De-Cossackization () was the

Bolshevik The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, were a radical Faction (political), faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, ...

policy of systematic repression against the

Cossacks The Cossacks are a predominantly East Slavic languages, East Slavic Eastern Christian people originating in the Pontic–Caspian steppe of eastern Ukraine and southern Russia. Cossacks played an important role in defending the southern borde ...

in the former

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

between 1919 and 1933, especially the Don and

Kuban Cossacks Kuban Cossacks (; ), or Kubanians (, ''kubantsy''; , ''kubantsi''), are Cossacks who live in the Kuban region of Russia. Most of the Kuban Cossacks are descendants of different major groups of Cossacks who were re-settled to the western Norther ...

in Russia, aimed at the elimination of the Cossacks as a distinct collectivity by exterminating the Cossack elite, coercing all other Cossacks into compliance, and eliminating Cossack distinctness. Several scholars have categorised this as a form of

genocide Genocide is violence that targets individuals because of their membership of a group and aims at the destruction of a people. Raphael Lemkin, who first coined the term, defined genocide as "the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group" by ...

,"Soviet order to exterminate Cossacks is unearthed"

University of York The University of York (abbreviated as or ''York'' for Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a public Collegiate university, collegiate research university in York, England. Established in 1963, the university has expanded to more than thir ...

Communications Office, 21 January 2003 whilst other historians have highly disputed this classification due to the contentious figures which range from "a few thousand to incredible claims of hundreds of thousands". The campaign began in March 1919 in response to growing Cossack insurgency. According to Nicolas Werth, one of the authors of '' The Black Book of Communism'', Soviet leaders deciding to "eliminate, exterminate, and deport the population of a whole territory", which they had taken to calling the "Soviet

Vendée Vendée () is a department in the Pays de la Loire region in Western France, on the Atlantic coast. In 2019, it had a population of 685,442. The process has been described by scholar Peter Holquist as part of a "ruthless" and "radical attempt to eliminate undesirable social groups" that showed the Soviet regime's "dedication to social engineering". Throughout this period, the policy underwent significant modifications, which resulted in the "normalization" of Cossacks as a component part of Soviet society.

Background

Cossacks were simultaneously both an

ethnicity An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people with shared attributes, which they Collective consciousness, collectively believe to have, and long-term endogamy. Ethnicities share attributes like language, culture, common sets of ancestry, ...

and a grouping of special

social estates in the Russian Empire Social estates in the Russian Empire were denoted by the term soslovie (sosloviye). They were introduced in 18th-19th centuries to approximately match the European estate of the realm. The terms "сословие", "состояние", "сосло ...

from the 16th to the early 20th century. Because of their military tradition, Cossack forces played an important role in Russia's wars of the 17th–20th centuries such as the

Crimean War The Crimean War was fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, the Second French Empire, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Kingdom of Sardinia (1720–1861), Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont fro ...

(1853–1856), the

Napoleonic Wars {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Napoleonic Wars , partof = the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars , image = Napoleonic Wars (revision).jpg , caption = Left to right, top to bottom:Battl ...

, various Russo-Turkish Wars, and the

First World War World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

of 1914–1918. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the tsarist regime deployed Cossack detachments to perform police service and to suppress revolutionary movements, especially in 1905–1907. Following the

October Revolution The October Revolution, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution (in Historiography in the Soviet Union, Soviet historiography), October coup, Bolshevik coup, or Bolshevik revolution, was the second of Russian Revolution, two r ...

of 1917, a conflict broke out between the new

Communist regime in

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

and many Cossacks. In the Don territory, the

Ataman Ataman (variants: ''otaman'', ''wataman'', ''vataman''; ; ) was a title of Cossack and haidamak leaders of various kinds. In the Russian Empire, the term was the official title of the supreme military commanders of the Cossack armies. The Ukra ...

of the

Don Cossacks Don Cossacks (, ) or Donians (, ), are Cossacks who settled along the middle and lower Don River (Russia), Don. Historically, they lived within the former Don Cossack Host (, ), which was either an independent or an autonomous democratic rep ...

, Alexey Kaledin, declared that he would "offer full support, in close alliance with the governments of the other Cossack hosts" to Kerensky's forces (the Bolshevik's opponents in the civil war). Establishing ties with the Ukrainian Central Rada and with the

Kuban Kuban ( Russian and Ukrainian: Кубань; ) is a historical and geographical region in the North Caucasus region of southern Russia surrounding the Kuban River, on the Black Sea between the Don Steppe, the Volga Delta and separated fr ...

, Terek, and Orenburg

host A host is a person responsible for guests at an event or for providing hospitality during it. Host may also refer to: Places * Host, Pennsylvania, a village in Berks County * Host Island, in the Wilhelm Archipelago, Antarctica People * ...

s, Kaledin sought to overthrow the Soviet regime in Russia. On 15 November 1917,

White White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no chroma). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully (or almost fully) reflect and scatter all the visible wa ...

