Scythian Siberia - Tartary and ancient Russia - Muscovy, are linked by a common historical past, their military class, the Cossacks, stayed in the vast Eurasian space under different names and it is simply ridiculous to separate them. Therefore, we will focus on the Cossacks, which, as a phenomenon of social Russian life, was developed by conditions before Peter's Rus and after. Peter's reforms with the centralization of power were death to the free Cossacks. All the Cossacks were defeated, but most of them were those who, by nature, were, for the most part, free Cossacks. In the first row of the free Cossacks were, first of all, the Zaporozhye, Don and Siberian. The Zaporizhzhya Sich was eventually destroyed. The Siberian Cossacks were disbanded, some of them were sent to Turkestan, to Semirechye, some were converted to mining peasants, police officers and partly border officials,and in Siberia itself they were replaced by commoners. Since 1721, the Donets have been prohibited from collecting Military Circles, the Don Church has been reassigned, and the Don rulers have been ordered to be called Army "order" atamans. From that time on, they held their post not by election, but by the appointment of the emperor. Here you will also learn about Mazepa, Bulavin, the Cossacks of the Third Reich. The 47 points of the behests of the ataman Ignat Fedorovich Nekrasov, which are almost 250 years old, are given as an example, and now we can find out by what laws the Cossacks lived. The 47 points of the behests of the ataman Ignat Fedorovich Nekrasov, which are almost 250 years old, are given as an example, and now we can find out by what laws the Cossacks lived. The 47 points of the behests of the ataman Ignat Fedorovich Nekrasov, which are almost 250 years old, are given as an example, and now we can find out by what laws the Cossacks lived.
The mutual repulsion of the two worlds - the Russian-Moscow and the Cossack - existed throughout history, both during the times of their union cooperation, that is, before Peter I, and then during the times of forced cohabitation in the imperial period, pouring out from the Cossacks sometimes into violent forms of armed protests such as the revolutionary movement of Razin and Pugachev and the Bulavin uprising. In a latent form, this strife existed constantly, manifesting itself in everyday relationships between Cossacks and ordinary people. The reasons for this repulsion lie deeply in the difference between the two psychologies resulting from the difference in everyday and historical conditions. The ethnographic question is also of no small importance - the question of blood, the Russian people and the Cossacks for a long time developed in a historical parallel, sometimes intersecting with each other. Some were sedentary and farmers,others moved across vast territories for various reasons. But if the common people were subjected to violence from the outside, the Cossacks acted in their defense. Remember the famous: "there is no extradition from the Don", it says just about that.
In the middle of the last century, Bronevsky, who wrote The History of the Don Host, laid the foundations for a new theory, which is adhered to by: Soloviev, Ilovaisky, Klyuchevsky, Platonov and a native of Don Svatikov with his work “Russia and the Don”. According to this theory, the Cossacks were formed from the fugitive Moscow people, from the Great Russians who lived in the forests north of the southern Russian steppes and fled to the southern steppes for social, political and economic reasons. But this was a historical sabotage against the true origin of the Cossacks. This theory was put forward for the political purpose - to destroy the idea of the origin of the Cossacks from the local Podonsk and Dnieper peoples, who settled here long before the Tatar invasion, and thus knock out the historical weapon from the hands of the Cossacks in their struggle for originality in the organization of their lives.
The Romanovs' house needed to prove that the Cossacks, and especially for them the problematic at that time - the Don and the Ukrainian, consisted of fugitive Russian peasants and criminals. Such a formulation of the question morally justified the social and political methods that the Russian government used in order to bring the Cossacks to the conditions of the Russian peasantry. This theory became classical and thus hammered into the heads of not only Russian people, but also Cossacks. At the same time, the true Cossacks of the Siberian land were withdrawn from Siberia under various pretexts to the new lands of Central Asia (Turkestan), and on the ground, linear Cossacks were created from the common people.
Here is what they wrote in tsarist Russia about the Cossacks after the Petrine era.
