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Cossacks

Origin of the Cossacks.

 09:42 December 16, 2016

Cossacks are a people formed at the beginning of the new era, as a result of genetic connections between many Turanian (Siberian) tribes of the Scythian people Kos-Saka (or Ka-Saka), the Azov Slavs Meoto-Kaisars with a mixture of Asov-Alans or Tanaites (Donts). The ancient Greeks called them kossakha, which meant “white sahi,” and the Scythian-Iranian meaning “kos-sakha” was “white deer.” The sacred deer is the solar symbol of the Scythians; it can be found in all their burials, from Primorye to China, from Siberia to Europe. It was the Don people who brought this ancient military symbol of the Scythian tribes to the present day. Here you will find out where the Cossacks got their shaved head with a forelock and drooping mustache, and why the bearded prince Svyatoslav changed his appearance. You will also learn the origin of many names of the Cossacks, Don, Grebensky, Brodniks, Black Klobuks, etc., where the Cossack military paraphernalia, papakha, knife, Circassian coat, gazyri came from. And you will also understand why the Cossacks were called Tatars, where Genghis Khan came from, why the Battle of Kulikovo took place, Batu’s invasion and who really was behind all this.

“Cossacks, an ethnic, social and historical community (group), which, due to their specific characteristics, united all Cossacks... Cossacks were defined as a separate ethnic group, an independent nationality, or as a special nation of mixed Turkic-Slavic origin.” Dictionary of Cyril and Methodius 1902.

As a result of processes that in archeology are usually called “the introduction of the Sarmatians into the Meotian environment,” in the North. In the Caucasus and Don, a mixed Slavic-Turanian type of a special nationality appeared, divided into many tribes. It was from this mixture that the original name “Cossack” came about, which was noted by the ancient Greeks back in ancient times and was written as “Kossakhi”. The Greek style Kasakos remained until the 10th century, after which Russian chroniclers began to mix it with the common Caucasian names Kasagov, Kasogov, Kazyag. But from the ancient Turkic “Kai-Sak” (Scythian) meant freedom-loving, in another sense - a warrior, a guard, an ordinary unit of the Horde. It was the Horde that became the unification of different tribes under a military union - whose name today is Cossacks. The most famous: “Golden Horde”, “Pied Horde of Siberia”. So the Cossacks, remembering their great past, when their ancestors lived beyond the Urals in the country of Assov (Great Asia), inherited their name of the people “Cossacks”, from As and Saki, from the Aryan “as” - warrior, military class, “sak” - by type of weapon: from sak, sech, cutters. "As-sak" was later transformed into a Cossack. And the name Caucasus itself is Kau-k-az from the ancient Iranian kau or kuu - mountain and az-as, i.e. Mount Azov (Asov), like the city of Azov, was called in Turkish and Arabic: Assak, Adzak, Kazak, Kazova, Kazava and Azak.
All ancient historians claim that the Scythians were the best warriors, and Svydas testifies that from ancient times they had banners in their troops, which proves the regularity of their militias. The Getae of Siberia, Western Asia, the Hittites of Egypt, the Aztecs, India, Byzantium, had a coat of arms on their banners and shields depicting a double-headed eagle, adopted by Russia in the 15th century. as a legacy of their glorious ancestors.

It is interesting that the tribes of the Scythian peoples depicted on the artifacts found in Siberia, on the Russian Plain, are shown with beards and long hair on their heads. Russian princes, rulers, and warriors are also bearded and hairy. So where did the Oseledets come from, with a shaved head with a forelock and a drooping mustache?
The custom of head shaving was completely alien to European peoples, including the Slavs, while in the east it had been widespread for a long time and very widely, including among the Turkic-Mongolian tribes. So the hairstyle with the assailant was borrowed from the eastern peoples. In 1253 it was described by Rubruk in the Golden Horde of Batu on the Volga.
So, we can say with confidence that the custom of shaving the head of the Slavs in Rus' and Europe was completely alien and unacceptable. It was first brought to Ukraine by the Huns, and for centuries it was in use among the mixed Turkic tribes living on the Ukrainian lands - Avars, Khazars, Pechenegs, Polovtsians, Mongols, Turks, etc., until it was finally borrowed by the Zaporozhye Cossacks along with all the other Turkic-Mongol traditions of the Sich . But where does the word “Sich” come from? This is what Strabo writes. ХI.8,4:
“All southern Scythians attacking Western Asia were called Sakas.” The weapon of the Sakas was called sakar - ax, from slash, to chop. From this word, in all likelihood, came the name of the Zaporozhye Sich, as well as the word Sicheviki, as the Cossacks called themselves. Sich is the camp of the Saks. Sak in the Tatar language means careful. Sakal - beard. These words are borrowed from the Slavs, Masaks, and Massagets.

In ancient times, during the mixing of the blood of the Caucasians of Siberia with the Mongoloids, new mestizo peoples began to form, which later received the name Turks, and this was long before the emergence of Islam itself and their adoption of the Mohammedan faith. As a result of these peoples and their migration to the West and Asia, a new name appeared, defining them as the Huns (Huns). From the discovered Hunnic burials, a reconstruction was made from the skull and it turned out that some Hunnic warriors wore oseledets. The ancient Bulgars later had the same warriors with forelocks, who fought in the army of Attila, and many other peoples mixed with the Turks.

By the way, the Hunnic “devastation of the world” played an important role in the history of the Slavic ethnic group. Unlike the Scythian, Sarmatian and Gothic invasions, the invasion of the Huns was extremely large-scale and led to the destruction of the entire previous ethnopolitical situation in the barbarian world. The departure of the Goths and Sarmatians to the west, and then the collapse of Attila’s empire, allowed the Slavic peoples in the 5th century. begin mass settlement of the Northern Danube, the lower reaches of the Dniester and the middle reaches of the Dnieper.
Among the Huns there was also a group (self-name - Gurs) - Bolgurs (White Gurs). After the defeat in Phanagoria (Savernaya Black Sea region, Don-Volga interfluve and Kuban), part of the Bulgarians went to Bulgaria and, strengthening the Slavic ethnic component, became modern Bulgarians, the other part remained on the Volga - the Volga Bulgarians, now the Kazan Tatars and other Volga peoples. One part of the Hungurs (Hunno-Gurs) - the Ungars or Ugrians - founded Hungary, the other part of them settled on the Volga and, mixing with Finnish-speaking peoples, became Finno-Ugric peoples. When the Mongols came from the east, they, with the agreements of the Kyiv prince, went to the west and merged with the Ungars-Hungarians. That’s why we talk about the Finno-Ugric language group, but this does not apply to the Huns in general.
During the formation of the Turkic peoples, entire states appeared, for example, from the mixing of the Caucasoids of Siberia, the Dinlins, with the Gangun Turks, the Yenisei Kirghiz appeared, from them - the Kyrgyz Kaganate, after - the Turkic Kaganate. We all know the Khazar Kaganate, which became a union of the Khazar Slavs with the Turks and Jews. From all these endless unifications and separations of the Slavic peoples with the Turks, many new tribes were created, for example, the state unification of the Slavs suffered for a long time from the raids of the Pechenegs and Polovtsians.

For example, according to Genghis Khan's law "Yasu", developed by the cultured Central Asian Christians of the Nestorian sect, and not by the wild Mongols, the hair should be shaved, and only one braid should be left on the top of the head. High-ranking individuals were allowed to wear a beard, while others had to shave it off, leaving only a mustache. But this is not a Tatar custom, but of the ancient Getae (see Chapter VI) and Massagetae, i.e. people known back in the 14th century. BC and brought fear to Egypt, Syria and Persia, and then mentioned in the 6th century. according to R. X. by the Greek historian Procopius. The Massagetae - the Great Saki-Geta, who made up the advanced cavalry in Attila's hordes, also shaved their heads and beards, leaving a mustache, and left one pigtail on top of their head. It is interesting that the military class of the Russians always bore the name Het, and the word “hetman” itself is again of Gothic origin: “great warrior.”
The paintings of the Bulgarian princes and the Liutprand indicate the existence of this custom among the Danube Bulgarians. According to the description of the Greek historian Leo the Deacon, the Russian Grand Duke Svyatoslav also shaved his beard and head, leaving one forelock, i.e. imitated the Geta Cossacks, who made up the advanced cavalry in his army. Consequently, the custom of shaving beards and heads, leaving a mustache and forelock, is not Tatar, since it previously existed among the Getae more than 2 thousand years before the appearance of the Tatars in the historical field.

The already canonical image of Prince Svyatoslav with a shaved head, long forelock and drooping mustache, like a Zaporozhye Cossack, is not entirely correct and was imposed mainly by the Ukrainian side. His ancestors had luxurious hair and beards, and he himself was depicted in various chronicles as bearded. The description of the forelocked Svyatoslav was taken from the above-mentioned Leo the Deacon, but he became such after he became the prince not only of Kievan Rus, but also the prince of Pechenezh Rus, that is, southern Rus'. But why then did the Pechenegs kill him? Here it all comes down to the fact that after Svyatoslav’s victory over the Khazar Kaganate and the war with Byzantium, the Jewish aristocracy decided to take revenge on him and persuaded the Pechenegs to kill him.

Well, also Leo the Deacon in the 10th century, in his “Chronicles,” gives a very interesting description of Svyatoslav: “King of the Goths Sventoslav, or Svyatoslav, the ruler of Russia, and the hetman of their army, was of the origin of the Balts, the Rurikids (the Balts are the royal dynasty of the Western Goths. From this dynasty was Alaric, who took Rome.)... His mother, regentess Helga, after the death of her husband Ingvar, killed by the Greuthungs, whose capital was Iskorost, wanted to unite under the scepter of the Balts the two dynasties of the ancient Riks, and turned to Malfred, the Riks of the Greuthungs , give her sister Malfrida for her son, giving her word that she would forgive Malfred for the death of her husband. Having received a refusal, the city of the Greuthungs was burned by her, and the Greuthungs themselves submitted... Malfrida was escorted to Helga's court, where she was raised until did not grow up and did not become the wife of King Sventoslav..."
In this story, the names of Prince Mal and Malusha, the mother of Prince Vladimir the Baptist, are clearly visible. It is curious that the Greek persistently called the Drevlyans Greuthungs - one of the Gothic tribes, and not Drevlyans at all.
Well, we’ll leave this to the conscience of the later ideologists, who did not notice these same Goths. Let us only note that Malfrida-Malusha was from Iskorosten-Korosten (Zhitomir region). Next - again Leo the Deacon: “Sventoslav’s mounted warriors fought without helmets and on light horses of Scythian breeds. Each of his Rus warriors had no hair on their heads, only a long strand that went down to the ear - a symbol of their military god. They fought furiously on horseback, descendants of those Gothic regiments that brought great Rome to its knees. These horsemen of Sventoslav were gathered from the allied tribes of the Greuthungs, Slavs and Rosomons, they were also called in Gothic: “kosaks” - “horseman”, that is, and among the Rus they were the elite, themselves The Russians, from their Gothic fathers, inherited the ability to fight on foot, hiding behind shields - the famous "turtle" of the Vikings. The Russians buried their fallen in the same way as their Gothic grandfathers, burning the bodies on their canoes or on the banks of the river, in order to then let the ashes fall on flow. And those who died by their own death were laid in mounds, and hills were poured on top. Among the Goths, such resting places in their land sometimes stretch for hundreds of stadia..."
We will not figure out why the chronicler calls the Rus Goths. And there are countless burial mounds throughout the Zhytomyr region. Among them there are also very ancient ones - Scythian, even before our era. They are mainly located in the northern regions of the Zhytomyr region. And there are also later ones, from the beginning of our era, IV-V centuries. In the area of ​​​​the Zhytomyr hydropark, for example. As we see, the Cossacks existed long before the Zaporozhye Sich.
And here is what Georgy Sidorov says about the changed appearance of Svyatoslav: “The Pechenegs chose him over themselves, after the defeat of the Khazar Kaganate, he becomes a prince here, that is, the Pecheneg khans themselves recognize his power over themselves. They give him the opportunity to control the Pecheneg cavalry, and the Pecheneg cavalry goes with him to Byzantium.

