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History of our Name

"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 etymology of our name: "Cossacks."

"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 the 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 Russains, 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.

"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.

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.

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 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.

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.

So whats in a name?

What's in a name? Quite a bit. Wittingly or unwittingly, we have taken on a brotherhood name whose very origin means "free person." In a sense, "Cossack" 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.

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.