Don Cossacks and the February Revolution

Abstract

In the great Russian empire, by the twentieth century, the Cossacks had formed a well-to-do agrarian community whose privileged position as an independent state gradually evolved into a strictly military society of limited political status and autonomy. As early as the end of the nineteenth century this society was integrated into a monarchial system whose main military functions were restricted to protection and expansion of the empire; thus the role of a Cossack was limited to that of a frontiersman. To a greater extent the bonding of Cossack-Russian relations was traditionally solidified through the Cossack's unquestioning loyalty to the monarchial system and its tsar.1 No matter how strong the Cossacks' devotion to the Russian tsar, it came second to their love and devotion to their homeland, be it Don, Kuban, Terek, or any other Cossack territory. The idea of self-government, however, whether in the form of an autonomous component of Russian monarchy, as a republic, or as a territory completely independent from Russia, was for centuries nurtured in the hearts of the majority of the Cossacks. The memories of the insurrections of Emelian Pugachov, Stenka Razin, Bulavin, and the massacres under Peter the Great and Catherine n are monuments to the Cossacks' struggle for rights and independence, signifying their pride in freedom and the glorious past.2 Nevertheless, the tsar's abdication in March 1917, was a great surprise to them. It took time and propaganda from Russian political parties to make the Cossack masses realize that the tsar was gone, though the Cossacks eventually accepted the abdication without great sorrow or regret.3 Their attention immediately turned toward their