URAL COSSACKS

On the edge of vast Russia,
Along the Ural banks,
Lives quietly and peacefully
An army of blood Cossacks.
Everyone knows the caviar of the Urals
And the Ural sturgeon,
They only know very little
About the Ural Cossacks.

Ural Cossack song.

So it was in reality. The purpose of my essay is to tell the reader who the Ural Cossacks were, where they lived, how they lived and how they lived.

N. S. Samokish. Ural Cossacks.

The land of the Ural Cossack army was located on the right bank of the Ural River, it began from the borders of the Orenburg Cossack army and stretched to the shores of the Caspian Sea. From the west, the Urals had neighbors with the Samara province and the Bukeevsky Kirghiz; on the left bank of the Ural River, the Cossacks owned a narrow strip of meadows. There was a country of the Trans-Ural Kyrgyz.

A.O. Orlovsky. Battle of the Cossacks with the Kirghiz. 1826.

The Ural Cossacks lived in a dead end among their vast steppes, surrounded by two-thirds of the Kyrgyz tribes. Thanks to this isolation, the Urals, more than other Cossack troops, have preserved the life and customs of the ancient Cossacks. From the very beginning, the Ural army showed itself as a rebellious army. It all the time had great friction with the central Russian government, which throughout history tried to subordinate it finally to its will.

The banner that was at the Yaik Cossacks near Azov in 1696/97

Fulfilling the outfits of the Russian state in its own manner, the army participated in literally all external wars and enjoyed great deserved military glory. But as soon as the State began to introduce any changes in the life of the Cossacks, the Cossacks saw this as an encroachment on freedom, rebelled, and their "unwillingness" brought a lot of trouble, and the Cossacks themselves always cost a lot.

In one of the next uprisings, Peter the Great only miraculously did not destroy the Yaitskoye army at that time. He was saved from death by the transformer of the southeastern region, Neplyuev, an associate of Peter.

He proved that such an energetic united people, useful to the state, cannot be destroyed. In the future, there were great troubles because of the elected chieftains and because of religion.

In the Yaitsk army there were a lot of Old Believers who fled from persecution from Russia, and so at all costs they wanted to forcibly convert them to Nikon's faith.

Government troops from Orenburg were brought into the Army almost continuously.

And in 1772, when General Traubenberg came to Yaik, with artillery and infantry, the Cossacks attacked him, killed the artillerymen, torn apart Traubenberg himself and the military chieftain Tambovtsev, who was on the side of the government. This event was followed by the fact that, by order of Catherine, a detachment of 3,000 people came, under the command of General Freiman, and severely punished the Cossacks, executed many, flogged and imprisoned many, and sent many to Siberia to settle.

It was at such and such an alarming time that the Don Cossack Emelyan Pugachev came to Yaik. The Yaik Cossacks, doubting that he was really the emperor, nevertheless found that the moment was right and decided to shake off Moscow.

It is not part of my plans to describe this rebellion, we can say that the Army, after the suppression of this rebellion, suffered greatly and was completely depopulated.

And the Yaitskoye Army, by order of Catherine II, began to be called the Ural Army, the Yaik River was the Ural River, and the Yaitsk town was called the Uralsk city. Catherine the Great was greatly disliked by the Cossacks and, on the contrary, Paul I enjoyed great sympathy, probably because he consigned the Pugachev revolt to oblivion and expressed a desire to have a hundred guards from the Urals with him.

The hundred was formed under the command of Sevryugin and was in great favor with the emperor.

When it was decided to strangle Paul in the palace, Count Panin prudently sent the Ural hundred to Tsarskoe Selo, fearing that the Urals would intercede for him. And until recently, many have kept Paul's irreplaceable silver ruble with the dictum "Not to us, not to us, but to Your name."

In the future, the Cossacks had a stubborn opinion that all the insults and injustices came from the Tsar's henchmen and that the Tsar knew nothing about this, so they often sent delegates to the Tsar, but they were always intercepted and punished.

In 1803, a new position and form was introduced. An uprising took place, and when Prince Volkonsky, sent to pacify, began to interrogate the instigator, Efim Pavlov, a Cossack, the latter, as the song says, kept this answer:

During this period, the Uralites were very dissatisfied with the order chieftain. On the square, crowded with people, a group of old Cossacks, upon a signal, grab the wheels of the royal carriage and stop it. They fall to their knees and serve a petition to the frightened heir who looks out. The result was disastrous. All these old men were ordered to be flogged and sent to Siberia. The hundred that escorted the Heir was disbanded.

The last turmoil occurred with the introduction of universal conscription in 1874. This year, various reforms were introduced in the life of the Urals people concerning their military service and self-government. By the way, military service was introduced for each Cossack, which radically changed the previous order of serving military service. The Ural Cossacks grew up with distrust of the central government and were afraid of its interference in their internal affairs like fire. When the authorities found out that discontent arose among the Cossacks, mainly among the elderly, who always played a large role among the Old Believer patriarchal population, they ordered to select all over the "subscription" for the adoption of the new regulation, and they offered to sign on blank sheets.

It was here that a mess began, which the authorities had to unravel for ten years, and as a result of which there was a massive administrative exile of Cossacks and families to settle in the desert parts of the Syrdarya and Amudarya regions of the Turkestan Territory.

The Urals residents resolutely refused to give subscriptions, motivating their refusal with two reasons: firstly, they do not know what they are signing on white sheets, and secondly, because of their religious beliefs, which forbid them to give oath promises, etc. This second reason, based on religious superstition has become widespread. Threats and violent measures by the authorities only intensified the passive resistance, which took on the character of martyrdom for the faith! Women forbade their sons and husbands to submit to the new position and give a subscription, considering it a great sin. The fathers threatened their sons with curses and were the first to go under arrest, processions of arrested, respectable bearded old men, under escort of military guards, only added fuel to the fire, and almost everyone had to be arrested.

To intimidate, it was decided to exile the first parties. This was in 1875. The arrested resisted, they had to be dragged by force, which, with hundreds of arrested persons, was not an easy task for the convoy. The old people were tortured and then forcibly dragged onto carts and taken away. In general, the picture of all this violence was wild and outrageous.

These are the Cossacks from the Urals, they were called “outgoing”. The link was unlimited. About three thousand Cossacks were expelled, and in 1875 their families were sent to them, only about 7 and a half thousand. There was no railroad then, so this unprecedented horde was marching, of course, quite a few old people and children died on the way. The Cossacks endured a lot of grief and poverty in a foreign land. The governor of the region has repeatedly appealed to the government to improve their situation, but to no avail. In 1891, on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the Ural Cossack army, the order chieftain General Shipov, who had great sympathy for the Urals, petitioned the government for the return of the Cossacks to the Urals. The government agreed on condition that the Cossacks submit a statement of complete repentance for their deeds. The caretakers neglected this royal favor. Only when the revolution broke out in 1917 did the Urals send an invitation to those who left, and many returned to the Urals. Of course, of those who were expelled in 1875, almost no one survived, their children and grandchildren returned, and immediately they had to take part in the civil war.

In 1914, when the German war began, 6 more privileged regiments were mobilized, plus three regiments of active service.

When the preferential division was announced that the general would be in command of the division. Kaufman-Turkestansky, - the Cossacks said they did not want to have a German commander. The orderly chieftain was forced to ask the government, from which an explanation followed who Kaufman-Turkestan was, and only then the Cossacks calmed down.

Cossacks of the Ural Hundreds of the Consolidated Life Guards Cossack Regiment

As I said, the Urals. despite all the troubles, they were loyal servants to the Tsar and on their steppe masts were on all the battlefields of the Russian state and the fame of the soldiers was magnificent.

The Emperor splendidly awarded a hundred and a monument was erected to those who died at the site of the battle.

Monument erected on a mass grave on the battlefield near Icahn

In the wide steppe under Icahn
And three days with a basso
We had a bloody battle ...

As already mentioned, among the Urals there were many Old Believers of various persuasions, and it is they, mainly, zealots of antiquity and have always been against any innovations. Religious issues among them were of great importance.

Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin

In the sixties of the last century, after one of the religious oppression by the government, the Cossacks decide to leave for another land where there is real Orthodoxy. They send the Cossack Baryshnikov to find this holy country, called the "Belovodsk kingdom". The Cossack traveled all over the world, but he did not find such a country. The Old Believers make a second attempt in 1898. They sent three Cossacks, led by Khokhlov, to finally find this land. They visited many countries, but again they did not find anything. This event was described with great sympathy by the writer Korolenko. Until very recently, missionaries from the Holy Synod came to Uralsk every year for Great Lent, and in one of the churches they arranged disputes in order to convert the Old Believers to the Nikonian faith. From the Old Believers, an old man Miroshkhin, a blind man, spoke every year, who answered the speeches with theses from the Holy Scriptures, and this happened in this way, with him was a young man, to whom Miroshkhin ordered: "Open such and such a stranger and read from such and such a line." His memory was phenomenal and he always had great success with the Old Believers.

Despite. that in all clashes with the government, the government was the winner, yet the Urals managed to preserve some of the Cossack customs.

The Urals is the only army of the Russian Empire, which until the last day retained its communal structure and had a common land, the reserved Ural River, which within the Army belonged exclusively to the Urals and fishing on it was carried out exclusively by the Urals. And the Urals themselves used it only during certain periods of the year. Crimson in winter, floodplain in spring and autumn and some other fishery. Since the Urals have been fishermen since ancient times, they have developed the strictest rules and techniques for these fishery.

When the German scientist Pallas visited the Yaik army in 1769, during the reign of Catherine II, he described in detail some of the Cossack fishery, they have remained unchanged since then. The rest of the time, the Urals were heavily guarded, not allowing poachers. This is due to necessity, since the lower line of the earth had, one might say, a desert, the former seabed, where nothing grew; fishing among the grassroots Cossacks was almost the only means of life.

The Cossacks, on the other hand, carried out the equalization in the blessings of their land. Since the villages located above Uralsk had good land and, being engaged in arable farming, could do without fishing, the Cossacks decided not to let red fish above Uralsk. For this purpose, from a narrow wooden bridge thrown across the Urals, they lowered iron bars to the bottom, quite often. The fish, climbing upstream, reaches this obstacle, stops and comes back, looking for other places. This building is called "uchug".

New iron uchug

Above, the Ural fishing is free and whatever.

Each stanitsa used the land as it wanted, in its own way, even the congress of the elective societies of the stanitsa, the so-called Military Congress, or otherwise the Army Circle, did not interfere with the decisions of the stanitsa gatherings, he freely approved them. By the way, this Military Congress existed among the Urals until the very end, but only functions were of an exclusively economic nature and even the chief chieftain had no right to interfere in his affairs.

The only property the Urals could have was an orchard. The Cossack submitted a request to the village gathering to allocate space for a garden. As a rule, there were no obstacles, the gathering decided, the Troops Congress confirmed, a surveyor came from Uralsk, measured out the five tithes due, and this was the property of the Cossack forever and even of his descendants. But it is surprising that very few have started these gardens.

The Cossacks were so jealous of the fact that the land was shared that they did not want to sell it to anyone or even lease it.

During the period when General N. Shipov was the chief chieftain, who, by the way, was an exceptional chieftain, no others before and after him. He, having been appointed to this post, undertook with zeal to improve the life of the Cossacks and, by the way, planned to organize an exemplary farm and an agricultural school with her. From this farm, each Cossack, at will, could take improved producers for livestock. It took a lot of work for General Shipov to get permission from the Congress to alienate the land for this farm.

As the reader can see from my historical note, there was a great decrease in people among the Urals all the time, new ones were not accepted, the population was dense only in the upper villages, where there were good lands. Below Uralsk, even by 1914, the population was rare - this probably also influenced the fact that the question of the division of land was never raised. There was a lot of land, and everyone plowed wherever he liked, and each grazed his shoals of horses, herds of cattle and hens, where they were assigned a place by the village gathering.

Ural Cossack woman from a wealthy family

The Urals lived richly, and some Cossacks had a very large number of horses, cattle and rams.

The upbringing of horses by horse breeders was special. In the summer, horses were always in the steppe, where they grazed and spent the night. In winter, there were rooms for them, but they were fed with hay, which was scattered on clean snow and they were not watered: together with the hay, they took the snow; and at the very beginning of winter, when the snow was not deep, they had not yet been given hay, they, as they say, “forgave you,” that is, tearing up the snow with their hoofs, they found food for themselves. And the horses were as wild; they began to be taught only when they were four years old. When the repair commission for the army came, it was a spectacle when they caught these horses with a lasso and brought them by force to the veterinarian and, after acceptance, imposed a brand. And such and such horses were handed out to the Cossack recruits and how much knowledge, patience, dexterity and courage were needed to teach such a horse to the ranks. The result of such upbringing was hardy horses, not afraid of either storms or rains.

For the rams, there were, only for winter, reed enclosures without a roof. Chicken rams numbered 500, and rams were driven into a fence or yard in such a way that when they lay down, they lay so tightly to each other that it was impossible to step between them. And in this form, no frost and rain took them, it was very warm there. They, like the horses, were fed in the snow in winter and not watered.

The Urals never served on mares.

Despite the fact that the Urals were very conservative and shunned innovations, the scythe was already replaced by a mower; the threshing of wheat was no longer carried out by horses, but by steam threshers; the plow was long ago replaced by a plow.

And even by the war of 1914, cars were already visible. But the patriarchal way of life sat tightly among the Cossacks.

I will take my village Chizhinskaya as an example. In my village, for example, for the holidays of Christmas and Easter, my father and uncle always sent many of the poor Cossacks to break the fast, lamb carcasses, tea and sugar, and to some people for new clothes. It was also sent, as a custom, on the day of some commemoration, a sweet cake with a candle and a coin - but this was done in secret. To do this, my mother sent me when it was already completely dark, and I had to put this on the window and quickly run away.

In the spring, some Cossacks came to take the bulls for all summer work and returned them only in late autumn. I do not know how other rich Cossacks helped, for the reason that all these good deeds were done without publicity. There were many curiosities among the Old Believers; any such person would come to his father on business. You go up to him to say hello, but he does not hold out his hand, because I am not of his faith. Among the Old Believers' Cossacks there were those who, having gone somewhere far away, asked someone to spend the night on the way, and this was done in this way: knock on the window and read the prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ. Son of God, have mercy on us! " From home they answer: "Amen!" - "Let me spend the night for Christ's sake."

They let them spend the night, but they do not accept tea from your samovar, because we are not of their faith. They make a fire in the courtyard and boil water there in the teapots they brought with them. Some do not even recognize the samovar, believing that there is something of the devil in it. In the houses, the Old Believers did not allow smoking, and if, out of ignorance, you decided to smoke, then the Cossack unceremoniously kicked the cigarette out of your mouth.

My family was also Old Believers, and my parents told me how in late autumn they took me on horseback in a sleigh to baptize me 400 miles to the Volga, where our priest was hiding at that time.

As a curiosity, I can point out to the reader that the Urals all wore beards. It was worn not only by the Old Believers, who considered it a great sin to shave it, but also by the Nikonians. Some officers left their mustaches, shaved their beards, and there is a humorous poem by our poet officer A. B. Karpov.

Morning, the sun is shining
A hundred stands in the field,
At least a hundred overshoot,
Everywhere there are beards.
I alone disgraced them -
I shaved my beard.

