SUMMARY:

In his guest editor’s introduction Sergei Markedonov presents an account of historiographic and historic discussion on the concept of Cossackdom. He criticizes the tendency of Russian historians to take this category for granted and thus reify the ontological reality of this socially and culturally heterogeneous group. Moreover, Markedonov suggests that the historiographic evolution of the concept of Cossackdom is part of the historic process of identity formation and reflects the vicissitudes of political and national contexts of construction of Cossack historical memory. Markedonov also suggests that further work is needed for arriving at a comprehensive typology of Cossack communities. However, the crucial aspect of this research is taking seriously the heterogeneity of the imperial space (and the space framed by interacting continental empires) that conditioned the variety of Cossacks’ identity, social and political organization.