Cossacks as a class. Are the Cossacks a separate people? Decossackization during the Russian Empire

It’s good that the media publishes materials on Cossack topics. It’s bad that sometimes you have to deal with ignorance and lack of knowledge of the topic. Moreover, sometimes Cossack folklore is presented as historical truth.

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I remember a case where once, at the celebration of Stavropol Day, one of the artists, playing the role of Peter I, uttered the phrase: “Cossacks, I give you freedom.” But historians are well aware that it was Peter I who executed several thousand Cossacks after the Bulavin uprising. Many, including Nekrasov Cossacks, fled from Russia. He also abolished the election of military atamans, etc. A number of information messages incorrectly interpret the traditions of Cossack self-government, military service, and questions about classifying Cossacks as class. On the pages of the newspaper I would like to acquaint readers, at least briefly, with some issues that relate to the Cossacks.

January 24, 2009, as you know, marked 90 years since the adoption by the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of the circular letter “On the attitude towards the Cossacks.” The minutes of the meeting do not indicate the names of those present. There is no original document left. Only the Central Party Archives of the former Institute of Marxism-Leninism preserved a copy of the document. In all likelihood, the one who drew up and accepted this ominous document was afraid of the curses of his descendants.

The flywheel of local repression was spun up in such a way that it could not be stopped completely for many decades. Until now, it is unlikely that anyone will indicate the exact number of Cossacks destroyed, evicted, or starved to death.

Almost twenty years have passed since the time when the Cossacks reasserted themselves, and public organizations began to be created to revive them. During this time, many scientific articles, textbooks, and monographs were written, which examined the issues of the Cossacks from various points of view, sometimes directly mutually exclusive. The most pressing topic was whether the Cossacks were a people or a class. Of course, this topic is complex and requires a scientific approach.

In a newspaper article it is hardly possible to fully disclose the issue of the Cossacks as a cultural and ethnic community - a people. We will try to briefly dwell on just some archival and historical materials in order to use them to understand what we are talking about and express our personal judgment.

In 1807, E. Zyablovsky’s book “The Newest Geography of the Russian Empire” was published, which was published for Moscow State University. It lists the Slavic peoples of Russia. These are “Russians, Cossacks, who are the Slavic peoples, who are the Don, Greben, Terek, Volga, Orenburg, Siberian, Little Russian, Bug and Black Sea peoples, Poles, and other Slavic peoples.”

In the textbook “Russian History” by Ustryalov, ed. 1845, it is said: “The Cossack people arose from the fusion of people of different tribes who were looking for unbridled will; it included: the remnants of the ancient Polovtsians, Circassians who migrated from the Caucasus, Russian daredevils for whom the laws were burdensome, fugitive Poles, Moldavians, Tatars, did not tolerate the autocracy of the khans. A wonderful mixture of tribes was reflected in the features of the Cossacks, their language, and their very way of life. Their faces still express something Asian. Their language consists of Russian, Tatar, Polish, etc. words... Their fearlessness is reminiscent of the children of the Caucasus.”

A very interesting interpretation of the word “Cossack” was given by the famous Don historian of the early twentieth century, E. P. Savelyev. In his famous work “History of the Cossacks” for 1915-1916. he noted: “The Cossacks of previous centuries, oddly enough, did not consider themselves Russians, that is, Great Russians or Muscovites: in turn, both the residents of the Moscow regions, and the government itself, looked at the Cossacks as a special nationality, albeit related with them in language and faith." It is no coincidence that until the 18th century, Russian tsars communicated with the Don Cossacks through the Ambassadorial Prikaz (read - Ministry of Foreign Affairs - P.F.).

The great Russian writer L.N. Tolstoy, having lived for some time in the Terek village of Novogladkovskaya, noted in his story “Cossacks” a significant difference between the Cossacks and the Russian people. He wrote: “Living among the Chechens, the Cossacks became related to them and adopted their customs, way of life and morals of the highlanders... Even to this day, Cossack clans are considered kinship with the Chechens... The influence of Russia is expressed (for a Cossack - P.F.) only with disadvantageous side: constraint in elections (meaning atamans and governing bodies. - P.F.), removal of bells and troops that stand and pass there... The Cossack, by instinct, hates the horseman-mountainer who killed his brother less than the soldier, who stands with him to protect his village, but who lit up his hut with tobacco. He respects the enemy mountaineer, but despises the soldier who is alien to him and the oppressor.”

In the Russian language, the word “Cossack” was used for some time as a “homeless person”, “tramp”, or in the narrow sense - “a lonely free person who does not have his own shelter and homeland” (read - homeless - P.F.). How many crimes had to be committed in order to form a people who immediately declared themselves with numerous positive qualities?! It is impossible to imagine that somewhere by chance a huge mass of people would meet, seeing each other for the first time, conspiring to flee to some unknown land to live as gangs of thieves and vagabonds. Having appeared on the Don, these “fugitive people” suddenly unexpectedly managed to show their intelligence, ingenuity, create a fair society governed by the people themselves, and become not only defenders of their territory, but conquerors and guardians of new unexplored lands. Using the example of the Russian state, one can see what an invaluable contribution the Cossacks made not only to its stabilization, but also to the expansion of borders, which to this day remain the largest in the whole world. So the debate about the true meaning of the word “Cossack” and the time of its appearance in the Russian language, the time of the appearance of the Cossacks, can be continued indefinitely.

For a significant part of its existence, the Cossacks struggled with the steppe. Many centuries passed before it took the path of unification. The organization of large communities and the emergence of permanent settlements should be attributed to this time. Living conditions required protection and self-defense of the outskirts of their settlements.

Zaporozhye and Don Cossacks created the most original and unique forms of Cossack life and way of life. The structure of the internal life and traditions of the Don Cossacks was in the spirit of the ancient Novgorod veche. The military circle on the Don also resembled the Zaporozhye Rada. In the military circle, each Cossack had the right to vote on an equal basis with everyone else. The circle owned administrative, legislative and judicial power, it appointed campaigns and carried out land surveys and water resources, it approved the approval of court sentences and the death penalty. Cossack leaders were elected in the circle, and the main executor of the decisions of the military circle was the military ataman.

The Cossack people were many-sided and multinational, but everyone sang with enthusiasm: “Our mother Russya is the head of the whole world.” During active service, the Cossacks were taught: “Don’t stick out your chest, you’re not a soldier,” “Don’t stomp, you’re not in the infantry,” “Pull up your belly, you’re not a man.” All this contributed to the ability to wear “Cossack posture,” which means a wide and firm gait, dexterity of movement, and a bold eye.

The Cossacks, having appeared in the Caucasus, lived next to the mountain peoples on the right bank of the Terek - “on the ridges.” Only at the beginning of the 18th century did they move to live on the left bank in order to prevent free raids of the Crimean Tatars not only on themselves, but also on the highlanders who had become close and dear to them.

Some scientists reject the hypothesis “about the Cossacks as a people” and say that they are a military class that enjoys certain benefits and privileges. Are they possible today? But this is precisely what should not be done: in the conditions of the development of a democratic society, any privileges can provoke discontent among many peoples of Russia and even a social explosion in society.

In my opinion, a Cossack should be defined by his natural (hereditary) origin, by his observance of the traditions, culture, and customs developed by his ancestors, and not by whether he accepted the responsibilities of public service. Unfortunately, over the many years of Soviet power, the word “Cossack” has become almost a household word, and many are indignant when Cossacks consider themselves an ethnic group. And often even natural Cossacks themselves do not have the courage to openly declare that they belong to the Cossack ethnic group. The latest census confirms this.

In order to revive the Cossacks as an ethnic community, a law on the Cossacks is needed, which should clearly define who a Cossack is. In this case, there will be no need to define a Cossack as having accepted the obligation to perform public service. Unfortunately, according to this law, representatives of many nations became “Cossacks”. But no representative of the Chechen people would ever think of becoming a Circassian or a Karachay, but a Cossack is welcome. Indeed, in the early centuries, representatives of other nations became Cossacks. But this took more than one generation and provided that the Cossack accepted faith, traditions, culture, and customs, which became native. At one time, when the Greben Cossacks began to move to the left bank of the Terek, some of them did not want to do this. They went to the mountains and there converted to Islam, and after several generations they became the Chechen clan “Guno”, i.e. Gunoevites. Blue eyes and the Slavic type of face have been preserved by many to this day.