As you can see, they cleaned everything up, even the archives were destroyed, and the historians of Tsarist Russia are guessing on the "coffee grounds", who are the Cossacks? How can we not remember Peter I, with his dislike for the Cossacks.
Promotional video:
An example of Peter I's dislike of the Cossacks is indicative, where the seal of the Donskoy army was changed at his command.
The official version of the origin of the coat of arms of the Don Cossacks is as follows: "White deer struck by an arrow" - in his image, the history of the army, local military features are symbolically displayed. The “White Deer” symbolizes the independence and rebelliousness of the Don Cossacks. The image of the White Deer goes back to the ancient legend of the deer, which many travelers saw in the lower reaches of the Don, but no one could either catch or kill him. Neither cunning nor the arrows of his pursuers took him. In 1704, the "White Deer" was replaced by the image of a Cossack sitting on a barrel. "Cossack on a barrel" is a symbol imposed on the Cossacks by Peter the Great, who once saw a drunken Don Cossack who drank all his clothes in the heat of fun, but kept his weapon and hat."
In the picture above, on the right side, on the image is the official seal of the Donskoy army, approved by Peter I in 1704. Earlier, in the old days, the seal of the Don Army (left) had an image of a deer pierced by an arrow. After Peter the Great suppressed the revolt led by Ataman Kondrat Bulavin, the official seal was changed intentionally and with a mockery. Since then, it began to depict a naked Cossack in some underpants, sitting astride a wine barrel, holding a saber and a gun in his hands. After the Petrine era, the pants were already dressed, but no more. Closer to our times, we still managed to return our ancient Cossack symbol to its place.
It seemed to Peter I that he was able to change the composition of the Cossacks, pouring into their ranks commoners, criminals, foreigners who fled from despotism, asking for protection in the Cossack villages. But he was wrong, they took them under their wing, defended them, provided shelter and food, but did not become related, it was already after the 1917 revolution that everything was mixed, and then the Cossacks strictly preserved their family, the purity of their blood. They knew their past and saw how the example of other ancient Cossack tribes, which mixing their blood with foreigners, then degenerated. Hence the misconception that the Cossacks consist of fugitives, convicts, and so on. Let's not forget that from time immemorial the Cossacks were distinguished by mobility, and if something happened, they simply left to settle in new places, thereby preserving the purity of their blood. The end of the liberties to the Cossacks was put by Catherine II,with the famous Pugachev events. Those who did not want to join the sovereign's service scattered across the vast expanses of Great Tartary, i.e. Siberia, and some fled to the Ottomans. Once the Turks, in 1471, ousted the Cossacks from the shores of the Sea of Azov, and now they have become gatherers of scattered Cossack tribes under their own banner.
And it was so. The unbearable extortions of Peter's power and the cruel tortures that were perpetrated on the people everywhere in the collection of taxes and duties, led the people to bitterness. The people fled to the Don and to the Ukrainian lands; along the rivers: Buzuluk, Medveditsa, Bityuga, Khopru, Donets so-called riding Cossack towns, inhabited entirely by fugitives. These riding towns did not want to know any taxes, no work, they hated Peter and his reign, were ready to resist the tsarist military force with an armed hand. In 1707, the tsar sent a colonel, prince Yuri Dolgorukov, to the Don, to demand that the Don Cossacks give up all the fugitives hiding on the Don; the foremen showed an air of submission, but a strong murmur arose between the common Cossacks, especially when at the same time the order of the tsar was announced to the Cossacks to shave their beards. Don Cossacks,considered it their long-standing privilege to give refuge to all fugitives.
In the rank of colonel, Yuri Vladimirovich Dolgorukov, at the head of a small detachment, arrived in the Don in 1707, having an assignment to capture the fugitive serfs. Dolgorukov's Moscow detachment was accompanied by five Cossacks who knew the way. The Cossacks considered the capture of fugitive serfs "beyond the Don" as a violation of the old custom and therefore illegal. In addition, they were dissatisfied with arbitrary extortions and other actions of the prince, considering his orders unfair and too harsh. As a result, the Cossacks, led by Kondraty Bulavin, rebelled, ambushed the Aydar River, killed the entire detachment of Dolgorukov and killed the prince himself. Hence the popular expression: "there is no extradition from the Don." After that, the brother of the murdered prince, Vasily Vladimirovich Dolgorukov, was sent to capture the rebels. He ruthlessly suppressed the rebellion and avenged his brother's death.
