the war.
For the collaborators their options were thin. It should be pointed out that most of the collaborators, who some say numbered over 250,000 (although more realistic current figures claim the true number was not even a third of that) were the Don Cossacks, who, formerly the largest and strongest host, suffered the worst under Soviet collectivization policies. Kuban and Terek Cossacks, on the other hand, fought almost exclusively for the Red Army, and even in most desperate situations their heroism was evident. Being the largest Red Army Cossack host, the Kuban Cossacks in 1945 triumphantly marched on Red Square in the famous Victory Parade.
Many of the collaborators fled the Soviet advance (often chased by Soviet Cossacks) but under Soviet-Allied agreements thousands of them were handed back to the USSR. Surprisingly, following the death of Stalin, large numbers of the repatriated were allowed to return to their native lands, under a promise of secrecy. Only after 1991, with the collapse of the Communist regime in the USSR, could they openly mourn the lost members of their communities.
The division of the Cossacks in the Russian Civil War and the Second World War continues to be a controversial issue today.
[edit] Cossacks in Russia today
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Vasili Glazkov (Wasili Glaskow), History of the Cossacks, p. 3, Robert Speller & Sons, New York, ISBN 0831500352
- ^ Samuel J Newland, Cossacks in the German Army, 1941-1945, Routledge, 1991, ISBN 0714633518
- ^ Philip Longworth, The Cossacks, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970, ISBN 0030818559
