Newsgroups: talk.politics.soviet
Subject: Cossack revival gets mixed reception in southern Russia
From: verbit@brauer.harvard.edu (Mikhail S. Verbitsky)
Date: 8 Sep 92 10:15:41 EDT
Distribution: world
Organization: Sozialistische Patienten Kollektiv



The following article is being reposted from Clarinews without 
permission :(. Note that Kuban' Cossacdom now is a greatest base of Pamyat'
nationalistic movement in the whole country.

>	TAMAN, Russia (UPI) -- For a Russia wracked by depression and despair
>it was obscenely extravagant: a festival of riotous color on the shores
>of a sun-drenched Black Sea bay. Only Cossacks could stage such a
>shindig in such difficult times.
>	The celebrations in the picturesque resort of Taman in the Krasnodar
>region marked the 200th anniversary of the first Cossack landing in
>Kuban, Russia's wild southern frontier region, which Empress Catherine
>the Great granted the Cossacks to colonize and conquer in 1792.
>	But the festival was not merely a commemoration of the Taman landing.
>It was also the biggest show of strength by Russia's Cossacks since the
>Bolsheviks almost obliterated them 70 years ago.
>	``I am glad I can be present at this triumph,'' said Nikolai
>Sukhenko, a proud member of the Cossack diaspora who rushed to Taman
>from his New Jersey home to attend the festival.
>	The authorities deported Sukhenko's father's entire village after the
>1917 revolution, when Cossacks were branded the main prop of deposed
>Czar Nicholas' regime and enemies of the newly triumphant proletariat.
>	For Sukhenko, who emigrated to the United States after World War II,
>Taman was a vindication after years of exile and repression -- the
>yearned-for redress of a great historical wrong.
>	But Taman also was a display of the Cossacks' new assertiveness.
>These days Cossacks will not make do with the tacky folklore ensembles
>and dance troupes of the past. Now what they want most of all is
>political power. And there is no knowing what they will do if they do
>not get it.
>	``We are now bigger than any political party,'' said Vladimir Gromov,
>the Kuban Cossacks' pugnacious ataman, or chieftan. ``And we'll fight
>these democrats -- the whole idle stinking lot of them.''
>	Fifteen thousand Cossacks converged on Taman for the festival, and
>over the weekend of Aug. 22-23 the resort turned into a military
>encampment, with proud warriors brandishing sabres and whips, clad in
>Caucasian fur hats and black kaftans festooned with rifle cartridges.
>	A unit of 40 Ukrainian Cossacks, distinguished by their bald heads
>and shaggy forelocks, rode 600 miles on horseback across southern Russia
>to join in the festivities, re-enacting the exodus of the Cossack host
>from Zaporozhye in present-day southern Ukraine to Kuban.
>	Concerts of song and dance were held on the shores of Taman bay.
>Orthodox priests in flowing beards blessed the assembled hosts, and
>atamans in full regalia gave paeans in praise of Cossack arms. At night
>men cooked stew under the starry skies, drank Kuban wine and sang folk
>songs round their camp fires.
>	The romance of Kuban's born-again Cossacks is seductive, hinting at a
>peculiarly Russian lust for freedom and adventure, eroded by decades of
>repressive Soviet rule.
>	``Cossacks were initially fugitive peasants escaping serfdom,'' says
>Igor Yakovenko, a Moscow academic specializing in Cossack affairs. 
>``They reveal the innate Russian craving for freedom.''
>	But the romantic rhetoric hides the fact that Cossacks are now a huge
>factor in the ethnic powder keg of southern Russia. Their revival
>threatens to set alight already smouldering tensions between Russians
>and the hundred other minorities that inhabit Kuban.
>	The Krasnodar region, the Kuban heartland, is now home to thousands
>of refugees fleeing war and ethnic strife in Azerbaijan and Armenia. As
>the influx of Caucasians increases, so does resentment among Krasnodar's
>Russians.
>	Locals say refugees, who are mostly unregistered and unemployed, run
>the criminal underground and earn fortunes from the illegal export of
>goods across the border into Georgia and Armenia.
>	``They have turned the Kuban into their raw materials base,'' says
>Nikolai Pomogayev of the Kuban Cossack Rada or Council. ``Russia is
>becoming enslaved to the Caucasus.''
>	Dislike of Caucasians has reached such a pitch that Cossacks
>automatically blame them for crimes against ethnic Russians. There have
