What is the Cossacks? Meaning and interpretation of the word kazachestvo, definition of the term. External general characteristics of the Cossacks Cossack definition from history

from Turkic: Cossack, Cossack - a daring man, a free man), a military estate in Russia. In the XIV-XVII centuries. - free people, free from tax and employed, ch. arr. in various trades, as well as persons carrying military service on the outskirts of the country. Serving Cossacks were divided into city (regimental) and stanitsa (sentry) and were used to protect cities and sentry posts, respectively, for which they received land from the government for life use on terms of local ownership and salaries. As a social group, these Cossacks were close to archers, gunners, etc. In the XVIII century. most of them were transferred to the taxable estate and entered the category of single-palaces, some became part of the Cossacks (Siberian, Orenburg, etc.).

From the 2nd floor. 15th century Behind the line of guard fortifications on the southern and southeastern outskirts of the Polish-Lithuanian and Russian states, fugitive peasants and townspeople began to accumulate, who also called themselves free people - Cossacks. The need to wage a continuous struggle against neighboring feudal states and semi-nomadic peoples contributed to the unification of these people into communities. In the XV century. communities of Don, Volga, Dnieper and Grebensky Cossacks arose. In the 1st floor. 16th century Zaporizhzhya Sich arose, in the 2nd half. 16th century - communities of Terek and Yaik Cossacks. In the end of the XVI century. the Siberian Cossacks formed, and in the middle. 17th century in the Left-bank Little Russia - Sloboda Cossacks. Polish-Lithuanian government in the 2nd half. 16th century created from the top of the Ukrainian Cossacks a category of registered Cossacks, who were on a salary, and sought to transfer the rest to taxable estates. The rapidly growing Little Russian Cossacks formed the leading force of the popular uprisings in Little Russia in the XVI - 1st half. 17th century under the leadership of S. Nalivaika, K. Kosinsky, G. Loboda and others. In the middle. 17th century Little Russian Cossacks, led by Bohdan Khmelnitsky, took an active part in the liberation war for the reunification of Little Russia with Russia.

The economic life and socio-political structure of the Cossacks had many common features. The basis of the economic life of the Cossacks at first was crafts - hunting, fishing and beekeeping. Cattle breeding appeared relatively early; agriculture, as a rule, began to spread later, from about the 2nd floor. 17th century In the XVI-XVII centuries. important sources of existence of the Cossacks were also military booty and salaries from the state. Behind short term the Cossacks mastered the vast expanses of the fertile lands of the Wild Field and other outskirts of Russia. The Cossacks actively participated in the movement of Russian explorers in Siberia and the Far East. In the XVI - 1st floor. 17th century the tsarist government did not have sufficient forces to subjugate the "free" Cossacks outside the state borders. At the same time, it sought to use this Cossacks to protect the southern and southeastern borders of the state and sent the Cossacks salaries "for service", ammunition, bread. This contributed to the gradual transformation of the Cossacks into a privileged military estate, the position of which was determined by the fact that for the service to the state, each Cossack army was endowed with land, which it transferred to the use of the Cossack villages. This form of medieval use of land for service was retained by the Cossacks until 1917.

The Cossacks from the very beginning were not homogeneous. The number of poor Cossacks ("golytba", "non-traction", etc.) increased, and they took the most active part in the peasant wars and popular uprisings of the 17th-18th centuries. At the same time, a wealthy part stood out from the mass of the Cossacks - the "domovity", the top of which seized a leading position in the Cossack communities, forming a group of foremen. In n. 19th century the Cossack foreman entered the ranks of the nobility.

In the XVI-XVII centuries. the Cossacks enjoyed autonomy in the field of court, administration and external relations. All the most important matters were discussed by the general gathering of the Cossacks ("rada", "circle", "kolo"), on the decisions of which the ordinary mass had some influence. During the XVIII century. along with the transformation of the Cossacks into a military class, the Cossack communities were transformed into irregular Cossack troops. In 1721 they came under the jurisdiction of the Military Collegium; then the election of military chieftains and foremen was eliminated, who gradually turned into military officials. In 1709 (in connection with the suppression of the Bulavin rebellion) the Zaporozhian Sich was liquidated, which was restored in 1734 under the name of the New Sich and finally abolished in 1775 after the Pugachev rebellion. In the 1670s, the Don and Yaik (renamed Ural) troops were finally subdued, and the Volga Cossack Host formed in 1733 was disbanded.

In the 2nd floor. XVII - 1st floor. 19th century instead of some of the Cossack troops that had lost their significance, new ones were created on the basis of complete subordination to the government. So, to protect the eastern and southeastern borders of the state from the Nogais, Kalmyks, Kazakhs and Bashkirs, the Astrakhan army was formed in 1750, and in 1755 the Orenburg army. In 1787, the Black Sea Cossack Army was formed from the former Cossacks to defend Novorossia, and in 1792-93 they were resettled in the Kuban. In 1828, the Azov Cossack Army was created from the Transdanubian Cossacks, who accepted Russian citizenship, which was liquidated in 1865 (the Cossacks were resettled in the Kuban and joined the Black Sea Army). The Cossacks defending the Ishim ("Gorky"), Irtysh and Kolyvano-Kuznetsk lines were united in 1808 into the Siberian Cossack Army. In 1851, the Transbaikal Army was formed, from which the Amur Army was detached in 1858. In 1867, the Semirechensk Army was created, and in 1889, the Ussuri Army. In 1833, the Caucasian Line Cossack Army was formed, which included all the Cossack troops located on the Caucasian Line (except for the Black Sea). In 1860, the Kuban and Terek Cossack troops were formed instead of the Black Sea and Caucasian linear ones. The Cossacks of the newly formed Cossack troops played a significant role in the colonization of the sparsely populated outskirts (Siberia, the Far East, the Semirechye, partly the North Caucasus), and in the spread of agriculture. Along with this, it was influenced by the local population in the field of life and economy.

K n. 20th century in Russia there were 11 Cossack troops - Don, Kuban, Terek, Astrakhan, Ural, Orenburg, Semirechensk, Siberian, Transbaikal, Amur and Ussuri. In addition, there were a small number of Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk Cossacks, who in 1917 formed the Yenisei Army and the Yakut Cossack Regiment of the Ministry of the Interior. The Cossacks numbered 4434 thousand people. population (1916), including approx. 480 thousand service personnel, and had approx. 63 million acres of land. All Cossack troops and regions inhabited by Cossacks were militarily and administratively subordinated to the Main Directorate of Cossack troops of the Military Ministry, headed by the ataman of all Cossack troops, who from 1827 was the heir to the king. At the head of each army was a "mandatory" (appointed) chieftain, and with him - a military headquarters, which managed the affairs of the troops through the appointed chieftains of departments or (in the Don and Amur troops) district chieftains. In the villages and farms there were village and farm atamans who were elected at gatherings. The adult male Cossack population from the age of 18 was obliged to carry out military service for 20 years (according to the charter of 1875 for the Don army, later extended to other troops), incl. 3 years in the "preparatory" category, 12 years in the "combat" (4 years in active service - 1st stage and 8 years on the "benefits" - 2nd and 3rd stages, with periodic camp fees) and 5 years in reserve. In 1909, the service life was reduced to 18 years by reducing the "preparatory" category to a year. The Cossack came to military service with his uniform, equipment, edged weapons and a riding horse. On the eve of the 1st World War, the Cossacks in peacetime fielded 54 cavalry regiments, 20 batteries, 6 plastun battalions, 12 separate hundreds and 4 separate divisions (a total of 68.5 thousand people). During the war (by 1917), 64 cavalry regiments, 56.5 batteries, 30 battalions, 175 separate hundreds, 78 half-hundreds, 11 separate divisions and 61 spare hundred (about 300 thousand people) were fielded. Thanks to good combat training and military traditions, the Cossack units played a prominent role in the wars of Russia in the XVIII - AD. XX centuries, especially in the Seven Years' War of 1756-63, the Patriotic War of 1812, the Crimean War of 1853-56, the Russian-Turkish War of 1877-78.

Great Definition

Incomplete definition ↓

Cossacks - a nation formed at the beginning new era, as a result of genetic links between many Turanian (Siberian) tribes of the Scythian people Kos-Saka (or Ka-Saka), Azov Slavs Meoto-Kaisar with a mixture of Ases-Alans or Tanaits (Dontsov). The ancient Greeks called them kossakha, which meant "white sakhi", and the Scythian-Iranian meaning "kos-sakha" - "white deer". The sacred deer - the solar symbol of the Scythians, can be found in all their burials, from Primorye to China, from Siberia to Europe. It was the Don people who brought this ancient military symbol of the Scythian tribes to our days. Here you will find out where the Cossacks came from, a shaved head with a forelock and a drooping mustache, and why the bearded Prince Svyatoslav changed his appearance. You will also learn the origin of many names of the Cossacks, Don, Greben, roamers, black hoods, etc., where did the Cossack military paraphernalia, hat, knife, Circassian coat, gazyri come from. You will also understand why the Cossacks were called Tatars, where Genghis Khan came from, why the Battle of Kulikovo took place, the invasion of Batu and who was really behind all this.

"Cossacks, an ethnic, social and historical community (group), which, due to its specific characteristics, united all the Cossacks ... The Cossacks were also defined as a separate ethnic group, an independent nationality, or as a special nation of mixed Turkic-Slavic origin." Dictionary of Cyril and Methodius 1902.

As a result of the processes that in archeology are usually called "the introduction of the Sarmatians into the environment of the Meots", in the North. In the Caucasus and on the Don, a mixed Slavic-Turanian type of special nationality appeared, divided into many tribes. It was from this confusion that the original name "Cossack" originated, which was noted by the ancient Greeks in ancient times and was written as "kossakhs". The Greek inscription Kasakos was preserved until the 10th century, after which the Russian chroniclers began to mix it with the common Caucasian names Kasagov, Kasogov, Kazyag. But from the ancient Turkic "Kai-Sak" (Scythian) meant freedom-loving, in another sense - a warrior, a guard, an ordinary unit of the Horde. It was the Horde that became the unification of different tribes under a military union - whose name today is the Cossacks. The most famous: "Golden Horde", "Piebald Horde of Siberia". So the Cossacks, remembering their great past, when their ancestors lived beyond the Urals in the country of Asses (Great Asia), inherited their name of the people "Cossacks", from As and Saki, from the Aryan "as" - warrior, military estate, "Sak" - by type of weapon: from sak, whip, cutters. "As-sak" was later transformed into a Cossack. And the very name of the Caucasus - Kau-k-az from the ancient Iranian kau or kuu - mountain and az-as, i.e. Mount Azov (Asov), as well as the city of Azov in Turkish and Arabic was called: Assak, Adzak, Kazak, Kazova, Kazava and Azak.
All ancient historians claim that the Scythians were the best warriors, and Svydas testifies that they had banners in the troops from ancient times, which proves the regularity in their militias. The Getae of Siberia, Western Asia, the Hittites of Egypt, the Aztecs, India, Byzantium, on banners and shields had a coat of arms depicting a double-headed eagle, adopted by Russia in the 15th century. as a legacy of their glorious ancestors.

Interestingly, the tribes of the Scythian peoples depicted on the artifacts found in Siberia, on the Russian Plain, are shown with beards and long hair on their heads. Russian princes, rulers, warriors are also bearded and hairy. So where did the settler come from, a shaved head with a forelock and a drooping mustache?
For European peoples, including the Slavs, the custom of shaving the head was completely alien, while in the east it has been widespread for a long time and very widely, including among the Turkic-Mongolian tribes. So the hairstyle with the sedentary was borrowed from the eastern peoples. In 1253 Rubruk described it in Batu's Golden Horde on the Volga.
So, we can say with confidence that the custom of shaving the head of the Slavs in Rus' and in Europe was completely alien and unacceptable. It was first brought to Ukraine by the Huns, for centuries it lived among the mixed Turkic tribes that lived on Ukrainian lands - Avars, Khazars, Pechenegs, Polovtsy, Mongols, Turks, etc., until it was finally borrowed by the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks, along with all the other Turkic-Mongolian traditions of the Sich . But where does the word "Sich" come from? Here is what Strabo writes. XI.8.4:
"Saks were called all the southern Scythians attacking Western Asia." The weapon of the Saks was called sakar - an ax, from whipping, chopping. From this word, in all likelihood, the name of the Zaporozhian Sich came, as well as the word Sicheviki, as the Cossacks called themselves. Sich - the camp of the Saks. Sak in Tatar means careful. Sakal - beard. These words are borrowed from the Slavs, Masaks, Massagets.

