Figure 1.--The Cossocks with their rough-hewn democrtatic ethos fought the absolutist Tsarist state expanding south in southern Russia and the Ukraine. Rather like the Scotts in Briain, after they were defeted, they became the mounted shock troops of the Tsarist Empire and its absolutist tradition and vast serf poplation. By the late-19th century a kind of romantic national aura had developed arond the Cosocks. Tsar Alexander III used the Cossocks as part of his Russification efforts, conducting terrible attacks on Jewish communities in the Ukraine and Poland, helping to drive Jews to America. Russian and Ukranian boys and their parents liked to have portraits taken of boys in Cossock outfits--seen as a kind of national costume.

The Cossacks ( козаки́ ) were a predominantly East Slavic-speaking people appearing on the European Steppe, meaning Russians, Ukranins, Moldavians, and some Poles. The first references date to the lte medieval period in the aftemath of the Mongol invasions. They appeared in the sparsely populated areas and islands in the lower Dnieper, Don, Terek, and Ural river basins, meaning southern European Russia and the Ukraine. The term Cossack is believed to have originated from Turkic, Kazakh meaning either 'horseman' or 'free man'. They played an important role in the historical and cultural development of both Russia and Ukraine. In the informally democratic society they developed, there was ethnic mixing, including some Tartar and Turkish people, but as Cossack society developed after Chritianization, the Cossacks acquired a decidely Christian ethos although without formal religious connections. Some sources claim the Khazars were a element in the origin of the Cossaaks. Whatever the etnnic origins, the Cossacks acquired a European orientation, becoming a major force combaring Tartar raids in the expansion of the Ottoman Empire north into what is now the Ukraine and southern Russia. With the decline of the Ottoman Empire, the Cossacks fouht the expansion of first the Polih-Lithuanian Commonwealth and then after the Great Northern war, the Tsrist Empire. As European Fedalism became imposed on Russia and Ukraine by the Tsarist state, run-away Russian and Ukranian serfs joined the Cossack companies. Eventually they became a kind of miltary estate within the Tsarist state.

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Created: 1:15 PM 11/6/2010
Last updated: 3:47 AM 6/29/2016