In order for the Pechenegs to submit to him, he was forced to take on their appearance, which is why, instead of a beard and long hair, he has an asshole and a drooping mustache. Svyatoslav was a Veneti by blood, his father did not wear a forelock, he had a beard and long hair, like any Veneti. Rurik, his grandfather, was the same, and Oleg was exactly the same, but they did not adapt their appearance to the Pechenegs. In order to control the Pechenegs, so that they would trust him, Svyatoslav had to put himself in order, to be outwardly similar to them, that is, he became the khan of the Pechenegs. We are constantly divided, Rus' is the north, the south is the Polovtsy, the wild steppe and the Pechenegs. In fact, it was all one Rus', steppe, taiga and forest-steppe - it was one people, one language. The only difference was that in the south they still knew the Turkic language, it was once Esperanto of the ancient tribes, they brought it from the East, and the Cossacks knew this language too, preserving it until the 20th century."
In Horde Rus', not only Slavic writing was used, but also Arabic. Until the end of the 16th century, Russians had a good command of the Turkic language at the everyday level, i.e. Until then, the Turkic language was the second spoken language in Rus'. And this was facilitated by the unification of the Slavic-Turkic tribes into a union whose name is the Cossacks. After the Romanovs came to power in 1613, they, due to the freedom and rebellion of the Cossack tribes, began to propagate a myth about them as the Tatar-Mongol “yoke” in Rus' and contempt for everything “Tatar”. There was a time when Christians, Slavs and Muslims prayed in the same temple; this was common faith. There is one God, but different religions, and then everyone was divided and taken in different directions.
The origins of ancient Slavic military vocabulary date back to the era of Slavic-Turkic unity. This still unusual term is provable: sources provide reasons for this. And first of all - a dictionary. A number of designations for the most general concepts of military affairs are derived from ancient Turkic languages. Such as - warrior, boyar, regiment, labor, (meaning war), hunting, roundup, cast iron, iron, damask steel, halberd, axe, hammer, sulitsa, army, banner, saber, brush, quiver, darkness (10 thousandth army ), hurray, let's go, etc. They no longer stand out from the dictionary, these invisible Turkisms that have been tested for centuries. Linguists notice only later, clearly “non-native” inclusions: saadak, horde, bunchuk, guard, esaul, ertaul, ataman, kosh, kuren, bogatyr, biryuch, jalav (banner), snuznik, kolymaga, alpaut, surnach, etc. And the common symbols of the Cossacks, Horde Russia and Byzantium, tell us that there was something in the historical past that united them all in the fight against the enemy, which is now hidden from us by false layers. Its name is the “Western World” or the Roman Catholic world with papal rule, with its missionary agents, crusaders, Jesuits, but we’ll talk about that later.

As mentioned above, “Oseledets” was first brought to Ukraine by the Huns, and in confirmation of their appearance we find in the Name Book of the Bulgarian Khans, which lists the ancient rulers of the Bulgarian state, including those who ruled in the lands of present-day Ukraine:
“Avitohol lived 300 years, he was born Dulo, and for years I eat dilom tvirem...
These 5 princes reigned over the country of the Danube for 500 years and 15 shorn heads.
And then the prince Isperi came to the country of the Danube, the same as I have hitherto.”
So, facial hair was treated differently: “Some Russians shave their beards, others curl and braid it, like a horse’s mane” (Ibn-Haukal). On the Taman Peninsula, the fashion for Oseledets, later inherited by the Cossacks, became widespread among the “Russian” nobility. The Hungarian Dominican monk Julian, who visited here in 1237, wrote that local “men shave their heads bald and carefully grow their beards, except for noble people who, as a sign of nobility, leave a little hair above their left ear, shaving the rest of their head.”
And here is how contemporary Procopius of Caesarea described the lightest Gothic cavalry in fragments: “They have little heavy cavalry, on long campaigns the Goths go light, with a small load on the horse, and when the enemy appears, they mount their light horses and attack... Gothic cavalry is called themselves "kosak", "owning a horse". As usual, their riders shave their heads, leaving only a long tuft of hair, so they are likened to their military deity - Danaprus. All their deities have their heads shaved in this way, and the Goths hasten to imitate them in their appearance.. When necessary, this cavalry also fights on foot, and here they have no equal... When stopping, the army places carts around the camp for protection, which hold the enemy in case of a surprise attack..."
Over time, the name “Kosak” was assigned to all these military tribes, whether with forelocks, beards or mustaches, and therefore the original written form of the Cossack name is still fully preserved in English and Spanish pronunciation.

N. Karamzin (1775-1826) calls the Cossacks a knightly people and says that their origins are more ancient than the Batu (Tatar) invasion.
In connection with the Napoleonic Wars, the whole of Europe began to become especially interested in the Cossacks. The English General Nolan states: “The Cossacks in 1812-1815 did more for Russia than its entire army.” The French general Caulaincourt says: “All of Napoleon’s numerous cavalry died, mainly under the blows of the Cossacks of Ataman Platov.” The generals repeat the same thing: de Braque, Moran, de Bart, etc. Napoleon himself said: “Give me the Cossacks, and with them I will conquer the whole world.” And the simple Cossack Zemlyanukhin, during his stay in London, made a huge impression on the whole of England.
The Cossacks retained all the distinctive features they received from their ancient ancestors, such as love of freedom, ability to organize, self-esteem, honesty, courage, love of horses...

Some concepts of the origin of Cossack names

Horsemen of Asia - the most ancient Siberian army, originating from the Slavic-Aryan tribes, i.e. from the Scythians, Saks, Sarmatians, etc. All of them also belong to the Great Turan, and the Turs are the same Scythians. The Persians called the nomadic tribes of the Scythians “Turas,” because for their strong physique and courage, the Scythians themselves began to be associated with the Tura bulls. Such a comparison emphasized the masculinity and bravery of the warriors. So, for example, in Russian chronicles you can find the following expressions: “Brave be, like a tur” or “Buy tur Vsevolod” (this is what is said about Prince Igor’s brother in “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”). And this is where the most curious thing arises. It turns out that in the time of Julius Caesar (F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron refer to this in their Encyclopedic Dictionary), the wild bulls of Turov were called “Urus”! ... And today, for the entire Turkic-speaking world, Russians are “Uruses”. For the Persians we were "Urs", for the Greeks - "Scythians", for the British - "cattle", for the rest - "tartarien" (Tatars, wild) and "Uruses". Many originated from them, the main ones from the Urals, Siberia and ancient India, from where military teachings spread in a distorted form, known to us in China as oriental martial arts.
Later, after regular migrations, some of them populated the Azov and Don steppes and began to be called horse azas or princes (in ancient Slavic, prince - konaz) among the ancient Slavic-Russians, Lithuanians, Aryan peoples of the Volga and Kama, Mordovians and many others from ancient times became the head of the board, forming a special noble caste of warriors. Perkun-az among the Lithuanians and Az among the ancient Scandinavians were revered as deities. And what is konung among the ancient Germans and könig among the Germans, king among the Normans, and kunig-az among the Lithuanians, if not converted from the word horseman, who came out of the land of the Azov-Aces and became the head of the government.
The eastern shores of the Azov and Black Seas, from the lower reaches of the Don to the foot of the Caucasus Mountains, became the cradle of the Cossacks, where they finally formed into the military caste we recognize today. This country was called by all ancient peoples the land of the Az, Asia terra. The word az or as (aza, azi, azen) is sacred to all Aryans; it means god, lord, king or folk hero. In ancient times, the territory beyond the Urals was called Asia. From here, from Siberia, in time immemorial, the people's leaders of the Aryans with their clans or squads came to the north and west of Europe, to the Iranian plateau, the plains of Central Asia and India. For example, historians mention the Andronovo tribes or the Siberian Scythians as one of these, and the ancient Greeks note the Issedons, Sindons, Sers, etc.

Ainu - in ancient times they moved from the Urals through Siberia to Primorye, Amur, America, Japan, known to us today as the Japanese and Sakhalin Ainu. In Japan they created a warrior caste, recognized by everyone today as the samurai. The Bering Strait was formerly called Ainsky (Aninsky, Ansky, Anian Strait), where they inhabited part of North America.

Kai-Saki (not to be confused with Kyrgyz-Kaisak),wandering across the steppes, these are the Cumans, Pechenegs, Yases, Huns, Huns, etc., lived in Siberia, in the Piebald Horde, in the Urals, the Russian Plain, Europe, Asia. From the ancient Turkic "Kai-Sak" (Scythian), it meant freedom-loving, in another sense - a warrior, a guard, an ordinary unit of the Horde. Among the Siberian Scythians-Sakas, "kos-saka or kos-sakha", this is a warrior, whose symbol is a totemic animal deer, sometimes elk, with branched antlers, which symbolized speed, fiery tongues of flame and the shining sun.

Among the Siberian Turks, the Solar God was designated through his intermediaries - the swan and the goose; later the Khazar Slavs would adopt the symbol of the goose from them, and then the hussars would appear on the historical stage.
But Kirgis-Kaisaki,or Kyrgyz Cossacks, these are today's Kyrgyz and Kazakhs. They are descendants of the Ganguns and Dinlins. So, in the first half of the 1st millennium AD. e. on the Yenisei (Minusinsk Basin), as a result of the mixing of these tribes, a new ethnic community is formed - the Yenisei Kyrgyz.
In their historical homeland, in Siberia, they created a powerful state - the Kyrgyz Kaganate. In ancient times, this people was noted by the Arabs, Chinese and Greeks as blond and blue-eyed, but at a certain stage they began to take Mongolian women as wives and in just a thousand years changed their appearance. It is interesting that, in percentage terms, the R1A haplogroup among the Kyrgyz is greater than among the Russians, but one should know that the genetic code is transmitted through the male line, and external characteristics are determined through the female line.

Russian chroniclers begin to mention them only from the first half of the 16th century, calling them Horde Cossacks. The character of the Kyrgyz people is direct and proud. Kirghiz-Kaysak only calls himself a natural Cossack, without recognizing this for others. Among the Kirghiz there are all transitional degrees of types, from purely Caucasian to Mongolian. They adhered to the Tengrian concept of the unity of the three worlds and entities “Tengri - Man - Earth” (“birds of prey - wolf - swan”). So, for example, ethnonyms found in ancient Turkic written monuments and associated with totem and other birds include: kyr-gyz (birds of prey), uy-gur (northern birds), bul-gar (water birds), bash- kur-t (Bashkurt-Bashkirs - head birds of prey).
Until 581, the Kyrgyz paid tribute to the Turks of Altai, after which they overthrew the power of the Turkic Kaganate, but gained independence for a short time. In 629, the Kyrgyz were conquered by the Teles tribe (most likely of Turkic origin), and then by the Kok-Turks. Continuous wars with related Turkic peoples forced the Yenisei Kyrgyz to join the anti-Turkic coalition created by the Tang state (China). In 710-711 the Turkuts defeated the Kyrgyz and after that they were under the rule of the Turkuts until 745. In the so-called Mongol era (XIII-XIV centuries), after the defeat of the Naimans by the troops of Genghis Khan, the Kyrgyz principalities voluntarily joined his empire, finally losing their state independence. Kyrgyz combat units joined the Mongol hordes.
But the Kyrgyz-Kyrgyz did not disappear from the pages of history; already in our times, their fate was decided after the revolution. Until 1925, the government of the Kyrgyz autonomy was located in Orenburg, the administrative center of the Cossack army. In order to lose the meaning of the word Cossack, the Judeo-commissars renamed the Kyrgyz ASSR to Kazakstan, which would later become Kazakhstan. By decree of April 19, 1925, the Kirghiz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was renamed the Kazakh Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Somewhat earlier - on February 9, 1925, by decree of the Central Executive Committee of the Kirghiz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, it was decided to transfer the capital of the republic from Orenburg to Ak-Mechet (formerly Perovsk), renaming it Kyzyl-Orda, since one of the decrees of 1925, part of the Orenburg region was returned to Russia. So the ancestral Cossack lands, together with the population, were transferred to the nomadic peoples. Now, for today’s Kazakhstan, world Zionism demands payment for the “service” provided in the form of an anti-Russian policy and loyalty to the West.

Siberian Tartars - Dzhagatai,this is the Cossack army of the Rusyns of Siberia. Since the time of Genghis Khan, the Tatar Cossacks began to represent the dashing invincible cavalry, which was always on the forefront of aggressive campaigns, where its basis was made up of the Chigets - Dzhigits (from the ancient Chigs and Gets). They also served in the service of Tamerlane; today they are known among the people as dzhigit, dzhigitovka. Russian historians of the 18th century. Tatishchev and Boltin say that the Tatar Baskaks, sent to Rus' by the khans to collect tribute, always had detachments of these Cossacks with them. Finding themselves close to sea waters, some of the Chigs and Getae became excellent sailors.
According to the news of the Greek historian Nikephoros Gregor, the son of Genghis Khan, under the name Telepuga, in 1221 conquered many peoples who lived between the Don and the Caucasus, including the Chigets - Chigs and Gets, as well as the Avazgs (Abkhazians). According to the legend of another historian George Pachimer, who lived in the second half of the 13th century, a Tatar commander named Noga conquered all the peoples living along the northern shores of the Black Sea under his rule and formed a special state in these countries. The Alans, Goths, Chigs, Rosses and other neighboring peoples they conquered mixed with the Turks, little by little they adopted their customs, way of life, language and clothing, began to serve in their army and raised the power of this people to the highest degree of glory.
Not all of the Cossacks, but only part of them, accepted their language, morals and customs, and then along with them the Mohammedan faith, while the other part remained faithful to the idea of ​​Christianity and for many centuries defended their independence, dividing into many communities, or partnerships, representing from itself one common union.

