The Cossacks

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Origin of the "Free People" 1

II. The Zaporogian Cossacks 21

Foreword

TO weave a connected narrative from the known episodes of Cossack history would be a difficult and, in many ways, an impossible task. Such a work would, moreover, involve years of patient preparation and research — for authentic records concerning the subject are only to be found scattered as isolated chapters or paragraphs among the pages of Russian, Polish and Turkish history.

Poets and native bards were, generally speaking, the chief historians of the Cossacks or "Free People." The guiding traditions of their race, like those of all pastoral peoples, are to be found in songs, ballads and f olkstories, rather than in written records. Yet the national ideals thus orally maintained have lost nothing thereby in strength or influence. The Cossack ballads and khorovod of the present day, like those of earlier times, teach love of freedom, loyalty to comrades and hetman, and a sturdy devotion to the privileges which the courage of their forefathers obtained for them in the past. Cossack folktales differ in many respects from the heroic legends and peasant by-lines of the North. They possess, moreover, a characteristic vi FOREWORD

strain — praise of joyous adventure and "glad living" — all their own. Filled with the spirit of the "Free Steppes," they tell of hard knocks given and taken for the sheer love of fight; of struggles desperate and bloody, followed by Gargantuan feasting and debauch. Doughty feats with the wine-cup are honoured almost equally with deeds of war. In all these romances the dominant note is the praise of personal liberty and of a freedom often degenerating into license.

While the Cossack did, or ballad-mongers, frankly celebrate the deeds of their heroes in a measure of exaggeration permitted by patriotism and poetic license, the more ambitious and labored "historical" works of certain Polish and Russian writers only furnish an account so manifestly partial and prejudiced that they have little more scholarly authority than the Cossack folklore tales. A great historical romance has added to this confusion. All that is generally known abroad concerning the most glorious epoch of Cossack history is contained in the heroic pages of the late Henryk Sienkiewicz. In these masterpieces of fiction the part played by the tyrannical oppressors of the Cossack patriot Bogdan is lauded to the skies, and every act of his "base-born" followers too often treated with a fine if unconvincingly nobiliary contempt.

To French historical authorities, Salvandy, Rambaud and notably Lesur (to whose Histoire des

FOREWORD yii

Kosaques y published in 1814, the author acknowledges himself especially indebted) we owe a more objective treatment of the Cossack's story. Following their lead the writer will attempt in his work to dispel something of the ignorance so strangely persistent outside of Russia with respect to the origin and significance of this military caste or people. The term "Cossack," while generally applied to a characteristic branch of the old Russian cavalry service — more properly designates a community of warlike clans loosely bound together by the common tradition of a long and stirring history. If during the closing decades of the imperial system the Cossack "nations" became more or less identified with the other peoples of the Russian empire, they were nevertheless permitted through the strength of their free traditions and the importance of their services to the state, to retain the marks of an outstanding individuality — a policy wholly in opposition to the great unifying aim of Russian imperialism.

It is the proudest boast of the Cossacks of today — as of their forbears of the Ukraine — that they have never been classed as serfs nor for a moment lost their freeman's instinct for the principles of liberty. While the peasants of North Russia were bowed in shameful submission to the Great Princes of Moscow and later to the "dark forces" of the Tsar's court and the Baltic-German officialdom of the capital on the Neva, the history of the viii FOREWORD

Cossack inhabitants of the southern steppes was (as we shall later see) a long epic of heroic resistance to the encroachments of autocracy. If their distrust of the infinite docility of the moujik class has often made them in the past the blind instruments of reaction, their loyalty to Tsardom has never implied any abdication of the privileges guaranteed their own caste.

While the organization of the present Cossack armies is the outcome of a system which may generally be termed "Democratic-Feudalism" — i. e., a popular system of land tenure in return for military service to the old regime — their basic traditions were essentially free and republican. In spite of their old-time loyalty to the Tsar, the Cossack troops of the army — and notably those about the imperial court — were among the first to raise the standard of revolt during the constructive changes of March, 1917. The return of the Cossacks to the side of popular government was but the logical outcome of the whole trend of their history.

