Putin's Wars (28 page)

However, are the Cossacks really these so-called white knights as depicted by their
admirers? It is, for instance, a well-known fact that in the latter half of the nineteenth
century the tsarist government used Cossack troops not only to repress uprisings against
the state, but also to perpetrate pogroms against the Jews. An Israeli paper expressed
its concern. “Famed for leading anti-Jewish pogroms and close ties to the czar,” wrote
the paper, “the group is making a comeback with Vladimir Putin’s support.”
^[25]
In a 1998 Human Rights Watch report the Cossack ideology is described as “virulently
anti-ethnic migrant which often degenerates into a general hatred of all minorities.”
^[26]
After the fall of communism Cossacks became active as mercenaries in conflict zones.
They fought in the Georgian breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, in
Chechnya, in Transnistria (Moldova), and in the former Yugoslavia. During the Russian
invasion of Georgia in August 2008 Human Rights Watch reported that “officials in
Java [South Ossetia] also said that Russian Cossacks were fighting alongside Ossetian
militias.”
^[27]
This was confirmed by other sources. The
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
wrote on August 6, 2008, that Cossack atamans (leaders) had announced “that in case
of necessity the Cossacks could send 10,000 to 15,000 volunteers to the war, and this
will be fighters with lengthy experience in active service.”
^[28]
This announcement was immediately put in practice. “[I]rregular Cossack paramilitaries,
said by some reports to have numbered in the thousands, fought on the Russian/separatist
side in the 2008 Russo-Georgian War.”
^[29]
“Cossack volunteers . . . crossed the borders to engage Georgian forces. Cossacks
in nearby North Ossetia apparently organized a relatively efficient and rapid system
for clothing, equipping and transporting their paramilitaries into the breakaway province
to feed them onto combat.”
^[30]
“Cossack volunteers formed the second major paramilitary force in the war, the
first being the South Ossetian militias. According to reports, the Cossack forces
fought with dogged determination.”
^[31]
Militias, active in South Ossetia in August 2008, have been accused of war crimes.
Shortly after the war
The Guardian
’s Luke Harding wrote: “South Ossetian militias, facilitated by the Russian army,
are carrying out the worst ethnic cleansing since the war in former Yugoslavia.”
^[32]

Cossacks were not only active in the “frozen conflicts” in the former Soviet space.
According to Israpilov, Russia needed “more urgently a filter against threats coming
from within the country, than from the external borders.”
^[33]
In effect, inside Russia’s frontiers also the Cossacks proved to be useful to the
authorities, taking on tasks that the authorities preferred to outsource. In the southern
Krasnodar province, a Cossack region that includes Sochi, the site of the 2014 Winter
Olympics, such practice was already long established. The regional government’s program
“Cossack Participation in Protecting Public Order” allowed Cossacks “to be used as
the main force for displacing the targeted ethnic minority of Meskhetian Turks. The
Cossacks were not too picky about the means they used to do their job: ethnic Turks
were subjected to mass beatings and ambushes, their gardens were destroyed, homes
looted, and the goods and market stalls of Turkish traders were confiscated.”
^[34]
The Cossacks’ efforts were successful, and the Turks left the Krasnodar region
after the U.S. government granted them asylum. “The exercise in displacing the Turkish
minority,” wrote Fatima Tlisova, “became an example of how effective Cossacks may
be in dealing with the sensitive task of making people’s lives hell while maintaining
the appearance of law and order and non-involvement on the part of the Russian government.”
^[35]

In the meantime Cossacks patrolling the streets have become a familiar sight in Krasnodar.
Aleksandr Tkachev, the governor of the Krasnodar region, said the Cossacks were entrusted
with “forcing out” from his region the unwelcome “intruders” (i.e., Muslim migrants)
from adjacent Russian territories of the North Caucasus.
^[36]
To clarify further, he went on to explain “that the Cossacks should act more freely
than the police, whose operations are constrained by ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights.’”
^[37]
“What they can’t do, he said, a Cossack can.”
^[38]
After the mass demonstrations in Moscow and St. Petersburg in December 2011 and
the spring of 2012 it became clear that the Cossacks, with their sabres, high fur
caps, epaulettes, and impressive, broad shouldered uniforms, could be useful also
in the rest of the Federation. They displayed all the characteristics necessary for
a pro-Kremlin militia with their militant tradition, their socially conservative attitude,
their patriotism, their supposed strict observance of the Russian Orthodox faith,
and their staunch support for Vladimir Putin. Moreover, they had still another additional
advantage that the Kremlin could not neglect: they could more easily be controlled
than Nashi hooligans, while in the population at large they enjoyed a rather positive
image.