Sinds, Miots and Tanaitesthese are Kuban, Azov, Zaporozhye, partly Astrakhan, Volga and Don.
Once upon a time from Siberia, part of the tribes of the Andronovo culture moved to India. And here is an indicative example of the migration of peoples and the exchange of cultures, when some of the proto-Slavic peoples had already moved back from India, bypassing the territory of Central Asia, passing the Caspian Sea, crossing the Volga, they settled on the territory of the Kuban, these were the Sinds.

Afterwards they formed the basis of the Azov Cossack army. Around the 13th century, some of them went to the mouth of the Dnieper, where they later began to be called Zaporozhye Cossacks. At the same time, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania subjugated almost all the lands of present-day Ukraine. The Lithuanians began to recruit these military men for their military service. They called them Cossacks and during the time of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Cossacks founded the border Zaporozhye Sich.
Some of the future Azov, Zaporozhye and Don Cossacks, while still in India, accepted the blood of local tribes with dark skin color - the Dravidians and among all the Cossacks, they are the only ones with dark hair and eyes, and this is what makes them different. Ermak Timofeevich was precisely from this group of Cossacks.
In the middle of the first millennium BC. In the steppes, the Scythian nomads lived on the right bank of the Don, displacing the Cimmerian nomads, and the Sarmatian nomads lived on the left. The population of the Don forests was original Don - all of them in the future will be called Don Cossacks. The Greeks called them Tanaitians (Donets). At that time, near the Sea of ​​Azov, in addition to the Tanaitians, there lived many other tribes who spoke dialects of the Indo-European group of languages ​​(including Slavic), to which the Greeks gave the collective name "Meotians", which translated from ancient Greek means "marsh people" (inhabitants swampy places). The sea where these tribes lived was named after the name of this people - “Meotida” (Meotian Sea).
Here it should be noted how the Tanaites became the Don Cossacks. In 1399 after the battle on the river. Vorskla, the Siberian Tartars-Rusyns who came with Edigei, settled along the upper reaches of the Don, where Brodniki also lived, and they gave rise to the name of the Don Cossacks. Among the first Don Ataman recognized by Muscovy is Sary Azman.

The word sary or sar is an ancient Persian word meaning king, ruler, lord; hence Sary-az-man - the royal people of Azov, the same as the Royal Scythians. The word sar in this sense is found in the following proper and common nouns: Sar-kel is a royal city, but Sarmatians (from sar and mada, mata, mati, i.e. woman) from the dominance of women among this people, from them - Amazons. Balta-sar, Sar-danapal, serdar, Caesar, or Caesar, Caesar, Caesar and our Slavic-Russian tsar. Although many are inclined to think that sary is a Tatar word meaning yellow, and from here they deduce red, but in the Tatar language there is a separate word to express the concept of red, namely zhiryan. It is noted that Jews descended from the maternal side often call their daughters Sarah. It is also noted about female dominance that from the 1st century. along the northern shores of the Azov and Black Seas, between the Don and the Caucasus, the rather powerful people Roksolane (Ros-Alan) become known, along Iornand (6th century) - the Rokas (Ros-Asy), whom Tacitus classifies as Sarmatians, and Strabo - as Scythians. Diodorus Sicilian, describing the Saks (Scythians) of the northern Caucasus, talks a lot about their beautiful and cunning queen Zarina, who conquered many neighboring peoples. Nicholas of Damascus (1st century) calls the capital of Zarina Roskanakoy (from Ros-kanak, castle, fortress, palace). It’s not for nothing that Iornand calls them Aesir or Rokas, where a giant pyramid with a statue on top was erected for their queen.

Since 1671, the Don Cossacks recognized the protectorate of the Moscow Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, that is, they abandoned their independent foreign policy, subordinating the interests of the Army to the interests of Moscow. The internal order remained the same. And only when the Romanov colonization of the south advanced to the borders of the Land of the Don Army, then Peter I carried out the incorporation of the Land of the Don Army into the Russian state.
This is how some of the former Horde members became the Cossacks of the Don, took an oath to serve the Tsar Father for a free life and protection of borders, but refused to serve the Bolshevik authorities after 1917, for which they suffered.

So, the Sinds, Miots and Tanaites are Kuban, Azov, Zaporozhye, partly Astrakhan, Volga and Don, of which the first two mostly died out due to the plague, replaced by others, mainly Cossacks. When, by decree of Catherine II, the entire Zaporozhye Sich was destroyed, then the surviving Cossacks were collected and resettled to Kuban.

The photo above shows the historical types of Cossacks who made up the Kuban Cossack army in the reconstruction of Yesaul Strinsky.
Here you can see a Khoper Cossack, three Black Sea Cossacks, a Lineets and two Plastuns - participants in the defense of Sevastopol during the Crimean War. The Cossacks are all distinguished, they have orders and medals on their chests.
-The first on the right is a Cossack of the Khoper regiment, armed with a cavalry flintlock rifle and a Don saber.
-Next we see a Black Sea Cossack in the uniform of the 1840 - 1842 model. He holds an infantry percussion rifle in his hand, an officer’s dagger and a Caucasian saber in a sheath hang on his belt. A cartridge bag or cannon hangs on his chest. At his side is a revolver in a holster with a lanyard.

-Behind him stands a Cossack in the uniform of the Black Sea Cossack Army of the 1816 model. His weapons are a flintlock Cossack rifle, model 1832, and a soldier's cavalry saber, model 1827.
-In the center we see an old Black Sea Cossack from the time of settlement of the Kuban region by the Black Sea people. He is wearing the uniform of the Zaporozhye Cossack Army. In his hand he holds an old, apparently Turkish flintlock gun, in his belt he has two flintlock pistols and a powder flask made of horn hangs from his belt. The saber at the belt is either not visible or missing.
-Next stands a Cossack in the uniform of a linear Cossack army. His weapons consist of: a flint infantry rifle, a dagger - beibut at the belt, a Circassian saber with a recessed handle in the scabbard, and a revolver on a cord at the belt.
The last ones in the photograph are two Plastun Cossacks, both armed with the authorized Plastun weapons - Littikh double-rifled fittings of the 1843 model. Cleaver bayonets hang from their belts in homemade sheaths. To the side stands a Cossack pike stuck into the ground.

Brodniki and Donets.
Brodniki are descended from the Khazar Slavs. In the 8th century, the Arabs considered them Saqlabs, i.e. white people, Slavic blood. It is noted that in 737, 20 thousand of their horse breeding families settled on the eastern borders of Kakheti. They are indicated in the Persian geography of the tenth century (Gudud al Alem) on the Sreny Don under the name Bradas and were known there until the 11th century. after which their nickname is replaced in the sources by a common Cossack name.
Here it is necessary to explain in more detail about the origin of the wanderers.
The formation of the union of Scythians and Sarmatians received the name Kas Aria, which later became distortedly called Khazaria. It was Cyril and Methodius who came to missionize the Slavic Khazars (KasArians).

Their activities were also noted here: Arab historians in the 8th century. noted the Sakalibs in the Upper Don forest-steppe, and the Persians, a hundred years after them, the Bradasov-Brodnikovs. The sedentary part of these tribes, remaining in the Caucasus, was subordinate to the Huns, Bulgarians, Kazars and Asam-Alans, in whose kingdom the Azov region and Taman were called the Land of Kasak (Gudud al Alem). It was there that Christianity finally triumphed among them, after the missionary work of St. Kirill, ok. 860
The difference between KasAria is that it was a country of warriors, and later became Khazaria - a country of traders, when the Jewish high priests came to power in it. And here, in order to understand the essence of what is happening, it is necessary to explain in more detail. In 50 AD, Emperor Claudius expelled all Jews from Rome. In 66-73 there was a Jewish uprising. They capture the Jerusalem Temple, the Antonia fortress, the entire upper city and the fortified palace of Herod, and arrange a real massacre for the Romans. They then rebel throughout Palestine, killing both the Romans and their more moderate compatriots. This uprising was suppressed, and in 70 the center of Judaism in Jerusalem was destroyed and the temple was burned to the ground.
But the war continued. The Jews did not want to admit they were defeated. After the great Jewish uprising of 133-135, the Romans wiped out all historical traditions of Judaism from the face of the earth. In 137, on the site of the destruction of Jerusalem, a new pagan city, Elia Capitolina, was built; Jews were forbidden to enter Jerusalem. To further offend the Jews, Emperor Ariadne forbade them from being circumcised. Many Jews were forced to flee to the Caucasus and Persia.
In the Caucasus, Jews became neighbors of the Khazars, and in Persia they slowly entered all branches of government. It ended with a revolution and civil war under the leadership of Mazdak. As a result, the Jews were expelled from Persia - to Khazaria, where the Khazar Slavs lived there at that time.
In the 6th century, the Great Turkic Khaganate was created. Some tribes fled from him, such as the Hungarians to Pannonia, and the Khazar Slavs (Kozars, Kazars), in alliance with the ancient Bulgars, united with the Turkic Kaganate. Their influence reached from Siberia to the Don and the Black Sea. When the Turkic Kaganate began to fall apart, the Khazars took in the fleeing prince of the Ashin dynasty and drove out the Bulgars. This is how the Khazar-Turks appeared.
For a hundred years, Khazaria was ruled by Turkic khans, but they did not change their way of life: they lived a nomadic life in the steppe and only returned to the adobe houses of Itil in the winter. The Khan supported himself and his army himself, without burdening the Khazars with taxes. The Turks fought the Arabs, taught the Khazars to repel the onslaught of regular troops, since they had the skills of steppe maneuver warfare. Thus, under the military leadership of the Turkuts (650-810), the Khazars successfully repelled the periodic invasions of the Arabs from the south, which united these two peoples, moreover, the Turkuts remained nomads, and the Khazars remained farmers.
When Khazaria accepted the Jews who fled from Persia, and wars with the Arabs led to the liberation of part of the lands of Khazaria, this allowed the refugees to settle there. So gradually Jews who fled from the Roman Empire began to join them, it was thanks to them at the beginning of the 9th century. the small khanate turned into a huge state. The main population of Khazaria at that time could be called “Slav-Khazars”, “Turkic-Khazars” and “Judeo-Khazars”. The Jews who arrived in Khazaria were engaged in trade, for which the Khazar Slavs themselves did not show any ability. In the second half of the 8th century, rabbinic Jews expelled from Byzantium began to arrive among the Jewish refugees from Persia in Khazaria, among whom were also descendants of those expelled from Babylon and Egypt. Since Jewish rabbis were city dwellers, they settled exclusively in cities: Itil, Semender, Belendzher, etc. All these immigrants from the former Roman Empire, Persia and Byzantium are known to us today as Sephardim.
At the beginning, there was no conversion of the Slavic Khazars to Judaism, because The Jewish community lived separately among the Slavic Khazars and Turkic Khazars, but over time some of them accepted Judaism and today they are known to us as Ashkenazis.

By the end of the 8th century. The Judeo-Khazars began to gradually penetrate the power structures of Khazaria, acting using their favorite method - becoming related through their daughters to the Turkic aristocracy. Children of Turkic-Khazars and Jewish women had all the rights of their father and the help of the Jewish community in all matters. And the children of Jews and Khazars became a kind of outcasts (Karaites) and lived on the outskirts of Khazaria - in Taman or Kerch. At the beginning of the 9th century. the influential Jew Obadiah took power into his own hands and laid the foundation for Jewish hegemony in Khazaria, acting through the puppet khan of the Ashin dynasty, whose mother was Jewish. But not all Turkic-Khazars accepted Judaism. Soon a coup took place in the Khazar Kaganate, which resulted in a civil war. The "old" Turkic aristocracy rebelled against the Judeo-Khazar authorities. The rebels attracted the Magyars (ancestors of the Hungarians) to their side, the Jews hired the Pechenegs. Constantine Porphyrogenitus described those events as follows: “When they separated from power and an internecine war broke out, the first government (the Jews) gained the upper hand and some of them (the rebels) were killed, others fled and settled with the Turks (Magyars) in the Pecheneg lands (lower Dnieper), made peace and received the name Kabars."