In order to understand the significance of the present Cossack movement in Southern Russia and the difference separating the former "Free People" of the Russian Empire from the moujiki or peasantry of the north, some knowledge of their history and origin is essential.

The following pages only attempt to sketch the outlines of their subject, yet so far as the author is aware no more comprehensive study of Cossack

FOREWORD

IX life and history has appeared in English. The chapter which traces the early history and development of the Cossack race is little more than a synopsis of facts forming part of a much broader subject: the history of the growth and expansion of Modern Russia. Elsewhere in this narrative, an effort has been made to follow, whenever possible, the colourful style of the original Cossack legends and sources. These latter are almost always biographical and fragmentary yet they give a vivid picture of their time and subject. The story of Yermak's heroic march through the twilight of the northern forests and his discovery and conquest of Siberia ; of Bogdan's fight for the Cossack liberties against the proud nobles of Poland ; of Mazeppa's almost forgotten part in the epic struggle between Charles XII of Sweden and Peter the Great for the Empire of the North; of the strange outbreak of savagery led by the "False Tsar" Pougatchev — the eighteenth century forerunner of the mobleaders of our own day — are matters of interest to the general reader.

Recent events show the importance of a better understanding of the facts of Cossack history.

One qualification at least the author may claim for the task he has undertaken. Many miles of travel in Cossack country during tw r o fateful years — just before and after the Russian Revolution — brought him into familiar and friendly contact with the Cossacks of the present day. Out of a desire to x FOREWORD

acquaint himself more thoroughly with their story and the part they have played in Russia's development grew the notes and studies from which the present volume has been written.

W. P. C.

Princeton University,

September, 1919.

THEIR HISTORY AND COUNTRY

Chapter I The Origin Of The "free People"

THE level plains and steppes of South Russia were known to the ancients as the broad channel followed by the ebb and flow of every fresh wave of conquest or migration passing between Europe and Asia. The legions of Rome and Byzance found this territory as impossible to occupy by military force as the high seas. The little known history of "Scythia" — from the earliest times until the thirteenth century of the Christian era — presents a confused picture of barbarous tribes pressing one upon another, the stronger driving the weaker before them from the more favoured hunting grounds. Often, voluntarily or by force, the victors included the vanquished in their own "superior" civilization. There are many reasons why it is difficult or impossible to follow with any degree of certainty the national history of these races. "Their long-forgotten quarrels, their interminglings and separations, above all the constant changes in their names and habitat make the study of their history as difficult as it is unprofitable." (Lesur, Histoire de$ Kosaques.)

This ignorance of the changes — political and economical — which are constantly taking place along the amorphous racial frontiers of Eastern Europe, has continued to our own times. But at recurrent intervals these Slav borderlands separating the Occident from the Orient become the scene of political upheavals so vast in their consequences that the very foundations of European civilization are shaken in their turn.

The great Tartar invasion which, during the thirteenth century, swept out of Asia and spread across the steppes of Southern Russia, was an occurrence of such magnitude that its echoes travelled to the most distant states of Europe. The arrival of fugitive bands of Khomans, Black Bulgars, and other wild steppe tribesmen at the court of Bela IV, King of Hungary, first spread the fame and terror of these new invaders. From these refugees and their descriptions of the enemy the sovereigns of Christendom learned with horror of the fate which in the short space of a few months had overtaken the most powerful strongholds of the princes of Bus and Muscovy. Even the Poles — whose more civilized and warlike state was generally considered the bulwark separating the "barbarians" of ancient Scythia from the communities of Europe — had been forced to make the best terms possible: by paying a degrading tribute to the invaders.

The powers of Europe now beheld upon the frontiers of their own empires an enemy far more redoubtable than the Saracen "infidels" against whom they had waged their mystical crusades. Turning from his dream of rescuing the Holy Sepulchre the Emperor Frederick II exercised all his eloquence to unite the Christian princes in a league against the Mongols. The Roman Pontiff, fearing for the Christian religion, preached a Holy War. Saint Louis prepared to march in person against the barbarians.