In ancient times, during the mixing of the blood of the Caucasoids of Siberia with the Mongoloids, new mestizo peoples began to form, which later received the name of the Turks, and this was still a long time after the emergence of Islam itself and their adoption of the Mohammedan faith. Subsequently, from these peoples and their migration to the West and Asia, a new name appeared, defining them as the Huns (Huns). Of the discovered Hunnic burials, they reconstructed the skull and it turned out that some Hunnic warriors wore a sedentary. The same warriors with forelocks were then among the ancient Bulgars who fought in the army of Attila, and many other peoples mixed with the Turks.

By the way, the Hunnic "devastation of the world" played an important role in the history of the Slavic ethnos. Unlike the Scythian, Sarmatian and Gothic invasions, the invasion of the Huns was extremely large-scale and led to the destruction of the entire former ethno-political situation in the barbarian world. The departure to the west of the Goths and the Sarmatians, and then the collapse of the empire of Attila, allowed the Slavic peoples in the 5th century. to begin mass settlement of the Northern Danube, the lower reaches of the Dniester and the middle reaches of the Dnieper.
Among the Huns there was also a group (self-name - Gur) - Bolgurs (White Gur). After the defeat in Phanagoria (Northern Black Sea, Mesopotamia Don-Volga and Kuban), part of the Bulgarians went to Bulgaria and, having strengthened the Slavic ethnic component, became modern Bulgarians, the other part remained on the Volga - the Volga Bulgarians, now Kazan Tatars and other Volga peoples. One part of the Khungurs (Hunno-gurs) - the Ungars or Ugrians, founded Hungary, the other part of them settled on the Volga and mixed with the Finnic-speaking peoples, became Finno-Ugric peoples. When the Mongols came from the east, they, with the agreements of the Kyiv prince, went west and merged with the Ungars-Hungarians. That is why we are talking about the Finno-Ugric language group, but this does not apply to the Huns in general.
During the formation of the Turkic peoples, entire states appeared, for example, from the mixing of the Caucasoids of Siberia, the Dinlins with the Gangun Turks, the Yenisei Kirghiz appeared, from them - the Kyrgyz Kaganate, after - the Turkic Kaganate. We all know the Khazar Kaganate, which became the unification of the Khazar Slavs with the Turks and Jews. From all these endless associations and separations of the Slavic peoples with the Turks, many new tribes were created, for example, the state association of the Slavs suffered from the raids of the Pechenegs and Polovtsy for a long time.

For example, according to the law of Genghis Khan "Yasu", developed by cultural Central Asian Christians of the Nestorian sect, and not by wild Mongols, hair must be shaved off, and only a pigtail is left on the crown. High-ranking personalities were allowed to wear a beard, and the rest had to shave it off, leaving only mustaches. But this is not a custom of the Tatars, but of the ancient Getae (see Chapter VI) and the Massagetae, i.e. people known as far back as the 14th century. BC and intimidating Egypt, Syria and Persia, and then mentioned in the VI century. according to R. X. by the Greek historian Procopius. The Massagetae - the Great-Saki-Geta, who made up the advanced cavalry in the hordes of Attila, also shaved their heads and beards, leaving a mustache, and left one pigtail on top of their heads. It is interesting that the military class of the Russ always bore the name Get, and the word "hetman" itself is again of Gothic origin: "great warrior."
The painting of the Bulgarian princes and Liutprand speak of the existence of this custom among the Danube Bulgarians. According to the description of the Greek historian Leo Deacon, the Russian Grand Duke Svyatoslav also shaved his beard and head, leaving one forelock, i.e. imitated the Geta Cossacks, who constituted the advanced cavalry in his army. Consequently, the custom of shaving beards and heads, leaving a mustache and forelock, is not Tatar, as it existed earlier among the Getae more than 2 thousand years before the appearance of the Tatars in the historical field.

The image of Prince Svyatoslav, who has already become canonical, with a shaved head, a long forelock and a drooping mustache, like a Zaporozhian Cossack, is not entirely correct and was imposed mainly by the Ukrainian side. His ancestors had luxurious hair and beards, and he himself was portrayed in various chronicles as bearded. The description of the forelocked Svyatoslav is taken from the above-mentioned Leo Deacon, but he became so after he became the prince not only of Kievan Rus, but also the prince of Pecheneg Rus', that is, southern Rus'. But why then did the Pechenegs kill him? It all comes down to the fact that after the victory of Svyatoslav over the Khazar Kaganate and the war with Byzantium, Jewish aristocracy decided to take revenge on him and persuaded the Pechenegs to kill him.

Well, Leo the Deacon in the X century, in his "Chronicles" gives very interesting description Svyatoslav: "The king is ready Sventoslav, or Svyatoslav, the ruler from Russia, and the hetman of their troops, was the root of the Balts, Rurikovich (the Balts are the royal dynasty of the Western Goths. From this dynasty was Alaric, who took Rome.) ... His mother, regentess Helga , after the death of her husband Ingvar, who was killed by the Greutungs, whose capital was Iskorost, she wished to unite the two dynasties of the ancient Rixes under the scepter of the Balts, and turned to Malfred, the Rix of the Greutungs, to give her sister Malfrida for her son, giving her word that she would forgive Malfred the death of her husband Having received a refusal, the city of the Greuthungi was burned by her, and the Greuthungi themselves submitted ... Malfrida was escorted to the court of Helga, where she was brought up until she grew up and became the wife of King Sventoslav ... "
In this story, the names of Prince Mala and Malusha, the mother of Prince Vladimir the Baptist, are clearly guessed. It is curious that the Greek stubbornly called the Drevlyans Greytungs - one of the Gothic tribes, and not Drevlyans at all.
Well, let's leave it on the conscience of the late ideologists, who point-blank did not notice these very Goths. We only note that Malfrida-Malusha was from Iskorosten-Korosten (Zhytomyr region). Then - again Leo the Deacon: "The equestrian warriors of Sventoslav fought without helmets and on light horses of Scythian breeds. Each of his warriors from the Rus had no hair on his head, only a long strand descending to the ear - a symbol of their military god. They fought furiously, descendants of those Gothic regiments that brought great Rome to its knees.These horsemen of Sventoslav gathered from the allied tribes of the Greytungs, Slavs and Rosomones, they were also called in Gothic: "kosaks" - "horseman" that is, and among the Rus they were an elite, themselves but the Ruses inherited from their fathers the ability to fight on foot, hiding behind shields - the famous "tortoise" of the Vikings. The Ruses buried their fallen ones in the same way as their Gothic grandfathers, burning the bodies on their canoes or on the banks of the river, in order to then put the ashes on And those who died by their own death, they laid them in mounds, and poured hills on top. In the Goths in their land, such resting places stretch for hundreds of stages sometimes ... "
We will not understand why the chronicler calls the Rus Goths. And burial mounds in the Zhytomyr region are stumbled unmeasured. Among them there are very ancient ones - Scythian, even before our era. They are mainly located in the northern regions of the Zhytomyr region. And there are later ones, the beginning of our era, IV-V centuries. In the area of ​​the Zhytomyr hydropark, for example. As you can see, the Cossacks existed long before the Zaporozhian Sich.
And here is what Georgy Sidorov says about the changed appearance of Svyatoslav: “The Pechenegs chose him over themselves, after the defeat of the Khazar Khaganate, he becomes a prince already here, that is, the Pecheneg khans themselves recognize his power over themselves. They give him the opportunity to control the Pecheneg cavalry, and she herself the Pecheneg cavalry goes with him to Byzantium.

In order for the Pechenegs to obey him, he was forced to take on their appearance, which is why instead of a beard and long hair, he has a sedentary man and a drooping mustache. Svyatoslav, was a Venetian by blood, his father did not wear a forelock, he had a beard and long hair like any venet. Rurik, his grandfather, was the same, Oleg was exactly the same, but they didn’t adjust theirs to the Pechenegs appearance. Svyatoslav, in order to manage the Pechenegs, so that they believed him, he had to put himself in order, to be outwardly similar to them, that is, he became the khan of the Pechenegs. We are constantly divided, Rus' is the north, the south is the Polovtsy, this is the wild steppe and the Pechenegs. In fact, it was all one Rus', steppe, taiga and forest-steppe - it was one people, one language. The only difference was that in the south they still knew the Turkic language, it was once the Esperanto of the ancient tribes, they brought it from the East, and the Cossacks knew this language up to the 20th century, too, preserving it.
In Horde Rus', not only Slavic writing was used, but also Arabic. Until the end of the 16th century, Russians had a good command of the Turkic language at the everyday level, i.e. Turkic until then was the second spoken language in Rus'. And this was facilitated by the unification of the Slavic-Turkic tribes into an alliance, whose name is the Cossacks. After the Romanovs came to power in 1613, they, because of the freedom and rebelliousness of the Cossack tribes, began to instill a myth about them, as about the Tatar-Mongol "yoke" in Rus' and contempt for everything "Tatar". There was a time when Christians, Slavs and Muslims prayed in the same temple, this was a common faith. God is one, but the religion is different, it was then that everyone was divided and parted in different directions.
The origins of the ancient Slavic military vocabulary date back to the era of Slavic-Turkic unity. This term, so far unusual, is provable: the sources give grounds for this. And above all - a dictionary. A number of designations for the most general concepts of military affairs are derived from the ancient Turkic languages. Such as - warrior, boyar, regiment, labor, (in the meaning of war), hunting, round-up, cast iron, iron, damask steel, halberd, ax, hammer, sulitsa, army, banner, saber, kmet, quiver, darkness (10 thousandth army ), cheers, let's go, etc. They no longer stand out from the dictionary, these invisible Turkisms, tested for centuries. Linguists notice only later, clearly "non-native" inclusions: saadak, horde, bunchuk, guard, esaul, ertaul, ataman, kosh, kuren, hero, biryuch, zhalav (banner), snuznik, rattletrap, alpaut, surnach, etc. And the common symbols of the Cossacks, Horde Russia and Byzantium, tell us that there was something in the historical past that united them all in the fight against the enemy, which is now hidden from us by false layers. Its name is the "Western World" or the Roman Catholic world under papal control, with its missionary agents, crusaders, Jesuits, but we'll talk about that later.

As mentioned above, the "settler" was first brought to Ukraine by the Huns, and in confirmation of their appearance we find in the Name Book of the Bulgarian Khans, which lists the ancient rulers of the Bulgar state, including those who ruled on the lands of present-day Ukraine:
"Avitokhol has lived for 300 years, he was born Dulo, and I eat (y) dilom tvirem ...
These 5 princes reign over the country of the Danube for 500 years and 15 shorn heads.
And then I came to the country of the Danube Isperih prince, I am the same hitherto."
So, facial hair was treated differently: "Some Russ shave their beards, others twist and braid it, like horse manes" (Ibn-Khaukal). On the Taman Peninsula, among the "Russian" nobility, the fashion for sedentary people, which was later inherited by the Cossacks, became widespread. The Hungarian Dominican monk Julian, who visited here in 1237, wrote that the local "men shave their heads baldly and carefully grow their beards, except for noble people who, as a sign of nobility, leave a little hair above their left ear, shaving the rest of their head."
And here is how the contemporary Procopius of Caesarea described fragmentarily the lightest Gothic cavalry: “They have few heavy cavalry, on long campaigns the Goths go light, with a small load on the horse, and when the enemy appears, they sit on their light horses and attack ... The Gothic horsemen are called themselves "kosak", "owning a horse". As usual, their riders shave their heads, leaving only a long tuft of hair, so they become like their military deity - Danapr. All of them have deities with heads shaved in this way and the Goths hasten to imitate them with their appearance .. If necessary, this cavalry fights on foot, and here they have no equal ... When stopping, the army puts carts around the camp for protection, which hold the enemy in case of a sudden attack ... "
To all these military tribes, with a forelock, with a beard or mustache, the name "Kosak" was fixed over time, and therefore the original written form of the Cossack name is still fully preserved in English and Spanish pronunciation.

N. Karamzin (1775-1826) calls the Cossacks a people-knight and says that its origin is more ancient than the Batyevo (Tatar) invasion.
In connection with the Napoleonic wars, the whole of Europe began to be especially interested in the Cossacks. The English general Nolan claims: "The Cossacks in 1812-1815 did more for Russia than its entire army." The French general Caulaincourt says: "Napoleon's entire numerous cavalry perished, mainly under the blows of Ataman Platov's Cossacks." The same is repeated by the generals: de Braque, Moran, de Bart, and others. Napoleon himself said: "Give me the Cossacks, and I will conquer the whole world with them." And the simple Cossack Zemlyanukhin, during his stay in London, made a huge impression on the whole of England.
The Cossacks retained all the distinctive features they received from their ancient ancestors, this is the love of freedom, the ability to organize, self-esteem, honesty, courage, love for the horse...

