Putin's Wars (27 page)

In 2012 the Kremlin took steps to diversify its
druzhina
policy. After doubts emerged over the effectiveness of the Nashi groups, the Kremlin
polit-technologists identified a new reservoir of public peacekeepers. They found
this reservoir in a traditional group: the Cossacks. The Cossacks have a reputation
for being independently minded, whip-wielding horseback warriors. Originally, they
were runaway serfs, nomads, and adventurers who colonized the southern steppes near
the river Don where they were not likely to be caught. The oldest historical records
concerning their existence date from 1549, when Crimean Tatars complained to Ivan
the Terrible that Cossacks living on the Don were raiding their territory.
^[1]
Later the Cossacks acknowledged the sovereignty of the tsar. In exchange they got
land and the status of a special military community with its own rights and freedoms.
The different Cossack hosts (communities) served as buffers on the borders. They enjoyed
great autonomy, had a local democracy with a general assembly (Krug) that elected
a leader (ataman), and were recognized as a special estate (
soslovie
) between the serfs and the nobility. During more than two centuries they were engaged
in the tsars’ armies, and their cavalry played an important role in the expansion
of the Russian Empire into Siberia and the Caucasus. They brought their own horses
and weapons. Service of the state was a lifelong affair. In the period 1835–1863,
for instance, individual Cossacks served the state for thirty years, of which five
years in active service and twenty-five years as reservists.
^[2]
Their relative importance becomes clear if one considers the fact that during the
war in Turkestan (1877–1878), the Cossacks provided 125,000 soldiers, which was 7.4
percent of the army, while they made up only 2.2 percent of the total population.
^[3]
The Cossacks’ fortunes, however, were reversed during the Civil War (1917–1923),
which followed the October Revolution. Though they fought on both sides, the majority
resisted Bolshevik rule. This led to severe repression under communism. In 1919 the
Soviet authorities even ordered the genocide of the Don Cossacks.
^[4]
Thousands of Cossacks fled abroad and went into exile. The fate of those who remained
was dramatic. “Their property and livestock were confiscated, over two million Cossacks
were repressed, more than 1.5 million were killed . . . . Cossack institutions, laws,
self-government and customs were abolished.”
^[5]
However, before the Second World War Stalin made some conciliatory gestures toward
the Cossacks. He even established a Cossack cavalry division in the Red Army, though
a Cossack ancestry did not seem to be required to serve in this division. During the
war the Germans also raised some Cossack units from among their prisoners of war and
war deserters,
^[6]
which only reinforced Stalin’s suspicions about this group.

The Cossacks had to wait for Gorbachev’s
perestroika
and the fall of communism to make a glorious comeback. In 1992 Yeltsin issued Decree
632 on the rehabilitation of the Cossacks, followed, in July 1994, by Decree 1389,
establishing a Council for Cossack Affairs. At the end of 1994 Yeltsin went still
further, supporting a new law on Cossacks that granted them the status of an
archipelago state
within Russia, consisting of twelve Federal Cossack Regions, each of which corresponded
with a Cossack host.
^[7]
This Cossack archipelago state was headed by a Council of Atamans (Cossack leaders),
which was responsible not to the government, but to the president—mirroring the historical
special relationship with the tsar.
^[8]
Already in the 1990s the Cossacks began to be used as vigilantes, though only locally.
In 1995 Mark Galeotti wrote:

Like the Tsars, today’s Russian leaders have turned to the Cossacks for internal and
external security. Since 1990, Cossack vigilantes have patrolled the streets of many
Russian cities, armed with clubs, sabres and
nagaykas
(traditional whips). The regional administration in the southern Russian region of
Krasnodar went further, in 1992 hiring armed Cossack units to patrol the countryside
on horseback and in armoured vehicles . . . . The section on law enforcement in the
Law on Cossacks—drafted by the Interior Ministry—formalises this role, establishing
the dubious precedent of giving full police powers of search and arrest to untrained,
armed vigilantes responsible to their elders rather than the authorities.
^[9]