In the war of the 14th year, there were big troubles with these beards, when you had to put on a gas mask.

In the Urals, all surnames ended in the letters -ov, -ev and -in, there were no -ich, -skiy and so on. Therefore, when they accepted someone into the Cossacks for military distinction or for services to the Army, they changed their names in their own way.

And one more curiosity. Some historians, and even Pushkin, in his "History of the Pugachev rebellion", believe that the Yaik Cossacks descended from the Don Cossacks. The Urals categorically disagree with this. The Urals believe that such ancient free troops - Donskoy, Terskoe, Volzhskoe and Yaitskoe formed independently, but that during history some Cossacks passed from army to army.

The Urals admit that the Don army was the oldest and largest, and the Yaik Cossacks were in close connection with it, but for what reason the Don people were drawn to the Yaik Cossacks, this is unknown to them. One must think that they left for the reason that they did not like something. As an example, you can point to the ataman Gugnya - he was a ushkuynik and fled from Novgorod at a time when Ivan the Terrible destroyed the Novgorod veche. He ran to the Don, but something did not like him on the Don, and he went to Yaik.

By the way, on Yaik he did not show himself in any particular way, he is known only for breaking the old custom of the Yaik Cossacks, who, leaving on a campaign, abandoned their wives, and brought new ones from the campaign. He saved his wife, but did not bring a new one, and from this very Gugnihi appeared permanent wives. The Cossacks call her great-grandmother Gugniha and raise a glass to her at any convenient and inconvenient occasion.
__________

In Uralsk, equality was complete, and no service to the Army gave the right to have more.

There were no privileged estates, as was the case in the Don army, when the sovereigns gave the Don people titles with the grant of lands and peasants, in the Ural army.
__________

The Urals were Great Russians, there was no Ukrainian blood. The Tatars, Kalmyks were also full-fledged Cossacks, and they were magnificent Cossacks. There were even officers among the Tatars.

INCOMING POPULATION

The city of Uralsk had a population of 50 thousand before the war of 1914; half of them were from other cities.

All commercial enterprises and all trade were in the hands of nonresidents. The Cossacks did not like to trade. All these commercial enterprises grew rich at the expense of the Cossacks. All artisans, all employees of post offices, banks and others were from other cities.

In Uralsk there was a real Cossack school and a women's gymnasium, as well as government men's and women's gymnasiums. All the staff were out of town. All watchmakers and pharmacists were Jews. There were up to 40 families of Jews, and they lived richly.

There were few newcomers in the villages. They were mainly artisans and merchants.

Russian-Kyrgyz school of craft students, or simply Kyrgyz school

Throughout the territory of the Army, there were many Kirghiz of the Bukeev Horde. They were powerless, they served as shepherds for the Cossacks and worked in the field, and, it must be confessed, the Cossacks greatly exploited them. Some lent them tea, sugar, flour, and money at high interest during the winter; they had to work out in the summer.

There were many horse thieves among them, one of them became very famous and was elusive, as he was hiding by the Kirghiz. His name was Aidan-Galiy. He managed to choose the best horses in the school, his relatives helped him, of course, and drove them to the Urals or to the Samara province. Once he even stole a whole shoal of horses of 300 heads, but it was not possible to smuggle them across the Urals secretly, and the overtaken one was forced to throw the shoal and hide. They did not succeed in catching him, according to rumors, he fled to Turkey.

The Cossacks unceremoniously evicted the Kirghiz, who had been noticed in unseemly deeds, into the Bukeev Horde. All this newcomer population did not like the Cossacks and the Cossacks did not interfere with them by blood. Cossacks married only Cossack women, with the exception of the rarest cases. They never married Kyrgyz women.

Now, with the permission of the reader, I will offer a description of the ragreness of the Ural Cossacks of B. Kirov.

LUGGAGE

It seems to me that those who have never been to the Urals or have not met the Ural Cossacks have not even heard such a word, and, meanwhile, crimson is a whole event in the life of the Urals.

Bagrenia is a special type of winter fishing. I think that I will not be mistaken if I say that it existed only in the Urals.

Bagrenia is a celebration, a Cossack holiday.

Since autumn, with the beginning of the first cold weather, red fish - sturgeon, stellate sturgeon - go to winter. She gathers in herds (herds) and, having chosen a place for herself, sinks to the bottom, where she spends time until warm days. Cossacks follow the Urals and notice these places.

Usually, around the Christmas holidays, a special commission of old people watching the Urals determined that the ice was strong enough to withstand the entire Army. The day was appointed. Hooks, baggrenniki, peshnyi were prepared in advance, the harness was cleaned, the sled was renewed, crimson coils were baked, and on the eve, on the night before, the Cossacks on their best horses set out for crimson. Wives and children went there too.

Cossacks and Cossacks are dressed in a special crimson suit: a hat with a crimson top, a black cloth jacket tucked into white canvas trousers. Cossacks are dressed in a festive fashion - in velvet, with fox fur, fur coats and expensive shawls.

We left whole villages, went alone, but everyone merged into one stream of sleighs and moved without disturbing the order where the leader was leading. There the horses were placed in strict, regular rows. The Cossacks lined up on both banks of the Urals in a long front, and waited. The Cossacks crowded in merry groups behind.

There was a Kyrgyz wagon on the shore, and the senior officers of the Army and their families gathered around it.

At about nine o'clock, in the distance, against the background of the snowy steppe, a troika was shown, escorted by mounted Cossacks. The ataman was driving.

The troika drove up to the wagon, and the chieftain, getting out of the sleigh, loudly greeted the villagers. The friendly loud reply of the Troops swept through the frosty air.

Then there was a solemn silence. On the ice, in the middle of the Urals, a crimson ataman came out and gave a sign for the beginning of crimson.

The ranks of the Cossacks swayed and ran towards the Urals. With long hooks in their hands, the Cossacks jumped from the ravine into the deep snow, rolled down it and ran across the ice to the stirrup of the Urals. They stopped and began to punch small holes in the ice with their peshers. Several seconds passed. The thick ice has been cut through. Almost simultaneously, the shafts of the crimps rose, forming a whole forest, and immediately plunged into the ice-holes. Bagging began.

The fish, frightened by the noise, rose and walked under the ice, but met the hooks on its way and, poking with a hook, pulled itself up to the ice. Now a large ice-hole was making its way, and in a moment the fish, caught by several other bunks, fought on the ice and froze. A sleigh with a flag drove up, the Cossacks, often with difficulty, put huge fish on them and took them to a barrack on the shore, where the whole catch was added.

The crowd on the shore watched with great attention and interest what was happening on the ice, and the appearance of each new fish was greeted with an enthusiastic hum.

The first day, according to custom, the best yatovs were unpacked near Uralsk; the purple was special. Royal purple. As a gift to the Tsar, the Army sent, according to tradition, all this catch. Large carts, and recently several wagons loaded with fish, went every year to St. Petersburg for a "present".

By noon they began to leave.

The horses stagnant in the frost rushed forward, and the Cossacks, satisfied with the good catch, gave them full freedom. The jump began. Along the wide flat road, overtaking each other, the Cossacks rushed in sledges. The well-fed horses trotted at a large trot, throwing snow dust at their riders.

A couple in a small sled flies past you like a whirlwind. Bending slightly to the front end and putting one leg out of the sleigh, the Cossack sits. The hat, his eyebrows, mustache and beard are white with frost, and he, gradually lowering the reins, gives the horses more and more speed. And next to him, leaning back, turning his head from the wind and snow flying from under the hooves, sits a young Cossack woman, squealing slightly bumpy, and her black eyes laugh from under sable eyebrows and white teeth sparkle in the sun. And after them, catching up or already overtaking, another couple rushes, there is a third, a fourth ... and looking at them, you feel that today is a holiday, a special, Ural holiday.

Cheerful and cheerful, the Cossacks are returning home. Pies, flatbreads and a cheerfully boiling samovar await them. After the frost it is nice to indulge in tea and in warm comfort to remember and tell what happened in the morning.

And in the evening, the training camp began again, and early in the morning, often at night, the Cossacks left again to crimson, this time for themselves, to other frontiers. And so it went on for several days.

The yards of the fish merchants were often littered with fish and work was in full swing there. Huge fish parted and sacks of caviar fell out into the sieves. There and then it was cut, salted and filled with it in large and small jars. There and then fish was plastered on balyk and tyoshka.

Each fishmonger has guests, and he proudly leads them around the yard. And there was something to boast about. There were belugas of 60 poods. If you sit on it, you will not reach the ground with your feet. Walking around the courtyard and examining the fish, everyone went to their rooms to sample new caviar and drink tea. Caviar was served in large bowls, one bowl replaced another, and the hospitable host persuaded to try from each:

- This, perhaps, is better, the salting is different.

When the guests departed, a jar of caviar was placed in each sleigh, and no one dared to refuse it.

Merchants sent Ural caviar and Ural sturgeons all over the world, and the whole world feasted on them.

But how many knew how the Cossacks got these treasures from the "Yaik, the golden bottom"?

B. Kirov
Renaissance newspaper, Paris

CZAR'S LUGGAGE

The first day of crimson was set aside for the king. All the fish caught that day was taken to the royal table. This custom has existed since the time of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, the first of the Romanov dynasty, when the Yaik Cossacks came to the Tsar with a fish gift and a bow with a request to "take" them under a high hand. And then it happened that every year the Cossacks took this present to the royal table. It was not difficult in the old days, when Yaik was very rich in fish and he was not otherwise called in songs as "the golden bottom", and he fed the entire Army. But when Yaik gradually began to become impoverished, it became more difficult for the Cossacks to do this, and, by the way, this custom turned into a duty and existed until the 1917 revolution. It happened like this: the military treasury released the amount of money to buy red fish from the Cossacks right on the ice, during crimson. But the rates were as follows: 3 rubles for barnyard and 15 rubles for caviar sturgeon. The real price of caviar sturgeon was 120–150–200 rubles and more, depending on the size. Imagine now a Cossack who was lucky in the tsar's crimson and unlucky in his. What amount of earnings he was losing! They tried to somehow hide the fish, but this became completely impossible, because the authorities forbade to bring horses and sleighs onto the ice due to the royal crimsonness. For the royal crimson, special yatovs were assigned, and sometimes it turned out that there were no fish deposits on it; then they smashed another, and so on until they caught enough fish.

During the period of atamanhood of General Shipov, at the end of the last century, an unfortunate incident occurred. We smashed three yatovs and there was no fish. It was necessary to break more, but the remaining lines were not prepared, and the Cossacks refused to continue. Despite the threats and orders of the order chieftain, the Cossacks flatly refused, arguing that no barriers were set up at other lines and the frightened fish would go to sea. About 60 people were arrested, and some were sent to Siberia.

One has to wonder how this tsarist government did not abolish this ancient custom.

This fish was carried to the king by an honorary delegation of three or four people from the honored Cossacks. The king gave someone a gold watch with his portrait, someone a gold cigarette case or something like that.

But, probably, the emperor handed out this fish, since there was a lot of it, but the Urals never received gratitude from anyone.

See also:
... (I.F.Blaramberg);
... (I.I.Zheleznov);
... (E.P. Kovalevsky);
... (A.K. Gaines);
... (F.I. Lobisevich);
... (V.I. Masalsky).

There are many amazing facts and events in Russian history that require study and knowledge, and among them there is one, less studied, but full of mysteries, which requires careful study - this is the history of the Cossacks.

The history of the Cossacks resembles either an ancient tragedy, or an adventurous novel, or a fairy tale about people of strong spirit, brave and brave warriors who, not sparing their lives, defended our Fatherland.

A Cossack means a freedom-loving and rebellious person. He will not tolerate injustice and oppression, he will not tolerate violence against himself. It is no coincidence that the word "Cossack" in the minds of Russian people is consistently combined with the word "free".

Folk legends and epics put the Cossacks on a par with the heroes. The most popular hero of the Russian epic - Ilya Muromets - bylinas are often called a Cossack.

The history of the Cossacks was considered by such domestic historians as Karamzin, Soloviev, Klyuchevsky, it is reflected in the literary works of our writers and poets Pushkin and Lermontov, Tolstoy and Sholokhov.

But the history of the Cossacks has not been fully studied, scientists are still arguing about the very origin of the word "Cossack", questions about the history of the Cossacks of the Urals and Siberia have not been sufficiently considered, the history of the Cossacks is not studied in the country's educational institutions.

The birth of the Ural Cossacks

The history of the Cossacks is full of mysteries. And the first of them is the origin of the word "Cossack". For many decades, scientists have been arguing about the origin of the word "Cossack", about what it meant among the Russians, Tatars or Polovtsians. There are various versions and approaches to explaining the origin of this word.

In the Polovtsian dictionary of 1303, the word "Cossack" meant a watchman. Among the Tatars, it meant something like "free man", "daring" and this term was called "familyless and homeless lonely warriors who served as the vanguard during the campaigns and movements of the Tatar hordes."

According to another version, the word "Cossack" is of eastern, most likely Turkic origin. A number of tribes and peoples were called and are called today by this or similar in sounding words. The Byzantine emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus wrote back in the 10th century that there was a country in the Caucasus called "Cossackia". Before the Mongol invasion, the Russians, apparently, called the Turks, Berendeys and other tribes, which were resettled in the 11th century to the southeastern border of the Old Russian state, as Cossacks. These tribes served as a guard service for the princes of Kiev, Chernigov, Pereyaslavl, Tmutarakan. Ultimately they merged with the Russians.

In Russian chronicles, the word "Cossack" or "Cossack" began to be used quite widely in the XIV-XVI centuries to designate two related, but not coinciding with one another, phenomena. On the one hand, the chronicles call "Cossacks" the service people who were stationed in the principalities bordering on the Golden Horde, which were used to prevent the raids of nomads. They were sent to patrol patrols and guards, they were settled in the border fortified towns. And these Cossacks were called "policemen". At the same time, chronicles note the existence of cossack artels of another type. They were not constantly in the public service, they were replenished almost exclusively by fugitive or declassified people, their main occupation was raids on the surrounding tribes and peoples, attacks on merchant caravans. They lived, not only at the expense of war booty, but often hunted and fished.

In real life, servicemen city Cossacks often went to the free Cossacks or took part in their enterprises, at the same time bands of free Cossacks sometimes entered the service of the princes, and this kind of service was paid directly from the state treasury.

In the XV-XVI centuries, the term "Cossacks" is becoming more and more widespread. Large Cossack communities were formed first of all on the Dnieper, Don, then in the Volga region. In the Urals, the formation of such communities took place later.

Ural Cossack

The first Cossacks came to the stone belt, as the Urals was called in ancient Russian chronicles, apparently over five hundred years ago. First of all, of course, in those lands that directly border on the Russian state. Of these, the most important and richest was Biarmia - the legendary country of the Scandinavian sagas, behind which, as the Vikings believed, lies the land of Nothangheim - the birthplace of the horrors of nature and evil sorcery. The Russians called Biarmia the Great Perm.

Inhabited by Finno-Ugric tribes and ruled by local princes, Great Perm paid tribute to Russian princes in the X-XI centuries.