Some concepts of the origin of the names of the Cossacks

Asia's Cavalry - the most ancient Siberian army, originating from the Slavic-Aryan tribes, i.e. from the Scythians, Saks, Sarmatians, etc. All of them also belong to the Great Turan, and the tours are the same Scythians. The Persians called the nomadic tribes of the Scythians "Tura", because for their strong physique and courage, the Scythians themselves began to be associated with the bulls of the Tours. Such a comparison emphasized the masculinity and courage of the warriors. So, for example, in the Russian chronicles one can find such phrases: "Brave bo be, like a tour" or "Buy tour Vsevolod" (this is how it is said about brother Prince Igor in "The Tale of Igor's Campaign"). And this is where the most curious thing comes in. It turns out that in the time of Julius Caesar (F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron give a reference to this in their Encyclopedic Dictionary), the wild bulls of Turov were called "Urus"! ... And today, for the entire Turkic-speaking world, Russians are "Uruses". For the Persians, we were "urs", for the Greeks - "Scythians", for the British - "cattle", for the rest - "tartarien" (Tatars, wild) and "Urus". Many came from them, the main ones from the Urals, Siberia and ancient india, from where the military doctrine spread already in a distorted form, known to us in China as martial arts.
Later, after regular migrations, some of them were settled in the Azov and Don steppes and began to be called equestrian azes or princes (in Old Slavonic, prince - konaz) among the ancient Slavic-Russians, Lithuanians, Arsk peoples of the Volga and Kama, Mordovians and many others from ancient times became at the head of the board, forming a special noble caste of warriors. Perkun-az among the Lithuanians and the basics among the ancient Scandinavians were revered as deities. And what is a king among the ancient Germans and among the Germans könig (könig), among the Normans king, and among the Lithuanians kunig-az, if not converted from the word horseman, who came out of the land of the Azov-Asses and became the head of the board.
The eastern shores of the Azov and Black Seas, from the lower reaches of the Don, up to the foot of the Caucasus Mountains, became the cradle of the Cossacks, where they finally formed into a military caste, recognizable to us today. This country was called by all the ancient peoples the land of the Azov, Asia terra. The word az or as (aza, azi, azen) is sacred to all Aryans; it means god, lord, king or folk hero. In ancient times, the territory beyond the Urals was called Asia. From here, from Siberia, in ancient times, the people's leaders of the Aryans with their clans or squads went to the north and west of Europe, to the Iranian plateau, the plains of Central Asia and India. For example, historians note the Andronov tribes or the Siberian Scythians as one of these, and the ancient Greeks - the Issedons, Sindons, Seres, etc.

Ainu - in ancient times, they moved from the Urals through Siberia to Primorye, Amur, America, Japan, are known to us today as the Japanese and Sakhalin Ainu. In Japan, they created a military caste, recognizable today by everyone as the samurai. The Bering Strait used to be called the Ain (Aninsky, Ansky, Anian Strait), where they inhabited part of North America.

Kai-Saki (not to be confused with the Kirghiz-Kaisaks),roaming the steppes, these are Polovtsy, Pechenegs, Yases, Huns, Huns, etc., lived on the territory of Siberia, in the Pinto Horde, in the Urals, the Russian Plain, Europe, Asia. From the ancient Turkic "Kai-Sak" (Scythian), meant freedom-loving, in another sense - a warrior, a guard, an ordinary unit of the Horde. Among the Siberian Scythians-Saks, "kos-saka or kos-sakha", this is a warrior, whose symbol is a totem animal deer, sometimes an elk, with branched horns, which symbolized speed, fiery flames and a shining sun.

Among the Siberian Turks, the Sun God was designated through his intermediaries - the swan and the goose, later the Khazar Slavs will accept the symbol of the goose from them, and then the hussars will appear on the historical stage.
And here is Kirgis-Kaisaki,or the Kyrgyz Cossacks, these are today's Kyrgyz and Kazakhs. They are descendants of the Gangun and the Dinling. So, in the first half of the 1st millennium AD. e. on the Yenisei (Minusinsk basin), as a result of the mixing of these tribes, a new ethnic community is formed - the Yenisei Kyrgyz.
In their historical homeland, in Siberia, they created a powerful state - the Kyrgyz Kaganate. In ancient times, this people was marked by Arabs, Chinese and Greeks as blond and blue-eyed, but at a certain stage they began to take Mongols as their wives and changed their appearance in just a thousand years. Interestingly, in percentage terms, the haplogroup R1A among the Kyrgyz is larger than among the Russians, but one should know that the genetic code is transmitted through the male line, and external signs are determined by the female.

Russian chroniclers begin to mention them only from the first half of the 16th century, calling them Horde Cossacks. The character of the Kirghiz is direct and proud. Kirghiz-Kaisak only calls himself a natural Cossack, not recognizing this for others. Among the Kirghiz come across all the transitional degrees of types, from purely Caucasian to Mongolian. They adhered to the Tengrian concept of the unity of the three worlds and entities "Tengri - Man - Earth" ("birds of prey - wolf - swan"). So, for example, ethnonyms found in ancient Turkic written monuments and associated with totem and other birds include: kyr-gyz (birds of prey), uy-gur (northern birds), bul-gar (water birds), bash- kur-t (Bashkurt-Bashkirs - head birds of prey).
Until 581, the Kyrgyz paid tribute to the Turks of Altai, after which they overthrew the power of the Turkic Khaganate, but gained independence for a short time. In 629, the Kyrgyz were conquered by the Teles tribe (most likely of Turkic origin), and then by the Kok-Turks. The ongoing wars with kindred Turkic peoples forced the Yenisei Kyrgyz to join the anti-Turkic coalition created by the Tang state (China). In 710-711, the Turkuts defeated the Kyrgyz and after that they were under the rule of the Turkuts until 745. In the so-called Mongol era (XIII-XIV centuries), after the defeat of the Naimans by the troops of Genghis Khan, the Kyrgyz principalities voluntarily replenished his empire, finally losing their state independence. Combat detachments of the Kyrgyz joined the Mongol hordes.
But the Kyrgyz-Kyrgyz have not disappeared from the pages of history, already in our times, their fate was decided after the revolution. Until 1925, the government of the Kyrgyz autonomy was located in Orenburg - administrative center Cossack army. In order to lose the meaning of the word Cossack, the Jewish Commissars renamed the Kyrgyz ASSR into Kazakstan, which would later become Kazakhstan. By a decree of April 19, 1925, the Kirghiz ASSR was renamed the Kazakh ASSR. Somewhat earlier - on February 9, 1925, by a decree of the Central Executive Committee of the Kyrgyz ASSR, it was decided to transfer the capital of the republic from Orenburg to Ak-Mechet (formerly Perovsk), renaming it Kyzyl-Orda, since one of the decrees of 1925, part of the Orenburg region was returned to Russia. So the original Cossack lands, together with the population, were transferred to nomadic peoples. Now world Zionism demands payment for the rendered "service" to today's Kazakhstan in the form of anti-Russian policy and loyalty to the West.

Siberian Tartars - Jagatai,this is the Cossack army of the Rusyns of Siberia. Ever since the time of Genghis Khan, the Tatarized Cossacks began to represent a dashing invincible cavalry, which was always in the advanced conquest campaigns, where it was based on the Chigets - Dzhigits (from the ancient Chigs and Gets). They were also in the service of Tamerlane, today the name among the people has remained from them, like a dzhigit, dzhigitovka. Russian historians of the eighteenth century. Tatishchev and Boltin say that the Tatar Baskaks, sent to Rus' by the khans to collect tribute, always had detachments of these Cossacks with them. Caught near sea waters, some of the Chigs and Geth became excellent sailors.
According to the Greek historian Nicephorus Gregory, the son of Genghis Khan, under the name of Telepug, in 1221 conquered many peoples living between the Don and the Caucasus, including the Chigets - Chigs and Gets, as well as the Avazgs (Abkhazians). According to another historian Georgy Pakhimer, who lived in the second half of the 13th century, the Tatar commander, named Noga, subjugated all the peoples living along the northern shores of the Black Sea under his rule and formed a special state in these countries. The Alans, Goths, Chigis, Rosses and other neighboring peoples, conquered by them, mixed with the Turks, little by little learned their customs, way of life, language and clothing, began to serve in their army and raised the power of this people to the highest degree of glory.
Not all of the Cossacks, but only part of it, adopted their language, customs and customs, and then, together with them, the Mohammedan faith, while the other part remained faithful to the idea of ​​Christianity and for many centuries defended its independence, dividing into many communities, or partnerships, representing one common union.

Sinds, Miots and Tanahitesthese are Kuban, Azov, Zaporozhye, partly Astrakhan, Volga and Don.
Once from Siberia, part of the tribes of the Andronovo culture moved to India. And here is an indicative example of the migration of peoples and the exchange of cultures, when some part of the Proto-Slavic peoples already moved back from India, bypassing the territory of Central Asia, passing the Caspian Sea, crossing the Volga, they settled on the territory of the Kuban, they were Sinds.

After they formed the basis of the Azov Cossack army. Approximately in the XIII century, some of them went to the mouth of the Dnieper, where they later became known as the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks. At the same time, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania subjugated almost all the lands of present-day Ukraine. The Lithuanians began to recruit these military people for their military service. They called them Cossacks and during the time of the Commonwealth, the Cossacks founded the border Zaporozhian Sich.
Some of the future Azov, Zaporozhye and Don Cossacks, while still in India, took in the blood of local tribes from dark color skin - Dravidian and among all the Cossacks, they are the only ones with dark hair and eyes, this is what distinguishes them. Ermak Timofeevich was just from this group of Cossacks.
In the middle of the first millennium BC. in the steppes lived on the right bank of the Don, the nomadic Scythians, who displaced the nomadic Cimmerians, and on the left bank, the nomadic Sarmatians. The population of the Don forests was original Don - all of them in the future will be called Don Cossacks. The Greeks called them Tanaites (Donets). At that time, besides the Tanahites, many other tribes lived near the Sea of ​​Azov, speaking dialects of the Indo-European group of languages ​​(including Slavic), to which the Greeks gave the collective name "Meots", which in ancient Greek means "bogs" (inhabitants swampy areas). By the name of this people, the sea was named, near which these tribes lived - "Meotida" (Meotian Sea).
Here it should be noted how the Tanaites became the Don Cossacks. In 1399, after the battle on the river. Vorskla, the Siberian Tartars-Rusyns who came with Edigei, settled along the upper reaches of the Don, where Brodniki also lived, and they gave rise to the name of the Don Cossacks. Among the first Don ataman recognized by Muscovy is Sary Azman.

The word sary or sar is ancient Persian, meaning king, lord, lord; hence Sary-az-man - the royal Azov people, the same as the Royal Scythians. The word sar in this sense is found in the following proper and common nouns: Sar-kel is a royal city, but the Sarmatians (from sar and mada, mata, mother, i.e. woman) from the dominance of women among this people, from them - Amazons. Balta-Sar, Sar-Danapal, Serdar, Caesar, or Caesar, Caesar, Caesar and our Slavic-Russian Tsar. Although many people tend to think that sary is a Tatar word meaning yellow, and from here they derive - red, but in the Tatar language there is a separate word for expressing the concept of red, namely zhiryan. It is noted that the Jews, leading their family on the maternal side, often call their daughters Sarah. It is also noted about female domination that from the 1st century. along the northern shores of the Azov and Black Seas, between the Don and the Caucasus, the rather powerful people of Roksolane (Ros-Alan) become known, according to Iornand (VI century) - Rokasy (Ros-Ases), whom Tacitus ranks with the Sarmatians, and Strabo - with Scythians. Diodorus Siculus, describing the Sakai (Scythians) North Caucasus, says a lot about their beautiful and cunning queen Zarina, who conquered many neighboring peoples. Nicholas of Damascus (I century) calls the capital of Zarina Roskanakoy (from Ros-kanak, castle, fortress, palace). It is not for nothing that Iornand calls them Ases or Rokas, where their queen was erected a giant pyramid with a statue on top.

Since 1671, the Don Cossacks have recognized the protectorate of the Moscow Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, that is, they have abandoned independent foreign policy, subordinating the interests of the Troops to the interests of Moscow, the internal order remained the same. And only when the Romanov colonization of the south advanced to the borders of the Land of the Don Army, then Peter I carried out the incorporation of the Land of the Don Army into the Russian state.
This is how some of the former Horde became the Cossacks of the Don, swore an oath to serve the tsar father for a free life and protection of borders, but refused to serve the Bolshevik authorities after 1917, for which they suffered.

So, Sindy, Miot and Tanait are Kuban, Azov, Zaporozhye, partly Astrakhan, Volga and Don, of which the first two mostly died out due to the plague, replaced by others, mainly Cossacks. When, by decree of Catherine II, the entire Zaporozhian Sich was destroyed, then after the surviving Cossacks they were collected and resettled in the Kuban.

