Putin’s Registered Pseudo-Cossacks Foundering, a Trend that Gives Hope to the Real Ones

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 30 – Yesterday, Igor Barinov, the head of Russia’s Federal Agency for Nationality Affairs, spoke to the Second All-Russian Conference Seminar on Russian Cossacks. Two aspects of his remarks give hope to the genuine Cossacks who are not registered and thus not part of the official establishment.

            On the one hand, the fact that the senior Russian official spoke to such a meeting gives support to those who believe that the Cossacks are a distinct nation and not just a social stratum, a position very much at odds with the Putin administration but widely held among Cossack groups not registered by the authorities.

            And on the other hand, Barinov confessed that Cossack groups the state has recognized and registered are failing both because many of them “have nothing in common with Cossackdom except the name” and because they are losing members rather than attracting young people to their organizations (nazaccent.ru/content/39573-problemy-kazachestva-v-regionah-obsudili-na-seminare-soveshanii-v-moskve.html).

            The leaders of the unregistered Cossacks who count themselves the genuine article and who see the registered Cossacks as mostly people who like to dress up in fancy uniforms and collect money from the state to work as guards or to disperse demonstrations are pleased on both grounds (9111.ru/questions/7777777772064549/).

            They know that they are the real Cossacks and as such are a nation, and they are pleased that Barinov acknowledges both this and that the unregistered “Cossacks” he and the government have constructed are failing because each loss of membership in those groups represents a real gain for real Cossacks.

              (For background on the differences between registered and unregistered Cossacks and why this is no small thing, see jamestown.org/program/de-cossackization-modern-day-echoes-of-soviet-crime/, jamestown.org/program/moscow-tightens-control-over-its-cossacks/, jamestown.org/program/putins-pseudo-cossacks-assume-larger-role-but-real-cossacks-refuse-to-go-along/ and jamestown.org/program/cossackia-no-longer-an-impossible-dream/.)