Cossacks

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Cossack Mamaj with Kobsa , early 19th century, oil on canvas in the National Art Museum of Ukraine

Cossacks ( Ukrainian козаки́ , kosaky; Russian казаки́ / каза́ки , kasaki; pronunciation ? / I ; Polish kozacy ) were communities of free equestrian associations , to which volatile Russian and Ukrainian serfs , sometimes just adventurers or otherwise renegades in the southern steppes . Audio file / audio sample

The name Cossack comes from the Turkic languages , means something like "free warrior" and is etymologically, but not content- wise related to the ethnonym Kazakhs . The view that the Cossacks are the descendants of the Cumans who lived in the Eastern European steppe areas before the Mongol invasion is no longer up-to-date .

From the 16th century onwards, the Slavic Cossacks founded their own settlements and communities and became defensive farmers who had to defend themselves against the frequent raids by nomads of Asian descent (especially Crimean Tatars ). In the 17th century the quasi-state Cossack hetmanate was formed in Ukraine , which fought against Polish rule and later became part of the Russian Empire as an autonomy. Up to the 18th century, both Russian and Ukrainian Cossacks were partially independent from the Tsarist empire, then they were gradually integrated into the Russian army as free cavalry units . The main settlement areas of the Cossacks were the Dnepr , the Don and the Ural regions.

Traditionally, the Cossacks are organized hierarchically under atamans or hetmans . The Cossacks played a key role in the Russian conquest and development of Siberia and the North Caucasus .

Ukrainian Cossacks

From the 15th century, the Ukrainian territory belonged nominally to the Polish-Lithuanian Union , i.e. to the Polish (West Ukraine) and the Lithuanian Empire (East Ukraine). However, the area of ​​rule was severely restricted due to the loss of population as a result of the Mongol storm and did not in fact extend beyond Kaniw and Cherkassy to the south. On the north coast of the Black Sea , on the other hand, the Crimean Tatars had established themselves as a center of power that had separated from the remnants of the Golden Horde . The rule of the Tatars, however, was not territorially organized, mostly tied to the center of the Crimea and was also limited to collecting tribute and raids in the northern Ukrainian border areas. The gap between Poland, Lithuania, Russia and the Crimean Tatars was an area without domination, in which state power could only establish itself in the few fortified border towns.

Attack of the Zaporozhian Cossacks in the steppe. Painting by Franz Roubaud

Life in the border areas was initially related to the fortified cities; agriculture was underdeveloped because Tatar campaigns destroyed all settlement approaches. People lived from the steppe industry, that is, they left the border fortresses in groups to catch fish, raise bees and hunt game in areas endangered by the Tatars. For this purpose, people gathered every spring in one of the border towns, formed a group, chose a leader and swore to stick together for the duration of the steppe season. The resulting steppe booty groups ( Watahy ) became the core of the Slavic (Ukrainian) Cossack groups. These individual Cossack groups were communities of around 20 men each, who lived together, worked together, defended themselves together and, following the example of the Tartar cavalry troops who opposed them, began to undertake their first forays on horseback.

The feudal oppression in the Polish-Lithuanian and Russian hinterland ( second serfdom ) caused more and more peasants to flee to the southern border area in the 16th century. The influx of people from the middle of the 16th century onwards led the steppe hunters to develop the first settlement cores on the rivers of the steppe area (earlier bee gardens became the core of new settlements) and slowly penetrated into previously uninhabited areas. On the other hand, there was also an increase in the number of people who continued to pursue the steppe trade, but increasingly hired themselves out as mercenaries with their experience in fighting Tatars or who initiated independent war undertakings in their Cossack groups. The term Stan refers to a militarily organized group of Cossacks, which also belonged together regionally, and which mostly appeared as a large association . The field of action for military activities was also large and grew more and more, not only Poland and the Moscow Empire (initially for border guards, but then also for military campaigns against Tatars, Russians and Swedes), but also Lithuanian magnates as troop recruits to support their huge private armies for internal power struggles. In addition, the Tatar threat to the areas continued to promote the amalgamation of Cossack groups with a warlike goal: Cossacks raided Tatar groups on their own or took boats across the Black Sea and plundered the coastal cities of the Ottoman Empire .