I believe that the issue of the Cossacks should not be removed from the agenda. And if the registered Cossacks (register in translation from Polish means list. - P.F.) practically agreed with the option of service Cossacks, then representatives of public organizations, especially natural (hereditary) Cossacks, are obliged to continue working on the adoption of the law on the Cossacks.

The Cossacks survived, must live and will live as long as the Cossacks live.

P. FEDOSOV. Candidate of Historical Sciences, member of the Union of Journalists of the Russian Federation.

P.S. The newspaper hopes that there are other opinions and invites you to take part in the discussion of this article.

But I’m posting someone else’s opinion. Why not discuss it?

Cossacks: nation, subethnic group or class?

Why did the Cossacks oppose themselves to the Great Russians?

The turn of the end of the 20th - beginning of the 21st century was marked by an intense search by the Cossacks for their own, lost in the crucible of the revolution and the “meat grinder” of the Soviets, a truly Cossack path. What is a Cossack? Who is he - a social worker (warrior, guardsman, border guard, etc.) or is a Cossack first of all a Cossack, that is, a full-fledged, and therefore nationally obliged, representative of the original Cossack tribe?

The whole history of Russia was made by strange people?

“The ethnicity factor of the Cossacks” - that’s how we’ll call the above problem for brevity - throughout the history of Russia, it has caused irreconcilable ideological clashes between Russian intellectuals who genetically have nothing to do with the Cossacks.

Our review of the factor of Cossack ethnicity should begin with a mention of the scientific work of a famous historian, whose scientific reputation in the sense of apologetics of Cossack independence is absolutely blameless, because he deeply, consistently and in his own bright way did not love the Cossacks.

Nikolai Ivanovich Ulyanov, a famous historian of the Russian Abroad, created a truly anti-Cossack masterpiece - a thorough historiographical opus “The Origin of Ukrainian Separatism.” In this extremely ideological work there are many reflections on the “predatory nature of the Cossacks”, abundant quotes from Polish sources comparing the Cossacks with “wild beasts”. With particular voluptuousness, N. I. Ulyanov quotes the travel impressions of a certain Moscow priest Lukyanov about the lands of the Cossacks: “The earthen rampart, in appearance, is not strong, but strong as prisoners, but the people in it are like animals;... they are very scary, black, like araps and they are as daring as dogs: they tear from your hands. They stand in amazement at us, and we marvel at them three times over, because we have never seen such monsters in our lives. Here in Moscow and in Petrovsky Circle it won’t be long before you find even one like this.”

The priest Lukyanov “awarded” the Cossack town of Khvastov, the ataman headquarters of the famous Cossack leader Semyon Paley, with this description. It is logical to speculate (although this is not directly in the text of N.I. Ulyanov) - since in Khvastov, among Paley himself, all the Cossacks are completely “beasts and freaks,” then what can we say about the more ordinary, so to speak, representatives of the Cossacks who are closer to the people villages?

The opinion of N.I. Ulyanov and priest Lukyanov could be supported by a dozen more quotes of the same kind from the epistolary heritage of Russian intellectuals of both the pre-revolutionary and Soviet periods of Russian history (it is enough to recall, for example, in what style Leon Trotsky and Vladimir Ulyanov-Lenin spoke , who branded the Cossacks as a “zoological environment”). This is one pole of opinion.

“Portrait of A.V. Suvorov”, Nicola-Sebastian Froste, 1833-1834

The other pole was represented, for example, by the Russian generalissimo Alexander Vasilyevich Suvorov, whose enthusiastic judgments about the Cossacks are well known. It was Suvorov, together with Prince Potemkin, who managed to convince Catherine II to stop the policy of “silent genocide” towards the Zaporozhye Cossacks, relocating the Cossacks who remained after the defeat of the Zaporozhye and New Sich to the Kuban. Thus, forty Cossack villages arose in the Kuban, of which 38 received the traditional names of kurens of the Zaporozhye Sich.

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy was undoubtedly a “Kazakophile”. This outstanding writer, ideologist and philosopher has repeatedly expressed the idea that Russia as a state owes a huge debt to the Cossacks.

I will cite only the most famous of Leo Tolstoy’s statements: “...The entire history of Russia was made by the Cossacks. It’s not for nothing that Europeans call us Cossacks. People (obviously, this means the Russian people. - N.L.) wants to be Cossacks. Golitsyn under Sofia (Chancellor Golitsyn during the reign of Tsarina Sophia Romanova. - N. L.) went to the Crimea - he disgraced himself, and from Paley (that same Cossack ataman Semyon Paliy from Khvastov. - N.L.) the Crimeans asked for pardon, and Azov was taken by only 4,000 Cossacks and held - the same Azov that Peter took with such difficulty and lost...”

Indicative in this sense is the psychological reaction to the stay among the Cossacks of the famous traveler in the Far East, Mikhail Ivanovich Venyukov, a native of a small noble family from the village of Nikitsky, Ryazan region. In his work “Description of the Ussuri River and the lands east of it to the sea,” M. I. Venyukov writes: “... Throughout my travels through Siberia and the Amur region, I consciously tried to avoid staying or even spending the night in the houses of the local Cossacks , preferring each time inns, government institutions or, if necessary, the huts of Russian settlers. Even though the Cossack houses are richer and cleaner, I have always been unbearable for this internal atmosphere that reigns in Cossack families - a strange, heavy mixture of barracks and monastery. The internal hostility that every Cossack feels towards a Russian official and officer, in general towards a Russian European, almost undisguised, heavy and caustic, was unbearable for me, especially with more or less close communication with this strange people.

It is noteworthy that these lines about the “heavy and strange” people were written by a very meticulous and objective researcher who made his journey through Ussuri surrounded by thirteen Cossacks and only one “Russian European” - non-commissioned officer Karmanov.

During the revolutionary events of 1917-1918, not a single case of extrajudicial reprisal of ordinary Cossacks against a Cossack officer occurred in Cossack military formations. In Russian regiments during these years, such incidents numbered in tens, if not hundreds. In the Russian fleet, where there were no Cossacks at all, officers were shot, drowned, and raised to the point of bayonet on an even larger scale than in the land army.

At one time, the remarkable ethnologist Lev Nikolaevich Gumilyov introduced into scientific use the concept of ethnic complementarity (two categories: positive and negative), which the researcher defined as a feeling of subconscious mutual sympathy (or antipathy) of ethnic individuals, defining the division into “us” and “strangers”.

The reason for such polarly different assessments of the Cossacks on the part of Russian intellectuals, which aroused both admiration and a desire to be with the Cossacks in some (remember, for example, Tolstoy’s first story “Cossacks”), and sincere rejection, rejection, even antagonism in others, was , as it seems to me, the ethnicity of the Cossacks was fully formed by the end of the 16th century.

Unlike the Cossacks, the national formation of the Great Russian people themselves, forcibly stopped, broken and largely distorted by the so-called reforms of Patriarch Nikon, and then by the paroxysmal activities of Peter I, could not give the Russian intelligentsia a single mental-ideological platform for assessing this or that social or national phenomena.

Against the background of the internal mental and ideological disunity of the Russians, the Cossacks amazed all outside observers (both benevolent and hostile) with the Cossack worldview firmly rooted in the national mentality, a complete, fully formed stereotype of behavior, recognized by all Cossacks as a national ideal, the absence of any internal rushing in favor of changing their ethnopolitical identity. It seems that it was precisely this integrity, self-worth and steadfastness of the Cossack mentality, the enviable monolithic nature of the Cossack social environment that gave rise to that sharp polarity in the assessment of the Cossacks by external, primarily Russian, observers.

From the point of view of compliance with the theory of ethnicity according to its classical version in the interpretation of Yu. A. Bromley, the Cossack society in Russia at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries had all the signs, features and social properties inherent only to it, which clearly indicated a full-fledged, completed in its formation of Cossack ethnicity.

