The Attempt of the Cossack Revival in the Social and Political System of Russia in the 20th and Early 21st Centuries

Abstract

Introduction. The paper conducts the analysis of the attempt of the Cossack revival in Russia in different historical periods of the 20th and early 21st centuries. The attempt of revival is treated as a series of social experiments that involved the government and the Cossacks as a social group. The relevance of the issue is due to the need for complex studying the relations between the government and the Cossacks in the conditions of transformation and systemic modernization in different periods. The revival experiments of different periods had both specific and common characteristics as to their tasks and forms. It is important to study the tasks, participants, forms and methods of the revival experiments in different periods. Methods and materials. The author uses the historical method, the conception of systemic modernization and transformation, and the conception of social and cultural construction. Analysis. The paper determines two main periods in the history of the relations between the government and the Cossacks in the 20th – early 21st centuries that can be characterized as “the Cossack revival”. The author establishes the reasons of those social experiments as well as the roles of participants, and the forms and ways of Cossacks’ integration into the new social and political relations. Results. The article determines that all the attempts of the Cossack revival were undertaken during the systemic modernization. The author determines the main difference between the periods. In the 1920s – 1930s there were transformation of the Cossacks and their adaptation to the new conditions. The late 1980s – early 1990s can be characterized as the period of social and cultural formation of the Cossacks as a social group. Within each period revival development stages that display peculiar features of those experiments can be determined. The mid 1920s was the period of involving Cossacks in the Soviet construction processes. Some Cossack cultural elements were restored and the authorities sought to establish a dialogue with the Cossacks. In the mid 1930s the government actions were rather ostentatious. In both periods the initiator of the processes was the government. In the late 1980s – early 1990s, the initiators of the revival process were Cossacks themselves while the authorities played an important role as a supporter of the revival movement. Within this period the early 2000s can be marked out when the process of the Cossack revival shifted from cultural development to the Cossacks’ public service.