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Mar. 29, 2005 The Cossacks were a military caste that formed in what is now southern Russia and Ukraine perhaps as early as the 14th century. The Ukrainian word is 'Kozak', but the Russian word is 'Kazak', which is a little confusing, because there is a word 'Kazakh' also, which denotes a member of a Turkic people that live in Kazakhstan. 'Kazak' and 'Kazakh' are entirely different words, but 'Kazachka', the feminine, is the same for both. Originally, the Cossacks did not form an ethnic group so much as an aggregate of fugitives, outlaws and vagabonds who were able to organize effective military groups. They farmed and raised livestock, but an important part of their sustenance came from mounting raids on Turks, Poles, Jews and other groups that lived in the vicinity. There were at least two subdivisons, namely, the Don Cossacks and the Zaporozhian Cossacks. A Cossack chieftain was called an 'ataman' (also spelled 'hetman'). The duly constituted governments in the region were the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire. Antecedent to the Razin Revolt was the Khmelnitskyi Revolt (1648-1654), led by Bohdan Khmelnitskyi (or Chmielnicki), a nobleman who became a Cossack ataman and led a rebellion against the Poles, believing Poles had sold the Cossacks into the hands of Jewish slavemasters. Khmelnitskyi made an alliance with the ordinarily hostile Tatars, who were descendants of the Mongol invaders that ruled Russia 200 years, but the Cossacks were later betrayed by the Tatars. To defend themselves from the Poles, the Cossacks made an alliance with Russia, and thus eventually parts of Ukraine came under Russian domination. Stepan Timofeyevich Razin (1630-1671), who is usually called Stenka (Steve) Razin rose to be an ataman of the Don Cossacks. The Don is one of the rivers that empties into the Black Sea. As ataman, he led his warriors on several rounds of marauding and looting along the lower reaches of that river. Around 1667, Razin expanded his operations to the shores of the Caspian Sea (really a lake), as well. There, he pirated imperial and merchant ships that sailed down the Volga River, carrying grain and other goods. Taking possession of 35 galley ships, he sailed down to the city of Astrakhan, near the mouth of the Volga, and defeated the governor, Yakov Bezobrazov, there. Leading his fleet into the Caspian, he sailed to Iran (Persia), where he plundered and ravaged wantonly in Derbent, Yaitsik and Bakú, often resorting to trickery as well as martial excellence. His men would pose as merchants or pilgrims, win the confidence of the locals and then massacre them and pillage. Accumulating vast sums of money, he also defeated a Persian fleet sent to punish him. The entire fleet, with its ships chained together to prevent the Cossacks from escaping, sank when one of Razin's cannonballs ignited the powder magazine in the hold of one of the Persian ships, which pulled the other ships down after it. During one of his raids, Stenka captured and married a Persian princess, of whom he was excessively fond. Fearing that their leader would lose his warlike spirit, his men grew restless, as if devising mutiny. To show them that he was still a man-at-arms, Stenka raised the princess over his head aboard his ship and cast her into the Volga River, where she drowned. This is the subject of a famous Russian folksong called "Stenka Razin", which I've known for about 20 years. Stenka Razin agreed with Tsar Alexei to stop his killing and marauding, receiving in exchange a promise of amnesty for past misdeeds. But Razin defaulted later, seizing the city of Astrakhan in 1670, and making it the capital of his republic. At the zenith of his popularity, with 200.000 followers, he decided to march on Moscow itself, and depose the Tsar, Alexei I (lived 1629-1676, reigned 1645-1676). Razin's forces took Samara, Saratov, Penza and other cities, but met their match when they attacked Simbirsk. After a bloody siege and battle, royalist forces defeated the rebels. Those who were not fortunate enough to escape to Siberia or elsewhere, were flogged, maimed and transpierced. Razin was himself dismembered, branded and beheaded, the fragments of his body being marched around the city of Moscow impaled on stakes. There is an excellent Russian-language novel in two volumes called "Stepan Razin", by Stepan Pavlovich Zlobin. As far as I know, it's never been translated into English, perhaps because Zlobin was a Communist. The book has nothing at all to do with Communism, however. Lenin did try to hijack the Razin Revolt as a proletarian revolution, a precursor of his own revolution, but that doesn't figure into Zlobin's account at all. I'm sure there are Ukrainian writers too, for those who can read them. ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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