“Oh, Sich! You are the cradle of the faithful Cossacks!”

In our thinking about the “ethnicity factor of the Cossacks,” we immediately started from the middle period of the history of the Cossacks. What about the period of ancient history? Maybe there we will find irrefutable evidence that the Cossacks represent some kind of organic, albeit very peculiar branch of the Russian or Ukrainian peoples?

Alas, there is no such evidence. Or rather, there is evidence, but completely opposite in sign: in the ancient and medieval sources of Eurasia there are many messages that can clearly be interpreted as clear indications of the gradually emerging distinctive ethnicity of the Cossacks, starting from the 13th century. In the well-known, and today, perhaps, the most detailed work by E. P. Savelyev, “The Ancient History of the Cossacks,” the texture and reliability of the vast majority of ancient and medieval sources about the process of formation of the Cossack ethnosociety is analyzed in detail.

Prefaced by my own, I emphasize once again, a very authoritative study from the point of view of scientific argumentation, E.P. Savelyev writes: “The Cossacks of previous centuries, strange as it may sound to historians, did not consider themselves Russians, that is, Great Russians or Muscovites; in turn, both the residents of the Moscow regions, and the government itself, looked at the Cossacks as a special nationality, although related to them in faith and language. That is why relations between the supreme government of Russia and the Cossacks in the 16th and 17th centuries took place through the Ambassadorial Prikaz, that is, according to modern times, through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, through which they generally communicate with other states. Cossack ambassadors or, as they were called then, “stanitsa” in Moscow were received with the same pomp and solemnity as foreign embassies...”

As a general context for all more or less ancient sources, we can cite, for example, information from the Grebenskaya Chronicle, compiled in Moscow in 1471. The following is said here: “...There, in the upper reaches of the Don, the Christian people of the military rank called Cossacks, meet (those who meet them) in joy. N.L.) him (Grand Duke Dmitry Donskoy. - N. L.) with holy icons and crosses congratulating him on his deliverance from his adversaries and bringing him gifts from his treasures...”

The first Russian encyclopedist V.N. Tatishchev, who, unlike all other historiographers, possessed a unique collection of the oldest Russian manuscripts, which then perished in the fire of Moscow in 1812, confidently deduced the genealogy of the Don Cossacks from the Cossacks, who, led by Hetman Dmitry Vishnevetsky, fought together with the troops of Ivan the Terrible for Astrakhan. Tatishchev admitted, at the same time, that another component in the formation of the primary ethnosocial mass of the Don Cossacks were, perhaps, the so-called Meshchera Cossacks, that is, the Turkic-speaking Mangyts (“Tatars”) who converted to Orthodoxy, whom Ivan the Terrible transferred to the Don. It is important to emphasize that the undisputedly greatest historian of the 19th century on the problem of the Cossacks, V.D. Sukhorukov, generally agreed with the ethnogenetic concept of V.N. Tatishchev.

Thus, it becomes clear that at least the Don Cossacks - the alpha and omega of the Russian Cossacks - as direct descendants of the genetic alliance of the Cossacks and Meshchera Tatars, due to this fact, had very few common genetic roots with the Great Russian ethnos.

“Don Cossacks”, Juliusz Kossak, 1877

“Here (in the Zaporozhye Sich. - N. L.) had their own age-old traditions, customs and their own view of the world. A person who ended up here was digested and reheated, as if in a cauldron; from a Little Russian he became a Cossack, changed his ethnography, changed his soul.<...>The figure of a Cossack is not identical with the type of a native Little Russian (that is, a Ukrainian. - N.L.), they represent two different worlds. One is sedentary, agricultural, with culture, way of life, skills and traditions inherited from Kyiv times. The other is a wanderer, unemployed, leading a life of robbery, who has developed a completely different temperament and character under the influence of lifestyle and mixing with people from the steppe. The Cossacks were not generated by South Russian culture, but by a hostile element that had been at war with it for centuries.”

One could argue with the author of these lines about the degree of mutual influence between the Cossacks and the bearers of southern Russian culture, but he undoubtedly accurately noted the fact that the Cossacks had a very small genetic connection with the surrounding Ukrainian environment, which was genetically very distant from the Cossacks. This indication is all the more important because it was the ancestral Cossacks, who moved under the leadership of the atamans Zakhar Chepega and Anton Golovaty to the Kuban, who became the ethnic basis for both the Kuban and Terek Cossacks.

The mechanism of the rather rapid ethnic dissolution of Ukrainian immigrants into the Cossack environment was succinctly but reliably described by the same N. I. Ulyanov.

“In Zaporozhye, as in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth itself, there were claps (of Ukrainian peasants. - N.L.) were contemptuously called “rabble”. These are those who, having escaped from the master's yoke, were unable to overcome their grain-growing peasant nature and assimilate Cossack habits, Cossack morality and psychology. They were not denied asylum, but they were never merged with them; The Cossacks knew the accident of their appearance on Niza and the dubious qualities of the Cossacks. Only a small part of the Khlops, having gone through the steppe school, irrevocably changed their peasant lot to the profession of a dashing breadwinner. For the most part, the cotton element was scattered: some died, some went as workers to the farmsteads to the registered ones...”

So, we can admit, following V.N. Tatishchev, V.D. Sukhorukov, E.P. Savelyev, N.I. Ulyanov and other major historians of Russia and Ukraine, that the Cossack community from ancient times was formed as if from itself, through the gradual strong merging of small parts of heterogeneous ethnic elements, including Great Russians, Ukrainians, representatives of some Turkic peoples, which gradually and separately, in different historical periods, were layered on a certain very powerful genetically, anciently formed in the interfluve of the Dnieper and Don ethnic core.

Cossacks descended from Cossacks

The attitude of the Cossacks of the early twentieth century to the question of their origin is described with brilliant laconicism by Mikhail Sholokhov in “Quiet Don”. A truly textbook scene even for modern Cossacks is the scene where, in response to Commissar Shtokman’s remark that the Cossacks, they say, descended from the Russians, the Cossack dismissively, even defiantly throws out: “The Cossacks descended from the Cossacks!” This proud motto of the entire Cossacks - from the Zaporozhye army to the Semirechensk army - has remained unshakable to this day. Only this fundamental platform of the Cossack worldview ensured the physical survival of the Cossack ethnic community, despite many decades of Bolshevik persecution.

Recently, two Russian publishing houses republished an interesting collection of materials and reflections on the problems of the Cossacks, first published in 1928 in Paris on the initiative of Ataman A.P. Bogaevsky. This collection contains valuable observations on the ethnicity of the Cossacks, made both by the Cossacks themselves and by foreign observers who know this people closely.

“The Cossacks had, and still have, a pronounced consciousness of their unity, of the fact that they, and only they, constitute the Don Army, the Kuban Army, the Ural Army and other Cossack troops... We quite naturally contrasted ourselves - the Cossacks - with the Russians; however, not the Cossacks - Russia. We often said about some official sent from St. Petersburg: “He doesn’t understand anything in our life, he doesn’t know our needs, he’s Russian.” Or about a Cossack who married in the service, we said: “He is married to a Russian.” (I. N. Efremov, Don Cossack)

“We Russians have no need to talk about the Cossack virtues. We know the historical colonization and marginal defensive mission of the Cossacks, their skills for self-government and military merits for many centuries. Many of us, residents of the northern and central parts of Russia, became more familiar with the Cossack way of life, having found refuge together with the white movement in the Cossack regions of southeastern Russia. In emigration, we appreciated the solidarity and cohesion of the Cossacks, which distinguishes them favorably from the all-Russian “human dust.” (Prince P. D. Dolgorukov, Russian)

“The Cossacks are always united, integral in resolving and understanding their internal Cossack issues. In opinions, views, attitudes towards an issue external to him - the Russian one, the Cossack intelligentsia is divided, scattered, forgetting about the main thing, the only unshakable one - the interests of their people, the Cossack people. The Russian intelligentsia here, abroad, and the Soviet authorities there, in the USSR, achieved amazing consistency in their aspirations to introduce into the consciousness of the Cossacks (the former in exile, the latter in our native lands) the conviction that the Cossacks are Russian (Great Russian) people, and “Cossack” and “peasant” are identical concepts. The concerns of the Soviet government about such “education” of the Cossacks are quite understandable: they pursue practical goals: by darkening the national self-awareness of the Cossacks, by introducing the psychology of the Great Russian, to weaken resistance to Soviet construction. However, the Cossacks never recognized themselves, did not feel and did not consider themselves Great Russians (Russians) - they considered them Russians, but exclusively in the state-political sense (as subjects of the Russian state).” (I. F. Bykadorov, Don Cossack)

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On the Lithuanian-Crimean borderland (which ran along the Dnieper River). Initially they were distinguished as an estate.