Don ataman Bulavin raised a mutiny and made a plan to raise all the Cossacks, take Taganrog and Azov, then go to Voronezh, and then to Moscow. But another Don chieftain, Lukyan Maksimov, opposed him, defeated and drove him to Zaporozhye. Maksimov began to pursue him, but the Cossacks went over to the side of Bulavin and twelve towns on the northern Donets rose for him, twenty-six on Khopr, sixteen on Buzuluk, fourteen on Medveditsa. The uprising echoed even in the vicinity of Tambov: there, in the villages, the peasants were agitated and arbitrarily instituted a Cossack system.
Bulavin himself adhered to the old faith. Most of his associates were Old Believers - Nikita Goliy, Ignatiy Nekrasov and Lucian Khokhlach. Therefore, they urged people to speak out not only against the oppressors, but also against the "Hellenic faith" - Russian Orthodoxy, changed by Nikon according to the Greek model. They called on the people to rise up to defend the ancient church piety.
“Know yourselves, fellows, wrote Bulavin, how your grandfathers and fathers laid them down and in what way you were born; before that the old field was strong and held, but now those evil people have translated the old field into nothing, and so that you do not waste the old field, but to me, Bulavin, the Zaporozhye Cossacks gave their word, and the Belogorod horde and other hordes to be with you at the same time. And if someone or which stanitsa will be disgusted with that military letter, they will not make up half-and-half, or whoever does not turn up in dozens, and that Cossack will be punished.
The Cherkasy Cossacks gave Bulavin the ataman Lukyan Maksimov, loyal to the tsar, and with him the foreman. Gathered in the Skorodumovskaya stanitsa, all of them, including six people, were sentenced to death. Their heads were cut off; Bulavin was proclaimed ataman of all rivers. He ordered not to pray in the churches for the tsar and sent letters in all directions, assuring that he had risen up for all small people, for piety, for the traditions of seven councils, for the old true faith; announced that the Cossacks intend to leave the tsar for the fact that the tsar translated the Christian faith in his kingdom, shaves beards and secret ouds of men and women, and therefore the Cossacks, instead of the Russian tsar, want to recognize the power of the Turkish tsar over themselves. And Bulavin, after that, through the Kuban Murza sent a letter to the Turkish Sultan. “Do not trust our sovereign,” he wrote, because he ruined many lands for a peaceful state,and now it ravages, and prepares ships and troops for the Turkish state. Bulavin knew what he was talking about, because the English-speaking empire and papal agents were behind all this.
When, after the accession of the Romanovs, the persecution of the Cossacks began, most of them left to serve the Turkish Sultan. Once the Ottomans and Russia were one, but the West was afraid of such a kindred union and separated us on opposite sides of the barricades, but for the Cossacks of Russia, Turkey was a second home.
Bulavin hoped for Ukrainian towns, for the Cossacks, but Peter sent the Major of the Guard, Prince Vasily Vladimirovich Dolgoruky, and gave him the order to destroy the towns founded in remote places and inhabited by fugitives, to burn everything, to chop people indiscriminately, and the most guilty - to wheel, quartered, put on stakes.
7 conspirators opposed Bulavin, he managed to kill two Cossacks, but seeing that the forces were not equal, to avoid capture, he shot himself. In Great Russian Ukraine and on the Don, the Cossacks did not expect any mercy for themselves and, inevitably, in despair, fought to the last degree. They were headed by Ataman Nekrasov.
Dolgoruky, having learned about his native Asaulov town on the Don, ordered many to be quartered and hanged: then several hundred gallows, with the rebels hanged on them, were put on rafts and launched across the Don.
