Paul Goble
Staunton,
November 27 – Today, at Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral, “registered” Cossacks
from throughout Russia, voted to create a single All-Russian Cossack Society
with a single ataman that will oversee and control the 11 Cossack hosts (nazaccent.ru/content/28740-uchreditelnoe-sobranie-vserossijskogo-kazachego-obshestva-prohodit.html).
Vladimir Putin in a message to the
group made it clear that he not only supports this development but along with t
eh Russian Orthodox Church played a key role in it. “Today,” he said, thanks to
Cossack volunteers and “the support of the organs of power and of the Russian
Orthodox Church, Cossackry is not only being reborn but is becoming a more
significant and constructive force” (tass.ru/obschestvo/5839261).
According to the Kremlin leader, “the
creation of the All-Russian Cossack Society will make possible the development
of the Cossacks and its unification around the centuries-old traditions of
devoted service to the Fatherland and also to the preservation of unique
cultural and historical heritage.”
The vote to create this new body was
unanimous, Oblastnaya gazeta reports
(oblgazeta.ru/news/43989/), yet
another indication of how much the Kremlin is behind this latest move. But even
more significant, the constituent meeting said it would register with the state
and then Putin would appoint its “ataman for a six-year term.”
That is an obvious violation of the democratic
traditions, admittedly sometimes violated, of the Cossacks, and the formation
of a single Cossack organization under the control of the state ignores three
important aspects of that community which all too many Russians and others
choose to ignore.
First, the Cossack community is
extremely diverse, with different histories, different religions, and different
nationalities. It is not all ethnic Russian and Russian Orthodox as much as
Hollywood and Putin invariably try to suggest otherwise. And many Cossacks
today will be offended by efforts to portray it otherwise and as a single
whole.
Second, while many Cossacks engaged
in state service historically, the relations of most of them with the Russian
state have been fraught, not only in that some of the 13 hosts that existed at
the end of tsarist times consisted of people who fled the state but also in the
ugly genocide of the Cossacks under the Soviets.
And third, the “registered” Cossacks
that were represented in Moscow today are only a small part of all Cossacks.
Most Cossack groups are independent and refuse in principle to register, many
are in opposition to the government, and many are unprepared to serve as Putin’s
shock troops against the population.
With this Moscow meeting, the
Kremlin may achieve what it does want, a single power vertical within a portion
of the Cossacks prepared to do its bidding and that it can present as what it
isn’t, the Cossack world as a whole. And that in turn likely means that Putin
and company will now use the existence of this new “body” to go after those genuine
Cossacks who don’t go along.
But even that will do little to
stifle demands by most Cossacks for recognition as a distinct nation, for the
restoration of their lands, and for support popular and political not as a
police force of the empire but as an ancient and proud people.
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