The emergence of the Cossacks

The original homeland of the Cossacks is considered to be a line of Russian fortified cities bordering the steppe, running from the middle Volga to Ryazan and Tula, then abruptly breaking to the south and abutting the Dnieper along the line of Putivl and Pereyaslav. Cossacks are people's self-defense aimed at protecting civilians from constant raids by armed gangs of Tatar origin. These people, constantly encountering Tatar warriors in the steppe, were given the Turkic name Cossacks, then spreading to free people in northern Rus'. The oldest news about the Cossacks speaks of the Ryazan Cossacks, who rendered service to their city in the clash with the Tatars in 1444. In the 16th century, urban Cossacks, and especially the Ryazan Cossacks, began to settle in military-fishing artels in the open steppe, in the upper Don region. (V. O. Klyuchevsky, “Course of Russian History”)

The Cossacks also played a significant role in the consolidation of the Ukrainian ethnic group.

The Cossacks also owe their emergence to the “living tribute” available during the Mongol-Tatar yoke, that is, people whom the Russian principalities supplied to the horde to replenish the Mongol troops. And the word Cossack itself is of Turkic origin, meaning light cavalry. The Mongols were loyal to the preservation of their religions by their subjects, including the people who were part of their military units. There was even a Saraisko-Podonsky bishopric. Thus, those expelled from Rus' retained their originality and self-identification. After the collapse of the unified Mongolian state, the Cossacks who remained and settled on its territory retained their military organization, but at the same time found themselves in complete independence both from the fragments of the former empire and from the Muscovite kingdom that appeared in Rus'. The fugitive peasants only replenished, but were not the root of the emergence of troops. The Cossacks themselves always considered themselves a separate people and did not recognize themselves as runaway men; these opinions are clearly reflected in fiction (for example, by Sholokhov). N.I. Ulyanov, who studied the history of the Cossacks, provides detailed excerpts from the chronicles of the 16th-18th centuries. with a description of conflicts between the Cossacks and alien peasants, whom the Cossacks refused to recognize as equals.

This is what Wikipedia says about the emergence of the Cossacks, but there is still no clear answer about its origin.

The first pages of Cossack history are difficult to read, since no reliable written sources have survived. When the Cossacks entered the broad historical arena, no one could give a clear and precise answer to the question of how it arose. The lack of indisputable evidence led to an abundance of hypotheses and shrouded the proto-Cossack history in the fog of legendary retellings. Semi-fantastic plots and guesses found a place early on in the pages of the first historical works, and later received further development.
Many researchers tried to unravel the phenomenon of the origin of the Cossacks, looking for the national roots of their ancestors among a variety of peoples (Scythians, Cumans, Khazars, Alans, Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Tatars, Mountain Circassians, Kasogs, Brodniks, Black Klobuks, Torks and others), or considered the original Cossack military community as the result of genetic connections of several tribes with the Slavs who came to the Black Sea region, and this process was counted from the beginning of the new era.

Other historians, on the contrary, proved the “original Russianness” of the Cossacks, emphasizing the constant presence of the Slavs in the regions that became the cradle of the Cossacks.

The original concept was formulated by the emigrant historian A. A. Gordeev, who believed that the ancestors of the Cossacks were the Russian population as part of the Golden Horde (“blood tax” from Russian lands), settled by the Mongols in the future Cossack territories. The long-dominant official point of view (pre-revolutionary and Soviet) that Cossack communities arose as a result of the flight of Russian peasants from serfdom, as well as the views on the Cossacks as a class, was subjected to reasoned criticism in the twentieth century. But both the “fugitive” (migration) version and the theory of the autochthonous (local) origin of the Cossacks today have a weak evidence base and are not confirmed by serious sources. The question remains open...

The question of what the Cossacks are - an estate or a people - was acute already in 1917. The developing revolution, whatever its outcome, would have abolished the Cossack estate, so the leaders of the Cossacks, in order to preserve their privileges and interests at general Cossack congresses and circles, began to prove that the Cossacks were this is a people, not a class that could be destroyed.

The atamans of the Don, Kuban, Terek and the leaders of the Cossack emigration have repeatedly stated that although the Cossacks of the South of Russia are part of the Russian nation and a special branch of the Russian people, they will be guided by the constitutions and laws adopted during the Civil War by the Cossack formations that emerged. They viewed these associations as springboards from which they were to establish a new central power throughout Russia, and then provide local self-government for the Cossacks with the right to resolve the land issue.

At the same time, a small part of the Cossack emigrants, who initially settled in Sofia, propagated the idea that the Cossacks are a people, and nurtured the idea of creating the state of Cossackia (Kozakia) on the basis of the Don, Kuban, Terek, Astrakhan, Ural and Orenburg Cossack troops. This group and its supporters tried to spread their views in Europe and the USA, but were unable to convince the Cossack emigration. Nowadays, the old dilemma “class or people,” for various reasons, including opportunistic ones, is being reproduced by scientists, Cossack leaders, and politicians.

I liked the concept of one of the hereditary Cossacks, whom I met the other day and listened to a wonderful, very capacious lecture on the Cossacks, it was this meeting that pushed me to study this topic, and so he called the Cossacks an Order like the Order of Malta.

In many ways, the way of life of this Order can be set as an example for modern society. This is the attitude towards the family, towards the older generations, towards children, and, as a result, towards life.

I present for your reference an article by Yu.N. Emelyanov about honoring the elderly.

REVERENCE FOR OLD PEOPLE AS ONE OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF THE LIFESTYLE OF THE KUBAN COSSACKS

Yu.N. Emelyanov

(Slavyansk-on-Kuban)

Old men acted as guardians of Cossack customs and traditions, and the veneration of old men among the Cossacks was limitless. Showing disrespect to an old man was regarded as a betrayal of Cossack ideals and was severely punished by society.

Admiration for elders was reinforced not only by customs, but also by official, “written” Cossack laws. Thus, in the Regulations “On the public administration of the villages of the Cossack troops,” Article 556 read: “In judging and resolving public affairs, the village Assembly has the main basis for penalties to serve to relentlessly preserve and strengthen ancient customs, good morals and respect for elders.” Art. 568 of the same law, concerning the duties of the village ataman, provided: “The village ataman is obliged to ensure that the Cossacks show due respect to the elderly.”

The old men did not hold official positions in the structure of Cossack self-government, but they always played a large role in public opinion and had a significant influence on the decisions of village fees.

Younger people never approached them without prior permission. Under no circumstances should one interfere in the conversation of elders. The custom said: “Explain and advise only when you are asked for advice.” Even the ataman did not sit down without the permission of the elders. Young people generally had no right to sit down in the presence of old people. In front of the old men, Cossacks of combat age, with shoulder straps, stood at attention, not of combat age and without uniform - having taken off their hats.

Kuban old-timers remember: “Whether old people sitting or walking see you or not, you need to take off your hat or bow and greet you.” The orders of the elders were carried out unquestioningly. All old people, including parents, were addressed only “you”. According to custom, it was impossible to call out to the elder walking in front if something needed to be said, and therefore to catch up with the elder and, having caught up, address him. The younger one, even after marriage, had no right to smoke in front of the older one.

