The Kuban’ region (Krasnodarskii Krai) of the Russian Federation provides a unique case for testing our understanding of how Soviet applied nationality policies transformed and influenced local identities. Although prior to the revolution the Cossacks had clear conceptions of group identity (drawing important distinctions between themselves and their Russian, Ukrainian, and Caucasian neighbors) and zealously guarded the boundaries of their communities against non-Cossacks, they were denied any status whatsoever in the Soviet solution to the nationalities question.^[1] Soviet policies promoted other groups to membership in the family of fraternal socialist nations and awarded them trappings of nationhood ranging from alphabets to opera houses, but the Cossacks were stripped of their existing attributes (flags, symbols, uniforms) and civic distinctions (administrative borders, institutions of local self government, historical narratives, academic choirs).^[2] In many ways the Cossack case represents the reverse of the Soviet construction of ethnic infrastructures. If the USSR was a communal apartment, the Cossacks were deprived of a room of their own and frequently tucked away in corners of the kommunalka that were virtually invisible to the other inhabitants.
The Kuban’ Cossacks provide a particularly fascinating case, because they were subjected to two different nation-building projects in the Soviet era. Between 1926 and 1932 the Ukrainianization of culture and self-identification was promoted in the region.^[3] As a result of opposition to grain requisitions and fears of insurrection in Kuban’ stanitsas, after January 1933 Ukrainianization was halted and the Ukrainian language was banned from schools, publishing and the media.^[4] Party directives decreed that virtually overnight more than a million people would be re-categorized and re-nationalized as Russians. Expected to live their lives with a Russian identity, the Kuban’ Cossacks were marked for extinction through assimilation rather than recognition or reinforcement of ethnic distinction.
After decades of oblivion, however, Cossacks re-emerged from the shadows in the late eighties and demands for recognition came soon thereafter. In a 1998 article, I argued that Kuban’ Cossack revival, which started with a kind of informal proto-revival in the seventies and eighties and became official in the early nineties, is based upon a concept of ethnic distinction, regional uniqueness, and historical “rights.”^[5] I outlined how the term kazachestvo was historically utilized to denote both a people and a military caste and suggested that Cossack identity became an ethnic identity in the Soviet period. Since Soviet rule (acts of targeted repression against Cossacks, destruction of kazachestvo as a military caste, collectivization, lack of official recognition,) and modernization (mechanization of warfare and agriculture, industrialization, urbanization, the elimination of estate categories) coincided, activists in the early nineties lamented the loss of Cossack traditions and articulated the need to revive kazachestvo.
I concluded that the current Kuban’ Cossack revival is both a political movement and a process of ethno-cultural renewal. Although Cossack leaders claim to speak for the “indigenous” Cossack inhabitants of Kuban’, the size of their Cossack constituency has never been precisely determined. I portrayed the movement as a minority movement spurred by activists who hope to halt migration to their region and claim for Cossacks the same titular status enjoyed by the national republics of the North Caucasus. Cossack leaders repeatedly claimed that Kuban kazachestvo must not only be revived or reborn as a people and culture, but must also be legally rehabilitated. While “revival” as a nation or people in most respects depends upon the Cossacks themselves, rehabilitation is a process that requires winning recognition and cooperation from state authorities.
Now, after a decade of revival, I will revisit the questions of identity that emerged in the post-Soviet period. My primary objective is to make the Kuban’ Cossacks manifest to scholars of ethnicity and nationality policy by surveying the negotiation of identity in the Kuban’ region between 1991 and 2002. I also will address the following questions: How have conceptions of local distinction been constructed since 1991? Have Cossack activists been able to reconstruct a Cossack constituency from the descendants of pre-1920 Cossacks? How do local people talk about nationality and Cossack identity? I will argue that official invisibility does not constitute extinction and that various modes of viewing produce differing depictions of Cossack distinction.

