World press on Russian Cossack revival and national politics (August 5, 2013)

"Cossacks ride again as Russia seeks to fill ideological void" is an article published in Financial Times, authored by Courtney Weaver. It examines the revival of the Cossack culture and movement in the Krasnodar region in Russia. 

"Romanticised by writers such as Alexander Pushkin and suppressed by the Soviets, the Cossacks – a nomadic military people descended from the Tatars – have resumed their historic role of military service in Krasnodar, the prosperous southern region next to Russia’s restive Caucasus. The revival coincides with a surge of Russian nationalism and xenophobia as migration rises from nearby Muslim republics," the article reads. 

"Last year, Krasnodar’s governor Alexander Tkachev, a descendant of the Cossacks himself, put 1,000 of his fellow Cossacks on the government’s payroll with the task of patrolling the region’s cities for illegal migrants, hooligans and drunks. The Cossacks make up just a fraction of Krasnodar’s total police, but as the region prepares for the Winter Olympics early next year they are playing an increasingly visible role and supporting an overworked force," the author writes. 

"The rise of the Cossacks across Russia comes as Vladimir Putin, in his third term as president, has overseen a broad shift towards conservative values and a rise in nationalist rhetoric. In Krasnodar – the only region where Cossack patrolmen are paid by the government – the situation is particularly acute due to rising tensions between the region’s ethnic Russians and migrants from the surrounding Caucasus region. As construction work for the Olympics gets under way, Krasnodar has attracted labourers from the republics of Dagestan, Ingushetia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. More than 700,000 migrants came to the region of 5.2m people last year, a figure expected to rise by 25 per cent in 2013, according to the federal migration service," the articles states. 

"Hussein, a manual labourer from Uzbekistan working on Olympic building projects in Sochi said that he and his fellow migrant workers, have all had run-ins with local Cossack groups. “They are aggressive. They always ask for our documents,” he said. However Hussein noted that their power was limited. “We know that they have no power to arrest or detain without police supervision,” the author presents a different side of the story. 

"While some believe the Cossack patrols could stop after the Olympics or the Krasnodar governor’s departure from office, others, such as Mr Perezhniko, believe the Cossack culture – with its emphasis on Russian nationalism – could help fill Russia’s ideological vacuum of the post-Soviet period" the article concludes.