Cossack: Democratic Bandit to Tsarist Reactionary

The Cossack subculture represents one of the most interesting studies in the history of liberty as a social ideal.  To the early Muscovite State, the Cossack hosts represented a volatile natural force.  Cossacks were both useful and dangerous, a disruptive element in commerce and diplomacy and a wild card in war.  While some authors maintain that the Cossacks have always functioned as the vanguard of Slavic control of Steppe, whether Polish or Russian,  they were never truly invested in either of these societies.  The word “Cossack” itself is Turkik, meaning “free warrior and vagrant”  without a place in society and living on the periphery.    How then did the word Cossack by the nineteenth century come to mean a reactionary conservative who suppresses change by force? 


The efforts of Ivan IV of Moscow and his successors to expand southward, together with the beginnings of peasant flight from the land, brought the ordered Muscovite world into conflict with the Cossack hosts.   Theirs was both a military organization and an oddly democratic one, with officers being selected by the fighting men.  Yet these officers lived in the knowledge that they could be violently deposed at any moment.   If this seems odd, parallel instances of internal democracy among outlaws exist, most notably in some of the pirate laws of the Caribbean.  Even when they deigned to fight for a state, the Cossack hosts understood that this was a purely voluntary association. 


In 1665, a contingent of the Don host was fighting with Prince Yuri Dolgoruky against the Poles.  Disgusted with their indecisive Russian leaders, the Cossack commander informed Dolgoruky that his men were not being properly used and that they intended to return home.   Upon the Prince’s indignant refusal, this Cossack, the brother of future rebel Stepan (Stenka) Razin, called a mass meeting and told his Cossacks that they were free men and not soldiers and had the right to go home.   A well-disposed Polish chronicler called the Cossacks “those who since ancient times considered themselves warriors, who learned to carry a sword and did not recognize the yoke of slavery.”   Fighting for Orthodoxy and the Tsar was one thing- being in bondage was another. 


With the so-called "Time of Troubles," the Cossacks reached the zenith of their political influence and military strength.  The Don host in particular enjoyed the benefits of large numbers of peasants fleeing famine and disorder.  They became a politically potent force, putting several pretenders on the throne.  These were only the first steps in awakening the state to the dangers the Cossacks could pose. 


In September of 1670, Stenka Razin, successful leader of a band of rogue Cossacks (rogue in relation to the power structures of the Cossack hosts, that is), sailed with his following up the Volga, capturing Tsaritsin.  There, emissaries came to him from Astrakhan, asking him to come and liberate their city from the rule of the aristocrats.   With a little incitement from advance agents, most of the population rose against the aristocracy as soon as the Cossacks appeared, as did the elite Streltsi.   In Astrakhan he did the unprecedented, instituting the organization of a Cossack host.  This action proved to be so inspirational that from there, Razin stampeded through Russia, cities falling to him or freeing themselves before his arrival.  His proclaimed goals and those of his followers were often disparate.  Razin proclaimed to the Streltsi who joined him that they were “fighting for the Tsar against the boyars who have betrayed his trust.”   Bulgars, pagan remnants, raskolniki, serfs, merchants and many other parts of society flocked to Razin, each with their own goals, a process that would repeat itself in other Cossack uprisings in the time of Catherine II.  


Over the course of three centuries, the Cossacks demonstrated that they could mount the military force and popular support for expeditions ranging from isolated raids to territorial occupations to regime changes to full-scale rebellion.  Thus, the foremost question of internal security for the Russian Empire was how to remove the Cossacks not only as a military threat, but as the focal point of social unrest.


The first part of the solution to the Cossack problem came ironically from a Cossack.  Yermak, a Cossack expeditionary who later conquered parts of Siberia, was originally hired by the wealthy Stroganov family to protect their trade from Tatar raiders.  The Cossacks drove off the Tatars, and then, for lack of activity, began plundering Stroganov possessions.  To the Stroganovs’ complaints, Yermak pointed out that as long as the Cossacks had no war to fight, they could not be stopped.  He proposed that the Stroganovs provide them with military employment.  It was from this proposal that the Siberian venture originated.   After Yermak had occupied several towns, he sent a mission to the Tsar bearing gifts.  It was then that Ivan IV set a new precedent by detaching some of his own troops to the ataman’s command, under the appellation of Cossacks.   Thus, the first formal Cossack military unit was formed, though of course the Cossacks did not yet see it in that light.  So long as Moscow could provide manly work for the Cossacks, they were willing.  This was the first and most obvious of the Cossack weaknesses.


