Welcome to Russian History Retold.Episode 314.The Cossacks.Part 1.Last time we covered Sergei Witte's life and times.Today we begin a series of episodes on the Cossacks.My primary source will be The Cossacks by Philip Longworth.
In his introduction, he writes the following about them.Quote, the legend is romantic and spectacular. mention the word Cossack, and any number of vivid images is called to mind.
A fur-capped horseman, saber flashing, galloping across the empty steppe.Bakhnelian dancers in gaudy Eastern costumes, swirling and leaping to the strum of balalaikas.
Dark riders with leaded whips, slashing into a crowd of demonstrators on the streets of a Russian city. The origins of the Cossacks are part mythical and part contested.
Some historians believe they have a Slavic origin, some believe they are a scion of a Turkic background, and some think it's just a mixture of the two.This is the most likely scenario, although we have no definitive answers to the question of origin.
One train of thought believes that the Cossacks are actually the Cumans who survived the Mongol invasion, and that those people who were themselves the remnants of the Scythians.
A few have claimed that the Cossacks came from the Khazars when they broke up in the mid-900s.Another theory goes back even further, with Cossacks coming from the Scythians, but not the Cumans in the 500s.
My research has suggested there's no one scion but many.
In reality, the Cossacks were Russians, Khazars, Ukrainians, Tatars, and others who settled on the Pontic-Caspian steppe lands stretching from Central Asia to Southeastern Europe and what is now Turkey.
What is common among all of these people is that they wanted to be free of the control of governments and all the rules that come with a settled lifestyle.The very word Cossack, which has a Turkic origin, means free man.
Numerous Russian and Ukrainian writers such as Pushkin, Yevtushenko, Gogol, and Tolstoy have told the story of the Cossacks.
Music by Mussorgsky and Shostakovich have entertained us, and people like Repnin have painted amazing works of art about them.We first heard of the Cossacks around 1400.
They were used by the rulers of the Grand Duchy of Moscow and of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as guards against Tatar raids.
One thing you can say is that the Cossacks were never one tribe or nation, as many different groups identified as being Cossacks in origin.You have the Don, Yalk, Kuban, Azov, Danube, Black Sea, and Zaporozhian Cossack hosts.
Each has a unique history, rich in folklore and tales of adventure. Another important part of Cossack history was their involvement in many of the major revolutions of the 17th through the 19th century.
Rebellions led by Bolotnikov, Pugachev, and Stenka Razin were just a few that threatened the Russian nobility.Seeing this, the Tsarist government began to use them for their own defense, conceding several freedoms of self-rule.
In this series, I want to review the history of each of the major hosts and the Cossacks in a broader context.Hopefully, we will have a greater appreciation for them and their story.
Let's start with what we do know about the beginnings of the people we know as Cossacks. They are thought to have settled into an area that is now southern Ukraine around the 11th century as the influence of the Cumans waned.
When the Mongols pretty much wiped out the Cumans in the mid-13th century, the Cossack population began to grow.
As Geoffrey Hopkins puts the beginnings of the Cossacks in his book, Russia and the Russians, quote, the first concentration of the Cossacks were in the lower reaches of two great rivers, the Don and the Dnieper.
In the early stages, many of them were Tatars, survivors perhaps of the Golden Horde or other nomadic hosts.
But many too were Slavs, hunters, fishermen, and traders who had strayed from the borders of the Polan or Muscovy, peasants or even landowners fleeing from justice or injustice in their homeland.
In time, the Slavic element became dominant and most Cossacks adopted the Orthodox faith. He further goes on to write, quote, Kossaks lived at first in settlements of tents made of hides, reminiscent of the nomadic Ayurtsi.
Though, as their way of life stabilized, they began to build wooden or clay houses, kuren, grouped in a stanitsa, a village or fortified camp.
They practiced a mixture of primitive democracy and ruthless authoritarianism, characteristics of communities that live in a highly vulnerable environment and whose members are dependent on each other to survive in it.
Selecting leaders was done by all of the men within a group or band of army soldiers. They would choose a Hetman if they were Don Cossacks or an Ataman if they belonged to the Dnieper group.
For the first few hundred years, they did not practice any form of agriculture, preferring to trade to purchase the goods or by outright seizure of produce.This would often lead to conflict with the local authorities.
Ivan IV was the first Tsar to deal with the threat of the Cossacks. Instead of raiding their lands, he sought to develop alliances with them.
It was a much-needed arrangement that forced Ivan's hand as the Dnieper Cossacks accepted a deal with the Polish king to serve as frontier troops.
The Don Cossacks decided to join forces with the Russians and serve as troops against the Khanates of Kazan and Asrahan.
Over the decades that followed, they would be given a charter to confirm their rights to a set border of lands in the Southern Don region.