The Zaporozhian Cossacks write a letter to the Turkish sultan (painting by Ilya Repin , 1891)

Social and religious ties

Until the 18th century, the Cossacks did not form a special social class , they rather defined themselves through their activity as steppe hunters, later also - when they were accepted into the military organization of the register Cossacks - through the freedoms granted to them by the Polish crown or the tsar and privileges as a warrior.

Initially, Cossacks were tolerant of social origins and religious beliefs. Nobles, peasants and citizens as well as Tatars and Cossacks of Russian Orthodox, Uniate and Roman Catholic faith are documented; up to the first half of the 17th century even Cossacks of Jewish faith are clearly documented in the sources. However, a change took place in the 17th century, when the grip of Polish-Lithuanian state and aristocratic power grew stronger.

Since the third decade of the 17th century, the controversy on the socio-political level led to an increasingly clear defense of the Cossacks against everything Catholic and - because of the increasing importance of Jewish administrators on Polish aristocratic estates - everything Jewish. In this context, the Cossacks became the bearers of a Ukrainian independence, which was initially defined exclusively as a distinction to everything Polish, but in the course of the first half of the 17th century also laid the roots for an independent Ukrainianism.

The Zaporozhian Cossacks and the Sich

Bohdan Khmelnytskyi

In the 1550s, Prince Dmytro Wyschneweckyj , who was closely allied with the Cossacks, built a fortress on the Dnepr island of Khortyzja in order to have a base for attacks on the Tatars. He was supported by both the Lithuanian and Moscow authorities. From this time on, this fortress served the Cossacks as a model for the Zaporozhian Sitsch and other fortifications. These fortresses marked a turning point in the consciousness of the Cossacks as they now had a central point independent of the administration. This is where the image of the rough, hard-drinking male society emerged, to which both monastic (because women had no access to the sitsch) and knightly features were ascribed. In fact, the Cossacks now achieved a certain degree of independence from the Polish-Lithuanian government, which the latter also confirmed to the Turks and Tatars when complaints about the attacks came from that side. Towards the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th centuries, Cossacks were organized and their position was consolidated. Attempts by the Polish kings Sigismund II August and Stefan I to take the Cossacks into their service were only temporarily and partially successful. At this time the Cossacks formed their own class with independent jurisdiction and authority. Economically, however, they remained dependent on both the Polish and Russian states. The Cossacks received food and money for their services as defenders of the Russian south-western and the Polish south-eastern border, on which they were dependent. This economic dependency on the one hand and political independence on the other not infrequently led to disputes with the consolidating states of Russia and Poland-Lithuania over rights and obligations to rule. By the middle of the 17th century, the Polish state had succeeded in integrating large parts of the upper class of the Cossacks into the Polish nobility, the Szlachta . So it came to internal social conflicts. The simple Cossacks saw their rights more and more curtailed. They were mostly defense farmers and became increasingly dependent on Polish landowners. In addition, the Polish state made attempts to convert the Orthodox Cossacks to the Catholic faith. The contrasts Polish-Cossack, Catholic-Orthodox, landowner-peasant became decisive for the development of the political myth about the Cossacks.

In 1648 the hetman of the Zaporozhian Cossacks , Bogdan Khmelnitski , led the Khmelnytskyi uprising against the Polish-Lithuanian rule. His followers plundered large parts of the Polish-Lithuanian Empire, with the participation of the local Christian population in serious riots against the Jewish population. The Jews were assumed to be under the special protection of the Polish king. These pogroms may have killed up to a hundred thousand Jews. Khmelnicki is still considered a kind of national hero in Ukraine today. In order to avoid the defeat against Poland-Lithuania, the Cossacks made an oath of allegiance with Khmelnicki in 1654 by the Treaty of Perejaslav to the Moscow tsar. The historical interpretation of this oath of loyalty has since been disputed between Ukraine and Russia; The treaty of 1654 was interpreted in Soviet historiography as a (re) unification of the Eastern Slavs and was celebrated in 1954 (for example by renaming the Ukrainian city Proskuriw to Khmelnyzkyj ).

