"What's in a name?" the Bard once asked. If one were to ascribe to the implications behind that deceptively simple question, the answer would be "quite a bit." A name carries with it a history, a legacy (and perhaps even obligations) of which the person bearing the name might not even be aware. That being the case, please let me invite you into the Cave of the Moonbat to discuss the etymology of one of this community's adoptive nicknames, "Kossacks."
"Cossack" is one of those terms that rings familiar, but that one tends to find difficult to place in an historical context - it's kinda like "byzantine" that way - and while your resident historiorantologist cannot speak to the first intentional mingling of Mr. Moulitsas Zuniga's name with that of the storied, feared, splendidly dressed Russian cavalrymen of the Napoleonic era, I was able to scrounge up a bit of research about the historical Cossacks themselves. As usual, I learned that the story behind the stories is much more complicated than one might, at first glance, think.
These guys were Russians, right?
The word "Cossack" is actually of Turkish origin ("quzzaq"), and means "adventurer" or "freeman." The word which entered the Turkish language word may well come from the Khazak people of Central Asia, who themselves were at least partly descended from the truly terrifying Scythian horsemen that worried Herodotus so (hafta do a diary on them sometime - they made cloaks out of human scalps!), but by the time the Turks started using the word to describe the people who had settled in the river valleys of what is now the Ukraine, "Cossack" had lost its horse- and geography-related connotations. The people the word described, however, had lost none of the love of freedom and fierce sense of independence that one often finds associated with horse-based nomads.
They were a Slavic people who get their first historical shout-out in the 13th century, where we find them as a group of refugees muscling their way into the area north of the Black Sea. Prior to being crushed by the Mongols, the Turkic tribes along the Dnieper, Don, and Volga Rivers were strong enough to turn back any potential migrants, so it seems likely that the proto-Cossacks were fleeing south from the Khanate-imposed serfdom going on in Muscovy and Poland.
If you've ever played one of the incarnations of the computer game Civilization, you know there are times when you just have to plunk down and grow your civ for a while. You need time to consolidate things, build some infrastructure, get a code of societal behavior going. That's what the Cossacks were doing for the next couple of centuries. The various tribes seem to have fought amongst themselves for territory and dominance, eventually coalescing into an extremely loose federation of independent states.
"Don Cossack" is not one dude
By the 16th century, the Cossacks had arranged themselves into two major groups. The Zaporozhe Host, with its capitol at Zaporizhian Sich, inhabited much of the modern Ukraine and the area surrounding the lower reaches of the Dnieper River, but not extending as far south as Tatar-controlled Crimea. The Don Cossacks (who rather predictably lived along the Don River) were located further east, separating the Grand Duchy of Muscovy from the remnants of the Mongol hordes ruling over the Nogai States of Central Asia. In both cases, the fanatically Orthodox Christian Cossacks defended their faith from foreign incursion, from militant Catholicism in the north and west, and Islam in the east and south.
The Cossacks of this period made their living by pillaging, and welcomed into their lands anyone who did not wish to live as a slave elsewhere (a Cossack motto grew from this: "There is no extradition from the Don."). They developed a stridently military tradition while conducting raids on other Cossacks, neighboring tribes, Ottoman and Muscovite frontier towns, and any other target of opportunity that presented itself. Their independent, uncontrollable ways were attested to by some of the movers and shakers of the day - men who bent millions to their will, but threw up their hands at the thought of bringing the Cossacks to heel:
1539: Grand Duke Vasilli III of Russia asks the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire to put an end to Cossack raids into Russia. The Sultan sent back in reply, "The Cossacks do not swear allegiance to me, and they live as they themselves please."
1549: The Sultan asks Ivan the Terrible to stop the Don Cossacks from conducting further raids across Ottoman borders, to which Ivan replied, "The Cossacks of the Don are not my subjects, and they go to war or live in peace without my knowledge."
They cut deals with some of the nations of the late 16th/early 17th centuries, like when they burned their boats and promised to give up raiding at the request of the Poles, or when they took Hapsburg money to do what they were going to do anyway - namely, raid Ottoman frontier forts. They were too big, mean, and fierce for any neighboring state to conquer them, and too bogged down in inter-clan rivalry to unify on their own.
Ever hear of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth?
The only reason I ask is because while I have access to a great many textbooks on World History, I see very scant mention of this 1 million km2 early experiment in constitutional monarchy - a nation-state that for two centuries was among the largest and most populous of all Europe. Between 1569 and 1795, the Commonwealth, a dual monarchy with a nobility-run legislative body and the second-oldest constitution in the world, controlled land from the Baltic to just north of the Black Sea, east to the Volga, and west to the German states; it also fought off assaults by the Teutonic Order, the Ottomans, the Russians, and the Swedes (if it sounds like I'm Enlightenment-Age name-dropping, I am - the Commonwealth of Both Kingdoms, as it was called, was one of the important players on the European stage at a time when New World colonies were almost an afterthought).
