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.^[1] 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.^[2] 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.^[3] 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.”^[4]
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?”^[5] 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.^[6]
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.^[7] 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.^[8] 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.”^[9]
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.^[10] 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.”^[11] 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.”^[12]

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.^[13] 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.”^[14]
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.”^[15]
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.^[16] 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.^[17] 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.”^[18]
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.^[19]
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...”^[20]
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.”^[21] 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.^[22] 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.^[23]
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.^[24]
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.^[25]
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.”^[26]
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.”^[27]

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.”^[28]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.