By the tsar's order, all the towns along the banks of the rivers Khopra, Medveditsa to Ustmedveditskaya stanitsa, Donets, to Lugan, and along the entire length of the rivers: Aydar, Buzuluk, Derkul, Cherna Kalitva, were burned. All the inhabitants of these towns, those on whom the accusation of participation in the rebellion fell, were exterminated, others were transferred to other areas, where it was more convenient to demand payment of taxes and duties from them.
Sheremetyev himself wrote to the sovereign at the end of 1702: “I sent to captivate and burn in all directions, nothing was left, everything was ruined and burned, and your military sovereigns were full of male and female and rob several thousand, also work horses and cattle with 20,000 or more … and what they could not raise, they chopped and chopped. Those killed in battle, according to Dolgorukov's report - 29,400 people, 7,000 people were executed.
When Nekrasov heard about the devastation of his town, he fled to the Kuban with a two-thousand-strong army and surrendered to the rule of the Crimean Khan. Many others from the Don villages, devoted to the schism, followed in his footsteps, and this was the beginning of the Nekrasov Cossacks, who settled on the Black Sea coast between Temryuk and Taman, and in 1778, in a larger force, left for Turkey. The number of Nekrasov Cossacks who left the punitive forces behind the cordon was about 40,000 people.
In a foreign land, Ignat Fedorovich and his associates proved themselves to be successful organizers and diplomats. Questions: how to live on and how to get along with the owners of the Kuban - the Crimean Khan and Circassian princes were successfully resolved.
The Code of Cossack laws is based on the national traditions of the times of the formation of Russia. After the death of Ignat, this vault began to be called the "Testaments of Ignat Nekrasov". According to these precepts, people have lived far from Russia - 245 years!
These laws are written in blood. The Nekrasov Cossacks, living according to these precepts, have preserved their identity. And after 200 years they returned back to the Russian society, having preserved their original identity in an alien environment.
The precepts of Ataman Ignat Fedorovich Nekrasov:
1. Tsarism does not obey. Do not return to Russia under the tsars;
- to stick to the old faith.
- for blasphemy - death.
2. Do not connect with the Turks, do not communicate with the non-believers. Communication with the Turks only when needed (trade, war, taxes). Quarrels with the Turks are prohibited.
3. The highest power is the Cossack circle. Participation from 18 years old.
4. The decisions of the circle are executed by the chieftain. They strictly obey him.
5. Ataman is elected for a year. If he is guilty, he is displaced ahead of schedule.
6. Circle decisions are mandatory for everyone. Everyone is watching the execution.
7. All earnings are transferred to the military treasury. From it, everyone gets 2/3 of the money earned. 1/3 goes to the kosh. / In another place … just a testimony: - the Cossack hands over one third of his earnings to the military treasury /.
8. Kosh is divided into three parts: 1st part - army, weapons. 2nd part - school church. 3rd - assistance to widows, orphans, old people and others in need.
9. Marriage can only be contracted between members of the community. For marriage with infidels - death.
10. The husband does not offend his wife. She, with the permission of the circle, can leave him, and the circle punishes her husband.
11. To make good is obliged only by labor. A real Cossack loves his work.
12. For robbery, robbery, murder - by decision of the circle - death.
13. For robbery, robbery, murder in war - by decision of the circle - death.
14. Shinks, taverns - do not keep in the village.
15. Cossacks have no road to be a soldier.
16. Keep, keep the word. Cossacks and children should gut up in the old way.
17. A Cossack does not hire a Cossack. He does not receive money from his brother.
18. Do not sing worldly songs during fasting. You can only old.
19. Without the permission of the circle, the chieftain, the Cossack cannot leave the village.
20. Orphans and the elderly are only helped by the army, so as not to humiliate and humiliate themselves.
21. Keep personal assistance secret.
22. There should be no beggars in the village.
23. All Cossacks adhere to the true Orthodox old faith.
24. For the murder of a Cossack a Cossack, the murderer is buried alive in the ground.
25. Do not engage in trade in the village.
26. Who trades on the side - 1/20 of profit per kosh.
27. Young people honor elders.
28. The Cossack must go to the circle after 18 years. If you do not walk, they take a fine twice, on the third they are flogged. The fine is established by the chieftain and the foreman.
