Don Cossacks

The name Cossack (Russian: казак, romanized: kazak; Ukrainian: козак, romanized: kozak) was widely used to characterise "free people" (compare Turkic qazaq, which means "free men") as opposed to others with different standing in feudal society (i.e., peasants, nobles, clergy, etc.). The name "cossack" was also applied to migrants, free-booters and bandits.^[4]

It has the same etymological root as "Kazakh", an unrelated Central Asian Turkic people. ^[5][6]

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Russian language

Russian language

Russian is an East Slavic language mainly spoken in Russia. It is the native language of the Russians and belongs to the Indo-European language family. It is one of four living East Slavic languages, and is also a part of the larger Balto-Slavic languages. Besides Russia itself, Russian is an official language in Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, and is used widely as a lingua franca throughout Ukraine, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and to some extent in the Baltic states. It was the de facto language of the former Soviet Union, and continues to be used in public life with varying proficiency in all of the post-Soviet states.

Romanization of Russian

Romanization of Russian

The romanization of the Russian language, aside from its primary use for including Russian names and words in text written in a Latin alphabet, is also essential for computer users to input Russian text who either do not have a keyboard or word processor set up for inputting Cyrillic, or else are not capable of typing rapidly using a native Russian keyboard layout (JCUKEN). In the latter case, they would type using a system of transliteration fitted for their keyboard layout, such as for English QWERTY keyboards, and then use an automated tool to convert the text into Cyrillic.

Ukrainian language

Ukrainian language

Ukrainian is an East Slavic language of the Indo-European language family, spoken primarily in Ukraine. It is the native language of the Ukrainians.

Romanization of Ukrainian

Romanization of Ukrainian

The romanization of Ukrainian, or Latinization of Ukrainian, is the representation of the Ukrainian language in Latin letters. Ukrainian is natively written in its own Ukrainian alphabet, which is based on the Cyrillic script. Romanization may be employed to represent Ukrainian text or pronunciation for non-Ukrainian readers, on computer systems that cannot reproduce Cyrillic characters, or for typists who are not familiar with the Ukrainian keyboard layout. Methods of romanization include transliteration and transcription.

Turkic languages

Turkic languages

The Turkic languages are a language family of over 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and Western Asia. The Turkic languages originated in a region of East Asia spanning from Mongolia to Northwest China, where Proto-Turkic is thought to have been spoken, from where they expanded to Central Asia and farther west during the first millennium. They are characterized as a dialect continuum.

Kazakhs

Kazakhs

The Kazakhs are a Turkic people native to Central Asia and Eastern Europe, mainly Kazakhstan, but also parts of northern Uzbekistan and the border regions of Russia, as well as northwestern China and western Mongolia. The Kazakhs are descendants of the ancient Turkic Kipchak tribes and the medieval Mongolic tribes, and generally classified as Turco-Mongol cultural group.

Outlaw

Outlaw

An outlaw, in its original and legal meaning, is a person declared as outside the protection of the law. In pre-modern societies, all legal protection was withdrawn from the criminal, so that anyone was legally empowered to persecute or kill them. Outlawry was thus one of the harshest penalties in the legal system. In early Germanic law, the death penalty is conspicuously absent, and outlawing is the most extreme punishment, presumably amounting to a death sentence in practice. The concept is known from Roman law, as the status of homo sacer, and persisted throughout the Middle Ages.

Turkic peoples

Turkic peoples

The Turkic peoples are a collection of diverse ethnic groups of West, Central, East, and North Asia as well as parts of Europe, who speak Turkic languages.

The exact origins of Cossacks remain unclear. In the modern view, Don Cossacks descend from Slavic people connected with Russian lands like the Povolzhye, the Novgorod Republic, and the Principality of Ryazan, and Ukrainian lands like the Dnieper. As well as nomadic Turkic tribes inhabiting the Steppes. Gotho-Alans^[7] could also have played a role in forming Don Cossack culture, which originated in the western part of the North Caucasus.^[8]

Turkic theory

Theory of Russian historian A. M. Orlov is, that Cossacks were formed among Turkic peoples used to the Nomadic life. He then thinks, that the Don Cossacks were originally formed largely by "Meshchera Tatars" during Golden Horde, which he also connects to later Mishar Tatars. ^[9]

According to Orlov, he is not alone with this; A. V. Mirtov wrote, that the life and language of Don Cossack were heavily influenced by "Tatars from Meshchera". G. Shtekl on the other hand, that the first Russian Cossacks were simply "Russified Tatars." V. N. Tatishchev: "Some of them lived in the small cities of Meshchera, their capital being Donskoy, where the Donskoy Monastery is now.^[9] A. A. Gordeyev connets them to Golden Horde also, and states: "They did not fall under the Khans of the Orda, did not accept serfdom, were pained by all kinds of social injustice, and rebelled against feudal rule".^[10]

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Volga region

Volga region

The Volga Region is a historical region in Russia that encompasses the drainage basin of the Volga River, the longest river in Europe, in central and southern European Russia.