Yeltsin’s reforms led also to the creation of Cossack regiments, and some Cossack
units were formed within the Border Troops.
^[10]
Cossacks also got the right to set up security companies, and in 1997 several of
these companies were working for the Moscow city government.
^[11]
However, the rehabilitation of the Cossacks under Yeltsin still remained uncompleted,
and their new status was only a pale reflection of their privileged position in the
former tsarist Empire. Their real chance, therefore, came with the arrival of Vladimir
Putin. The new president was highly appreciative of the Cossacks. He attached great
importance to this group and wanted to restore the Cossacks to their traditional function
of pillars of the regime. In 2003 he appointed Gennady Troshev, a Cossack general
who had served as commander of the military operations in Chechnya, as special adviser
for Cossack Affairs in his presidential administration. In 2005 Putin signed the bill
“On the State Service of the Russian Cossacks,” which offered the Cossacks privileged
entry to the state service.
^[12]
Draft-age Cossacks would “gain the right to serve in traditional Cossack military
units, as well as frontier and internal forces.”
^[13]
Lev Ponomaryov, head of the NGO “For Human Rights” did not conceal his concern.
“If they want to guard the borders,” he said, “let them do this . . . . [However],
it is alarming that they may be given the right to maintain law and order within these
borders. Experience shows that the Cossacks have their own interpretation of law and
order.”
^[14]
But the Cossacks were satisfied. They showed their gratitude by granting Putin
the title of
ataman
—Cossack colonel—a title previously reserved for the Russian tsars. Putin himself
became the highest Cossack leader. In 2005 a Cossack regiment was founded in the army
together with Cossack military schools where pupils—ages seven to seventeen—attend
classes in army fatigues. The curriculum includes military tactics, patriotism, and
moral (i.e., Orthodox) education. In 2013 there existed thirty such Cossack schools
in the Russian Federation.
^[15]
The southern town of Krasnodar, the centre of the Don Cossacks host, became a testing
ground for the new Cossack activities. In February 2012, during the presidential election
campaign, Putin once more stressed the importance of the Cossacks in an article in
Izvestia
:

Now, a few words about the Cossacks, a large group counting millions of Russians.
Historically, Cossacks served the Russian state by defending its borders and taking
part in military campaigns of the Russian Army. Following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution,
the Cossack community was subjected to brutal repression, which was actually genocide.
But the Cossacks survived and retained their culture and traditions. The mission of
the state now is to help the Cossacks, draw them into military service and educational
activities for youths, involving a patriotic upbringing and initial military training.
^[16]

The comeback of the Cossacks into Russian public life after an absence of ninety years
was accompanied by much publicity, culminating in a Cossack media frenzy in which
their martial traditions and supposed virtues, such as courage, loyalty, patriotism,
and observance of “traditional values” were touted. “Cossacks protected the Russian
Orthodox Church and the Motherland during difficult times,” wrote Olivia Kroth in
the pro-Kremlin paper
Pravda
.
^[17]
“Today Cossacks continue doing so, educating children and young people according
to their high ethical standards.”
^[18]
Another author, Sergey Israpilov, saw in the Cossacks a bulwark against the decay
of modern Russian society, characterized by individualism that “arrived in Russia
from the West” and by a low birth rate. According to him, Russia needed to build “enclaves
of traditionalists, who defend or create anew traditional society with its strong
family and great fecundity.”
^[19]
Improving the birth rate and “bearing children for Russia” is also one of the objectives
of Putin, who, in his address to the Federal Assembly, in December 2012, said people
should “believe that families with three children should become the standard in Russia.”
^[20]
A BBC correspondent, who visited some Cossack villages in southern Russia, saw
families there with seven children. He was told “that Cossack families should be as
large as possible.”
^[21]
He wrote that “Cossack family values are simple, rigid, and to a Western eye, seem
to come from another era. The men build the home and provide an income; the women
cook, clean and give birth to children. Traditional Russian values, culture, and Orthodoxy
form the bedrock of their beliefs.”
^[22]
Russian authors and intellectuals, touting the purported traditional values of
the Cossacks, resemble the nineteenth-century
narodniki
, urbanites who idealized the supposedly high ethical standards and deep spiritual
life of the simple Russian peasant. In 2009, in a speech before the Presidential Council
for Cossack Affairs, Patriarch Kirill also contributed to this moral glorification
of the Cossack. “Without faith, without spiritual eagerness, without true reliance
upon spiritual and moral values,” declared the Patriarch, “it is not only impossible
to revive the Cossacks, but the Cossack culture itself cannot exist.”
^[23]
This culture, he added, is “a lifestyle, formed under the spiritual influence of
the Orthodox faith.”
^[24]