29. To elect ataman after Krasnaya Gorka for a year. To elect Esaul after 30 years. Colonel or marching chieftain after 40 years. Military chieftain - only after 50 years.
30. They beat him with 100 lashes for betraying her husband
31. For betrayal of his wife - to bury her neck in the ground.
32. Beaten to death for theft.
33. For theft of military property - flogged and a hot boiler on the head
34. If you get confused with the Turks - death.
35. If a son or daughter raised their hand against their parents - death. For an insult to a senior - whips. The younger brother does not lift his older hands, the circle will punish with whips.
36. For treason to the army - death.
37. Do not shoot at Russians in war. Do not go against blood.
38. Stand up for small people.
39. There is no issue from Don.
40. He who does not fulfill the commandments of Ignat will perish.
41. If not everyone in the army is wearing hats, then you cannot go on a campaign.
42. For violation of Ignat's precepts by the ataman - to punish and remove from atamanism. If, after the punishment, the ataman does not thank the Circle "for science", then whip him again and declare him a rebel.
43. Atamanism can last only three terms - power spoils a person.
44. Don't keep jails.
45. Not to put on a campaign a deputy, but those who do it for money - to be executed by death as a coward and a traitor.
46. The Circle establishes guilt for any crime.
47. A priest who does not fulfill the will of the Circle - to expel, or even kill as a rebel or a heretic.
In total, the "Testaments of Ignat" included more than 170 articles entered into a manuscript book. Unfortunately, in the course of endless wars and resettlements, this unique document of people's rule was lost.
Nekrasov Cossacks lived two hundred years in Turkey, where they left the Kuban. They have preserved their language, Cossack Orthodox faith, customs, culture and traditions. They fully fulfilled the behest of Ignat Nekrasov - "not to submit, under tsarism, not to return to Russia." And only in the 60s of the last century they returned to their homeland and were settled in the Stavropol Territory (at the time of resettlement, the Nekrasov Cossack community consisted of 700 families).
And among the rest of the Cossacks in Russia - Muscovy, a split began, conspirators scurried everywhere, Western influence on the royal court of the Romanovs bore fruit. An illustrative example of this is the Cossack ataman of Little Russia Mazepa.
He was convinced that if the victory remained with the Swedish king, and if Little Russia stubbornly stood for Russia, then Karl would take it away from Russia and give it to Poland, and therefore it seemed a matter of prudence to take Karl's side in advance, so that, after the reprisal against Peter, Little Russia was recognized as an independent independent state. In this sense, Mazepa began to conduct secret negotiations, but still hesitated and did not reveal his plan to anyone except his close circle. When Karl approached Ukraine, Menshikov demanded the hetman to join him with the Great Russian military forces for joint action against Karl. Mazepa found himself in the fatal need to choose either one or the other: on October 24, 1708, he joined the Swedish army with several persons from the Cossack foreman, with four colonels and a detachment of Cossacks; but thosewho followed him, then began to leave him when they found out where he was taking them. Hence the emergence of the state flag of Ukraine, from the Swedish, and in fact the flag of treason to the Cossacks.