The photo above shows the historical types of Cossacks that made up the Kuban Cossack army in the reconstruction of Yesaul Strinsky.
Here is a Khoper Cossack, three Black Sea Cossacks, a lineman and two scouts - a participant in the defense of Sevastopol during the Crimean War. The Cossacks are all distinguished, they have orders and medals on their chests.
-The first on the right is a Cossack of the Khoper regiment, armed with a cavalry flintlock gun and a Don saber.
-Next we see a Cossack from the Black Sea in the form of a sample of 1840 - 1842. He holds in his hand an infantry percussion rifle, an officer's dagger and a Caucasian saber in a sheath hang on his belt. He has a cartridge bag or a carcass hanging on his chest. On the side is a revolver in a holster on a cord.

- Behind him is a Cossack in the form of the Black Sea Cossack army of the 1816 model. Its armament is a flint Cossack rifle of the 1832 model and a soldier's cavalry saber of the 1827 model.
-In the center we see an old Black Sea Cossack from the time when the Black Sea people settled in the Kuban region. He is wearing the uniform of the Zaporizhzhya Cossack army. In his hand he holds an old, apparently Turkish flintlock gun, he has two flintlock pistols in his belt and a powder flask made of horn hangs from his belt. The saber at the belt is either not visible or absent.
-Next is a Cossack in the form of a linear Cossack army. His weapons are: a flintlock infantry rifle, a dagger - beybut at the waist, a Circassian saber with a handle recessed in the sheath, and a revolver on a cord at the waist.
The last in the photograph were two Cossacks of the plastun, both armed with authorized plastun weapons - Littih double-threaded fittings of the 1843 model. Bayonet-cleavers in makeshift scabbards hang from the belt. On the side stands a Cossack pike stuck into the ground.

Brodniki and Donets.
Brodniki come from the Khazar Slavs. In the VIII century, the Arabs considered them Saklabs, i.e. white people, Slavic blood. It is noted that in 737, 20 thousand of their families of horse breeders settled on the eastern borders of Kakheti. They are indicated in the Persian geography of the tenth century (Gudud al Alam) on the Srenem Don under the name Bradas and are known there until the 11th century. after which their nickname is replaced in the sources by a common Cossack name.
Here it is necessary to explain in more detail about the origin of wanderers.
The formation of the union of Scythians and Sarmatians received the name Kas Aria, which later became distortedly called Khazaria. It was to the Slavic Khazars (CasArians) that Cyril and Methodius came to missionary work.

Their activity is where it was noted: Arab historians in the VIII century. the Sakalibs were noted in the Upper Don forest-steppe, and the Persians, a hundred years after them, Bradasov-Brodnikov. The sedentary part of these tribes, remaining in the Caucasus, obeyed the Huns, Bolgars, Kazars and Asam-Alans, in whose kingdom the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov and Taman were called the Land of Kasak (Gudud al Alem). There, among them, Christianity finally triumphed, after the missionary work of St. Cyril, ok. 860
The difference between KasAriya is that it was a country of warriors, and later became Khazaria - a country of merchants, when the Jews came to power in it. And here, in order to understand the essence of what is happening, it is necessary to explain in more detail. In 50 AD, Emperor Claudius expelled all the Jews from Rome. In 66-73, a Jewish uprising arose. They capture the Temple of Jerusalem, the fortress of Anthony, the whole upper city and the fortified palace of Herod, arrange a real massacre for the Romans. They then start an uprising throughout Palestine, killing both the Romans and their more moderate compatriots. This rebellion was crushed, and in 70 the center of Judaism in Jerusalem was destroyed, and the temple was burned to the ground.
But the war went on. The Jews did not want to admit defeat. After the great Jewish uprising of 133-135, the Romans wiped out all the historical traditions of Judaism. A new pagan city of Elia Capitolina has been built on the site of the destroyed Jerusalem since 137, Jews were forbidden to enter Jerusalem. To hurt the Jews even more, the emperor Ariadne forbade them to be circumcised. Many Jews were forced to flee to the Caucasus and Persia.
In the Caucasus, Jews became neighbors to the Khazars, and in Persia they slowly entered all branches of government. It ended with a revolution and a civil war under the leadership of Mazdak. As a result, the Jews were expelled from Persia - to Khazaria, where at that time the Khazar Slavs lived there.
In the 6th century, the Great Turkic Khaganate was created. Some tribes fled from him, such as the Hungarians to Pannonia, and the Khazar Slavs (kozare, kazara), in alliance with the ancient Bulgars, united with the Turkic Kaganate. Their influence reached from Siberia to the Don and the Black Sea. When the Turkic Kaganate began to fall apart, the Khazars received the fled prince of the Ashin dynasty and drove out the Bulgars. This is how the Khazar-Turks appeared.
For a hundred years, Khazaria was ruled by Turkic khans, but they did not change their way of life: they lived in the steppe as a nomadic life and only returned to the adobe houses of Itil in winter. Khan supported himself and his army himself, without burdening the Khazars with taxes. The Turks fought against the Arabs, taught the Khazars to repel the onslaught of regular troops, as they possessed the skills of a steppe maneuver war. So, under the military leadership of the Turks (650-810), the Khazars successfully repelled periodic invasions from the south of the Arabs, which rallied these two peoples, moreover, the Turks remained nomads, and the Khazars - farmers.
When Khazaria accepted the Jews who fled from Persia, and the wars with the Arabs led to the liberation of part of the lands of Khazaria, this allowed the refugees to settle there. So, gradually, Jews who fled from the Roman Empire began to join them, it was thanks to them that at the beginning of the 9th century. a small khanate turned into a huge state. The main population of Khazaria at that time could be called "Slavs-Khazars", "Turkic-Khazars" and "Judeo-Khazars". The Jews who arrived in Khazaria were engaged in trade, for which the Khazar Slavs themselves did not show any abilities. In the second half of the 8th century Jewish refugees from Persia began to arrive in Khazaria by rabbinic Jews expelled from Byzantium, among whom were also descendants of those expelled from Babylon and Egypt. Since the Rabbinical Jews were townspeople, they settled exclusively in the cities: Itil, Semender, Belenjer, etc. All these immigrants from the former Roman Empire, Persia and Byzantium, today we know as Sephardim.
At the beginning of the conversion of the Slavic Khazars to Judaism was not, because. the Jewish community lived apart among the Slavic Khazars and Turkic-Khazars, but over time, some of them converted to Judaism and today they are known to us as Ashkenazi.

By the end of the 8th c. The Judeo-Khazars began to gradually penetrate into the power structures of Khazaria, acting in their favorite way - by becoming related through their daughters to the Turkic aristocracy. The children of the Turkic-Khazars and Jews had all the rights of a father and help Jewish community in all matters. And the children of Jews and Khazars became a kind of outcasts (Karaites) and lived on the outskirts of Khazaria - in Taman or Kerch. At the beginning of the 9th c. the influential Jew Obadiah took power into his own hands and laid the foundation for Jewish hegemony in Khazaria, acting through the Khan-puppet of the Ashin dynasty, whose mother was Jewish. But not all Turko-Khazars accepted Judaism. Soon, a coup took place in the Khazar Kaganate, resulting in a civil war. The "old" Turkic aristocracy revolted against the Judeo-Khazar authorities. The rebels attracted the Magyars (ancestors of the Hungarians) to their side, the Jews hired the Pechenegs. Konstantin Porphyrogenitus described those events as follows: “When they separated from power and an internecine war broke out, the first power (Jews) prevailed and some of them (the rebels) were killed, others fled and settled with the Turks (Magyars) in the Pecheneg lands (lower reaches of the Dnieper), made peace and were called kabars.

In the 9th century, the Judeo-Khazar kagan invited the Varangian squad of Prince Oleg to wage war against the Muslims of the Southern Caspian region, promising the partition of Eastern Europe and help in capturing the Kyiv Kaganate. Tired of the constant raids of the Khazars on their lands, where the Slavs were constantly taken into slavery, Oleg took advantage of the situation, captured Kyiv in 882 and refused to fulfill the agreements, the war began. Approximately in 957, after the baptism of the Kievan princess Olga in Constantinople, i.e. after enlisting the support of Byzantium, the confrontation between Kyiv and Khazaria began. Thanks to an alliance with Byzantium, the Pechenegs supported the Russians. In the spring of 965, the troops of Svyatoslav descended along the Oka and the Volga to the Khazar capital Itil, bypassing the Khazar troops that were waiting for them in the Don steppes. After a short battle, the city was taken.
As a result of the campaign of 964-965. Svyatoslav excluded the Volga, the middle reaches of the Terek and the middle Don from the sphere of the Jewish community. Svyatoslav returned independence to Kievan Rus. Svyatoslav's blow to the Jewish community of Khazaria was cruel, but his victory was not final. Returning, he passed the Kuban and the Crimea, where the Khazar fortresses remained. There were also communities in the Kuban, in the Crimea, Tmutarakan, where the Jews, under the name of the Khazars, still held dominant positions for another two centuries, but the state of Khazaria ceased to exist forever. The remnants of the Judeo-Khazars settled in Dagestan (Mountain Jews) and the Crimea (Karaite Jews). Part of the Slavic Khazars and the Turkic-Khazars remained on the Terek and Don, mixed with local kindred tribes and, according to the old name of the Khazar warriors, they were called "Podon Brodniki", but it was they who fought against Rus' on the Kalka River.
In 1180, the wanderers helped the Bulgarians in their war for independence from the Eastern Roman Empire. The Byzantine historian and writer Nikita Choniates (Acominatus), in his "Chronicle", dated 1190, described the events of that Bulgarian war, so with one phrase he comprehensively characterizes the roamers: "Those roamers who despise death are a branch of the Russians." The initial name was worn as "Kozary", originating from the Kozar Slavs, from whom it received the name Khazaria or the Khazar Kaganate. This is a Slavic militant tribe, part of which did not want to submit to the already Judaic Khazaria, and after its defeat, uniting with their kindred tribes, they subsequently settled along the banks of the Don, where the Tanahits, Sarmatians, Roxalans, Alans (yases), Torki-Berendeys and others lived. The name of the Don Cossacks was received after most of the Siberian army of the Rusins ​​of Tsar Edygei settled there, which also included black hoods left after the battle on the river. Vorskla, in 1399. Edigey - the founder of the dynasty, who led the Nogai Horde. His direct descendants in the male line were the princes Urusovs and Yusupovs.
So, Brodniki are the undeniable ancestors of the Don Cossacks. They are indicated in the Persian geography of the tenth century (Gudud al Alam) in the Middle Don under the name Bradas and are known there until the 11th century. after which their nickname is replaced in the sources by a common Cossack name.
- Berendei, from the territory of Siberia, like many tribes due to climatic shocks, they moved to the Russian Plain. The field, driven from the east by the Polovtsy (Polovtsy - from the word "sexual", which means "red"), at the end of the 11th century, the Berendeys entered into various allied agreements with the Eastern Slavs. According to agreements with the Russian princes, they settled on the borders Ancient Rus' and often carried guard duty in favor of the Russian state. But after that they were scattered and partly mixed with the population of the Golden Horde, and the other part - with Christians. They existed as an independent people. The formidable warriors of Siberia originate from the same lands - the Black Hoods, which means black hats (papakhas), which will later be called Cherkases.

Black hoods (black hats), Cherkasy (not to be confused with Circassians)
- moved from Siberia to the Russian Plain, from the Berendeev kingdom, the last name of the country is Borondai. Their ancestors once inhabited the vast lands of the northern part of Siberia, up to the Arctic Ocean. Their harsh temper terrified enemies, it was their ancestors who were the people of Gog and Magog, it was from them that Alexander the Great was defeated in the battle for Siberia. They did not want to see themselves in family alliances with other peoples, they always lived apart and did not consider themselves to be among any peoples.

For example, about the important role of black hoods in political life Kyiv Principality is evidenced by repeatedly repeated in the annals set expressions: "the whole land of Ruska and black hoods." The Persian historian Rashid-ad-din (died in 1318), describing Rus' in 1240, writes: "The princes Batu with his brothers, Kadan, Buri and Buchek went on a campaign to the country of the Russians and the people of black hats."
Subsequently, in order not to separate one from the other, black hoods began to be called Cherkasy or Cossacks. In the Moscow chronicle of the end of the 15th century, under the year 1152, it is explained: "All the Black Hoods, which are called Cherkasy." The Resurrection and Kiev Chronicles also speak of this: "And having accumulated your squad, go, catch with you the Vyacheslav regiment, all and all black hoods, which are called Cherkasy."
Black hoods, because of their isolation, easily got into the service of both the Slavic peoples and the Turkic ones. Their character and special differences in clothes, especially the headdress, were adopted by the peoples of the Caucasus, whose clothes are now considered for some reason only Caucasian. But in old drawings, engravings and photographs, these clothes, and especially hats, can be seen among the Cossacks of Siberia, the Urals, Amur, Primorye, Kuban, Don, etc. In cohabitation with the peoples of the Caucasus, an exchange of cultures took place and each tribe had something from the others, both in the kitchen, and in clothes and customs. The Siberian, Yaik, Dnieper, Grebensky, Terek Cossacks also came from the Black Hoods, the first mention of the latter dates back to 1380, when free Cossacks living near the Grebenny Gory blessed and presented the holy icon of the Virgin (Grebnevskaya) to Grand Duke Dmitry (Donskoy) as a gift .