In the 9th century, the Judeo-Khazar Kagan invited the Varangian squad of Prince Oleg to war with the Muslims of the Southern Caspian region, promising the division of Eastern Europe and assistance in capturing the Kyiv Kaganate. Tired of the constant raids of the Khazars on their lands, where the Slavs were constantly taken into slavery, Oleg took advantage of the situation, captured Kyiv in 882 and refused to fulfill the agreements, and a war began. Around 957, after the baptism of the Kyiv princess Olga in Constantinople, i.e. After gaining the support of Byzantium, the confrontation between Kyiv and Khazaria began. Thanks to the alliance with Byzantium, the Russians were supported by the Pechenegs. In the spring of 965, Svyatoslav's troops descended along the Oka and Volga to the Khazar capital Itil, bypassing the Khazar troops who were waiting for them in the Don steppes. After a short battle the city was taken.
As a result of the campaign 964-965. Svyatoslav excluded the Volga, the middle reaches of the Terek and the middle Don from the sphere of the Jewish community. Svyatoslav returned independence to Kievan Rus. Svyatoslav’s blow to the Jewish community of Khazaria was cruel, but his victory was not final. Returning, he passed Kuban and Crimea, where Khazar fortresses remained. There were also communities in the Kuban, Crimea, Tmutarakan, where Jews under the name Khazars continued to hold dominant positions for another two centuries, but the state of Khazaria ceased to exist forever. The remnants of the Judeo-Khazars settled in Dagestan (Mountain Jews) and Crimea (Karaite Jews). Part of the Slavic Khazars and Turkic-Khazars remained on the Terek and Don, mixed with local related tribes and, according to the old name of the Khazar warriors, they were called “Podon Brodniks,” but it was they who fought against Rus' on the Kalka River.
In 1180, the Brodniks helped the Bulgarians in their war for independence from the Eastern Roman Empire. The Byzantine historian and writer Nikita Choniates (Acominatus), described in his “Chronicle”, dated 1190, the events of that Bulgarian war, and in one phrase comprehensively characterizes the Brodniks: “Those Brodniks, despising death, are a branch of the Russians.” The initial name was borne as “Kozars”, by origin from the Kozar Slavs, from whom the name Khazaria or the Khazar Kaganate received. This is a Slavic warring tribe, part of which did not want to submit to the already Jewish Khazaria, and after its defeat, uniting with their kindred tribes, they subsequently settled along the banks of the Don, where the Tanaitians, Sarmatians, Roxalans, Alans (Yas), Torquay-Berendeys, etc. lived. They received the name Don Cossacks after most of the Siberian army of the Rusins ​​of Tsar Edygei settled there, which also included black hoods left after the battle on the river. Vorskla, in 1399 Edigei is the founder of the dynasty, who led the Nogai Horde. His direct descendants in the male line were the princes Urusov and Yusupov.
So the Brodniki are the undisputed ancestors of the Don Cossacks. They are indicated in the Persian geography of the tenth century (Gudud al Alem) on the Middle Don under the name Bradas and were known there until the 11th century. after which their nickname is replaced in the sources by a common Cossack name.
- Berendei, from the territory of Siberia, like many tribes due to climatic shocks, moved to the Russian Plain. The field, pressed from the east by the Polovtsy (Polovtsy - from the word “polovy”, which means “red”), the Berendeys at the end of the 11th century entered into various alliance agreements with the Eastern Slavs. According to agreements with the Russian princes, they settled on the borders of Ancient Rus' and often served as guards in favor of the Russian state. But after that they were scattered and partly mixed with the population of the Golden Horde, and partly with Christians. They existed as an independent people. From the same region originate the formidable warriors of Siberia - Black Klobuki, which means black hats (papakhas) who will later be called Cherkas.

Black hoods (black hats), Cherkasy (not to be confused with Circassians)
- moved from Siberia to the Russian Plain, from the Berendey kingdom, the last name of the country is Borondai. Their ancestors once inhabited the vast lands of the northern part of Siberia, up to the Arctic Ocean. Their stern disposition terrified their enemies; it was their ancestors who were the people of Gog and Magog, and it was from them that Alexander the Great was defeated in the battle for Siberia. They did not want to see themselves in kinship alliances with other peoples, they always lived separately and did not classify themselves as any people.

For example, the important role of black hoods in the political life of the Kyiv principality is evidenced by the stable expressions repeatedly repeated in chronicles: “the whole Russian land and black hoods.” The Persian historian Rashid ad-din (died in 1318), describing Rus' in 1240, writes: “The princes Batu and his brothers, Kadan, Buri and Buchek set out on a campaign to the country of the Russians and the people of the black caps.”
Subsequently, in order not to separate one from the other, the black hoods began to be called Cherkasy or Cossacks. In the Moscow Chronicle of the late 15th century, under the year 1152, it is explained: “All the Black Klobuks are called Cherkassy.” The Resurrection and Kiev Chronicles also speak about this: “And gather up your squad and go, taking with you Vyacheslav’s entire regiment and all the black hoods, which are called Cherkassy.”
Black hoods, due to their isolation, easily entered the service of both the Slavic and Turkic peoples. Their character and special differences in clothing, especially the headdress, were adopted by the peoples of the Caucasus, whose attire is now considered for some reason only to be Caucasian. But in ancient drawings, engravings and photographs, these clothes, and especially hats, can be seen among the Cossacks of Siberia, the Urals, Amur, Primorye, Kuban, Don, etc. Living together with the peoples of the Caucasus, an exchange of cultures took place and each tribe acquired something from the others, both in cuisine and in clothes and customs. From the Black Klobuks also came the Siberian, Yaitsky, Dnieper, Grebensky, Terek Cossacks, the first mention of the latter dates back to 1380, when free Cossacks living near the Grebenny Mountains blessed and presented the holy icon of the Mother of God (Grebnevskaya) to Grand Duke Dmitry (Donskoy) .

Grebensky, Tersky.
The word ridge is purely Cossack, meaning the highest line of the watershed of two rivers or gullies. In each Don village there are many such watersheds and they are all called ridges. In ancient times there was also a Cossack town of Grebni, mentioned in the chronicle of Archimandrite Anthony of the Donskoy Monastery. But not all combs lived on the Terek; in the old Cossack song, they are mentioned in the Saratov steppes:
As on the glorious steppes it was on Saratov,
Below the city of Saratov,
And higher up was the city of Kamyshin,
Friendly Cossacks gathered, free people,
They, brothers, gathered in a single circle:
like Don, Grebensky and Yaitsky.
Their chieftain is Ermak son Timofeevich...
Later in their origin, they began to add “living near the mountains, i.e. at the ridges.” Officially, the Terets trace their ancestry back to 1577, when the city of Terka was founded, and the first mention of the Cossack army dates back to 1711. It was then that the Cossacks of the Free Community of Grebenskaya formed the Grebensk Cossack Army.

Pay attention to the photograph from 1864, where the Greben people inherited a dagger from the Caucasian peoples. But in essence, this is an improved sword of the Scythians akinak. Akinak is a short (40-60 cm) iron sword used by the Scythians in the second half of the 1st millennium BC. e. In addition to the Scythians, the Akinaki were also used by the tribes of the Persians, Saks, Argypeans, Massagetae and Melanchleni, i.e. proto-Cossacks.
The Caucasian dagger is part of national symbols. This is a sign that a man is ready to defend his personal honor, the honor of his family and the honor of his people. He never parted with it. For centuries, the dagger has been used as a means of attack, defense and as a cutlery. The Caucasian dagger "Kama" is most widespread among the daggers of other peoples, Cossacks, Turks, Georgians, etc. The attribute of gazyrs on the chest appeared with the advent of the first firearm with a powder charge. This detail was first added to the clothing of a Turkic warrior, it was among the Mamelukes of Egypt, the Cossacks, but it was already established as an adornment among the peoples of the Caucasus.

The origin of the hat is interesting. Chechens adopted Islam during the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad. A large Chechen delegation that visited the prophet in Mecca was personally initiated into the essence of Islam by the prophet, after which in Mecca the envoys of the Chechen people accepted Islam. Muhamed gave them karakul for the journey to make shoes. But on the way back, the Chechen delegation, considering that it was not appropriate to wear the prophet’s gift on their feet, sewed papakhas, and now, to this day, this is the main national headdress (Chechen papakha). Upon the return of the delegation to Chechnya, without any coercion, the Chechens accepted Islam, realizing that Islam is not only “Mohammedanism,” which originated from the Prophet Muhammad, but this original faith of monotheism, which made a spiritual revolution in the minds of people and laid a clear line between pagan savagery and true educated faith.

It was the Caucasians, who adopted military attributes from different peoples, adding their own, such as a burka, a hat, etc., who improved this style of military attire and secured it for themselves, which no one doubts today. But let's look at what military vestments they used to wear in the Caucasus.

In the middle photo above we see Kurds dressed according to the Circassian pattern, i.e. this attribute of military attire is already attached to the Circassians and will continue to be attached to them in the future. But in the background we see a Turk, the only thing he doesn’t have is gazyrs, that’s what makes him different. When the Ottoman Empire waged war in the Caucasus, the peoples of the Caucasus adopted some military attributes from them, as well as from the Greben Cossacks. In this mixture of cultural exchange and war, the universally recognizable Circassian woman and papakha appeared. The Ottoman Turks seriously influenced the historical course of events in the Caucasus, so some photographs are replete with the presence of Turks with Caucasians. But if not for Russia, many peoples of the Caucasus would have disappeared or been assimilated, such as the Chechens who left with the Turks for their territory. Or take the Georgians, who asked for protection from the Turks from Russia.

As we see, in the past, the main part of the peoples of the Caucasus did not have their recognizable today attributes, “black caps”, they will appear later, but the combs have them, as the heirs of the “black caps” (hoods). We can cite as an example the origins of some Caucasian peoples.
Lezgins, ancient Alan-Lezgi, the most numerous and brave people in the entire Caucasus. They speak a light, sonorous language of Aryan root, but thanks to influence, starting from the 8th century. Arab culture, which gave them their writing and religion, as well as pressure from neighboring Turkic-Tatar tribes, have lost much of their original nationality and now represent a striking, difficult-to-research mixture with Arabs, Avars, Kumyks, Tarks, Jews and others.
Neighbors of the Lezgins, to the west, along the northern slope of the Caucasus Range, live the Chechens, who received their name from the Russians, actually from their large village “Chachan” or “Chechen”. The Chechens themselves call their nationality Nakhchi or Nakhchoo, which means people from the country of Nakh or Noach, i.e. Noah. According to folk tales, they came around the 4th century. to their present residence, through Abkhazia, from the area of ​​Nakhchi-Van, from the foot of Ararat (Erivan province) and pressed by Kabardians, they took refuge in the mountains, along the upper reaches of the Aksai, the right tributary of the Terek, where even now there is still the old village of Aksai, in Greater Chechnya , built once, according to the legend of the inhabitants of the village of Gerzel, by Aksai Khan. The ancient Armenians were the first to connect the ethnonym "Nokhchi", the modern self-name of the Chechens, with the name of the prophet Noah, the literal meaning of which means Noah's people. Georgians, from time immemorial, have called Chechens “Dzurdzuks,” which means “righteous” in Georgian.
According to the philological research of Baron Uslar, the Chechen language has some similarities with Lezgin, but in anthropological terms the Chechens are a mixed people. In the Chechen language there are quite a lot of words with the root “gun”, such as in the names of rivers, mountains, villages and tracts: Guni, Gunoy, Guen, Gunib, Argun, etc. They call the sun Dela-Molkh (Moloch). Mother of the sun - Aza.
As we saw above, many Caucasian tribes of the past do not have the usual Caucasian attributes, but all the Cossacks of Russia have them, from the Don to the Urals, from Siberia to Primorye.

And here below, there is already a discrepancy in military uniforms. Their historical roots began to be forgotten, and military attributes were copied from the Caucasian peoples.