The collapse of the Old Russian state and the Tatar-Mongol invasion weakened, but did not completely interrupt the connection between Russia and Great Perm. In the 13th – 15th centuries, the Novgorod and Rostov princedoms, as well as the increasingly growing Grand Duchy of Moscow, competed for influence on this land.

In 1472, Ivan III directed a squad against the Permian prince Mikhail, which defeated the Permians, captured the prince, and in fact annexed Great Perm to the Russian state. Service Cossacks come to the Urals with the Moscow warriors.

Service Cossacks

Almost simultaneously with this, the process of development of areas along the course of the Yaik River by free Cossacks is under way. Legends and legends have survived, which speak of free people who settled since the time of Tamerlane on the banks of the Yaik, i.e. in the late XIV - early XV centuries.

A gang of daredevils settled on Yaik, headed by the ataman Vasily Gugney. They said different things about his origin - some considered Gugnya a Don Cossack, others - a Novgorod ushkuynik who fled to the Don to the Cossacks.

At first, he and his gang hunted on the Volga and in the Caspian Sea, attacking merchant ships and caravans, then made the coast of the Yaik base, where he only hibernated, setting off every spring to his usual fishery. This gang, consisting of three dozen people, and, according to legend, laid the foundation for the settlement of Yaik by the Cossacks.

Legends and documents related to the beginning of the 18th century - a report to the Military Collegium of the ataman Rukavishnikov, a petition addressed to Peter I of the Yaitsky village ataman Fedor Mikhailov and some others, in a few words, but quite expressively depict the life and life of the first Russian settlers on Yaik. The first Cossack bands were small - several dozen people each. They were ruled by elected chieftains, whose power was limited, tk. practically all major issues were resolved at a general meeting of the Cossack artel.

The first Cossack settlements were usually built on the islands - for safety. These were temporary dwellings, like dugouts, intended only for the winter.

According to the tradition established since the time of Vasily Gugni, in the spring the Cossacks went to hunt on the Volga or the Caspian Sea, and returning to Yaik in the fall, they often chose a new place for anchorage.

Permanent Cossack “townships” appear later, at the end of the 16th - beginning of the 17th centuries.

Semi-dugout in the Cossack town

The banks of the Yaik were very poorly populated. The Tatars who lived here - first the subjects of the khans of the Golden Horde, and then the Nogai princes, of course, were not pleased with such a close proximity to the Cossack gangs. Small armed clashes between the one and the other were not uncommon, especially since the Cossacks for a long time kept the custom of getting wives for themselves, attacking the surrounding villages.

The khans of the Golden Horde, seeing the courage of the Cossacks, wanted to attract them to their service, promising to give them uluses and make them murzas for this. The Cossacks refused. The Tatar army surrounded the Cossack town on all sides, hoping to starve its inhabitants to death. The famine among the Cossacks was terrible. They "from hunger ate the soles and skin, and roots and all other filthiness," says one of the documents in this regard.

Nevertheless, the Cossacks did not surrender. They made wooden cannons for themselves, loaded them with bones and stones for lack of nuclei and hit the enemy. Ultimately, the Tatars were forced to yield, leaving the Cossack town alone. When this battle took place is difficult to say. Judging by the fact that it was about the khans of the Golden Horde - no later than the 15th century.

It should be noted that the Cossacks were not always at enmity with the local Tatars. Some of them, apparently, joined the Cossack artels, participated in their campaigns. The following detail is also characteristic: literally all the legends and legends about the first Cossacks who settled on Yaik note that their artels were also Tatars. Tradition says that there was at least one Tatar already in Vasily Gugni's gang. In the petition addressed to Peter I of the Yaik village ataman Fyodor Mikhailov and his "comrades" it is directly stated that the ancestors of the Yaik Cossacks are free people from the Don, as well as Tatars "from Crimea, from the Kuban, from other Muslim peoples." But Russians, Orthodox Christians still constituted the overwhelming majority.

The Yaik Cossacks maintained constant contacts with the Volga and Don Cossacks, and often united with them to organize joint military expeditions. The Yaik Cossacks apparently did not have permanent ties with the Moscow government, at least until the end of the 16th century. They did not consider themselves to be subjects of Moscow princes and tsars. The borders of the Moscow state were then more than a thousand miles from Yaik.

At the turn of the 15th – 16th centuries, two events predetermined the development of political processes in Eastern Europe: the conquest of independence by the Russian state and the collapse of the Golden Horde, which was finally completed by the end of the 15th century. The connection between them is obvious. As Russia grew stronger, the influence of the Mongol khans, who had previously ruled in Eastern Europe, as in their ulus, fell.

The Kazan, Astrakhan, Siberian and Crimean khanates, which arose on the ruins of the Golden Horde, as well as smaller Mongolian states were at enmity with each other, and this significantly weakened them. Already at the end of the 15th century, some of them were dependent on the Grand Dukes of Moscow.

Paying tribute to the Moscow state, at the same time the Kazan princes and Murzas plundered the border Russian villages. In 1551, the Kazan Khanate contained up to one hundred thousand Russian prisoners.

In 1552 Ivan the Terrible organized a campaign against Kazan. This campaign in the memory of the people and in the annals is considered as the most important event in the struggle for their Fatherland from enemies of other faiths, a direct continuation of the struggle against the Tatar-Mongol yoke. In this campaign, an important role was given to the Cossacks. Reporting on the actions of the Russian troops, chronicles note that Ivan the Terrible ordered Prince Peter Serebryany to go from Nizhny Novgorod to Kazan Posad; "And with him the children of the boyars and archers, and the Cossacks." Cossack detachments were sent by the tsar to block the traffic on the Vyatka, Kama and Volga rivers in order to cut off Kazan from the northern and northeastern regions of the khanate. From Meshchera to the Volga were sent two and a half thousand foot Cossacks under the command of the atamans Saverga and Elka. They were ordered, having made ships, go up the Volga, conquering the villages subject to the Kazan khans.

In general, at least ten thousand Cossacks took part in the Kazan campaign of Ivan the Terrible, according to the very minimum estimates, who contributed a lot to the success of the campaign. This circumstance is firmly imprinted in the memory of the people. It is no coincidence that many historical songs, epics and legends call Ermak Timofeevich among the participants in the Kazan campaign, and some of them paint the case even in such a way that Kazan was actually taken not even by Ivan the Terrible, but by the Cossack ataman Ermak, albeit on behalf of the Moscow sovereign ...

The accession to the Russian state of the Kazan Khanate, and in 1556 the Astrakhan Khanate, radically changed the situation in the east of Europe. More than three hundred years of Tatar domination in the Volga region came to an end. The influence of the Muscovite Empire grew sharply. The Siberian Khan sent Ivan the Terrible a tribute and a letter of honor, testifying to his passing under the patronage of Moscow.

At the same time, Bashkiria, previously dependent on the Kazan khans, joins the Russian state. Immediately after the Bashkirs' declaration of allegiance to the Russian tsar, Ivan the Terrible sent a fairly large detachment of Moscow troops to Bashkiria, consisting of mounted Cossacks and a foot company of archers led by voivode Ivan Nagy. They founded a small prison on the Belaya Volozhka River in 1574, which was the first Russian settlement in Bashkiria. Ostrozhek was occupied by a garrison, which consisted mainly of city Cossacks. This is the beginning of the history of the Ufa Cossacks, who later joined the Orenburg Cossack army. Since the founding of the prison, and hence the first service of the Cossacks to the state, the seniority of the Orenburg army later began to be calculated.

Ostrozhek on Belaya Volozhka, not much different from the usual “outposts”, “spotted” and other similar structures on the southeastern border. Defending such fortifications in the event of an attack by nomads was not easy. They withstood the onslaught of the enemy often only thanks to the desperate bravery of the garrisons that occupied them, in which every Cossack, every inhabitant understood perfectly well: if the fortress fell, they would not be spared.

In the 70s of the 16th century in Bashkiria, the construction of other Russian fortresses, outposts, forts and forts, which were supposed to block the path of the nomads who robbed Bashkiria, was unfolding. The Moscow government is strengthening its political and military presence in the area by sending Russian troops here and building Russian fortresses. Carrying out measures to strengthen its eastern borders, it relocates city Cossacks here, but along with this, to the north and south of Bashkiria, at the same time, in the 70s - 80s of the 16th century, the free colonization of the Urals by the Cossacks began.

Cordon

Traditionally, it is believed that the impetus for the development of Yaik by the Russians was the repressive measures taken by Ivan the Terrible against the Volga Cossacks. The Volga Cossacks were especially numerous at this time and were so successful in their "concerns" about merchant caravans that they practically endangered the entire eastern trade of the Muscovy. Daring daredevils on their light boats and plows robbed not only merchant ships, but often attacked the ambassadorial caravans, even the ambassadors of the Tsar of Moscow. Withdrawn from patience by numerous complaints from Russian and foreign merchants, as well as from neighboring states, Ivan the Terrible ordered to clear the Volga of the Cossacks. On October 1, 1577, the tsar gave a very categorical decree to the steward Ivan Murashkin: wherever he found those "Cossack thieves", there they would be tortured, executed and hanged.

However, it was, of course, much easier to give such an order than to carry it out. Indeed, only ataman Yermak, who was working on the Volga at that time, had at least five thousand Cossacks under his command. And Yermak was by no means the only chieftain who procured "zipuns" here. In any case, the tsarist troops, if they were unable to “execute and hang” all the Cossacks, seriously hampered their trade. It was necessary to look for new places, safer and just as profitable. And in 1579, large detachments of the Volga Cossacks set off to explore new places. Some of them went with Yermak to the Chusovsky towns of the Stroganovs, the other to the Terek, the third to Yaik.

The Cossacks that appeared on Yaik in 1580 looked little like the fugitives fleeing from the tsarist wrath. Rather, the opposite is true. They had an impressive military force and thought not so much about escape by flight as about the conquest of new territories. They seized with battle a number of towns belonging to the Nogai Tatars, including Saraichik, which was then a fairly large trade center.

According to the customs of that time, the victorious assault on the city was accompanied by its subsequent thorough sacking. Prince Urus of Nogai wrote about this to Ivan the Terrible: “The sovereign Cossacks of this summer came and Saraichik fought and burned; not only that the living people were flogged, and the dead were taken out of the earth and the coffins were ravaged. "

At rest

In this message of the Nogai prince, in addition to specific facts related to the seizure of Saraichik by the Cossacks, the following detail is especially interesting: Urus, apparently, is quite sure that the Cossacks did not attack at their own peril and risk, but with the knowledge and on behalf of the Moscow government. The Cossacks are directly named by him sovereign. Ivan the Terrible replied that he had nothing to do with it. Cossacks were declared state criminals and thieves. However, Ivan Vasilyevich repeatedly and solemnly denied his connection with the Cossacks, in polemics with Urus, shortly before that, in an alliance with the Crimean Tatars who invaded the Russian lands and robbed them decently, wrote: “For such lies and rudeness of yours we will command you to fight ... Cossacks Astrakhan and Volga, and Don, and Kazan, and Meshchersky. And they will inflict such annoyance on you over yourself, and now it is too early for us to calm down our Cossacks ”.

The thought that the connection between the Cossacks who seized Saraichik and the Moscow government did exist is also suggested by the following circumstance: it was in the 80s of the 16th century, simultaneously with the actions of the Cossacks on Yaik, that the Moscow state took measures to strengthen its positions in neighboring Bashkiria , helps Ermak in the conquest of Siberia, seeks to secure the lower reaches of the Volga. And in all these cases he relies on the Cossacks.

It is also important that this time the Cossacks sought not only to seize this or that prey, but to settle on Yaik seriously and for a long time. A few years later, Urus was again forced to complain to Grozny that the Cossacks, numbering 600-700 people, had built a "big city" on Yaik. At the same time, the Russian ambassador to Turkey, Boyar Blagov, reported to Moscow, according to the Nogai ambassadors Kutlaberdey and Tulupar, “many Cossacks have set up small towns on the Volga and on the Yaik and on the Emmi River”. Of course, all the complaints of the Nogai ambassadors, and even of Prince Urus himself, were very similar to the voice crying in the desert. The Moscow government believed that the Cossacks were doing something important and necessary for the Russian state.

Let us also note the following fact. In 1591, i.e. only eleven years after the capture of Saraichik, the Yaik Cossacks, then still formally independent from Moscow, take part in the campaign of the tsarist squads against the Tatar prince Shakhmal. Judging by the surviving data, the detachment of the Yaik Cossacks was quite large - 500 people. This indicates that the Yaik Cossacks were already a serious military force at that time.

Participation in the campaign against Shakhmal was officially considered the first firmly established service of the Yaik Cossacks to the Russian state. From 1591 the seniority of the Cossack army was calculated later.

Along with Bashkiria and Yaik, one of the main areas of Cossack colonization at the end of the 16th century was the Middle Urals. Great Perm, finally annexed to the Moscow state, was already settled quite well by the Russians. Further expansion to the east of the Russian lands is largely due to the activities of eminent people, industrialists and merchants Stroganovs, who received enormous privileges from Ivan the Terrible and, in particular, the right to develop new lands, attracting Cossacks to their service.

Yaik Cossacks on a campaign

They used this right, hiring mobs of free Cossacks even before Yermak Timofeevich came to the Urals. The Stroganovs turned to Ermak because they had heard about the courage shown by the ataman and his Cossacks in numerous skirmishes with the Nogai Tatars, as well as during attacks on merchant caravans. In April 1579, the Stroganovs sent Yermak and his comrades "many gifts" along with a letter in which they were invited to their Chusovo towns and prison for military service.

Ermak's Cossacks stayed in the Urals before the campaign to Siberia, according to various estimates, from two to four years. They defended the Stroganov towns from the attacks of neighboring tribes, they themselves made campaigns against these tribes, and even quite distant ones - beyond the Ural ridge.

There is enough convincing evidence that the Cossacks who came to the Urals to the Stroganovs saw their settlements here not just as temporary dwellings, where they just needed to spend the winter so that in the spring they could go “for zipuns”. They seemed to want to settle in the Urals for a long time. The Cossacks built a small town, which even later was called the Ermakov settlement. In this town, the Church of St. Nicholas was built and consecrated, in which the Cossacks performed divine services, fortunately there were three priests among them.

Preserved detailed descriptions depicting the life of Ermak's Cossacks during their stay in the Urals. Judging by this information, the ataman and his closest assistants: Ivan Koltso, Yakov Mikhailov, Nikita Pan, Matvey Meshcheryak established a fairly strict discipline in their artel, which was not inferior, and perhaps even surpassed discipline in Moscow rifle regiments and squads. Even for relatively minor offenses, the perpetrators were punished, chained in iron for three days. For disobedience or an attempt to escape unauthorizedly from the camp, the guilty were drowned in the river, after having tied them up in sacks filled with sand and stone. More than 20 people were executed in this way.

The role of Yermak's Cossacks in the defense of the Stroganov townships located in the Urals was so great that when they went east to Siberia and the Pelymsky prince, taking advantage of their departure, attacked Russian towns, the Stroganovs received an extremely angry letter from Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich. Grozny demanded the immediate return of the Yermak Cossacks in order to defend the Russian settlements on Kamen. True, this letter had no practical significance, since when it arrived, Ermak “with his comrades” was far away in Siberia. But this document testifies that, quite recently, he considered the Cossacks as "thieves" and "robbers", who ordered to catch them and hang Grozny already before the conquest of Siberia by Ermak, considered the atamans and Cossacks who entered the service of the Stroganovs as a very important force necessary for the defense of the eastern borders of the state. The execution of these "thieves" was out of the question.