Peter, who had never expected such an event, found out about him on October 27 in Pogrebki on the Desna, where he watched the movements of the enemy. He ordered Menshikov to destroy Baturin, the hetman's capital, to the ground. Peter's troops took Baturin on November 1, and killed all living things in it with such cruelty that they differed in Livonia and in their own land during the taming of the Bulavin revolt. Following this, Peter ordered the Little Russian clergy and the foreman to gather in the city of Glukhov by November 4. There, a new hetman Starodubsky, Colonel Ivan Skoropadsky, was elected, and then, pleasing the tsar, the Little Russian clergy performed the rite of anathema to Mazepa and his accomplices. After that, between Karl and Mazepa, on the one hand, and Peter and Skoropadsky, on the other, polemics began with manifestos and generalists addressed to the Little Russian people. Karl and Mazepa tried to turn the people against Moscow, frightening them with the fact that the tsar wanted to destroy the Cossack liberties, and Peter and Skoropadsky assured the Little Russians that Mazepa had an intention to give Little Russia to the former enslavement of Poland and introduce union. Peter ordered to lay down the extortions set by Hetman Mazepa from the people, and in his manifesto he put it this way: “Not a single people under the sun can boast of such freedoms and privileges and ease as the Little Russian people, for not a single penalty to our treasury in the whole we do not command to take them. "and in his manifesto he put it this way: "Not a single people under the sun can boast of such freedoms and privileges and ease as the Little Russian people, for we do not command to take a single penalty to our treasury in the entire Little Russian region."and in his manifesto he put it this way: "Not a single people under the sun can boast of such freedoms and privileges and ease as the Little Russian people, for we do not command to take a single penalty to our treasury in the entire Little Russian region."
Little Russia did not follow its old hetman Mazepa: the interests of the common people were opposite to the interests of the elders and, in general, the rich and important people of the Cossack estate. The latter understood freedom in such a sense that a privileged class, like the Polish gentry, ruled the entire country and used its economic forces at the expense of the rest of the people - the so-called mob, and the common people wanted complete equality, universal Cossacks. As soon as the news went through Little Russia that the strangers approached the borders of the Little Russian region and the hetman and the foreman were going over to their side, the people became agitated, gangs began to form - to attack officials, landlords, rob rich merchants, kill Jews. Mazepa, planning with the foreman to deliver independence and freedom to Little Russia, had to confess,that the people do not want such independence and freedom, but want another freedom, to which the striving begins by robbery and reprisals against noble and rich people. Those who bore the Cossack rank and were distinguished by their personal and property rights from the polite people or the rabble, perhaps, would have followed their leader if Charles had great forces, while Peter had few of them. It turned out the other way around: the Cossacks saw that Karl had come with a small army, and it was difficult for him to supplement him from his distant homeland, and Peter appeared with an army that was twice the strength of his rival; Peter's army was constantly increasing, and it was ready to mercilessly ruin the Little Russian land if the Cossacks began to declare favor to the Swedes.who bore the Cossack rank and were distinguished by personal and property rights from the polluting people or the rabble, perhaps, they would have followed their leader if Charles had great forces, and Peter had few of them. It turned out the other way around: the Cossacks saw that Karl had come with a small army, and it was difficult for him to supplement him from his distant homeland, and Peter appeared with an army that was twice the strength of his rival; Peter's army was constantly increasing, and it was ready to mercilessly ruin the Little Russian land if the Cossacks began to declare favor to the Swedes.who bore the Cossack rank and were distinguished by personal and property rights from the polluting people or the rabble, perhaps, they would have followed their leader if Charles had great forces, and Peter had few of them. It turned out the other way around: the Cossacks saw that Karl had come with a small army, and it was difficult for him to supplement him from his distant homeland, and Peter appeared with an army that was twice the strength of his rival; Peter's army was constantly increasing, and it was ready to mercilessly ruin the Little Russian land if the Cossacks began to declare favor to the Swedes.and it was difficult for him to supplement him from his distant homeland, and Peter appeared with an army that was twice the strength of his rival; Peter's army was constantly increasing, and it was ready to mercilessly ruin the Little Russian land if the Cossacks began to declare favor to the Swedes.and it was difficult for him to supplement him from his distant homeland, and Peter appeared with an army that was twice the strength of his rival; Peter's army was constantly increasing, and it was ready to mercilessly ruin the Little Russian land if the Cossacks began to declare favor to the Swedes.
Sadly, but the Cossacks of Little Russia have ceased to be such. On the brink of choosing between the West and Petrovskaya Russia, they chose the latter. The West would destroy them and completely digest them in itself, while in Russia there was a chance to remain free. Gradually Western influence sowed deception, betrayal, conspiracies there, the list is long. And in Russia, from the time of Peter the Great to Catherine II, many Cossack associations ceased to exist or were disbanded, such as the Zaporozhye Cossacks. But the house of the Romanovs did not stop there. If the authorities dealt with the Donskoy, Zaporozhye, Yaitsky, there were still Siberian Cossacks.