The Commonwealth may have exhibited some forward-looking politics, but in the end it was unable to overcome the difficulties of incorporating the various ethnic groups inhabiting its domain into a unified whole. In a sense, they were playing out the same scenario faced by the Empire of Austria-Hungary in the half-century leading up to the First World War; Byelorussians (then called Ruthenians), Estonians, Latvians, and Ukrainians outnumbered the ruling Poles and Lithuanians, and the maps between 1630 and 1795 make the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth look more like the Incredible Shrinking Nation-State.
Wars were almost constant between the Commonwealth, Russia, the Tatars in the Crimea, the Ottomans, and the Cossacks. Everyone wanted the Cossacks on their side, and the fiercely independent warriors (especially the Zaporozhe in the west) found themselves weakened over time by what might be termed over-mercenarization. Even when not being used as pawns of the mighty, the Cossacks as often as not took up arms in defense of the Orthodox Church or on behalf of the rights of revolting serfs in nearby Russian lands. By the late 16th century, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was able to extend its influence southward into Cossack territory, and the Zaporozhe were more-or-less regarded as subjects by the Poles.
"Registered Cossacks" was the term given to those who joined the Cossack units in the Commonwealth Army. They fielded both cavalry and infantry, and became especially adept at using the mobility of tabors, ox-drawn armored supply wagons, to hastily create, wherever they wanted, ring fortresses that were impervious to cavalry attack. Regrettably for the army they served, the Commonwealth attempted to lay the yoke of serfdom upon the Cossacks, and this, coupled with insults to pride and faith, led them to revolt against the dual monarchy in 1648. Though unsuccessful, this revolt was a leading part of several calamities which befell the thrones that year, and set in motion the long, slow decline of the once-expansive empire.
The tsar's warm, crazed embrace
The worsening relations with the Poles sent the Cossacks more and more frequently into the arms of the Russians. Ivan might have been Terrible, but he was also cagey - for the price of letting an unruly mob have an autonomous district within his empire, he got a fiercely loyal, well-trained, and highly potent military force that seemed willing to do things for him for free. Take Siberia, for example.
Actually, it was the Cossacks who took Siberia, and they presented it to the czars in great chunks of land and natives given as gifts. In the Russian view of things, the Cossacks occupy a place roughly equivalent to the mountain men, explorers, and cavalrymen who explored and subjugated the American West - it was they who first sighted the Bering Strait, they who first claimed Kamchatka. It was the Cossacks who founded as region-dominating forts the "eleven pearls in the Crown of Russia," Cossack outposts strung from the Caucasus to the Pacific Ocean. It was Cossacks who founded the Russian trading posts in Alaska, the west coast of Canada, and the Pacific coastline as far south as San Francisco - bold, half-starved frontiersmen making epic, forgotten journeys across places where angels fear to tread.
Of course, that's the Russian view of things. One would suspect that native Siberians regard the Cossacks the same way Native Americans regard the U.S. Cavalry, or the Pueblo peoples the Spanish conquistadors. The Chinese thought of them as the Russian vanguard, a menacing presence encroaching on their borders. Military types the world over admire their tenacity, esprit-de-corps, and bravery, while thanking their stars that they don't have such an impulsive, maniacal unit in their own command. Indeed, in some American subcultures, "Cossack" was what you called a uniformed government thug in the days before the Nazis. According to an article written in 1952:
Not long ago a traffic officer in Brooklyn gave a ticket to an offending motorist. As usual, the latter was full of indignation and, to express his disdain, called the officer a Cossack. The patrolman hauled the motorist into traffic court, where the judge immediately passed the following, sentence: "Present your apology to the officer for calling him a Cossack and pay a fine of five dollars for the traffic violation; otherwise -- ten days in jail.
There was yet another side to the Cossacks as the Russian Imperial Period hurtled toward its date with history's refuse pile: that of the Cossacks as brutal enforcers of the tsar's regime. To a Jew being thrashed as part of a late-19th century pogrom, the Cossacks were a military caste of Russians, and many Eastern European immigrants to the United States report having been frightened at gendarme-reminiscent uniforms worn by American officials at Ellis Island. An interesting take on this view of the Cossacks comes from the same article cited above ("The History of Cossacks," Colonel W.V.Chereshneff):
The unenviable reputation of the Cossacks as brutal executioners in the Czar's service originated from this phase of their service in the Russian Army. Three Russian words -- the pogrom, the knut (or nagaika) and the Cossack -- entered hand in hand into the pages of Western dictionaries and school books. The impression was created and universally accepted that the Cossacks conducted the pogroms and terrified the Jewish population of the western provinces of Russia.