Novgorod Republic

Novgorod Republic

The Novgorod Republic was a medieval state that existed from the 12th to 15th centuries, stretching from the Gulf of Finland in the west to the northern Ural Mountains in the east, including the city of Novgorod and the Lake Ladoga regions of modern Russia. The Republic prospered as the easternmost trading post of the Hanseatic League, and its Slavic, Baltic and Finnic people were much influenced by the culture of the Viking-Varangians and Byzantine people.

Principality of Ryazan

Principality of Ryazan

The Grand Duchy of Ryazan (1078–1521) was a duchy with the capital in Old Ryazan, and then in Pereyaslavl Ryazansky, which later became the modern-day city of Ryazan. It originally split off from the Chernigov Principality as the provincial Murom Principality.

Dnieper Upland

Dnieper Upland

The Dnieper Upland or Cisdnieper Upland is a southeastern European plain occupying the territory between the Dnieper and the Southern Bug. It lies in central Ukraine, occupying the oblasts of Zhytomyr, Kyiv, Vinnytsia, Cherkasy, Kirovohrad and Dnipropetrovsk.

Ostrogoths

Ostrogoths

The Ostrogoths were a Roman-era Germanic people. In the 5th century, they followed the Visigoths in creating one of the two great Gothic kingdoms within the Roman Empire, based upon the large Gothic populations who had settled in the Balkans in the 4th century, having crossed the Lower Danube. While the Visigoths had formed under the leadership of Alaric I, the new Ostrogothic political entity which came to rule Italy was formed in the Balkans under the influence of the Amal dynasty, the family of Theodoric the Great.

Alans

Alans

The Alans were an ancient and medieval Iranian nomadic pastoral people of the North Caucasus – generally regarded as part of the Sarmatians, and possibly related to the Massagetae. Modern historians have connected the Alans with the Central Asian Yancai of Chinese sources and with the Aorsi of Roman sources. Having migrated westwards and becoming dominant among the Sarmatians on the Pontic–Caspian steppe, the Alans are mentioned by Roman sources in the 1st century CE. At that time they had settled the region north of the Black Sea and frequently raided the Parthian Empire and the Caucasian provinces of the Roman Empire. From 215–250 CE the Goths broke their power on the Pontic Steppe.

North Caucasus

North Caucasus

The North Caucasus, or Ciscaucasia, is a subregion of Eastern Europe in the Eurasian continent. It is the northern part of the wider Caucasus region, and is entirely a part of Russia, sandwiched between the Sea of Azov and Black Sea to the west, and the Caspian Sea to the east. The region shares land borders with Georgia and Azerbaijan to the south. Krasnodar is the largest city within the North Caucasus.

Golden Horde

Golden Horde

The Golden Horde, self-designated as Ulug Ulus, lit. 'Great State' in Turkic, was originally a Mongol and later Turkicized khanate established in the 13th century and originating as the northwestern sector of the Mongol Empire. With the fragmentation of the Mongol Empire after 1259 it became a functionally separate khanate. It is also known as the Kipchak Khanate or as the Ulus of Jochi, and replaced the earlier, less organized Cuman–Kipchak confederation.

Mishar Tatars

Mishar Tatars

The Mishar Tatars, previously known as the Meshcheryaki (мещеряки), are the second largest subgroup of the Volga Tatars, right after Kazan Tatars. Traditionally, they have inhabited the middle and western side of Volga, including the nowadays Mordovia, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Ryazan, Penza, Ulyanovsk, Orenburg, Nizhny Novgorod and Samara regions of Russia. Many have since relocated to Moscow. Mishars also comprise majority of the Finnish Tatars and Tatars living in other Nordic and Baltic countries.

Donskoy Monastery

Donskoy Monastery

Donskoy Monastery is a major monastery in Moscow, founded in 1591 in commemoration of Moscow's deliverance from the threat of an invasion by the Crimean Khan Kazy-Girey. Commanding a highway to the Crimea, the monastery was intended to defend southern approaches to the Moscow Kremlin.

Early history

More than two thousand years ago the Scythians lived on the banks of the river Don. Many Scythian tombs have been found in this area.^[11] Subsequently, the area was inhabited by the Khazars and the Polovtsians. From the 16th to the 18th centuries the steppes of the Don River were part of "the Wild Field" (Russian: Дикое Поле). In the late Middle Ages the area was under the general control of the Golden Horde, and numerous Tatar (especially Crimean Tatar) armed groups roamed there, attacking and enslaving merchants and settlers.^[12]

The first Christians to settle on the territories around the Don were the Jassi and Kosogi tribes^[13] of the Khazar Kaghanate of the 7th to 10th centuries. After the fall of the Golden Horde in 1480, more colonists started to expand onto this land from the Novgorod Republic^[14] after the Battle of Shelon (1471), and from the neighboring Principality of Ryazan.^[15] Until the end of the 16th century, the Don Cossacks inhabited independent free territories.^[16]

