Ruch kozacki u schyłku ZSRR
Journal Title: Przegląd Wschodni - Year 2018, Vol 14, Issue 56
Abstract
Cossacks made a significant contribution to the construction of the Russian Empire. For the last two centuries of the existence of the Tsarist state they constituted a separate social layer, which in exchange for certain privileges (including exemption from paying taxes, free land plots) carried the main burden of service in the irregular units of the Russian army. It is estimated that before World War I, almost 5 million Cossacks lived in Russia. They formed 12 units, deployed along the southern borders of the country, from the Don to Kamchatka. After coming to power, the Bolsheviks liquidated all Cossack separateness as well as a significant parts of the Cossack elites. The presented article is a fragment of a larger whole, which aims to show the process of rebirth of the Cossack movement in Boris Yeltsin’s Russia. After two bloody world wars, revolutions and, what amounted to, genocide of the anti-Soviet repressions of Bolshevik power and the total transformation of the socio-political face of the empire, it seemed that the Cossack issue had passed into history. However, the reconstruction initiated by Gorbachev revealed, that in the USSR there are still people who consider themselves to be Cossacks and are ready to cultivate their traditions. This can be considered a phenomenon that testifies to the durability of cultural codes. The article covers the period from the appearance of the first Cossack organizations to the collapse of the Soviet Union, that is the years 1989-1991. It shows the spherical uprising of the Cossacks’ Union, the most important Cossack organization in this period. It highlights the ideological and personnel conflicts that accompanied the rather dynamic development of the traffic structures, which at the time of the collapse of the USSR counted several hundred thousand people. It discusses the divisions of Cossacks, like “red” and “white”, “asphalt” and “state”. These divisions mainly reflected problems in shaping the neo-Cossack identity and searching for their place within new political and civilizational conditions. The Neocozies, just like their grandfathers, were the social group who saw their deepest sense of existence in symbiosis with the structures of the state. The article tries to explain why during this period, the cooperation did not go well, and the power structures, both trade union and republican, were quite indifferent to the offers from the Cossack Union.
Authors and Affiliations
Leszek Szerepka
Keywords
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