Day: May 29, 2018
«Без родного языка нет и русского»: обращение к президенту Путину
«Без родного языка нет и русского»: обращение к президенту Путину
Fifteen Minutes of Fame Long Gone: Circassian Activism before and after the Sochi Olympics
Fifteen Minutes of Fame Long Gone: Circassian Activism before and after the Sochi Olympics
Bo Petersson and Karina Vamling
Faculty of Culture and Society, Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden
bo.petersson@mah.se, karina.vamling@mah.se Read more
Circassia
Don Cossacks
Don Cossacks
Updated May 29 2018
ETHNONYM: Cossacks
Orientation
Identification. Originally the Cossacks were free mercenaries who resided in a no-man’s-land. They eventually became a part of the Russian irregular military with the main objective of defending Russia‘s borderlands. As such, they were identified by their area of residence. The Don Cossacks, the earliest known in Russia, appeared in the fifteenth century and the host was established during the early sixteenth century. About the same time the Zaporozhian Cossacks formed in the Dnieper River region. In the late sixteenth century, two offshoots of the Don Cossacks emerged: the Terek Cossack Host along the lower Terek River in the northern Caucasus and the Iaik (Yaik) Host along the lower Iaik River (now known as the Ural River). With the expansion of the Russian state and the government’s encouragement, the Cossack hosts proliferated, forming a defensive belt along the borders of the empire. By the late nineteenth century, in addition to the earlier hosts, there were the Amur, the Baikal, the Kuban, the Orenburg, the Semirechensk, the Siberia, the Volga, the Ussuriisk, and, on the Dnieper River, the Zaporozhian Cossack hosts. The Don Cossacks remained, however, the most numerous and significant host. In pre-Revolutionary Russia, the Don Cossacks enjoyed an administrative and territorial autonomy. Read more