15th–17th centuries

Cossacks of Ryazan are mentioned in 1444 as defenders of Pereslavl-Zalessky against the units of Golden Horde and in a letter of Ivan III of Russia from 1502. After the Golden Horde fell in 1480, the area around the Don River was divided between the Crimean west side and the Nogai east side. On their border since the 14th century the vast steppe of the Don region was populated by those people who were not satisfied with the existing social order, by those who did not recognize the power of the land-owners, by runaway serfs, by those who longed for freedom. In the course of time they turned into a united community and were called "the Cossacks". At first the main occupation of these small armed detachments was hunting and fishing—as well as the constant struggle against the Turks and the Tatars who attacked them. Only later they began to settle and work on the land.

16th century

The first records relating to the Cossack villages: the "stanitsa", date back to 1549. In the year 1552 Don Cossacks under the command of Ataman Susar Fedorov joined the Army of Ivan the Terrible during the Siege of Kazan in 1552. On 2 June 1556 the Cossack regiment of Ataman Lyapun Filimonov, together with the Army of Moscovits comprising strelets, conquered and annexed the Astrakhan Khanate.

During the reign of Ivan the Terrible (Ivan IV), the ataman Yermak Timofeyevich went on an expedition to conquer Siberia. After defeating Khan Kuchum in the fall of 1582 and occupying Isker, the capital of the Siberian Khanate, Yermak sent a force of Cossacks down the Irtysh in the winter of 1583. The detachment, led by Bogdan Bryazga (according to other sources, the Cossack chieftain Nikita Pan) passed through the lands of the Konda-Pelym Voguls and reached the walls of the town of Samarovo. Surprised by the Cossack attack, the Ostyaks surrendered. In fall 1585, shortly after Yermak's death, Cossacks led by voevoda (army commander) Ivan Mansurov founded the first Russian fortified town in Siberia, Obskoy, at the mouth of the Irtysh river on the right bank of the Ob river. The Mansi and Khanty lands thus became part of the Russian state, finally secured by the founding of the cities of Pelym and Berezov in 1592 and Surgut in 1594. As a result of Yermak's expedition, Russia was able to annex Siberia.

17th century

Don cossacks in Paris in 1814

In the 17th century Cossacks waged war against the Ottomans and the Crimean Khanate. In 1637 the Don Cossacks, joined by the Zaporozhian Cossacks, captured the strategic Ottoman fortress of Azov, which guarded the Don.^[17] The defense of the Azov Fortress in 1641 was one of the key actions in Don Cossack history. After total taking of the Free Territories of Don Cossacks under the Moscovy control, Don Cossack history became more intertwined with the history of the rest of Russia. In exchange for protection of the Southern borders of medieval Russia, the Don Cossacks were given the privilege of not paying taxes and the tsar's authority in Cossack lands was not as absolute as in other parts of Russia.

During this period, three of Russia's most notorious rebels, Stenka Razin, Kondraty Bulavin and Emelian Pugachev, were Don Cossacks.

18th–19th centuries

1915 drawing from The War Illustrated showing a charging Don Cossack. The figure is portrayed in peacetime dress uniform

After 1786, the territory of the Don Cossacks was officially called Don Voisko Lands, and was renamed Don Voisko Province (Oblast’ Voyska Donskogo) in 1870 (presently part of the Rostov, Volgograd, and Voronezh regions of the Russian Federation as well as part of the Luhansk region of Ukraine).

In 1805 the Don Cossack capital was shifted from Cherkassk to Novocherkassk (New Cherkassk).^[18]

Don Cossacks are credited with playing a significant part in repelling Napoleon's Invasion of Russia. Under the command of Count Matvey Ivanovich Platov, the Don Cossacks fought in a number of battles against the Grande Armée. In the Battle of Borodino, Don Cossacks made raids to the rear of the French Army. Platov commanded all the Cossack troops and successfully covered the retreat of the Russian Army to Moscow. The Don Cossacks distinguished themselves in subsequent campaigns, and took part in the capture of Paris. Napoleon is credited with declaring, "Cossacks are the finest light troops among all that exist. If I had them in my army, I would go through all the world with them."^[19]

In the general census of 1884, the male population of the Don Cossacks was reported to number 425,000. The Don Cossacks were the largest of the ten cossack hosts then in existence, providing over a third of total cossack manpower available for military service.