Subsidiary article: Hetmanat

Russian Cossacks

Orenburg Cossack, approx. Second half of the 19th century

As early as the 15th century, Cossack communities formed on the Don. As mostly escaped serfs from central Russia and the Ukraine, the Cossacks led a semi-legal and sometimes predatory existence, but also fulfilled an important function in the defense of the Moscow state from the raids of the Crimean Tatars. Even if the Cossacks were not always on good terms with the Russian state power, they were mostly patriotic and belonging to the Orthodox faith was mandatory for acceptance into the ranks of the Cossacks.

Yermak's Conquest of Siberia , a painting by Vasily Surikov

After the Cossack Yermak Timofeyevich the Khanate of Sibir conquered and had assumed the Czar areas beyond the Urals, its status and its relationship to state power improved. In 1577 a Cossack army was founded on the Terek in the Caucasus ; At the end of the 16th century, Cossacks founded the cities of Tobolsk , Berjosow , Surgut , Tara , Obdorsk and Narym in western Siberia .

A Siberian Cossack, late 19th century

At the beginning of the 17th century, Russian Cossacks reached the East Siberian river Yenisei . During the reign of Michael Fyodorovich , the first tsar from the Romanov dynasty , Russian Cossacks opened up eastern Siberia and founded the settlements of Yeniseisk , Kuznetsk , Krasnoyarsk and Yakutsk . They reached the Sea of ​​Okhotsk (Pacific Ocean).

1645 the Cossack sailed Vasily Poyarkov the river Amur and discovered the north coast of the island of Sakhalin . In 1648 the Cossack Semyon Deshnev reached the mouth of the Anadyr River in the Pacific from the mouth of the Kolyma River in the Arctic Ocean and discovered the road between Asia and America. From 1697 to 1699, the Siberian Cossack Vladimir Atlasov explored the Kamchatka Peninsula and the Kuril Islands. In the 19th century the Cossacks settled the Amur region, which the governor Nikolai Muravyov-Amursky took from China through diplomatic channels. The Cossacks also played a decisive role in the conquest and Russification of the Caucasus .

The relationship between state power and the Cossacks was not only characterized by cooperation. Again and again the Cossacks protested against what they considered to be too big a cut in their free way of life. During the Russian time of turmoil , the Cossacks were instrumental in the unrest and fighting in central Russia. In the late 17th century, the ataman Stenka Razin organized a major uprising in southern Russia and about a hundred years later it was the Cossacks under Yemeljan Pugachev who, together with the Tatars and Bashkirs, rose up in the Pugachev uprising against the intensified bondage policy of Catherine the Great . In these uprisings, which were also joined by numerous dissatisfied peasants and members of the lower classes, and which can therefore be described as social revolutions, the Cossacks took on a military leadership role on the one hand, and on the other hand they provided the rebels with their slogans of freedom and equality a kind of program that was enthusiastically received and partly put into practice during the uprisings.

The Cossacks in the 19th century

The clothing of the Kuban Cossacks (Southern Russia) took many Caucasian elements such as the 19th century Chokha on

If the Cossacks were the main bearers of social protest in the tsarist empire well into the 18th century, the 19th century, in contrast, was largely free of conflict and the Cossacks became one of the pillars of the empire. This succeeded mainly because from then on the Cossacks were considered a hereditary warrior class, which clearly distinguished itself from other social groups and was granted tax and duty exemption for the performance of military service. The Cossack units of the Imperial Russian Army played an important role as light cavalry during the coalition wars and Napoleon's Russian campaign , in the Caucasus War and in the Russo-Turkish Wars . Because of their exotic appearance, they were feared as barbaric savages on the one hand, and admired for their riding skills and their combative qualities on the other. For these reasons, a Cossack brigade based on the Russian model was also established as the Shah's bodyguard in Persia .