KUBAN’ COSSACK IDENTITY IN SCHOLARLY DISCOURSE 1991-2002

The appropriation of Cossacks by intellectuals is one of the principle issues in the study of Cossack communities in any period. Regardless of how Cossacks have imagined or talked about themselves over the ages, much of the discourse on Cossack community and identity has been generated by and for intellectuals, who for centuries have engaged in the “intellectual privatization” of the Cossack subject for supra-local narratives.^[6] Information on Cossack identity is often made public through the mediation of interested parties with metropolitan agendas, whether they be historians, literary critics, school teachers or ethnographers.
After decades of hidden history (Cossacks were barely mentioned in narratives of local history in the Soviet period) since 1991 local scholars have helped define the contours of Cossack visibility in post-Soviet Kuban’. Competing visions of what kazachestvo once was, could help to shape what it might become. While ostensibly looking at the same object (Kuban’ kazachestvo), however, observers have managed to discern different things.
Although hundreds of articles have been written on topics pertaining to the history of Kuban’ since 1991, few of these have been published in a forum that is easily accessible to readers in most Kuban’ stanitsas, let alone available to scholars in Moscow or academics outside of Russia. Numerous academic miscellanies appear in Krasnodar every year in editions of no more than a few hundred copies and quite often they are unavailable even in local bookstores. Many very good articles on individual aspects of local history are published annually in local journals such as Rodnaia Kuban’, Golos Minuvshego, and the various publications of the Kuban’ State University of Culture and Arts, but, thus far, only a handful of works have addressed the larger problem of conceptualizing Cossack distinction.^[7] Thus, I will provide only a selective sample of recent studies that have tried to delineate the broad contours of Kuban’ Cossack distinction.
The most influential scholar of the first post-Soviet decade was Nikolai Ivanovich Bondar’ a historian, ethnographer, and folklorist. He grew up in Kuban’ and attended Leningrad State University. Upon returning to the region in the mid-seventies, he was one of first scholars to systematically investigate Cossack topics under the permissible guise of folkloristics. By 1993, when I became acquainted with him and his work, he already occupied his present positions as a professor at Kuban’ State University and co-director of the newly founded Center for Folk Culture in Krasnodar. By that time he had amassed a collection of thousands of folkloric texts and was acknowledged as the leading specialist on Kuban’ Cossack culture. Although his works have primarily been published in limited print-run editions, his influence as a teacher, academic patron, and publicist has been very important on the local level.
As I noted in my 1998 article, Bondar’s research provided critical academic support for the early stage of Cossack revival. His two major contributions to debates about Cossack culture and identity, however, were already being formulated years before the fall of the Soviet Union. As early as 1983, he began to talk about the interpenetration of Russian and Ukrainian cultures in local folk culture.^[8] In later articles he further developed this position and by 1995 he could declare: “the traditional culture of Kuban’ Cossacks occupies an intermediary position between Russian (in its local southern Russian variant) and Ukrainian cultures.”^[9]
A 1987 article in an academic miscellany published in Maikop provided the first argumentation that the Kuban Cossacks are a sub-ethnos of the Russian nation. “One of the most important results of the development of Cossackdom in Kuban’ in the period discussed here [the 19th century],” he concluded, “was the emergence of a Kuban Cossack subethnos.”^[10] Using a category (subethnos) created within the walls of Institute of Ethnology, Bondar’ articulated an acceptable compromise between local distinction and national identity.^[11] The compromise consisted of subordinating the former to the latter.
His concepts proved to be productive, however, for delineating local distinction. The concept of “traditional culture” (traditional usually serving as a trope for customs deemed central to the pre-Soviet, pre-modern, Kuban’ folk experience) explains local color and local culture without according them any status in the world of print culture. The emphasis on cultural symbiosis advanced the case that Kuban’ Cossack culture is a unique, local creation that is neither exclusively Russian nor Ukrainian. The concept of a Kuban’ Cossack subethnos provided local scholars with a way to discuss local distinction without calling into question or challenging the hegemonic position of Russian identity and culture in the region since the thirties. His concept of a Kuban’ Cossack sub-ethnos has been widely discussed in private, but not subjected to a systematic published critique. It has, however, been adopted with minor modifications by his colleagues Oleg Matveev and Valerii Ratushniak at Kuban’ State University.^[12]
An alternative vision of Kuban’ Cossack identity focuses on its Ukrainian components.^[13] This development is noteworthy due to the fact that discussion of Ukrainian language and identity in the region was suppressed after 1933. The main proponent of this trend is Viktor Kirillovich Chumachenko, who since 1993 has almost single-handedly revived Ukrainian studies in the region. A specialist in literature and professor at the Kuban’ State University of Culture and Arts in Krasnodar, Chumachenko has organized a series of conferences and published numerous miscellanies on various aspects of the Ukrainian contribution to the literature and culture of Kuban’. His publication of an anthology of Kuban literature in 1994 sparked the only substantial discussion of the role of Ukrainian culture in the region since 1933.^[14]
Chumachenko published excerpts from the works of eleven pre-revolutionary authors from the Kuban’ region. All of the authors selected for inclusion in the anthology wrote in some variant of Ukrainian and Chumachenko and his colleagues translated the selections into Russian. In a few cases dialogues and direct speech in the local (largely Ukrainian) idiom were not translated, but rather were conveyed via Russian orthography as was customary in the nineteenth century.
The publication spurred the local scholarly establishment to address the problem of Ukrainian culture in the Kuban’ region.^[15] The first literary works written in the region were in Ukrainian and many prominent local intellectuals continued to write and publish in Ukrainian until 1933. By attempting to re-acquaint local readers with a series of undeservedly forgotten figures, Chumachenko issued an implicit challenge to generations of local scholars who had excluded Ukrainian culture from their purview.
The first appraisal of the book was penned by Oleg Matveev, who at the time was still a graduate student at Kuban’ State and who subsequently became a rising star among the younger generation of historians in the region.^[16] He questioned why only Ukrainian authors were included in the anthology and insisted that the authors in the collection did not represent a “purely Ukrainian literary tradition” (chisto ukrainskuiu literaturnuiu traditsiiu). Endorsing N. I. Bondar’s concept of a Kuban’ Cossack subethnos, he argued that in the late imperial period a “mutual interpenetration of cultures” (vzaimoproniknovenie kul’tur) had taken place in the region, making it difficult to untangle the Russian and Ukrainian elements of a common Kuban’ culture. The implicit message was that residents of Kuban’ should not be called Ukrainians and to emphasize this point he concluded his essay by lampooning the Ukrainian national movement and arguing that Ukrainians could not even be considered Ukrainians in the late imperial period.
A vitriolic evaluation of the volume was soon published by Vitalii Bardadym, a senior, semi-professional author of several works on local history. Bardadym accused Chumachenko of purposefully omitting mention of dozens of talented representatives of Russian literature in the region.^[17] In a series of scathing comments he criticized both Chumachenko and the authors he republished, reviving the use of the terms such as Little Russian and portraying the anthology as an attempt to fan contempt for Moskali (Russians). F. A. Shcherbina, one of the most distinguished and universally revered scholars of the region in the imperial period, was derided by Bardadym for the Ukrainian tendencies he espoused in emigration:

“He selfishly (samoliubivo) dismembered himself from the single and whole (tselostnyi) living organism of the great Russian people, which consists of the three great and related branches – the Great Russian, Little Russians (Ukrainians), and the Belorussians.”^[18]

Cossacks, in his opinion, “considered it an honor to master the Russian grammar, and the Russian literary language, in order to thereby connect to the common national culture of the fatherland and to world culture (priobshchitsia k obshchenatsional’noi otechestvennoi i mirovoi kul’ture).” He accuses Chumachenko of feeling “enmity (nepriazn’) for everything Russian” and asks:

“Estemeed compiler of Kuren’, whom do you serve? What are you calling for? The unity of the Russian nation? The rebirth of Kuban’ and Great Russia? Or to schism? Where is your conscience and patriotism? They are lost!”

The mere attempt to revive interest in the Ukrainian literary heritage of the region was dismissed as a dangerous example of “Mazepism.” His message is short and simple: a true patriot, and a true Cossack, should turn a blind eye to things Ukrainian.
Nikolai Velengurin, a specialist in literature, responded to the discussion by criticizing Bardadym for his tone, but upheld many of his criticisms as valid.^[19] Chumachenko had neglected to include various Russian authors in the anthology and had hurried the book into publication without “first getting the advice of specialists or discussing it in literary or academic circles” i.e. without consulting the establishment that had suppressed discussion of Ukrainian topics for decades. He did however censure Bardadym for allowing himself “to use the haughty tone of a prosecuting attorney in a literary controversy.” Without touching on questions of censorship or the neglect of Ukrainian topics since 1933, Velengurin mused: “A strange (and previously unknown to literary scholarship) term has appeared: ‘Cossack author.’” Emigre authors had employed the term “Cossack author” since at least the thirties, but apparently Velengurin’s vision of literary scholarship stopped at the borders of the USSR.
B. Gerasimenko concluded the discussion with a letter to the newspaper that had published Bardadym’s tirade. “It reminds me not of a review, but of devastating (razgromnaia) party-line article from a time that is not so distant and that was not so good for the revival of culture.”^[20] With no party to suppress discussion, however, the Ukrainian voices in local discourse could no longer be silenced by administrative fiat. In view of the fact that over half of the region’s population once spoke Ukrainian, the revival of Ukrainian studies is not as remarkable as the negative reaction to the first attempt to violate Stalinist era taboos on discussing the Ukrainian heritage.
Although a few intellectuals followed the discussion, the fact that it was carried out in three different publications effectively precluded broad sectors of the population from following it. Chumachenko has continued to publish profusely on the Ukrainian heritage of the region, but his publications are not widely available in local kiosks or bookstores. Hence, Ukrainian perspectives on questions of local identity and history remain beyond the range of vision of all but the most dedicated local readers.
A more ambiguous view of Kuban’ Cossack language and culture appeared in 1995. Petr Tkachenko, a retired military officer from Kuban’ who now resides in Moscow, published a book entitled: “Where does Cossack glory sleep?”^[21] Widely available in Krasnodar in the mid-nineties, the book treats various aspects of Cossack history and revival in the form of a personal, introspective expedition:

“On several occasions I tried to find out and retrieve from the past [information] about my grandfathers, but nothing came of this – it turned out that everything connected with the life of that mysterious tribe to which I belong, kazachestvo, was mercilessly trampled under foot.”^[22]

The account is a wistful, lyrical search for authentic voices from the Cossack past in conversations with family members, among residents of Cossack stanitsas, in documents, and in songs. Tkachenko portrays his efforts as an intellectual rescue mission to find out whether Cossack glory can ever be aroused from its deep slumber. Here one is reminded of 19th century romantic notions of the nation as a dormant force waiting to be awakened.
Tkachenko also provides an ambiguous assessment of the language situation in the region: “The main problem of the culture of Kuban’ was and remains the problem of its language.”^[23] He condemns both tsarist policies of forbidding use of the Ukrainian literary language and early Soviet attempts to “artificially impose the Ukrainian language” in the region.^[24] He sees a tragedy in the fact that the spoken language and literary language are antagonistically opposed (protivopostavleny), but at the same time he advocates the status quo: retention of Russian as literary language and use of the [Ukrainian] local tongue as a language of “folk creativity” (narodnoe tvorchestvo).^[25]
Tkachenko’s book provides a good indication of the contradictory impulses present among the current generation of Cossack descendants.
He provides various statements condemning de-Cossackization and the loss of Cossack culture, yet clings to a residual Soviet great-power patriotism. While treasuring and promoting the local idiom, he is ambivalent about its status in the world of print culture. He laments the loss of pre-revolutionary historian F. A. Shcherbina’s archive, without probing the reasons why Shcherbina eventually came to consider himself a Ukrainian.^[26] He rejects the categorization of the Kuban’ Cossacks as either a soslovie (estate/military caste) or a distinct ethnic group, but in articulating his definition of kazachestvo, he relies on vague visions of Cossacks as somehow special and distinct, yet uniquely Russian.^[27] Oddly, or perhaps appropriately, he claims to have found the resting place of Cossack glory in an unmarked, unconsecrated mass grave of victims of the great famine of 1933.^[28]
The famine is a ubiquitous feature of the local historical landscape, but it is virtually invisible in print culture and official memory. The pervasive oral accounts of the famine have not been widely incorporated into narratives of the region’s history. No monograph devoted solely to the famine in Kuban’ has yet appeared and most local officials and academics seem content to forget about the tragedy altogether. Apparently no official, Krai-level commemorations of the famine were held to mark either the sixtieth (1992-1993) or seventieth (2002-2003) anniversaries of this tragic event. Unlike in Ukraine, where memories of the famine have been mobilized to present a narrative of victimization at the hands of an uncaring and unforgiving Soviet government, no coherent Cossack-centered narrative has been constructed from the various individual accounts of the famine period published since 1991.^[29]
A victimization narrative of sorts did emerge, however, in a book called “Combat above the Abyss” published in 1999 by a Vitalii Baranichenko, a university student in Krasnodar.^[30] It would be easy to ignore this problematic narrative concocted from various (sometimes contradictory) secondary sources, if not for the fact that it was issued in a significant print run (5000 copies) by the leading publishing house in the region. Moreover, the book claims to be no less than a “spiritual-moral textbook of the history of Cossackdom of Kuban’ and Russia in the context of the irreconcilable confrontation (protivostoianie) between Good and Evil.”^[31]
Baranichenko frequently recycles from other historians (without citing sources) and covers a broad expanse of history from the medieval period to the twentieth century. In general he produces a crude synthesis of Cossack nationalist views found in Gubarev’s emigre Cossack encyclopedia and the views of Cossacks as servants of Russia that are present in local surveys of the history of Kuban’. The author cannot claim much originality, or conceptual clarity, in his conclusions that Cossacks are both “a people within a people” (narod v narode) and a military estate.^[32]
Innovation, however, can be identified in his re-visioning of Cossack history through the lens of anti-Zionist rhetoric of the type favored by then governor Nikolai Kondratenko. Several chapters set up the usual array of anti-Semitic and anti-Masonic conspiracy theories that are far from rare in post-Soviet discourse, but Baranichenko portrays Cossacks as the “force for Good” that attempted to save Russia from Jewish revolution. He even asserts that Cossacks were crucified by Jewish commissars and that collective farms were instituted by Kaganovich on the pattern of the kibbutz in Palestine.^[33] Here the famine becomes a central event in the imagined history of Cossack victimization by Zionism. Eyewitness accounts of the famine are interwoven with statements blaming Jews. For example a communist named Mendel’ Khataevich is quoted as having said: “it took famine to show them who is the master here. It costs millions of lives, but we won.”^[34] In contrast to the indifference to the famine that characterizes much local historiography, Baranichenko acknowledges local suffering and attempts to explain it. In the face of academic inertia, it is not inconceivable that he and other “historians” could carve out an impressive popular niche for themselves in the politics of local memory. Perhaps even more unsettling is the fact that for a time the author worked as an instructor at a Cossack summer camp for children.
While scholarly discourse helps to define the parameters of Cossack visibility, public education provides a more potent lens for shaping visions of Cossack history and identity. The first officially approved high school textbook of twentieth-century Kuban’ history produced in the post-Soviet period recognizes a degree of local distinction, but nonetheless focuses on Cossacks from a Russian perspective.^[35] Written by Valerii Shchetnev, a historian of the older generation at Kuban’ State University, and Elena Smorodina, a high school history teacher, this cautious overview was issued in a first print run of ten thousand copies. Contrary to much of the debate and writing in the nineties, Cossacks are characterized here as “a special military-service estate” (osoboe voenno-sluzhiloe soslovie ) that enjoyed special privileges and represented “the best military traditions of Russia.”^[36] In a brief survey of Cossack “traditional culture” the authors mention the existence of a “Cossack language” (kazachii iazyk) that “arose on the basis of the unification of Ukrainian and Russian conversational styles (razgovornykh stilei) and represents a dialect within the Russian language.”^[37] This awkward phrase is followed by various examples of local lexical items, but examples of grammar and verbal declension are not provided, for to include these would make transparent the high degree of distinction between local speech and the Russian literary language. Students are thus left with the impression that local speech, which is also characterized as a “disappearing phenomenon” (ukhodiashchee iavlenie), consists of only isolated and colorful words and phrases.
Essentially, the text follows old Soviet narrative structures: endless catalogues of official statistics, glorification of the World War II victors, emphasis on cultural development and economic construction, triumph rather than tragedy. The textbook’s treatment of the Kuban’ republic of the Civil War period is only cursory and one senses a residual discomfort with this non-Bolshevik political alternative. The liquidation of the Cossack estate and repressions directed against Cossacks, arguably the central events of local history in the twentieth century, are barely mentioned. Both the brief period of Ukrainianization (1926-1932) and the ban on education in Ukrainian and publications in the Ukrainian literary language (1933 – ca. 1991) are absent from the narrative. The famine is briefly mentioned and the 1932 deportation of the entire population of Poltavskaia stanitsa is also mentioned, but both are treated without any particular pathos.^[38] The authors acknowledge that some Cossacks joined the Nazi occupying forces during the Second World War, but they are very ambiguous about their motivations for doing so or their overall numbers.^[39] The treatment of Cossack revival avoids controversy and makes no mention of the schisms that exist within the revived Cossack ranks. The Gromov group is portrayed as the successor to the pre-revolutionary Host and is described as dedicated to the “re-instatement and preservation of kazachestvo as a special ethnic group of the population of the krai.”^[40]
In my view, the Kuban’ Cossacks that come into view in post-Soviet historiography are too often one-dimensional images: knights of Orthodoxy, defenders of Rus’, servants of the tsar, patriots of Kuban’, sons of Ukraine, etc. Existing narrative structures have failed to accommodate diversity and one-dimensional models poorly explain the experience and self-perceptions of a hypothetical mid-nineteenth century Kuban’ Cossack: Born on the territory of modern day Ukraine (which he knew as Little Russia), he moved to the North Caucasus. He served the tsar by standing guard in a watchtower which marked the border of the Russian empire, but felt a certain contempt for Russians, whom he casually and sometimes contemptuously referred to as moskali, katsapy, laposhniki. Sometimes on duty he had occasion to speak in broken Russian, but generally he carried on in a local variant of Ukrainian. He sang songs condemning Catherine II for uprooting the Zaporozhians, while commemorating his loyal service in Kuban’ to her successors. Overtly Orthodox, he attended church irregularly and felt a certain respect for his Muslim adversaries. He listened with alacrity when a comrade read aloud newspaper stories about Russia (which for him probably began somewhere north of the Don) and wept when the poetry of Taras Shevchenko was recited.
In order to bring such individuals and their communities into sharper focus, selective vision must yield to multi-dimensional observations and variegated perspectives. Only collective, corrective insight derived from the observations of various scholars (who individually apply diverse ideological lenses, experience astigmatic proclivities, and tend to look through rose-colored glasses or dark-shaded spectacles) can sketch a new and multi-faceted vision of identity and ethnicity in Kuban’.
THE POLITICS OF COUNTING COSSACKS