Their fate was not enviable. The Siberian Cossacks still remembered their ancient capital on the site of the present Omsk and the authorities preferred to keep silent about them. Remembering all the problems with the Cossacks from the times of Peter the Great, the authorities decided to quietly bury the very spirit of the Siberian Cossacks and put them to their unquestioning service, and it was like this: the Semirechensk Cossack army was formed from the Siberian Cossack army. In 1867, the banners of the 9th and 10th Siberian Cossack regiments from among those granted to the Siberian Cossack army in 1809 were transferred to the newly formed Semirechensk Cossack army. In 1879, the emperor approved the provision on the Semirechensk Cossack army. The army was given a seniority equal to that of the Siberian Cossack army. Thus, most of the Cossacks of Siberia are already under the guise of Semireks,departed to guard the borders in the Turkestan direction. It was they who gained the glory of Russian arms in the Kokand campaign and eliminated the threat of British influence on the Russian underbelly.
According to folk legends, in antiquity, Semirechye (Belovodye) was located on the territory of today's Siberia and was called so because of the flowing rivers: Irtysh, Ob, Yenisei, Angara, Lena, Ishim and Tobol. Then they tied this name to a new place, to the Balkhash, and Siberian Cossacks began to settle along the borders of the Empire.
The boundaries of the possessions of the new Semirechye are shown below.
Only on the territory of North-East Kazakhstan in 1822 lived 25,528 Siberian Cossack settlers, called upon to carry out the policy of the empire in the steppe.
It is also appropriate to remember that the tsarist government, erasing its history from the memory of the people, on August 19 (31), 1808, adopted a decree on the formation of the Siberian Cossack army and recruits ordinary townspeople and peasants into the Cossacks. They are declared linear Cossacks, and Omsk is officially proclaimed the capital of the Cossacks, as if it had never been native to the Cossacks. At the beginning, this was preceded by business trips of the Don and Ural Cossacks to the Siberian defensive line, and since 1769 they were canceled, leaving only the old and infirm with the Siberian Cossacks. In October 1758, General Frauendorf sent an order to the commanders of the fortresses, which he obliged to accept foreigners on the line, if they wished to accept Christianity, moreover, "to accept everyone, without distinction of nations." In 1798 there was the last thousandth team of many Tatars and Bashkirs,who converted to Christianity and "preferred, instead of returning to their homeland, to stay in Siberia, enrolling in the Cossack estate." The Dzungars (Kalmyks) also became a source of replenishment for the Siberian Cossack army. Defeated in battles with the Chinese (the Qing army), their whole families and ulus fled under the cover of Russian fortresses. In 1757, in the Ust-Kamenogorsk fortress, 277 Dzungars and Tatars voluntarily accepted Orthodox baptism, in Omsk 747, etc. Also, the Cossacks began to recruit the Kyrgyz and Kazakhs (Kyrgyz-Kaisaks), they, like many others, began to wear Russians names and surnames. Another factor that significantly influenced the growth in the number to replace the Siberian Cossack army was the permission from 1760 of "different ranks of Russian people" to settle on the line. After this decree was issued, Governor Chicherin was allowed to call various artisans from Siberian cities to settle on the Irtysh and Ishim Cossack lines. By 1764, there were already 3450 such settlers.
On February 11, 1825, Tsar Alexander 1 signed a decree "On the purchase of female slaves or udders from neighboring nomadic peoples of women due to their lack in Western Siberia." On February 18, 1825, the entire population of the Siberian Cossack army was converted into stanitsa Cossacks, and the total number of inhabitants of the military class was 36,921 people.