In Cossack families, at the table, the eldest in the family had the right to be the first to scoop from a common bowl. Only the owner of the house cut the bread. It happened that an elderly man could freely punish adult sons who might already have grandchildren. And if an adult son raised his voice against his father, the latter could file a complaint with the village assembly. The gathering approved the decision to teach the disobedient sons and immediately “poured in the hot ones” according to the number of years the culprit had lived. The “scientist” stood up and, together with his father, thanked the world for science.

It should not be assumed that reverence for elders among the Cossacks was imposed only by force. The very way of life of the Cossacks, many traditions and customs contributed to the fact that the younger generation developed a sense of worship and respect for their elders, those who knew all the intricacies of horse riding, hand-to-hand combat, and artistically wielded all types of weapons. It was impossible to do without knowledge in the field, in everyday life, on holidays and mourning.

The veneration of elders in Cossack society went on a par with the veneration of children - the successors of the Cossack family. Children, growing up and creating a family, also took care of their offspring and taught them to respect their elders, surrounded the elderly with attention and care. Education according to the proverb: “Execute a son in his youth, may he console you in old age” gave the Cossacks confidence in their future and the preservation of their foundations.

Materials provided by I. Kiriy

Why did the Cossacks oppose themselves to the Great Russians?
The turn of the end of the 20th - beginning of the 21st century was marked by an intense search by the Cossacks for their own, lost in the crucible of the revolution and the “meat grinder” of the Soviets, a truly Cossack path. What is a Cossack? Who is he - a social worker (warrior, guardsman, border guard, etc.) or is a Cossack first of all a Cossack, that is, a full-fledged, and therefore nationally obliged, representative of the original Cossack tribe?

The whole history of Russia was made by strange people?
“The ethnicity factor of the Cossacks” - that’s how we’ll call the above problem for brevity - throughout the history of Russia, it has caused irreconcilable ideological clashes between Russian intellectuals who genetically have nothing to do with the Cossacks.
Our review of the factor of Cossack ethnicity should begin with a mention of the scientific work of a famous historian, whose scientific reputation in the sense of apologetics of Cossack independence is absolutely blameless, because he deeply, consistently and in his own bright way did not love the Cossacks.
Nikolai Ivanovich Ulyanov, a famous historian of the Russian Abroad, created a truly anti-Cossack masterpiece - a thorough historiographical opus “The Origin of Ukrainian Separatism.” In this extremely ideological work there are many reflections on the “predatory nature of the Cossacks”, abundant quotes from Polish sources comparing the Cossacks with “wild beasts”. With particular voluptuousness, N. I. Ulyanov quotes the travel impressions of a certain Moscow priest Lukyanov about the lands of the Cossacks: “The earthen rampart, in appearance, is not strong, but strong as prisoners, but the people in it are like animals;... they are very scary, black, like araps and they are as daring as dogs: they tear from your hands. They stand in amazement at us, and we marvel at them three times over, because we have never seen such monsters in our lives. Here in Moscow and in Petrovsky Circle it won’t be long before you find even one like this.”
The priest Lukyanov “awarded” the Cossack town of Khvastov, the ataman headquarters of the famous Cossack leader Semyon Paley, with this description. It is logical to speculate (although this is not directly in the text of N.I. Ulyanov) - since in Khvastov, among Paley himself, all the Cossacks are completely “beasts and freaks,” then what can we say about the more ordinary, so to speak, representatives of the Cossacks who are closer to the people villages?
The opinion of N.I. Ulyanov and priest Lukyanov could be supported by a dozen more quotes of the same kind from the epistolary heritage of Russian intellectuals of both the pre-revolutionary and Soviet periods of Russian history (it is enough to recall, for example, in what style Leon Trotsky and Vladimir Ulyanov-Lenin spoke , who branded the Cossacks as a “zoological environment”). This is one pole of opinion.

The other pole was represented, for example, by the Russian generalissimo Alexander Vasilyevich Suvorov, whose enthusiastic judgments about the Cossacks are well known.

It was Suvorov, together with Prince Potemkin, who managed to convince Catherine II to stop the policy of “silent genocide” towards the Zaporozhye Cossacks, relocating the Cossacks who remained after the defeat of the Zaporozhye and New Sich to the Kuban. Thus, forty Cossack villages arose in the Kuban, of which 38 received the traditional names of kurens of the Zaporozhye Sich.
Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy was undoubtedly a “Kazakophile”. This outstanding writer, ideologist and philosopher has repeatedly expressed the idea that Russia as a state owes a huge debt to the Cossacks.
I will cite only the most famous of Leo Tolstoy’s statements: “...The entire history of Russia was made by the Cossacks. It’s not for nothing that Europeans call us Cossacks. The people (obviously, this means the Russian people - N.L.) want to be Cossacks. Golitsyn under Sofia (Chancellor Golitsyn during the reign of Queen Sophia Romanova. - N.L.) went to Crimea - he was disgraced, and from Paley (the same Cossack ataman Semyon Paliy from Khvastov. - N.L.) the Crimeans asked for forgiveness, and Azov was taken only 4000 Cossacks held it - the same Azov that Peter took with such difficulty and
lost..."

A positive or negative assessment of the Cossacks by one or another Russian intellectual apparently depended on how positively or negatively this intellectual assessed Russian life itself in the internal regions of the country.
Indicative in this sense is the psychological reaction to the stay among the Cossacks of the famous traveler in the Far East, Mikhail Ivanovich Venyukov, a native of a small noble family from the village of Nikitsky, Ryazan region. In his work “Description of the Ussuri River and the lands east of it to the sea,” M. I. Venyukov writes: “... Throughout my travels through Siberia and the Amur region, I consciously tried to avoid staying or even spending the night in the houses of the local Cossacks , preferring each time inns, government institutions or, if necessary, the huts of Russian settlers. Even though the Cossack houses are richer and cleaner, I have always been unbearable for this internal atmosphere that reigns in Cossack families - a strange, heavy mixture of barracks and monastery. The internal hostility that every Cossack feels towards a Russian official and officer, in general towards a Russian European, almost undisguised, heavy and caustic, was unbearable for me, especially with more or less close communication with this strange people.
It is noteworthy that these lines about the “heavy and strange” people were written by a very meticulous and objective researcher who made his journey through Ussuri surrounded by thirteen Cossacks and only one “Russian European” - non-commissioned officer Karmanov.
During the revolutionary events of 1917-1918, not a single case of extrajudicial reprisal of ordinary Cossacks against a Cossack officer occurred in Cossack military formations. In Russian regiments during these years, such incidents numbered in tens, if not hundreds. In the Russian fleet, where there were no Cossacks at all, officers were shot, drowned, and raised to the point of bayonet on an even larger scale than in the land army.
At one time, the remarkable ethnologist Lev Nikolaevich Gumilyov introduced into scientific use the concept of ethnic complementarity (two categories: positive and negative), which the researcher defined as a feeling of subconscious mutual sympathy (or antipathy) of ethnic individuals, defining the division into “us” and “strangers”.

If we use the scientific tools proposed by L.N. Gumilev, it turns out that M.I. Venyukov (as well as other “Russian Europeans”) and the Amur Cossacks are two different, and mutually negatively complementary (“alien”) ethnic groups. But why then are such indisputably ethnically pure Russians as A.V. Suvorov, L.N. Tolstoy, A.I. Solzhenitsyn positively complimentary to the Cossacks, absolutely “their own” for them?
The reason for such polarly different assessments of the Cossacks on the part of Russian intellectuals, which aroused both admiration and a desire to be with the Cossacks in some (remember, for example, Tolstoy’s first story “Cossacks”), and sincere rejection, rejection, even antagonism in others, was , as it seems to me, the ethnicity of the Cossacks was fully formed by the end of the 16th century.
Unlike the Cossacks, the national formation of the Great Russian people themselves, forcibly stopped, broken and largely distorted by the so-called reforms of Patriarch Nikon, and then by the paroxysmal activities of Peter I, could not give the Russian intelligentsia a single mental-ideological platform for assessing this or that social or national phenomena.
Against the background of the internal mental and ideological disunity of the Russians, the Cossacks amazed all outside observers (both benevolent and hostile) with the Cossack worldview firmly rooted in the national mentality, a complete, fully formed stereotype of behavior, recognized by all Cossacks as a national ideal, the absence of any internal rushing in favor of changing their ethnopolitical identity. It seems that it was precisely this integrity, self-worth and steadfastness of the Cossack mentality, the enviable monolithic nature of the Cossack social environment that gave rise to that sharp polarity in the assessment of the Cossacks by external, primarily Russian, observers.
From the point of view of compliance with the theory of ethnicity according to its classical version in the interpretation of Yu. A. Bromley, the Cossack society in Russia at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries had all the signs, features and social properties inherent only to it, which clearly indicated a full-fledged, completed in its formation of Cossack ethnicity.

