Doukhonin made a note against this point: “This might lead to excesses.”
Thus the constant morbid fears of an officers’ “Counter-Revolution” proved to be in vain. Events took the officers unawares. They were unorganised, bewildered; they did not think of their own safety, and finally scattered their forces.
[CHAPTER XXIV.]
The Revolution and the Cossacks.
A peculiar part was played by the Cossacks in the history of the Revolution.
Built up historically, in the course of several centuries, the relations of the Cossacks with the Central Government, common to Russia, were of a dual character. The Government did all to encourage the development of Cossack colonisation on the Russian south-eastern borders, where war was unceasing. It made allowances for the peculiarities of the warlike, agricultural life of the Cossacks, and allowed them a certain degree of independence and individual forms of democratic rule, with representative organs (the Kosh, kroog, rada), an elected “Army elder” and hetmans.
“In its weakness,” says Solovyov, “The State did not look too strictly on the activities of the Cossacks, so long as they were directed only against foreign lands; the State being weak, it was considered needful to give these restless forces an outlet.” But the “activities” of the Cossacks were more than once directed against Moscow as well. This circumstance led to a prolonged internecine struggle, which lasted until the end of the eighteenth century, when, after a ferocious suppression of the Pougatchov Rebellion, the free Cossacks of the South-East were dealt a final blow; they gradually lost their markedly oppositionary character, and even gained the reputation of the most conservative element in the State, the pillars of the throne and the régime.
From that time onward the Government incessantly showed favour to the Cossacks by emphasising their really great merits, by solemn promises to preserve their “Cossack Liberties,”[30] and by the appointment of members of the Imperial family to honorary posts among the Cossacks. At the same time, the Government took all measures to prevent these “liberties” from developing to excess at the expense of that ruthless centralisation, which was a historical necessity in the beginning of the building up of the Russian State and a vast historical blunder in its later development. To the number of these measures we must refer the limitation of Cossack self-government, and, latterly, the traditional appointment to the post of Hetman of persons not belonging to the Cossack caste, and often complete strangers to the life of the Cossacks. The oldest and most numerous Cossack Army, that of the Don, has had Generals of German origin at its head more than once.
It seemed as if the Czarist Government had every reason to depend upon the Cossacks. The repeated repression of the local political labour and agrarian disturbances which broke out in Russia, the crushing of a more serious rising—the revolution of 1905-1906, in which a great part was played by the Cossack troops—all this seemed to confirm the established opinion of the Cossacks. On the other hand, sundry episodes of the “repressions,” accompanied by inevitable violence, sometimes cruelty, were widely spread among the people, were exaggerated, and created a hostile attitude towards the Cossacks at the factories, in the villages, among the Liberal intelligencia, and especially among those elements which are known as the Revolutionary Democracy. Throughout the whole of the underground literature—in its appeals, leaflets, and pictures—the idea of a “Cossack” became synonymous with “servant” of the Reactionary party.