SUMMARY:

One of the key disputed issues in Cossack history revolves around the origins of the Cossacks. Historically, Cossack self-understanding has shifted as the Cossacks’ social, political, and cultural situation changed. Prior to their incorporation into the structures of the Russian Empire, the Don Cossacks credited their own founding to a territorial grant issued by Ivan the Terrible, the arrival of fugitives from Russia, and an influx of female prisoners from the Ottoman Empire. This founding story was utilized by the Cossacks to argue their right to freely associate with the Muscovite Tsars. It also contributed to the vision of the Cossack land as a place of freedom, a view shared by Russian peasants, revolutionaries, and White guards alike. Cossack views of their past changed as the Russian state turned the Cossacks into a closed military caste and an instrument of state policy. Beginning in the 18th century, the Don Cossacks extended their supposed origins back into history well beyond the 16th century, thus distancing themselves from the rest of Russia. Many Cossack authors invoked a Cossack “national feeling” during the turmoil of the revolution and the Civil War. The neo-Cossack movement in the Russian south that emerged in the late 1980s stresses the so-called “genocide” of the Cossacks, allegedly pursued by Jews and their representatives in the Bolshevik leadership. At the same time, neo-Cossack leaders often utilize the “ancient” version of Cossack origins not shared by Cossacks elsewhere in Russia. The author reviews the two versions (linked to migration and indigenous) of the Cossack origins in historiography, focusing on the issues pertaining to “the Russian reconquista” of the Don region, ancient ethnic components in the origins of the Cossacks, and émigré visions of a separate Cossack “people” as well as on Soviet interpretations of Cossack history.