“Oh, Sich! You are the cradle of the faithful Cossacks!”
In our thinking about the “ethnicity factor of the Cossacks,” we immediately started from the middle period of the history of the Cossacks. What about the period of ancient history? Maybe there we will find irrefutable evidence that the Cossacks represent some kind of organic, albeit very peculiar branch of the Russian or Ukrainian peoples?
Alas, there is no such evidence. Or rather, there is evidence, but completely opposite in sign: in the ancient and medieval sources of Eurasia there are many messages that can clearly be interpreted as clear indications of the gradually emerging distinctive ethnicity of the Cossacks, starting from the 13th century. In the well-known, and today, perhaps, the most detailed work by E. P. Savelyev, “The Ancient History of the Cossacks,” the texture and reliability of the vast majority of ancient and medieval sources about the process of formation of the Cossack ethnosociety is analyzed in detail.
Prefaced by my own, I emphasize once again, a very authoritative study from the point of view of scientific argumentation, E.P. Savelyev writes: “The Cossacks of previous centuries, strange as it may sound to historians, did not consider themselves Russians, that is, Great Russians or Muscovites; in turn, both the residents of the Moscow regions, and the government itself, looked at the Cossacks as a special nationality, although related to them in faith and language. That is why relations between the supreme government of Russia and the Cossacks in the 16th and 17th centuries took place through the Ambassadorial Prikaz, that is, according to modern times, through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, through which they generally communicate with other states. Cossack ambassadors or, as they were called then, “stanitsa” in Moscow were received with the same pomp and solemnity as foreign embassies...”
As a general context for all more or less ancient sources, we can cite, for example, information from the Grebenskaya Chronicle, compiled in Moscow in 1471. It says the following: “...There, in the upper reaches of the Don, the Christian people of the military rank called Cossacks, in joy met (those who met - N.L.) him (Grand Duke Dmitry Donskoy - N.L.) with holy icons and from the cross congratulating him on his deliverance from his adversaries and bringing him gifts from his treasures..."

Not only in the majority, but, perhaps, in all sources without exception on the history of Rus'-Russia of the 14th-17th centuries, we will not find any mention of the Cossacks in the context of “Russianness”; Even noting that the “Cossacks” are a Christian and Orthodox people, Russian sources nevertheless never identify them with the actually Great Russian, Moscow people. Describing the deeds of the Cossacks, the Russian historical chronograph in dozens of details finds the opportunity to emphasize the existence of fundamental differences in the nature of indigenous Russianness, or rather, Great Russianness and the Cossacks.
The first Russian encyclopedist V.N. Tatishchev, who, unlike all other historiographers, possessed a unique collection of the oldest Russian manuscripts, which then perished in the fire of Moscow in 1812, confidently deduced the genealogy of the Don Cossacks from the Cossacks, who, led by Hetman Dmitry Vishnevetsky, fought together with the troops of Ivan the Terrible for Astrakhan. Tatishchev admitted, at the same time, that another component in the formation of the primary ethnosocial mass of the Don Cossacks were, perhaps, the so-called Meshchera Cossacks, that is, the Turkic-speaking Mangyts (“Tatars”) who converted to Orthodoxy, whom Ivan the Terrible transferred to the Don. It is important to emphasize that the undisputedly greatest historian of the 19th century on the problem of the Cossacks, V.D. Sukhorukov, generally agreed with the ethnogenetic concept of V.N. Tatishchev.
Thus, it becomes clear that at least the Don Cossacks - the alpha and omega of the Russian Cossacks - as direct descendants of the genetic alliance of the Cossacks and Meshchera Tatars, due to this fact, had very few common genetic roots with the Great Russian ethnos.

Equally insignificant was, apparently, the genetic connection of the Cossacks themselves with the Ukrainian people proper (or, as they wrote before 1917, Little Russian) people. The already mentioned consistent fighter against the Cossack idea, N.I. Ulyanov, reflected on this matter as follows:
“Here (in the Zaporozhye Sich. - N.L.) there were their own age-old traditions, customs and their own view of the world. A person who ended up here was digested and reheated, as if in a cauldron; from a Little Russian he became a Cossack, changed his ethnography, changed his soul. The figure of a Cossack is not identical with the type of a native Little Russian (that is, a Ukrainian - N.L.), they represent two different worlds. One is sedentary, agricultural, with culture, way of life, skills and traditions inherited from Kyiv times. The other is a wanderer, unemployed, leading a life of robbery, who has developed a completely different temperament and character under the influence of lifestyle and mixing with people from the steppe. The Cossacks were not generated by South Russian culture, but by a hostile element that had been at war with it for centuries.”
One could argue with the author of these lines about the degree of mutual influence between the Cossacks and the bearers of southern Russian culture, but he undoubtedly accurately noted the fact that the Cossacks had a very small genetic connection with the surrounding Ukrainian environment, which was genetically very distant from the Cossacks. This indication is all the more important because it was the ancestral Cossacks, who moved under the leadership of the atamans Zakhar Chepega and Anton Golovaty to the Kuban, who became the ethnic basis for both the Kuban and Terek Cossacks.
The mechanism of the rather rapid ethnic dissolution of Ukrainian immigrants into the Cossack environment was succinctly but reliably described by the same N. I. Ulyanov.
“In Zaporozhye, as in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth itself, the khlops (Ukrainian peasants - N.L.) were contemptuously called “rabble.” These are those who, having escaped from the master's yoke, were unable to overcome their grain-growing peasant nature and assimilate Cossack habits, Cossack morality and psychology. They were not denied asylum, but they were never merged with them; The Cossacks knew the accident of their appearance on Niza and the dubious qualities of the Cossacks. Only a small part of the Khlops, having gone through the steppe school, irrevocably changed their peasant lot to the profession of a dashing breadwinner. For the most part, the cotton element was scattered: some died, some went as workers to the farmsteads to the registered ones...”
So, we can admit, following V.N. Tatishchev, V.D. Sukhorukov, E.P. Savelyev, N.I. Ulyanov and other major historians of Russia and Ukraine, that the Cossack community from ancient times was formed as if from itself, through the gradual strong merging of small parts of heterogeneous ethnic elements, including Great Russians, Ukrainians, representatives of some Turkic peoples, which gradually and separately, in different historical periods, were layered on a certain very powerful genetically, anciently formed in the interfluve of the Dnieper and Don ethnic core.

Cossacks descended from Cossacks
The attitude of the Cossacks of the early twentieth century to the question of their origin is described with brilliant laconicism by Mikhail Sholokhov in “Quiet Don”. A truly textbook scene even for modern Cossacks is the scene where, in response to Commissar Shtokman’s remark that the Cossacks, they say, descended from the Russians, the Cossack dismissively, even defiantly throws out: “The Cossacks descended from the Cossacks!” This proud motto of the entire Cossacks - from the Zaporozhye army to the Semirechensk army - has remained unshakable to this day. Only this fundamental platform of the Cossack worldview ensured the physical survival of the Cossack ethnic community, despite many decades of Bolshevik persecution.