Second and ultimately more important were the Cossack tendencies to identify with the Tsar and the Russian cause on the grounds of their Orthodox faith,  but not to identify with anything else about Russian society.  The hierarchy they detested, and detested equally the serfs at the bottom of it, save those who showed the courage to run away.  The Cossack mind reviled servility.  This sense of Cossack exceptionalism made it possible to alienate the Cossack from the commoner by appealing to the Cossack’s ego. 


In each town he took, Stenka Razin instituted Cossack principles of equality, and most of all in those towns which overthrew their nobles before his arrival.  The streltsi who came over to him he made Cossacks.   This course of action allowed Razin to make these new allies acceptable to his fellow Cossacks.  A free Cossack respects a free Cossack, but does not respect those still enslaved.  Thus, it was only a matter of time and patience for Moscow to completely alienate the affections of the Cossacks from the rest of their subjects, making the Cossacks a useful tool for suppressing popular unrest.  


A third Cossack weakness was the pronounced lack of political agenda.  With the exception of Stenka Razin, Cossacks were usually content to stand apart from the social order of the Russian Empire without attempting to institute or popularize Cossackdom throughout it.  Thus, they became a sort of pressure valve for social unrest among the serfs and other lower classes, who could choose to flee to the Cossacks if their conditions became unbearable, without expressing to the latter any of the values that could make these classes able to stand up for themselves.  Stenka Razin’s exceptionality to this rule may stem from the murder of his brother by Yuri Dolgoruky,  or from his identification with the many poorer peasants who had fled to the Don.  


It was Stenka who expressed for the first time the kernel of a democratic idea of universal Cossackdom: “There shall be no serfs anymore, but all shall be free and equal…I do not wish to be as a Tsar, but to live amongst you as a brother.”   However, with the defeat and execution of Razin, this idea died quickly, for the hunger and oppression of the Russian people on the one hand and the Cossack love of any subversion and battle had alone caused the acceptance of such a notion, which was still foreign to the official Cossack hetmanates.  As long as the rights of Cossacks were maintained sufficiently, or at least worn away very slowly, the Cossacks would not stand on principle.


Peter the Great turned his formidable attentions to the issue of Cossack independence when his trusted, aristocratic Cossack minister Mazeppa betrayed him and joined the Swedes in exchange for the promise of Cossack independence.   Fortunately for Peter, only a handful of Cossacks joined Mazeppa, but the Emperor was not one to sweep a problem under the carpet.  To him, unity meant uniformity, and so he dissolved Cossack privileges, put Cossacks under oath of loyalty, imposed military service, and officially dissolved independent Cossack law.   In 1721, he placed all Cossacks under the authority of a military Collegium, affirming their status as a military adjunct of the Russian Empire, while simultaneously exulting certain Cossack leaders to the level of military dukes, thus alienating the traditional councils of elders from authority.   This typically Petrine measure was not, however, the cleverest way of managing the Cossacks.  Future rulers would adopt other techniques.

 
The Empress Elizabeth, for example, introduced privileges for the Cossack elite, thus alienating them from their subordinates at a time of spreading serfdom in the Ukraine.    It was during this period that the Cossack democratic assemblies came to exclude the lower ranks, and the hetmanate attained a truly ducal character, with appointments and hereditary titles backed by the crown.  