The potential of the new Cossack reservoir is impressive. About 7 million Russians
consider themselves Cossacks, which is approximately 5 percent of the population.
^[39]
This does not mean that the whole group will be engaged by the state. According
to Alexander Beglov, the chairman of the President’s Council on Cossack Affairs, there
are three ways to be a Cossack. The first is to be active as a member of a Cossack
community in order to preserve its traditions; the second is more passive—to be “just
a Cossack”; the third is to sign up on the state’s Cossacks register. Only by choosing
this last option does a Cossack oblige himself to serve the state. In order to be
accepted, a candidate must be a Russian citizen older than eighteen years, he must
have no criminal record, drink no alcohol, “share the ideas of the Cossacks,” and
be a Christian Orthodox believer, because “a Cossack cannot be an atheist.”
^[40]
In 2012 the state register counted 426 organizations with a total of 937,000 active
members.
^[41]
At the end of 2012 the eleven existing Cossack armies were merged into a single
All-Russian Cossack Army. The army leader (ataman) has his headquarters in Moscow
and will directly report to the commander-in-chief, Vladimir Putin. In this way the
Kremlin leader will have—like the tsars before him—his own army, loyal only to him.
The Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church form the two pillars of this new praetorian
guard, which functions as a “cordon sanitaire” around Putin. The haste with which
Putin is building this personal army is a sign that, weakened after the mass protests
of 2011–2012, he wants to strengthen his position in the “internal war” with the opposition.
It is, furthermore, a sign that, due to growing dissensions amongst the political
elite, he is placing less trust in the traditional vestiges of power: the military,
the police, and even the secret service.

To test the ground in 2011 Cossack squads had already become active in the southwest
district of Moscow. On September 12, 2012, a new step was taken when they made their
first appearance in the center of the Russian capital. About six hundred Cossacks
were assigned to Moscow, which is fifty per district.
^[42]
The Cossacks took their new role of moral police seriously, barring visitors from
entering a Moscow art exhibition in which the female punk group Pussy Riot’s woollen
balaclavas were put over Orthodox Christian icons.
^[43]
Cossack activists also led a campaign to cancel a staging of Vladimir Nabokov’s
novel
Lolita
in St. Petersburg, accusing the organizers of “propaganda for paedophilia.” Their
action was successful: the play was canceled. This new moral police could also play
a prominent role in the homophobic campaign initiated by the “gay propaganda bill,”
introducing heavy fines for providing information about homosexuality to minors, which
was signed by Putin on June 30, 2013. Alexander Mikhailov, a regional deputy from
the Zabaikalsky region, said Cossacks should be allowed to punish gay people physically
by flogging them in public with a leather whip.
^[44]
How privileged the Cossacks’ position has become in Putin’s Russia became clear
when on November 24, 2012, the Cossacks founded their own political party. According
to the official website the program of the party is “based on the traditional values
of the Cossacks. This is patriotism, the defense of the interests of the government,
and the moral principles of society.”
^[45]
The party’s chairman, Sergey Bondarev, is a former member of the pro-Kremlin party
United Russia and deputy governor of the Rostov region.
^[46]
The abbreviation of this new Cossack Party of the Russian Federation is CaPRF,
which resembles the abbreviation of the Communist Party: CPRF (in Russian, respectively,
KaПРФ and KПРФ). It has led to protests from the Communists against this “spoiler
project.” Vadim Solovyev, secretary of the central committee of the Communist Party,
accused the Kremlin of wanting to siphon off voters: “They seek to water down the
electorate.”
^[47]
According to the Russian analyst Alexander Golts, “All the talk that Cossacks represent
generations of pedigreed fighters imbued with a burning desire to defend the motherlands
is nonsense.”
^[48]
“The Kremlin,” he said, “wants to incorporate an invented ‘elite’ group of Russians
into the siloviki.”
^[49]
Golts saw the Cossack patrols as the first step in the creation of a new mafia:
the “first step toward their control over such profitable sectors as collection of
parking fees in the city center.”
^[50]
While these profitable practices might motivate individual Cossacks to enter Putin’s
Cossack squads, their importance for the Kremlin lies elsewhere: to build a reliable
force that is able to prevent and repress mass protest movements.