Generals Kornilov, Alekseev and Denikin began to organize a force that would become the

Volunteer Army The Volunteer Army (; ), abbreviated to (), also known as the Southern White Army was a White Army active in South Russia during the Russian Civil War from 1917 to 1920. The Volunteer Army fought against Bolsheviks and the Makhnovists on the ...

in the Cossack cultural capital,

Novocherkassk Novocherkassk () is a types of inhabited localities in Russia, city in Rostov Oblast, Russia, located near the confluence of the Tuzlov and Aksay Rivers, the latter a distributary of the Don (river), Don River. Novocherkassk is best known as the ...

. Imposing martial law, Cossack leader Kaledin started to advance in late November. On , after a seven-day battle, his forces occupied Rostov. However, on , Bolshevik troops pushed back successfully and occupied Rostov and Novocherkassk. The remnants of the White Cossacks, headed by Ataman , fled into the .Калединщина
/ref> After the

Imperial German army The Imperial German Army (1871–1919), officially referred to as the German Army (), was the unified ground and air force of the German Empire. It was established in 1871 with the political unification of Germany under the leadership of Kingdom o ...

invaded and occupied Rostov on 8 May 1918, a government headed by Ataman Krasnov was formed in the Don province. In July 1918, the White Cossack forces of Ataman Krasnov launched their first invasion of Tsaritsyn (present-day Volgograd). Soviet forces counterattacked, however, and drove out the White Cossacks by 7 September. On 22 September, Krasnov's forces launched a second invasion of Tsaritsyn, but by 25 October Soviet troops had pushed Krasnov's forces back beyond the Don. On 1 January 1919, Krasnov launched a third invasion of Tsaritsyn. Soviet forces repelled the invasion again and forced Krasnov's forces to withdraw from Tsaritsyn in mid-February 1919.

History

The policy was established by a secret resolution of the Bolshevik Party on 24 January 1919, which ordered local branches to "carry out mass terror against wealthy Cossacks, exterminating all of them; carry out merciless mass terror against any and all Cossacks taking part in any way, directly or indirectly, in the struggle against Soviet power". On 7 February the Southern Front issued its own instructions on how the resolution was to be applied: "The main duty of stanitsa and khutor executive committees is to neutralize the Cossackry through the merciless extirpation of its elite. District and Stanitsa

ataman Ataman (variants: ''otaman'', ''wataman'', ''vataman''; ; ) was a title of Cossack and haidamak leaders of various kinds. In the Russian Empire, the term was the official title of the supreme military commanders of the Cossack armies. The Ukra ...

s are subject to unconditional elimination, utkhutor atamans should be subject to execution only in those cases where it can be proved that they actively supported Krasnov's policies (having organized pacification, conducted mobilization, refused to offer refuge to revolutionary Cossacks or to Red Army men)."Peter Holquist
Conduct merciless mass terror': decossackization on the Don, 1919"
/ref> There were also proposals for the "mass resettlement" of poor peasants in Cossack territories, which would ultimately result in Sovnarkom implementing the forced migration of Cossacks in April. In mid-March 1919 alone,

Cheka The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission ( rus, Всероссийская чрезвычайная комиссия, r=Vserossiyskaya chrezvychaynaya komissiya, p=fsʲɪrɐˈsʲijskəjə tɕrʲɪzvɨˈtɕæjnəjə kɐˈmʲisʲɪjə, links=yes), ...

forces condemned more than 8,000

to death. In each ''

stanitsa A stanitsa or stanitza ( ; ), also spelled stanycia ( ) or stanica ( ), was a historical administrative unit of a Cossack host, a type of Cossack polity that existed in the Russian Empire. Etymology The Russian word is the diminutive of the word ...

,'' summary judgements were passed by revolutionary courts within minutes, and whole lists of people were condemned to execution for " counterrevolutionary behavior".Nicolas Werth, Karel Bartošek, Jean-Louis Panné, Jean-Louis Margolin, Andrzej Paczkowski, Stéphane Courtois. '' The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression''.

Harvard University Press Harvard University Press (HUP) is an academic publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University. It is a member of the Association of University Presses. Its director since 2017 is George Andreou. The pres ...

, 1999. p 99-100 The Don region was required by the Soviets to make a grain contribution equal to the total annual production of the area. Almost all Cossacks joined the Green Army or other rebel forces. Together with Baron Wrangel's troops, they forced the Red Army out of the region in August 1920. After the retaking of the

Crimea Crimea ( ) is a peninsula in Eastern Europe, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, almost entirely surrounded by the Black Sea and the smaller Sea of Azov. The Isthmus of Perekop connects the peninsula to Kherson Oblast in mainland Ukrain ...

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...

, the Cossacks again became victims of the

Red Terror The Red Terror () was a campaign of political repression and Mass killing, executions in Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Soviet Russia which was carried out by the Bolsheviks, chiefly through the Cheka, the Bolshevik secret police ...

. Special commissions in charge of de-Cossackization condemned more than 6,000 people to death in October 1920 alone.Nicolas Werth, Karel Bartošek, Jean-Louis Panné, Jean-Louis Margolin, Andrzej Paczkowski, Stéphane Courtois. '' The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression''.

, 1999. p 100 The families and often the neighbours of suspected rebels were taken as hostages. In November 1920, Feliks Dzerzhinsky, head of the

, reported to

Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until Death and state funeral of ...