The Cossacks have keenly felt their ethnic separation, in a good sense - independence from anyone else, at all times. In relation to the Great Russians, this sense of independence was not dictated by the desire to oppose themselves to the Russian people as some kind of unattainable model for the latter. Since the time of the struggle against the Polish gentry, the Cossack was alien to ethnic arrogance, and his attitude towards the Russian people in general has always been benevolent and respectful. However, the feeling of independence always existed and was determined by only one thing: the desire to preserve their original Cossack island in the boundless Great Russian Sea, which was uncontrollably rolling from the north onto the lands of the Cossack people.
Recently, two Russian publishing houses republished an interesting collection of materials and reflections on the problems of the Cossacks, first published in 1928 in Paris on the initiative of Ataman A.P. Bogaevsky. This collection contains valuable observations on the ethnicity of the Cossacks, made both by the Cossacks themselves and by foreign observers who know this people closely.
“The Cossacks had, and still have, a pronounced consciousness of their unity, of the fact that they, and only they, constitute the Don Army, the Kuban Army, the Ural Army and other Cossack troops... We quite naturally contrasted ourselves - the Cossacks - with the Russians; however, not the Cossacks - Russia. We often said about some official sent from St. Petersburg: “He doesn’t understand anything in our life, he doesn’t know our needs, he’s Russian.” Or about a Cossack who married in the service, we said: “He is married to a Russian.” (I. N. Efremov, Don Cossack)

“I know that in the eyes of the common people an ideal warrior, a warrior primarily is always thought of as a Cossack. This was the case in the eyes of both Great Russians and Little Russians. The German influence on the system and popular concepts had the least impact on the morals of the Cossacks. At the beginning of the 20th century, when I asked one of the cadets of the Konstantinovsky School whether Cossack cadets participated in their nightly adventures, he answered: “Not without that, but the Cossacks never boast to each other about their debauchery and never blaspheme.” (Metropolitan Anthony [Khrapovitsky], Russian)
“We Russians have no need to talk about the Cossack virtues. We know the historical colonization and marginal defensive mission of the Cossacks, their skills for self-government and military merits for many centuries. Many of us, residents of the northern and central parts of Russia, became more familiar with the Cossack way of life, having found refuge together with the white movement in the Cossack regions of southeastern Russia. In emigration, we appreciated the solidarity and cohesion of the Cossacks, which distinguishes them favorably from the all-Russian “human dust.” (Prince P. D. Dolgorukov, Russian)
“always united, whole in resolving and understanding their internal Cossack issues. In opinions, views, attitudes towards an issue external to him - the Russian one, the Cossack intelligentsia is divided, scattered, forgetting about the main thing, the only unshakable one - the interests of their people, the Cossack people. The Russian intelligentsia here, abroad, and the Soviet authorities there, in the USSR, achieved amazing consistency in their aspirations to introduce into the consciousness of the Cossacks (the former in exile, the latter in our native lands) the conviction that the Cossacks are Russian (Great Russian) people, and “Cossack” and “peasant” are identical concepts. The concerns of the Soviet government about such “education” of the Cossacks are quite understandable: they pursue practical goals: by darkening the national self-awareness of the Cossacks, by introducing the psychology of the Great Russian, to weaken resistance to Soviet construction. However, the Cossacks never recognized themselves, did not feel and did not consider themselves Great Russians (Russians) - they considered them Russians, but exclusively in the state-political sense (as subjects of the Russian state).” (I. F. Bykadorov, Don Cossack)

The Cossacks recognized themselves as a separate, original people, not reducible to the status of a Russian subethnic group, and in a purely political sense: the sociopolitical interests of the Cossacks were recognized (and, if possible, defended) by the Cossack intelligentsia precisely as ethnic (national) interests, and not as the interests of some speculative military -service class.

Nicholas I, the warrior tsar, loved the Cossacks. Respected their characteristics. However, he tried to use these features to the benefit of the state and the dynasty. And in 1827 he proclaimed his 9-year-old heir the August Ataman of the Cossack Troops. Grand Duke Alexander Nikolaevich(the future Alexander II), became the first unified ataman for all the Cossack Troops of Russia. At the same time, the Don Ataman Regiment was renamed the Life Guards of the Heir to the Tsarevich Ataman Regiment. In total, in the history of the Cossacks there were 5 August Atamans: after Alexander Nikolaevich they became the heirs Nikolai Alexandrovich(died before accession to the throne), Alexander Alexandrovich(Alexander III), Nikolai Alexandrovich(Nicholas II) and Alexey Nikolaevich. And the wives of the heirs received the title “atamansha”. This, by the way, is the only case when the term “chieftain” was used quite officially.

Under Nicholas I, the “second wave” of regulations on the Cossack Troops was developed and adopted. Their history is very peculiar. The first provisions were of a very general nature. After Platov’s death in 1818, Adrian Karpovich Denisov became the ataman of the Don. And he found military affairs in a terribly confused state. Platov did not consider it necessary to deal with small paperwork, he acted as he considered necessary, and he did not give a damn about the reporting requirements that came from the capital. But what was forgiven to Platov was not forgiven to others. And Denisov, a thorough man, proposed drawing up a new regulation on the Don Army - one that would clearly regulate all aspects of life. Alexander I approved the initiative, ordered to collect all legal acts on the Don Army and create a commission. However, these acts contradicted each other, as did the interests of various groups of Cossacks. Such intrigues developed around the situation that Denisov flew from his post, and then several more atamans. It was possible to work out a regulation only in 1825 - but Alexander I died, and the new tsar was informed that the document was no good. The fuss continued successfully, and the situation was adopted only in 1835.

It clarified the management procedure. The chief of staff became the second person in the Army. For the civilian part, a Military Board was established. The territory of the Army was divided into districts, headed by district generals. Orders of public charity, medical boards, post offices, and noble assemblies were introduced in the Army and districts. Management in the villages was carried out by the village ataman, 2 judges and 2 clerks. The total service life of the Cossacks was determined to be 30 years, 25 in the field and 5 in the interior. Field - in combat units, internal - as messengers, watchmen, clerks, in the police. A Cossack started it at the age of 17, arrived at the review and was enrolled as a “youngster.” Until the age of 19, he served “sedentary duty” - he studied and performed internal service, then he went to the regiment for 3 years, and to the Caucasus for 4. Then he was released home for 2 years on benefits, and again went to service. And so on up to 4 times.

As before, the regulations on the Don Troops became a model, and regulations on other Troops began to be revised based on it. The troops were divided into “Caucasian” - the Black Sea and Caucasian Linear, and “steppe” - all the rest. There were other changes as well. In 1828, Nicholas I approved the list of Cossack ranks: Cossack, constable, cornet, centurion, esaul, military foreman, lieutenant colonel, colonel. The combat strength of the regiments increased, they became not five, but six hundred, each hundred consisted of 144 Cossacks. And to streamline the formation of regiments, “departments” were established - each department fielded a regiment. Weapons were improved. In 1832, the Cossack gun of the “Asian type” was adopted. And in 1838, cavalry-type sabers were officially replaced by the Cossack saber. Daggers were also left for the Caucasian Troops. In 1840, the dress code changed. For the Steppe Troops, the uniform remained the Don type, but became more spacious and comfortable. And for the Black Sea and Caucasian Linear, the Circassian style was officially approved.

Historians mechanically copy each other’s conclusion that in the 19th century. The Cossacks, they say, have finally turned into a “service class.” Well, in Russia there really was a division into classes, and the Cossacks were singled out as one of them. But for some reason no one thinks: what other service classes were there in our country? Nobility? It had the opportunity to serve not only in the military, but also in the “civil” line. Moreover, under Peter the masses shied away from service, already under Anna Ioannovna they received an indulgence - release for one of their sons, and under Peter III - a decree on “noble freedom”, which made service completely optional. Soldiers were not a class; they were recruited from peasants. And being recruited was considered the greatest disaster.

The Cossacks are completely different. It was a shame not to serve here. Anyone who for some reason avoided the hike and stayed at home was contemptuously teased as a “remnant.” And the provisions on the Cossack Troops did not introduce anything fundamentally new. They only recorded, tried to streamline and adapt to the needs of the state those principles that the Cossacks developed on their own, “from below.” The Cossacks still considered themselves “soldiers of Christ,” although in the new conditions this concept acquired a slightly different content. They became warriors not by recruiting, but by birth. That is, they were called by the Lord himself. And they served, for that matter, not for 30 years, but for their entire lives. A Cossack girl is playing, riding on a stick, and is already preparing for future trips. Then he serves in the ranks. When he grows old (if he lives) he teaches the Cossacks, passes on his experience and traditions to them. It turns out that it also serves. And only the Lord gives him resignation when he calls upon Him to give an account of the service...

