# De-Cossackization > Mediated Wiki article. Canonical URL: https://mediated.wiki/source/De-Cossackization > Markdown URL: https://mediated.wiki/source/De-Cossackization.md > Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-Cossackization > Source revision: 1356361711 > License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) {{Short description|Systemic repressions of the Cossacks under the Bolsheviks from 1919 to 1933}} {{Use dmy dates|date=January 2024}} {{Infobox civilian attack | title = De-Cossackization | partof = the [Red Terror](/source/Red_Terror) | image = | image_size = | alt = | caption = Anti-Soviet poster "How the Bolsheviks manage the Cossack villages", 1918 | map = | map_size = 2/10 | map_alt = | map_caption = | location = [Don](/source/Don_(river)) and [Kuban](/source/Kuban), Russia | coordinates = | date = 1919–1933 | type = [Deportation](/source/Deportation), [execution](/source/execution), [ethnic cleansing](/source/ethnic_cleansing) | fatalities = Anywhere from 10,000 to 700,000 | victims = At least 45,000 [Cossacks](/source/Cossacks) deported to [Ukraine](/source/Ukrainian_Soviet_Socialist_Republic),{{cite book|first=Pavel |last=Polian|author-link=Pavel Polian|title=Against Their Will: The History and Geography of Forced Migrations in the USSR|publisher=[Central European University Press](/source/Central_European_University_Press)|year= 2004|isbn=978-963-9241-68-8|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8ktrYux1gTMC&q=cossacks&pg=PT1|page=60}} potentially up to 300,000 to 500,000 Cossacks deported and a lower amount killed overall | perps = {{ublist |item_style = white-space:nowrap; | [Red Army](/source/Red_Army) | [Cheka](/source/Cheka) }} | susperps = | weapons = | numparts = | dfaens = | motive = }} {{Cossacks}} {{Purges in the Soviet Union}} '''De-Cossackization''' ({{langx|ru|Расказачивание|Raskazachivaniye}}; {{langx|uk|Розкозачення|Rozkozachennja}}) was the [Bolshevik](/source/Bolshevik) policy of systematic repression against the [Cossacks](/source/Cossacks) in territories of the former [Russian Empire](/source/Russian_Empire) between 1919 and 1933, especially the [Don](/source/Don_Cossacks) and [Kuban Cossacks](/source/Kuban_Cossacks) in Russia, aimed at the elimination of the Cossacks as a distinct [collectivity](/source/social_collectivity) by exterminating the Cossack élite, coercing all other Cossacks into compliance, and eliminating Cossack distinctness.{{Cite book |last=Schleifman |first=Nurit |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FTpdAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT114 |title=Russia at a Crossroads: History, Memory and Political Practice |date=2013 |publisher=[Routledge](/source/Routledge) |isbn=978-1-135-22533-9 |page =114 |language=en}} Several scholars have categorised this as a form of [genocide](/source/genocide),[http://www.york.ac.uk/admin/presspr/pressreleases/cossacks.htm "Soviet order to exterminate Cossacks is unearthed"]. {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091210025518/http://www.york.ac.uk/admin/presspr/pressreleases/cossacks.htm |date=December 10, 2009}} [University of York](/source/University_of_York) Communications Office, 21 January 2003 whilst other historians have highly disputed this classification due to the contentious figures involved, which range from "a few thousand to incredible claims of hundreds of thousands".{{cite book |last1 =Adamski |first1 =Łukasz |last2 =Gajos |first2 =Bartłomiej |title =Circles of the Russian Revolution: Internal and International Consequences of the Year 1917 in Russia |date =3 June 2019 |publisher =Routledge |isbn =978-0-429-76363-2 |url =https://books.google.com/books?id=2XimDwAAQBAJ&dq=Decossackization&pg=PT37 |language=en}}"The socio-demographic statistical data for the period of the late 1920s summarized by the quota (local) representative sample and attracted by the article indicate the absence of negative population dynamics, including the Cossack population, which leads to the conclusion that the red power did not use terror and genocide against the Cossacks massively in the designated period of time, and, accordingly, the Bolsheviks did not carry out a large-scale decossackization policy."