20th century

World War I

On the eve of World War I, the Don Cossack Host comprised 17 regular regiments plus 6 detached sotnias (squadrons). In addition two regiments of the Imperial Guard were recruited from the Don territory. By 1916 the Don Host had expanded to 58 line regiments and 100 detached sotnias. The central location of the Don territories meant that these units were employed extensively on both the German and Austro-Hungarian fronts, though less so against the Ottoman Turks to the south. The continued value of the Don and other Cossacks as mounted troops was illustrated by the decision taken in 1916 to dismount about a third of the regular Russian cavalry, but to retain the cossack regiments in their traditional role.^[20]

February 1917 Revolution

At the outbreak of the February 1917 Revolution, three regiments of Don Cossacks (the 1st, 4th and 14th) formed part of the garrison of St. Petersburg. Consisting partly of new recruits from the poorer regions of the Host territory, these units were influenced by the general disillusionment with the Tsar's government. Accordingly, they did not act effectively when ordered to disperse the growing demonstrations in the city. Reports that the historically loyal Don Cossacks could no longer be relied on were a significant factor in the sudden collapse of the Tsarist regime.^[21]

Bolshevik persecution

The Don Cossack Host was disbanded on Russian soil in 1918, after the Russian Revolution, but the Don Cossacks in the White Army and those who emigrated abroad, continued to preserve the traditions, musical and otherwise, of their host. Many found employment as trick riders in various circuses throughout Europe and the United States. Admiral Aleksandr Vasiliyevich Kolchak, one of the leaders of the White movement during the Russian Civil War, was of Don Cossack descent. Following the defeat of the White Army in the Russian Civil War, a policy of decossackization ("Raskazachivaniye") took place on the surviving Cossacks and their homelands, since they were viewed as a threat to the new Soviet regime.^[22]

Percentage of depopulation during the Soviet famine of 1932–33. Formerly Don Cossack lands are on right.

The Cossack homelands were often very fertile, and during the collectivisation campaign many Cossacks shared the fate of the kulaks. According to historian Michael Kort, "During 1919 and 1920, out of a population of approximately 1.5 million Don Cossacks, the Bolshevik regime killed or deported an estimated 300,000 to 500,000".^[23] Others, such as Peter Holquist, estimate a figure of 10,000 deaths.^[24] The region also suffered greatly during the Soviet famine of 1932–33 as a result of the Soviet policies.

A monument to Don Cossacks in Luhansk. In Russian: "To the sons of glory and freedom"

Don Cossacks in World War II

On 20 April 1936 the previous ban on Cossacks serving in the Red Army was lifted. Later the same year two existing Red Army cavalry divisions were re-designated as Don Cossacks. By 1939 a number of these regiments had been issued with traditional Cossack uniforms in ceremonial and field service versions. The dress of the Don Cossack units included the broad red stripes on dark-blue breeches, which had been their distinguishing feature prior to the Revolution. The Don Cossack Cavalry Corps saw extensive active service until 1943, after which its role diminished (as did that of the other remaining horse-mounted units in the Red Army).^[25] However Don Cossack cavalry was still in existence in 1945 and participated in the Victory Parade in Moscow.

During World War II, the Don Cossacks mustered the largest single concentration of Cossacks within the German Army, the XVth SS Cossack Cavalry Corps, a great part of them being former Russian citizens. The XVth SS Cossack Cavalry Corps included the 1st Cossack Division and the 2nd Cossack Division.

The majority of the Cossacks remained loyal to the Red Army.^[26] In the earliest battles, particularly the encirclement of Belostok Cossack units such as the 94th Beloglisnky, 152nd Rostovsky and 48th Belorechensky regiments fought to their death.

In the opening phase of the war, during the German advance towards Moscow, Cossacks became extensively used for the raids behind enemy lines. The most famous of these took place during the Battle of Smolensk under the command of Lev Dovator, whose 3rd Cavalry Corps consisted of the 50th and 53rd Cavalry divisions from the Kuban and Terek Cossacks, which were mobilised from the Northern Caucasus. The raid, which in ten days covered 300 km and destroyed the hinterlands of the 9th German Army, before successfully breaking out.^[27] Whilst units under the command of General Pavel Belov, the 2nd Cavalry Corps made from Don, Kuban and Stavropol Cossacks spearheaded the counter-attack onto the right flank of the 6th German Army delaying its advance towards Moscow.

The high professionalism that the Cossacks under Dovator and Belov (both generals would later be granted the title Hero of the Soviet Union and their units raised to a Guards (elite) status) ensured that many new units would be formed. In the end, the Germans during the whole war only managed to form two Cossack Corps, while the Red Army in just 1942 alone had 17.^[26] Many of the newly formed units were filled with ethnically Cossack volunteers. The Kuban Cossacks were allocated to the 10th, 12th and 13th Corps. However, the most famous Kuban Cossack unit would be the 17th Cossack Corps under the command of general Nikolay Kirichenko.

During one particular attack, Cossacks destroyed up to 1,800 enemy soldiers and officers, they took 300 prisoners, seized 18 artillery pieces and 25 mortars. The 5th and 9th Romanian Cavalry divisions fled in panic, and the 198th German Infantry division, carrying large losses, hastily departed to the left bank of the river Ei.^[28]

During the opening phase of the Battle of Stalingrad, when the Germans overran the Kuban, the majority of the Cossack population, long before the Germans began their agitation with Krasnov and Shkuro, became involved in Partisan activity.^[29][30] Raids onto the German positions from the Caucasus mountains became commonplace. After the German defeat at Stalingrad, the 4th Guards Kuban Cossack Corps, strengthened by tanks and artillery, broke through the German lines and liberated Mineralnye Vody, and Stavropol.