"All of civilized Europe was given over to anxiety and apprehension. The Tartars were represented as monsters living upon human flesh."* "Even the most reasonable believed that the end of the world was at hand. The people of Gog and Magog advancing under the command of the Antichrist were about to bring about the destruction of the universe." Suddenly, as though by common agreement or following some general command, the widely scattered hordes of horsemen turned once more towards the East, finally settling in great armed camps upon the fertile steppes near the shores of the Volga. In this inexplicable action, as mysterious as their first appearance from the heart of Asia, the writers of the time perceived the hand of an unseen Providence. The avenging wrath of the Deity had been turned aside by the intercession of the priests and holy men of Christendom.

* Memoires de Joinville.

Yet complete as the conquest of the Tartars appeared to be it was not destined to outlast the century which saw its rise. As usual in Oriental despotisms the seeds of its dissolution came from within.

The first result of these disaffections — notably a revolt of the Nogai tribesmen against the princes of the Golden Horde — was the disappearance of the crude administrative system exercised by the Tartar rulers over the old tribes of the steppes. These began once more to reassert their independence. Bands of Scythian refugees, Khosars, Khomans and "Khosaks," began to leave the marshy deltas of the great rivers such as the Don and Dnieper — where they had found in common a precarious refuge — and mounted on horses stolen from the Tartars returned to their familiar haunts. Here a terrible desolation spoke everywhere of "Tartar Peace." How complete had been the destruction of whole tribes and settlements of the previous inhabitants — caught by the over-^ whelming avalanche of Tartar horsemen — is pictured by the monkish chroniclers of a previous generation. In Hakluyt's Voyages these travellers describe how "for over three hundred leagues" they passed through great fields of whitening bones, "the only signs that might recall the presence of previous inhabitants of the steppes."

The wars of the princes of Tartary with the revolted Nogai and the struggles of the latter with the Russians now gave to the miserable remnants of the ancient lords of Scythia an opportunity to recover something of their ascendency, over the wildest and most deserted parts of the steppes. As these scattered tribesmen became more skilled in desert warfare, both Russians and Tartars occasionally sought their alliance and the aid of their ill-armed cavalry in settling their quarrels. But whether gathered in armed camps or Slovods, or else leading an errant nomad life, these "war bands," composed of refugees and renegades of every origin, were a constant menace to the frontiers of their more civilized neighbours; pirating on the great rivers and attacking the caravans of Russian or Tartar merchants with indifferent zeal. In the precarious existence of these rovers, we find the first traces of the frontier "civilization" of the Cossacks.

No problem of Russian history has given rise to more controversy than that of the origin of the Cossack race. It now appears established that the influence of the geographic and climatic conditions which exist on the steppes, modifying to a common type the characteristics of the peoples and tribes (often of wholly different origin) who in turn have inhabited the ancient lands of the Scyths — is the paramount factor in solving this problem. The tracing of blood ties and relationships would therefore seem of less importance than an understanding of the conditions under which the characteristic Cossack civilization has been developed.

The Russian word Kasak — of which "Cossack" is the English equivalent — still signifies in several Tartar dialects a "Horseman" or "Rover." By a not unnatural association of ideas this term has been adopted at different times and in widely separated localities as a tribal name by nomad peoples of the steppes. But the attempt not infrequently made to trace a direct connection between these tribes and the famous Kasaki of modern Russia is generally based upon far-fetched historical analogies.*

In Clarke's famous "Travels in the Ukraine" the ingenious theory is advanced that the country of "Kasachia" mentioned by Constantine Porphyrogenetes was the original homeland of the modern "tribes" of Russia which have taken the general name of Kasak or Cossack. But the relative unimportance of this people lost among powerful L

* A modern example exists of the facility with which errors may be made in tracing tribal relationships through nomenclature alone. Not far from Tiflis, near the frontiers of old Armenia, the author recently visited the territory occupied by a tribe of Tartar origin still called "Kasaks." The skill of these nomads as rug-weavers has filled the bazaars with a coarse but well-woven carpet bearing their tribal name. It is certain, however, that neither ethnographically nor historically does any connection exist between these nomad tribesmen and the Cossacks of modern Russia.

neighbours whose history has survived to the present day is the strongest argument against such a supposition. Moreover, as we have already pointed out, other tribes of this name have more than once risen to temporary importance in the annals of the steppes.