Cossacks in the Russian Civil War and in Soviet times

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Shortly before the October Revolution there were around 4.5 million Cossacks, of which just under 450,000 were military trained. In the following Russian civil war , a large part of the Cossacks took part on the side of the tsarist “ whites ”. At the same time they tried to maintain their autonomous position and their special rights, which often brought them into conflict with the “whites”, so that the Cossacks were often “ground up” between the civil war fronts. Under Lenin and then Stalin, the majority of the Cossacks were collectively persecuted as "anti- Bolsheviks ". As early as January 1919, the Bolsheviks had decreed a policy of "decosacization", which meant the physical annihilation of all opponents among the Cossacks. Revolutionary tribunals chose their victims often completely arbitrary and imposed death sentences in summary proceedings , where at least 10,000 Cossacks were alone until mid-1919 to the victim. Many Cossacks - especially the upper classes - fled the systematic terror of the Bolsheviks to France, whose language they already knew. Today you live fully integrated in France.

But there were also so-called Red Cossacks on the side of the Bolsheviks. Their most famous commander was Semyon Budjonny , who was not a Cossack himself. The novel The Silent Don by Michail Scholochow describes the attitude of the Cossacks during the revolution. There were many Cossacks who often switched sides.

Cossacks in World War II

Cossacks in the Wehrmacht

As in the time of the Russian Civil War, the Cossacks found themselves on both sides during World War II. Many Cossacks, including a not inconsiderable number of the Cossacks living in exile, such as B. the former ataman Pyotr Krasnow , because of their anti-Bolshevik attitudes, had open sympathy for National Socialist Germany, which they viewed as a bulwark against Stalin and communism.

In the advance of the German armed forces , they believed they saw a way to regain old rights and privileges and to openly celebrate their belief in the Orthodox religion again. That is why they offered their services to Hitler. This initially did not meet their wishes, although the Cossacks in the Nazi racial hierarchy were not regarded as Slavic " subhumans ", but as a people descended from the Ostrogoths and thus at least partially " Aryan ".

A Cossack takes an oath on Hitler
Cossack unit of the Wehrmacht

The first security and cavalry formations of the Cossacks, which were deployed on the German side, emerged in autumn 1941. On August 22, 1941, the Soviet 463rd Infantry Regiment under Ivan Kononov, a Don Cossack, surrendered almost completely to the Wehrmacht and became part of Army Group Center taken into service as Cossack Department 600 for security tasks and for fighting partisans. The 18th Army of the Wehrmacht ( Army Group North ) decided that every division of the Wehrmacht that was entrusted with occupation tasks should receive a Cossack hundred , whose special task should be the annihilation of partisans . These formations, soldiers and officers, were initially formed entirely from the prisoner-of-war camps and defectors from the Red Army .

During the Wehrmacht's summer offensive in 1942, Hitler approved the use of Cossack units not only in fighting partisans, but also at the front. With the help of 25,000 volunteers, a large, front-line association was to be formed. When the Wehrmacht had to withdraw from the Caucasus after the defeat of Stalingrad , the plan was dropped. However, around 20 battalion- strong Cossack units were fighting across the entire Eastern Front .

The 1st Cossack Cavalry Division , set up in Mława in Poland in the summer of 1943 , numbered around 10,000 men. It was the first large Cossack unit in the east. The trunk of the division was made up of the Cossacks from the Kherson reception camp in the Ukraine, Cossacks from the Don , Kuban , Terek , Siberia , Transbaikalia and Ussuria . The officer and non-commissioned officer corps was formed from former prisoners of war of the Red Army and from emigrant Cossacks from western countries who had agreed to collaborate. The form of organization, armament and equipment corresponded to that of the East Prussian cavalry brigades. In September 1943, the division consisted of one regiment each of Siberian and Terek Cossacks and two regiments of Don and Cuban Cossacks . Each regiment had 2,000 men, with 160 German soldiers as support staff. The division was subordinate to the German major general Helmuth von Pannwitz , who was elected by the Cossacks as the division's hetman.