Because the Cossacks were considered all but extinct for much of the Soviet period, it is very difficult to establish the number of people in Kuban’ (Krasnodarskii Krai) who consider themselves Cossacks. Between 1926 and 2002, the state did not attempt to discern the contours of Cossack distinction, but rather employed its power to blur the boundaries between kazachestvo and national categories that it endorsed. With no legal recognition or official sanction for Cossack identity, the Cossacks were an invisible population in the reams of official statistics produced by the Soviet Union.
In the 1926 census Cossacks in the North Caucasus region were permitted to “register” themselves as a Cossacks in a supplement to the question on national identity.^[41] The initiative came from local statisticians, who requested the inclusion of information on Cossacks in the census in order to assist in practical matters of local governance such as creation of local administrative boundaries (raionirovanie). The Central Statistics Administration in Moscow opposed the decision to “register” Cossacks because they were believed to “belong” (prinadlezhat’) to existing nationality categories such as Russian, Ukrainian, etc. The Central Executive Committee (TsIK) decided in favor of collecting the information, but the statisticians were permitted to measure and tabulate the Cossack category as “combined with, not parallel to” categories such as Russian and Ukrainian.
The 1926 census revealed that after six years of Soviet rule, in most districts of Kuban’ over half the population still continued (or were willing) to identify themselves as Cossacks.^[42] Just under a million people were recorded as Cossacks in the territories that comprise today’s Krasnodarskii Krai. Based upon mother tongue, however, in the Kuban’ okrug almost three out of every four Cossacks were counted as Ukrainians. It is important to emphasize categorization, since census-takers were not really gauging local conception of identity, but rather were assigning people to officially approved categories.
A humorous and revealing dialogue from a newspaper article illustrates the ways in which local people and census-takers in Kuban’ could talk past each other.^[43] Moreover, one does not have to accept the literal truth of the account in order to comprehend that different conceptual vocabularies were generally at work in such encounters:

“– Which language do you speak?
– Which? ...the simple one... our true Cossack way... the khokhol manner, perhaps... oh, who knows...
– So, then, that means Russian, that’s what we’ll record. And your nationality?
– How’s that, nationality, I beg your pardon, I don’t get it...”