This would lead to a gradual dissolution of their freedoms as they were assimilated into the Russian Imperial Army.This assimilation would erode during the Time of Troubles, when the Cossacks began to push for their freedom.
They did this by supporting the numerous false Dmitriys that sprouted up during this lawless time.The first false Dmitriy, as you know, came from Poland.According to some sources, his name was Grigory Otrupev, a junior boyar.
Because of the support from the Polish government, the Dnieper host backed his foray towards Moscow. This was also the time of another revolt, this time led by Ivan Bolotnikov, who was a runaway slave.
He called upon the peasants and Cossacks alike to rebel against the rule of Vasily Shuisky, whom they claimed had no right to be the ruler of Muscovy.
Luckily for Shuisky, the nobility felt threatened by this peasant army and bound together to fight them off. One of the outcomes of this rebellion was the order by Tsar Shuisky to begin the registration of serfs.We'll be back after a quick break.
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Although the Cossacks were yearning for the days of freedom, they decided to join Prince Dmitry Pozarsky and Kuzma Minin to drive the Poles from Moscow in September 1611.Their decision to reverse their allegiance was based on their mutual orthodoxy.
They would also be a key factor in the nomination of Mikhail Romanov as the new Tsar. One of the people put forth as a candidate for ruling Russia after the Time of Troubles was Karl Philipp, younger brother of Gustav Adolphus of Sweden.
The Cossacks were dead set against a foreigner taking the throne, feeling it was a ploy by the boyars to control the outsider.
This backing would backfire on the Cossacks, as Michael Romanov would move to suppress any Cossack bond that did not pledge allegiance to him.
Since their freewheeling ways were being hindered in the West, the Cossacks jumped at the possibility that an eastern expansion would offer.The vast frontier of Siberia was just what the doctor ordered for the Cossacks.
The fur trade exploded, as Hosking writes, quote, the courts of Renaissance Europe were hungry for the more exotic types of fur.Martin, sable, ermine, which had long ago exterminated farther west.
This was a literal goldmine for the Cossacks who ventured east beginning in the late 16th century. As I mentioned earlier, in the mid-16th century, the Cossacks split into two main groups, the Zaporozhian Host and the Don State.
The former capital was the Zaporozhian Sich, and the Don's capital was Razdori, then Cherkask, and later Novocherkassk.These were the two largest territorial Cossack organizations.
Other smaller ones at this time included the Tatar, Volga Finns, Kalmyk, and Buryats.Many of these would be assimilated into the two larger hosts.So let's begin to talk about each of these different but similar Cossack hosts.
In the beginning, around the mid-16th century, the Zaporozhian Cossacks were mainly made up of escaped serfs.The lives of these serfs must have been extremely harsh, as the lands they settled in were a wild and untamed region known as the steppes.
Others who would join them included Crimean Tatars, as well as lesser noblemen from Poland and Lithuania. As I mentioned earlier, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth treated the Zaporozhian Cossacks as its subjects.
This was an important relationship as the Commonwealth became embroiled in several conflicts with the Ottoman Empire.Part of the reason for the hostilities that were to develop was the Cossacks raiding Ottoman territory.
In retaliation, the Ottomans authorized their subjects, the Tatars, to raid into what is now southern Ukraine.These raids were likely to capture peasants to sell at the slave markets.
The Cossacks were raiding wealthy Ottoman trading outposts and cities.They were even able to reach the outskirts of Constantinople in 1615 and 1625, burning a number of towns.
This led to several treaties being signed in which the Poles and the Turks promised to control their minions.They failed miserably.The Tatars and the Cossacks would fight each other year after year.
Ottoman Sultan Mehmed IV demanded that the Cossacks submit to his authority.What came out of that is one of the most humorous responses that I've ever read in history. It is known as the Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks.
I just have to read this to you.So, here it goes.Quote, Thou Turkish devil, brother and companion to the accursed devil, and secretary to Lucifer himself.Greetings!What kind of noble knight art thou?Satan voids, and your army devours.
Never wilt thou be fit to have the sons of Christ under thee. Thy army we fear not, and by land and by sea, and arch out, because we will do battle against thee.
Thy scullion of Babylon, thou beer-brewer of Jerusalem, thou goat-thief of Alexandria, thou swine-herd of Egypt, both the greater and the lesser, thou Armenian pig and Qatar goat,
thou hangman of the Kamyonets, thou evildoer of Podolia, thou grandson of the devil himself, thou great silly oaf of all the world and of the netherworld, and before our god, a blockhead, a swine's stout, a mare's ass and clown of Hades,
May the devil take thee.That is what the Cossacks have to say to thee, thou basest form of runts.Unfit art thou to lord over true Christians.The date we do not know, for no calendar have we got.
