Table of contents:
- The revolutionary positions of the Cossacks
- Cossacks from the white and red camps
- Revenge of the Bolsheviks
- About the victims of decossackization
Video: How the Soviets eradicated the Cossacks: How many people became victims of the civil war and how they lived outside the law
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
The attitude of the Soviet government towards the Cossacks was extremely wary. And when the active phase of the civil war began, it was completely hostile. Despite the fact that some Cossacks voluntarily took the side of the Reds, repressions were carried out against those who did not. Historians call a different number of victims of decossackization, but we can say for sure - the process was massive. And with the victims.
The revolutionary positions of the Cossacks
The largest Cossack unit was the Don Army, the number of which exceeded a million people, or a third of the total number of Cossacks by the beginning of the 20th century. Practically all the land in the Don Cossack Oblast was in the hands of the Donets. The share of the land was assigned to the Cossack at birth and exceeded the peasant's fivefold. Therefore, there were few poor people among the Cossacks, and it was possible to earn money on just one land lease. So the Cossacks did not complain about life and they had something to lose.
With the arrival of the Bolsheviks in 1917, the Cossacks acted differently. Some units demonstrated a passive position, refusing to defend the Provisional Government and participate in the civil war. But individual Cossack groups even then rose to fight the Soviet regime. The Don Ataman Kaledin, immediately after the October events, sent a telegram to the center stating that he considered the accomplished seizure of power to be criminal and unacceptable. Some elite in the Army tried to push through sovereign ideas under the guise of war. For example, on the initiative of Ataman Krasnov, a project for the creation of a federal state from the Kuban, Tersk, Don and Astrakhan troops appeared. The Don-Caucasian Union was supposed to remain neutral in the civil war and not oppose the Bolsheviks outside the Cossack federation.
Cossacks from the white and red camps
The opposing red and white sides of the civil conflict, which reached the south, actively agitated the Cossacks in their favor. Whites promised freedom-loving warriors the preservation of liberties, ancient Cossack traditions and identity. The Reds, on the other hand, bet on the socialist revolution, the common values for all working people, the warm attitude of the Cossack front-line soldiers to the Red Army brothers. Both camps, of course, were primarily interested in the military Cossack potential. And at first, the Bolsheviks succeeded in the propaganda field, as evidenced by the recognition of Soviet power in several villages and even an uprising against whites.
Gradually, the Cossacks split into two camps, but the majority still stood under the white flags. According to the historian A. Smirnov, up to 20 thousand Cossacks under the leadership of Krasnov were driven out of the territory of the Don Army by the Reds in May 1918. Rifles, machine guns and ammunition were supplied by the Germans. The Don army of 38 thousand White Guard Cossacks existed until 1920. In the Red Army, the Cossack minority fought - no more than a third. During the Civil War, there were only a few regular Red Cossack formations.
Revenge of the Bolsheviks
After the consolidation of the Bolsheviks in the Cossack territories, repression began. In the spring of 1919, Yakov Sverdlov signed a document from the All-Russian Central Executive Committee with measures applied to the Cossacks involved in the White movement. All of them were proposed to be shot, their property confiscated, and members of the families of traitors were taken hostage without adjusting for age. The decree stated that everyone who dared to raise weapons in the red rear, as well as anyone involved in anti-Soviet uprisings and agitation, should be completely destroyed.
It was supposed to burn Cossack farms, villages, to arrange demonstrative executions, leaving the slightest pity for the traitors. Local amendments to the repressive directive only toughened the adopted provisions, endangering the very existence of the Cossack class. Under the auspices of physical destruction, the Cossacks remained outside the law, having lost at least land, property and civil rights. No one also understood the legitimacy of the lynchings that were customary at that time. Izvestia quoted the commander-in-chief of the Red Army Vatsetis, who believed that the old Cossacks must be burned up with the flames of social revolution. And there should be no place for generosity on the Don.
About the victims of decossackization
Some historians call the extermination of the Cossacks a genocide that lasted until 1924. By the mid-1920s, Soviet policy had softened. And according to the historian V. Gromov, the process of decossackization went in waves right up to the Great Patriotic War. But even the surviving representatives of the Don Army ended up in the disenfranchised part of the Russian population.
In recent years, previously unpopular assessments of victims of the decossackization period have become widespread. Some scientists call fantastic numbers with six zeros (data from the historian L. Reshetnikov). However, the census says that there is no need to talk about millions, even taking into account those who died in the First and Second World War and those who emigrated. The historian L. Futoryansky believes that the number of those killed by the Reds in 1918-1919. in the territories of the troops of the Don, Kuban and Stavropol Territories, barely more than 5,500 people, of which less than 3,500 are in the Don. At the same time, associate professor and hereditary Cossack G. Babichev, citing data from his own historical research, claims that the troops of the white commander Krasnov on the Don were shot and hanged from above 40 thousand Cossacks who took the power of the Soviets.
An almost legendary personality for the White Cossacks is Alexei Kaledin. He was always in the thick of things. It was all the fault the tragedy of the Cossack chieftain, thanks to whom the White Army appeared.
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