In this particular case a Ukrainian newspaper correspondent was worried that Ukrainians were being undercounted in 1926. He was not so much concerned about the local population’s lack of comprehension of national categories (nationality was, after all, an imposed category that did not yet have much meaning for local populations) as he was irked that local enumerators were errantly categorizing potential Ukrainians as Russians. Both national lenses (Russian and Ukrainian), however, failed to discern local distinction or render local categories (kozak/kazak, kubanets, khokhol, etc) visible to the gaze of officialdom. In subsequent censuses, virtually the entire population of Kuban’ would be recorded as Russian, but by then neither Cossacks nor Ukrainians had opportunities to publicly register protests.
Much more work needs to be done before sweeping generalizations can be made about how Cossack identity functioned in the Soviet period, but enough evidence exists to suggest that group boundaries eroded gradually and not without resistance from the older generation. Valentina K. born in 1928 related the following case of ethnic boundary maintenance in an interview:

“When I was young, my girlfriend dated this boy. It came time to talk to her father about marriage... she was a kazachka (Cossack) and he was a horodovyk (non-Cossack)... Her father said: “No, he’s a horodovyk, and I won’t let you marry a horodovyk.” So us girls got together and said [to him]: “Now, uncle Vasia, what’s the difference whether he’s just a man [cholovik] or he’s a Cossack.” We didn’t say whether he’s an Armenian or an Azerbaijani, that’s another question altogether. He’s Rus’kyi too, he was born here. “No. He’s a horodovyk!” She wasn’t allowed to marry him.”^[44]
This testimony would suggest that as late as the mid-twentieth century, Cossack ethnic boundaries, though obviously beginning to blur for the younger generations, continued to function on the local level. Conversations with local residents generally confirm that “mixed” marriages, i.e. between Cossacks and others, became increasingly more common. By 1992 a local resident could declare in his newspaper: “Today the majority of young people fall in love with one another and get married without asking, who are you, a katsap (Russian), inogorodnii (non-Cossack), kazak (Cossack) or anyone else?”^[45] Even though these categories are depicted as defunct, the statement still testifies to their past vitality during the author’s lifetime.
In Kuban’ the strict dichotomization between Cossacks and non-Cossacks that existed prior to the revolution became blurred in the Soviet period. Not everyone who claimed Cossack ancestors still identified with the Cossack category. Those who continued to identify themselves as Cossacks possessed few publicly sanctioned occasions for expressing a Cossack identity. Folklore collectives did, however, provide an opportunity to publicly perform Cossack culture after World War II. Cossack military uniforms were re-imagined as “folk costumes” and re-created in various bright and colorful combinations. Folklorism, the appropriation and adaptation of folklore for display and consumption in situations outside its original context, reached its peak in the virtuoso performances of the State Kuban’ Cossack Choir, which was led since the mid-seventies by Victor Zakharchenko. Its spirited renditions of jubilant, jumping, singing, dancing, and twirling Kuban’ Cossacks were eagerly consumed by Soviet and international audiences. Even as the boundaries of Cossack identity became less distinct on the local level, in the seventies and eighties Krasnodarskii Krai began to once again publicly identify with the Kuban’ Cossacks.^[46]
When Cossack revival began in the early nineties, it became possible to publicly profess a Cossack identity for the first time in decades. In 1992 a sociological survey conducted by Monitoring, a Russian sociological bureau, concluded that 18-27 % of the population of Krasnodarskii Krai (900,000 to 1.3 million) residents identified themselves as Cossacks.^[47] While the results were widely heralded at the time in newspapers, the precise method for obtaining these figures were not described in the press. In 1994 the Kuban’ Cossack Host led by Ataman V. P. Gromov claimed to have 387 local affiliates and a membership of 341,000 Cossacks.^[48] This number (even if an exaggeration) would suggest that at its peak the organized movement reached only a minority of the Kuban’ Cossack heritage group.
In the early nineties Ataman Gromov, the leader of the largest and most successful Cossack organization in Kuban’, proclaimed on various occasions that kazachestvo should be considered a people (narod). In 1992, for example, he justified this claim with the following statement:

“Kazachestvo was always such [a people]. Recently I visited the Cossacks in America. They showed me a book, which was published in 1807. There the list of Slavic peoples included kazachestvo, which, of course, had its own estates, in particular, the nobility. The right to be called a people was recognized for Cossacks in the law on repressed peoples, alhough it took a relentless (upornaia) struggle. In the draft of the law, kazachestvo variously appeared and then disappeared.”^[49]
The claim appeals to an example of historical acknowledgement in the world of print culture, continuity with the pre-revolutionary past (Cossack emigres in America), and recent recognition from the Russian government. The statement obviously seeks to establish outside legitimization beyond what local people may or may not assert about their own identity.^[50] Ten years after the first steps towards official recognition, however, a new day of reckoning would come in the 2002 census.
As in 1926, political considerations influenced the decision to subject Cossacks to the official gaze. “The Cossacks present a special problem” – the dean of Russian ethnologists Valery Tishkov argued in 2002. “Ethnologists do not regard them as a separate ethnic group, but that is how many of them regard themselves.”^[51] While recognizing that Cossacks view themselves as distinct, their problematic status emerges precisely because they defy the competence of ethnological experts to deny Cossack distinction.
Because the government of the Russian Federation had issued various decrees on Cossack revival, it came under pressure to include Cossacks in the census. In response to an official inquiry about counting Cossacks in the census, the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology in Moscow drafted the following expert opinion:

“There is no basis for counting the Cossacks as a separate people and adding them to the census list as such in the 2002 census. In view of our current (and rather imperfect) mode of conducting a census, any attempt to count the Cossacks separately will result in a distortion of the data on the ethnic structure of the population at the expense of the number of ethnic Russians.”^[52]

There is little reason to doubt that this appraisal was voiced with the full conviction that it was correct, but the concern for distortion of the data seems overtly political and disingenuous regarding the distortions inherent in prior attempts to categorize Cossacks. Since I am not privy to either the evidence or expertise that the Institute considered in reaching its decision, I will simply note once again that various local and international publications had discussed Cossack ethnic distinction by 2002.
Once again the politicians prevailed. Premier Mikhail Kasianov is said to have personally approved the decision to include Cossacks in the census.^[53] A compromise very similar to the one in 1926 was worked out. Cossacks would be counted, but they would not count as a separate ethnicity.
Ataman Gromov tried his best to convince Cossacks to reclaim their identity and declare it in the census. At a press conference held in Krasnodar on September 28, 2002 he stated:

“Each of you is already asking about your personal participation in the census and how to designate (oboznachit’) yourself: as a Cossack or simply as a Russian. The last census in which Cossackdom was designated in the forms was conducted in 1926, not long after Cossacks in Kuban’ and in all of Russia experienced the political genocide and repressions during and after the Civil War. But even then the majority of Cossacks called themselves Cossacks in the forms.”^[54]
He, of course, neglects to mention the fact that in 1926 those who designated themselves as Cossacks were nonetheless not counted as Cossacks in the final reckoning. For Gromov it was imperative that local residents designate themselves as Cossacks in order to honor the memory of their ancestors and to guarantee that “as the lawful masters of Kuban’” (zakonnye khoziaeva Kubanskoi zemli) Cossacks would have access to resources and representation in the “power structures” of the region.
The Moscow ethnologists concerned about diluting the numbers of Russians in Russia found an unwitting local ally in Nikolai Kondratenko, the populist, national communist, “anti-Zionist” former governor of Krasnodarskii Krai. After Gromov’s press conference and on the eve of the census, he issued a statement that was widely publicized in local newspapers:

