“The kind of riffraff that behave like militias on behalf of local oligarchs. “Most of these Cossack squads consist of local criminals,” says commentator Maxim Shevchenko. Some are now questioning the legitimacy of funding groups with a reputation for close links to local crime. In 2015, roughly 1bn roubles (£10.2m) was sidelined for Cossack groups in the Kuban region, the RBC newspaper reported.
“What you can’t do, the Cossacks can,” then-governor Alexander Tkachyov was cited as telling police when he announced the Cossack patrols.īut the allocation of state money into local Cossack organisations has come under attack after the Navalny incident. Even though they had no authority to conduct arrests or carry firearms, the message was that the Cossack figures alone would provide police with a tool of intimidation less constrained by the burden of public accountability. Their increased presence was widely seen as an attempt to keep in check an increasing number of migrants in the region bordering the Caucasus region.
In Krasnodar, the southern region where the attack on Navalny and his team took place, they were even put on the region’s payroll in 2012. Inside Russia, Cossack patrols have now become a kind of volunteer morality police. Later, under the direction of Cossack ataman Nikolai Kozitsyn, many of them streamed into eastern Ukraine to fight against Ukrainian government forces. In the leadup to Russia’s annexation of the Black Sea peninsula Crimea two years ago, Cossacks in black woollen and fur hats stood guard at the Crimean parliament and manned checkpoints across the peninsula. Under Putin, registered Cossack organisations have been set up across the country and championed as a symbol of patriotism.īezugly, the Cossack ataman, late last year reportedly presided over the burning of effigies of US president, Barack Obama, and Turkish president, Recep Erdoğan, at a rally in support of Putin. In subsequent years, the Kremlin’s return to conservative values and a brand of militant patriotism under President Vladimir Putin has made the deeply conservative and religious Cossacks a natural ally. “The average Cossack was a middle-aged man who daydreamed about patriarchal values, unbridled masculinity and the glorious pursuit of imagined ancestors,” says Brian Boeck, a historian at DePaul University who has focused on the Cossacks’ rehabilitation in the 1990s. By then, there were very few Cossacks left and the vacuum had been filled with men of questionable Cossack ancestry. Yeltsin’s decree called for the restoration of Cossacks as an “ethno-cultural group”. After suffering defeat, hundreds of thousands of Cossacks were killed and persecuted under the Soviet policy of “decossackisation”. Loyal to the Romanov dynasty and the Orthodox church, they fought on the losing side against the Red Army in 1917. The Cossacks had served tsars for centuries, lending their sabres to help conquer Siberia, the Caucasus and central Asia in return for land and privileges. Photograph: Dmitry Slaboda/AP RehabilitationĬossack culture was all but extinct when President Boris Yeltsin issued a decree encouraging its revival in the 1990s. With parliamentary elections due to take place in September, it’s not just opposition-minded Russians who are worried – some traditional Cossacks are too.įilm still showing Cossacks throwing milk at opposition leader Alexei Navally at Anapa airport. The attack on peaceful opposition activists has sparked concerns that the Cossacks’ romanticised past is being used to legitimise the actions of Kremlin-backed paramilitary groups. The subsequent dispute over what constitutes “true” Cossack identity goes beyond a simple matter of uniform. “Anyone can buy a papakha at any souvenir stall,” he said.
Another former Cossack ataman, Vladimir Gromov, said the men’s outfits were nothing to go by. He told media that “real” Cossacks had actually tried to break up the scrap that had broken out. The leader, or ataman, of the local Anapa Cossack group, Valery Plotnikov, denied the men had been part of his 98-member-strong crew. In the aftermath of the incident, there was considerable confusion over the hecklers’ identities – even within the Cossack community. More than 20 men splashed the group with milk and a brawl ensued. In mid May, a group of men in papakhas attacked the activist Alexei Navalny and members of his Anti-Corruption Fund at an airport in the seaside town of Anapa.
#Define cossacks full
The full regalia, including the horsemen’s nagaika leather whip, costs around $100.īut the widespread availability of Cossack garb has come at a price. A fake-fur version of their traditional red papakha hat will set you back about $10 (£6.80).
I n Moscow, you don’t have be to rich to be a Cossack.
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