Why the Cossacks are not an ethnos

“Ethnic self-identification is a personal choice of every person, the state and society should not impose anything. As for the origin, according to the sources, there is a close connection between the Don Cossacks and the Russian people, as well as the Cossacks with the Ukrainian people. East Slavic roots of the Cossacks prevail. At the same time, the Cossacks were ethnically variegated, ”the D.I. Sci., Professor of the Department of Special Historical Disciplines and Documentation of the Institute of History and International Relations of the SFedU Nikolay Mininkov.

According to the historian, there is a large group of Kalmyk Cossacks among the Don Cossacks. Until the 70s. XIX century. lived a group of Cossack Tatars, who then emigrated to Turkey. In the XVII century. according to sources, the "Don Tatars" are generally known. These are the Don Cossacks who preserved the Muslim faith and their names. In general, the ethnic origin of individual Cossacks has been considered in the literature. In addition to the Cossacks of East Slavic origin (Ukrainians by origin are the Cossacks of the Black Sea Cossack army, which became the main part of the Kuban Cossacks), Kalmyks, representatives of the Turkic peoples, there are Cossacks of other origin.

“I consider the myth about the origin of the Cossacks in ancient times (E.P. Savelyev), the view of the Cossacks as a special ethnos that does not belong to the Russian people. It is possible to speak about the tendency of the Cossacks' transformation into a subethnos before the revolution, it existed, it was recognized by the outstanding historian of the Cossacks V.N. Korolev, who worked in the SFedU, but the revolution and the civil war interrupted this process. It is also impossible to talk about the origin of the Cossacks only due to the flight of serfs and slaves. The departure of serfs from inner Russia to the Don with the acceptance of these people into the Cossacks did indeed take place and intensified after the adoption of the Code of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich in 1649, "added Nikolai Alexandrovich.

As Nikolai Mininkov specified, in fact, the process of forming the Cossacks was much more complicated. Sources often make it possible to trace the origin of some Cossacks of the 17th century, as a rule, they came from service people according to the device. In the second half of the 17th century. in the sources there are more and more Don Cossacks in the second generation.

“The question of belonging of the Cossacks to a separate ethnic group is not so categorically posed by historical science today. Moreover, I consider this statement to be incorrect in itself. What Cossacks, in this case, are we talking about? The Cossacks themselves were extremely heterogeneous ethnically, culturally and in other respects. Undoubtedly, class and other isolation began to characterize the Don and other Cossack Troops over time, its uneasy relations with the so-called nonresident and other categories. Over time, the sources of replenishment of the Cossack groups from the outside began to be limited, even if from among the Slavs, "- Dmitry Sen, D. and. Sci., Professor of the Department of Special Historical Disciplines and Documentation, Institute of History and International Relations, SFedU.

As Dmitry Sen noted, on the other hand, back in the 18th century. The Russian autocracy did not strongly interfere with the replenishment of other ethnicities (again, from the outside) for the most diverse Cossack Troops, enrolling in them representatives of the most diverse peoples - Kalmyks, Nogais, Tatars, Kabardians and others. In general, it should be noted that the Cossacks are not an exclusive cultural phenomenon for history, say, inherent only in Russia. At the same time, the composition of the Russian Cossacks themselves should be recognized as exceptionally diverse - they are multi-ethnic and multi-confessional, organically combining the culture of interethnic contacts and not always expressing the will of state institutions alone. And, of course, one should not forget that the Cossacks were constantly transforming - therefore, say, the Don Cossacks of the second half of the 16th century. and the 18th century. - these are different communities or, in other words, different Don Cossacks. Here, for example, the fundamental was the difference between their “free”, in the first case, and “serviceman,” in the second case, status.

Anton Averyanov, Candidate of Historical Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Russian History of the XX-XXI Centuries, added that before the revolution, the Cossacks were determined by class affiliation. The Cossacks were one of the estates (like the nobility, the bourgeoisie, the clergy, the merchants, etc.) with their own clearly regulated rights and obligations.

“If in earlier times - XVI-XVII centuries - it was quite easy to become a Cossack (small Cossack communities in conditions of constant war danger needed an influx of new people), then over time - by the XIX century - as the Cossacks were integrated into the social and the state and legal system of the Russian Empire, as the Cossacks were endowed with certain privileges, and finally, as the population grew and the land resources were exhausted, the Cossacks turned into a closed social structure that clearly separated itself from the surrounding population and protected its corporate identity. Now the origin was of decisive importance - birth from a Cossack and a Cossack woman. Although formally any citizen could still join the Cossack estate, the mass admission to the Cossacks, as it had been before, has stopped, ”said Anton Averyanov.

According to the expert, in Soviet times, the Cossacks, deprived of the exclusive right to own land, transformed into an ethnocultural group, whose self-consciousness was gradually eroded. Although there is a Cossack identity in the countryside, many traditions and customs have survived. At the present stage, there is a process of searching for the place of the Cossacks in society, for their unique social niche. The key idea is to serve the society and the state.

Russian Cossacks are a non-unique phenomenon

As historians said, it turns out that the Russian Cossacks are a non-unique phenomenon. In the Middle Ages, such militant groups arose on the territory of other countries. But over time, they did not achieve such development and involvement in state affairs as the Russian Cossacks. As such a population that moved to the West, he called pioneers, cowboys, trappers. A. Kappeler compared all these groups with the Cossacks, recognizing that such a comparison is relative (Kappeler A. Cossacks. History and legends. Translated from German Rostov-on-Don: YuFU Publishing House, 2014. P.81-85).

Dmitry Sen also believes that the Cossacks are not an exclusive Russian phenomenon. In addition, it is in vain to idealize the relationship between the Cossacks and the authorities - throughout their extremely "uneven" relationship. The Russian Cossacks are not necessarily and by no means always Russian in their ethnic composition, not always Orthodox (as well as Buddhists, Muslims), not always loyal to Tsarism, and so on. To assert the opposite means deliberately not to notice the diversity of the internal components of the Cossacks, the significance of their own culture and the special view of the Cossacks themselves on the world and on state power, to emasculate the history of the Cossacks in favor of mythological and other pseudoscientific constructs. It is impossible to generalize the significance of only one "Moscow-centric" view in the life of the Cossacks, say, in the 16th-17th centuries. For example, the Don people actively interacted with different peoples and states of Europe and the East, and their military-political interests did not always coincide with the goals of Moscow diplomacy.

“It is appropriate to consider the history of the Russian Cossacks against the background of world history and other, similar paramilitary (paramilitary) communities - the Granichars, Uskoks, etc. Undoubtedly, the early Cossacks are a more organic phenomenon for the Eastern, including the Turkic world than for the Slavic world. In particular, we are talking about Nogai Cossacks, Cossacks of the Golden Horde, Azov Cossacks and others. By the way, many extremes of different approaches, when describing the cultural characteristics of the Cossacks and different vectors of its historical development, have been successfully overcome in the newest monographs - "Cossacks in the Turkic and Slavic Worlds" (Kazan, 2018) and "History of the Don Cossacks" in three volumes (Rostov -on-Don, 2020) ”, the historian summed up.

It should be noted that on September 12, a presentation of the three-volume History of the Don Cossacks took place, in the creation of which historians of the Southern Federal University also took part. Today it is the most complete publication about the history of the Don Cossacks.