“Our enemy is acting according to the ancient principle of divide and rule. What will he achieve by dividing that which cannot be divided: Russians and Cossacks? The first and most important is to reduce the number of Russians in Russia.”^[55]
Without actually naming the enemy (the presidential administration? the Cossack leadership? the Zionists?) he nonetheless warns his supporters of a sinister and divisive plot. Given his continuing popularity in certain circles, his clarion call may have made a difference in individual decisions about how to “designate” themselves on census day.
Although the official census results for Krasnodarskii Krai are not available to me, the total number of Cossacks counted in the census has been released. The State Committee of the Russian Federation on Statistics reported that 140,000 residents of Russia referred to themselves as Cossacks.^[56] The figure seems strikingly low, given the numbers cited above, but is not entirely unexpected. In an interview with the newspaper Vol’naia Kuban’ in late October 2002, Viktor Andreev, the head of the Krasnodarskii Krai State Statistical Committee, provided two potential clues.^[57] His first statement gives the impression that large numbers of people may have indeed asserted a Cossack identity: “With regard to national self-identification, many indigenous residents (korennye zhiteli) called themselves Cossacks.” The corollary to the statement, however, hints at the possibility of obscuring the results at either the local or national level: “But, most likely, during the calculation of results they will be counted among the Russian population of the country.”
The 2002 census might some day be looked upon by future historians as a turning point in the assimilation of the Kuban’ Cossacks into the Russian nation, but it is not necessarily proof of the demise of Cossack identity. As in 1926, the official gaze only turned to Cossacks in 2002 in a moment of furtive political pragmatism. In both cases experts begrudgingly agreed to count Cossacks without acknowledging ethnic distinction. While from Moscow it may appear that Cossack distinction is obscured to the point of fading into a national background, in villages throughout Kuban’ local distinction can still be discerned and described if national filters are disengaged.

TALKING ABOUT IDENTITY: TOWARDS AN EXPLANATION OF THE CENSUS RESULTS

Assuming for the sake of argument that there was no manipulation of the results by statisticians, how might one explain the local population’s reticence to “designate themselves Cossacks” or to “write themselves into history” as the official census slogan proclaimed?
The first major factor is the failure of the organized Cossack movement to mobilize the population. With ten years to present its case, one would think that the organized Cossack movement had sufficient time to promote its message that the Kuban’ Cossacks should be viewed as a people. In 1998, I addressed the future of the Cossack movement with the following statement:

“It is not impossible that Cossacks will attempt to assimilate portions of the Orthodox, Slavic population of the region into their movement. Restricting migration (especially the in-migration of non-Slavs) and consolidating the Slavic population around the Cossack movement is perhaps the most important, but uncertain, aspect of Cossack revival.”^[58]
Now in 2004 it seems that not only did the Kuban’ Cossack Host not succeed in consolidating the Slavic population of Kuban’ around its agenda, but it also lost ground among its imagined constituency: the Kuban’ Cossack heritage group. Even in spite of rhetoric claiming that kazachestvo could help to prevent ethnic conflict in the North Caucasus and should become a stabilizing geopolitical factor in areas such as Chechnia, the population has not wholeheartedly embraced the current Cossack movement.^[59]
The problem of division within the movement’s ranks, which has plagued its leaders for nearly a decade, must have also contributed to the results of the census. V. P. Gromov remains the officially recognized, elected leader of the Kuban’ Cossack Host, but apparently he was able to convince only a fraction of those whom he has claimed as members of his organization to record themselves as Cossacks. Furthermore, other evidence points to a shrinking body of active participants in the movement. An open letter published by Cossacks from the Temriuk Cossack organization in March 2003 alleged that ataman Gromov had all but destroyed his own organization:

“They [Gromov and his associates] have privatized the practically non-existent Host, turning it into an instrument for personal advantage and wrongful accumulation of wealth (nazhivy)... Gatherings of the Cossacks of the Host have been transformed into party meetings in which only those deemed suitable by the ataman are allowed to speak... The Chernomorskii, Labinsk and Yeisk departments (otdely) are destroyed, the Ekaterinodar and other departments are being destroyed... Among the Cossacks of Kuban’ Gromov has completely lost his authority...”^[60]
While I have no direct evidence to confirm that any of these charges is indeed true, the circulation of such accounts points to considerable dissatisfaction in the ranks. In a similar vein, Petr Tkachenko recently concluded: “Cossack revival has reached a dead end.”^[61] It remains possible, but not necessarily probable, that many within the movement could have consciously contravened the ataman’s call to declare themselves Cossacks in order to deny Gromov his desired place in the “power structures” of the region.
An even more plausible explanation is that the ataman’s eleventh hour appeal to consider Cossacks a natsional’nost’ simply fell on deaf ears. As I argued in 1998, publicists within the Cossack movement have utilized the term narod rather than the term natsiia.^[62] The term narod was more flexible, and less official/bureaucratic than natsional’nost’, which has been the domain of theorists, ethnographers, politicians, and local registration functionaries since the early decades of Soviet rule. In local discourse between 1991 and 2002, Cossacks might be referred to as a subetnos, narod, soslovie (estate), patriotic state of mind, or military force, but I know of no coherent attempt to make the case that they are a natsional’nost’.
As is often common in statistics, the phrasing of the question is absolutely crucial for framing the results. For many local residents natsional’nost’ is an official category that is used in a limited range of situations and nationality has historically been a concept that they have had little power over. I have personally spoken to several older people who were born Kuban’ Cossacks, had been “recorded as Ukrainian” during Ukrainianization, but “now are Russian.” What was written in their documents had changed on two occasions without their input. Furthermore, a recent study by Anna Engelking has raised serious and important questions about the local reception of the Soviet category of natsional’nost’. While her work focuses on the district of Grodno in Belarus, her conclusions about passport nationality as a non-traditional category in folk culture should be broadly applicable to other regions.^[63]
In a series of sixty ethnographic/oral history interviews that I commissioned in Kuban’ (carried out by a local researcher in 2001) respondents were asked a series of open-ended questions about identity and ethnicity. When local residents were asked: “Representatives of which nationalities live in your stanitsa?” – Cossacks were almost never mentioned among a list that frequently included Armenians, Ukrainians, Adyghe, etc. When asked for their own nationality (Vasha natsional’nost’) virtually all listed Russian, though a few informants expressed a degree of uncertainty. Even among respondents who consider themselves to be Cossacks, almost none considered Cossacks to be a nationality.
Rather than continue to view Cossacks exclusively within a framework of categories imposed from above, it is preferable to explore how local residents of the region perceive their situation. In order to include local voices in this discussion of identity and ethnicity, I will provide some examples of how informants in 2001 answered the question: “Is kazachestvo considered a natsional’nost’?” These responses should not be seen as representative of any statistical validity, but rather should be evaluated as discursive possibilities.