Because there were concerns that the Cossacks would not fight reliably against their compatriots, the large unit was not deployed on the Eastern Front, but was ordered to Yugoslavia in the Belgrade area in September 1943 and subordinated to the 2nd Panzer Army , Army Group F. The surrender of Yugoslavia in April 1941 and the simultaneous disintegration of the multi-ethnic state heralded one of the bloodiest and most sacrificed partisan wars in history. The fronts crisscrossed the country between the political power groups. The Cossack regiments were given the task of protecting the supply lines to Greece (including the ethnic Germans ), attacking the partisans and driving them out of their bases. The Yugoslav People's Liberation Army had long since grown from 80,000 initially to over 400,000 by the end of 1944. The mobility of the mounted Cossack units and their courage to fight brought the partisans into serious distress several times. As part of the “ Operation Rösselsprung ”, two Cossack regiments distinguished themselves when they captured Tito's headquarters in the mountains near Drvar, although the partisan leader only managed to escape capture at the last minute through a lucky circumstance.

From February 1945, Helmuth von Pannwitz, who had meanwhile been appointed Lieutenant General, was in charge of the XIV Cossack Cavalry Corps of the Waffen SS, which had grown into an army corps and consisted of the 1st Cossack Cavalry Division (Commander Colonel von Baath) and the 2nd Cossack Cavalry Division (Commander Colonel Hans-Joachim von Schultz), the Plastunbrigade (Commander Colonel Iwan Kononow) and the 3rd Cossack Division , which is currently under construction, with a combat strength of more than 25,000 men. Efforts had already been made to integrate the Cossack Division into the Waffen SS since mid-1944 . On August 26, 1944, there was a discussion between Himmler and Pannwitz. General von Pannwitz accepted a loose association with the Waffen-SS in order to give his units access to heavier weapons and better equipment and to maintain further control over Cossack units in France . The command structures, uniforms and rank designations remained with the Wehrmacht. The 1st Cossack Cavalry Division became known for a large number of looting, rapes and shootings in the Yugoslav insurrectionary area.

Relocation

Due to the withdrawal of the Wehrmacht in the east in 1943, many Cossack families were also forced to leave their homeland. The German imperial government assigned them new settlement areas in the Tolmezzo area, in the northern Italian province of Friuli , as the new " Kosakia ". In the summer of 1944, around 35,000 Cossacks were evacuated from the east in 50 railroad trains and settled in this area, where they were mainly used in the fight against Italian partisans until the end of the war.

"Lienz Cossack Tragedy"

For various reasons, but mainly to avoid being captured by the Red Army or Tito's partisans , the Cossack Stans fled to Austria over the Plöckenpass in early May 1945 . In this way they came to the region of Upper Carinthia and East Tyrol . The headquarters was set up in Lienz , and thousands of soldiers, women, children and their horses camped in the meadows and forests in the area.

The British Army handed the Cossacks over to the Red Army in Judenburg at the end of May / beginning of June 1945 . This happened on the basis of the agreements of the Yalta Conference in 1945, which provided for the repatriation of Soviet citizens, especially those who wore German uniforms or who had collaborated with National Socialism . Among these, however, were also emigrants from the Tsarist Empire who were not Soviet citizens and therefore should not have been extradited. For most of the Cossack officers, extradition meant execution , usually immediately, and most of the men disappeared in the Siberian penal camps , where many of them also perished. Von Pannwitz , Krasnow , Schkuro and nine other prominent Cossack leaders were brought to Moscow, sentenced to death in a high treason trial, and executed in January 1947.

Red Army Cossack units

Kuban Cossacks at the Moscow Victory Day parade in 1945

On the Soviet side, too, Cossack associations, especially the Kuban and Terek Cossacks, formed an essential part of the mobile armed forces of the Red Army in the southern section of the Eastern Front. As early as 1936 the Red Army had started to set up Cossack associations again, which also wore the old Cossack costume. After the outbreak of war, volunteers from the traditional Cossack areas were called in to set up four Cossack divisions (12th and 13th Cuban Cossacks, 14th and 15th Don Cossacks) which together formed the 17th Cossack Cavalry Corps of the Red Army. For its achievements, the corps was later elevated to the 4th Guard Cossack Cavalry Corps.