Actually the pogroms were expressions of mob rule directed against the Jews and carried out by the lowest, the most ignorant portion of the Russian peasantry and the scum of the big cities. They were usually engineered by the anti-semitic, ultra-conservative patriotic societies, and encouraged, at least in some instances, by the government.
The pogroms often resulted in some loss of life and great destruction of property in the Jewish sections of such big cities as Kishenev, Bielostok, and others. When the mob got out of hand and the instigators lost control over the rioters, the government officials would call the nearest army units to suppress the disorders and the pillage. Usually, the Cossacks would be the first to saddle, and gallop to the scene of the riot. In a short time, using their horse whips on the mob, they would disperse the drunken tramps and farm hands, and the pogrom would be over.
But the radicals and the revolutionary press in Russia and in the countries unfriendly to its government, constantly looking for something to undermine and damage the prestige and good name of the monarchy, would publish the next day a shocking account of the pogrom and the part the government had had in it. They would describe how the Cossacks were called on to protect the mob from the resisting Jews and how they horse-whipped every Jew who happened to be on the street.
The best proof of the actual role played by Cossacks in the pogroms is preserved to the present day in the archives of several Cossack regiments, in the form of beautifully inscribed and even more beautifully worded scrolls, presented to these regiments by organized Jewish communities, societies and synagogues, as tokens of their gratitude for the protection afforded by the Cossacks to the Jews in the suppression of pogroms.
The Cossackdom: As close to anarchy as democracy gets
The string of Cossack states (from west to east, they were: Don, Kuban, Terek, Astrakhan, Ural, Orenburg, Semirechjie, Sibir, Zabaikal, Amur, and Ussury), ranging in size from two million (Don) to a few thousand (Ussury), were de facto independent states, though the tsar retained considerable authority in filling the highest leadership posts. The Cossacks of these lands gradually became farmers and settlers, but always retained the idea that they were warriors first. These were farmers ready to ride into battle at a moment's notice - mounted minutemen. There was even an application process for those who wished to become naturalized Cossacks. As for their governments:
Proud as the Cossacks were of their military prowess and glory, they cherished much more their way of living. The main principles of Cossackdom were full and complete equality in rights and duties -- equality social, political and economic. Each Cossack Voiska was a democracy, pure and simple.
All their administration was elective. All communal matters were discussed and decided by the general assembly (the sbor), composed of all male Cossacks of each stanitza; all local officers, beginning with the stanitza's ataman, were elected, mostly for a term of three years, at these sbors. Every officer could be impeached for inefficiency or malfeasance. The duties of all elected officers were strictly defined, as well as their rights and powers. In general, their rights were broad, but always short of infringement on the personal freedom and dignity of their constituents. The Cossacks were a proud people. They had no classes, social or economic, and the few attempts on the part of the central government to create a class of nobles, from among the distinguished Cossack officers and generals, always met with determined opposition from the rank and file, as well as from the intended beneficiaries of the scheme.
Cossackdom is the long established combination of complete individual freedom with the iron discipline of organized society; it is an absolute equality in rights and privileges, and just as absolute an equality in carrying common burdens and duties; it is a sensible and practical unity of individual initiative and private ownership of things personal with communal ownership of the gifts of nature and the means of production.
ibid.
Cossack society was as militaristic as the Spartans (though far less hair-shirtish), and carried with it a code of honor which valued loyalty and courage above all other concerns. This sense of military tradition made them some of the most formidable cavalry of their day, and the soldiers most feared by Napoleon's veterans. Cossack raids deep within French territory disrupted supply and communication and later decimated the retreating French. It was during the Napoleonic invasion that the Cossacks began to explore some of the first uses of guerilla- and special operations tactics in modern warfare, as when they burned an evacuated Moscow shortly after the arrival of early-November arrival of the Grand Armee. Throughout the 19th century, the exploits of Cossack cavalrymen on battlefields from the Crimea and the Balkans to the northern reaches of Manchu China became the stuff of legend, as did those of Cossack women who fended off attacks on their frontier settlements while the menfolk were off pursuing honor and glory.
Meanwhile, back in Petrograd...
The Cossacks stayed loyal through some of the tsar's worst decisions, like the Bloody Sunday Massacre and the violent suppression of protests in 1905-06. This was Cossackdom at its most repugnant, an ancient code of honor twisted to justify atrocities in the name of suppressing revolt. As the first few years of the 20th century passed, however, individual Hosts of Cossacks began to increasingly lose faith in the Imperial government. Just one too many Rasputins, I guess.