21st century

Modern Don Cossacks

Emblem of registered Don cossacks

The Don Cossacks were revived in the early 1990s and were officially recognised by the Russian Government in 1997, its Ataman holding the rank, insignia and uniform of a full Marshal.

In 1992 they joined the separatist forces during the Transnistria War.^[31]

Don Cossacks volunteered by hundreds to fight in South Ossetia during the 2008 Russo-Georgian war.^[32]

In 2009, the Ukrainian Security Service banned a leader of the Don Cossacks from entering Ukraine in order to prevent the creation of an illegal parliamentary formation on Ukrainian territory.^[33]

Since 2014, members of Don Cossacks have participated in the war in Eastern Ukraine as independent volunteers for the pro-Russian Donbass militias. Reportedly several military formations were formed though most of these groups were subsequently disbanded and integrated into the armed forces of the DPR and LPR.^[34][35]

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Scythians

Scythians

The Scythians or Scyths, and sometimes also referred to as the Classical Scythians and the Pontic Scythians, were an ancient Eastern Iranian equestrian nomadic people who had migrated from Central Asia to the Pontic Steppe in modern-day Ukraine and Southern Russia from approximately the 7th century BC until the 3rd century BC.

Khazars

Khazars

The Khazars were a semi-nomadic Turkic people that in the late 6th-century CE established a major commercial empire covering the southeastern section of modern European Russia, southern Ukraine, Crimea, and Kazakhstan. They created what for its duration was the most powerful polity to emerge from the break-up of the Western Turkic Khaganate. Astride a major artery of commerce between Eastern Europe and Southwestern Asia, Khazaria became one of the foremost trading empires of the early medieval world, commanding the western marches of the Silk Road and playing a key commercial role as a crossroad between China, the Middle East and Kievan Rus'. For some three centuries the Khazars dominated the vast area extending from the Volga-Don steppes to the eastern Crimea and the northern Caucasus.

Russian language

Russian language

Russian is an East Slavic language mainly spoken in Russia. It is the native language of the Russians and belongs to the Indo-European language family. It is one of four living East Slavic languages, and is also a part of the larger Balto-Slavic languages. Besides Russia itself, Russian is an official language in Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, and is used widely as a lingua franca throughout Ukraine, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and to some extent in the Baltic states. It was the de facto language of the former Soviet Union, and continues to be used in public life with varying proficiency in all of the post-Soviet states.

Golden Horde

Golden Horde

The Golden Horde, self-designated as Ulug Ulus, lit. 'Great State' in Turkic, was originally a Mongol and later Turkicized khanate established in the 13th century and originating as the northwestern sector of the Mongol Empire. With the fragmentation of the Mongol Empire after 1259 it became a functionally separate khanate. It is also known as the Kipchak Khanate or as the Ulus of Jochi, and replaced the earlier, less organized Cuman–Kipchak confederation.

Crimean Tatars

Crimean Tatars

Crimean Tatars or Crimeans are a Turkic ethnic group and nation who are an indigenous people of Crimea. The formation and ethnogenesis of Crimean Tatars occurred during the 13th–17th centuries, uniting Cumans, who appeared in Crimea in the 10th century, with other peoples who had inhabited Crimea since ancient times and gradually underwent Tatarization, including Greeks, Italians, Armenians, Goths, Sarmatians, and others.

Christians

Christians

Christians are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words Christ and Christian derive from the Koine Greek title Christós (Χριστός), a translation of the Biblical Hebrew term mashiach (מָשִׁיחַ). While there are diverse interpretations of Christianity which sometimes conflict, they are united in believing that Jesus has a unique significance. The term Christian used as an adjective is descriptive of anything associated with Christianity or Christian churches, or in a proverbial sense "all that is noble, and good, and Christ-like." It does not have a meaning of 'of Christ' or 'related or pertaining to Christ'.

Circassians

Circassians

The Circassians are an indigenous Northwest Caucasian ethnic group and nation native to the historical country-region of Circassia in the North Caucasus. As a consequence of the Circassian genocide, which was perpetrated by the Russian Empire in the 19th century during the Russo-Circassian War, most Circassians were exiled from their homeland in Circassia to modern-day Turkey and the rest of the Middle East, where the majority of them are concentrated today. The Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization estimated in the early 1990s that there are as many as 3.7 million Circassians in diaspora in over 50 countries.

Novgorod Republic

Novgorod Republic

The Novgorod Republic was a medieval state that existed from the 12th to 15th centuries, stretching from the Gulf of Finland in the west to the northern Ural Mountains in the east, including the city of Novgorod and the Lake Ladoga regions of modern Russia. The Republic prospered as the easternmost trading post of the Hanseatic League, and its Slavic, Baltic and Finnic people were much influenced by the culture of the Viking-Varangians and Byzantine people.