The Cossacks' war effort on the side of the Red Army certainly contributed to the fact that - in contrast to "unreliable" ethnic groups such as Crimean Tatars , Volga Germans or Chechens - the Cossacks as a group no longer suffered systematic persecution by the Soviet leadership. Leaders of collaborators and anti-Bolsheviks were therefore accused of "White Guards" and "German agents", respectively, while the loyalty of the Cossacks per se was not called into question. Nevertheless, all Cossack units of the Red Army were disbanded in 1947 and the Cossacks were largely pushed out of the public consciousness.

Cossackism in the Post-Soviet Era

Cossacks in a Ukrainian magazine

During the Gorbachev era , there was a revival and reorganization of the Cossacks. What is characteristic of these groups, known as Neo-Cossacks , is that they do not define themselves by their descent or a certain (historical) territory, but as communities of belief, which, in addition to the descendants of real Cossack families, can also include people who support the "rebirth" of the Want to use Cossacks. Another characteristic is that the neo-Cossacks saw themselves from the beginning as part of their respective nation states, for whose "defense" they wanted to stand up. In addition to the historically based division into Ukrainian and Russian Cossacks, a Belarusian Cossack organization has now also emerged . The identification of the new Cossack organizations with their respective nation-states meant that, especially among the Cossacks, supporters of nationalistic, often xenophobic and chauvinistic slogans and ideologems could be found and still do.

In 1990 the All-Russian Cossack League was re-established in Russia; at the local level, the eleven armies that existed during the Tsarist era were revived. In 1993 Boris Yeltsin tried to involve the Cossacks in his politics by giving them functions of border protection. On December 5, 2005, the Law On the State Service of the Russian Cossacks came into force in Russia . It allows the Cossacks to serve in the Russian Army, as a rule, in units that have traditional Cossack designations. The Cossack associations organize the "military-patriotic education" of future recruits and look after their members who serve as reservists in the Russian army. They help in emergency and disaster situations, but also with civil and territorial defense and the maintenance of public order, such as the 2014 Winter Olympics . In addition, they can make agreements on other activities with various executive bodies, from bodies across the Russian Federation to local self-government. The Cossack organizations are entered in a state register .

In 2007, state funds were made available for the first time to set up and maintain Cossack cadet corps .

In 2009, Russian President Medvedev established a Cossack Council, headed by the President's Deputy Chief of Staff, Alexander Beglov. The council includes the chief ataman of the Russian Cossack Union, Pawel Sadorozhny, and the atamans of the seven Russian Cossack societies.

Today there are said to be up to ten million Cossacks. Cossack associations in Russia belong to 740,000 people, 600,000 of whom perform border security tasks. The Great Don Army alone is said to include 156,000 Cossacks, some of whom are said to have been involved in the 2008 Caucasus War . Many of these Russian Cossack associations are now legally listed as Registered Cossacks of the Russian Federation ( Russian Реестровое казачество Российской Федерации ) to perform these complex public tasks. At the last census in Russia in 2010, only 67,000 people identified themselves as Cossacks. In the finally published figures, however, they were not listed as a separate ethnic group, but included in the Russians. In the Ukraine, too, the Cossacks are not officially regarded as a separate people but as Ukrainians.

Cossack leagues are considered particularly loyal to the government in Russia and were also used in the war in Ukraine . They support the state authority, among other things they attacked a protest by Pussy Riot with the Cossack whip in 2014 when such militias were used as security forces. At the beginning of May 2018, the Human Rights Council asked the law enforcement authorities to answer the question of why the demonstrations on May 5, 2018 had scenes of violence exactly where the Cossacks were present, and about their cooperation with the authorities. Swiss television called the groups that also wanted to mark presence at the 2018 World Cup " thugs " after the ultra-conservatives beat down demonstrators critical of the government.