It was not until the latter half of the fifteenth century that the ebbing tide of Tartar invasion, which for nearly two centuries had submerged the richest lands of the great Russian plain, once more opened to settlement from the North the rich steppes of the "Black Earth" district, and the scarcely less fertile lands to the South and East. During this long period of subjection the Russian nation had been held back from its richest heritage.

Scattered among the Finnish aborigines of the great northern forests — in that fabulous land of "Cimmerian darkness" where, as Herodotus states, the inhabitants "spend half their time in slumber" — the men of "Rus" had kept alive the faith of their ancestors while learning their long lesson of patience and endurance. Thus it came about that so many of the old centres and cities of Holy Russia are found today in the most barren and unattractive parts of the great Russian plain.

When the prairies of the Ukraine — the "border land" — had ceased to be the hunting grounds of roving nomads, and the Asiatic hordes had withdrawn with their flocks and herds to the oases of their native deserts, the peasant population of

Northern Russia became filled with a restless fever for emigration. Out of the dark fir wilderness came bands of pioneers, — dazzled by the bright sunlight of the steppes, — pressing ever southward. Thus settlers of true Russian blood began once more to populate the war-worn plains of Scythia where free land and, dearer still, personal freedom rewarded the daring of the adventurer.

While fear and hunger had kept them submissively huddled about the wooden fortresses of the hoyars, no laws had been necessary to chain the peasants to the glebe. Serfdom now began in Russia at the time when the feudal system of Europe was sinking into decay. For when the princes and nobles of these northern principalities found their apanages and broad grants of forest land fast reverting to wilderness through the flight of the agricultural laborers, legal steps were taken to preserve their "rights." In edicts of Ivan the Terrible and Boris Godounov, we find the legislative traces of this great southern movement. Yet, in spite of terrible punishments and laws enacted to keep the peasants from roving, the moujiki continued to join themselves to the remnants of the wild Asiatic tribes and the no less barbarous "Cossacks" of their own race, who had established themselves in vagabond communities following close upon the receding frontier of Tartar invasion.

It would appear that about this time the term Cossack or Kasak was first used to describe a

"masterless man," one who refused to identify himself with the Krestianin or ordinary agricultural laborer (a class about to fall wholly into the condition of serfdom) . The same word may previously have been used by the Tartars after their conquest of Russia to denote tribesmen who, refusing to settle in towns or colonies, preferred to continue the nomad and adventurous life of their ancestors. The name also began to be applied to soldier-mercenaries from the steppe "war bands," who, while maintaining the warlike traditions of this wandering life, refused to become incorporated among the men-at-arms attached to the great boyars or to take permanent service in the paid militia formed by the Tsars after the reign of Ivan IV,

To the brutal methods of Tartar dominion may be ascribed traits which have left a deep mark on the government and policy of the empire of the Tsars. Russian historians are now the first to recognize the depth and force of this influence. Naturally democratic in their ideals and personal relations, long subjection to the Tartars taught the Slav people subservience, and (together with later principles borrowed by Peter the Great from the Prussian system) furnished their rulers a model of greedy despotism and autocratic power. Even the excesses of revolution in our own day show the persistence in the Russian state of these pernicious alien influences.

Under the ruthless sword-strokes of Czar Vasili, and his successor Ivan the Terrible, began the upbuilding of the great modern state of Russia — engulfing in an ever-widening circle of dominion the liberties of lesser princelings and the bourgeoisie of the forest "City Republics." Such was the fate of Pskov, of the Free Republic of Vologda and the city of "Lord Novgorod the Great."

Meanwhile, on the vast southern plains, under the leadership of dispossessed boyars, renegade Polish nobles, Turkish janissaries, or even some far-wandering French or German adventurer, the characteristic civilization of the Ukraine Cossack communities steadily grew and strengthened. Recruited from sturdy vagabonds of every race and clan, "stolen youths, thieves and patriots" armed with the weapons they had brought with them from Russia or with the bows and arrows of their Tartar neighbours, they fought for and gradually obtained the right to exist and to remain free.