Battle of Shelon

Battle of Shelon

The Battle of Shelon was a decisive battle between the forces of the Grand Duchy of Moscow under Ivan III and the army of the Novgorod Republic, which took place on the Shelon River on 14 July 1471. Novgorod suffered a major defeat and ended with the de facto unconditional surrender of the city. Novgorod was absorbed by Muscovy in 1478.

Principality of Ryazan

Principality of Ryazan

The Grand Duchy of Ryazan (1078–1521) was a duchy with the capital in Old Ryazan, and then in Pereyaslavl Ryazansky, which later became the modern-day city of Ryazan. It originally split off from the Chernigov Principality as the provincial Murom Principality.

Ryazan

Ryazan

Ryazan is the largest city and administrative center of Ryazan Oblast, Russia. The city is located on the banks of the Oka River in Central Russia, 196 km (122 mi) southeast of Moscow. As of the 2010 Census, Ryazan had a population of 524,927, making it the 33rd most populated city in Russia, and the fourth most populated in Central Russia after Moscow, Voronezh, and Yaroslavl.

Pereslavl-Zalessky

Pereslavl-Zalessky

Pereslavl-Zalessky, also known as Pereyaslavl-Zalessky, is a town in Yaroslavl Oblast, Russia, located on the main Moscow–Yaroslavl road and on the southeastern shore of Lake Pleshcheyevo at the mouth of the Trubezh River. Population: 41,925 (2010 Census); 43,379 (2002 Census); 42,331 (1989 Census).

Flag of Don Cossacks

Flag of Don Cossacks

The Don Cossacks flag 3:4 was inaugurated during the Don Cossacks assembly in Novocherkassk, Don Republic, on 4 May 1918 under chiefing of Ataman Pyotr Krasnov. The flag has three colours: blue, yellow, and red. The flag is similar to that of the Ukrainian State, also established in 1918, which the Don Republic bordered to its west.

Coat of arms

The Don Cossacks Coat of Arms was known from the 17th century. It was adopted as a symbol of the Don Republic on 15 September 1918.

Coat of Arms of Don Cossacks

Uniform

Until 1914 the distinguishing colour of the Don Cossack Host was red: worn on the cap bands and wide trouser stripes of a dark blue uniform of the loose-fitting cut common to the Steppe Cossacks. Tall lambskin hats were worn on occasion, with red cloth tops edged in white lace. Silver metal scrolls were worn on the headdress to denote the distinguished conduct of individual regiments. Officers had silver braiding on their collars and epaulettes plus silver/black girdles.^[36] Shoulder-straps of other ranks were the same dark blue as the caftan (coat).^[37] A whip was used instead of spurs.^[38] Prior to 1908, individual cossacks from all Hosts were required to provide their own uniforms (together with horses and harness).^[39] However the size and relative affluence of the Don Cossack Host permitted the setting up of communally owned clothing factories.

A khaki field tunic was adopted in 1908, replacing the dark blue coats or white (summer) blouses previously worn for ordinary duties. However the blue riding breeches with broad red stripes long characteristic of the Don Host, continued to be worn even on active service during both World Wars.^[40]

The Don Cossack Battery of the Imperial Guard wore a "Tsar's green" (a dark shade common to the army) uniform, with the black and red distinctions of the artillery as a branch.^[41]

Anthem of Don Cossacks

Всколыхнулся, взволновался православный Тихий Дон written by Fedor Anisimov in 1853.^[42] (in Russian)

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Novocherkassk

Novocherkassk

Novocherkassk is a city in Rostov Oblast, Russia, located near the confluence of the Tuzlov and Aksay Rivers, the latter a distributary of the Don River. Novocherkassk is best known as the cultural capital of the Cossacks, and as the official capital of the Don Cossacks. Population: 168,746 ; 170,822 ; 187,973 (1989 Census);.

Don Republic

Don Republic

The Don Republic was an independent self-proclaimed anti-Bolshevik republic formed by the Armed Forces of South Russia on the territory of Don Cossacks against another self-proclaimed Don Soviet Republic. The Don Republic existed during the Russian Civil War after the collapse of the Russian Empire from 1918 to 1920.

Pyotr Krasnov

Pyotr Krasnov

Pyotr Nikolayevich Krasnov, sometimes referred to in English as Peter Krasnov, was a Don Cossack historian and officer, promoted to Lieutenant General of the Imperial Russian Army when the revolution broke out in 1917, one of the leaders of the anti-Bolshevik White movement afterwards and a German collaborator who mobilized Cossack forces to fight against the Soviet Union during World War II. The major motivation was the brutal repression of Cossacks by the Soviet government, e.g., the portioning of the lands of the Terek, Ural and Semirechye hosts, forced cultural assimilation and repression of the Russian Orthodox Church, deportation and, ultimately, the Soviet famine of 1932–33. During the Russian Civil War, Krasnov was the chief perpetrator of the White Terror in the Don Province. His troops executed between 25,000 and 40,000 people.