It should be noted that not all of Yermak's associates who came with him to the Urals from the Volga set off to conquer Siberia. Part of the Cossacks and chieftains remained, with the permission of Yermak, in the Stroganov towns and settlements founded by the Cossacks along the Sylva River. Also, after the death of Yermak, not all of his Cossacks went back to Russia. Most of those who survived, led by ataman Meshcheryakov, remained either in Siberia or returned to the Urals. Over time, they firmly settled down in these areas. The diplomas of Ivan the Terrible and his closest successors - Fyodor Ioannovich, Boris Godunov, addressed to the Siberian governors, who then controlled a significant part of the Urals, constantly mention the settlements of Cossacks in the Perm land along the rivers Chusovaya, Iset, Sylva and other places.

In the service of the Tsars of Moscow

At the beginning of the 17th century, acute social-class conflicts arose in the country, which, in combination with the Polish-Lithuanian and then Swedish intervention, created a real threat to the very existence of the Russian state. These turbulent and tragic years were called the Time of Troubles by contemporaries and posterity.

The role of the Cossacks during the Time of Troubles is very great, but usually we are talking about the Don, Ukrainian, Volga Cossacks, whose communities were very numerous and located closer to the theater of operations than the Ural Cossacks.

The Yaik Cossacks from the very beginning of their settlement on Yaik were, first of all, warriors. Therefore, it is not surprising that they participated in almost all the wars waged by the Russian Empire. They fought against the Crimean Tatars, Poles, Swedes, Turks, French, Germans and many other peoples, fought bravely near Smolensk, Poltava, Zurich, Leipzig, Balaklava, Ikan, Mukden, etc., took Silistria, Paris, Samarkand, Geok –Tepe, Przemysl and other strongholds repeatedly went to war against the Khiva and Kokand khanates.

And in the Time of Troubles, they did not stand aside. The Yaik Cossacks, along with the Don, Cossacks, Terek Cossacks, supported and quite actively opposed Boris Godunov. Later, Bolotnikov took part in the campaign against Moscow, posing as a voivode, the son of Tsar Fyodor Ioanovich, Tsarevich Peter. The Cossacks played an important role in the battles near Tula; they proved themselves to be daring, brave warriors. "The bravest villains" - called them N.М. Karamzin, who did not sympathize with the rebels in general and who fought on the side of I.I. Bolotnikov to the Cossacks - in particular. Surrounded on all sides, they fought for two days, and only on the third of those who were still alive were they able to be captured by force. There and then all of them, except for seven people, who were pardoned at the request of the nobles loyal to Shuisky, who were saved some time ago by the Cossacks, when these nobles were captured by the rebels of the False Peter.

After the defeat of I.I. Bolotnikov and the surrender of Tula, the Cossacks who survived the battles, supported either False Dmitry II or a new candidate for the Moscow throne - Vladislav. They were considered by the Moscow government to be so dangerous that during the negotiations of the boyars with the Polish senators about the conditions under which Vladislav could become Tsar of Moscow, it was specially agreed: Cossacks are needed or not. "

The battle

The Yaik Cossack Host was considered the most "rebellious". The disobedience of the Urals manifested itself at the slightest intention of the authorities to infringe on their rights and freedoms. Free people could not reconcile with this. Unrest and unrest, sometimes turning into open disobedience and into armed confrontation with the tsarist troops, took place on the lands of the Ural Cossacks on a regular basis.

The times of the Great Troubles are over. Having withstood the struggle against the Polish-Swedish invaders, with the centrifugal destructive forces inside the country, the Russian state was gradually restoring its former power, returning previously lost territories, annexing new ones. The transition of the Yaik Cossacks to the citizenship of the Russian tsars belongs to this time. In 1613, the Yaik Cossacks were accepted into the citizenship of the Moscow state, and in 1615 the army was granted the royal charter of ownership of the river. Yaik.

The adoption of Russian citizenship by the Yaik Cossacks created more favorable conditions than before for the use of the military force of the Cossacks in the public service.

In 1629, the Yaik Cossacks, as part of the detachment of the governor Blagov and Prince Solntsev-Zasekin, took part in a campaign against the Crimean Tatars. In 1634, 380 Cossacks from Yaik defended Smolensk as part of the troops of the boyar M.B. Sheina. In 1655, one hundred Cossacks were sent as part of the troops of Prince Khovansky to Poland and near Riga. This hundred carried out military service here for seven years.

In 1681, one hundred Yaik Cossacks with ataman Prokofy Semyonov fought against the Poles near Chigirin in the detachment of Prince Bulat-Cherkassky. The next year, another two hundred Cossacks were sent there under the command of Ataman Belousov.

In 1684, one and a half hundred Yaik Cossacks, led by Ataman Prokofy Tagaevsky, fought as part of the Russian troops on a large-scale but unsuccessful Crimean campaign, undertaken on the initiative and under the command of the favorite of Tsarevna Sophia, Prince V.V. Golitsyn. In 1685, another two hundred Cossacks, led by the ataman Yakov Vasiliev, were sent to the war against the Crimean Tatars.

But, the main task set by the Moscow government before the Cossacks of the Urals was the task of protecting the southeastern borders of the Russian state from nomads from the steppes, who were then called Kyrgyz-Kaisak. In the XVI-XVII centuries, the Russian state spread far to the east up to China and the Pacific Ocean. These conquests were, however, very fragile, since from the south, from the Kirghiz-Kaisak steppes, the Russians were constantly threatened by the militant Kyrgyz tribes, Dzungars, Karakalpaks, as well as Kalmyks who migrated to the Yaik-Volga interfluve from China. Although they accepted Russian citizenship, whenever an opportunity presented itself, they attacked Russian villages. The Nogai Tatars and the constantly revolting Bashkirs were such unreliable subjects. As a result, the vast territories from the Caspian Sea to Western Siberia became, in fact, the arena for a border war that lasted more than three centuries.

Border defenders

The border line stretching for thousands of kilometers was defended not so much by regular military units as by detachments of Cossacks. The border line formed a special warehouse of people. It was impossible to survive here without perfect possession of weapons, without fulfilling the customs of the Cossack communities. The defense of the southeastern border was then focal in nature. The Cossacks, and indeed the armed formations of the Russian state, could not cover the border sufficiently at that time. Therefore, fortifications were created in the most dangerous areas. There were three of them then: Bashkiria, the region along the course of the Iset River with its tributaries, and, finally, Yaik.

The Yaik Cossack army carried border and guard services along the Yaik. Separate Cossack bands made raids on nomads, went “for zipuns” together with the Volga and Don Cossacks. The government's policy of eliminating Cossack liberties, depriving the Cossacks of autonomy has repeatedly caused riots and uprisings. Most of the Yaitsk Cossack army took part in the Cossack-peasant war under the leadership of S.T. Razin in 1667–71. After the end of the war and the defeat of the rebels, the tsarist government deprived the Cossacks of many rights.

In 1677, part of the Yaik Cossacks under the command of Ataman V. Kasimov rebelled again, but were defeated by the tsarist troops. In 1721, the Yaitsk Cossack army was subordinated to the Military Collegium, and in 1723 the election of atamans and foremen was abolished.

In 1748, the Yaitsk Cossack army received a permanent organization of seven cavalry regiments with artillery. The army was led by the order chieftain. From the middle of the 18th century, the Yaitsk Cossack army was involved in the protection of the Nizhneyaitskaya fortified line. The government's policy towards the Cossacks provoked a major uprising of the Yaik Cossacks in 1772, which lasted about six months, and was brutally suppressed.

The Yaik Cossack troops took part in the Cossack-Peasant War under the leadership of Yemelyan Ivanovich Pugachev, a fined and fugitive Don Cossack who pretended to be the miraculously escaped Emperor Peter III in 1773–75. And after it was suppressed, they wanted all the Troops, like the Don ataman Ignat Nekrasov, who left after the uprising K.A. Bulavin part of the Don Cossacks to Turkey, go abroad. The government cruelly dealt with the most active participants in the uprising, and for the edification of descendants, and in order to forever eradicate the memory of the Pugachev uprising on Yaik, Catherine II, by a decree of January 15, 1775, ordered the Yaik river to be renamed into the Ural River, the Yaitsky town - to Uralsk, and the Yaitskoye Cossack region The army was sent to the Ural Cossack army. So the Yaik Cossacks became the Ural Cossacks.

The troops were led by the order chieftain and the military administration, from 1782 subordinate to the Astrakhan or Orenburg governor-general, from 1868 to the governor-general of the newly formed Ural region.

Since 1868, the territory of the Ural Cossack army has been divided into three departments in military-administrative terms, each department into villages and towns. The departments were headed by atamans appointed by the governor, and the village and village atamans were elected by the Cossack communities. The order of service of the Uralites was determined by the Regulations on the Military Service of the Cossacks of the Ural Cossack Army in 1874. The entire population of the Ural Cossack army was taxed, from which the Cossack troops were equipped for service.

The Cossacks carried out their service regularly. They participated in the Azov campaign of Peter I in 1695 and 1696, in battles they showed restraint, courage, resourcefulness, they were always at the forefront of the army. The Great Northern War with Sweden, which began in 1700, required a significant increase in the Russian army. Accordingly, the need for Cossack troops increased sharply. In 1701, shortly after the defeat of the Russian troops near Narva, to the Baltic States in the corps of Field Marshal B.P. Sheremetyev, six hundred Yaik Cossacks with ataman Vitoshnov were sent. In 1703, an additional five hundred Cossacks were sent there under the command of Ataman Matvey Mironov, in 1704 - another Cossack regiment of five hundred strengths led by Ataman Matvey Rekunov, in 1706 - another five hundred people under the command of Mitrofan Pimenov. These 2,100 Yaik Cossacks fought as part of the Russian army until the very end of the Northern War.

Surikov. Cossack history

In 1711, during the Prut campaign of the Russian army, two regiments of the Yaik Cossacks led by Konon Nikeyev participated under the command of the boyar P.M. Apraksin on a military expedition to the Kuban. The main goal of the expedition was to prevent the Crimean Khan from providing sufficient support to the Turks.

If we consider the history of the participation of the Ural Cossacks in the wars and military campaigns of the 18th - 19th centuries, it can be noted that the Ural Cossacks took part in all these enterprises, but still their main task was to protect the border territories of the Russian state in the southeast.

The Ural Cossacks served under the command of Colonel Suvorov, participated in the Patriotic War of 1812 against Napoleon, the Ural Cossack detachments were not only part of the Russian army, but also participated in partisan detachments during the difficult war years. So, for example, in the detachment of D.B. Davydov, consisting of 130 people, there were 50 hussars and 80 Cossacks. And they always showed courage, courage, resourcefulness in battle. Among the winners who entered Paris on March 19, 1814 were the Cossacks of the Urals. Residents of Orenburg, Urals, Bashkirs and Kalmyks watered their plain looking horses in the Seine and in the Parisian fountains. Having lost the means to resist, Napoleon was deposed. The war was ended victoriously by the Russians. The Ural Cossacks, who, like all participants in the capture of Paris, were awarded medals on this occasion, returned to Russia in 1814.

The Ural Cossacks, who did not participate in wars, but served in the border regions of the Russian state, were also noted more than once in the orders for the troops of Yaitsky and Orenburg for their courage and courage shown in the fight against the constant raids of nomads. More than once, the Cossacks of even the most remote fortresses and redoubts were awarded awards, not only from their own superiors, but also from the government.

On February 19, 1861, Emperor Alexander II signed a manifesto abolishing serfdom in Russia. This was followed by other reforms that propelled the country along the path of bourgeois development. These included: zemstvo, city, judicial, military, financial reforms, reforms in the field of education. Significant transformations have taken place in the life of the Cossacks. They were aimed at bringing the Cossacks closer to the rest of the population, leading to the renewal of the internal life of the Cossacks.

Economy and life of the Cossacks

While developing the Ural Territory, the Cossacks initially did not lead a sedentary lifestyle, coming to the Urals, they settled on small islands, where they built dugouts, semi-dugouts and huts, which corresponded to the marching lifestyle of the Cossacks, here they spent the winter. With the onset of the warm season, they made campaigns "for zipuns" to the Volga and the Caspian, and returning from the campaign, settled in a new place.

Having entered the service, guarding the southeastern borders of the Russian state, they build fortresses and outposts. On the lower Yaitskaya line, 10 fortifications and 15 outposts were created. Fortresses and outposts were located 20-30 versts from each other. The garrison of the fortress was about 1000 people, and the outpost was 100 people.

At the request of the government, strict discipline was maintained in the outpost garrisons. Each Cossack had to have at the ready: a saddled horse, serviceable weapons and the necessary supply of gunpowder and lead. The Cossack had no right to leave the outpost. For unauthorized departure, the perpetrator was imprisoned for 1–2 months.

Cossack towns, settlements, ostrozhki also lose the features of temporary settlements. The Cossacks are really settling in the areas inhabited by them. The economy of the Cossacks is becoming more stable and versatile.

The well-being of the Cossacks depended, first of all, on the size of government salaries, as well as rights and privileges. The most important privilege of the Cossacks was the exemption from any taxes and duties, except for military service. This privilege was fully preserved in the 18th century. The Cossacks, to a much greater extent than the Ural and Siberian peasants, were allotted land and agricultural land in general. The land plots of the Cossacks were on average 4–6 times, and sometimes 10 times higher than the allotments of neighboring peasants. The main agricultural crops are rye, spring wheat, millet. Arable implements are almost everywhere - a plow, a saban; for loosening the soil, a rally with wooden and iron teeth, harrows were used. They cleaned the bread with sickles and braids. When threshing, they used stone and wooden rollers, threshed grain with the help of animals - they drove bulls and horses along sheaves spread on the current. Since the end of the 19th century, harvesting machines have been used on the farms of wealthy Cossacks; quite often several Cossacks jointly rented or bought agricultural machinery. The development of agriculture was restrained by the constant war threat from the nomads, who especially eagerly attacked those who worked in the fields, far from the fortress or outpost of the Cossacks.

On the other hand, animal husbandry, primarily horse breeding, was well developed. Livestock raising was of a commercial nature. The leading industries were horse breeding and sheep breeding; cows, poultry and pigs were also raised. In the south of the Ural Cossack army, camels were bred.

One of the main articles of income of the Cossacks was hunting, fortunately in the Ural forests and steppes there was a lot of a wide variety of game, also important, in addition to owning allotments, for the Cossacks had the right to use lakes rich in fish, the right to conduct river fishing for the most valuable species of fish. Fishing for the Cossacks was much more profitable than even campaigns "for zipuns", not to mention military service. It is not surprising that the Cossacks fought for such a long time against Guryev's fishmongers. Ultimately, with the help of the government, it was possible to find a compromise solution to the problem. In 1743, the government obliged the tax farmer of the Guryev state-owned uchugs at the mouth of the Yaik to open the gates from each bank of 8 fathoms for the free passage of fish up the Yaik.