Grebensky, Tersky.
The word comb is purely Cossack, meaning the highest line of the watershed of two rivers or beams. In each village of the Don there are many such watersheds and they are all called ridges. In ancient times, there was also the Cossack town of Grebni, mentioned in the annals of Archimandrite Anthony of the Donskoy Monastery. But not all the combers lived on the Terek, in an old Cossack song, they are mentioned in the Saratov steppes:
As it was on the glorious steppes in Saratov,
What is below the city of Saratov,
And above was the city of Kamyshin,
Cossacks-friends gathered, free people,
They gathered, brothers, in a single circle:
like Don, Grebensky and Yaitsky.
Their ataman is Ermak son Timofeevich ...
Later in their origin, they began to add "living near the mountains, i.e. near the ridges." Officially, the Tertsy trace their genealogy from 1577, when the city of Terka was founded, and the first mention of the Cossack army dates back to 1711. It was then that the Cossacks of the Grebensky Free Community formed the Grebensky Cossack Army.

Pay attention to the photograph of 1864, where the combers inherited the dagger from the Caucasian peoples. But in fact, this is an improved sword of the Scythians akinak. Akinak is a short (40-60 cm) iron sword used by the Scythians in the second half of the 1st millennium BC. e. In addition to the Scythians, the tribes of Persians, Saks, Argipeys, Massagets and Melankhlens also used Akinaks, i.e. proto-Cossacks.
The Caucasian dagger is part of the national symbolism. This is a sign that a man is ready to defend his personal honor, the honor of his family and the honor of his people. He never parted with him. For centuries, the dagger has been used as a means of attack, defense and as cutlery. The Caucasian dagger "kama" was most widely used among the daggers of other peoples, Cossacks, Turks, Georgians, etc. The attribute of gasses on the chest appeared with the advent of the first firearm with a powder charge. This detail was first added to the clothes of a Turkic warrior, was among the Mamelukes of Egypt, the Cossacks, but already as an ornament it was fixed among the peoples of the Caucasus.

The origin of the papakha is interesting. Chechens adopted Islam during the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad. A large Chechen delegation that visited the prophet in Mecca was personally initiated by the prophet into the essence of Islam, after which the envoys of the Chechen people accepted Islam in Mecca. Mohamed gave them astrakhan fur for the journey to make shoes. But on the way back, the Chechen delegation, considering that it was not appropriate to wear the gift of the prophet on their feet, sewed hats, and now, before today, this is the main national headdress (Chechen hat). Upon the return of the delegation to Chechnya, without any coercion, the Chechens accepted Islam, realizing that Islam is not only "Mohammedanism", originating from the Prophet Muhammad, but this original faith of monotheism, which made a spiritual revolution in the minds of people and laid a clear line between pagan savagery and true educated faith.

It was the Caucasians who adopted military attributes from different peoples, adding their own, such as a cloak, hat, etc., improved this style of military attire and secured it for themselves, which no one doubts today. But let's see what military vestments used to be worn in the Caucasus.

In the middle photo above we see Kurds dressed according to the Circassian pattern, i.e. this attribute of military attire is already attached to the Circassians and will continue to be assigned to them in the future. But in the background we see a Turk, the only thing he does not have is gazyrs, and this is different. When Ottoman Empire waged war in the Caucasus, the peoples of the Caucasus adopted some military attributes from them, as well as from the Grebensky Cossacks. In this mixture of exchange of cultures and war, the recognizable Circassian and hat appeared. Turks - Ottomans, seriously influenced the historical course of events in the Caucasus, so some photos are full of the presence of Turks with Caucasians. But if not for Russia, many peoples of the Caucasus would have disappeared or assimilated, such as the Chechens who went with the Turks to their territory. Or take the Georgians who asked for protection from the Turks from Russia.

As you can see, in the past, the main part of the peoples of the Caucasus did not have their recognizable attributes today, "black hats", they will appear later, but the combers have them, as the heirs of the "black hats" (hoods). The origin of some Caucasian peoples can be cited as an example.
The Lezgins, the ancient Alans-Lezgi, are the most numerous and brave people in the entire Caucasus. They speak in a light sonorous language of Aryan root, but thanks to influence, starting from the 8th century. Arab culture, which gave them their script and religion, as well as the pressure of the neighboring Turkic-Tatar tribes, have lost a lot of their original nationality and now represent an amazing, difficult to study mixture with Arabs, Avars, Kumyks, Tarks, Jews and others.
The neighbors of the Lezgins, to the west, along the northern slope of the Caucasus Range, live the Chechens, who received the name from the Russians, actually from their large village "Chachan" or "Chechen". The Chechens themselves call their nationality Nakhchi or Nakhchoo, which means people from the country of Nakh or Noah, that is, Noah. According to folk tales, they came around the 4th century. to their present place of residence, through Abkhazia, from the Nakhchi-Van area, from the foot of Ararat (Erivan province) and pressed by the Kabardians, took refuge in the mountains, upstream Aksai, the right tributary of the Terek, where even now there is still the old village of Aksai, in Greater Chechnya, once built, according to the legend of the inhabitants of the village of Gerzel, by Aksai Khan. The ancient Armenians were the first to connect the ethnonym "Nokhchi", the modern self-name of the Chechens, with the name of the prophet Noah, the literal meaning of which means Noah's people. Georgians, from time immemorial, have called Chechens "dzurdzuks", which means "righteous" in Georgian.
According to the philological researches of Baron Uslar, in the Chechen language there is some similarity with the Lezgin language, while in anthropological terms the Chechens are a people of a mixed type. In the Chechen language, there are quite a lot of words with the root "gun", as, for example, in the names of rivers, mountains, auls and tracts: Guni, Gunoy, Guen, Gunib, Argun, etc. Their sun is called Dela-Molch (Moloch). The mother of the sun is Aza.
As we saw above, many Caucasian tribes of the past do not have the usual Caucasian paraphernalia for us, but all the Cossacks of Russia, from the Don to the Urals, from Siberia to Primorye, have it.

And here below, there is already inconsistency in military uniforms. Their historical roots began to be forgotten, and military attributes are already copied from the Caucasian peoples.

After repeated renaming, mergers and divisions of the Grebensky Cossacks, according to the order of the Minister of War N 256 (dated November 19, 1860) "... it was ordered: from the 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th brigades of the Caucasian linear Cossack troops, in full force, to form the "Terek Cossack army", turning into its composition the horse-artillery battery of the Caucasian linear Cossack army N15th and reserve ... ".
In Kievan Rus, subsequently, the semi-settled and settled part of the black hoods remained in Porosie and was eventually assimilated by the local Slavic population, taking part in the ethnogenesis of Ukrainians. Their free Zaporizhzhya Sich ceased to exist in August 1775, when the Sich and the very name "Zaporozhian Cossacks" in Russia, according to Western plans, were destroyed. And only in 1783, Potemkin again gathers the surviving Cossacks for the sovereign's service. The newly formed Cossack teams of the Cossacks receive the name "Kosh of the faithful Cossacks of Zaporozhye", and settle in the territory of the Odessa district. Soon after that (after repeated requests of the Cossacks and for faithful service), they, by personal decree of the Empress (of January 14, 1788), are transferred to the Kuban - to Taman. Since then, the Cossacks are called Kuban.

In general, the Siberian army of the Black Hoods had a huge impact on the Cossacks throughout Russia, they were in many Cossack associations and were an example of a free and indestructible Cossack spirit.
The very name "Cossack" comes from the time of the Great Turan, when the Scythian peoples of Kos-saka or Ka-saka lived. For more than twenty centuries, this name has changed little, originally among the Greeks it was written as Kossakhi. The geographer Strabo called the military people stationed in the mountains of Transcaucasia during the life of Christ the Savior by the same name. After 3-4 centuries, back in the ancient era, our name is repeatedly found in the Tanaid inscriptions (inscriptions), discovered and studied by V.V. Latyshev. Its Greek inscription Kasakos was preserved until the 10th century, after which the Russian chroniclers began to mix it with the common Caucasian names Kasagov, Kasogov, Kazyag. The original Greek inscription of Kossakhi gives the two constituent elements of this name "kos" and "sakhi", two words with a definite Scythian meaning "White Sahi". But the name of the Scythian tribe Sakhi is equivalent to their own Saka, and therefore the following Greek inscription "Kasakos" can be interpreted as a variant of the previous one, closer to the modern one. The change of the prefix "kos" to "kas" is obvious, the reasons are purely sound (phonetic), the peculiarities of pronunciation and the peculiarities of auditory sensations among different peoples. This difference remains even now (Cossack, Kozak). Kossaka, in addition to the meaning of White Saks (Sahi), has, as mentioned above, another Scythian-Iranian meaning - "White deer". Remember the animal style of Scythian jewelry, tattoos on the mummy of the Altai princess, most likely deer and deer buckles - these are attributes of the military class of the Scythians.

And the territorial name of this word was preserved in Sakha Yakutia (in ancient times the Yakuts were called Yakoltsy) and Sakhalin. In the Russian people, this word is associated with the image of branched horns, like elk, colloquial - elk. So, we again returned to the ancient symbol of the Scythian warriors - to the deer, which is reflected in the seal and coat of arms of the Cossacks of the Don army. We should be grateful to them for the preservation of this ancient symbol of the warriors of the Rus and Ruthenians, who come from the Scythians.
Well, in Russia, the Cossacks were also called Azov, Astrakhan, Danube and Transdanubian, Bug, Black Sea, Sloboda, Transbaikal, Khoper, Amur, Orenburg, Yaitsky - Ural, Budzhak, Yenisei, Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk, Yakutsk, Ussuriysk, Semirechensky, Daursky, Ononsky , Nerchen, Evenk, Albazin, Buryat, Siberian, you will not cover everyone.
So, no matter how they call all these warriors, they are all the same Cossacks living in different parts of their country.

P.S.
There are in our history the most important circumstances that are hushed up by hook or by crook. Those who, throughout our historical past, constantly played dirty tricks on us, are afraid of publicity, they are afraid of being recognized. That is why they hide behind false historical layers. These visionaries invented their story for us in order to hide their dark deeds. For example, why did the Battle of Kulikovo take place in 1380 and who fought there?
- Donskoy Dmitry, Prince of Moscow and Grand Duke of Vladimir, led the Volga and Trans-Ural Cossacks (Sibiryaks), who are called Tatars in Russian chronicles. The Russian army consisted of the prince's cavalry and foot squads, as well as the militia. The cavalry was formed from baptized Tatars, defected Lithuanians and Russians trained in Tatar equestrian combat.
- In the Mamaev army there were Ryazan, Western Russian, Polish, Crimean and Genoese troops that fell under the influence of the West. Mamai's ally was the Lithuanian prince Jagiello, Dmitry's ally is Khan Tokhtamysh with an army of Siberian Tatars (Cossacks).
The Genoese financed the Cossack chieftain Mamai, and promised the troops manna from heaven, that is, "Western values", well, nothing changes in this world. The Cossack ataman Dmitry Donskoy won. Mamai fled to Kafu and there, as unnecessary, was killed by the Genoese. So, the Battle of Kulikovo is a battle of Muscovites, Volga and Siberian Cossacks, led by Dmitry Donskoy, with an army of Genoese, Polish and Lithuanian Cossacks, led by Mamai.
Of course, later the whole story of the battle was presented as a battle of the Slavs with foreign (Asian) invaders. Apparently, later, with tendentious editing, the original word "Cossacks" was replaced everywhere in the annals with "Tatars" in order to hide those who so unsuccessfully proposed "Western values".
In fact, the Battle of Kulikovo was only an episode of a civil war that broke out, in which the Cossack hordes of one state fought among themselves. But they sowed the seeds of discord, as the satirist Zadornov says - "traders". It is they who imagine that they are the chosen and exceptional, it is they who dream of world domination, and hence all our troubles.