Moreover, the legal obligations of the state in relation to the Cossacks were never fulfilled. A share was supposed to be 30 dessiatines, but there was not enough land on the Don. The Cossack nobility multiplied, creating large farms with serfs. Stanitsa yurts were embarrassed by the landowners' possessions. However, the number of Cossacks also grew... The government paid attention to this under Catherine, Paul, Alexander, and Nicholas. Demarcations were carried out, and other lands on the river were allocated to the landowners as compensation. Mius. But some avoided resettlement. And at the same time, new officers were produced, military officials were appointed, they were entitled to a larger share depending on their ranks. After resigning, their share was retained in lieu of a pension. And the real share of an ordinary Cossack was 7-10 dessiatines.

In the Urals, land was not divided into shares; it was infertile. In the lower reaches, farming was impossible; here the share was the right to participate in fishing and an equal share in the catches. And in the upper reaches the land was cultivated together, by the entire community, otherwise it was impossible to raise it. There was theoretically enough land on the Terek, but there was little fertile land. Yes, and there seemed to be enough in the Kuban, but try cultivating it under the constant blows of the highlanders. So where are the privileges of the “service class”? No, another factor was at work, not material, but psychological - the Cossacks saw the highest meaning of their life in serving the Orthodox Fatherland.

It has already been noted that the Cossacks were still widely replenished from outside. But people like N.P. Sleptsov, became Cossacks not because they were appointed to the Cossack unit, but according to their spiritual calling. But a spiritual calling - therefore, the Lord called anyway. They are still soldiers of Christ. The soldiers who served in the Caucasus for 25 years, managed to survive, and then, despite everything, wanted to stay here, were already almost Cossacks. Just like the “imprisoned” peasants of the Caucasian province, who grew up with weapons, in conditions of constant danger. Well, those who were resettled to the Caucasian Line from Ukraine and Central Russia knew well that there was a war going on here, that they would have to reclaim land for themselves and defend it. And not everyone went. Usually these were volunteers. Often, an additional incentive to move to the Caucasus was the memory of one’s origins from the Little Russian, Sloboda, service Cossacks. But even those who were sent here by order, by lot, did not all become Cossacks - they had the opportunity to pay off, evade, and escape. Well, “natural selection” was added on the spot. Some died, others ran away, and others actually “turned up.”

Of course, differences remained in the first generation. The “Old Lineans” looked down on the “New Lineans” who settled in the Caucasus later. And both of them looked down on those assigned to them. But in the harsh crucible of war, new components were quickly melted down and “welded” to the frame of the old base. And the children and grandchildren of those assigned to them already felt themselves to be hereditary, and they themselves looked skeptically at the new ones assigned to them. That is, as in earlier times, the Cossacks were not replenished randomly, but absorbed people of a certain type and energy. And if they became Cossacks not by birth, but by drawing the resettlement lot, by volunteering, by serving as a soldier in a Caucasian regiment, then on the whole it worked out by the will of fate. This means that the Lord also called.

No, the Cossacks were clearly something more than an estate. Cossacks became officials, clergy, generals and officers received nobility, and there were also merchant Cossacks. So, they have already moved to other classes? But they still remained Cossacks! It turns out that there are several classes within one class? And the Cossack leaders, no matter what ranks and honors they achieved, first of all considered themselves Cossacks. Take, for example, the hero of the Patriotic, Caucasian and Polish Wars, Maxim Grigorievich Vlasov 3rd. In 1836, the tsar personally invited him to his place, and did not even order him, but asked him to serve more, regardless of his age and wounds, and appointed him military ataman of the Don. However, trust did not prevent Nicholas I from warming up Vlasov the next year. Returning from the Caucasus, the emperor organized a military review in Novocherkassk, and, being an inveterate “fruit lover,” was indignant: “I expected to see 22 regiments of Cossacks, but I saw 22 regiments of men! Nobody has any idea about the front. And the horses!.. These are not Cossack horses, but peasant horses!”

Well, the chieftain took the criticism into account. To improve horses, regulations on military herds were issued and a military breeding plant was established. And in 1838, under the leadership of Vlasov, “Rules for the composition and formation of Cossack regiments” were published - the first Cossack drill regulations, which combined traditional “lava” techniques and the restructuring of ranks and columns of a regiment, hundreds, platoons, rules for foot formation, ceremonial march, carrying out and carrying away the banner. "Regularity"? No, the transition to “regularity” did not happen. The originality was preserved, but it was also combined with combat smartness and smartness, which the Cossacks also began to be proud of. By the way, when these rules were introduced, Cossack ranks were also adjusted. For the same reorganizations of hundreds, fifty, platoons of the existing junior command staff was not enough, and the rank of clerk (corresponding to corporal) was introduced, and the rank of constable was divided into two - senior and junior constable.

Vlasov devoted himself entirely to serving not only the Fatherland, but also the Cossacks. He could, for example, at the wedding of the heir to the throne in the presence of the entire foreign diplomatic corps, kneel before the king, asking for an increase in the salaries of his subordinates.

The emperor was very dissatisfied with this and whispered: “Get up! You're disgracing me! And the ataman then explained to General Chernyshev: “Damn all our foreign ambassadors, what are they to me! Yes, before whom did I kneel, after all, before the king himself! And why did I kneel before him! Perhaps I was begging for some kind of mercy for myself - no, I was asking for his own faithful royal servants, who have nothing to eat.” In 1848, when a cholera epidemic began on the Don, the 81-year-old ataman personally led the fight against it and traveled around the villages. And he died after becoming infected while visiting a sick Cossack.

And in Kuban he was such a “father” Nikolai Stepanovich Zavodovsky. He began his service at the age of 12 in battles with the highlanders, and participated in the Patriotic and Turkish wars. In 1828–1829 At the head of the Cossack regiments he took Kars and Ardahan. He became not only the appointed ataman of the Black Sea Army, but, while maintaining this post, was appointed commander of the troops of the entire Caucasian line, and received the rank of general from the cavalry. Nevertheless, he continued to personally lead the Cossacks on campaigns. And the faithful assistant who replaced Zavodovsky in Yekaterinodar was the Chief of Staff of the Army, Lieutenant General Grigory Antonovich Rasp. Also a brave warrior who organized annual campaigns against the Circassians. But also a very talented business executive and administrator. It was under him (but also thanks to the successes in the fight against the highlanders) that the Kuban flourished and its economic rise began. Rasp fought against negligence and violations of discipline very simply, with a whip. Being self-taught, he encouraged enlightenment. Along with military operations, he was the first to begin to establish coexistence with the Circassians, turned them to peaceful activities, and allowed them to attend fairs in Yekaterinodar. Alas, in 1852, Rasp was removed from his post for his addiction to strong drinks - although he handed over the affairs to his successor in an exemplary manner. And Zavodovsky died in 1853 - at the age of 75, but on a military campaign beyond the Kuban.

And yet, the state leadership did not like such “Cossack patriotism.” Therefore, Vlasov became the last on the Don, and Zavodovsky - the last pre-revolutionary chieftain of the ancestral Cossacks in the Kuban. After Vlasov, a general was appointed Mikhail Grigorievich Khomutov, after Zavodovsky - a brilliant general staff officer Grigory Ivanovich Philipson. This did not cause any excesses or conflicts; the Cossacks knew them well, and they themselves knew the Cossacks. Before this, Khomutov had been the chief of staff of the Don Army for 10 years, and Philipson was an old Caucasian, chief of staff of the Caucasian Line. And no official ban was introduced on the appointment of hereditary Cossacks as military atamans. But behind the scenes it became a rule. Cossack generals began to be appointed to non-Cossack military and administrative posts, and army generals were placed at the head of the Cossack Troops.