Later in 1752, at the request of I.I. Neplyuev's Cossacks received the state-owned uchug for a certain annual fee, and thus became full-fledged masters of the lower reaches of the Yaik River with its richest fish stocks. Every year, the Cossacks caught and sold to the central regions of Russia several hundred thousand sturgeons, belugas, fresh and salted sturgeons, a large amount of caviar, receiving money for this, which significantly exceeded the cost of their payments to the treasury for the exploitation of fisheries. The fish caught in Yaik was valued much higher, for example, the Volga fish.

The Cossacks most jealously guarded this privilege of theirs - the right of crimson. Only employees of the Cossacks were allowed to crimp. Those of the employees of the Cossacks who did not want or could not blame themselves could sell this right for a significant amount. Successful hooking brought the Cossack a profit many times higher than the size of the salary.

The Cossacks were also engaged in fishing on the numerous lakes of the Ural Territory. In the South Urals, the Cossacks of the village of Verkhnee-Miasskaya were widely famous for this art. Back in the 17th - early 18th centuries, they practiced fish farming on a fairly large scale in neighboring lakes, which also gave considerable income.

In general, the Cossacks in the Urals were quite prosperous, especially in comparison with the peasants of the central provinces of Russia, this higher standard of living was achieved at the cost of constant, very hard labor of the civilian and military.

For settlements, the Cossacks chose strategically advantageous places: steep river banks, elevated areas protected by ravines and swamps. The villages were surrounded by a deep ditch and an earthen rampart. There were frequent cases of change of the original place of settlement. A sharp increase in the number of settlements in the 18th - early 19th centuries was associated with the creation of military defensive lines.

Special government orders regulated the nature of development and the layout of settlements, the distance between them, etc. The main types of settlements were villages, fortresses, outposts, redanks and pickets. The construction of fortifications intensified during periods of aggravation of military-political relations between Russia and the Central Asian states. After the "pacification", the fortifications around the settlements also disappeared, and their layout changed. Farms, winter huts, koshi and settlements - temporary settlements in which the Cossacks kept livestock, changed their appearance - crops were located next to them.

The average size of the Cossack villages far exceeded the size of the peasant villages. Initially, the Cossack settlements had a circular building, which facilitated the defense in the event of an unexpected enemy attack. In the 18th-19th centuries, the planning of Cossack villages and outposts was regulated by the government and local military commanders: street-quarter planning and division into quarters were introduced, within which the Cossacks allocated plots for the estate, the facade line was strictly observed.

In the center of the Cossack village there were a church, a village or village administration, schools, shops, etc. Most of the Cossack settlements were located along rivers, sometimes stretching for 15–20 kilometers. The outskirts of the villages had their own names, their inhabitants sometimes differed according to ethnic or social characteristics. The houses of nonresidents were located both among the Cossack estates and at some distance from them.

Cossack estates were usually fenced off with deaf high fences with tightly closed gates, which emphasized the isolation of the Cossack life. Often the house was located in the back of the courtyard or turned to the street with the deaf side.

The estates of the middle and wealthy Cossacks were distinguished by the relatively large size of the courtyard, several backyards). Outbuildings were most often constructed from local building materials. In the Cossack estate, a summer kitchen was always built, to which the family moved in the warm season.

The interior of the hut of the wealthy Cossacks was distinguished by emphasized decorativeness. The walls of the Cossack hut were decorated with weapons and horse harness, pictures depicting military subjects, family portraits, portraits of Cossack chieftains and members of the royal family.

Old Cossack

The traditional clothing of the Cossacks is characterized by the early displacement of homespun fabrics, the use of purchased fabrics already from the middle of the 19th century. In the second half of the 19th century, urban clothing almost completely replaced the traditional costume. A jacket, trousers, a vest, a coat, and a skirt with a jacket and a dress were widely used everywhere among men. In the Cossack environment in the late 19th - early 20th centuries, factory-made hats, shoes and jewelry were very popular.

The ethnosymbolizing functions of clothing were also manifested in the special attitude of the Cossacks to the military uniform and its components. The uniform and cap were kept as family heirlooms. Modern descendants of the Cossacks often place a Cossack cap in a conspicuous place in the living room.

The traditional men's clothing of the Cossacks of various troops had similar features associated with a common militarized lifestyle and economic and everyday life. In the 19th century, a shirt and trousers were included in the complex of traditional clothing. Wide trousers were sewn from canvas, cloth, velvet, velvet, silk, leather, etc. At the end of the 19th century, in addition to tunic-like shirts with a straight cut, collars became widespread, and shirts with a yoke. Typical for the Cossacks was the custom of tucking the shirt into the trousers.

Vintage clothing of the Yaik Cossacks

In the 18th - first half of the 19th centuries, the Ural Cossacks wore a robe, chekpen, beshmet and malakhai, soft boots - ichigi, the cut of which was similar to the cut of boots among Tatars, Bashkirs, Nogais, etc. casing, armyak, zipun, burka. Two- and three-layer clothes were put on the road. When fishing or hunting, they preferred short clothes. In such cases, the Ural Cossacks tucked the hem of their outerwear into their trousers. The most common type of footwear was boots. Work footwear - porsches, shoe covers. In winter they wore felt boots, in summer - boots and boots. Lapti almost never existed.

Women's clothing was very diverse. The main set of women's clothing at the end of the 19th century was a skirt with a jacket. In the 18th - the first half of the 19th centuries, the Ural Cossacks had an oblique sundress decorated with galloon ribbons, lace, embroidery, a sundress was necessarily belted. At the end of the 19th century, the sundress is rare, mainly as a festive and ceremonial-ritual clothing. The Ural Cossacks had a traditional women's shirt with shoulder inserts. Since the second half of the 19th century, a faceless shirt has spread, as well as a shirt with a yoke. A feature of the Ural shirt was very lush, colorful sleeves, decorated with galloon, embroidery with gold or silver thread. Skirts with a jacket were sewn from fabric of the same or different colors. In accordance with the cut, they distinguished cuirasses, hussars, geisha, matene, etc. The skirt and jacket were decorated with ribbons, lace, cord, bugles.

The old headdress of the Ural Cossack woman consisted of a kichka, a kokoshnik, over which a scarf was tied. The disappearance of ancient hats, the change in traditional forms in the second half of the 19th century is associated with the influence of the city. Girl's headdress: most often a ribbon decorated with a beaded bottom, pearls, beads, embroidery, was tied around the head.

The clothes of the Old Believers were generally distinguished by greater conservatism, the predominance of dark colors, the preservation of archaic cut details and methods of wearing. The old Cossack costume was used as a festive, stage clothes along with modern ones.

The food of the Cossacks was based on the products of agriculture, animal husbandry, fishing, vegetable growing and horticulture. Sour dough bread made with yeast or sourdough was the most widespread bread. Bread was baked in a Russian oven, pies, pies, shangi, rolls, pancakes, pancakes, etc. were baked from sour dough. The Ural Cossacks baked eggs into bread for the journey. Pies are a festive and everyday dish filled with fish, meat, vegetables, cereals, fruits, berries, including wild ones.

Unleavened dough was used to bake flat cakes, bursaks, koloboks, knyshes, makans, nuts, rosants. They were cooked in a Russian oven or fried in oil. Sour choux pastry was used to make rolls and pretzels. Dishes made from flour brewed in boiling water - zatiukha, djurma, balamyk, salamat - formed the basis of the lean diet; they were prepared during fishing, on the road, in haymaking. Dumplings, dumplings, dumplings were among the dishes of the everyday and festive table. Kulaga, jelly for memorial and lenten meals were also cooked from flour. Cereals, cereals on water and milk played a large role in nutrition, vegetables were added to them. On the basis of cereals, they prepared dishes like pudding - millet, with the addition of eggs and butter. "Porridge with fish" was known among the Ural Cossacks.

Dairy dishes were an important part of the daily diet. Sour milk was the basis for the preparation of many dishes. Aryan was made from it - a drink to quench thirst, milk, syuzbe, like feta cheese, dried cheese. Kaimak was added to many dishes, giving them a special taste. Remchuk, sarsu - sour milk dishes borrowed from nomadic peoples. Milk was used to make varenets, fermented baked milk, sour cream, and cottage cheese.

Fish dishes are the basis of the diet of the Ural Cossacks. The fish was boiled, fried, simmered in the oven. Cutlets and veal were prepared from fish fillets. Fish pies, aspic and stuffed fish were served on the festive table. Cutlets and meatballs were made from caviar of small fish. The fish was dried, smoked, dried.

Meat was used to prepare first courses, second courses, and pie filling.

Vegetable and fruit dishes were very varied. The most popular vegetable dish among the Ural Cossacks was cabbage soup made from meat, cabbage, potatoes and cereals. Carrots, pumpkin seeds, stewed cabbage, fried potatoes were included in the daily diet. The Ural Cossacks made dry melons in the same way as the Turkmens, only after drying in the sun they were tormented in a Russian oven. Vegetable dishes with kvass were popular. Melons and gourds - watermelons, melons and pumpkins - dominated the diet of the Cossacks in the summer. Watermelons and melons were salted. Salted tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbage were poured with the pulp of a watermelon. Bekmes was a widespread dish made from watermelon and melon molasses.

Wild plants were used everywhere.

Drinks were varied: kvass, compote, sour milk diluted with water, fed from honey, booze from licorice root, etc. Intoxicating drinks were served at the festive table: mash, sour, chikhir - young grape wine, moonshine. Tea was very popular among the Cossacks. He penetrated into the everyday life of the Cossacks quite early - in the second half of the 19th century. Tea drinking ended all festive, often daily meals of the Cossacks.

Until the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries, the Cossacks were characterized by the existence of a large undivided family. Its long-term preservation was facilitated by the special social position of the Cossacks and the specific way of life: the need to cultivate large land plots, the impossibility of separating a young family during service or before it begins, the isolation of family life. The Cossacks of the Ural army had 3-4 generation families, the number of which reached 25-30 people. Along with large families, small families were also known, consisting of parents and unmarried children.

The intensive development of commodity-money relations at the beginning of the 20th century accelerated the disintegration of a large family. The class and confessional isolation of the Cossacks in the 19th century significantly limited the circle of marriage ties. Marriages with nonresidents and representatives of local peoples were extremely rare even at the beginning of the 20th century.

The head of the family was the sovereign leader of the whole family: he distributed and controlled the work of its members, all incomes flowed to him, he had sole power. A similar position in the Cossack family was occupied by the mother in the absence of the owner. The peculiarity of the family structure of the Cossacks was the relative freedom of a Cossack woman in comparison, for example, with a peasant woman. The youth in the family also enjoyed greater rights than the peasants.

Long-term coexistence of the Cossack agricultural, industrial and military communities determined many aspects of their life, everyday life and spiritual life. The customs of collective labor and mutual assistance were manifested in the unification of draft animals and implements for the period of urgent agricultural work, fishing gear and vehicles during fishing, joint grazing of livestock, voluntary gratuitous assistance during the construction of a house, etc.

The Ural Cossacks are characterized by traditions of joint leisure activities: communities, meals after the end of agricultural or commercial work, seeing off and meeting the Cossacks from service. Almost all holidays were accompanied by competitions in felling, shooting, horse riding. A characteristic feature of many of them were "funeral" games, staged military battles or Cossack "freemen". Games and competitions were often held at the initiative of the military administration, especially equestrian competitions.

At the christening, the boy was "initiated into the Cossacks": they put a saber on him and put him on a horse. The guests brought arrows, cartridges, a gun as a gift to the newborn and hung them on the wall. The initiation of older children into the Cossacks was called - tonsured.

Tonsured

The most significant religious holidays were Christmas and Easter. Patronal holidays were widely celebrated. The day of the saint - the patron saint of the army was considered a general holiday. Agrarian-calendar holidays were an important part of the entire festive ritual, they reflected traces of pre-Christian beliefs. Among the Ural Cossacks in the 19th century, the number of festive fun included entertainment known among the Turkic peoples; without the help of hands, they had to get a coin from the bottom of the cauldron with flour stew.

The peculiarity of the everyday life of the Cossacks determined the nature of oral and poetic creativity. Songs were the most widespread folklore genre among the Cossacks. Choral singing traditions were deeply rooted. The widespread use of the song was facilitated by living together in campaigns and at training camps, performing agricultural work in peace.

The military authorities encouraged the Cossacks' hobbies for choral singing, creating choirs, organizing the collection of old songs and the publication of collections of texts with scores. Musical literacy was taught to schoolchildren in stanitsa schools, the basis of the song repertoire was made up of old historical and heroic songs associated with specific historical events, as well as those that reflected military life. Ritual songs accompanied the holidays of the calendar and family cycle, love and comic songs were popular. Among other genres of folklore, historical legends, epics, and toponymic stories were widely spread.

The Cossacks considered the Circle to be the power. When people from different lands gather together, bearers of different cultures and keepers of different faiths, in order to get along, they have to retreat in their communication to the level of the simplest, tested for millennia, accessible to any understanding. The armed men stand in a circle and, looking into each other's faces, decide. Decisions are taken unanimously. A circle was considered incompetent if less than 2/3 of the payroll of the society was present at it, there is no council of old people and a priest. In a situation where every moment you risk your life, the armed majority will not tolerate the armed minority. Either expel or simply interrupt. Those who disagree can break away, but later on within their group, they will not tolerate differences of opinion either.

When the decision was made, a leader called "chieftain" was elected for the period of its implementation. They obeyed him implicitly. And so until they do what they decided.

Cossacks in the XX century

The stormy beginning of the 20th century became a difficult test for the Cossacks. A large number of Ural Cossacks took part in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. In the revolution of 1905-1907. Cossack troops as part of the Russian army were involved in establishing and maintaining order in the country, for which they received solemn imperial letters, which again confirmed the household and land benefits of the Cossacks. The tense social and political atmosphere contributed to the manifestation of negative sentiments among the Cossacks. World War I 1914-1918 brought huge human losses to the Cossacks.

On the eve of the First World War, there were 11 Cossack Troops in Russia: Don, Kuban, Tersk, Astrakhan, Ural, Orenburg, Siberian, Semirechenskoe, Transbaikal, Amur, Ussuri and two separate Cossack regiments. They occupied 65 million acres of land with a population of 4.4 million people. , including 480 thousand service personnel. Among the Cossacks, ethnic Russians prevailed, in second place were Ukrainians, in third place were Buryats. Most of the Cossacks professed Orthodoxy, there was a large percentage of Old Believers, and national minorities professed Buddhism and Islam.

More than 300 thousand Cossacks took part in the battlefields of the First World War. The war showed the ineffectiveness of using large horse masses in conditions of a continuous front, high density of infantry firepower and increased technical means of defense. The exceptions were small partisan detachments formed from volunteer Cossacks, who successfully operated behind enemy lines in performing sabotage and reconnaissance missions. The Cossacks, as a significant military and social force, took part in the Civil War. Combat experience and professional military training of the Cossacks was again used in solving acute internal social conflicts.

The February events of 1917 and the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II, the Cossacks, tired of the bloody war, met without much resistance and took a neutral wait-and-see attitude. The successive members of the Provisional Government, verbally demonstrating their loyalty to the Cossacks, did not take real measures to solve their problems. The Bolsheviks, seeing in the Cossacks a significant military force capable of influencing the military-political situation in the country, tried to neutralize him during the Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917, and then make him an ally.

By decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of November 17, 1917, the Cossacks were formally abolished as an estate and Cossack formations. The land redistribution on an equalizing basis under the Soviet law on the socialization of the land, which unfolded in early 1918 in the Cossack regions, affected the share plots of ordinary Cossacks, which, together with the atrocities of the revolutionary detachments in the Cossack villages, pushed the Cossacks to resistance in the ranks of the White movement. In the spring of 1918, the Civil War engulfed the entire territory of Russia. During the Civil War, the Cossack territories became the main bases of the White movement and it was there that the most fierce battles were fought. The Cossack units were numerically the main military force of the Volunteer Army in the fight against Bolshevism. The Cossacks were pushed to this by the policy of decossackization carried out by the Reds.

The Red Army also had Cossack units. The Red Cossacks played a very significant role in the famous raid of the partisan army under the command of V.K. Blucher, I. D. and N.D. Kashirins. Many of the participants in the raid later became fighters and commanders of the Red Army, and some, including the Kashirin brothers, made a brilliant career in it.

At the end of the Civil War, a large number of Cossacks between the ages of 20 and 40 found themselves in emigration, mainly within Turkey, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, France, China, from where they subsequently settled all over the world. The huge losses suffered by the Cossacks during the First World War and the Civil War significantly weakened the Cossacks. The Soviet transformations in the villages and the abolition of the estate significantly distorted the Cossack worldview.

The revolution and civil war actually finally split the Cossacks. In the course of the fratricidal war, it suffered irreparable losses to the entity. The most active part of the Ural and Orenburg Cossack troops, primarily the officers and a significant part of the Cossack intelligentsia in general, were physically destroyed. Many Cossacks with their families ended up abroad. The Cossack villages, through which the front line rolled from east to west and from west to east more than once, were seriously destroyed, the economies of many Cossack families were ruined. The Cossack estate was formally abolished, like all estates in general, in fact, the special Cossack governing bodies and other institutions were completely liquidated. Speaking for the most part on the side of the counter-revolution, the Cossacks became politically suspicious of the Soviet regime. And this also affected the further fate of the Cossacks of the Urals, and the Cossack country as a whole.

In Soviet times, the official policy of decossackization actually continued, although in 1925 the plenum of the Central Committee of the RCP recognized as unacceptable "ignoring the peculiarities of Cossack life and the use of violent measures in the fight against the remnants of Cossack traditions." Nevertheless, the Cossacks continued to be considered "non-proletarian elements" and were subject to restrictions in their rights, in particular, the ban to serve in the ranks of the Red Army was lifted only in 1936, when they created several Cossack cavalry divisions, which proved to be excellent during the Great Patriotic War. In a difficult time for the country, the overwhelming majority of the Cossacks defended their homeland. During the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. most of the cavalry units and formations were awarded honorary titles and orders for military services.

Thousands of Ural and Orenburg Cossacks who fought in the cavalry, rifle units and formations of the Red Army were awarded orders and medals for their courage. Cossacks G.M. Gubarev, N.M. Dmitriev, F.M. Zankin, I.A. Kuznetsov, S.P. Labuzhinsky, P.I. Orekhov, G.T. Chumakov, N.V. Chernenko, F.K. Chegodaev, V.A. Sorokin and a number of others were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

The “abolished” and formally long ago “liquidated” Cossacks of the Urals gave the Fatherland not only many glorious warriors, but also heroes of labor who built the Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant and Magnitka, the mines of Kopeisk and Korkino, who grew bread. Among the Cossacks there are many scientists, teachers, literary and art workers. The famous Ural poet Boris Ruchev, who built Magnitka and carried through the Gulag camps, faith in his homeland, his people, also comes from a hereditary Cossack family, was proud of his origin, although he could not always say it out loud.

Of course, over the long years, when the Cossacks were actually banned, they suffered enormous human losses. Many cultural values ​​were destroyed, the most interesting traditions were violated, which should be protected and preserved. And yet, in spite of everything, the Ural Cossacks survived, continued and continues to serve the Fatherland.

The turbulent nineties opened a new stage in the history of the Ural Cossacks. In a difficult time for the Motherland, the Cossacks revived again. On April 14, 1990, in the premises of the Writers' Union of Orenburg, a constituent gathering of the descendants of the Cossacks of the Orenburg army took place. There were relatively few participants in the gathering. And it was mainly about the revival of the cultural traditions of the Orenburg Cossacks. At this meeting, it was decided to create a community "Orenburg Cossack Host". A local young writer I. Pyankov was elected community ataman. Around the same time, similar communities appeared in Uralsk, Magnitogorsk, and a little later in Chelyabinsk and a number of other cities of the Urals. The movement for the revival of the Cossacks proceeded in the Urals from below, embracing an increasing number of people.

In this movement, especially at first, there was a lot of inconsistency and contradiction. Many of its participants, including the most influential at that time, had a rather vague idea of ​​the very goals of the movement, its organizational forms. The founding Big Circle of the Union of Cossacks, which took place on July 22-30, 1990 in Moscow, was of great importance for resolving these issues. The Urals people took part in the work of the circle. The delegation of the Ural Cossack army, headed by Vodolazov and Kachalin, was one of the largest on the circle. Vostryakov, Knyazev, Pyankov were delegated from the Orenburg army to the circle. The decision of the circle, as well as the discussion that took place at it, helped to develop common approaches to approaches to the problems of reviving the country's Cossacks.

Soon after the Moscow constituent Big Circle, the Orenburg Cossack Host community was officially registered with the Orenburg Regional Council as a regional public organization. But almost at this time, the descendants of the Orenburg Cossacks, whom fate scattered throughout the country and even the Cossacks from abroad, established a connection with her. On December 23, 1990, at the circle of the community, its new charter and regulations on rank-and-file production were adopted. Due to the fact that I. Pyankov resigned at the circle, the chief of the scientific archival commission of the troops, V. Semenov, was temporarily assigned to perform the duties of the ataman. Three months later, at the next round of the community, V.I. Kosyanov, a hereditary Cossack, candidate of pedagogical sciences, who then worked at the Orenburg Pedagogical Institute.

On March 24, 1991, the circle approved the program of the community of the Orenburg Cossack army "For the revival of the Cossacks", which formulates the goals and objectives of the organization, ways to achieve them.

In the process of rebuilding the Orenburg Cossack army, one of the most difficult problems was the problem of developing the principles of its organization and structure. Life has shown from the very beginning that in this sense it was impossible simply to restrict oneself to the restoration of the old structures that existed before 1919. Conditions have changed, the Cossacks themselves have changed, the former villages and villages - some have disappeared from the face of the earth, others have turned into large cities - for example, Magnitogorsk, Chelyabinsk. The geography of settlement of the Cossacks, the administrative division, changed. All this must be taken into account.

In extremely difficult conditions, the revival of the Ural Cossack army is taking place. The fact is that the territory of the army was once transferred to Kazakhstan. This did not matter as long as the USSR existed. But after its collapse, the Ural Cossacks, like the Semirechye Cossacks, found themselves outside the borders of the Russian state.

In September 1991, the 400th anniversary of the Ural Cossack army was celebrated, which Kazakh nationalists tried to prevent, but the holiday took place. It was attended by the Cossacks of the Orenburg region, the Don, Siberia and other regions of the country. Now the Ural Cossack army, recreated, despite all the obstacles and difficulties, plays a very significant role in the struggle for the revival of the Russian Cossacks.

The Cossack movement in the Urals is growing and gaining strength. The social nature of the modern Cossacks is distinguished by a wide variety of ethnic, class and other elements that make up it, which determines the existence of various approaches to the revival of the Cossacks. The most difficult are the issues related to the reconstruction of the Cossack national - state formations, the Cossack structures of local self-government, the return of the lands illegally taken away from them to the Cossacks, etc. self-government of places for representatives of Cossack structures, the use of the traditions of communal land use when choosing forms of land tenure in places of compact residence of the Cossacks. There are projects of Cossack formations based on the principles of cultural and national regional autonomy within the established administrative and territorial division. This means that on the territory of this or that region, region, republic where the Cossacks live, zones of life and being, centers of Cossack culture and education, departments of the history of the Cossacks in educational institutions can be created, Cossack newspapers can be published, etc. Other solutions are also possible. the problems of the revival of the Cossacks, taking into account the interests of both the Cossacks themselves and the rest of the population, including the revival of the Cossacks in the Urals.

Of particular importance is the adoption of the Federal Law "On the Cossacks", designed to legislatively determine the status of the Cossacks, the procedure for the formation of Cossack communities, relations with local authorities and other issues.

Who are the Cossacks? Is it a people, or a "service class"? And why, in response, there is always talk of social functions, but not ethnicity? On the other hand, is it true that the Cossacks are the people?

We will not rush, and in confirmation of the complexity of the problem, let us quote V. Bezotosny: “Modern science claims that the Cossacks are an ethnosocial and historical community (group), which, by virtue of their specific features, united all Cossacks, primarily Russians, as well as Ukrainians , Kalmyks, Buryats, Bashkirs, Tatars, Evenks, Ossetians and representatives of other peoples, as separate sub-ethnoses of their peoples into a single whole "(see his article" Who are the Cossacks "in the journal Rodina No. 5, 2004).

In other words, “modern science asserts” that “Russian” Cossacks are a sub-ethnos of the Russian people, “Tatar” Cossacks are a sub-ethnos of the Tatar people, and so on. And at the same time, a number of sub-ethnoses of these heterogeneous and independent peoples, once united by state laws and the execution of public service, today are ethnically “a single whole”.

It is impossible to be sub-ethnoses of different peoples and at the same time form an "ethnosocial and historical community (group)". And this term itself, or more correctly a scientific and methodological construction - "ethnic group", is used in ethnology to denote a transitional form of ethnic community, related in origin, language and culture of a group of people, which can be correlated with the concepts of "tribe", "nationality ".

Of course, it is impossible to be both German and French, Mordvin and Tatar, Cossack and Russian. The mechanism of ethnic self-identification will simply work. After all, belonging to an ethnos, a people, each person determines for himself.

In this case, at least V. Bezotosny clearly expressed the desire for such a unity to exist. True, here the author likens the Cossacks to a meta-ethnic community, while ignoring the historical realities of the formation of the “natural” or “old”, self-generated, and “attributed” Cossacks, which arose by imperial decrees.

Natural Cossacks, as sub-ethnoses of the free Cossacks of the East of Europe: Don, Zaporozhye, Volga, Yaik and Terek, took shape during the 15th - 16th centuries. each on its own territory, in the valleys of its rivers, rapidly developing into independent peoples. Their historical development has been repeatedly disrupted by violent outside interference.

At present, the descendants of three natural Cossacks continue to live on their native land: the Don, Yaik (since 1775 - the Ural) and Terek. The heir to the glorious traditions of the Cossacks is now the Kuban Cossacks.

All of them are as dissimilar to each other as their historical destinies in the past and present are dissimilar. It is appropriate to draw a parallel here: just as the sub-ethnoses of the once united Slavs, for example, Poles, Serbs, Russians and Ukrainians, are not today, so the current Don, Ural, Terek and Kuban Cossacks cannot be sub-ethnoses of unity.

Free Cossacks already in the 15th - 16th centuries. was a rapidly developing, original ethnos. Entering the 18th century. into the orbit of the Russian super-ethnos, the Cossacks, without losing their ethnic independence, acted in this community as a sub-ethnos, at the same time fulfilling the role of the service class in the Russian state.

When, with the fall of the Russian Empire, the estates, including the nobles and merchants, were abolished, the natives of them lost their class affiliation, but did not lose their nationality: the noblemen from the Cossacks remained simply Cossacks, the Lithuanian nobles - Lithuanians, merchants of Cossack origin remained Cossacks, merchants from Tatars - Tatars. As you can see, the death of the state system and the loss of social functions do not entail the loss of ethnicity.

The main and main feature of ethnicity is the presence of the problem itself. And here there are two views of the phenomenon, two interpretations of it. They depend on the position of the observer: the view from the inside - the people at themselves (intra-ethnicity) and the outside view - at the people (extra-ethnicity).

Naturally, no outsider, let alone an interested observer, has the moral right to give marks and give out titles - nominations to other peoples. And the only criterion here can be “the recognition by the ethnic collective of its unity”, which is reflected in the consciousness of the people of this ethnic group “as an objectively existing integrity” (AS Mylnikov). In other words, only the people themselves determine their place in the world among other nations.

When does an ethnos get the first name from the outside and a self-name? Of course, not at the first moment of his “birth”, but when the need arises for these names, after certain historical events that marked the emergence of a new ethnic group.

HE. Trubachev rightly notes: “We have to persistently remind that the ethnonym is a historical category, like the ethnos itself, that it does not appear immediately, which is preceded by a long period of relatively narrow ethnic horizons, when the people, the tribe, in essence, do not call themselves in any way, resorting to common noun self-identification “We”, “ours”, “ours”, “people (in general)”. By the way, such identification is very convenient and is applicable as an opposing one in cases like “ours” - “others”.

In the first half of the 19th century. among the Cossack intelligentsia, the self-name arose and began to be used: "Uraltsy". Cossacks also call themselves "Urals", "Urals".

The Cossacks, however, never considered themselves Russian, clearly displaying their "opposing identification" in such words: "we are our own." Among the Ural Cossacks there was an expression "to go to Russia" when they left the "Voyskovaya" land inside Russia. Nonresidents living on the land of the Ural Community of Russians were called "Raseyskie" by the Cossacks.

The composition of the ethnic system of the Ural Cossacks

Errors in research on the history of the Yaik Cossacks are manifested primarily in ignoring the ethnic aspects of the problem, which even today they are trying to replace with a "runaway" concept so dear to the hearts of ideological workers of the Soviet era. power and their last. One of the first signs of an established ethnicity, as it were, a sign of an established ethnos, is the emergence of endoethnonyms (self-names) and exoethnonyms (names that are given to the people from outside). The name "Yaik Cossacks", as a self-name and a name from the outside (for example, the same Russia), has been documented since the middle of the 16th century. We know other names from the outside: in the 18th century, the Kazakhs called the Yaik Cossacks "zhaik orys" (Russians from Yaik), while the same Russians and at the same time (1775), wishing to punish the Cossacks for the uprisings of 1772. and 1773 - 75, they were deprived of their self-designation by decree, renaming them into Cossacks, but the Ural.

If each ethnonym is not only a “component of ethnic self-consciousness” of an ethnos, but also contains certain “information about the level of its development (endoethnonym) or about ideas on this score from the outside (exoethnonym)” (A.S. Mylnikov), then the same is in full This also applies to the names of units, local and confessional designations of the internal structure that make up an ethnos (subethnos and smaller groups) that are still prevalent among the Uralians. They are mobile and changeable throughout the history of the ethnos: some show their desire for leadership, others recede into the background, almost disappearing.

The first known names of groups that stood out from the ethnic substratum (local population) and took part in the ethnogenesis of the Yaik Cossacks are cuffs or tums - the settled agricultural population of the river valley. Yaik in the Golden Horde and Nogai times. Material traces of the presence of sedentary inhabitants in the valley of the river. Yaiks are recorded already in pre-Mongol times, and the presence of cuffs here is documented as early as the 17th century. It was in the settlements of cuffs, and not in the wild and uninhabited places that the villages of the free Cossacks of the Great Field came to Yaik.