{{cite web |last1=Skorik |first1=Alexander |title=Decossackization as a Policy and Social Process in the Don Region in the 1920s |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335577059}}"Thus, one of the most famous manifestations of the Red Terror is the policy of “decossackization” on the Don in 1919. The number of its victims is estimated differently, up to tens and even hundreds of thousands of people, sometimes it is even defined as “genocide.” Recently, Cossack researcher A.V. paid attention to this issue. Venkov in a book about the Veshensky uprising, and he mainly relied on data from the rebels. As it turned out, both sides at the height of the conflict agreed that about 300 people were killed by the Reds before the uprising".{{cite web |last1=Zayats |first1=Nikolay |title=On the scale of the Red Terror during the Civil War |url=https://scepsis.net/library/id_3807.html |website=scepsis.net}} The campaign began in March 1919 in response to growing Cossack insurgency. The process has been described by scholar Peter Holquist as part of a "ruthless" and "radical attempt to eliminate undesirable social groups" that showed the Soviet regime's "dedication to [social engineering](/source/social_engineering_(political_science))".{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Hvz80NWkMuUC&q=genocide |title=Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia's Continuum of Crisis, 1914–1921|first=Peter|last=Holquist|date=30 December 2002|publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=9780674009073 |access-date=2014-03-01}}{{Cite journal|last=Holquist|first=Peter|date=1997|title='Conduct merciless mass terror': decossackization on the Don, 1919|url=https://www.persee.fr/doc/cmr_1252-6576_1997_num_38_1_2486|journal=Cahiers du Monde Russe|volume=38|issue=1|pages=127–162|doi=10.3406/cmr.1997.2486}} Throughout this period, the policy underwent significant modifications, which resulted in the "normalization" of Cossacks as a component part of [Soviet society](/source/Soviet_people). ==Background== Cossacks were simultaneously both an [ethnicity](/source/ethnicity) and a grouping of special [social estates in the Russian Empire](/source/social_estates_in_the_Russian_Empire) from the 16th to the early 20th century. Because of their military tradition, Cossack forces played an important role in Russia's wars of the 17th–20th centuries such as the [Crimean War](/source/Crimean_War) (1853–1856), the [Napoleonic Wars](/source/Napoleonic_Wars), various Russo-Turkish Wars, and the [First World War](/source/First_World_War) of 1914–1918. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the [tsarist regime](/source/Tsarist_autocracy) deployed Cossack detachments to perform police service and to suppress revolutionary movements, especially [in 1905–1907](/source/1905_Russian_Revolution).[https://archive.today/20050509071059/http://www.cultinfo.ru/fulltext/1/001/008/057/598.htm Казачество] Following the [October Revolution](/source/October_Revolution) of 1917, a conflict broke out between the new [Bolshevik](/source/Bolshevik) [Communist regime](/source/Communist_regime) in [Russia](/source/Russian_Soviet_Republic) and many Cossacks. In the Don territory, the [Ataman](/source/Ataman) of the [Don Cossacks](/source/Don_Cossacks), [Alexey Kaledin](/source/Alexey_Kaledin), declared that he would "offer full support, in close alliance with the governments of the other Cossack hosts" to [Kerensky](/source/Alexander_Kerensky)'s forces (the Bolsheviks' opponents in the civil war).