The moon is in the sky, the year is in a book, and the day is the same here as ye over there.And thou canst kiss us thou knowest where. Kosovi-Ottoman Ivan Sirko and all the Zaporozhian-Cossack Brotherhood.
Now, whether this was the absolutely factual correspondence is under review, and as we don't have the original copy, we do have evidence that does appear to suggest it was actually sent to the Ottoman Sultan.
One of the most famous pieces of Russian art by Ilya Repin, known as the Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, also known as the Cossacks of Zaporog, are drafting a manifesto, and Cossacks are writing a letter to the Turkish Sultan.
It's completed in 1891, and it hangs in the State Russian Museum in St.Petersburg.I really recommend you look this up online. Ilia Repin, The Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks.It is a beautiful and immense piece of art.So, you'd really love it.
It's just gorgeous.Now, the reputation of the Zaporozhian Cossacks spread throughout Europe. The Habsburgs even hired them to harass the Ottomans at their borders.In the early part of the 17th century, Cossack numbers swelled.
Many were fleeing serfs from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Zizlachta, or a noble class of the Commonwealth, attempted to turn the Zaporozhian Cossacks into serfs.This angered them as well as the suppression of orthodoxy in their territory.
This would bring on the Kamianetsky Uprising, which started in 1648. The Kiemlynitsky Uprising would be quite successful, so much so that it would precipitate the event known as the Deluge, a time similar to the Russian Time of Troubles.
It would lead to the dissolution of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the fall of their dominance over western Ukraine.
Another outcome from the uprising was the 1654 Pereyaslav Agreement, which asked the Cossacks to swear allegiance to the Tsar while retaining a measure of autonomy.This would lead to a time known as the Ruin.
Civil war would break out between those who refused to pledge allegiance to the Tsar, those who wanted to stay with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and those who agreed with the Pereyaslav Agreement.
Between 1657 and 1686, tensions within the Zaporozhian Cossack host, as well as between the Commonwealth, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire were explosive. It wasn't until the signing of the Eternal Peace Treaty that things began to calm down.
Ukraine was split between the three nations, with Poland losing the so-called Left Bank of Ukraine, which weakened it, beginning its decline as a regional power. The end of the ruin came with the ascension of Hetman Ivan Mezpa in 1687.
This selection would be a major mistake, as Mezpa would side with Swedish King Charles XII in the Great Northern War against our Peter I. After the Battle of Poltava, Mezpa, Charles, and the Cossacks that rebelled against the Russians were forced into exile in the Ottoman Empire.
Peter ordered the destruction of the Zaporozhian Sich, which led to further distrust of the Russian state.Over the next few decades, forays were made to rejoin the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but they failed due to religious differences.
In 1734, the Treaty of Lubny was signed between the Cossacks and Russia, giving them more autonomy and helping rebuild the Sich.The Cossacks, in turn, assisted the Russians in their upcoming war with the Ottomans.
The influence of Russia over the Zaporozhian host began to irritate the majority of the Cossacks.
The elite members of the host gained noble status, but the poorer people lost their standing, which spurred the largest revolt in Russian history to that date, the Pugachev Rebellion.
Beginning in 1773 and lasting until 775, would begin with the Yalk Cossacks, with the Zaporozhians joining early on.The rebellion was so large and intense that it actually rattled Catherine II.
She would order another destruction of the Sich, the region's main fortress of the Cossacks. It would be carried out between May 15th and June 8th, 1775.Catherine would then send out the following decree.
Quote, With this, we would like to let our empire and our faithful subjects be known that the Zaporozhian Sich is now destroyed, and the name of the Zaporozhian Cossacks is to be no more as well.
mentioning of whom will be considered no less as an affront to our imperial majesty, and for their deeds and insolence, for disobeying the will of our imperial majesty.
About 5,000 fighting men of the Zaporozhian Cossacks escaped the destruction and made their way to Ottoman territory, creating the Danubian Sich.
This would present a major problem for the Russians, especially with their continued wars with the Ottoman Empire.
In 1828, Tsar Nicholas I gave amnesty to all of those in the Danubian Sich if they agreed to return to Russia and create the Azov Cossack Host.Many decided to return and accept the offer.
In 1862, they would join with the Kuban Host and become a protectorate of the Russian Empire until the end of the Russian Civil War.
Stalin subjugated and relocated many of the remaining members of the Kuban host, and strongly discouraged their celebration of the Zaporozhian heritage.This ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Putin actually encouraged the return of pride for their heritage, even going so far as to enlist the Kuban Cossacks into the Kremlin Presidential Regiment, where they are now the majority.
Their jobs are to protect the Russian leaders and the Kremlin.Well, I hope you enjoyed today's episode.Join me next time when we continue our coverage of Cossack history, and we'll focus mostly on the Don Cossacks at this time.
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