Vestnik Kavkaza implements the National Question project together with Vesti FM, trying to figure out how different countries, different nations and different governments have solved problems among different nationalities at different times. Today, presenters Vladimir Averin and Gia Saralidze host historian, Ph.D. Marat Safarov. The theme of the program is "Cossacks: Past and Present Times.’’
Safarov: A historical retrospective of Cossacks’ relations with different peoples, including conflict situations is, of course, the main theme of the national question. In fact, it was an extension of boundaries: both geographical and mental ones. There were clashes among civilizations and penetration of them.
If we speak about the North Caucasus, it is not just the Cossacks, it is the world of Orthodoxy, including Old Believers, but anyway the Christian world faces the world of the East. I wouldn’t speak here of the Islamic world in any orthodox way, as many peoples of the North Caucasus adopted Islam very late. Some completed Islamization only in the 19th century. In one way or another, the interpenetration of European and Oriental values started.
Averin: Cossacks were the first who encountered the cultures of the Far East.
Safarov: In fact, the Russian people in the name of the Cossacks not just extended the boundaries, but also met with different worlds. If we speak about other Cossack settlements, Cossack areas such as the Urals, Orenburg and Siberia, the process was less painful there. The involvement of local Turkic peoples in the uprisings initiated by the Cossacks may be considered as an example. Tatars and Bashkirs immediately began to support the Cossacks, particularly in the peasant war of Yemelyan Pugachev. The East is very different, and suddenly there comes a Western understanding of the Russian model of the West. It is still quite different.
Saralidze: It's an interesting fact that the Cossacks came at a time when there was serfdom in the central regions of Russia and people had a completely different cast and mentality.
Safarov: Perhaps this was the reason for the success in building these relations, because free men appeared. History doesn’t know the subjunctive mood, but if a peasant came there at that period of time, of course, relations would be different. Therefore, we see rapid penetration even in household characteristics in North Caucasus. Now as tourists we try on different clothes, taste different cuisines. We like the different features of cultures and we treat this rather calmly. And only a very free person could accept another culture. As for men's clothing of the Cossacks who settled in the North Caucasus, for example, in Terek, they used Circassian clothes. It means that the Cossacks had no stereotypes and belonged to the cultural experience of neighboring peoples, using their best features. But we should not idealize relations.
There are long and rather complicated relations of interpenetration, often of a conflicting nature, because the expansion of the limits of the state was not only cultural, but above all political. In addition, a certain invasion took place from the outside, both on the part of those states that supported the mountain peoples, with the result that the Caucasian War dragged on, it was evident in the 19th century, and from the central Russian government that had always been behind the Cossacks.
The Cossacks are in a "minefield" for first time, but Moscow or Petersburg are vigilantly watching it, intervening in this situation. It has aggravated relations. But politics is politics, there is no way around it.
Averin: Did the Cossacks always follow every order? Or was it sometimes a spontaneous process, when first the Cossacks for various reasons were on their way to a particular area or region, and then the central government recognized that the territory was Russian?
Safarov: I agree in this regard with many historians of the Cossacks who note that the Cossacks formed the policy in many ways. They beat those paths. The imperial government realized the value of the south, the Far East or the Urals thanks to the Cossacks’ resettlement. The Cossacks outlined the territory and, accordingly, the imperial power sent its troops and regular army there. The Caucasus demonstrates this very well.
The Cossacks were determined vectors of expansion of the Russian state’s limits, because they are often free and runaway people, not only serfs. We sometimes oversimplify the situation with respect to serfdom, and it was distributed within the central southern provinces. The Cossacks moved to the southern limits from everywhere. And there was no extention by the state of serfdom. But the conditions of life, for example the climatic conditions, were difficult and they moved to fertile lands.
Old Believers gave some incentive. Old Believer libertines disagreed with church reforms of the 17th century, which led to the fact that it combined well with the Cossack outlaws. There were lot of Old Believers among the Cossacks. That is why they determined the borders. The imperial power took advantage very effectively and used the outposts.
In addition, we should understand that the Cossacks were both free and on a registry that was tied to serving the tsar. It wasn’t a part of the regular army, but to a large extent it coordinated their actions to those areas of external policies that Petersburg determined for them.
Saralidze: But the highlanders were enemies for a long time to a certain extent.
Safarov: But the Cossacks had such a medieval characteristic feature of respecting their enemies for their strength and courage. Medieval manly features such as generosity to a defeated enemy appeared during the capture of Shamil in Gunib in 1859. The Cossacks treated the leader of the highlanders as a worthy enemy. In principle, the Cossacks are a warrior class, so relations are built on the basis of "win-lose", ‘‘courage-cowardice," and not with the help of such aspects as prosperity or allotment.