These "traders" persuaded Genghis Khan to fight against his own peoples. The Pope of Rome and the French King Louis the Saints sent a thousand envoys, diplomatic agents, instructors and engineers to Genghis Khan, as well as the best of European commanders, especially from the Templars (knightly order).
They saw that no one else was fit to defeat both the Palestinian Muslims and the Orthodox Eastern Christians, Greeks, Russians, Bulgarians, etc., who once smashed ancient Rome, and then Latin Byzantium. At the same time, for fidelity and strengthening the blow, the popes began to arm the Swedish ruler of the throne, Birger, the Teutons, the swordsmen and Lithuania against the Russians.
Under the guise of scientists and capital, they occupied administrative positions in the Uighur kingdom, Bactria, Sogdiana.
It was these rich scribes who were the authors of the laws of Genghis Khan - "Yasu", in which great favor and tolerance was shown to all sects of Christians, unusual for Asia, popes and then Europe. In these laws, under the influence of the popes, actually the Jesuits, permission was expressed, with various benefits, to convert from Orthodoxy to Catholicism, which was used at that time by many of the Armenians, who later formed the Armenian Catholic Church.

To cover the papal participation in this enterprise and to please the Asians, the main official roles and places were given to the best native commanders and relatives of Genghis Khan, and almost 3/4 of the secondary leaders and officials consisted mainly of Asian Christian and Catholic sectarians. That's where the invasion of Genghis Khan came from, but the "traders" did not take into account his appetite, and cleaned up the pages of history for us, preparing another meanness. All this is very similar to the "invasion of Hitler", they themselves brought him to power and got hit in the teeth by him, which had to take the goal of the "USSR" as an ally and delay our colonization. By the way, not so long ago, during the period of the opium war in China, these "traders" tried to repeat the "Genghis Khan-2" scenario against Russia, they spud China for a long time with the help of Jesuits, missionaries, etc., but later, as they say: "Thank you Comrade Stalin for our happy childhood."
Have you wondered why the Cossacks of various stripes fought both for Russia and against it? For example, some of our historians are perplexed why the governor of the roamers Ploskinya, who, according to our chronicle, stood with 30 thousand detachments on the river. Kalke (1223), did not help the Russian princes in the battle with the Tatars. He even clearly took the side of the latter, persuading the Kyiv prince Mstislav Romanovich to surrender, and then tied him together with his two sons-in-law and handed him over to the Tatars, where he was killed. As in 1917, so here, there was a protracted civil war. Peoples related to each other pitted against each other, nothing changes, the same principles of our enemies remain, "divide and rule." And so that we do not learn from this, the pages of history are being replaced.
But if the plans of the "traders" of 1917 were buried by Stalin, then the events described above were Batu Khan. And of course, both of them were smeared with the indelible mud of historical lies, their methods are like that.

13 years after the Battle of Kalka, the "Mongols" under the leadership of Khan Batu, or Batu, the grandson of Genghis Khan, from beyond the Urals, i.e. from the territory of Siberia moved to Russia. Batu had up to 600 thousand troops, consisting of many, more than 20 peoples of Asia and Siberia. In 1238 the Tatars took the capital of the Volga Bulgarians, then Ryazan, Suzdal, Rostov, Yaroslavl and many other cities; defeated the Russians at the river. City, took Moscow, Tver and went to Novgorod, where at the same time the Swedes and the Baltic Crusaders were going. An interesting battle would be, the crusaders with Batu storm Novgorod. But the thaw got in the way. In 1240, Batu took Kyiv, his goal was Hungary, where the old enemy of the Chingizids, the Polovtsian Khan Kotyan, fled. Poland fell first with Krakow. In 1241, the army of Prince Henry with the Templars was defeated near Legitsa. Then Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary fell, Batu reached the Adriatic and took Zagreb. Europe was helpless, saved by the fact that Khan Udegei died and Batu turned back. Europe got in the teeth with full for its crusaders, Templars, bloody baptisms, and order reigned in Rus', the laurels for this remained with Alexander Nevsky, brother of Batu.
But then this mess began with the baptist of Rus', with Prince Vladimir. When he seized power in Kyiv, then Kievan Rus began to unite more and more with the Christian system of the West. Here we should note curious episodes from the life of the baptist of Rus', Vladimir Svyatoslavich, including the brutal murder of his brother, the destruction of not only Christian churches, the rape of the princely daughter Ragneda in front of her parents, a harem of hundreds of concubines, a war against her son, etc. Already under Vladimir Monomakh, Kievan Rus was the left flank of the Christian-crusader invasion of the East. After Monomakh, Rus' split into three systems - Kyiv, Darkness-Cockroach, Vladimir-Suzdal Rus'. When the Christianization of the Western Slavs began, the Eastern Slavs considered it a betrayal and turned to the Siberian rulers for help. Seeing the threat of a crusader invasion and the future enslavement of the Slavs, on the territory of Siberia, many tribes united into an alliance, so a state formation appeared - Great Tartaria, which stretched from the Urals to Transbaikalia. Yaroslav Vsevolodovich was the first to call for help from Tartaria, for which he suffered. But thanks to Batu, who created Golden Horde, the crusaders were already afraid of such a force. But all the same, on the sly, the "traders" ruined Tartaria.

Why it all happened, the question here is solved very simply. The cause of the conquest of Russia was led by papal agents, Jesuits, missionaries and other evil spirits, who promised the locals all sorts of benefits and benefits, and especially those that helped them. In addition, in the hordes of the so-called "Mongol-Tatars" there were many Christians from Central Asia, who enjoyed many privileges and freedom of religion, Western missionaries based on Christianity bred various kinds of religious movements there, such as Nestorianism.

Here it becomes clear where in the West there are so many old maps of the territories of Russia and especially Siberia. It becomes clear why the state formation on the territory of Siberia, which was called Great Tartary, is hushed up. On early maps, Tartaria is indivisible, on later maps it is fragmented, and since 1775, under the guise of Pugachev, it ceased to exist. So, with the collapse of the Roman Empire, the Vatican took its place and, continuing the traditions of Rome, organized new wars for its domination. This is how the Byzantine Empire fell, and its heir Russia became the main goal for papal Rome, i.e. now the Western world "traders". For their insidious purposes, the Cossacks were like a bone in the throat. How many wars, upheavals, how much grief has fallen to the lot of all our peoples, but the main historical time, known to us from ancient times, the Cossacks gave our enemies in the teeth. Already closer to our times, they still managed to break the dominance of the Cossacks, and after the well-known events of 1917, the Cossacks were dealt a crushing blow, but it took them many centuries.

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Where do they come from, who are the Cossacks, their manners and customs - let's figure it out together.

What does the word "Cossack" mean?

“Cossack” is a word used since the 14th century, for the first time it was mentioned in the meaning of “guard”. There are several versions of the meaning and origin.

• Turkic origin, meaning a free nomad, a free man. It was applied to a person who, independently or with the whole family, separated from the state and its “guardianship”. Lives in the steppe and supports himself. A subject dissatisfied with the ruler, who had gone to free bread, could also become a Cossack. The Cossacks also include people who left their master after a defeat in a battle or battle. They are also called nomads.
• Another version is of Mongolian origin. It translates as “ko” - “armor” and “zah” - “frontier”.
• Yakovenko N.N., a Ukrainian historian, believes that initially the word meant a hired worker, and among the Tatars - a hired soldier who left his military squad, the horde. But later the meaning expanded and began to mean a robber, an adventurer, a bachelor leading a restless life.

The origin of the phenomenon itself

The origin of the Cossacks as an essence also has several versions.

• L. Gumilyov, V. Shambarov believe that Russified eastern peoples became Cossacks: Kasogs, Circassians, Khazars.
• In pre-Slavic times, the empires of the Turks were located in the steppes of the Black Sea and in the southern Russian steppes. They were subject to assimilation (that is, mixing) with the Slavs in the future.
• According to V. Solovyov, the Cossacks are a Slavic people who settled on the empty lands of the steppes.

How the Cossacks lived: life, customs, customs

The villages were called the settlements of the Don Cossacks, the settlement - Little Russian. The Volga Cossacks called villages. If the Cossack was prosperous and had a separate estate with a household, it was called a farm.

The house of the Cossacks is a hut or a hut. Outside, it was coated with clay, the roof was covered with straw.

The furniture of the guest room was a table, benches, which housed the whole family. For clothes - chests. Goddess - here they made bows to the icons, lit the lampada. There were also bedrooms in the hut - they slept on beds and sometimes on chests. The kitchen was located separately. A shed or barn was set up in the yard, the yard itself was fenced with wattle.

The cuisine of the Cossacks differs little from the Russian one: women baked bread and pies, prepared porridge, fish soup, cherry juice and kvass. From the eastern roots in the kitchen, raisins and nardek (watermelon honey) remained.

The Cossacks bred horses, fished, grew buckwheat, watermelons, and melons.

Cloth

The headdress of a Cossack is a hat or cap. Shirt - with shoulder straps, pants - stripes. Necessarily, the Cossack also had a Circassian coat - outerwear, a caftan without a collar. The colors of uniforms differed according to the troops and the place where the Cossacks lived.

Women wore long skirts and long-sleeved shirts, dresses, trousers - many outfits were “inherited” from the Kazakhs. Unlike the peasant women, the Cossack women walked with their heads uncovered, and only tied a scarf around their hair.

Culture and traditions

There was a lot of singing and dancing at holidays and festivities. There were marching songs and commemoration songs, for example, Black Raven. During military festivities, young Cossacks organized competitions - Shermitsia. They measured strength and skill, raised the prestige of their family and showed themselves in all their glory in front of the brides. The regimental priest conducted prayers during general meetings. The fair is also a big event in the life of the Cossacks. Trade and communication with like-minded people were conducted here, local news was discussed.

The rites of the Cossacks are similar to Russian ones, but have some peculiarities. It has to do with lifestyle. When a man was buried, his horse was led behind the coffin, then relatives and close people followed. The horse was considered an assistant and protector of the owner in battle, so he was given such honor. The widow had the hat of the deceased under the icons.

They paid attention to the rituals at the farewell to the war. The wife bowed to the horse and asked to return her husband alive and well. The mother blessed with the icon, the father gave his pike with a strict order to return it back, so that later he could pass it on to his son. Crossing the river of their settlement, the Cossacks washed her face, bowed to the ground and prayed, turning to the Temple.

From campaigns and battles, the Cossacks were met by the whole village with bread and salt. The men entered solemnly, holding the icon of the Holy Savior in their hands. Followed to the temple - there served a prayer service. The Cossacks left gifts in the church. They believed that all victories and successes are due to the grace of God.

The houses knew in advance about the return of the Cossacks from service. The chicken was cleaned very carefully, all the relatives gathered for the meeting. The Cossack took off his cap, crossed himself, went into the house. He was baptized before the icons, bowed three times. He hugged his parents and only then - his wife.

The wedding was celebrated with special pomp. And there are many rituals here: the bride's bride, the matchmaking of the groom and his parents, the celebration in the house of the future wife, and then in the groom's house. The event was accompanied by dances and songs. The guests wore their best clothes. Cossacks - always with weapons, women - in bright dresses.

Attitude towards faith

The customs, values ​​and traditions of the Cossacks are intertwined with Orthodoxy. Faith occupies a central place in the culture of the Cossacks.

Cossacks, being warriors, served the sovereign, the fatherland, the native land. And they imagined their life as a service with weapons in their hands. To protect the motherland and their faith. A kind of motto is known: “Whoever wants to be impaled for the Christian faith, who wants to be quartered, wheeled, who is ready to endure all sorts of torments for the Holy Cross, who is not afraid of death - pester us!” Religion also determined the life of the Cossacks, filling their lives - both in war and in peacetime. The Cossacks sacredly honored the Christian faith, acted in accordance with the laws of the Bible: they started things with prayer words, helped those who were in need. Church days were observed in work - days of rest. They fasted, prayed and took communion.

Newborns were necessarily baptized, the bride and groom were married in the church, they were blessed with an icon. Prayers were served in churches when the Cossacks went to work. If a person died, a funeral service was held.

Relations with authorities

In the early 1600s, landowners could not feed their military servants (serfs). People fled to the free steppes. The fugitives, who had experience in battles, united in groups, robbed, and later formed free Cossacks. This is another feature of the Cossacks - the ability to fight. Initially, the Cossacks were hired soldiers. They guarded the borders of the state for a fee. Over time, the Cossacks became an independent army. At the same time, they did not obey anyone, and sometimes caused discontent of the Russian tsars. Under Peter 1, the Cossacks were obliged to serve in the tsar's army.

Already in 1847 there was a provision that divided employees into three categories: preparatory. Here the Cossacks underwent initial training. Usually it took place at the place of residence and lasted three years. The second category is combatant. The Cossack served 4 years in the regiment, and then went to the preferential line - a total of 8 years. The third category is a spare. The purpose is to replenish losses and losses in combat units and form new units during the war.

