Cossacks

The Cossacks are a historical military class of people with primarily Slavic heritage who continue to play key roles in the history of the steppes region of Central Asia. They have traditionally lived in an area north of the Black and Caspian Seas. The name Cossack is derived from the Turkic term kazak, meaning "free man" or "bandit." The name has proven to be apt, as they retained a large degree of autonomy throughout much of their cultural history as loose confederations of peoples. They were historically known as fearsome fighters who defended not only their own lands but also those of people with related Russian and Slavic heritage. In addition to their roles in the development of the Ukrainian and Russian nations, they have served as armies for hire in several conflicts.

In the modern era, the Cossacks have assumed mythic status among Russians and Ukrainians and are often invoked as proud legacies of their respective national identities. Correspondingly, they have played a key role in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, with many paramilitary groups claiming descent from historical Cossack groups. The Cossacks' shifting alliances, conflicts with regional governing powers, and defense of their lands from invading forces ultimately played major roles in determining the national boundaries of many Central Asian nations.

Brief History

The first known appearance of the term kazak is in a thirteenth-century language dictionary of the Cumans, a people of the southern steppes region. In the fifteenth century, the Golden Horde of the Mongol Empire—which had dominated the region for centuries—fell into decline, creating a power vacuum. In their wake, several states, including the Ottoman Empire, the Tsardom of Muscovy (a precursor to the Russian state), the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Kingdom of Poland, expanded their power into the steppes of Asia. Living in this region were proto-Cossack peasant migrants of East Slavic origin who had escaped serfdom in Poland, Russia, and elsewhere for the comparative freedom of Central Asia. The Cossacks formed organized communities that were principally nomadic in form. This expanse of land became known as a volatile area under constantly shifting pressures from the political powers surrounding it.

Despite the Turkic origins of the name, by the fifteenth century, contemporary documents began to make increased references to the Slavic rather than Turkic nature of the Cossacks. This may have been due to an appropriation of the term to describe a group of primarily Slavic immigrants to the area during this period rather than because they had any cultural or ancestral links to the original Turkic Cossack peoples. Most historians believe that the Cossacks who began to appear in the fifteenth century were likely of East Slavic heritage. Beyond this generally acknowledged ancestry, the precise cultural origin of these Cossacks remains a point of continuing debate. Some sources point to a combination of Belarusian, Russian, Ukrainian, Tatar, and Turkic roots in reflection of the cultural diversity of this region. Other academics have sought to ascribe a continuing singular Cuman or Tatar origin to them. Perhaps the most likely explanation of the ancestry of the Cossacks is that they existed in two early forms: a population of Tatar peoples of Turkic origin who lived in the region before the Mongol decline, and then a second—perhaps related—collection of peoples who the Lithuanians and Russians viewed as alien and as such were deemed as Cossacks due to a nomadic nature that was shared with earlier Turkic Cossacks. It is also possible that the two Cossack groups lived side by side for a period, with the Turkic groups ultimately being absorbed by the Slavic peoples.

By the sixteenth century, the Cossacks had split into several distinct confederations. These groups were initially formed as a means of self-defense against Tatar raids. Those Cossacks who defended local communities came to be known as Town Cossacks. Over time, as they gained military experience and the settlements grew in size, some of these Cossacks began to organize into larger military confederations called hosts. The two most prominent hosts were the western Zaporizhia Cossacks who were centered near the Dnieper River in the Ukraine and the eastern Don Cossacks who lived near the Don River of Russia.

Other Cossack groups included the Little Russian Cossacks found near Belgorad, the Yaik Cossacks (or Ural Cossacks) who lived near the Ural River, and the Siberian Cossacks of northern Russia. Oftentimes, these groups had little in common with one another. The Siberian Cossacks, for example, were typically non-property-owning serfs in military service to the tsar who shared few cultural ties with the Zaporizhia or Don Cossacks. The Siberian Cossacks are often credited with the Russian colonization of Siberia.