Ukrainian State

Ukrainian State

The Ukrainian State, sometimes also called the Second Hetmanate, was an anti-Bolshevik government that existed on most of the modern territory of Ukraine from 29 April to 14 December 1918.

Most Don Cossacks are Russian Orthodox, who consider themselves guardians of the faith. However, a large percentage of Don Cossacks were Starovers.^[43] Even in 1903, a minimum of 150,000 from a total of the 2,500,000 parish members of the Don Eparchy were Starovers.^[44] Ataman count Matvei Platov was of a Popovtsy Old Believers Family.^[45] Don Cossacks were tolerant of other religions – with the exception of Jews – and accepted Buddhists, Muslims, Old Believers, and pagans into their communities.^[46]

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Eparchy

Eparchy

Eparchy is an ecclesiastical unit in Eastern Christianity that is equivalent to a diocese in Western Christianity. An eparchy is governed by an eparch, who is a bishop. Depending on the administrative structure of a specific Eastern Church, an eparchy can belong to an ecclesiastical province, but it can also be exempt. Each eparchy is divided into parishes, in the same manner as a diocese in Western Churches. Historical development of eparchies in various Eastern Churches was marked by local distinctions that can be observed in modern ecclesiastical practices of Eastern Orthodox Churches, Oriental Orthodox Churches and Eastern Catholic Churches.

Matvei Platov

Matvei Platov

Count Matvei Ivanovich Platov was a Russian general who commanded the Don Cossacks in the Napoleonic wars and founded Novocherkassk as the new capital of the Don Host Province.

Popovtsy

Popovtsy

The Popovtsy or Popovschina were from the 17th century one of the two main factions of Old Believers, along with the Bezpopovtsy.

Old Believers

Old Believers

Old Believers or Old Ritualists are Eastern Orthodox Christians who maintain the liturgical and ritual practices of the Russian Orthodox Church as they were before the reforms of Patriarch Nikon of Moscow between 1652 and 1666. Resisting the accommodation of Russian piety to the contemporary forms of Greek Orthodox worship, these Christians were anathematized, together with their ritual, in a Synod of 1666–67, producing a division in Eastern Europe between the Old Believers and those who followed the state church in its condemnation of the Old Rite. Russian speakers refer to the schism itself as raskol (раскол), etymologically indicating a "cleaving-apart".

A Cossack from Don area 1821. An illustration from Fyodor Solntsev, 1869

The Cossacks had a democratic society where the most important decisions were made during a Common Assembly (Казачий Круг). The assembly elected temporary authorities — atamans.

Don Cossacks were skilled horsemen and experienced warriors, due to their long conflict with the Crimean Khanate and the Ottoman Empire. They sold their military services to different powers in Eastern Europe. Together with the Polish King, they raided Moscow during the Time of Troubles (Смутное Время) and, under Russian authority, carried out raids and expeditions against Ottoman Turkey and Qajar Persia.

Isolated between Russian and Muslim territory, the Don Cossacks developed a distinct culture and language which fused Ukrainian, Russian, Kalmyk, and Tatar elements.^[47]

The Don Cossacks have a tradition of choral singing and many of their songs, such as Chyorny Voron (Black Raven) and Lyubo, Bratsi, Lyubo (It's good, brothers, good) became popular throughout the rest of Russia. Many of the songs are about death in war.

Up to the 18th century marriages and divorces were held in the Common Assembly (Казачий Круг). If a Cossack wanted to marry a woman he was expected to bring her to the Common Assembly for presentation. If the Common Assembly gave approval, the marriage followed. The same procedure took place if there was a divorce. Peter I banned these practices in the Common Assembly, requiring Cossacks to marry only in church.

A Cossack marriage is a complex ritual, accompanied by songs, dances and performances. A bridegroom arrives on horseback and takes his bride to the church, followed by a marriage train. After the wedding all present would adjourn to the bridegroom's house. There, the parents would bless the couple, break a loaf of bread above their heads, and sprinkle them with wheat, nuts, sweets and hops. The bride's hair would then be unbraided according to traditional rites.

When a son was born to a Cossack family, his relatives presented him with an arrow, a bow, a cartridge, a bullet and a gun. All of these items were hung on the wall, over the boy's bed. At the age of three, the boy began to ride a horse. At the age of 7 to 8 he was allowed to ride in the street, to go fishing and hunt with adults.

Horse racing was a popular pastime with Don Cossacks. Riders competed to hit a target, firing weapons from horseback. The most dexterous were able to do this standing on the horses back. It was traditional practice for Cossack families to provide a young Cossack with two horses, a uniform and weapons.

Cossack leave-taking was always festive. All departing Cossacks would gather in the church, then hang a small bag around their necks containing a pinch of their native soil before setting off singing. Having left their stanitsa, they drank a cup of vodka and said good-bye to their native land.