{{citation needed|date=July 2020}} Establishing ties with the [Ukrainian Central Rada](/source/Ukrainian_Central_Rada) and with the [Kuban](/source/Kuban_Cossacks), [Terek](/source/Terek_Cossacks), and [Orenburg](/source/Orenburg_Cossacks) [host](/source/Cossack_host)s, Kaledin sought to overthrow the [Soviet regime](/source/Soviet_regime) in Russia. On 15 November 1917, [White](/source/White_movement) Generals [Kornilov](/source/Lavr_Kornilov), [Alekseev](/source/Mikhail_Alekseyev) and [Denikin](/source/Anton_Denikin) began to organize a force that would become the [Volunteer Army](/source/Volunteer_Army) in the Cossack cultural capital, [Novocherkassk](/source/Novocherkassk). Imposing martial law, Cossack leader Kaledin started to advance in late November. On {{OldStyleDate|15 December| 1917| 2 December}}, after a seven-day battle, his forces occupied [Rostov](/source/Rostov-on-Don). However, on {{OldStyleDate|25 February | 1918 | 12 February}}, Bolshevik troops pushed back successfully and occupied Rostov and Novocherkassk. The remnants of the [White Cossacks](/source/White_Cossacks), headed by Ataman {{ill|Pyotr Kharitonovich Popov|ru|Попов, Пётр Харитонович}}, fled into the {{ill|Salsk steppes|ru|Сальские степи}}, in an event known as the [Steppe March](/source/Steppe_March).[https://archive.today/20050118211700/http://www.cultinfo.ru/fulltext/1/001/008/057/821.htm Калединщина] After the [Imperial German army](/source/Imperial_German_army) invaded and occupied Rostov on 8 May 1918, a government headed by Ataman [Krasnov](/source/Pyotr_Krasnov) was formed in the [Don province](/source/Don_Host_Oblast). In July 1918, the White Cossack forces of Ataman Krasnov launched their first [invasion of Tsaritsyn](/source/Battle_of_Tsaritsyn) (present-day Volgograd). Soviet forces counterattacked, however, and drove out the White Cossacks by 7 September. On 22 September, Krasnov's forces launched a second invasion of Tsaritsyn, but by 25 October Soviet troops had pushed Krasnov's forces back beyond the [Don](/source/Don_(river)). On 1 January 1919, Krasnov launched a third invasion of Tsaritsyn. Soviet forces repelled the invasion again and forced Krasnov's forces to withdraw from Tsaritsyn in mid-February 1919. [https://archive.today/20050510091407/http://www.cultinfo.ru/fulltext/1/001/008/120/252.htm Царицынская оборона 1918—19] == History == The policy was established by a secret resolution of the Bolshevik Party on 24 January 1919, which ordered local branches to "carry out [mass terror](/source/State_terrorism) against wealthy Cossacks, [exterminating](/source/genocide) all of them; carry out merciless mass terror against any and all Cossacks taking part in any way, directly or indirectly, in the struggle against Soviet power".[Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev](/source/Alexander_Nikolaevich_Yakovlev). ''A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia.'' [Yale University Press](/source/Yale_University_Press), 2002. {{ISBN|0-300-08760-8}} [https://web.archive.org/web/20170422052232/https://books.google.com/books?id=ChRk43tVxTwC&pg=PA100&dq=carry+out+merciless+mass+terror&ei=XoB5Sq-HAqCGygTm5PG7DA#v=onepage&q=carry%20out%20merciless%20mass%20terror&f=false p. 100] On 7 February the Southern Front issued its own instructions on how the resolution was to be applied: "The main duty of stanitsa and [khutor](/source/khutor) executive committees is to neutralize the Cossackry through the merciless extirpation of its elite. District and Stanitsa [ataman](/source/ataman)s are subject to unconditional elimination, [but] khutor atamans should be subject to execution only in those cases where it can be proved that they actively supported Krasnov's policies (having organized pacification, conducted mobilization, refused to offer refuge to revolutionary Cossacks or to Red Army men)."Peter Holquist. [https://web.archive.org/web/20091204190025/http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/cmr_1252-6576_1997_num_38_1_2486 {{"'}}Conduct merciless mass terror': decossackization on the Don, 1919"] There were also proposals for the "mass resettlement" of poor peasants in Cossack territories, which would ultimately result in Sovnarkom implementing the forced migration of Cossacks in April.Ryan, James. Lenin's terror: the ideological origins of early Soviet state violence. Routledge, 2012, pg 128 In mid-March 1919 alone, [Cheka](/source/Cheka) forces condemned more than 8,000 [Cossacks](/source/Cossacks) to death. In each ''[stanitsa](/source/stanitsa),'' summary