These groups asserted a great deal of pressure on neighboring states. This necessitated the formation of various alliances between the Cossacks and regional governments. For instance, an army of twenty thousand Zaporizhia Cossacks joined the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in pushing back the invading Ottoman forces in 1621—a conflict that began in part due to the Cossacks' repeated pillaging of Ottoman communities. The Cossacks were also regarded as an ongoing nuisance for other regional powers throughout the Eurasian steppes.

Zaporizhia Cossacks

The oldest of the Cossack hosts was probably the Zaporizhia Cossacks, who have subsequently come to have strong cultural associations with Ukraine. These Cossacks came under the service of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth who employed them in military service as both a means of protecting themselves against Tatars while keeping them in check. The first great military leader of the Zaporizhia Cossacks was Prince Dmytro Vyshnevetsky, who was said to have established Zaporizhian Sich, the first organized political state of the Cossacks. Under Ivan the Terrible, a sixteenth-century Grand Prince of Moscow, Vyshnevetsky helped lead a sizable force of Cossacks against the Ottomans and became one of the first acknowledged hetmans (military leaders) of the Cossacks.

The Zaporizhia Cossacks had a tense relationship with the Poles. While the Cossacks were valued for their ability to protect borders, their military capabilities and growing demands represented a threat. As a result, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth created a register of Cossacks in the sixteenth century that granted listed members certain rights including payments of cash or goods and exemptions from taxes. Registered Cossacks were more financially comfortable than their unregistered neighbors were, and the Cossacks pressured the Polish-Lithuanian government to expand the rolls of the register. By the end of the sixteenth century, unregistered Zaporizhia Cossacks increasingly came into conflict with regional nobility over issues of land ownership. Several dozen uprisings between 1591 and 1638 led to brutal repressions by Polish leaders.

In 1648, the refusal of the Polish-Lithuanians to enlarge the register led to the Khmelnytsky Uprising, a bloody conflict in which the Cossacks engaged in widespread massacres of Poles, Catholics, and Jews. It ultimately resulted in the creation of an independent Cossack state called the Cossack Hetmanate. To protect their new state, the Cossacks agreed to the 1654 Pereyaslav Agreement in which they made a pledge of loyalty to the Russian tsar in exchange for greater autonomy. Rival leadership among the hetmanate led to internal divisions and competing alliances with the Poles and Russians. In 1667, the Ukrainian Cossack territories were split into two groups on either side of the Dnieper under the Truce of Andrusovo: Right-Bank Ukraine (under the Russians) and Left-Bank Ukraine (under the Poles). The two groups often found themselves at odds, creating tensions that were heightened by existing enmities between the Poles and Russians. This division eventually drew even the Ottomans into the regional conflict. Left-Bank Ukraine was eventually absorbed into the Polish state, while Right-Bank Ukraine was able to maintain its autonomy for almost a century.

However, internal conflicts and increasing class differentiations between the rich and poor in Right-Bank Ukraine helped lead to its decline. Constant tensions between the Cossack groups also created ongoing problems between the Russians and the hetmanate. The Russians gradually increased their authority over the hetmanate until its eventual collapse and abolishment by the Russians at the end of the eighteenth century.

Under the Russians, the Cossack nobility were granted increased rights equivalent to that of the Russian aristocracy, while Cossack commoners were faced with the growing threat of being reduced to the status of serfs. The Ukrainian Cossacks retained some small level of autonomy particularly in the Chernihiv and Poltava regions until the revolution of 1917, a freedom that was due in part to their continuing value as soldiers.

The Zaporizhia Cossacks and their Ukrainian heirs had major effects on the boundaries and shifting fortunes of the regional powers of Central Asia. For instance, the loss of the Zaporizhia host as a reliable military force helped lead to a decline of Polish power in the seventeenth century, a period known in Poland as the Ruin (or the Deluge). The Cossack Hetmanate is sometimes perceived as the forerunner to the modern Ukrainian state.