Over time, the Cossacks got used to the territory, expanding their land holdings and becoming wealthier people who moved to the cities, particularly to large cities such as the rich city of Novocherkassk, Rostov-on-Don and Ekaterinodar. Nevertheless, its marker is still above all a warrior. But not a dependent warrior, not a recruit, but a warrior in an equal fight.
Averin: Didn’t settlers continue to be laborers instead of becoming soldiers?
Safarov: Yes, they continued to be laborers, it was difficult to build relations with them. In fact, the Cossacks wanted to preserve their territory. Today, the task of the media and researchers is to discuss "islands" of the Russian world beyond Russia, especially in those areas where the conditions for their life, cultural context, language and economic conditions are very difficult. This certainly concerns the Semirechensk Cossacks, because in addition to all the other "good things" the Russian people received after the collapse of the Soviet Union, they stayed to live in different countries and also found themselves divided internally.
There are more or less favorable conditions for the Semirechensk Cossacks in Kazakhstan, but they also live in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan. Four states have become an area of traditional settlement of the Semirechensk Cossacks. They have the right to call themselves the original inhabitants of this area, as they have lived there for several centuries. They are interesting because they didn’t assimilate with the numerous waves of migration of Russian-speaking settlers during the late 19th and 20th centuries. Here are both special religious traditions and a significant proliferation of Old Believers. Here are domestic constraints, and awareness of their estates. They are a relic of the Russian Cossacks up to now.
Today, various Cossack national-cultural organizations exist in Kazakhstan. It is important for them to feel like Cossacks there. Not only penetration of civilization, but also specific non-governmental restrictions, and limitations in respect of the spread of the Russian language also influenced the situation. To feel like a Cossack is such a peaceful manifestation of their own identity in the ethnographic sense. Certainly, I think that cultural support for the Cossacks should be carried out.
Averin: Cossacks spread their own idea of the Russian world. But when the authorities came they carried their own idea of the Russian world. Was it a "brain explosion" for indigenous peoples? Or did they have an absolute identity among them?
Safarov: If speak about the Seven Rivers, Turkestan, the interpenetration of the local population and the Russian population really began to happen only in Soviet times. There were European and Oriental towns within a populated area even in Soviet times. For example, such a situation existed in Tashkent, the capital of Soviet Uzbekistan, before the earthquake in 1966. What can we say about the distant populated areas where the Semirechie Cossacks settled? It was a picture of the Russian world more than some domestic interpenetration. On the contrary, in the Caucasus the Circassian Cossacks adopted the footwear, the dishes of the Caucasian peoples, and brought the traditions of plough farming to the Caucasian peoples. They both quarreled in the Caucasus, and lived in peace. There was no host side in Turkestan. The local population wasn’t hostile, but it is very polar. It didn’t have any sort of interest in the Cossacks, and the authorities didn’t promote it. The authorities have never set the task of using the Cossacks as missionaries. The Cossacks serve, and other people were engaged in missionary who were specially trained for this purpose. They didn’t set the task of europeanizing "the natives". Maybe it saved the Semirechensk Cossacks from the dissolution of other waves of the Russian world who went there, especially during the Soviet period.
But there was a certain Cossack snobbery regarding the local residents, whose domestic lives varied too much. There was no common ground. Only the commercial line, but it wasn’t a well-developed sphere. The tsarist government actively used the other people in Turkestan – the Tatars, who were Turkic and professed Islam. The imperial power moved them towards the development of Turkestan. This policy of inertia continued during the Soviet period. The Cossacks were alone, because a Russian person, even a special Russian, is not someone at the command of the royal administration, not an official, a farmer or a trader. The local population clearly felt it.
Thank God that today this doesn’t cause any conflicts. We learned the lessons of the 1990’s about the political stability of the regime. The nationalism question isn’t aggravated by any parties. But the Cossacks aren’t a sort of inner strength or threat. This is a historical and cultural community. They are indigenous people of the local area. The same people as the local Uyghurs, the Dungan. They also came from somewhere, but they are well integrated into this culture. And the Cossacks still remain aloof.
Averin: Have the Cossacks ever claimed the separatist territories in the sense of nationhood?
Safarov: That's the point. We don’t take into account the early 1990’s, because deterioration was everywhere. From the mid-1990’s there were actions only for their rights for the registration of national and cultural societies and the return of the Orthodox churches, because some of them belonged to the Russian Orthodox Church, but nevertheless they were Cossack parishes. It didn’t pose any threat to local conditions, and the Cossacks didn't make any separatist attempts.