judgements were passed by revolutionary courts within minutes, and whole lists of people were condemned to execution for "[counterrevolutionary](/source/counterrevolutionary) behavior".Nicolas Werth, Karel Bartošek, Jean-Louis Panné, Jean-Louis Margolin, Andrzej Paczkowski, [Stéphane Courtois](/source/St%C3%A9phane_Courtois). ''[The Black Book of Communism](/source/The_Black_Book_of_Communism): Crimes, Terror, Repression''. [Harvard University Press](/source/Harvard_University_Press), 1999. {{ISBN|0-674-07608-7}} p 99-100 The Don region was required by the Soviets to make a grain contribution equal to the total annual production of the area. Almost all Cossacks joined the [Green Army](/source/Green_armies) or other rebel forces. Together with [Baron Wrangel](/source/Pyotr_Wrangel)'s troops, they forced the Red Army out of the region in August 1920. After the retaking of the [Crimea](/source/Crimea) by [Red Army](/source/Red_Army), the Cossacks again became victims of the [Red Terror](/source/Red_Terror). [Special commissions](/source/NKVD_troika) in charge of de-Cossackization condemned more than 6,000 people to death in October 1920 alone.Nicolas Werth, Karel Bartošek, Jean-Louis Panné, Jean-Louis Margolin, Andrzej Paczkowski, [Stéphane Courtois](/source/St%C3%A9phane_Courtois). ''[The Black Book of Communism](/source/The_Black_Book_of_Communism): Crimes, Terror, Repression''. [Harvard University Press](/source/Harvard_University_Press), 1999. {{ISBN|0-674-07608-7}} p 100 The families and often the neighbours of suspected rebels were taken as hostages. {{quote|Gathered together in a camp near [Maikop](/source/Maikop), the [hostage](/source/hostage)s, women, children and old men survive in the most appalling conditions, in the cold and the mud of October ... They are dying like flies. The women will do anything to escape death. The soldiers guarding the camp take advantage of this and treat them as prostitutes.}} In November 1920, [Feliks Dzerzhinsky](/source/Feliks_Dzerzhinsky), head of the [Cheka](/source/Cheka), reported to [Lenin](/source/Lenin): {{quote|the republic has to organize the [internment](/source/internment) in camps of about 100,000 prisoners from the Southern front and vast masses of people expelled from the rebellious [Cossack] settlements of the Terek, the Kuban, and the Don. Today 403 Cossack men and women aged between 14 and 17 arrived in [Oryol](/source/Oryol) for internment in the internment camp. They cannot be accepted as Oryol is already overloaded.[Dmitri Volkogonov](/source/Dmitri_Volkogonov). ''Autopsy of an Empire: The Seven Leaders Who Built the Soviet Regime.'' Free Press, 1998. {{ISBN|0-684-87112-2}} p. 74}} James Ryan argues that Lenin was aware that this policy had genocidal implications, as he was telegraphed by the Southern Front Revolutionary Military Council (RVS) who complained that the policy did not account for mass surrenders by Cossacks. Following this, indiscriminate killings were abandoned and the Southern RVS was ordered by Lenin not to antagonise the general Cossack population by "violating 'trivial' features of everyday Cossack life." However, uprisings against Bolshevik authority in the Don region that followed the killings were still heavily cracked down upon. In August, Lenin also instructed Dzerzhinsky to use "bribery and threats to exterminate the Cossacks to a man" if they attempted to destroy the oil in the city of [Guryev](/source/Guryev).Ryan, James. Lenin's terror: the ideological origins of early Soviet state violence. Routledge, 2012, pg 128 The [Pyatigorsk](/source/Pyatigorsk) [Cheka](/source/Cheka) organized a "day of [Red Terror](/source/Red_Terror)" to execute 300 people in one day. They ordered local Communist Party organizations to draw up execution lists. According to one of the [chekists](/source/Chekism), "this rather unsatisfactory method led to a great deal of private settling of old scores. ... In [Kislovodsk](/source/Kislovodsk), for lack of a better idea, it was decided to kill people who were in the hospital." Many Cossack towns were burned to the ground, and all survivors deported on the orders by [Sergo Ordzhonikidze](/source/Sergo_Ordzhonikidze) who was head of the Revolutionary Committee of the [Northern Caucasus](/source/Northern_Caucasus).