Don Cossacks

The early origins of the Don Cossacks followed a similar history to that of the Zaporizhia Cossacks. Much of its initial population was formed from escaped serfs seeking greater autonomy and land. After settling along the Don, they eventually developed into a strong buffer for the Russians against the Ottomans. While they grew economically dependent upon Moscow, they retained heightened autonomy in their own lands. Beginning with Peter the Great in the early eighteenth century, the Cossacks were regarded as valuable military assets who helped the Russians expand their national footprint and protect their southern borders.

In the eighteenth century, the Russians sought to reduce Cossack autonomy, particularly as the southern border began to move farther south beyond the Cossacks' traditional lands. Regional Cossack commanders were increasingly appointed by the Russian leadership in Moscow. As their military prowess was still highly respected, the Don Cossacks were conscripted into the Russian military under twenty years of required service. They helped to repel Napoleon's attempted invasion of Russia in 1812 and were important players in the Crimean War (1853–1856). Due to the special privileges that their military service granted them, they were regarded as highly loyal to the Russian tsars. However, by the time of the Russian revolution of 1917, the Don Cossacks were viewed as an obsolete force from a bygone era due to their outdated tactics, although they were called to serve in Russian forces during World War I (1914–1918).

Russian Decossackization

During the Russian Civil War (1918–1920), many Cossacks of southern Russia sided with the anti-Communist White armies. Up to thirty thousand Cossacks fled Russia after the fall of these forces. In the ensuing Soviet state, the Cossacks lost much of their prestige. Under the Soviet Communists, the Cossacks experienced a period of repression. In 1919, the Bolshevik leadership established a policy of decossackization that sought to integrate the Cossacks into the Soviet state more fully by eliminating their independent judicial, governmental, and cultural institutions. Cossack properties were seized and hundreds of thousands were killed or deported. Although Joseph Stalin used Cossack forces in World War II (1939–1945), official Soviet policy was to limit their cultural independence, and they remained a repressed minority group for much of the history of the Soviet state.

Roles in Contemporary Society

Under Mikhail Gorbachev's Perestroika movement, the Cossack hosts were reestablished and they were once again granted increased rights and autonomy. However, it was under Russian president Vladimir Putin that the lingering cultural prestige and romanticism associated with the Cossacks were used to help promote Russian nationalism in the twenty-first century. The self-proclaimed descendants of Cossacks have eagerly joined the Russian military in various conflicts, including the 2008 invasion of Georgia, the annexation of Crimea in 2014, and the conflict in eastern Ukraine that began in 2014. In some cases, these contemporary groups have assumed the form of ultranationalist paramilitary groups who have invoked the historical militancy of their ancestors in high-profile bids to defend conservative Russian values. In Ukraine, too, the symbolic associations of Cossacks with Ukrainian freedom and self-determination have led to a resurgence of Cossack traditions and invocations of nationalist pride.

Culture

The Cossack groups generally accepted refugees from other cultures, provided they were followers of Orthodox Christianity or willing to convert. For much of their early history, Cossacks were primarily nomadic and superb horse riders. As a provision of their military alliances with various regional powers, they were often allowed to plunder and keep any goods from their enemies—particularly communities under the oversight of the Ottomans. They supplemented these supplies through fishing, hunting, and foraging practices. Eventually during the sixteenth century, they began to settle and develop agricultural skills.

During this period, they demonstrated increased political organization with a defined leadership that had many features of direct democracies. They elected a general assembly called a rada, which served as a governmental body in which individual Cossacks had direct representation. At the top were the hetmans. The Cossack leadership ruled from centralized sichs, Cossack capitals that functioned as their primary administrative, judicial, and military centers.

The Cossacks developed distinct forms of art, literature, architecture, and other artistic expressions. They were particularly known for their distinctive dress that included tunics, shashka sabres, cherkesska coats, and tall fleece hats.

Bibliography

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