>been countless cases of Cossack assemblies demanding the immediate
>expulsion of refugee communities after attacks on Russians.
>	``Isolated cases of murder or rape by Armenians are immediately blown
>up into calamities of global proportions,'' says Vadim Remler, head of
>the Krasnodar administration's ethnic relations unit.
>	Remler says the rise in crime has nothing to do with Krasnodar's
>Armenians, most of whom have lived in Kuban for generations, and has
>everything to do with the open Russo-Georgian border, across which
>criminal gangs are free to smuggle out food and consumer goods and
>smuggle in arms and narcotics.
>	Krasnodar's leaders want Russia to impose tougher customs controls
>and a visa regime on the border. ``Otherwise, the Cossacks will take the
>matter into their own hands and close the border themselves,'' says
>Remler.
>	As crime rates rise, Cossacks are settling into the role of popular
>vigilantes. In areas where regional authority control is weak they mount
>joint patrols with the local police, set up spot customs checks and even
>launch raids on speculators at local markets.
>	``There is a complete paralysis of power in areas of rampant crime,''
>says Yakovenko. ``Cossacks are merely filling this vacuum.''
>	However, there are fears these new crime-fighters themselves harbor
>criminal elements who are attracted to the glamour and prestige of the
>Cossack whip.
>	``Today's Cossacks can be divided into three groups,'' says Mikhail
>Yegorov, deputy head of Krasnodar regional administration. ``There are
>the genuine ones with real Cossack blood. There are the ones who are
>drawn to it by unsatisfied political ambitions. And then there are those
>who like the idea of all those guns.''
>	The last group have come into prominence lately, with armed Cossack
>intervention in aid of ethnic Russians in the breakaway Trans-Dniester
>region of Moldova and pro-Russian separatists fighting government troops
>in northern Georgia.
>	Many fear the gung-ho chauvinism of the Cossacks will revive Russia's
>60-year Caucasian war, which finally cemented Czarist dominion over the
>countless nations on the southern frontier.
>	``I am very much against any manifestations of nationalism and
>chauvinism,'' says Yegorov. ``The fragile ethnic peace in Kuban must be
>preserved.''
>	But it is not only Russia's ethnic minorities who fear the Cossack
>revival. Many Russians in Krasnodar suspect that what the restless
>warriors really want is political power -- and they will stop at nothing
>to get it.
>	A recent law passed by the Russian Parliament gave Cossacks back many
>of the special privileges they enjoyed before 1917. Traditional land
>ownership rights, local autonomy for Cossack settlements and the
>creation of a Cossack fighting force within the Russian army are all
>provided for in the law.
>	But locals fear it will be used to impose Cossack rule in areas where
>they are not even a majority of the population. The fears are genuine: 
>``ataman rule'' invests all authority -- legislative, executive and
>judicial -- in the hands of the Cossack chieftain, who rules alone.
>	``They say they will restore order if they come to power,'' says
>Khajimurat Sarov, a teacher at Krasnodar polytechnic. ``But their order
>is the lash of a whip.''
>	Like many non-Russians, Sarov, a Karachaian from the small Caucasian
>republic of Karachayevo-Circassia, loathes the Cossacks, and sees in
>their leaders a lust for power only thinly disguised by a sentimental
>desire to revive the traditional Cossack way of life.
>	``They keep saying -- give us land, give us land -- but they don't even
>know how to harness a horse,'' says Sarov. ``The only thing they can do
>is organize rallies. Anyway the real Cossacks were all killed by the
>Communists. These people are just clowns who like dressing up.''
>	But whatever people think about them, the Cossacks are here to stay.
>``They are not a mirage that fades away all on its own,'' says
>Yakovenko. ``The Russia of the 21st century cannot exist without the
>Cossacks.''
>	This is a mixed blessing for some. In Taman, an old peasant watched
>as the ranks of Cossacks marched past, banners flapping in the breeze.
>She shook her head at the guardians of Kuban's new order. Their arrival
>does not bode well.
>	``They took my cow, they loaded it onto a car, took it away and ate
>it,'' said the babushka, who would not give her name. ``Just like the
>Communists used to do.''

Repost by: Misha Verbitsky.