Socio-Cultural Processes In The Former Cossack Regions Of Southern Russia

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to analyze the socio-cultural processes in the Cossack regions, the objectives are to review the policies of the Communist Party in relation to the Cossacks and identify factors that prevented the dissolution of Cossacks in Soviet society. The status and life activity of Cossack communities in southern Russia during the post-war decades have not yet been subjected to a special study by scientists. The study showed that the changing policy of the Soviet leadership reflected on the status and position of the Cossacks in Soviet society. The focus on "exposure to peasantry" of the Cossacks was determined by a number of factors: distrust of the party bureaucracy to the Cossacks, collaboration of some Cossacks during the war, a change in the military significance of the cavalry. The authors established and analyzed the most important factors of preservation of socio-cultural identity of the Cossacks in the second half of the 1940s and early 1960s, which included traditions, culture, and social (corporate) memory. It was concluded on reasoned grounds that if in the second half of the 1940–1950s the Cossacks of Southern Russia still represented a visible ethnographic community, then from the 1960–1970s the dissolution process of Cossacks in the rural and urban population proceeded at a very rapid pace. However, by the mid-1980s assimilation has not been completed yet, which created conditions for the revival of the Cossacks in the traditional Cossack regions and territories of Southern Russia.