One of the oldest sub-ethnic groups in the Yaik Cossacks are the remains of another group of the Golden Horde population - the Yaik Tatars. It is not without reason that the ethnogetic legend about grandmother Gugnich calls the Tatar the mother of the Yaik Cossacks. And although many newly baptized Tatars joined the Yaik Cossacks under Russian names, in the old Yaitsky town there was a Tatar settlement, where its own Cossack mosque stood, and the right side of the Kureni from Bolshaya Mikhailovskaya was called the Tatar side.

From documents of the early 18th century. known about the existence of a special layer in the Yaik Cossacks, called "old people", "old Cossacks." These were Cossacks of old, noble and wealthy families, foremen, many of whom were chosen atamans more than once. It was these "old people" who did business on Yaik.

In the second half of the 18th century. The Yaik Cossacks were split into the elders' or "obedient" side and into the military - "disobedient" side.

Russia took advantage of the confrontation between these groups, subjugating the Yaitsk Cossacks.

From the middle of the 18th century, after the establishment of outposts along the Lower and Upper Yaitskaya lines, two main sub-ethnic groups of the Yaik Cossacks began to take shape: the lower and the Verkhovsk ones. In addition to the difference in anthropological types (the lower Cossacks are dark-skinned, black-haired, with sharp movements and abrupt pronunciation; the Verkhovsky ones are fair-haired and white-skinned), these sub-ethnic groups spoke different dialects of the Russian language, which is recorded in the works of the famous philologist N.M. Malechi. At the same time, among the lower Cossacks, it was considered "good form" to know the second, Turkic language (Tatar, and later Kazakh) - a kind of "French" Yaik, and since 1775 - Ural Cossacks.

Everyone knows the "Nekrasovites", an ethnographic group of Don Cossacks; for two centuries they have preserved their original culture, surrounded by a foreign-speaking and non-religious population. But few people outside the Ural Valley - Yaik know the "Udders", an ethnographic group of Ural Cossacks similar to the Nekrasovites, exiled in 1875 for adherence to the old faith and protesting against the introduction of a "state" (new Regulation on government) in the Turkestan Territory, on the Aral. Deprived by the decree of the title of Cossacks, which means the ability to perform the social function of the service class, they retained their ethnic identity and their ethnonym - the Ural Cossacks, the Urals.

The original group in the ethnos of the Uralites (Yaik Cossacks) are the Grad Cossacks, the inhabitants of the city of Uralsk. The Guryevites, however, were not considered city-dwellers, it was, as it were, a separate group of the population, to which the most distant group from them, the Verkhovsk Cossacks, “are very disdainful of, as it were, a race alien to them” (see N.M. Malecha “Dictionary of Ural dialects (Yaitsk ) Cossacks "Vol. 1 p. 376).

And from the second half of the 18th century. after the development of the lands adjacent to the Common Syrt and remote from the Yaik-Ural, another ethnic group emerged - the "Suroshniki", the inhabitants of the steppe villages and farms.

The land of the Ural Cossacks was inhabited by a large number of "nonresident" Russians who came either for a while or for permanent residence, especially in the "capital" city of Uralsk. Moreover, some of the surnames of "nonresident" can be traced here for centuries, their carriers, in fact, were already "indigenous nonresident".

Old Believers (especially Old Believers of the "small circle", "krutovers"), which performed from the beginning of the 18th century. the function of the ideologue of the Yaik - Ural Cossacks, already in the first half of the 19th century turned into an ethno-confessional group.

Was in the composition of the Ural ethnos and "Xenia", the people - a guest. Beginning in 1630, various tribes of the Western Mongols came to the area between the Yaik and Volga rivers. This group of clans in local history is better known under the name of the Kalmyks, Torgout and Khoshouts. More than a thousand Kalmyks with their families became members of the Yaik Cossacks. And although most of them left our lands in 1771, until the 1950s. in many Cossack villages, small disseminations of the Kalmyk population continued to exist, in some places up to several dozen families (see, for example, IM Botov "Yanvartsev", p. 20).

The Ural (Yaik) Cossacks at different stages of its history included individual representatives of the Turkmens, Kizilbash (Iranians), Karakalpaks, Bashkirs, the peoples of the Volga region (Mordvinians, Chuvashs, Mishars, etc.).

Summing up, we can say that the Yaik (Ural) Cossacks, by the 17th century. formed into an independent original ethnos, in the 18th century. entered the orbit of the Russian super-ethnos as a sub-ethnos, fulfilling the social role of the service class in the Russian state.

Having survived the genocide (from 1918 to 1922 died during the Civil War, three quarters of the population died from epidemics and organized starvation), the Ural (Yaik) Cossacks continue to exist on their land as a persistent, being in a state of ethnic homeostasis. "Such a system, firmly connected with the enclosing landscape (ethnocenosis), can exist for a very long time, practically unchanged ..." (LN Gumilev "Ethnosphere: the history of people and the history of nature" p. 539).

History is an image of the past, recreated in a certain way and transferred to the present by the power of the researcher's imagination. That is why the consequences and responsibility for such movements in time are so great.

Any reconstruction of the past is intended, first of all, to influence the consciousness of people in the present; first of all, to prevent unwanted developments or repetition of tragic mistakes; this is the material taken from the Past to influence the Future. In this case, a mechanism similar to memories works: we also transfer our personal past to the present day and make it an effective, organic part of the Present.

For the reliability of the reconstruction, first of all, it is necessary to establish spiritual contact with the era, to try to understand the psychology of the people of that time. Because the starting point for us will not be the events themselves, but the driving force, the spring leading the reaction of the ethnic group to external influences to certain consequences.

The role of such a spring in History is played by the character of the people, "a complex and multifaceted ethnopsychological phenomenon", a behavioral intangible symbol of ethnicity. Among the Yaik - Ural Cossacks, the peculiarities of the ethnic character are very clearly manifested. There is also a verbal symbol that expresses these features. They say about a real, earnest Cossack: "A real Gorynych!"

In order for an outsider to understand what Gorynych is, and where he came from, you need to familiarize yourself with the folklore of the Yaik - Ural Cossacks, the unique spiritual heritage, the wealth that has been created by many generations, over the centuries. Is the "service class" capable of creating the richest folklore? And is it possible for the existence of "folk wisdom" (this is how the term "folklore" is translated from German) without the people?

The military harness is strong and reliable,
My horse is a dashing argamak,
Hot lance, damask saber,
I myself am a Ural Cossack!

The Ural Cossack Host is rightfully considered one of the oldest, and perhaps the most distinctive of all the Cossack Host of pre-revolutionary Russia. The Urals were among the few Cossacks who self-educated on the borders of Russia, being "natural" Cossacks, and not peasants and soldiers settled at the tsar's orders and called "Cossacks".

The time of the settlement of the territories of the lower reaches of the Ural River (Yaik) by bands of free people has not been precisely established. Historians name different time frames for the appearance of the Cossacks in the Urals: from the XIV to the XVI centuries. For the first time in official documents, Yaik Cossacks were mentioned in the 30s of the 16th century. It is believed that their detachments took part in the capture of Kazan in 1550, however, the documented first service of the Yaik Cossacks is 1591, when, according to the "order of Fyodor Ioanovich", they participated together with the rifle regiments in hostilities against Shamkhal Tarkovsky, the ruler of Dagestan. From this year, the seniority of the Ural (Yaitsk) Cossack Host is considered.

Equally different are the opinions of researchers as to where the Yaik Cossacks came from. Someone deduces their ancestry from the Turkic tribes, others talk about the detachments of the Cossacks who moved to Yaik from the Volga or Don. This question still remains open, but it is obvious that the Yaik Cossack community was formed by free people who, having settled on Yaik, set up a number of towns along the river, on its right bank. From the very beginning of their existence, the Yaik Cossacks faced their restless neighbors, at first they were the Nogais, then the Kyrgyz-Kaisaks. Their hordes, roaming along the left bank of the Yaik, crossed the river and attacked Cossack towns and outposts, drove away livestock, set fire to houses, and took people into slavery. Therefore, from the beginning of their existence, the Yaik Cossacks were all warriors, from childhood they learned to ride a horse, hold weapons in their hands and defend their home and their household. Fighting clashes with nomads continued until the middle of the 19th century. With the beginning of the service of the Cossacks to the Moscow sovereigns, the functions of protecting their own territories grew into the functions of protecting the entire Moscow state. For the protection of the borders, the tsars paid a salary to the Cossacks, sent gunpowder, weapons, etc. to Yaik. Along the Yaik from Yaik town to Guryev, down the river, the Nizhne-Yaitskaya line was built, consisting of a number of fortresses and outposts erected in places of possible crossings across the Yaik of nomads and performing protective functions. Up the river from Yaitsky town to Iletsky, the Verkhne-Yaitskaya line was built. Subsequently, when the need to defend their lands disappeared, these fortresses and outposts turned into Cossack villages and villages.

So, the Yaik (Ural) Cossacks from the very beginning of their settlement on Yaik were, first of all, warriors. Therefore, it is not surprising that they participated in almost all the wars waged by the Russian Empire. They fought against the Crimean Tatars, Poles, Swedes, Turks, French, Germans and many other peoples, fought bravely near Smolensk, Poltava, Zurich, Leipzig, Balaklava, Ikan, Mukden, etc., took Silistria, Paris, Samarkand, Geok -Tepe, Przemysl and other strongholds repeatedly went to war against the Khiva and Kokand khanates. Many Cossack bones are scattered from the Caucasus to Turkestan, hundreds of Cossacks died in the First World War, thousands - in the Civil War.

It is a paradox, but despite the fact that the Urals were loyal servants to the king and the throne, who more than once proved their loyalty on the battlefield, the Yaitsk (Ural) Cossack Host was considered the most "rebellious". The disobedience of the Urals manifested itself at the slightest intention of the authorities to infringe on their rights and freedoms. Free people could not reconcile with this. Unrest and unrest, sometimes turning into open disobedience and into armed confrontation with the tsarist troops, took place on the lands of the Ural Cossacks on a regular basis. Everyone knows that the Yaik Cossacks were the driving force behind the uprising of E.I. Pugachev in 1773-1775. Bulavin part of the Don Cossacks to Turkey, go abroad. For the edification of descendants, and in order to eradicate the memory of the Pugachev uprising on the Yaik forever, Catherine II ordered in 1775 to rename the Yaik River into the Ural, the Yaitsky town - into the Ural, and the Yaitsky Cossack Host - into the Ural. So the Yaik Cossacks became the Ural Cossacks.

Among the peaceful professions, first of all, the Ural Cossacks were engaged in fishing. This is not surprising, knowing what gifts the Ural (Yaik) concealed in itself, which the Cossacks worshiped as a deity. They guarded and protected the river, defended it, cherished it like a child and loved it endlessly. And the river paid the Cossacks for this with its treasures. Since 1732 every year the Ural Cossacks sent to the capital to the royal court summer and winter "villages" (embassies) with the gifts of the Urals - sturgeon fish and black caviar. It is not for nothing that the ancient coat of arms of the Ural Cossacks depicts a sterlet, and under it the legendary Ural warrior Ryzhechka, who defeated the Swedish hero in the Battle of Poltava. In addition to fishing, the Urals were engaged in hunting and animal husbandry, while the land in the Army was in general, communal use.

The Ural Cossacks have always been famous and proud of their originality. They have always tried to emphasize their own characteristics, their difference from the "Russian people", their superiority over other estates. Until 1917, more than half of the Troops were Old Believers. Orthodoxy in the Cossack environment took root extremely slowly and reluctantly, there were always much fewer Orthodox churches on the Cossack territory than the Old Believers. Repeated, at different times, "persecution of faith" also served as a catalyst for unrest and discontent among the Cossacks, to suffer for the "true" faith was considered a "godly deed" among them. In this regard, it becomes clear why they met the apostates of the Bolsheviks as the coming of the Antichrist, and practically without exception took up arms. For two whole years the Army fought heroically for its freedom, for the right to be called "Cossacks". The history of this heroic struggle, full of heroic deeds and courage, has not yet been written and practically not studied. Many Ural residents died in the winter of 1919-1920. retreating with families, livestock and property along the Urals to the Caspian Sea. It was not the red bullets that won the Urals, but the typhus and frost that raged in those years. The Ural Cossack Host, betrayed by their allies, preferred not to surrender, but to perish in an unequal struggle.

Nowadays, the remaining descendants of the Ural Cossacks live on the territory of the state of Kazakhstan. The territory of the Ural Cossack Host was hacked by the Bolsheviks - a small part was given to the Orenburg region, everything else to the Kazakh SSR, including the richest Urals, the large city of Guryev with access to the Caspian Sea, and numerous oil fields. The new owners of the land began with the main thing, they wanted to erase all the memory of the Cossacks, as if they had never existed on these lands. They renamed the Ural for the third time in a short time, now it is in the Kazakh manner - Oral, there is no longer the city of Guryev - there is Atyrau, there is no Ural region - there is West Kazakhstan. In Uralsk, there are still streets named after the executioners of the Cossacks - Chapaev, Furmanov, Petrovsky (chairman of the local Cheka). Monuments are erected on them by a new hero - Abai, Srym Datov and others like them. The existing Ural Cossack community is split, there are two chieftains, two newspapers, several Cossack organizations, each of which solves different goals and objectives. But no matter how they call us, no matter how humiliated and put on our knees, we have something to be proud of, because we are descendants of the glorious Ural Cossack Host, and, as you know, “the Cossack family has no translation”.

Both in tsarist times and today the Ural Cossacks remain the most deprived in terms of information. There is no partial, much less complete history of the Army, almost no description of military service, campaigns and exploits of the Cossacks, virtually no memoir literature. There is no reference literature about the heroes of the Urals, no biographical editions. The most ancient Army seems to have been forgotten, and many do not even know that such a thing existed. Our task is to eradicate this injustice, restore the names of the forgotten Ural heroes - "Gorynychs", remember their deeds and pass on the Ural Cossack spirit to the future generation.

Ural Cossacks

Ural Cossacks (Ural) or Ural Cossack military(before 1775 and after 1917 - Yaytskoe Cossack military) - a group of Cossacks in the Russian Empire, II in seniority in the Cossack troops. The historical self-name of the Urals - Kazara comes from the self-designation of the local population of the Cossacks. They are located in the west of the Ural region (now the northwestern regions of Kazakhstan and the southwestern part of the Orenburg region), along the middle and lower reaches of the Ural River (up to Yaik). Seniority since July 9, 1591. The military headquarters is Uralsk (until 1775 it was called Yaitsky town). Religious affiliation: fellow believers, Old Believers, partially Muslims (up to 8%) and Lamaists (1.5%) Military holiday, military circle on November 8 (21 in a new style), St. Archangel Michael.