General of Don Cossack in the early 1800s

Don Cossack Choir Serge Jaroff

The Don Cossack Choir Serge Jaroff was a group of former officers of the Russian Imperial Army who were discovered singing in Çilingir (near Constantinople), where they had fled after the defeat of their army in the Crimea. They made their formal concert debut in Vienna in 1923, led by their founder, conductor and composer, Serge Jaroff.

The choir became popular in America, Japan and Europe, touring the world in the 1930s, 40s and 50s, till today. The men, dressed as Cossacks, sang a cappella in a repertory of Russian sacred and secular music, army, folk and art songs. Cossack dancing was eventually added to their programme.

In popular culture

Mikhail Sholokhov's monumental work, "And Quiet Flows the Don", deals sympathetically with the Don Cossacks and depicts the destruction of their way of life as a result of World War I and the Russian Civil War.

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Ataman

Ataman

Ataman was a title of Cossack and haidamak leaders of various kinds. In the Russian Empire, the term was the official title of the supreme military commanders of the Cossack armies. The Ukrainian version of the same word is hetman. Otaman in Ukrainian Cossack forces was a position of a lower rank.

Crimean Khanate

Crimean Khanate

The Crimean Khanate, self defined as the Throne of Crimea and Desht-i Kipchak, and in old European historiography and geography known as Little Tartary, was a Crimean Tatar state existing from 1441 to 1783, the longest-lived of the Turkic khanates that succeeded the empire of the Golden Horde. Established by Hacı I Giray in 1441, it was regarded as the direct heir to the Golden Horde and to Desht-i-Kipchak.

Ottoman Empire

Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire, historically and colloquially the Turkish Empire, was an empire that controlled much of Southeast Europe, Western Asia, and Northern Africa between the 14th and early 20th centuries. It was founded at the end of the 13th century in northwestern Anatolia in the town of Söğüt by the Turkoman tribal leader Osman I. After 1354, the Ottomans crossed into Europe and, with the conquest of the Balkans, the Ottoman beylik was transformed into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Mehmed the Conqueror.

Time of Troubles

Time of Troubles

The Time of Troubles, or Smuta, was a period of political crisis during the Tsardom of Russia which began in 1598 with the death of Fyodor I and ended in 1613 with the accession of Michael I of the House of Romanov.

Peter the Great

Peter the Great

Peter I, most commonly known as Peter the Great, was a Russian monarch who ruled the Tsardom of Russia from 7 May [O.S. 27 April] 1682 to 1721 and subsequently the Russian Empire until his death in 1725, jointly ruling with his elder half-brother, Ivan V until 1696. He is primarily credited with the modernisation of the country, transforming it into a European power.

Stanitsa

Stanitsa

A stanitsa is a village inside a Cossack host. Stanitsas — Cossack military settlements — were the primary unit of Cossack hosts.

Crimea

Crimea

Crimea is a peninsula in Eastern Europe, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, almost entirely surrounded by the Black Sea and the smaller Sea of Azov. The Isthmus of Perekop connects the peninsula to Kherson Oblast in mainland Ukraine. To the east, the Crimean Bridge, constructed in 2018, spans the Strait of Kerch, linking the peninsula with Krasnodar Krai in Russia. The Arabat Spit, located to the northeast, is a narrow strip of land that separates the Syvash lagoons from the Sea of Azov. Across the Black Sea to the west lies Romania and to the south is Turkey. The largest city is Sevastopol. The region has a population of 2.4 million, and has been under Russian occupation since 2014.

Serge Jaroff

Serge Jaroff

Serge Alexis Jaroff was the founder, conductor and composer of the Don Cossack Choir Serge Jaroff.

A cappella

A cappella

A cappella music is a performance by a singer or a singing group without instrumental accompaniment, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. The term a cappella was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato musical styles. In the 19th century, a renewed interest in Renaissance polyphony, coupled with an ignorance of the fact that vocal parts were often doubled by instrumentalists, led to the term coming to mean unaccompanied vocal music. The term is also used, rarely, as a synonym for alla breve.

Mikhail Sholokhov

Mikhail Sholokhov

Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov was a Russian novelist and winner of the 1965 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is known for writing about life and fate of Don Cossacks during the Russian Revolution, the civil war and the period of collectivization, primarily in his most famous novel, And Quiet Flows the Don.

And Quiet Flows the Don

And Quiet Flows the Don

And Quiet Flows the Don is a novel in four volumes by Russian writer Mikhail Sholokhov. The first three volumes were written from 1925 to 1932 and published in the Soviet magazine Oktyabr in 1928–1932, and the fourth volume was finished in 1940.

Russian Civil War

Russian Civil War

The Russian Civil War was a multi-party civil war in the former Russian Empire sparked by the overthrowing of the monarchy and the new republican government's failure to maintain stability, as many factions vied to determine Russia's political future. It resulted in the formation of the RSFSR and later the Soviet Union in most of its territory. Its finale marked the end of the Russian Revolution, which was one of the key events of the 20th century.