[1] Born in 1926, Interview 47. “I don’t know. That’s probably politics. Previously they were despised and deported.”
[2] Born in 1927, Interview 40. “In my opinion its not a nationality, but a narodnost’.”
[3] Born in 1935, Interview 58. “I can’t say. Now it is said that they’re an ethnic group. But to whom do they pertain (k komu ikh otnosit’) to the Russians or Ukrainians?”
[4] Born in 1936, Interview 9. “How many times I’ve pondered that question. But it is not a nationality. In general they’re Russians.”
[5] Born in 1937, Interview 34. “God only knows if they’re considered such or not.”
[6] Born in 1937, Interview 30. “We record ourselves as Russians. But in general I don’t know which nationality we are. The blood is mixed. Cossackdom is perhaps an estate, that’s what I think.”
[7] Born in 1947, Interview 42. “I think that if kazachestvo is going to revive it might perhaps become a nationality. Because they don’ write Cossack in passports, they write Russian. So what kind of nationality is that?”
[8] Born in 1949, Interview 59. “No, its not considered. There is no longer any kazachestvo as such. The Cossacks have already become extinct. Those generations have passed on.”
[9] Born in 1950, Interview 18. “At present, no. Earlier, perhaps, they were considered such. Earlier more attention was paid to that, there was more pride. They somehow lived separately and considered themselves a distinct nation (obosoblennoi natsiei).”
[11] Born in 1960, Interview 4. “Officially its not considered a natsional’nost’. It has no status.”
[12] Born in 1961, Interview 49. “Oh, no! I wouldn’t say that it is a nationality. Its a state of the soul, a matter of upbringing.”

The range of variation in conceptualizing kazachestvo is striking. Such responses reveal a thought world that is beyond the reach of census-takers and statisticians, who must categorize for the sake of quantification. Precisely such variation, nuance, and ambiguity cannot be easily quantified and tabulated. Moreover, in the census only the present counts; neither the past nor the future are deemed relevant. All of the speakers in this sample declared their own nationality to be Russian, but many of them accept at least the possibility of kazachestvo as a nationality.
The function of nastional’nost’ as a tool of the state is registered in several answers [1, 3, 6, 7, 11]. It belongs to the realm of “politics.” Officially Cossacks have “no status” as a nationality. Natsional’nost’ is associated with exclusive, limited choices: it must be Russian, or possibly Ukrainian, but not Cossack, nor a combination of these categories. Since Cossack identity had no legal recognition, and Cossack was not a permissible nationality category on identity documents in the Soviet or post-Soviet period, it is very difficult for local residents to conceptualize Cossackdom as a nationality. After all they [local registration officials] “don’t write Cossack in [internal] passports, they write Russian.” Previous exposure to natsional’nost’ was often a ritualized act in which the local population was either “recorded as Russian” (indicating a lack of agency) or socialized to “write oneself Russian” on various kinds of official forms. The Cossack category has existed and currently exists outside the rules of the game of passport nationality as shaped by Soviet policies in the region.
Others might consider kazachestvo a valid category, but still suspend judgment about its ability to function as natsional’nost’. Some associate it primarily with the past [1, 8, 9], while others consider the possibility of a future [7]. Many informants express a level of uncertainty about how to categorize kazachestvo [1, 3, 4, 5, 6]. This could be indicative of genuine uncertainty or deference to those who presumably know better. Finally, there is a perception that either its boundaries are too blurred or its existence too precarious to consider it a natsional’nost’.
The lack of recognition of Cossacks as a nationality and adherence to state-imposed categories does not, however, automatically indicate that full assimilation has taken place. Local people have taken on a Russian public and written (passport) identity, without necessarily surrendering a Cossack identity. The fact that they frequently use expressions such as “recorded as Russian” indicates a residual degree of incongruity between their local, primarily vernacular, communities and identities and the wider world in which the Russian literary language and identity category predominate.^[64]
In previous studies I have described Cossack identity as an ethnic identity. I subscribe to this view not because I feel that Cossacks conform to a list of characteristics that could be agreed upon by either Anthony Smith (the quasi-primordialist theorist of ethnicity) or N. I. Bondar’ (the local theorist), but because ethnic boundaries, as conceptualized by Fredrik Barth, were a prominent part of the Cossack past.^[65]
My 1998 assessment credited Soviet policies with destroying the Cossack estate, but unfettering Cossack ethnicity:

“The Soviet destruction of kazachestvo as an estate transformed Cossack identity into a purely ethnic identity. By destroying kazachestvo as a political and social structure with special privileges, the Soviet state eliminated the complex dual nature of kazachestvo as both a people/ethnic group and a corporate estate that had existed for almost two centuries.”^[66]
Today, I see a need to nuance this interpretation. The fact that many people born years or decades after 1917 identified themselves as Cossacks, indicates to me that Cossack ethnicity, which prior to the revolution had been inextricably intertwined with notions of soslovie, became an autonomous determinant of local self-perception. Since these individuals had never been members of a tsarist estate, only some kind of functional ethnicity could explain their behavior.
Recent research has rejected the validity of using “objective” lists of cultural criteria to create ethnic taxonomies. Instead, a constructivist approach to ethnicity privileges how communities view the world and describe their place in it. Richard Jenkins states:

“A social constructionist approach to ethnicity and cultural differentiation involves, of necessity, an appreciation that ethnic identity is situationally variable and negotiable. It also involves recognizing the central emphasis which must be accorded to the points of view of actors themselves if we are to understand how processes of social construction and negotiation work.”^[67]

Moreover, as early as 1948 the Chicago sociologist Everett Hughes argued that an ethnic group exists when people “talk, feel, and act as if it were a separate group.”^[68]If continuity in Kuban’ Cossack communication, feelings and actions can be demonstrated, then it can be established that a Cossack ethnicity (but not necessarily group boundaries as constructed prior to the revolution) survived the policies of the Soviet period. Documenting and discerning the contours of this ethnicity is complicated by the fact that under Soviet rule Cossack identity was largely a private identity, shared primarily among family and close friends. Nonetheless, interviews revealed various levels of attachment to and performance of Cossack identity in the year 2001, and thus retrospectively shed light on hidden aspects of Cossack identity in previous decades.
Below I have provided a range of affirmative responses to the question: “Do you consider yourself a Cossack?”