History

Early history

There is no surviving evidence of written sources about the time of the first appearance of the Cossacks on Yaik. However, the coastal strip of the Yaik at the mouth of its right tributary. Since ancient times, Chagan has been a zone of continuous settlement. The remnants of material culture testify that Kureni at the site of modern Uralsk were inhabited since the Bronze Age. The first of the known predecessors of the city was a small settlement of the Srubna archaeological culture. There are also finds related to the material culture of the Pre-Slavs - fragments of ceramics of the Imenkovo ​​culture. The finds of ceramics from the Romano-Borshevsk culture testify to the presence of an ancient Slavic settlement here from at least the 10th century. In the pre-Mongolian period, the Ural Kureni was populated by the Volga Bulgars and Slavs. Numerous objects of material culture left by the Russian population, dating back to the XIII-XVI centuries, can testify to the permanent residence of the settled Slavic-Bulgar population in the town on Yaik. In the Golden Horde time, towns with a mixed population stood in the vicinity of Uralsk and on its territory - in Kureny, a neighboring settlement on Krasny Yar, as well as settlements on three settlements on the left (Bukhara) side of the river. Ural. In 1584, several hundred Volga Cossacks settled on the Yaik River, along the banks of which the Nogai Horde roamed. Among their leaders are Matvey Meshcheryak and the chieftain Barabosh. Another version deepens the history of the Yaik Cossacks for a century, but connects their ancestors with the Don and the chieftain Gugney. The original center of the Cossack settlements on Yaik was the Ilek Kosh-Yaik located at the mouth of the river. Unlike the local nomads, the Cossacks were mainly engaged in fishing, as well as salt extraction and hunting. The army was controlled by a circle that gathered in the Yaitsky town. All Cossacks had the per capita right to use the land and to participate in the elections of atamans and military foremen.

This article is part of the thematic block
Cossacks
Cossacks by region
Danube Bug Zaporozhye / Dnieper Don Azov Kuban Terek Astrakhan Volga Ural Bashkiria Orenburg Siberia Seven Rivers Yenisei Irkutsk Yakutia Transbaikalia Amur Ussuri Kamchatka Persia
History of the Cossacks
Registered Cossacks Caucasian Line Army Sloboda Cossack Regiments Hike for Zipuns City Cossacks Stanitsa Cossacks Nekrasovites Khopersk Cossacks Decossackization Cossack Camp
Cossack ranks
Plastun · Clerk · Pentecostal · Junior sergeant · Senior sergeant · Chief sergeant · Officer cornet · Centurion · Podesaul
Organization of the Cossacks
Ataman Hetman Kosh Circle Maidan Yurt Palanka Kuren Village
Cossack attributes
Hat · Whip · Trousers · Checker

Ural Cossacks on a campaign

According to the historical legend, cited in all studies about the Ural Cossack army, it is said that in the 16th centuries the Yaik Cossacks did not have permanent families. The Cossack brought his wife from a raid, and going to another, he left her, "getting" a new one for himself. But one day, among the Cossacks on Yaik, Gugnya appeared, he came either from the Don, or from other places, but the main thing is that he came with his wife and did not agree to leave her. With this Gugnihi, the supposedly old custom was abandoned. Most likely, this legend had real grounds, until the 19th century, Ural Cossacks lit candles in churches in memory of grandmother Gugnich.

In May 1772, Orenburg Governor-General Reinsdorp equips a punitive expedition to suppress the revolt. General Freiman scattered the Cossacks, headed by the future Pugachev generals I. Ponomarev, I. Ulyanov, I. Zarubin-Chikoy, and on June 6, 1772 occupied Yaitsky town. Then followed executions and punishments, the ringleaders, whom they managed to seize, were quartered, others tore nostrils, cut off their tongues and ears, branded their foreheads.

The land at that time was deaf, so many managed to hide in the steppe in remote farms. A decree of Catherine II followed - "By this imperial command it is forbidden to gather in circles as usual until our future decree."

Cathedral of the Archangel Michael (1741) in Uralsk - witness of the Pugachev rebellion

House of the Cossack Kuznetsov - "Tsar's" father-in-law

In March 1774, at the walls of the Tatishchev Fortress, the troops of General P.M. Golitsyn defeated the rebels, Pugachev retreated to the Berdskaya Sloboda, Ovchinnikov, who remained in the fortress, covered the withdrawal until the cannon charges ran out, and then with three hundred Cossacks broke through the enemy chains and retreated to Lower Lake Fortress. In mid-April 1774, the Cossacks, led by Ovchinnikov, Perfiliev and Dekhtyarev, set out from the Yaitsk town against the brigade of General PD Mansurov. In a battle on April 15, near the Bykovka River, the Pugachevites suffered a heavy defeat (among the hundreds of Cossacks who died in battle, there was also ataman Dekhtyarev). After this defeat, Ovchinnikov gathered scattered Cossack detachments and went to Pugachev at the Magnetic Fortress in the wilderness steppes. There followed either a campaign, or an escape through the Urals, the Kama and the Volga regions, Bashkiria, the capture of Kazan, Saratov, Kamyshin. Pursued by Michelson's troops, the Cossacks lost their atamans, some captured - like Chiku-Zarubina near Ufa, some killed. The army then turned into a handful of Cossacks, then again filled with tens of thousands of men.

After Catherine the Great, concerned about the duration of the revolt, sent troops from the Turkish borders, led by Suvorov, and heavy defeats rained down one after another, the top of the Cossacks decided to get forgiveness by surrendering Pugachev. Between the steppe rivers Uzen, they tied up and gave Pugachev to the government troops. Suvorov personally interrogated the impostor, and then headed the escort of the "tsar" who had been put in a cage to Moscow. The main associates from among the Yaik Cossacks - Chika-Zarubin, Perfilyev, Shigaev were sentenced to death along with Pugachev. After the suppression of the uprising, in 1775, Catherine II issued a decree stating that, in order to completely consign the turmoil to oblivion, the Yaitsky army was renamed the Ural Cossack army, the Yaitsky town in Uralsk, and the army lost the remnants of its former autonomy.

Ural Cossack army

Ural Cossacks (second half of the 19th century)

The head of the Ural Cossacks were appointed chieftain and military administration. Since 1782 it was ruled either by the Astrakhan or Orenburg governor-general. In 1868, a new "Temporary Provision" was introduced, according to which the Ural Cossack army was subordinated to the governor-general (he was also the chief chieftain) of the newly formed Ural region. The territory of the Ural Cossack army was 7.06 million hectares and was divided into 3 departments (Ural, Lbishensky and Guryevsky) with a population of 290 thousand people (for 1916), including the Cossack - 166.4 thousand people in 480 settlements, united in 30 pages. 42% of the Cossacks were Old Believers, a small part consisted of Kalmyks, Tatars, Kazakhs and Bashkirs. In 1908, the Iletsk Cossacks were annexed to the Ural Cossack army.

Medal for hiking in Central Asia

For the first time, the Yaik Cossacks set off on a joint campaign with the regular army to Khiva with the expedition of Prince Bekovich-Cherkassky in -1717. The Yaik Cossacks numbered 1,500 people from the four thousandth detachment that set off from Guryev along the eastern coast of the Caspian Sea to the Amu Darya. The campaign, which was one of the adventures of Peter I, was extremely unsuccessful. More than a quarter of the detachment died due to illness, heat and thirst, the rest either died in battles or were captured and executed, including the head of the expedition. Only about forty people were able to return to the Yaik shores.

After the defeat, the Astrakhan Governor-General Tatishchev began to organize garrisons along the Khiva border. But the Cossacks were able to convince the tsarist government to leave Yaik under their control, in return they promised to equip the border at their own expense. The construction of fortresses and outposts began along the entire Yaik. From that time on, the border service of the Yaik army began, and the time for free raids ended.

The Urals went to the next campaign against Khiva in 1839 under the command of the Orenburg Governor-General V.A.Perovsky. The winter campaign was poorly prepared, and although it was not so tragic, it nevertheless went down in history as an "unfortunate winter campaign." From lack of food, the detachment lost most of the camels and horses, in winter storms movement became impossible, constant hard work led to exhaustion and illness. Halfway to Khiva, half of the five thousandth detachment remained, and Perovsky decided to return.

Participants of the Ikan battle

From the mid-1840s, a confrontation with the Kokand Khanate began, since having taken the Kazakh zhuzes under its rule, Russia actually went to the Syr Darya. Under the pretext of protecting the Kazakh wards, as well as preventing the abduction of their subjects into slavery, the construction of garrisons and fortresses began from the mouth of the Syr Darya to the east, and along the Ili to the southwest. Under the command of the Orenburg governor-generals Obruchev and Perovsky, the Urals residents storm the Kokand fortresses of Kumysh-Kurgan, Chim-Kurgan, Ak-Mechet, Yana-Kurgan, after the completion of the construction of the Turkestan border line, they participate in numerous battles under the command of Chernyaev, storm Chimkent and Tashkent, then under the command of von Kaufman, they take part in the conquest of Bukhara and the successful Khiva campaign in 1873.

One of the most famous episodes during the conquest of Kokand is the Ikan case - a three-day battle of hundreds of Cossacks under the command of Esaul Serov near the village of Ikan near the city of Turkestan. Sent on reconnaissance to check the information about the seen gangs of Kokand people, the hundred met with the army of the Kokand Khan, heading to take Turkestan. For two days, the Urals kept a perimeter defense, using the bodies of killed horses as protection, and then, without waiting for reinforcements, lined up in a square, fought their way through the Kokand army until they united with the detachment sent to the rescue. In total, the Cossacks lost more than half of the people killed in the battle, almost all the survivors were seriously wounded. All of them were awarded the soldiers' Georgias, and Serov - the Order of St. George, 4th class.

However, active participation in the Turkestan campaigns did not save the Urals from the tsarist repressions. And the orderly chieftain Verevkin, with the same zeal with which he took Khiva with the Urals in 1873, flogged and exiled the Old Believers to the Amu Darya in 1874, whose convictions did not accept the provisions on military service written by him.

The era of Central Asian conquests was completed by campaigns to Khiva in -1881.

Ural Cossacks in the First World War and the Civil War

In the 1930s, many of the Cossacks who remained in their homeland, or who returned, were subjected to Bolshevik repression. Unlike the Don, Kuban or Terek troops, parts of which Stalin restored before the war, the Ural army was not restored and went down in history forever.

The descendants of the Ural Cossacks, from the late 1980s, made attempts to restore the Ural Cossacks, but the state, represented by its representatives, refused to support, which generally led to the disruption of festive events to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the army. The Urals were among the first to create their own organization as a legal entity - the Ural City Historical and Cultural Society, the first leader of which was Yuri Baev. At the same time, if many other Cossack troops in Russia managed to gain recognition from the authorities and successfully create a parallel administration and even their own military units, then the success of the Ural, Siberian and Semirechye Cossacks in Kazakhstan was limited to only some public cultural and historical organizations.

Exiled Ural Cossacks

Ural Cossack woman in festive clothes

The culture, rituals and dialects of the Ural Cossacks were most fully preserved not in their historical homeland, but in Karakalpakia, where they were partially exiled in the 19th century. The reason for this is isolation from the Russian people and the Old Believer tradition strictly observed by the exiles, which does not allow confusion with the Gentiles.

The reasons for the expulsion of the Urals were disobedience to the new "Regulations on military service, public and economic management of the Ural Cossack army" and the excitement in 1874 of the Cossacks-Old Believers of the Ural Cossack army. The expulsion took place in two stages. In 1875 - the resettlement of the Ural Cossacks-Old Believers, and in 1877 - the families of exiled Urals.

Nowadays, the Ural Old Believers (retirees) of Karakalpakstan represent a separate ethno-confessional group (subethnos), which possesses:

• Ethnic identity(considers himself a separate people);
• Self-name- Ural Cossacks or Uralians(this self-name was preserved, despite the indication in official documents and passports in the column nationality - Russians);
• A certain area of ​​settlement and compactness;
• Confessional peculiarity - Old Believers;
• Feature dialect;
• Specificity traditional culture(households, dwellings, clothing, food, household, calendar and religious rituals).

A similar Old Believer group is also known at the mouth of the Syr Darya (see Kazalinsk).

Territorial location

1st Ural military department

Ural Trekinskaya Rubezhinskaya Kirsanovskaya Irtetskaya Blagodanovskaya Krasnoumetskaya Sobolevskaya Krugloozernovskaya Iletskaya Studenovskaya Mukhranovskaya Mustaevskaya

Substeppe Novo-Derkulsky Gnilovskaya Darinsky Trebushinsky Dyakovsky Yanvartsevsky Rannevsky Borodinsky Tashlinsky Boldyrevsky Dirty Irtetsky Vyazovsky Tsarevsky Chuvashskinsky Ozernovsky Talovy Pylaevsky Gryaznovsky Mantsurovsky Sukhopassky Tsarevo-Nikolsky Serebryansky Kotamansky Sukhopassky Tsarevo-Nikolsky Zatorevsky

2nd Lbishensky military department

Kamenskaya Chizhinskaya Chagan Skvorkinskaya Budarinskaya Lbischenskaya Mergenevskaya Sakharnovskaya Kalmykovskaya Karmanovskaya Glinenskaya Slamikhinskaya

Paniksky Asserichev Zelenovsky Yermolichev Shilinsky Bogatyrevsky Podtyazhensky 1st Chizhinsky 2nd Chagan Kushumsky Vladimir Dzhemchinsky Yanaykinsky Bogatsky Prorvinsky Kolovetinsky Baranovsky Kozhekharovsky Goryachinsky Karshensky Kalenovsky Lebyazhinsky Antonovsky Kruglovsky Kotelny Krasnoyyarsky Abyazhinsky Kruglovsky Kotylinsky Krasnoyyarsky

3rd Guryev military department

Kulaginskaya Orlovskaya Yamankhalinskaya Saraichikovskaya Guryevskaya

Harkinsky Gorsky Grebenshchikovsky Zelenovsky Topolinsky Karmanovsky Baksaysky Sorochinsky Bogatsky Redut Kondaurovsky

Anthem of the Ural Cossack army

On the edge of vast Russia, Along the Ural shores, Lives quietly, peacefully, An army of blood Cossacks. They all know the caviar of the Urals And the Ural sturgeons, Only they know very little About the Ural Cossacks. It is a pity that there are no us forty thousand, So we are not worse than the Don. " Poles restless We did not beat apart, And the Frenchman, bezpardonny, Did not see any good from us. We cut the mercy of the Independent Circassians, And did not know the retreat Neither in the gorge nor in the forest. It is a pity that in the field, in the open, Among the innumerable regiment, Not visible, like a drop in the sea, A handful of Ural Cossacks. And only one quantity interferes with our glory, And in quality, we have the right to deserve Glory for a long time. Vid Khiva suffered from us; Who will say: “this is a lie?” Could our brave Nechay, How with the Tatars Ermak, Cope with Khiva. We guarded not one of our villages Ot Kirghnz. From raids, devastations We saved the whole region. For neighboring villages And now paradise is behind us. And as a cherished feature We appointed Yaik, Though for that we have a horde of Dispute it was hard and great. At least two centuries a black cloud Evil predators curled, We are kindred oh Ural stubbornly defended from the Kyrgyz. A lot of blood, anxiety Cost our fast Ural; But a Cossack of this kind: It's cute that he took it in battle. It was difficult for us to mess around, But for that now the kaisak And the name is afraid: Scare im "Jaik-kazak". There were many unfortunate days, The old men will tell: Both in captivity and in hand-to-hand fights, the Cossacks were dying. Know, nowhere else do they write About the deyanyah Kazakov; About everything that ours hear Iz raskazov old people.

Verses by N.F.Savichev. Folk music.