Here Come The Cossacks!

While the actual origins of the Cossacks is a bit sketchy, most people probably think of the Cossacks as the elite cavalry of Tsarist Russia, or others may think of the nomadic horsemen of the Russian Steppe. When I was a kid, the movie "Taras Bulba" was released. It starred Yul Brynner, who just seemed perfect for the role as the Cossack leader circa 1600.* Tony Curtis starred as his son. It was one of those movies I saw back in those times that I still remember to this day, as the masses of horse mounted actors dressed in colorful Cossack costumes dashed across the big screen. The film was loosely based on a novel of the same name by Nikolai Gogol, who was actually born and raised in a Ukrainian Cossack community in the 1800s.

The Cossacks initially had a contentious relationship with Russia, at times participating in open revolt against the Tsarist government. Eventually the Tsars saw the Cossacks as great military assets, and in exchange for their military service, they were not taxed. Viewed as elite and loyal servants of the Tsar, they were revered, but also feared by the population, as the government of Tsar Nicholas II used them to help put down the revolution that started in 1905, a good deal of which took place in the countryside. This role was not to be repeated in the revolution that swept through Russia in the late winter of 1917. With many Cossack units serving at or near the front line during World War I, the Cossack units, and for that matter, other army units, stationed in the capital of St. Petersburg (renamed Petrograd during the war) were largely made up of recruits and reservists who were witnesses to the lack of food and the terrible suffering of the population. When protests erupted, they did little to quell the disturbances, which encouraged more of the population to join in, and in fact eventually, these units went over to the revolution, helping to bring down Nicholas II and tsardom in favor of a "provisional government," which itself was overthrown later that year by the Bolsheviks.** This precipitated a civil war in Russia, with Cossack troops serving both in support of the Bolshevik government, as well as in opposition. When the Bolsheviks finally emerged triumphant, untold numbers of Cossacks were allegedly killed (likely true), and Cossack lands were confiscated, as the communist government sought to eliminate the Cossacks as a separate identity, and to bring their lands under government control. Later, many more died at the hands of Stalin and his forced collectivization program, which brought widespread starvation to the Ukraine and to parts of the Caucasus region, both home to many Cossacks. Exact numbers are unknown, but some estimates are that at least a million Cossacks died at this time.

World War Two brought new challenges for the Cossacks. Faced with defending the Stalinist regime, which had so decimated their people, some Cossacks defected and went into service for the Germans, while many others continued to serve in Soviet units. As the Cossack and other Soviet defectors to the Germans often served in units used to combat resistance fighters behind the actual front lines, there's no doubt in my mind that some of these forces participated in atrocities, but the details are beyond the scope of this article, although I may cover such details in a future article. Also, Tsarist Russia had a terrible history of mistreatment and repression of its Jewish population. How much Cossacks participated in this repression is something I need to research more, along with the specifics of the World War Two actions, but I wanted to at least make mention of it here. When World War Two ended, tens of thousands of Cossacks were prisoners of the Allies, who turned them over to the Soviets by agreement among the Allied powers. These were not just soldiers, but family members too, as they tended to travel in family groups. Some committed suicide, and how many were executed I don't know, but presumably all others were sent to labor camps.

There are some books available about the Cossacks, but I consulted the following for some of the information I used here:
"The Cossacks, An Illustrated History," by John Ure, published by Overlook Press, 2002.
"The Cossacks" by Philip Longworth, published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston," New York, 1970.

* Yul Brynner was actually born in the Russian Pacific coast region at Vladivostok.

** Nicholas II abdicated for both himself and his son, who was afflicted with hemophilia. The Bolshevik takeover came to be known to most as "the Bolshevik Revolution."

WORD HISTORY:
Cossack/Cassock-These two words seem to actually be the same word, but the spelling variation and the different meanings having come to English from different "immediate" sources. They both go back to Turkic, a family of languages primarily from southwestern Asia, which then spread into southeastern Europe. ^ The exact Turkic root of the word is unclear, as some believe it be "qaz," which had the notion of "wander," and the various Turkic tribes were often nomads of the Asian plains, but there are other possible Turkic word sources. Whatever the case, the source word expanded to "quzzak/kazakh," with the meaning "wanderer, nomad, free man of the open plain," and this was borrowed by Slavic as "kozak." This gave its Russian descendant "kazak," which was later borrowed by French as "casaque," and English borrowed the word from French in the later 1500s or early 1600s. The word "Kazakh," and its plural form for a Turkic people from Asia, prominently featured in the name "Kazakhstan," is really the same word as "Cossack." The Cossacks' long history as nomadic horsemen made them expert cavalrymen and they eventually became part of the Tsarist military in Russia as elite cavalry units."Cassock" goes back to the same sources, except that Italian called a long riding coat a "casacca," after similar apparel used by the Cossacks. French likely borrowed the term from Italian as "casaque," simply with the meaning of "long coat," and English borrowed it from French in the 1500s. It began to be used for religious clothing in the mid 1600s.

^ The more specific language, "Turkish," is one of the Turkic languages, a language family just as is Indo European, the ancient ancestor of English. Linguists generally use a "family tree" setup in classifying languages, and Turkic has several branches, as does Indo European, with English belonging to the Germanic branch. Turkic also has languages in northeastern Asia. The Turkic-speaking Bulgars were a group that entered southeastern Europe, mixed with other people there, and became the modern Bulgarians, but a form of Slavic gradually replaced their own Bulgar language by about 1400. Bulgar is now extinct, as is Hunnic, the language of the famous Huns, which were also a Turkic speaking people.