[1] Born in 1922, Interview 23. “What else? When they announced kozachestvo, I was the first [in the stanitsa] to buy a uniform for myself. The others started to do so after me.”
[2] Born in 1926, Interview 20. “How am I to consider myself. Because my father was one? It was all tossed aside (zabrosheno), kazachestvo.”
[3] Born in 1926, Interview 44. “Sure, I consider myself such. When I have an argument with my wife, she always says: “Oh, you Cossack mug! (A, kazatska morda)”
[4] Born in 1927, Interview 40. “Definitely. I considered myself a hereditary (potomstvennoi) Cossack. My mother and father were Cossacks, and all three of my sisters could beautifully sing Cossack songs.”
[5] Born in 1929, Interview 25. “Who knows! When we were growing up, people were ashamed to be Cossacks. But in my soul I’m a Cossack.”
[6] Born in 1935, Interview 58. “Yes, but I don’t follow the traditions. When I was a boy, and the grandmothers and grandfathers were still alive, all of that was still followed. But now, what kind of Cossack am I?”
[7] Born in 1936, Interview 9. “ I consider myself a Cossack. I have all that in my blood... I’ve been among Cossacks and kholkhozniks from a young age, and the songs and dances I’ve learned are all from them.”
[8] Born in 1937, Interview 34. “Yes, my grandfather was Cossack, and mom was a Cossack.... Who knows, they don’t write Cossack after all, but Russian. That’s it. If your local, then your a Cossack.”
[9] Born in 1937, Interview 30. “I’m from a Cossack family, on both sides, from an ancient line. There are no non-Cossacks among us.”
[10] Born in 1946, Interview 2. “Yes. My parents brought me up as a Cossack. I always sat at the table with them and sang.”
[11] Born in 1949, Interview 59. “Of course. But life has separated me from the past, and now I feel more like a Russian (teper’ bol’she oshchushchaiu sebia russkim chelovekom).”

The vitality of the Cossack identity category is confirmed in these statements, but the variety of ways of feeling like a Kuban’ Cossack is also impressive. Many construct some kind of continuity with the past, while others stress discontinuity [2, 6, 11]. Among the latter, there is a consciousness that the speakers have become estranged from their Cossack forbearers. There were times in the past when they felt and acted more like Cossacks than under present circumstances. Others talk about their Cossack identity as somehow situationally activated: putting on an outfit, exchanging choice words with one’s spouse, following the traditions.
Two complimentary views of Cossack identity are voiced in the responses. In some cases affiliation with the Cossack category is primarily articulated through blood, ancestry, and heredity [4, 7, 8, 9]. Without necessarily discounting such ties, others emphasize the continuation of Cossack culture [4, 6, 7,10]. In addition to ancestry, the reproduction of traditions, especially the collective singing of Cossack songs, is a vital part of performance of a Cossack identity. At the same time Cossack identity can also be a private identity carried in one’s heart or soul, but not necessarily announced to an indifferent world [5]. Many of the informants would probably share the sentiment that in certain situations, they each feel “more like a Russian.”
Although invisible in federal statistics and insufficient for intellectuals preoccupied with constructing (not diluting) a Russian nation, local conceptions of Cossack distinction still persist. For some a Cossack identity is part of their past, but for many a Cossack identity is part of their present. The future, however, is still uncertain. The fact that Cossacks managed to avoid extinction under Soviet rule does not automatically translate into a desire to embrace the visions of distinction proffered by local intellectuals or the current Cossack leadership since 1991. The Kuban’ Cossack heritage group is alive and well, but to avoid functional extinction in the coming decades it must decide whether to be identified as community of Russians who share a Cossack heritage or as a community of Cossacks who no longer wish to have their identity defined as “combined with, not parallel to” Russian identity.

CONCLUSION

This article has focused on identifying a camouflaged post-Soviet Kuban’ Cossack community among a population that has been officially categorized as Russian since 1933. Shadows of past policies still cloud visions of the present and Cossacks still exists in a state of semi-visibility.
As my survey of local historiography since 1991 demonstrates, Kuban Cossack distinction depends upon the eye of the beholder. The process of re-imagining the Cossack past after the fall of the Soviet Union has generated diverse visions of Kuban’ kazachestvo. Since 1991 local scholars have generally tended to focus on features that are conducive to blending the Kuban’ Cossacks into a Russian background, while obscuring features that might connect them to a Ukrainian milieu. The Soviet era myopia towards the Ukrainian heritage of the region is still pervasive, suggesting that Kuban’ Cossack identity in its post-Soviet incarnation is still not secure enough to confront the problem of local linguistic distinction.
My discussion of counting Cossacks illustrates how the politics of categorization has contributed to a blurring of boundaries between Cossacks and Russians in the eyes of officialdom. Neither the 1926 census nor the 2002 census provides accurate indications of how local identity was viewed or conceptualized. While in 1926 most Kuban’ Cossacks were counted as Ukrainians, in 2002 they were summoned to play a role in stabilizing the number of Russians in Russia. Officially defunct for decades as defenders of the frontiers of Russian state and empire, in 2002 Cossack identity became a critical, final frontier for maintaining the Stalinist boundaries of the Russian nation.
Because Cossacks were virtually excluded from the public sphere, the fuzzy contours of Cossack identity emerge most perceptibly in the private sphere. The apparent failure of most members of the Cossack heritage group to embrace an eleventh hour Cossack natsional’nost’ does not demonstrate that Cossacks have chosen extinction over distinction. The results merely indicate that Soviet era conceptualizations of natsional’nost’ still dominate the public sphere and that the local population still plays its prescribed role in the ritual act of “writing one’s self Russian.” While ambivalence towards the Cossack heritage is not uncommon in the region, idiosyncratic, ambiguous, and distinctly personal visions of Cossack ethnic identity nonetheless survive. At present many more residents of Kuban’ are willing to identify with decorative, de-politicized, and folkloric representations of Cossack distinction presented by the Kuban’ Cossack Choir than are willing to put on Cossack outfits and stride the political stage.