After repeated renamings, mergers and divisions, the Grebensky Cossacks, according to the order of the Minister of War N 256 (dated November 19, 1860) “... were ordered: to remove the 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th brigades of the Caucasian Linear Cossack troops, in full force, to form the “Terek Cossack Army”, incorporating into its composition the horse-artillery batteries of the Caucasian Linear Cossack Army No. 15 and the reserve... "
In Kievan Rus, subsequently, the semi-sedentary and sedentary part of the Black Klobuks remained in Porosye and over time were assimilated by the local Slavic population, taking part in the ethnogenesis of the Ukrainians. Their free Zaporozhye Sich ceased to exist in August 1775, when the Sich and the very name “Zaporozhye Cossacks” in Russia, according to Western plans, were destroyed. And only in 1783 Potemkin again gathered the surviving Cossacks into the sovereign service. The newly formed Cossack teams of the Zaporozhian Cossacks receive the name “Kosh of the faithful Zaporozhye Cossacks” and settle on the territory of the Odessa district. Soon after this (after repeated requests from the Cossacks and for their faithful service), according to the personal decree of the Empress (dated January 14, 1788), they were transferred to Kuban - to Taman. Since then, the Cossacks have been called Kuban.

In general terms, the Siberian army of the Black Cowls had a huge influence on the Cossacks throughout Russia; they were in many Cossack associations and were an example of the free and indestructible Cossack spirit.
The name “Cossack” itself dates back to the times of the Great Turan, when the Scythian peoples of Kos-saka or Ka-saka lived. For more than twenty centuries, this name has changed little; initially among the Greeks it was written as Kossahi. The geographer Strabo called the military people located in the mountains of Transcaucasia during the life of Christ the Savior by the same name. After 3-4 centuries, back in the ancient era, our name is repeatedly found in Tanaid inscriptions (inscriptions), discovered and studied by V.V. Latyshev. Its Greek script, Kasakos, was preserved until the 10th century, after which Russian chroniclers began to confuse it with the common Caucasian names Kasagov, Kasogov, Kazyag. The original Greek script of Kossahi gives two constituent elements of this name "kos" and "sakhi", two words with a specific Scythian meaning "White Sakhi". But the name of the Scythian tribe Sakhi is equivalent to their own Saka, and therefore the following Greek style “Kasakos” can be interpreted as a variant of the previous one, closer to the modern one. The change of the prefix “kos” to “kas” is obviously due to purely sound (phonetic) reasons, peculiarities of pronunciation and peculiarities of auditory sensations among different peoples. This difference continues to this day (Kazak, Kozak). Kossaka, in addition to the meaning of White Saki (Sakhi), has, as mentioned above, another Scythian-Iranian meaning - “White deer”. Remember the animal style of Scythian jewelry, tattoos on the mummy of the Altai princess, most likely deer and deer buckles - these are attributes of the Scythian military class.

And the territorial name of this word was preserved in Sakha Yakutia (Yakuts in ancient times were called Yakolts) and SakhaLin. In the Russian people, this word is associated with the image of branched antlers, like elk, colloquially - elk deer, elk. So, we again returned to the ancient symbol of the Scythian warriors - the deer, which is reflected in the seal and coat of arms of the Cossacks of the Don Army. We should be grateful to them for preserving this ancient symbol of the warriors of the Rus and Ruthenians, who come from the Scythians.
Well, in Russia, Cossacks were also called Azov, Astrakhan, Danube and Transdanubian, Bug, Black Sea, Slobodsk, Transbaikal, Khopyor, Amur, Orenburg, Yaik - Ural, Budzhak, Yenisei, Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk, Yakut, Ussuri, Semirechensk, Daur, Onon , Nerchen, Evenk, Albazin, Buryat, Siberian, you can’t cover everyone.
So, no matter what all these warriors are called, they are still the same Cossacks living in different parts of their country.

P.S.
There are the most important circumstances in our history that are hushed up by hook or by crook. Those who throughout our historical past have constantly played dirty tricks on us are afraid of publicity, afraid of being recognized. That’s why they hide behind false historical layers. These dreamers came up with their own story for us in order to hide their dark deeds. For example, why did the Battle of Kulikovo take place in 1380 and who fought there?
- Dmitry Donskoy, Prince of Moscow and Grand Duke of Vladimir, led the Volga and Trans-Ural Cossacks (Siberians), who are called Tatars in Russian chronicles. The Russian army consisted of princely horse and foot squads, as well as militia. The cavalry was formed from baptized Tatars, defected Lithuanians and Russians trained in Tatar equestrian combat.
- In Mamaev’s army there were Ryazan, Western Russian, Polish, Crimean and Genoese troops that fell under the influence of the West. Mamai's ally was the Lithuanian prince Jagiello, Dmitry's ally is considered to be Khan Tokhtamysh with an army of Siberian Tatars (Cossacks).
The Genoese financed the Cossack ataman Mamai, and promised the troops manna from heaven, i.e. “Western values,” well, nothing changes in this world. The Cossack ataman Dmitry Donskoy won. Mamai fled to Cafa and there, as unnecessary, was killed by the Genoese. So, the Battle of Kulikovo is a battle of Muscovites, Volga and Siberian Cossacks led by Dmitry Donskoy with an army of Genoese, Polish and Lithuanian Cossacks led by Mamai.
Of course, later the whole story of the battle was presented as a battle between the Slavs and foreign (Asian) invaders. Apparently, later, with tendentious editing, the original word “Cossacks” was replaced everywhere in the chronicles with “Tatars” in order to hide those who so unsuccessfully proposed “Western values”.
In fact, the Battle of Kulikovo was just an episode of a civil war that broke out, in which Cossack hordes of one state fought among themselves. But they sowed the seeds of discord, as the satirist Zadornov says - “traders”. It is they who imagine that they are chosen and exceptional, it is they who dream of world domination, and hence all our troubles.

These "traders" persuaded Genghis Khan to fight against his own people. The Pope and the French King Louis the Saint sent a thousand envoys, diplomatic agents, instructors and engineers, as well as the best European commanders, especially the Templars (knightly order), to Genghis Khan.
They saw that no one else was suitable for the defeat of both Palestinian Muslims and Orthodox Eastern Christians, Greeks, Russians, Bulgarians, etc., who once destroyed ancient Rome, and then Latin Byzantium. At the same time, to be sure and strengthen the blow, the popes began to arm the Swedish ruler of the throne, Birger, the Teutons, the Swordsmen and Lithuania against the Russians.
Under the guise of scientists and capital, they took administrative positions in the Uyghur kingdom, Bactria, and Sogdiana.
These rich scribes were the authors of the laws of Genghis Khan - "Yasu", in which all sects of Christians were shown great favor and tolerance, unusual for Asia, the popes and the Europe of that time. In these laws, under the influence of the popes, the Jesuits themselves, permission was expressed, with various benefits, to convert from Orthodoxy to Catholicism, which many of the Armenians took advantage of at that time, who later formed the Armenian Catholic Church.

To cover up the papal participation in this enterprise and to please the Asians, the main official roles and places were given to the best native commanders and relatives of Genghis Khan, and almost 3/4 of the secondary leaders and officials consisted mainly of Asian sectarians of Christians and Catholics. This is where Genghis Khan’s invasion came from, but the “traders” did not take into account his appetite, and cleaned up the pages of history for us, preparing the next meanness. All this is very similar to the “invasion of Hitler”, they themselves brought him to power and got it in the teeth from him, so that they had to take the goal of the “USSR” as an ally and delay our colonization. By the way, not so long ago, during the Opium War in China, these “traders” tried to repeat the “Genghis Khan-2” scenario against Russia, for a long time they occupied China with the help of Jesuits, missionaries, etc., but later, as they say: "Thank you Comrade Stalin for our happy childhood."
Have you wondered why Cossacks of various stripes fought both for Russia and against it? For example, some of our historians are perplexed why the governor of the Brodniks, Ploskin, who, according to our chronicle, stood with 30 thousand troops on the river. Kalka (1223), did not help the Russian princes in the battle with the Tatars. He even clearly sided with the latter, persuading the Kyiv prince Mstislav Romanovich to surrender, and then tied him up with his two sons-in-law and handed him over to the Tatars, where he was killed. As in 1917, here too there was a protracted civil war. Peoples related to each other were pitted against each other, nothing changes, the same principles of our enemies remain, “divide and conquer.” And so that we don’t learn lessons from this, the pages of history are being replaced.
But if the plans of the “traders” of 1917 were buried by Stalin, then the events described above were buried by Batu Khan. And of course, both of them were smeared with the indelible mud of historical lies, these are their methods.

13 years after the Battle of Kalka, the “Mongols” led by Khan Batu, or Batu, the grandson of Genghis Khan, from beyond the Urals, i.e. from the territory of Siberia moved to Russia. Batu had up to 600 thousand troops, consisting of many, more than 20, peoples of Asia and Siberia. In 1238, the Tatars took the capital of the Volga Bulgarians, then Ryazan, Suzdal, Rostov, Yaroslavl and many other cities; defeated the Russians at the river. City, took Moscow, Tver and went to Novgorod, where at the same time the Swedes and the Baltic crusaders were marching. It would be an interesting battle, the crusaders with Batu would storm Novgorod. But mud got in the way. In 1240, Batu took Kyiv, his goal was Hungary, where the old enemy of the Genghisids, the Polovtsian Khan Kotyan, had fled. Poland and Krakow fell first. In 1241, the army of Prince Henry and the Templars was defeated near Legica. Then Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Hungary fell, Batu reached the Adriatic and took Zagreb. Europe was helpless; it was saved by the fact that Khan Udegey died and Batu turned back. Europe received a full blow in the teeth for its crusaders, Templars, bloody baptisms, and order reigned in Rus', the laurels for this remained with Alexander Nevsky, Batu’s brother-in-law.
But this mess began with the baptist of Rus', with Prince Vladimir. When he seized power in Kyiv, Kievan Rus began to increasingly unite with the Christian system of the West. Here we should note interesting episodes from the life of the baptist of Rus', Vladimir Svyatoslavich, including the brutal murder of his brother, the destruction of not only Christian churches, the rape of the prince’s daughter Ragneda in front of her parents, a harem of hundreds of concubines, a war against her son, etc. Already under Vladimir Monomakh, Kievan Rus represented the left flank of the Christian crusader invasion of the East. After Monomakh, Rus' broke up into three systems - Kyiv, Darkness-Tarakan, Vladimir-Suzdal Rus'. When the Christianization of the Western Slavs began, the Eastern Slavs considered this a betrayal and turned to the Siberian rulers for help. Seeing the threat of a crusader invasion and the future enslavement of the Slavs, many tribes united into a union on the territory of Siberia, and this is how a state formation appeared - Great Tartary, which stretched from the Urals to Transbaikalia. Yaroslav Vsevolodovich was the first to call on Tartaria for help, for which he suffered. But thanks to Batu, who created the Golden Horde, the crusaders were already afraid of such power. But still, quietly, the “traders” destroyed Tartary.

Why everything happened this way, the question here is solved very simply. The conquest of Russia was led by papal agents, Jesuits, missionaries and other evil spirits, who promised all sorts of benefits and benefits to the local residents, and especially to those who helped them. In addition, in the hordes of the so-called “Mongol-Tatars” there were many Christians from Central Asia, who enjoyed many privileges and freedom of religion; Western missionaries, based on Christianity, spawned various kinds of religious movements there, such as Nestorianism.

Here it becomes clear where in the West there are so many ancient maps of the territories of Russia and especially Siberia. It becomes clear why the state formation on the territory of Siberia, which was called Great Tartaria, is kept silent. On early maps Tartaria is indivisible, on later maps it is fragmented, and since 1775, under the guise of Pugachevism, it has ceased to exist. So, with the collapse of the Roman Empire, the Vatican took its place and, continuing the traditions of Rome, organized new wars for its dominance. So the Byzantine Empire fell, and its successor Russia became the main target for Papal Rome, i.e. Now the Western world is "hucksters". For their insidious purposes, the Cossacks were like a bone in the throat. How many wars, upheavals, how much grief befell all our peoples, but the main historical time, known to us since ancient times, the Cossacks kicked our enemies in the teeth. Closer to our times, they still managed to break the dominance of the Cossacks and after the well-known events of 1917, the Cossacks were dealt a crushing blow, but it took them many centuries.

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“We must give justice to the Cossacks, they brought success to Russia in this campaign. Cossacks are the best light troops among all existing ones. If I had them in my army, I would go through the whole world with them."

Napoleon Bonaparte

According to the official version of history, the Cossacks took part in ALL wars of the Russian state from the 16th to the 20th centuries. But who are the Cossacks and where did they come from? From encyclopedias you can learn that the Cossacks are “...initially free people, from serfs, serfs, and townspeople who fled from feudal oppression and settled on the outskirts of the Russian state.”

According to this generally accepted version, the Cossacks finally took shape in the 16th and 17th centuries. For the defense of the borders of the state, the Cossacks received a salary from the treasury, were given land for life, were exempt from taxes, and had self-government from elected atamans.