Armies and formations of the Cossacks

Well-known Cossack leaders

Cossackism

  • Schaschka : Cossack saber
  • Nagaika : braided whip of the Cossacks
  • Stanitsa : Cossack settlement, but also unit of the Cossacks
  • Kazachok : Dance of the Cossacks
  • Traditional uniform: costume of the Cossacks, comes from the costume of the Circassians

literature

Overview works and overall presentations

The history of its origins and the time up to the 19th century

  • Carsten Kumke: Leaders and leaders among the Zaporozhian Cossacks. Structure and history of Cossack associations in the Polish-Lithuanian border region (1550–1648) (= research on Eastern European history; Volume 49). Harrassowitz, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-447-03374-6 .
  • Susanne Luber: The origin of Zaporog Cossacks of the 17th century according to personal names (= publications of the department for Slavic languages ​​and literatures of the Eastern European Institute at the Free University of Berlin, volume 56). Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1983, ISBN 3-447-02381-3 .
  • Peter Rostankowski: Settlement development and settlement forms in the countries of the Russian Cossack armies (= Berlin Geographical Treatises. Issue 6). Berlin 1969.
  • Günter Stökl: The emergence of the Cossack (= publications of the Eastern European Institute Munich, Volume 3). Isar-Verlag, Munich 1953.

Cossacks in the First and Second World Wars

  • Andreas Hilger , G. Wagenlehner: Soviet military tribunals. Böhlau, Cologne 2001, ISBN 3-412-06701-6 .
  • Stefan Karner : On the extradition of the Cossacks to the Soviets in Judenburg in 1945. In: Johann Andritsch (Ed.): Judenburg 1945 in eyewitness reports. Judenburg Museum Writings XII. Judenburg 1994, pp. 243-259.
  • Erich Kern : General von Pannwitz and his Cossacks. Vowinckel , Göttingen 1964.
  • Christian Koller : “Not exactly our finest hour”: History and memory of the Cossacks in the Balkans during World War II. In: Portal Military History, May 27, 2013.
  • Harald Stadler , Martin Kofler, Karl C. Berger: Escape into hopelessness. The Cossacks in East Tyrol. StudienVerlag, Innsbruck / Vienna / Bozen 2005, ISBN 3-7065-4152-1 .
  • Harald Stadler, Rolf Steininger, Karl C. Berger (eds.): The Cossacks in the First and Second World War. StudienVerlag, Innsbruck / Vienna / Bozen 2008, ISBN 978-3-7065-4623-2 .
  • Nikolai Tolstoy : The Yalta Betrayed: England's Guilt Before History. Langen-Mueller, Münch 1980, ISBN 3-7844-1719-1 .

New Cossacks of the post-Soviet period

Dittmar Schorkowitz with the participation of Vasile Dumbrava and Stefan Wiese: Post-communism and decreed nationalism. Memory, Violence and Politics of History in the Northern Black Sea Region. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-631-57610-6 , pp. 98-108.

To the reception history

  • Jana Bürgers: Bohdan Chmel'nyc'kyj and the Cossack myth in post-Soviet Ukraine. In: Yearbooks for the History of Eastern Europe. Volume 50, 2002, Issue 1. pp. 62-86.
  • Andreas Kappeler: The Cossack era as a central component in the construction of a national-Ukrainian story: The example of the magazine Kievskaja Starina 1882-1891. In: Robert O. Crummey, Holm Sundhaussen, Ricarda Vulpius (eds.): Russian and Ukrainian history from 16. – 18. Century. Research on Eastern European History, Volume 58. Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden 2002, ISBN 3-447-04480-2 , pp. 251-262.
  • Gertraud Patterer (prose text and poetry), Adi Holzer (collages, drawings and glass sculptures): The Cossack tragedy in Carinthia and East Tyrol. Storm Tryk Publishing House, Denmark 2007, ISBN 978-87-90170-29-5 .

