page_title: Cossacks
section_title: Cossacks in the Soviet Union, 1917–1945
hierarchical_section_title: Cossacks / Russian Cossacks / Cossacks in the Soviet Union, 1917–1945
caption_attribution_description: English: Kuban Cossacks at Victory Parade, Red Square, June 24 1945 Deutsch: Kuban-Kosaken bei der Parade zum Tag des Sieges am Roten Platz in Moskau.
context_page_description: The Cossacks, a group of predominantly East Slavic-speaking Orthodox Christian people, became known as members of democratic, self-governing, semi-military communities, originating in the Pontic steppe. They inhabited sparsely-populated areas and islands in the lower Dnieper, Don, Terek and Ural river basins and played an important role in the historical and cultural development both of Ukraine and of Russia.
  After World War II the Soviet Union disbanded the Cossack units in the Soviet Army. During the Perestroika era in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, descendants of Cossacks moved to revive their national traditions. In 1988 the Soviet Union passed a law allowing the re-establishment of former Cossack hosts and the formation of new ones. During the 1990s many regional authorities agreed to hand over to these Cossack hosts some local administrative and policing duties.
  In the 2002 Russian Census, 140,028 people claimed Cossack ethnicity, with 67,573 people identifying as ethnic Cossack in the Russian Census of 2010.
context_section_description: On 22 December 1917, the Council of People's Commissars effectively abolished the Cossack estate by ending their military service requirements and privileges. After the widespread anticommunist rebellions among Cossacks in 1918, the Soviet regime's approach hardened in early 1919, when the Red Army occupied Cossack districts in the Urals and northern Don. The Bolsheviks embarked on a genocidal policy of “de-Cossackization”, intended to end the Cossack threat to the Soviet regime. This was pursued through resettlement, widespread executions of Cossack veterans from the White armies, and favoring the outlanders within the Cossack hosts. Ultimately, the de-Cossackization campaign led to a renewed rebellion among Cossacks in Soviet-occupied districts, and produced a new round of setbacks for the Red Army in 1919.
  When the victorious Red Army again occupied Cossack districts in late 1919 and 1920, the Soviet regime did not officially reauthorize the implementation of de-Cossackization. There is, however, disagreement among historians as to the degree of Cossack persecution by the Soviet regime. For example, the Cossack hosts were broken up among new provinces or autonomous republics. Some Cossacks, especially in areas of the former Terek host, were resettled so their lands could be turned over to natives displaced from them during the initial Russian and Cossack colonization of the area. At the local level, the stereotype that Cossacks were inherent counterrevolutionaries likely persisted among some Communist officials, causing them to target, or discriminate against, Cossacks despite orders from Moscow to focus on class enemies among Cossacks rather than the Cossack people in general.
  Rebellions in the former Cossack territories erupted occasionally during the interwar period. In 1920–1921, disgruntlement with continued Soviet grain-requisitioning activities provoked a series of revolts among Cossack and outlander communities in South Russia. The former Cossack territories of South Russia and the Urals also experienced a devastating famine in 1921–1922. In 1932–1933, another famine, known as the Holodomor, devastated Ukraine and some parts of South Russia, causing a population decline of about 20–30%. While urban areas were less affected, the decline was even higher in the rural areas, populated largely by ethnic Cossacks. Robert Conquest estimates the number of famine-related deaths in the Northern Caucasus at about one million. Government officials expropriated grain and other produce from rural Cossack families, leaving them to starve and die. Many families were forced from their homes in the severe winter and froze to death. Mikhail Sholokhov's letters to Joseph Stalin document the conditions and widespread deaths, as do eyewitness accounts. Besides starvation, the collectivization and dekulakization campaigns of the early 1930s threatened Cossacks with deportation to labor camps, or outright execution by Soviet security organs.
  In April 1936, the Soviet regime began to relax its restrictions on Cossacks, allowing them to serve openly in the Red Army. Two existing cavalry divisions were renamed as Cossack divisions, and three new Cossack cavalry divisions were established. Under the new Soviet designation, anyone from the former Cossack territories of the North Caucasus, provided they were not Circassians or other ethnic minorities, could claim Cossack status.
  In World War II, during the German invasion of the Soviet Union, many Cossacks continued to serve in the Red Army. Some fought as cavalry in the Cossack divisions, such as the 17th Kuban Cossack Cavalry Corps and the famous Lev Dovator Corps, later awarded the honorific designation “guard” in recognition of its performance. Other Cossacks fought as partisans, although the partisan movement did not acquire significant traction during the German occupation of the traditional Cossack homelands in the North Caucasus.
caption: Kuban Cossacks during the Moscow Victory Parade of 1945
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "612", "Image ImageLength": "400", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "600", "Image YResolution": "600", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS5 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2010:09:27 00:28:59", "Image ExifOffset": "228", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "378", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7996", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "612", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "400"}