Despite the vigorous activity, the Cossacks are mentioned in passing in school and even university history courses. The beginning of the history of the Cossacks, even in various encyclopedias, dates back to the 14th, 15th, or 16th centuries.

The two-month siege of Moscow by the Cossacks of Ivan Bolotnikov takes place as spontaneous uprisings of peasants on the outskirts of Russia. The campaign against Moscow to restore the rightful heir to the throne, Tsarevich Dmitry, is called the “adventure of False Dmitry” and the Polish intervention.

1. Territories

Let's see where the peasants were hiding, who did not want to bend their backs to the landowners. For two centuries, hundreds of thousands of fugitive peasants have been hiding on the largest, central rivers of Russia - essentially on trade and political highways. These are the DNEPR, DON, VOLGA, URAL and TEREK. It's hard to think of a worse place to hide.

It is here that trade and other caravans constantly pass, and it was along these rivers that almost all the major military campaigns of that time were directed (Ivan the Terrible, Yuryev, Sheremetev, Nozdrevaty, Rzhev, Adashev, Serebryany, Vishnevetsky, etc.). There are no forests, mountains, or impenetrable swamps in which, for example, the Old Believers sought to hide from Nikon’s reform. All these areas are predominantly steppe, which can be seen for many kilometers around and where the search for fugitives is simplified as much as possible.

Historians claim that all these areas were unpopulated outskirts, unnecessary to anyone, backwaters. But the fugitive peasants get it from the most fertile places in terms of climate and geography. A surprisingly even warm climate, chernozem soils that produce two harvests a year, and an abundance of fresh water. Until now, these areas are called granaries and health resorts.

And for much more modest places on earth, long bloody wars were fought. Common sense dictates that such territories were given only to the strongest and luckiest, and not to runaway peasants and slaves.

There is one more oddity regarding the main Russian river. How do people in Russia treat the Volga? “Mother Volga”, “Dear Mother, Russian River”. But according to traditional history textbooks, the Volga should have remained in people's memory as a kind of generator of troubles. A kind of tartars, from where hordes of nomads constantly come. From here the Kipchaks and Polovtsians came, and the foolish Khazars carried out devastating raids. Later, wild Mongols came from beyond the Volga. This is where they located their barns. Here, on the Volga, for hundreds of years, with fear in their hearts, Russian princes went to bow to the khans, knowingly leaving posthumous wills. Later, gangs and gangs of various chieftains robbed here.

2. Taxes

Fugitive peasants are exempt from taxes. Moreover, for the fact that they defended the borders of Russia from numerous enemies. Both statements contradict common sense - why would fugitives defend the borders of a state from whose yoke they had just escaped? And where does the state have such warmth, even tax benefits, towards fugitives, who, logically, need to be returned, and not asked to pay taxes and sleep peacefully.

3. Activity

Literally from the first days of its existence, the Cossacks showed fantastic activity. Scattered groups of farmers and barefoot farmers who fled from different places in Russia, without any means of communication and, presumably, weapons, instantly organized themselves. And they are organized not into a working peasant community, but into a powerful army. Moreover, the army is not defensive, but clearly offensive.

Instead of sitting quietly, cultivating the garden and enjoying freedom, as it would seem that a runaway peasant should do, the Cossacks begin MILITARY CAMPAIGNS in all directions. And they are not going against some neighboring village, but attacking the strongest states of their time. The theaters of action of the Cossack troops know no limits. They attack Turkey, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Persia. Organize trips to Siberia. Their FLEET floats freely up and down the Don, Volga, Dnieper and Caspian Sea.

Fugitive peasants on the outskirts of the state are keenly interested in political and palace affairs in the capital. Throughout the 17th century, they always wanted to correct something in the structure of the state. They are constantly rushing to Moscow with fanaticism. Moreover, they are interested in only one question. They want to install the “right” king. Where do they get their weapons from, and in what shipyards do they build their fleet? It was not the tsarist government that supplied its fugitive slaves.

The idea of ​​historians that the Cossacks did not pay taxes for their service to Russia does not stand up to criticism, if only because it was Russia that suffered the most from the Cossacks in the 16th–18th centuries. At the same time, COSSACK WARS led by Khlopok, Bolotnikov, Razin, Pugachev are not called peasant wars.

Following this logic, historians should describe historical battles as follows: “a strike from the flank of Ataman Skoropadsky’s fugitive slaves put the Swedish troops to flight” or “a deep flanking maneuver with a passage to the rear of Ataman Platov’s fugitive slaves stopped the advance of the French troops.”

Then historians say that there is a second definition of Cossacks up to 1920 - the military class in Rus'. But when exactly did the runaway peasants turn into the MILITARY CLASS? After all, the military class is not just professional, but also hereditary military.

4. Cossacks-Tatars and Cossacks-Basurmans

Whenever Cossacks (or let’s say: residents of the territories designated above) fight on the side of Russia or on a side beneficial to it, they are called Cossacks. As soon as they defeat the Romanov troops or take Russian cities, they are called either Tatars, or infidels, or rebel peasants.

The 17th century Cossack wars against the Romanovs are called peasant revolts.

Cossack attacks on Moscow, Serpukhov, Kaluga in the 15th and 16th centuries are called Tatar raids.

These same “Tatars”, fighting on the side beneficial for Russia against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, against the Turks or Swedes, are already called Cossacks.

While the lower reaches of the Volga are at war with Moscow, the non-Russian and Basurman Astrakhan Khanate is located there; as soon as peace is concluded in 1556 and this Khanate joins Russia, the Astrakhan Cossack army magically appears here.

In place of the Great Horde, the inscription Don Cossacks appears. In the place of the Edisan Horde - the Zaporozhye Sich, in the place of the Nogai Horde - the Nogai and Yaik Cossacks.

In general, Tatars and Cossacks have common habitats, identical weapons, clothing, methods of warfare, and the names of the Cossack hordes.

The Tatars take an active part in the liberation war of the Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples against the Polish gentry, i.e. against Catholics in 1648–1654. The troops of Bohdan Khmelnitsky consist entirely of Cossack and Tatar cavalry. No one can really explain how Tatars and Cossacks coexisted on the same land at the same time.

5. Origin of the word “Cossack”

The word Cossack or Cossack is believed to be a Turkic word meaning “daring man.” Isn’t it strange that Orthodox Russian peasants flee from the landowners and call themselves the Turkic word “daring man”? Why not in Chinese or Finnish? At the same time, these fugitive peasants of the 15th–16th centuries appear before us as real polyglots. They called themselves with a Turkic word, and they called their military leaders with the proud Anglo-Saxon word headman - leader, leader. This is how the origin of the word ATAMAN is determined in the encyclopedia.

6. Famous Cossacks

What is surprising is not that the greatest commander of ancient Rus', Svyatoslav Igorevich (who, according to traditional history, lived in the 10th century) was a Cossack, but that the fugitive peasants of the 16th century, in some unknown way, learned and decided to adopt and preserve the old Russian military traditions of the 600s. a year (!) ago. In Svyatoslav's appearance, THREE UNIQUE features of the appearance of the Zaporozhye Cossacks are described - a hanging mustache with a shaved beard, a forelock and one earring in the ear.

In direct text, the old COSSACK is called the hero Ilya Muromets in Russian epics, which, according to the historians themselves, date back to the 11th–12th centuries! Although, according to generally accepted chronology, the emergence of the Cossacks was still half a millennium away.

7. Alternative version

The Cossacks are an ancient military class. There was no degeneration of runaway slaves into warriors. These territories were inherited from their ancestors and belonged to them for a long time and by right.

They lived where it was more convenient and better for them (along large rivers, in warm and populated areas). They never hid from anyone. Therefore, military campaigns of government troops along the Dnieper, Volga, Don, etc. did not encounter settlements of escaped slaves. These “escaped slaves” were initially the country’s regular army, specially positioned so as to gather all the kurens (small horse garrisons) in a pre-agreed place within a few days.

The army never pays taxes. The Cossacks themselves lived off taxes and collected these taxes themselves.

The duties of the army, essentially a regular army, include protection from external enemies of the state.

The army also takes an active political position during turbulent changes in the state, with the change of royal dynasties. The army is obliged to take a side and take part in hostilities; runaway peasants are not capable of this.

There is no logic in the fact that runaway serfs, magically turned into hereditary military men and receiving salaries, begin to go in whole regiments either to the hostile Poles, or to the hated Turks, or even go on a march against Moscow, i.e., against their benefactors .

However, if we assume that previously united territories without a central government begin to divide along religious and national lines, then everything falls into place.

The state, which the army had served faithfully from time immemorial, ceased to exist. A recent historical analogue can be considered the division of a single Soviet Army into the armies of separate states, and the situation in Ukraine today.

In this version, the wars of the western and southern Cossacks, called the Polish-Turkish wars, become logical.

Or the wars of the eastern Cossacks with the southern ones, called the campaigns of the Don Cossacks in Turkey and Persia.

The campaign of the Western Cossacks against Moscow is now called the Polish intervention and a series of Russian-Polish wars of 1632–1667. It becomes clear why many Russian cities not only surrendered without a fight, but joyfully welcomed the arrival of “foreign invaders.” As soon as it became clear that the Western Cossacks were still not able to complete the job, take Moscow and were ready to sign peace with the Romanovs, the Eastern Cossacks set out on a campaign under the leadership of Stepan Timofeevich Razin. This is now called the Peasants' War of 1667–1671. After Razin's defeat, the third part of the former imperial army - Turkey - entered the war. The first Russian-Turkish war of 1676–1681 began.

As a result of these wars, the territories of the western and eastern Cossacks were divided along the Dnieper. The left bank later proclaimed reunification with Russia, but the right bank remained the enemy of the Romanovs for many years and decades.

The Cossacks are inextricably linked with the history of Russia, because the Cossacks glorified both themselves and Russia forever in glorious battles.

In ancient times, states on our land did not touch their borders the way they do now. Between them there remained gigantic spaces in which no one lived - it was either impossible due to the lack of living conditions (no water, land for crops, you can’t hunt if there is little game), or simply dangerous due to raids by nomadic steppe dwellers. It was in such places that the Cossacks were born - on the outskirts of the Russian principalities, on the border with the Great Steppe. In such places people gathered who were not afraid of a sudden raid by the steppe inhabitants, who knew how to both survive and fight without outside help.

The first mentions of Cossack detachments date back to Kievan Rus; for example, Ilya Muromets was called the “old Cossack”. There are references to the participation of Cossack detachments in the Battle of Kulikovo under the command of governor Dmitry Bobrok. The exact origin of the Cossacks is unknown; there are many theories. It is believed that the Cossacks originated in the 14th century in the uninhabited steppe expanses between Muscovite Russia, Lithuania, Poland and the Tatar khanates. Its formation, which began after the collapse of the Golden Horde, took place in constant struggle with numerous enemies far from developed cultural centers. There are no reliable written sources preserved about the first pages of Cossack history. Many researchers tried to discover the origins of the Cossacks in the national roots of the ancestors of the Cossacks among a variety of peoples (Scythians, Cumans, Khazars, Alans, Kyrgyz, Tatars, Mountain Circassians, Kasogs, Brodniks, Black Klobuks, Torks, etc.) or considered the original Cossack military community as a result of genetic connections of several tribes with the Slavs who came to the Black Sea region, and this process was counted from the beginning of the new era. Other historians, on the contrary, proved the Russianness of the Cossacks, emphasizing the constant presence of the Slavs in the regions that became the cradle of the Cossacks. The original concept was put forward by the emigrant historian A. A. Gordeev, who believed that the ancestors of the Cossacks were the Russian population of the Golden Horde, settled by the Tatar-Mongols in the future Cossack territories.

In general, the Cossacks can be considered as an ethnic, social and historical community that unites all Cossacks, primarily Russians, as well as Ukrainians, Kalmyks, Buryats, Bashkirs, Tatars, Evenks, Ossetians, etc., as separate subethnic groups of their peoples, into a single whole. Until 1917, Russian legislation considered the Cossacks as a special military class that had privileges for performing compulsory service. The Cossacks were also defined as a separate ethnic group, an independent nationality (the fourth branch of the Eastern Slavs) or even as a special nation of mixed Turkic-Slavic origin. The latest version was intensively developed in the 20th century by Cossack emigrant historians. The long-dominant official point of view that Cossack communities arose as a result of the flight of Russian peasants from serfdom (as well as the view of the Cossacks as a special class) were subjected to reasoned criticism in the 20th century. But the theory of autochthonous (local) origin also has a weak evidence base and is not confirmed by serious sources. The question of the origin of the Cossacks still remains open.