The First World War did little to assuage the discontent growing among the Cossacks. Bad military calls and disastrous offensives at the front, coupled with economic deprivation at home and being treated as a disorderly anachronism by the Army, and a host of other insults and tsar-based miseries, were heaped upon the traditionally elite soldiers of the tsar. Nevertheless, they performed as soldiers. Virtually the entire Cossack population was mobilized for the First World War, and at times they found upwards of 10% of their entire number on the front lines. Their losses were predictably as horrific as they were heroic: doomed charges of horsemen against machine guns, barbed wire, and poison gas, all carried out with a fatalistic élan that simply eludes comprehension by the modern mind.
When the time came to take sides in March, 1917, it was the Cossack Imperial Guard that turned on the Tsar and ensured his abdication. Still, they didn't support Kerensky, and not many of them joined Lenin and his gang - perhaps a scent of totalitarianism in the air drove them off. Kerensky didn't help matters when his Provisional Government declared the Cossacks traitors for their neutrality, but after the Commies came to power in November, Lenin upped the ante by declaring them enemies of the proletariat.
How do you choose sides in a war with no good guys?
Most of the Cossacks ended up in the loose confederation of interested parties that was the White Russians, although some who came from poorer backgrounds joined the Reds. By this point, they were a military anachronism, but they remained one of the most potent weapons the Whites had against Trotsky's increasingly-modernized army. When the United States and the western allies aborted their half-hearted intervention in 1920, the fate of the Cossacks was sealed.
As perceived agents and recognizable symbols of the tsar, Lenin regarded the Cossacks as potential threats, and began following a policy of Razkazachivaniye ("Decossackization"). Stalin continued and accelerated this process through massive resettlement, collectivization, and by lumping Cossacks in with kulaks and just killing them outright. It didn't help, either, that the infamous famine of 1933 hit the Cossack provinces of Don and Kuban hardest of all the Soviet breadbasket.
Cossacks were reintroduced into the Soviet army in 1936, and were used as scouts and patrols on the southern steppe. When the Nazis invaded in 1941, the intense hatred some held for Stalin - White Russian refugees, mostly - led to collaboration between the Nazis and some Cossack groups, while the majority sided with the Red Army and fought valiantly in defense of their homeland; a detachment of such Cossacks marched in the Red Square victory parade in 1945.
One group that attained a certain degree of infamy for its actions on behalf of the Nazis was the XV Cossack Cavalry Corps, serving under German General von Pannwitz against Serbian resistance fighters in Yugoslavia. When the Germans capitulated, the Cossacks, who were reported to have committed atrocities, surrendered to the British in hopes of continuing what they saw as a fight against totalitarian communism. Rather than welcoming the Cossacks as allies, however, the British saw only Nazi-collaborating atrocity-committers, and forcibly repatriated 150,000 of them to the Soviet Union (many were not Soviet citizens), where they disappeared into Stalin's system of gulags, death camps, and mass graves. This incident is today known as the Secret Betrayal.
Cavalry was obsolete long before the end of the Second World War, and the Cossack units were disbanded after it was over. In the late 40's and 50's, The proud horse warriors finally hung up their saddles and sabers, and took up the plow and pitchfork of the peasant. A couple of generations (and a couple of Soviet Premieres) would pass before people began to express an interest in things Cossack. In the perestroika high of the 1980's, the Cossacks were permitted to reorganize as Hosts (as late as last year, they were commended by President Putin and the Duma for their long and faithful service), and they continue to work toward a day when they might once again enjoy the autonomous streak so integral to the Cossack cultural character.
"Give me 20,000 Cossacks and I will conquer the whole of Europe, even the whole world!" - N. Bonaparte
What's in a name? Quite a bit. Wittingly or unwittingly, we who visit this site have taken on a nickname whose very origin means "free person." In a sense, "Kossack" also carries with it the traditional connotations of freewheeling, freespeaking adherents to the purest forms of democracy and rights to self-determination, as well as their darker flipsides: a rigidity of purpose that can inure the soul to the darkest of evils and a stubborn refusal to change with the times.
As I mentioned before, I don't know how intentional was the adoption of the name "Kossack" by the earliest citizens of this site (any low-UIDers know the story?), but on balance it seems a good choice. The historic Cossacks had their failings, to be sure, but by being as fiercely independent and as strongly assertive as they tended to be, the Cossacks more often than not acquitted themselves with dignity and honor when they were swept up by, participated in, and occasionally resisted the vast tides of history that washed over Eastern Europe over the past millennium.