[Robert Gellately](/source/Robert_Gellately) (2007). [http://www.fsu.edu/news/2007/09/11/gellately.book/ ''Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe'']. {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160505235017/http://www.fsu.edu/news/2007/09/11/gellately.book/ |date=May 5, 2016 }}. [Knopf](/source/Alfred_A._Knopf). {{ISBN|1-4000-4005-1}} pp. 70–71. ==Effects on the Cossacks== The deportations and exterminations are recognized as genocide by modern scholars.{{cite book|first=Orlando|last=Figes|author-link=Orlando Figes|title=A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891–1924|publisher= Penguin Books|year=1998|isbn= 0-14-024364-X|page=660}}{{cite book|first=Donald|last=Rayfield|author-link=Donald Rayfield|title=Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him|publisher=Random House|year=2004|isbn=0-375-50632-2|pages=83,185}}{{cite book|first1=Mikhail|last1=Heller|first2=Aleksandr|last2=Nekrich|author-link2=Alexander Nekrich|title=Utopia in Power: The History of the Soviet Union from 1917 to the Present|publisher=Summit Books|year=1986|isbn=978-0671462420|page=87}}{{cite book|first=R. J.|last= Rummel|author-link=R. J. Rummel|url=http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE4.HTM|title=Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917|publisher=[Transaction](/source/Transaction_Publishers)|date=1990|isbn=1-56000-887-3|access-date=2014-03-01|chapter=Chapter 1 - 61,911,000 Victims: Utopianism Empowered}} While there were more than a million Cossacks before 1917, very few people consider themselves Cossacks today. Shane O'Rourke states that the de-Cossackization "was one of the main factors which led to the disappearance of the Cossacks as a nation". According to Łukasz Adamski and Bartłomiej Gajos, the exact death toll from de-Cossackization is highly contentious, with estimates ranging from thousands to hundreds of thousands.{{Cite book |last1=Adamski |first1=Łukasz |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2XimDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT37 |title=Circles of the Russian Revolution: Internal and International Consequences of the Year 1917 in Russia |last2=Gajos |first2=Bartłomiej |date=2019 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-0-429-76363-2 |pages=37 |language=en}} Several factors contribute to the difficulty of estimating the death toll, including exaggerated numbers published by the [white movement](/source/white_movement) and varying definitions of the genocide; some historians count the deaths of the [Holodomor](/source/Holodomor) in the Don region, a famine that killed hundreds of thousands of Don Cossacks and Ukrainians.{{Cite journal |last=Boeck |first=Brian J. |date=2008 |title=Complicating the National Interpretation of the Famine: Reexamining the Case of Kuban |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23611465 |journal=Harvard Ukrainian Studies |volume=30 |issue=1/4 |pages=31–48 |jstor=23611465 |issn=0363-5570}}{{Cite journal |last=Ellman |first=Michael |date=June 2007 |title=Stalin and the Soviet famine of 1932–33 Revisited |url=http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09668130701291899 |journal=Europe-Asia Studies |language=en |volume=59 |issue=4 |pages=663–693 |doi=10.1080/09668130701291899 |s2cid=53655536 |issn=0966-8136|url-access=subscription }} [Robert Gellately](/source/Robert_Gellately) claims that "the most reliable estimates indicate that between 300,000 and 500,000 were killed or deported in 1919–20" out of a population of around three million, with most being deported. [Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev](/source/Alexander_Nikolaevich_Yakovlev), head of the Presidential Committee for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression, writes that "hundreds of thousands of Cossacks were killed",{{cite book|first=Alexander