There is no unanimity among scientists on the question of the origin of the word “Cossack” (“Kozak” in Ukrainian). Attempts were made to derive this word from the name of the peoples who once lived near the Dnieper and Don (Kasogi, Kh(k)azars), from the self-name of modern Kyrgyz people - Kaysaks. There were other etymological versions: from the Turkish “kaz” (i.e. goose), from the Mongolian “ko” (armor, protection) and “zakh” (frontier). Most experts agree that the word “Cossacks” came from the east and has Turkic roots. In Russian, this word, first mentioned in Russian chronicles in 1444, originally meant homeless and free soldiers who entered service to fulfill military obligations.

Representatives of various nationalities took part in the formation of the Cossacks, but the Slavs predominated. From an ethnographic point of view, the first Cossacks were divided according to their place of origin into Ukrainian and Russian. Among both, free and service Cossacks can be distinguished. In Ukraine, the free Cossacks were represented by the Zaporozhye Sich (lasted until 1775), and the service Cossacks were represented by “registered” Cossacks who received a salary for their service in the Polish-Lithuanian state. Russian service Cossacks (city, regimental and guard) were used to protect abatis and cities, receiving a salary and land for life in return. Although they were equated “to service people according to the apparatus” (streltsy, gunners), unlike them they had a stanitsa organization and an elected system of military administration. In this form they existed until the beginning of the 18th century. The first community of Russian free Cossacks arose on the Don, and then on the Yaik, Terek and Volga rivers. In contrast to the service Cossacks, the centers of emergence of the free Cossacks were the coasts of large rivers (Dnieper, Don, Yaik, Terek) and steppe expanses, which left a noticeable imprint on the Cossacks and determined their way of life.

Each large territorial community, as a form of military-political unification of independent Cossack settlements, was called an Army. The main economic occupations of the free Cossacks were hunting, fishing, and animal husbandry. For example, in the Don Army, until the beginning of the 18th century, arable farming was prohibited under penalty of death. As the Cossacks themselves believed, they lived “from grass and water.” War played a huge role in the life of Cossack communities: they were in constant military confrontation with hostile and warlike nomadic neighbors, so one of the most important sources of livelihood for them was military booty (as a result of campaigns “for zipuns and yasir” in the Crimea, Turkey, Persia , to the Caucasus). River and sea trips on plows, as well as horse raids, were carried out. Often several Cossack units united and carried out joint land and sea operations, everything captured became common property - duvan.

Diplomatic relations with the Russian state were maintained by sending winter and light villages (embassies) to Moscow with an appointed ataman. Moscow and the Cossack Troops were allies. The Cossack Troops were interested in receiving monetary and military assistance from the Russian Tsar. Cossack territories played an important role as a buffer on the southern and eastern borders of the Russian state, protecting it from attacks by the steppe hordes. Cossacks also took part in many wars on the side of Russia against neighboring states. To successfully perform these important functions, the practice of the Moscow tsars included annual sendings of gifts, cash salaries, weapons and ammunition, as well as bread to individual Troops, since the Cossacks did not produce it. All relations between the Cossacks and the Tsar were conducted through the Ambassadorial Prikaz, i.e., as with a foreign state. It was often beneficial for the Russian authorities to present the free Cossack communities as completely independent of Moscow. On the other hand, the Moscow state was dissatisfied with the Cossack communities, which constantly attacked Turkish possessions, which often ran counter to Russian foreign policy interests. Often periods of cooling occurred between the allies, and Russia stopped all assistance to the Cossacks. Moscow's dissatisfaction was also caused by the constant departure of citizens to the Cossack regions. Democratic orders (everyone is equal, no authorities, no taxes) became a magnet that attracted more and more enterprising and courageous people from Russian lands. Russia's fears turned out to be far from unfounded - throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, the Cossacks were in the vanguard of powerful anti-government protests, and from its ranks came the leaders of Cossack-peasant uprisings - Stepan Razin, Kondraty Bulavin, Emelyan Pugachev.

So, by the end of the 14th century, two large groups of Cossacks had formed, living in the lower reaches of the Don and Dnieper. They were joined by many East Slavic settlers from the neighboring Moscow and Lithuanian principalities. These southern lands were mostly visited by energetic people who lacked adventure; later, fugitive peasants began to flock there; there is a version that the Turkic peoples also participated in the creation of Cossack detachments. Many Cossack settlements were created and their participation in the wars waged by Ivan the Terrible is already undeniable. The Cossacks distinguished themselves during the conquest of the Kazan and Astrakhan khanates and in the Livonian War. The first Russian statute of stanitsa guard service was drawn up by boyar M.I. Vorotynsky in 1571. According to it, guard duty was carried out by stanitsa (guard) Cossacks or villagers, while city (regimental) Cossacks defended cities. In 1612, together with the Nizhny Novgorod militia, the Don Cossacks liberated Moscow and expelled the Poles from the Russian land. For all these merits, the Russian tsars approved the Cossacks’ right to own the Quiet Don forever and ever.

As mentioned earlier, the Ukrainian Cossacks at that time were divided into the registered ones in the service of Poland and the grassroots ones, who created the Zaporozhye Sich. As a result of political and religious pressure from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Ukrainian Cossacks became the basis of the liberation movement and raised a number of uprisings, the last of which, led by Bohdan Khmelnitsky, achieved its goal - Ukraine was reunited with the Russian kingdom by the Pereyaslav Rada in January 1654. For Russia, the agreement led to the acquisition of part of the lands of Western Rus', which justified the title of the Russian tsars - Sovereign of All Rus'. Muscovite Rus' became a collector of lands with a Slavic Orthodox population.

Both the Dnieper and Don Cossacks at that time were at the forefront of the fight against the Turks and Tatars, who constantly raided Russian lands, ruining crops, driving people into captivity and bleeding our lands. Countless feats were accomplished by the Cossacks, but one of the most striking examples of the heroism of our ancestors is the Sea of ​​Azov - eight thousand Cossacks, having captured Azov - one of the most powerful fortresses and an important junction of communication routes - were able to fight off the two hundred thousand strong Turkish army. Moreover, the Turks were forced to retreat, losing about one hundred thousand soldiers - half of their army! But over time, Crimea was liberated, Turkey was driven out from the shores of the Black Sea far to the south, and the Zaporozhye Sich lost its significance as an advanced outpost, finding itself several hundred kilometers inland on peaceful territory. On August 5, 1775, with the signing of the manifesto “On the destruction of the Zaporozhye Sich and its inclusion in the Novorossiysk province” by the Russian Empress Catherine II, the Sich was finally disbanded. The Zaporozhye Cossacks then split into several parts. The most numerous moved to the Black Sea Cossack Army, which carried out border guards on the shores of the Black Sea; a significant part of the Cossacks were resettled to guard the southern borders of Russia in the Kuban and Azov. The Sultan allowed the five thousand Cossacks who went to Turkey to found the Transdanubian Sich. In 1828, the Transdanubian Cossacks, together with Koshevoy Josip Gladky, went over to the side of Russia and were personally pardoned by Emperor Nicholas I. Throughout the vast territory of Russia, Cossacks began to carry out border service. No wonder Tsar-peacemaker Alexander III once aptly remarked: “The borders of the Russian state lie on the arch of a Cossack saddle...”.

The successes of the Cossack cavalry were explained by the skillful use in battles of ancient tactical techniques that were not regulated by any regulations: lava (enveloping the enemy in a loose formation), an original system of reconnaissance and guard service, etc. These Cossack “turns” inherited from the steppe people turned out to be especially effective and unexpected in clashes with armies European states. In the popular consciousness, the image of the Cossack as a natural mounted warrior has developed. But there also existed Cossack infantry - plastuns - who became the prototype of modern special forces units. It originated on the Black Sea coast, where plastuns performed difficult service in the Black Sea floodplains. Later, Plastun units also operated successfully in the Caucasus. Even their opponents paid tribute to the fearlessness of the plastuns - the best guards of the cordon line in the Caucasus. It was the mountaineers who preserved the story of how the plastuns, besieged at the Lipka post, chose to burn alive - rather than surrender to the Circassians, even who promised them life.

However, the Cossacks are known not only for their military exploits. They played no less a role in the development of new lands and their annexation to the Russian Empire. Over time, the Cossack population moved forward into uninhabited lands, expanding the state boundaries. Cossack troops took an active part in the development of the North Caucasus, Siberia (Ermak's expedition), the Far East and America. In 1645, the Siberian Cossack Vasily Poyarkov sailed along the Amur, entered the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, discovered Northern Sakhalin and returned to Yakutsk. In 1648, the Siberian Cossack Semyon Ivanovich Dezhnev sailed from the Arctic Ocean (the mouth of the Kolyma) to the Pacific Ocean (the mouth of the Anadyr) and opened the strait between Asia and America. In 1697-1699, Cossack Vladimir Vasilyevich Atlasov explored Kamchatka.

“For this reason, a Cossack will be born so that he can be useful to the Tsar in the service,” says an old Cossack proverb. His service under the law of 1875 lasted 20 years, starting at the age of 18: 3 years in the preparatory ranks, 4 in active service, 8 years on benefits and 5 in the reserve. Each one came to duty with his own uniform, equipment, bladed weapons and riding horse. The Cossack community (stanitsa) was responsible for the preparation and performance of military service. The service itself, a special type of self-government and the land use system, as a material basis, were closely interconnected and ultimately ensured the stable existence of the Cossacks as a formidable fighting force. The main owner of the land was the state, which, on behalf of the emperor, allocated to the Cossack army the land conquered by the blood of their ancestors on the basis of collective (community) ownership. The army, leaving some for military reserves, divided the received land between the villages. The village community, on behalf of the army, periodically redistributed land shares (ranging from 10 to 50 dessiatines). For the use of the plot and exemption from taxes, the Cossack was obliged to perform military service. The army also allocated land plots to Cossack nobles (the share depended on the officer rank) as hereditary property, but these plots could not be sold to persons of non-military origin. In the 19th century, the main economic occupation of the Cossacks became agriculture, although different troops had their own characteristics and preferences, for example, the intensive development of fishing as the main industry in the Ural, as well as in the Don and Ussuri Troops, hunting in the Siberian, winemaking and gardening in the Caucasus, Don etc.

For centuries, the Cossacks were a universal branch of the armed forces. They said about the Cossacks that they were born in the saddle. At all times, they were considered excellent riders who had no equal in the art of horse riding. The Donets, Kuban, Terets, and later their brothers in arms, the Urals and Siberians, were the permanent combat vanguard in all the wars in which Russia fought almost without respite for centuries. Military experts assessed the Cossack cavalry as the best light cavalry in the world. The military glory of the Cossacks was strengthened on the battlefields of the Northern and Seven Years' Wars, during the Italian and Swiss campaigns of A. V. Suvorov in 1799. The Cossacks especially distinguished themselves in the Patriotic War of 1812. The memory of the legendary Don commander Ataman Matvey Ivanovich Platov, who led the Cossack regiments from Borodino to Paris, is still alive. Those same regiments about which Napoleon would say with envy: “If I had Cossack cavalry, I would conquer the whole world.” Led by the legendary ataman M.I. Platov, the irregular army became one of the main culprits in the death of the Napoleonic army in Russia in the campaign of 1812, and after the foreign campaigns of the Russian army, according to General A.P. Ermolov, “the Cossacks became the surprise of Europe.” Not a single Russian-Turkish war of the 18th-19th centuries could have happened without Cossack sabers; they took part in the conquest of the Caucasus and the conquest of Central Asia.

Cossacks were not only the most dashing cavalrymen, but also served in reconnaissance, artillery, infantry and even aviation. Thus, the native Kuban Cossack Vyacheslav Tkachev made the first long-distance flight in Russia along the route Kiev - Odessa - Kerch - Taman - Ekaterinodar with a total length of 1,500 miles, despite unfavorable autumn weather and other difficult conditions. On March 10, 1914, he was seconded to the 4th Aviation Company upon its formation, and on the same day, Tkachev was appointed commander of the XX Aviation Detachment, attached to the headquarters of the 4th Army. In the initial period of the war, Tkachev made several very important reconnaissance flights for the Russian command, for which, by Order of the Army of the Southwestern Front dated November 24, 1914, No. 290, he was awarded the Order of the Holy Great Martyr and Victorious George, IV degree (the first among pilots).