: James Ryan argues that Lenin was aware that this policy had genocidal implications, as he was telegraphed by the Southern Front Revolutionary Military Council (RVS) who complained that the policy did not account for mass surrenders by Cossacks. Following this, indiscriminate killings were abandoned and the Southern RVS was ordered by Lenin not to antagonise the general Cossack population by "violating 'trivial' features of everyday Cossack life." However, uprisings against Bolshevik authority in the Don region that followed the killings were still heavily cracked down upon. In August, Lenin also instructed Dzerzhinsky to use "bribery and threats to exterminate the Cossacks to a man" if they attempted to destroy the oil in the city of Guryev. The

Pyatigorsk Pyatigorsk (; Circassian languages, Circassian: Псыхуабэ, ''Psıxwabæ'') is a types of inhabited localities in Russia, city in Stavropol Krai, Russia, located on the Podkumok River, about from the town of Mineralnye Vody, which has an i ...

organized a "day of

" to execute 300 people in one day. They ordered local Communist Party organizations to draw up execution lists. According to one of the chekists, "this rather unsatisfactory method led to a great deal of private settling of old scores. ... In Kislovodsk, for lack of a better idea, it was decided to kill people who were in the hospital." Many Cossack towns were burned to the ground, and all survivors deported on the orders by

Sergo Ordzhonikidze Sergo Konstantinovich Ordzhonikidze, ; (born Grigol Konstantines dze Orjonikidze; 18 February 1937) was an Old Bolshevik and a Soviet statesman. Born and raised in Georgia, in the Russian Empire, Ordzhonikidze joined the Bolsheviks at an e ...

who was head of the Revolutionary Committee of the Northern Caucasus. Robert Gellately (2007)
''Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe''
.

Knopf Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. () is an American publishing house that was founded by Blanche Knopf and Alfred A. Knopf Sr. in 1915. Blanche and Alfred traveled abroad regularly and were known for publishing European, Asian, and Latin American writers ...

. pp. 70–71.

Effects on the Cossacks

The deportations and exterminations are recognized as genocide by modern scholars. While there were more than a million Cossacks before 1917, very few people consider themselves Cossacks today. Shane O'Rourke states that the de-Cossackization "was one of the main factors which led to the disappearance of the Cossacks as a nation". According to Łukasz Adamski and Bartłomiej Gajos, the exact death toll from de-Cossackization is highly contentious, with estimates ranging from thousands to hundreds of thousands. Several factors contribute to the difficulty of estimating the death toll, including exaggerated numbers published by the

white movement The White movement,. The old spelling was retained by the Whites to differentiate from the Reds. also known as the Whites, was one of the main factions of the Russian Civil War of 1917–1922. It was led mainly by the Right-wing politics, right- ...

and varying definitions of the genocide; some historians count the deaths of the

Holodomor The Holodomor, also known as the Ukrainian Famine, was a mass famine in Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians. The Holodomor was part of the wider Soviet famine of 1930–193 ...

in the Don region, an engineered famine that killed hundreds of thousands of Don Cossacks and Ukrainians. Robert Gellately claims that "the most reliable estimates indicate that between 300,000 and 500,000 were killed or deported in 1919–20" out of a population of around three million, with most being deported. Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev, head of the Presidential Committee for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression, writes that "hundreds of thousands of Cossacks were killed", and

Rudolph Rummel Rudolph Joseph Rummel (October 21, 1932 – March 2, 2014) was an American political scientist, a statistician and professor at Indiana University, Yale University, and University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. He spent his career studying data on collect ...

cites an estimate of 700,000 deaths in the Don Cossack genocide. Peter Holquist estimates a death toll in the thousands or tens of thousands in the period 1919–20, but notes that the extent of the genocide varied substantially by region. In some regions such as Khoper, tribunals executed thousands of Cossacks in a full-fledged extermination attempt, while some other tribunals did not conduct any executions at all. Research by Pavel Polian from

Russian Academy of Sciences The Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS; ''Rossíyskaya akadémiya naúk'') consists of the national academy of Russia; a network of scientific research institutes from across the Russian Federation; and additional scientific and social units such ...

on the subject of

forced settlements in the Soviet Union Special settlements in the Soviet Union were the result of population transfers and were performed in a series of operations organized according to social class or nationality of the deported. Resettling of "enemy classes" such as prosperous ...

shows that more than 45,000 Cossacks were deported from the Terek Oblast to Ukraine. Their land was distributed among Cossack collaborators and Chechens. According to the ''Dictionary of Genocides'', the "genocidal treatment" of the Cossacks was based on class, ethnicity and politics and part of a broader

policy of remaking society..

References

{{reflist, colwidth=30em

External links

Soviet order to exterminate Cossacks is unearthed

Communications Office, 21 January 2003 History of the Cossacks in Russia Ethnic groups in the Soviet Union Political repression in the Soviet Union Soviet ethnic policy Forced migration in the Soviet Union Ethnic cleansing in Europe Genocides in Europe Persecution by the Soviet Union Massacres of Christians Racism in the Soviet Union Red Terror

Background

History

Effects on the Cossacks

See also

References

External links