Riots of the Cossacks

The state demanded submission from the Cossacks. Compulsory military service limited freedoms and also violated the traditions of the life of the Cossacks. Therefore, the Cossacks often rebelled against the authorities. The uprisings of Mikhail Balovnev in 1614-15, Balash Ivan in 1632-34, Stepan Razin (1670-71), Emelyan Pugachev (1773-1775) are known. Uprisings and riots brought bloodshed and confusion, and were brutally suppressed by the authorities.

Cossacks, revolution, Civil war

The main part of the Cossacks during the civil war opposed the Soviet government and provided all-powerful support to the White movement. The Orenburg, Ural and Don armies opposed the Bolsheviks. Some Cossacks went over to the side of the Bolsheviks.

After the victory of the Reds, the Cossack troops were disbanded, the Cossacks were subjected to repression. Whole families were exterminated. They shot, exiled, everyone who was even indirectly related to the opponents of the Red Army. In 1992, the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation "On measures to implement the Law of the Russian Federation" On the rehabilitation of repressed peoples "in relation to the Cossacks" was issued.

The role of the Cossacks in the Great Patriotic War

In the USSR, all Cossacks were restricted to serve in the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army. In 1936, the Central Executive Committee issued a decree abolishing this restriction. The Cossacks supported this decision.

With the beginning of the Great War, the Cossack military units actively took part in the hostilities against the German invaders. Cossack newly formed units were poorly armed. Men had edged weapons and collective farm horses. This did not prevent them from valiantly fighting the enemy. Having no anti-tank mines, they jumped on the tank and covered the observation holes of iron killers with Circassian coats, threw incendiary mixtures into enemy vehicles.

Conclusion

The Cossacks as a phenomenon have gone through evolution: from a nomadic robber to a fearless defender of their fatherland, Motherland. Today, most of the Cossacks are assimilated (that is, mixed with other peoples, nationalities). But this does not prevent us from successfully reviving the way of life and culture of the Cossacks both in Russia and Ukraine.

Who are the Cossacks? There is a version that they trace their lineage from fugitive serfs. However, some historians argue that the origins of the Cossacks go back to the 8th century BC.

The Byzantine emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus in 948 mentioned the territory in the North Caucasus as the country of Kasakhia. Historians attached particular importance to this fact only after Captain A. G. Tumansky in 1892 in Bukhara discovered the Persian geography Gudud al Alam, compiled in 982.

It turns out that “Kasak Land”, which was located in the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov, is also found there. It is interesting that the Arab historian, geographer and traveler Abu-l-Hasan Ali ibn al-Hussein (896-956), who received the nickname of the imam of all historians, reported in his writings that the Kasaks who lived beyond the Caucasus Range are not mountaineers.
A parsimonious description of a certain military people who lived in the Black Sea region and in the Transcaucasus is also found in the geographical work of the Greek Strabo, who worked under the “living Christ”. He called them cossacks. Modern ethnographers provide data on the Scythians from the Turanian tribes of Kos-Saka, the first mention of which dates back to about 720 BC. It is believed that it was then that a detachment of these nomads made their way from Western Turkestan to the Black Sea lands, where they stopped.

In addition to the Scythians, on the territory of the modern Cossacks, that is, between the Black and Azov Seas, as well as between the Don and Volga rivers, the Sarmatian tribes ruled, who created the Alanian state. The Huns (Bulgars) defeated it and exterminated almost all of its population. The surviving Alans hid in the north - between the Don and Donets, and in the south - in the foothills of the Caucasus. Basically, it was these two ethnic groups - the Scythians and Alans, who became related to the Azov Slavs - that formed the nationality, which was called the Cossacks. This version is considered one of the basic ones in the discussion about where the Cossacks came from.

Slavic-Turanian tribes

Don ethnographers also connect the roots of the Cossacks with the tribes of northwestern Scythia. This is evidenced by burial mounds of the III-II centuries BC. It was at this time that the Scythians began to lead a sedentary lifestyle, intersecting and merging with the southern Slavs who lived in Meotida - on the eastern coast of the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov.

This time is called the era of "the introduction of the Sarmatians into the Meotians", which resulted in the tribes of the Torets (Torkov, Udz, Berenger, Sirakov, Bradas-Brodnikov) of the Slavic-Turanian type. In the 5th century, the Huns invaded, as a result of which part of the Slavic-Turanian tribes went beyond the Volga and into the Upper Don forest-steppe. Those who remained submitted to the Huns, Khazars and Bulgars, receiving the name Kasaks. After 300 years they converted to Christianity (approximately in 860 after the apostolic sermon of St. Cyril), and then, by order of the Khazar Khagan, they drove out the Pechenegs. In 965, Kasak Land came under the control of Mctislav Rurikovich.

Darkness

It was Mctislav Rurikovich who defeated the Novgorod prince Yaroslav near Listven and founded his principality - Tmutarakan, which stretched far to the north. It is believed that this Cossack power was not at the peak of power for long, until about 1060, but after the arrival of the Polovtsian tribes, it began to gradually fade away.

Many residents of Tmutarakan fled to the north - to the forest-steppe, and together with Russia fought with the nomads. This is how the Black Hoods appeared, which in the Russian chronicles were called Cossacks and Cherkasy. Another part of the inhabitants of Tmutarakan was called the Podon wanderers.
Like the Russian principalities, the Cossack settlements ended up in the power of the Golden Horde, however, conditionally, enjoying wide autonomy. In the 14th-15th centuries, the Cossacks were talked about as a formed community, which began to accept fugitive people from the central part of Russia.

Not Khazars and not Goths

There is another, popular in the West, version that the Khazars were the ancestors of the Cossacks. Its supporters argue that the words "Khusar" and "Cossack" are synonyms, because in both the first and second cases we are talking about fighting horsemen. Moreover, both words have the same root “kaz”, meaning “strength”, “war” and “freedom”. However, there is another meaning - it is "goose". But even here, the champions of the Khazar trace speak of horsemen-hussars, whose military ideology was copied by almost all countries, even foggy Albion.

The Khazar ethnonym of the Cossacks is directly stated in the “Constitution of Pylyp Orlik”, “... the fighting old Cossack people, which used to be called the Kazar, was first raised by immortal glory, spacious possessions and knightly honors ...”. Moreover, it is said that the Cossacks adopted Orthodoxy from Constantinople (Constantinople) in the era of the Khazar Khaganate.

In Russia, this version in the Cossack environment causes fair abuse, especially against the background of studies of Cossack genealogies, whose roots are of Russian origin. So, the hereditary Kuban Cossack, Academician of the Russian Academy of Arts Dmitry Shmarin, spoke out in this regard with anger: “The author of one of these versions of the origin of the Cossacks is Hitler. He even has a separate speech on the subject. According to his theory, the Cossacks are the Goths. The West Goths are Germanic. And the Cossacks are the Ost-Goths, that is, the descendants of the Ost-Goths, allies of the Germans, close to them in blood and in a warlike spirit. By militancy, he compared them with the Teutons. Based on this, Hitler proclaimed the Cossacks the sons of great Germany. So why should we now consider ourselves descendants of the Germans?

Cossacks

COSSACKS -A; cf.

1. Cossack estate.

2. collected Cossacks. Along the Don settled to.

Cossacks

military estate in Russia in the 18th - early 20th centuries. In the XIV-XVII centuries. free people who worked for hire, persons who carried out military service in the border areas (city and guard Cossacks); in the XV-XVI centuries. beyond the borders of Russia and the Polish-Lithuanian state (on the Dnieper, Don, Volga, Ural, Terek), self-governing communities of the so-called free Cossacks (mainly from runaway peasants) arose, which were the main driving force behind the uprisings in Ukraine in the 16th-17th centuries. and in Russia XVII-XVIII centuries. The government sought to use the Cossacks to guard the borders, in wars, etc., and in the 18th century. subjugated him, turning him into a privileged military class. At the beginning of the XX century. there were 11 Cossack troops (Don, Kuban, Orenburg, Transbaikal, Tersk, Siberian, Ural, Astrakhan, Semirechensk, Amur and Ussuri). In 1916 the Cossack population was over 4.4 million people, over 53 million acres of land. 1st world war put up about 300 thousand people. In 1920, the Cossacks as an estate was abolished. In 1936, Don, Kuban, and Terek cavalry Cossack formations were created to take part in the Great Patriotic War (disbanded in the second half of the 1940s). Since the late 1980s the revival of the traditions, culture and life of the Cossacks began, Cossack organizations appeared.