In view of the importance of geographical conditions upon the inhabitants of these plains, it now becomes necessary to consider at greater length some of the phenomena peculiar to the South Russian Steppes. For thousands of years — until the coming of the railways in recent times — the problems of life on the Russian prairies must have presented themselves again and again under the same inevitable forms. The nations who established their permanent home in this fertile "smiling wilderness" were all endowed with similar characteristics.

Their lives were passed on horseback and their existence depended on their skill as breeders of halfwild cattle and hunters of wary game. The Greek legend of the Centaurs was, in their case, scarcely an exaggeration. In plains so vast as to be almost without natural limits or defensible frontiers a necessary factor of effective occupation became the ability to defend a chosen area at any moment in hand to hand encounters with a mobile foe. Highways of trade and communication could be shifted — in the absence of all natural obstacles — with the same ease that a new course can be steered at sea. For this reason, the objects of steppe warfare were different from those of ordinary strategy. In reading of the military campaigns of the Ukraine we must often be prepared to draw our comparisons from naval rather than from land operations.

The country known as the Ukraine, where the characteristic Cossack civilization arose and developed, is, as the name indicates, a continental "border land," neither European nor Asiatic. On the wide steppes of the Black Sea basin even the climatic influences of north and south meet without blending. Thus, while during the short summer months a true southern climate prevails, yet the return of winter is marked by a cold nearly subarctic in its intensity.

In the famous Black Earth region about Kiev and Poltava, the brief harvest season forms the climax of a miracle of growth. Under the rays of an almost tropical sun the wide fields of grain change from silvery green to tawny gold in the space of days rather than weeks. But with the advent of another season the arctic winds sweep straight from the Polar seas, unchecked by hill or mountain range, all conquering, across the whole level expanse of New Russia. Upon the sunny steppes tightens once more the icy grip of the Empire of the North. There can be no softening of the fibre, no slackening of the powers of sturdy resistance which above all else characterize the Russian race in the population of such a land. Both in physique and temperament the lithe dark inhabitant of the Ukraine presents the type of a southerner. While sprung from the same stock he is as distinct from the blond dweller of the north as the Provencal of France is different from the blue-eyed Norman. To his Slav nature the brief vision of southern summer has added a touch of imagination, a capacity for boisterous enjoyment, lacking, at any rate less apparent, in the Russian of "Muscovy."

Before the coming of the farmer and his plough the plains of the Ukraine were everywhere covered by high waving grasses, similar to the vanished prairies of far western America, or the vegas of southern Andalusia. Often this growth is so thick that a horseman can only with difficulty force his way, and the half -wild cattle almost disappear in the richness of their pasture. Not even a tree or bush breaks the straight sky line of the horizon. Meandering in wide curves, often with a scarcelyperceptible fall from north to south, four great rivers form the most striking geographical features of these plains : the Dnieper, the Don, and farther eastward the mighty "Mother Volga" and her lesser companion, the Ural. "Her rivers," says Rambaud, "are the only allies of man against Russia's great enemy — distance." In winter their frozen surface, and in summer their broad tide, are the principal pathways from one part of this great land to another.

It was upon the shores of the great river Dnieper, known to the Ancients as the Borysthenes, that the first permanent Cossack communities established had their settlements.

vi* *I» ft* *i* *J* v|r yj*

By slow degrees, under the increasing influence of peasant immigration from the North (bringing with it the religion of Russia and such rude civilization as the northern woods had developed) the Asiatic and "tribal" features of Cossack life began to disappear. During the early days of the XVI th century they had so strengthened their hold upon the broad lands lying between the Dnieper and the Don, that we find the terms "Free Cossacks of the Ukraine" and even "The Republic of the Don" used to describe their settlements,

But the early condition of these wandering Cossack communities must have been a matter of scorn even to the primitive tribes of the Boujiak Tartars who were their neighbours. Family life or social organization were all but impossible under the conditions of their harried existence. Some of these steppe bands (as we shall later observe in the case of the "Brotherhood" of the Zaporogian Cossacks, inhabiting the shores and islands of the Dnieper) even appear to have forbidden the presence of women in their camps.