According to the review of Major General Gurko, who inspected the army, in the 1830s:
"… The Siberian Cossacks, who replaced the dragoons withdrawn from Siberia, received a regular structure and, constituting indispensable regiments located on the border itself, are kept in combat units on the same almost rules that exist now in the whole army. Supplied with state allowances, they should be more revered sent by cavalry regiments rather than by the Cossacks. " That is, they already could not be called Cossacks.
Thus, in parallel to the present Siberian Cossacks, commoners and foreigners were recruited into the Cossacks. Since 1808, it was legalized, and after that the ancestral Siberian Cossacks were fraudulently expelled to a new place - the Asiatic Semirechye, and after the events of 1917 they automatically found themselves on foreign territory, where they were gradually destroyed in this trap. So, basically, we all know about the Kuban, Don Cossacks, and almost nothing about the Siberians. And this is due to the fact that during the Civil War, the Siberian Cossack army died almost without exception, and the military archive in December 1919 fell into the hands of the Red Army at the Taiga station and disappeared without a trace. The authorities did not particularly spread about the Siberian Cossacks and secret this information, but in all the sketches, paintings of that time, the faces of the Siberian Cossacks of the Kokand campaign do not bear the features of foreigners.
About that part of the Siberian Cossacks who did not want to serve the sovereign and his officials, all the chronicles keep stubborn silence, as if they did not exist. How many of them remained in the vast territories of Siberia, living by free will, how many went to China, Western Russia, Turkey, is unknown.
This is how the common people became Cossacks who do not know their past greatness, and the new Siberian Cossacks were created by the state and from the very beginning served the interests of the state.
So the connection between times gradually began to be lost, and after the events of 1917, the Siberian and Semirechye Cossacks ceased to be such. The same fate befell many other Cossack associations.
Is it because in our time, remembering the persecution of the Cossacks, the elite of Ukraine is drawn to the West, contrary to the wishes of the people, and the Cossacks of Little Russia are silent.
Since 1917, the red commissars have tried so that those who survived after the Catherine's reforms fell silent forever, and those Cossacks who were revived during Soviet power - they themselves call them mummers. Isn't that why during the war of 1941-1945, many Cossacks, who harbored a grudge against the rulers of Russia, went over to the side of Nazi Germany. But the West deceived, used them against Russia and its people.
1919 year. From the Directive of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) "To all responsible comrades working in the Cossack regions":
… To carry out a mass terror against the rich Cossacks, exterminating them without exception; to carry out a merciless mass terror against all the Cossacks who took any direct or indirect participation in the struggle against Soviet power …
… "Liberating" the Cossack lands for migrants, 30-60 people were shot in the villages per day. In just 6 days, over 400 people were shot in the villages of Kazanskaya and Shumilinskaya. In Vyoshenskaya - 600. So began the "decossackization …" With Hitler's coming to power, many Cossacks went under his wing, fearing a repetition of the genocide, under which they fell with the coming to power of the Judeo-commissars. As of 1916, only the Cossacks of the Don, Kuban and Terek numbered 3 million 117 thousand. By 1941, 1 million 450 thousand Cossacks remained of them (47% of the 1916 population)
So the Cossacks, harboring anger and resentment against the power of the commissars, ended up in the ranks of the traitors to the Motherland and their sentence was harsh. But those who believed in the West and hoped for its support found themselves in an even more difficult situation. Our Cossacks were used against the peoples of the USSR, and with the end of the war with Nazi Germany, the West did not need them. An illustrative example is the extradition of the Cossacks in Lienz and Judenburg - the forcible extradition by the British and Americans to the Soviet Union, according to various sources, from 45 to 60 thousand Cossacks who fought on the side of Germany during World War II. Mostly they were part of the units of the Cossack Stan and the 15th Cossack Cavalry Corps, as well as refugees (women, children, old people) who left with the Germans from the Terek, Kuban and Don.
So, today the common people of Ukraine have to rely only on themselves. Loud protests against the new government today, which is promoting the war and the separation of the peoples of Ukraine, we seem to not soon hear. Maybe they would believe the mountains of gold promised by the West if they betray Russia, which today unites peoples and leads them to peace and prosperity.