De-Cossackization

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De-Cossackization
Part of the
expropriation, ethnic cleansing
DeathsAnywhere from 10,000[1] to 700,000[2]
Victimsat least 45,000 Cossacks deported to Ukraine,[3] potentially up to 300,000 to 500,000 Cossacks deported and a lower amount killed overall[4]
PerpetratorsRed Army, Cheka
Part of a series on
Cossacks
"Zaporozhian Cossacks write to the Sultan of Turkey" by Ilya Repin (1844–1930)
Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks
Cossack hosts
Other Cossack groups
History
Notable Cossacks
Cossack terms
Mass repression
in the Soviet Union
Economic repression
Political repression
Ideological repression
Ethnic repression

De-Cossackization (

Bolshevik policy of systematic repression against the Cossacks in the former Russian Empire between 1919 and 1933, especially the Don and Kuban Cossacks in Russia, aimed at the elimination of the Cossacks as a distinct collectivity by exterminating the Cossack elite, coercing all other Cossacks into compliance, and eliminating Cossack distinctness.[5] Several scholars have categorised this as a form of genocide,[6][7][8][9][10] whilst other historians have highly disputed this classification due to the contentious figures which range from "a few thousand to incredible claims of hundreds of thousands".[11][12]

The campaign began in March 1919 in response to growing Cossack insurgency.

deport the population of a whole territory", which they had taken to calling the "Soviet Vendée".[13] The process has been described by scholar Peter Holquist as part of a "ruthless" and "radical attempt to eliminate undesirable social groups" that showed the Soviet regime's "dedication to social engineering".[14][1] Throughout this period, the policy underwent significant modifications, which resulted in the "normalization" of Cossacks as a component part of Soviet society.[1]

Background

Cossacks were simultaneously both an

in 1905–1907.[15]

Following the

White Cossacks, headed by Ataman Pyotr Kharitonovich Popov [ru], fled into the Salsk steppes [ru].[16]

After the

Imperial German army invaded and occupied Rostov on 8 May 1918, a government headed by Ataman Krasnov formed in the Don province. In July 1918 the White Cossack forces of Ataman Krasnov launched their first invasion of Tsaritsyn (present-day Volgograd). Soviet forces counterattacked and drove out the White Cossacks by 7 September. On 22 September, Krasnov's forces launched a second invasion of Tsaritsyn, but by 25 October Soviet troops had thrown Krasnov's forces back beyond the Don. On 1 January 1919, Krasnov launched a third invasion of Tsaritsyn. Soviet forces repelled the invasion and forced Krasnov's forces to withdraw from Tsaritsyn in mid-February 1919.[17]

History

The policy was established by a secret resolution of the Bolshevik Party on 24 January 1919, which ordered local branches to "carry out mass terror against wealthy Cossacks, exterminating all of them; carry out merciless mass terror against any and all Cossacks taking part in any way, directly or indirectly, in the struggle against Soviet power".[18] On 7 February the Southern Front issued its own instructions on how the resolution was to be applied: "The main duty of stanitsa and khutor executive committees is to neutralize the Cossackry through the merciless extirpation of its elite. District and Stanitsa atamans are subject to unconditional elimination, [but] khutor atamans should be subject to execution only in those cases where it can be proved that they actively supported Krasnov's policies (having organized pacification, conducted mobilization, refused to offer refuge to revolutionary Cossacks or to Red Army men)."[19]

In mid-March 1919 alone,

counterrevolutionary behavior".[20]

The Don region was required by the Soviets to make a grain contribution equal to the total annual production of the area.[20] Almost all Cossacks joined the Green Army or other rebel forces. Together with Baron Wrangel's troops, they forced the Red Army out of the region in August 1920. After the retaking of the Crimea by Red Army, the Cossacks again became victims of the Red Terror. Special commissions in charge of de-Cossackization condemned more than 6,000 people to death in October 1920 alone.[21] The families and often the neighbors of suspected rebels were taken as hostages.