COSSACKS

COSSACKS, an ethnic, social and historical community (group), which, due to its specific features, united all Cossacks, primarily Russians, as well as Ukrainians, Kalmyks, Buryats, Bashkirs, Tatars, Evenks, Ossetians, etc., as separate subethnic groups of their peoples into a whole. Russian legislation until 1917 considered the Cossacks as a special military estate, which had privileges for performing compulsory service. The Cossacks were also defined as a separate ethnic group, an independent nationality (the fourth branch of Eastern Slavism) or even as a special nation of mixed Turkic-Slavic origin. latest version was intensively developed in the 20th century by Cossack emigrant historians.
Origin of the Cossacks
Social organization, way of life, culture, ideology, ethno-psychic way of life, behavioral stereotypes, folklore of the Cossacks have always differed markedly from the practices established in other regions of Russia. The Cossacks originated in the 14th century on the steppe uninhabited expanses between Moscow Russia, Lithuania, Poland and the Tatar khanates. Its formation, which began after the collapse of the Golden Horde (cm. GOLDEN HORDE), took place in a constant struggle with numerous enemies far from developed cultural centers. There are no reliable written sources about the first pages of the Cossack history. The origins of the origin of the Cossacks, many researchers tried to find in the national roots of the ancestors of the Cossacks among a variety of peoples (Scythians, Polovtsians, Khazars (cm. KhAZARS), alan (cm. ALANS), Kirghiz, Tatars, Mountain Circassians, Kasogs (cm. KASOGI), roamers (cm. Wanderers), black hoods (cm. BLACK CLOBS), Torkov (cm. TORQUI (people) etc.) or considered the original Cossack military community as a result of the genetic ties of several tribes with the Slavs who came to the Black Sea region, and this process was counted from the beginning of a new era. Other historians, on the contrary, proved the Russianness of the Cossacks, emphasizing the permanent presence of the Slavs in the regions that became the cradle of the Cossacks. The original concept was put forward by the emigrant historian A. A. Gordeev, who believed that the ancestors of the Cossacks were the Russian population in the Golden Horde, settled by the Tatar-Mongols in the future Cossack territories. The long-dominated official point of view that the Cossack communities appeared as a result of the flight of Russian peasants from serfdom (as well as the view of the Cossacks as a special class) were subjected to reasoned criticism in the 20th century. But the theory of autochthonous (local) origin has a weak evidence base and is not supported by serious sources. The question of the origin of the Cossacks still remains open.
There is no unanimity among scientists on the issue of the origin of the word "Cossack" ("Cossack" in Ukrainian). Attempts were made to derive this word from the name of the peoples who once lived near the Dnieper and Don (kasogi, x (k) azars), from the self-name of modern Kirghiz - kaisaks. There were other etymological versions: from the Turkish "kaz" (i.e. goose), from the Mongolian "ko" (armor, protection) and "zah" (line). Most experts agree that the word "Cossacks" came from the East and has Turkic roots. In Russian, this word, first mentioned in the Russian chronicles of 1444, originally meant homeless and free soldiers who entered the service with the fulfillment of military obligations.
History of the Cossacks
Representatives of various nationalities participated in the formation of the Cossacks, but the Slavs prevailed. From an ethnographic point of view, the first Cossacks were divided according to the place of origin into Ukrainian and Russian. Among both those and others, free and service Cossacks can be distinguished. In Ukraine, the free Cossacks were represented by the Zaporozhian Sich (cm. Zaporizhzhya Sich)(lasted until 1775), and the service - "registered" Cossacks, who received a salary for service in the Polish-Lithuanian state. Russian service Cossacks (city, regimental and sentry) were used to protect the security lines and cities, receiving salaries and lands for life for this. Although they were equated "to the service people on the instrument" (archers, gunners), but unlike them, they had a stanitsa organization and an elective system of military administration. In this form, they existed until the beginning of the 18th century. The first community of Russian free Cossacks arose on the Don, and then on the rivers Yaik, Terek and Volga. In contrast to the serving Cossacks, the coasts of large rivers (Dnieper, Don, Yaik, Terek) and the steppe expanses became the centers of the emergence of the Free Cossacks, which left a noticeable imprint on the Cossacks and determined their way of life. Each large territorial community as a form of military-political association of independent Cossack settlements was called the Army.
The main economic activities of the free Cossacks were hunting, fishing, and animal husbandry. For example, in the Don Army until the beginning of the 18th century, arable farming was prohibited under pain of death. As the Cossacks themselves believed, they lived "from grass and water." The war played a huge role in the life of the Cossack communities: they were in constant military confrontation with hostile and warlike nomadic neighbors, so one of the most important sources existence for them was military booty (as a result of campaigns "for zipuns and yasyr" in the Crimea, Turkey, Persia, and the Caucasus). River and sea trips were made on plows, as well as horse raids. Often several Cossack units united and made joint land and maritime operations, everything captured became common property - duvan (cm. DUVAN).
The main feature of social Cossack life was a military organization with an elective system of government and democratic order. Major decisions (issues of war and peace, elections officials, the court of the guilty) were taken at general Cossack meetings, village and military circles (cm. MILITARY CIRCLE), or Rada, which were the highest governing bodies. home executive branch belonged to the annually replaced military (koshevo (cm. KOSHEVOY ATAMAN) in Zaporozhye) to the ataman. For the duration of hostilities, a marching ataman was elected, whose obedience was unquestioning.
Diplomatic relations with the Russian state were maintained by sending winter (cm. WINTER STATION) and light villages (embassies) with an appointed chieftain. From the moment the Cossacks entered the historical arena, their relationship with Russia was ambivalent. Initially, they were built according to the principle independent states having one opponent. Moscow and the Cossack Troops were allies. Russian state acted as the main partner and played a leading role as the most forte. In addition, the Cossack Troops were interested in receiving monetary and military assistance from the Russian Tsar. The Cossack territories played an important role as a buffer on the southern and eastern borders of the Russian state, covering it from the raids of the steppe hordes. The Cossacks also took part in many wars on the side of Russia against neighboring states. To successfully perform these important functions, the practice of the Moscow tsars included annual sending of gifts, cash salaries, weapons and ammunition, as well as bread to individual Troops, since the Cossacks did not produce it. All relations between the Cossacks and the tsar were conducted through the Ambassadorial order (cm. AMBASSADOR'S ORDER), i.e., as with a foreign state. It was often advantageous for the Russian authorities to represent the free Cossack communities as absolutely independent from Moscow. On the other hand, the Muscovite state was dissatisfied with the Cossack communities, who constantly attacked Turkish possessions, which often ran counter to Russian foreign policy interests. Quite often, periods of cooling set in between the allies, and Russia stopped all assistance to the Cossacks. Moscow was also dissatisfied with the constant departure of subjects to the Cossack regions. Democratic orders (everyone is equal, no authorities, no taxes) became a magnet that attracted more and more enterprising and courageous people from the Russian lands. Russia's fears turned out to be by no means groundless - during the 17-18 centuries, the Cossacks were at the forefront of powerful anti-government uprisings, the leaders of the Cossack-peasant uprisings - Stepan Razin - came out of its ranks (cm. RAZIN Stepan Timofeevich), Kondraty Bulavin (cm. BULAVIN Kondraty Afanasyevich), Emelyan Pugachev (cm. PUGACHEV Emelyan Ivanovich). Great was the role of the Cossacks during the events of the Time of Troubles (cm. TIME OF TROUBLES) at the beginning of the 17th century. Supporting False Dmitry I (cm. FALSE DMITRY I), they made up an essential part of his military detachments. Later, free Russian and Ukrainian Cossacks, as well as Russian service Cossacks, took an active part in the camp of various forces: in 1611 they participated in the first militia, the nobles already prevailed in the second militia, but at the council of 1613 it was the word of the Cossack chieftains that turned out to be decisive in the election of Tsar Michael Fedorovich (cm. Mikhail Fedorovich) Romanova. The ambiguous role played by the Cossacks in Time of Troubles, forced the government in the 17th century to pursue a policy of sharp reduction in the detachments of serving Cossacks in the main territory of the state. But in general, the Russian throne, taking into account the most important functions of the Cossacks as a military force in the border areas, showed long-suffering and sought to subordinate it to its power. To consolidate loyalty to the Russian throne, the tsars, using all leverage, managed to achieve by the end of the 17th century the adoption of the oath by all the Armies (the last Don Army - in 1671). From voluntary allies, the Cossacks turned into Russian subjects. With the inclusion of the southeastern territories into Russia, the Cossacks remained only a special part of the Russian population, gradually losing many of their democratic rights and gains. Since the 18th century, the state has constantly regulated the life of the Cossack regions, modernized the traditional Cossack management structures in the right direction for itself, turning them into constituent part administrative system Russian empire.
Since 1721, the Cossack units were under the jurisdiction of the Cossack expedition of the Military Collegium. (cm. MILITARY BOARD). In the same year, Peter I (cm. PETER I the Great) abolished the election of military chieftains and introduced the institution of chief chieftains appointed by the supreme power. The Cossacks lost their last vestiges of independence after the defeat of the Pugachev rebellion in 1775, when Catherine II liquidated the Zaporozhian Sich. In 1798, by decree of Paul I (cm. PAVEL I Petrovich) all Cossack officer ranks were equated with the general army, and their owners received the rights to the nobility. In 1802, the first Regulations for the Cossack troops were developed. Since 1827, the heir to the throne began to be appointed as the august ataman of all Cossack troops. In 1838, the first combat charter for the Cossack units was approved, and in 1857 the Cossacks came under the jurisdiction of the Directorate (from 1867 the Main Directorate) of the irregular (from 1879 - Cossack) troops of the Military Ministry, from 1910 - under the authority of the General Staff.
The role of the Cossacks in the history of Russia
The Cossacks for centuries was a universal branch of the armed forces. They said about the Cossacks that they were born in the saddle. At all times they were considered excellent riders who knew no equal in the art of horse riding. Military experts rated the Cossack cavalry as the best light cavalry in the world. The military glory of the Cossacks was strengthened on the battlefields in the Northern (cm. NORTHERN WAR 1700-1721) and the Seven Years' War (cm. SEVEN YEARS WAR), during the Italian (cm. ITALIAN CAMPAIGN OF SUVOROV) and the Swiss campaigns of A. V. Suvorov (cm. SWISS CAMPAIGN OF Suvorov) in 1799. The Cossack regiments especially distinguished themselves in the Napoleonic era. Led by the legendary ataman M. I. Platov (cm. PLATOV Matvey Ivanovich) the irregular army became one of the main culprits for the death of the Napoleonic army in Russia in the campaign of 1812, and after the foreign campaigns of the Russian army, according to General A.P. Yermolov (cm. ERMOLOV Alexey Petrovich), "the Cossacks became the wonder of Europe".
Not a single Russian-Turkish war of the 18-19 centuries could do without Cossack sabers, they participated in the conquest of the Caucasus, the conquest of Central Asia, the development of Siberia and the Far East. The successes of the Cossack cavalry were explained by the skillful use in battles of grandfather's tactics unregulated by any charters: lava (enveloping the enemy in loose formation), the original system of reconnaissance and guard services, etc. These Cossack "turns" inherited from the steppes turned out to be especially effective and unexpected in clashes with armies European states.
“For this, a Cossack will be born, so that the tsar will be useful in the service,” says an old Cossack proverb. His service under the law of 1875 lasted 20 years, starting at the age of 18: 3 years in the preparatory category, 4 in active service, 8 years on benefits and 5 in the reserve. Everyone came to the service with their uniforms, equipment, edged weapons and a riding horse. The Cossack community (village) was responsible for the preparation and performance of military service. The actual service, a special type of self-government and the system of land use, as a material basis, were closely interconnected and ultimately ensured the stable existence of the Cossacks as a formidable fighting force. The main owner of the land was the state, which, on behalf of the emperor, allotted to the Cossack army the land conquered by the blood of their ancestors on the rights of collective (communal) property. The army, leaving a part for the military reserve, divided the land received between the villages. The village community, on behalf of the army, periodically redistributed land shares (ranging from 10 to 50 acres). For the use of the allotment and exemption from taxes, the Cossack was obliged to perform military service. The army also allocated land plots to the Cossack nobles (the share depended on the officer rank) as hereditary property, but these plots could not be sold to persons of non-military origin. In the 19th century, agriculture became the main economic activity of the Cossacks, although different troops had their own characteristics and preferences, for example, the intensive development of fishing as the main industry in the Ural, as well as in the Don and Ussuri Army, hunting in the Siberian, winemaking and gardening in the Caucasus, Don .
Cossacks in the 20th century
At the end of the 19th century, projects for the liquidation of the Cossacks were discussed in the bowels of the tsarist administration. Before the First World War (cm. WORLD WAR I 1914-18) in Russia there were 11 Cossack Troops: Don (1.6 million), Kuban (1.3 million), Terskoe (260 thousand), Astrakhan (40 thousand), Ural (174 thousand), Orenburg (533 thousand people). ), Siberian (172 thousand), Semirechensk (45 thousand), Trans-Baikal (264 thousand), Amur (50 thousand), Ussuri (35 thousand) and two separate Cossack regiments. They occupied 65 million acres of land with a population of 4.4 million people. (2.4% of the population of Russia), including 480 thousand service personnel. Among the Cossacks, ethnically, Russians prevailed (78%), Ukrainians were in second place (17%), and Buryats were third (2%). Most of the Cossacks professed Orthodoxy, there was a large percentage of Old Believers (especially in the Ural, Terek, Don Troops), and national minorities professed Buddhism and Islam.
More than 300 thousand Cossacks took part in the battlefields of the First World War (164 cavalry regiments, 30 foot battalions, 78 batteries, 175 individual hundreds, 78 fifty, not counting auxiliary and spare parts). The war showed the inefficiency of using large cavalry masses (Cossacks made up 2/3 of the Russian cavalry) in conditions of a continuous front, high density of infantry firepower and increased technical means of defense. The exceptions were small partisan detachments formed from Cossack volunteers, which successfully operated behind enemy lines when performing sabotage and reconnaissance missions. Cossacks as a significant military and social force participated in the Civil War (cm. CIVIL WAR in Russia).
The combat experience and professional military training of the Cossacks was once again used to resolve acute internal social conflicts. By the Decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of November 17, 1917, the Cossacks as an estate and Cossack formations were formally abolished. During the Civil War, the Cossack territories became the main bases of the White movement (especially the Don, Kuban, Terek, Ural) and it was there that the most fierce battles were fought. The Cossack units were numerically the main military force of the Volunteer Army (cm. VOLUNTEER ARMY) in the fight against Bolshevism. The Cossacks were pushed to this by the policy of decossackization pursued by the Reds (mass executions, hostage-taking, burning of villages, inciting non-residents against the Cossacks). The Red Army also had Cossack units, but they represented a small part of the Cossacks (less than 10%). At the end of the Civil War, a large number of Cossacks ended up in exile (about 100 thousand people).
In Soviet times, the official policy of decossackization actually continued, although in 1925 the plenum of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) declared unacceptable "ignoring the peculiarities of the Cossack way of life and the use of violent measures in the fight against the remnants of the Cossack traditions." Nevertheless, the Cossacks continued to be considered “non-proletarian elements” and were subject to restrictions in their rights, in particular, the ban on serving in the Red Army was lifted only in 1936, when several Cossack cavalry divisions (and then corps) were created, which proved to be excellent during the Great Patriotic War. Since 1942, the Hitlerite command also formed units from Russian Cossacks (15th Wehrmacht Corps, commander General G. von Panwitz) numbering more than 20 thousand people. During the fighting, they were mainly used to protect communications and fight against partisans in Italy, Yugoslavia, and France. After the defeat of Germany in 1945, the British handed over the disarmed Cossacks and members of their families (about 30 thousand people) to the Soviet side. Most of them were shot, the rest ended up in Stalin's camps.
The very cautious attitude of the authorities towards the Cossacks (which resulted in the oblivion of their history and culture) gave rise to the modern Cossack movement. Initially (in 1988-1989) it arose as a historical and cultural movement for the revival of the Cossacks (according to some estimates, about 5 million people). By 1990, the movement, having gone beyond the cultural and ethnographic framework, began to become politicized. An intensive creation of Cossack organizations and unions began, both in places of former compact residence, and in major cities, where a large number of descendants who fled political repressions settled during the Soviet period. The mass nature of the movement, as well as the participation of paramilitary Cossack detachments in conflicts in Yugoslavia, Transnistria, Ossetia, Abkhazia, Chechnya, forced government structures and local authorities to pay attention to the problems of the Cossacks. Further growth of the Cossack movement was facilitated by the decree of the Supreme Council of the Russian Federation "On the rehabilitation of the Cossacks" of June 16, 1992 and a number of laws. Under the President of Russia, the Main Directorate of the Cossack troops was created, a number of measures to create regular Cossack units were taken by the power ministries (Ministry of Internal Affairs, Border Troops, Ministry of Defense).

encyclopedic Dictionary. 2009 .

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