Nikolaevich|last=Yakovlev|author-link=Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev|title=A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia|publisher=[Yale University Press](/source/Yale_University_Press)|year=2002|isbn=0-300-08760-8|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ChRk43tVxTwC&dq=Hundreds+of+thousands+of+Cossacks+were+killed&pg=PA102 |page= 102|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141119143859/https://books.google.com/books?id=ChRk43tVxTwC&pg=PA102&dq=Hundreds+of+thousands+of+Cossacks+were+killed&lr=&ei=GoN5SuenNpP4NYXshIMN |archive-date=November 19, 2014 }} and [Rudolph Rummel](/source/Rudolph_Rummel) cites an estimate of 700,000 deaths in the Don Cossack genocide.{{cite web |last1=Rummel |first1=Rudolph |title=Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917 3,284,000 Victims: Sources Table 2A row 44 |url=https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/USSR.TAB2A.GIF |website=Powerkills |publisher=University of Hawaiʻi |access-date=6 August 2023}} [Peter Holquist](/source/Peter_Holquist) estimates a death toll in the thousands or tens of thousands in the period 1919–20, but notes that the extent of the genocide varied substantially by region. In some regions such as Khoper, tribunals executed thousands of Cossacks in a full-fledged extermination attempt, while some other tribunals did not conduct any executions at all. Research by [Pavel Polian](/source/Pavel_Polian) from [Russian Academy of Sciences](/source/Russian_Academy_of_Sciences) on the subject of [forced settlements in the Soviet Union](/source/forced_settlements_in_the_Soviet_Union) shows that more than 45,000 Cossacks were deported from the [Terek Oblast](/source/Terek_Oblast) to Ukraine. Their land was distributed among Cossack collaborators and Chechens.{{cite book|first=Pavel |last=Polian|author-link=Pavel Polian|title=Against Their Will: The History and Geography of Forced Migrations in the USSR|publisher=[Central European University Press](/source/Central_European_University_Press)|year= 2004|isbn=978-963-9241-68-8|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8ktrYux1gTMC&q=cossacks&pg=PT1|page=60}} According to the ''Dictionary of Genocides'', the "genocidal treatment" of the Cossacks was based on class, ethnicity and politics and part of a broader [Bolshevik](/source/Bolshevik) policy of remaking society.{{cite book|first1=Paul R.|last1= Bartrop|first2= Samuel |last2=Totten|title=Dictionary of Genocide|date=30 November 2007|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rgGA91skoP4C&q=Cossacks+genocide&pg=PA88|pages=88–9|publisher= ABC-CLIO|isbn=9780313346415}}{{cite journal|last=Paczkowski|first=Andrzej|year= 2001|title=The Storm over the Black Book|journal= The Wilson Quarterly|volume= 25|issue=2|pages=28–34|jstor=40260182}}. ==See also== * [Dekulakization](/source/Dekulakization) * [Mass killings under communist regimes](/source/Mass_killings_under_communist_regimes) * [Population transfer in the Soviet Union](/source/Population_transfer_in_the_Soviet_Union) * {{section link|Poltavskaya#Collectivization and deportation}} – deportation of a largely Cossack locality during the Soviet famine of 1932–33 ==References== {{reflist|colwidth=30em}} ==External links== * [https://web.archive.org/web/20091210025518/http://www.york.ac.uk/admin/presspr/pressreleases/cossacks.htm Soviet order to exterminate Cossacks is unearthed] [University of York](/source/University_of_York) Communications Office, 21 January 2003 {{Genocide navbox}} Category:History of the Cossacks in Russia Category:Political repression in the Soviet Union Category:Soviet ethnic policy Category:Forced migration in the Soviet Union Category:Genocides in Europe Category:Persecution by the Soviet Union Category:20th-century massacres of Christians Category:Racism in the Soviet Union Category:Red Terror --- Adapted from the Wikipedia article [De-Cossackization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-Cossackization) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-Cossackization?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.