In the growing Cossack settlements or slovods only the sturdiest of the children were allowed to survive. As a preparation for a lifelong struggle with the forces of the steppes "their mothers were wont to plunge them at birth either into a snowdrift or in a mixture of salt and water."* None of the scanty provisions of the tribe could be wasted upon weaklings or those of unpromising physique. When scarcely able to walk, the young Cossacks were placed on horseback and "soon learned to swim wide rivers thus mounted" (ibid). At an early age they were only allowed food when by their unaided skill with bow and arrow they had brought down the wild game which supplied the family cook-pot. The clothing of the first Cossack tribesmen was contrived from sheepskins or the hides of wild beasts. Only the chieftains of the

* Histoire de la Guerre des Kosaques. P. Chevalier. Paris, 1668.

highest rank were able to afford garments of coarsely woven cloth dyed in brilliant colours (ibid). In case of sickness the Cossack remedy was to mount on horseback and, after galloping across the plain until both steed and rider were exhausted, to open a small vein in the shoulder of their mount and drink the warm blood.*

As their flocks and herds multiplied upon the generous pasturage there grew up in the former "Tartar desert" a characteristic light-hearted civilization peculiar to the steppes. In the Little Russians of the present day we may still trace the manners and customs of this Free Cossack ancestry. Moreover as their ability to resist the encroaching tyranny of the Russian boyars increased, the Free Cossacks sought an early opportunity to renew relations with their European kinsmen. A common danger and their mutual hatred of the Turks and Tartars were forces tending to unite them with their Christian kindred the Russians and Poles. But in Poland the feudal land holders could find no place in their aristocratic state for freemen not of the noble classes, while in Russia the condition of the moujiki warned the Cossacks against the dangers of a too binding alliance with the Tsar.

In order to secure the military aid of the Cossacks, the Polish kings were forced to allow them

* A similar custom is noted by the Englishman Clarke in his Travels in the Ukraine in the latter part of the eighteenth century.

to establish lists or "Registers" of "Free Soldiers" to whom claim of serfage was relinquished by the feudal lords. These latter, however, always claimed possession of the lands occupied by the Cossacks and their right to liberty as a caste was never recognized. This, as we shall later see, was the cause of the great uprising ending in the separation of the Cossack Ukraine from the Polish crown.

In spite of these differences, however, the eastern Cossack steppes began, soon after the downfall of the Tartars, to be considered the defensive frontiers of both Poland and the Muscovite empire. The Cossack warriors of the Polish Ukraine, though clinging tenaciously to their liberties and denying any right on the part of an alien government to claim their services, often entered the feudal military companies of the Polish nobles as volunteers or paid men-at-arms, while farther to the eastward, their kindred entered the service of the Tsar.

The last stronghold of the Tartars in Russia — Kazan — was captured by Ivan the Terrible after a long siege ending October 2, 1551. We find in the list of troops taking part in these operations the presence noted of a large contingent of Cossacks: "Cossacks of the town and Cossacks of the country." These together with the newly-formed Russian streltzi or regular troops took a prominent part in the assault. From 1553 to 1555 Ivan completed his conquests along the whole course of the Volga, finally capturing Astrakhan near the shores of the Caspian. Their admiration for the Tsar's exploits against the common enemy, and perhaps a wholesome realization of the fact that his armies now controlled an easy base of approach to the strongholds of their "republic," led the Cossacks inhabiting the shores of the Don to place themselves under his protection. The Cossacks of the Dnieper remained, however, in the pay of Poland. Thus occurred the first great separation in the loose confederation of the "Free Companions of the Steppes."*

After the more or less voluntary submission of the "Free Cossacks of the Don" the Russian Tsars soon began to make use of their matchless skill in frontier warfare. An arrangement mutually favorable was now perfected and the Cossacks became the basis of a system of defensive militia policing the steppes against the Crimean Tartars. Although the Muscovite peasants were brave and (above all) docile foot soldiers, their usefulness as cavalry was limited. Previous to the time when Cossacks were enrolled for this purpose, it had been found necessary — in order to defend the open frontiers of Muscovy — to mobilize every year a force of about 65,000 men. Owing to the fact that the rendezvous chosen lay on the banks of the river Oka, this was called the annual "banks service." In the early days this duty had been performed by the feudal levies of the