Gathered together in a camp near

Maikop, the hostages, women, children and old men survive in the most appalling conditions, in the cold and the mud of October ... They are dying like flies. The women will do anything to escape death. The soldiers guarding the camp take advantage of this and treat them as prostitutes.[20]

In November 1920

Lenin
:

the republic has to organize the internment in camps of about 100,000 prisoners from the Southern front and vast masses of people expelled from the rebellious [Cossack] settlements of the Terek, the Kuban, and the Don. Today 403 Cossack men and women aged between 14 and 17 arrived in Oryol for internment in the internment camp. They cannot be accepted as Oryol is already overloaded.[22]

The

Northern Caucasus.[4]

Effects on the Cossacks

The deportations and exterminations are recognized as genocide by modern scholars.[6][7][8][9][10] While there were more than a million Cossacks before 1917, very few people consider themselves Cossacks today.[10] Shane O'Rourke states that the de-Cossackization "was one of the main factors which led to the disappearance of the Cossacks as a nation".[10]

According to Łukasz Adamski and Bartłomiej Gajos, the exact death toll from de-Cossackization is highly contentious, with estimates ranging from thousands to hundreds of thousands.[23] Several factors contribute to the difficulty of estimating the death toll, including exaggerated numbers published by the white movement[1] and varying definitions of the genocide; some historians count the deaths of the Holodomor in the Don region, an engineered famine that killed hundreds of thousands of Don Cossacks and Ukrainians.[24][25]

Rudolph Rummel cites an estimate of 700,000 deaths in the Don Cossack genocide.[2]

Peter Holquist estimates a death toll in the thousands or tens of thousands in the period 1919–20,[1] but notes that the extent of the genocide varied substantially by region. In some regions such as Khoper, tribunals executed thousands of Cossacks in a full-fledged extermination attempt, while some other tribunals did not conduct any executions at all.[1]

Research by

forced settlements in the Soviet Union shows that more than 45,000 Cossacks were deported from the Terek Oblast to Ukraine. Their land was distributed among Cossack collaborators and Chechens.[3]

According to the Dictionary of Genocides, the "genocidal treatment" of the Cossacks was based on class, ethnicity and politics and part of a broader

Bolshevik policy of remaking society.[27][28]

See also

References

  1. ^
    doi:10.3406/cmr.1997.2486
    .
  2. ^ a b Rummel, Rudolph. "Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917 3,284,000 Victims: Sources Table 2A row 44". Powerkills. University of Hawaiʻi. Retrieved 6 August 2023.
  3. ^
    ISBN 978-963-9241-68-8
    .
  4. ^
    ISBN 1-4000-4005-1
    pp. 70–71.
  5. ^
    ISBN 978-1-135-22533-9
    .
  6. ^
    ISBN 0-14-024364-X
    .
  7. ^
    ISBN 0-375-50632-2
    .
  8. ^ a b Heller, Mikhail; Nekrich, Aleksandr. Utopia in Power: The History of the Soviet Union from 1917 to the Present.
  9. ^
    ISBN 1-56000-887-3
    . Retrieved 1 March 2014.
  10. ^ a b c d "Soviet order to exterminate Cossacks is unearthed". Archived December 10, 2009, at the Wayback Machine University of York Communications Office, 21 January 2003
  11. ISBN 978-0-429-76363-2
    .
  12. ^ "The socio-demographic statistical data for the period of the late 1920s summarized by the quota (local) representative sample and attracted by the article indicate the absence of negative population dynamics, including the Cossack population, which leads to the conclusion that the red power did not use terror and genocide against the Cossacks massively in the designated period of time, and, accordingly, the Bolsheviks did not carry out a large-scale decossackization policy."Skorik, Alexander. "Decossackization as a Policy and Social Process in the Don Region in the 1920s".
  13. ISBN 0-674-07608-7
    .
  14. ISBN 9780674009073
    . Retrieved 1 March 2014.
  15. ^ Казачество
  16. ^ Калединщина
  17. ^ Царицынская оборона 1918—19
  18. ISBN 0-300-08760-8 p. 100
  19. ^ Peter Holquist. "'Conduct merciless mass terror': decossackization on the Don, 1919"
  20. ^
    ISBN 0-674-07608-7
    p 99-100
  21. ISBN 0-674-07608-7
    p 100
  22. ISBN 0-684-87112-2
    p. 74
  23. ISBN 978-0-429-76363-2
    .
  24. JSTOR 23611465
    .
  25. S2CID 53655536
    .
  26. ISBN 0-300-08760-8. Archived from the original
    on 19 November 2014.
  27. ISBN 9780313346415
    .
  28. JSTOR 40260182
    ..

External links
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