However, it was ultimately Catherine II who was put in the position of trying to disarm the “tradition of revolt”  which the Cossacks had been building since the Time of Troubles.  Her initial policies followed those of Peter, regularizing Cossack forces, removing their right to elect their own officers, and appointing foreign officers to oversee Cossack affairs.   Short of pay and frustrated by Catherine’s deafness to their appeals, the Terek Cossacks welcomed an articulate and energetic deserter from the Russian army named Pugachev, who swiftly rose to become ataman.   Appealing to Old Believers and peasants and impersonating the deceased Tsar Peter, Pugachev launched a rebellion paralleling those of both Stenka Razin and the False Dmitris.  It was after Pugachev’s execution that an appalled Catherine began to rethink her approach.   She offered both the carrot and the stick, lowering taxes and salt prices and offering a blanket amnesty, while simultaneously displacing Cossack populations, in effect creating reserves for them.  At the same time, Catherine substituted a mixture of imperial and Cossack law and created an administration based on the emerging Cossack noble class.


The result of these policies was to create a number of buffer communes along sensitive frontiers, giving both the Cossacks and external enemies something to keep them busy.   It was in these units that the weaknesses of Cossack society outlined above were fully exploited.  Because Cossack land was permenantly restricted for the first time, land came to be owned by a number of important Cossack families, leading to considerable stratification of Cossack society.   In the 18th Century, the Society of Notable Military Fellows was formed in the Ukraine, recognizing Cossacks whose ancestors had held starshina or hetman rank.  It was to this exclusive group of office holders that the tsars granted land and privilege.  For peasants and lower-ranking Cossacks, this meant increasing subjugation.  The government could play the “rabble” against the starshina, making the latter dependent on the government for support.  Later, the hetmanate officially divided Ukrainian Cossacks into two classes.   Needless to say, if even lower-class Cossacks had little access to the traditional privileges of their nation, escaped serfs could no longer count on the Cossack settlements as a refuge. 


Secondly, the male Cossack population was almost entirely occupied with military service, in recognition of which Cossacks were exempt from many taxes.  Cossacks also owned a great deal more land per capita than any other section of society.  Thus, the government formed twin buffers of alienation: one within the Cossack community between the privileged and the poor, and another between the Cossacks and their neighbours.   Catherine and her successors achieved a system that not only catered to the Cossack love of adventure and warfare, but to Cossack vanity as well.  Special career paths and privileges, ranging from elite field units to the personal guards of Tsars and magnates were open to the Cossack.   The system exulted Cossacks to a special caste, and, while this is no more than the Cossacks had always thought of themselves, it meant that they no longer felt threatened by the state order.  With the state as a patron, Cossacks seldom obected to being used in the suppression of rebellions.


From the end of Catherine’s reign until the later nineteenth century, the imperial government managed to effectively direct Cossack energies to the maintenance of the established order.  It should be noted, however, that the Cossacks began to realize and resent their own servitude toward the end of the monarchy.  With the establishment of state Dumas (Assemblies), Cossack deputies immediately began not only to raise the question of self-government,  but to support the liberal opposition.  Nor was this feeling unique to the delegates; several military units began to refuse orders to attack civilians, culminating in the refusal of Cossack units in 1917 to protect the government, walking their horses over to join the demonstrators rather than charging them down.   Perhaps the conditions on the eastern front of World War I had brought home to the Cossacks the misery of the entire empire, or perhaps they were beginning to transcend the selfish, introverted nature of their own lust for freedom and project it to others, as Razin had tried to teach them.


To the Russian state, the Cossacks represented a threat greater than any other enemy; to the Russian peasant, both fear and aspiration.  To the Cossacks themselves, nothing mattered so much as the freedom to fight.  In attempting to control the Cossacks by conventional means, the Russian government succeeded only in provoking rebellion.  But by employing Cossack soldiers in a way that catered to their sense of adventure and special destiny, by exulting them above the peasants and leaving them with a semblance of their own traditions, the state succeeded in taming their anarchic impulse and annulling their alliance with the peasant class- an alliance of convenience rather than sentiment.





Peter Julicher Renegades, Rebels and Rogues under the Tsars.  (London: McFarland & Co., 2003)

Maurice Hindus The Cossacks: The Story of a Warrior People. (Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1945.)

Cecil Field, The Great Cossack: The Rebellion of Sten’ka Razin against Alexis  Michaelovitch, Tsar of All the Russias.  (London: Herbert Jenkins Ltd, 1947.)

Orest Subtelny Ukraine: A History.  (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994)

Linda Gordon Cossack Rebellions:Social Turmoil in the Sixteenth Century Ukraine. (Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 1983.)