On the eve of the First World War, there were 11 Cossack Troops in Russia: Don (1.6 million), Kuban (1.3 million), Terek (260 thousand), Astrakhan (40 thousand), Ural (174 thousand), Orenburg (533 thousand), Siberian (172 thousand), Semirechenskoye (45 thousand), Transbaikal (264 thousand), Amur (50 thousand), Ussuriysk (35 thousand) and two separate Cossack regiments. They occupied 65 million dessiatines of land with a population of 4.4 million people. (2.4% of the Russian population), including 480 thousand service personnel. Among the Cossacks, Russians predominated in national terms (78%), Ukrainians were in second place (17%), Buryats were in third (2%). The majority of Cossacks professed Orthodoxy, there was a large percentage of Old Believers (especially in the Ural, Terek, Don Troops), and national minorities professed Buddhism and Islam. Rus' Cossacks Don

On the very first day of the First World War, the first two regiments of the Kuban Cossacks left the Ekaterinodar station for the front. Eleven Russian Cossack troops fought on the fronts of the First World War - Don, Ural, Terek, Kuban, Orenburg, Astrakhan, Siberian, Transbaikal, Amur, Semirechensk and Ussuri - without knowing cowardice and desertion. Their best qualities were especially clearly demonstrated on the Transcaucasian Front, where 11 Cossack regiments of the third stage were created in the militia alone - from older Cossacks, who could sometimes give a head start to the cadre youth. Thanks to their incredible resilience in the heavy battles of 1914, it was they who prevented the breakthrough of the Turkish troops - far from the worst at that time! - to our Transcaucasia and, together with the arriving Siberian Cossacks, drove them back. After the grandiose victory in the Battle of Sarykamysh, Russia received congratulations from the allied commanders-in-chief, Joffre and French, who highly appreciated the strength of Russian weapons. But the pinnacle of martial art in Transcaucasia was the capture of the mountain fortified area of ​​Erzurum in the winter of 1916, in the assault of which Cossack units played an important role.

More than 300 thousand Cossacks took part on the battlefields of the First World War (164 cavalry regiments, 30 foot battalions, 78 batteries, 175 separate hundreds, 78 fifty, not counting auxiliary and spare parts). The war showed the ineffectiveness of using large masses of cavalry (Cossacks made up 2/3 of the Russian cavalry) in conditions of a continuous front, high density of infantry firepower and increased technical means of defense. The exceptions were small partisan detachments formed from Cossack volunteers, which successfully operated behind enemy lines while carrying out sabotage and reconnaissance missions.

During the Civil War, the Cossacks became the main support of the white movement. But the Cossacks could not fight against their own people the same way they fought against other peoples. Having valiantly expelled the Reds from their native lands, the Cossacks then acted less decisively. Some of them continued the march on Moscow, some returned home, having decided the task was completed, and some were thinking about creating an independent state. All this ultimately ended sadly for them. Basically, their best representatives either died in the war or immigrated; some remained in their homeland, but they were subjected to persecution (relocations, arrests and executions). And only by the mid-30s did the USSR government decide to restore the Cossacks and allowed them to serve in the Red Army, for which they repaid him by valiantly fighting against Nazi Germany in World War II, although it is known that some of the immigrant Cossacks supported or even fought for the Wehrmacht army.

The Cossacks performed very well in the Great Patriotic War. In this most severe and difficult time for the country, the Cossacks forgot past grievances, and, together with the entire Soviet people, rose to defend their Motherland. The 4th Kuban and 5th Don Cossack Volunteer Corps passed with honor until the end of the war, participating in major operations. 9th Plastun Red Banner Krasnodar Division, dozens of rifle and cavalry divisions formed at the beginning of the war from the Cossacks of the Don, Kuban, Terek, Stavropol, Orenburg, Urals, Semirechye, Transbaikalia and the Far East. Guards Cossack formations often performed a very important task - while mechanized formations formed the inner ring of numerous “cauldrons,” Cossacks as part of cavalry-mechanized groups broke into operational space, disrupted the enemy’s communications and created an outer ring of encirclement, preventing the release of enemy troops. In addition to the Cossack units recreated under Stalin, there were many Cossacks among famous people during the Second World War, who fought not in the “branded” Cossack cavalry or Plastun units, but in the entire Soviet army or distinguished themselves in military production. For example: tank ace No. 1, Hero of the Soviet Union D.F. Lavrinenko is a Kuban Cossack, a native of the village of Besstrashnaya; Lieutenant General of the Engineering Troops, Hero of the Soviet Union D.M. Karbyshev is a tribal Ural Cossack, a native of Omsk; Commander of the Northern Fleet Admiral A.A. Golovko is a Terek Cossack, a native of the village of Prokhladnaya; gunsmith designer F.V. Tokarev is a Don Cossack, a native of the village of Yegorlyk Region of the Don Army; Commander of the Bryansk and 2nd Baltic Front, Army General, Hero of the USSR M.M. Popov is a Don Cossack, a native of the village of Ust-Medveditsk Region of the Don Army, commander of the guard squadron, Captain K.I. Nedorumbov - Hero of the Soviet Union and full Knight of St. George, as well as many other Cossacks.

All the wars of our time, which the Russian Federation has had the opportunity to wage, also could not do without the Cossacks. In addition to the conflicts in Transnistria and Abkhazia, the Cossacks took an active part in the Ossetian-Ingush conflict and in the subsequent protection of the administrative border of Ossetia with Chechnya and Ingushetia. During the First Chechen campaign, the Russian Ministry of Defense formed a motorized rifle battalion named after General Ermolov from volunteer Cossacks. Its effectiveness was so high that it frightened the pro-Kremlin Chechens, who saw the appearance of Cossack units as the first step towards the revival of the Terek region. Under their pressure, the battalion was withdrawn from Chechnya and disbanded. During the second campaign, Cossacks staffed the 205th motorized rifle brigade, as well as commandant companies serving in the Shelkovsky, Naursky and Nadterechny regions of Chechnya. In addition, significant masses of Cossacks, having concluded a contract, fought in “regular”, that is, non-Cossack units. More than 90 people from Cossack units received government awards based on the results of military operations; all Cossacks who participated in military operations and accurately fulfilled their duties received Cossack awards. For 13 years now, the Cossacks in the south of Russia have annually held field training camps, within the framework of which command and staff training with unit commanders and officers, classes in fire, tactical, topographical, mine and medical training have been organized. Cossack units, companies and platoons are led by Russian army officers with combat experience who took part in operations in hot spots in the Caucasus, Afghanistan and other regions. And Cossack horse patrols became reliable assistants to Russian border guards and police.

The very cautious attitude of the Soviet authorities towards the Cossacks (which resulted in the oblivion of their history and culture) gave birth to the modern Cossack movement. Initially (in 1988-1989) it arose as a historical and cultural movement for the revival of the Cossacks (according to some estimates, about 5 million people). By 1990, the movement, having gone beyond cultural and ethnographic boundaries, began to become politicized. The intensive creation of Cossack organizations and unions began, both in places of former compact residence and in large cities, where a large number of descendants escaping political repression settled during the Soviet period. The massive scale of the movement, as well as the participation of paramilitary Cossack detachments in conflicts in Yugoslavia, Transnistria, Ossetia, Abkhazia, and Chechnya, forced government structures and local authorities to pay attention to the problems of the Cossacks. The further growth of the Cossack movement was facilitated by the resolution of the Supreme Council of the Russian Federation “On the rehabilitation of the Cossacks” of June 16, 1992 and a number of laws. Under the President of Russia, the Main Directorate of Cossack Troops was created, and a number of measures to create regular Cossack units were taken by the power ministries (Ministry of Internal Affairs, Border Troops, Ministry of Defense).

Cossacks... A completely special social stratum, estate, class. Its own, as experts would put it, subculture: way of dressing, speaking, behaving. Peculiar songs. A heightened concept of honor and dignity. Pride in one's own identity. Courage and daring in the most terrible battle. For some time now, the history of Russia has been unimaginable without the Cossacks. But the current “heirs” are, for the most part, “mummers”, impostors. Unfortunately, the Bolsheviks tried very hard to uproot the real Cossacks during the civil war. Those who were not destroyed rotted in prisons and camps. Alas, what was destroyed cannot be returned. To honor traditions and not become Ivans, not remembering kinship...

History of the Don Cossacks

Don Cossacks Oddly enough, even the exact date of birth of the Don Cossacks is known. It became January 3, 1570. Ivan the Terrible, having defeated the Tatar khanates, essentially provided the Cossacks with every opportunity to settle in new territories, settle and take root. The Cossacks were proud of their freedom, although they took an oath of allegiance to one or another king. The kings, in turn, were in no hurry to completely enslave this dashing gang.

During the Time of Troubles, the Cossacks turned out to be very active and active. However, they often took the side of one or another impostor, and did not at all stand guard over statehood and the law. One of the famous Cossack atamans, Ivan Zarutsky, even himself was not averse to reigning in Moscow. In the 17th century, Cossacks actively explored the Black and Azov Seas.

In a sense, they became sea pirates, corsairs, terrifying merchants and merchants. The Cossacks often found themselves next to the Cossacks. Peter the Great officially included the Cossacks into the Russian Empire, obliged them to serve as sovereigns, and abolished the election of atamans. The Cossacks began to take an active part in all the wars waged by Russia, in particular with Sweden and Prussia, as well as in the First World War.

Many of the Donets did not accept the Bolsheviks and fought against them, and then went into exile. Well-known figures of the Cossack movement - P.N. Krasnov and A.G. Shkuro - actively collaborated with the Nazis during the Second World War. During the era of Gorbachev's perestroika, they started talking about the revival of the Don Cossacks. However, on this wave there was a lot of muddy foam, following fashion, and outright speculation. To date, almost none of the so-called. Don Cossacks and especially atamans by origin and rank are not such.

History of the Kuban Cossacks

Kuban Cossack The emergence of the Kuban Cossacks dates back to a later time than the Don Cossacks - only to the second half of the 19th century. The location of the Kuban residents was the North Caucasus, Krasnodar and Stavropol territories, Rostov region, Adygea and Karachay-Cherkessia. The center was the city of Ekaterinodar. Seniority belonged to the Koshe and Kuren atamans. Later, the supreme atamans began to be appointed personally by one or another Russian emperor.

Historically, after Catherine II disbanded the Zaporozhye Sich, several thousand Cossacks fled to the Black Sea coast and tried to restore the Sich there, under the patronage of the Turkish Sultan. Later, they again turned to face the Fatherland, made a significant contribution to the victory over the Turks, for which they were awarded the lands of Taman and Kuban, and the lands were given to them for eternal and hereditary use.

The Kubans can be described as a free paramilitary association. The population was engaged in agriculture, led a sedentary lifestyle, and fought only for state needs. Newcomers and fugitives from the central regions of Russia were willingly accepted here. They mixed with the local population and became “one of their own.”

In the fire of revolution and civil war, the Cossacks were forced to constantly maneuver between the Reds and the Whites, looked for a “third way,” and tried to defend their identity and independence. In 1920, the Bolsheviks finally abolished both the Kuban army and the Republic. Mass repressions, evictions, famine and dispossession followed. Only in the second half of the 30s. The Cossacks were partially rehabilitated, the Kuban Choir was restored. During the Great Patriotic War, Cossacks fought on an equal basis with others, mainly together with regular units of the Red Army.

History of the Terek Cossacks

Terek Cossacks The Terek Cossacks arose around the same time as the Kuban Cossacks - in 1859, on the date of the defeat of the troops of the Chechen Imam Shamil. In the Cossack power hierarchy, the Terets were the third in seniority. They settled along rivers such as the Kura, Terek, and Sunzha. The headquarters of the Terek Cossack army is the city of Vladikavkaz. The settlement of the territories began in the 16th century.

The Cossacks were in charge of protecting the border territories, but they themselves sometimes did not hesitate to raid the possessions of the Tatar princes. The Cossacks often had to defend themselves from mountain raids. However, the close proximity to the highlanders brought the Cossacks not only negative emotions. The Tertsy adopted some linguistic expressions from the mountaineers, and in particular the details of clothing and ammunition: burkas and hats, daggers and sabers.

The founded cities of Kizlyar and Mozdok became centers of concentration of the Terek Cossacks. In 1917, the Tertsy people declared independence and established a republic. With the final establishment of Soviet power, the Tertsy people suffered the same dramatic fate as the Kuban and Donets people: mass repression and eviction.

Interesting Facts

In 1949, the lyrical comedy “Kuban Cossacks” directed by Ivan Pyryev appeared on the Soviet screen. Despite the obvious varnishing of reality and the smoothing out of socio-political conflicts, it fell in love with the mass audience, and the song “What You Were” is performed on stage to this day.
It is interesting that the word “Cossack” itself, translated from the Turkic language, means a free, freedom-loving, proud person. So the name stuck to these people, you know, is far from accidental.
The Cossack does not bow to any authority; he is fast and free, like the wind.