Web links

Commons : Cossacks  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wiktionary: Kosak  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

References and comments

  1. ↑ “The Comani, who have lived in the country of Kipschak since time immemorial and who have not seldom been given this name, have become better known to us than the Turks, in whose place they act as the ruling horde and whose residences they partly take. A fairly extensive dictionary of their language has been preserved, whereby the ancestry of this people, the Usen and Pechenegs, who together, as is expressly assured, spoke one and the same language, is raised above all doubt. It is these Turks, not new immigrants from the areas beyond the Jaik, but real descendants of the old Scythians, who are now again under the name Comanen, i.e. H. Area or steppe dwellers, which the Slavs quite correctly translate with Polowzi and the Germans with Falawa, Felleut, appear again in world history. "(Karl Friedrich Neumann, The peoples of southern Russia in their historical development, BG Teubner, 1855, P. 132 )
  2. ^ Rolf-Dieter Müller: On the side of the Wehrmacht. Hitler's foreign helpers in the “Crusade against Bolshevism” 1941–1945. Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-86153-448-8 , pp. 207-212.
  3. ↑ Europe under the swastika. The occupation policy of German fascism (1938–1945). Eight-volume document edition. Supplementary volume 1, Occupation and Collaboration, Heidelberg 1994, ISBN 3-8226-2492-6 , p. 301 ff.
  4. ↑ Nikolai Tolstoy, p. 151, ISBN 978-3-7065-4623-2 . Samuel J. Newlands : Cossacks in the German Army. London 1991, pp. 145-46. Matthias Hoy: The way to death. Vienna 1991, pp. 152-155, 473-476.
  5. ↑ Military History Research Office (Ed.): The German Reich and the Second World War , Volume 5/2: Organization and Mobilization of the German Sphere of Power , Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-421-06499-7 , p. 160.
  6. ↑ Peter Hollquist: Cossack Identity in the 20th Century. In: Russia at the Crossroads: History, Memory and Political Practice. Routledge, 1998, p. 107.
  7. ↑ Website of the Ukrainian Cossacks (Ukrainian) ( Memento of the original from October 26, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kozatstvo.kiev.ua
  8. ↑ Website of the Belarusian Cossacks (Russian)
  9. ^ Roland Götz, Uwe Halbach: Political Lexicon Russia. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-406-35177-8 .
  10. ↑ Legal text in the Rossiskaya Gazeta (Russian)
  11. ↑ Pussy Riot were flogged in Sochi ( memento of the original from March 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Vice.com , February 21, 2014, last accessed February 24, 2014 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.vice.com
  12. ^ RIA Novosti of August 10, 2006: 2007 first funding from the federal center for the Russian Cossacks
  13. ^ RIA Novosti of January 12, 2009: Russia's President forms Council for Cossack Affairs
  14. ^ RIA Novosti of July 3, 2008: Russia's Cossacks are jointly responsible for national security
  15. ^ RIA Novosti of July 1, 2005: Cossacks back in service with the state
  16. ↑ RIA Novosti of August 5, 2008: Russian Cossack ataman denies reports of division in the Cossack army
  17. ^ RIA Novosti of August 16, 2006: Cossacks of Abkhazia and Russia sign friendship treaty
  18. ^ RIA Novosti of August 2, 2006: Russian Cossacks ready to protect the citizens of Russia in Abkhazia
  19. ↑ Federal Law of the Russian Federation of December 5, 2005 № 154-FZ On the State Service of the Russian Cossacks.
  20. ↑ How Russia's Patriotic Cossacks Conquer Moscow. Die Welt , November 28, 2012
  21. ↑ Russia Update November 15, 2003: Surprises in the Great Population Census
  22. ↑ Poroshenko ordered a short ceasefire. NZZ, June 20, 2014. According to Ukrainian information, not only have mercenaries flooded into eastern Ukraine in droves, but also heavy weapons. ... The OSCE observers were probably in the hands of a paramilitary Cossack unit.
  23. ↑ Russian Cossacks whip Pussy Riot
  24. ↑ The Human Rights Council decided to investigate the role of the Cossacks and the NOD in suppressing the opposition action on May 5 , Novaya Gazeta, May 7, 2018
  25. ↑ FOCUS: Protesters in Russia are forcibly removed , 10vor10 , May 7, 2018