[1627 A.D.]
In the year 1627 the Cossacks of the Don, in one of their periodical uprisings, conquered Azov, which they offered to the czar, but which he did not accept. As we shall meet the Cossacks again from time to time, it is worth while to interrupt our main narrative to make inquiry as to the antecedents of this peculiar people.[a]
Soloviev gives the following definition of the term “cossacks”: “At the end of the first half of the fifteenth century we encounter for the first time the name of Cossack, principally the Cossacks of Riazan. Our ancestors understood by this name, in general, men without homes, celibates obliged to earn their bread by working for others. In this way the name “cossack” took the meaning of day-labourer. They formed a class altogether opposed to land owners; that is, the villagers. The steppes, so agreeable to live on, not lacking fertility, watered by rivers filled with fish, attracted in these countries the more hardy, namely the Cossacks; the people who could not stay in villages, those who were pursued for some crime, fugitive serfs, united with each other; it is this group of individuals who formed the population of the frontiers and were known under the name of Cossacks. The Cossacks were therefore of great importance; being an enterprising people they were the first to lead the way to the great solitudes which they peopled. It was not difficult for a Russian to become a Cossack; in going to the steppes he did not enter a strange country, nor did he cease to be a Russian; there among the Cossacks he felt at home. The Cossacks who remained near the frontier recognised the right of the Russian government over them in all things, but obeyed it only when it would prove useful to them. They depended somewhat on the government, while those who lived far away were more independent.”[i]
Polish authors have acquainted western Europe with the name and the fact of the existence of the Cossacks. This name (in Russian kazak) has passed into other languages, by the writings of the seventeenth century, with the Polish pronunciation. The etymology of this word long exercised the sagacity of northern savants. Some derive it from the Slavonic koza “goat”—the Cossacks, they argued, wandered about like goats. Others believe it comes from kossa, which signifies “tress of hair,” “scythe,” “body of land projecting into a river.” Justifications are not wanting for these different acceptations, since (1) the Cossacks were formerly in the habit of wearing long braids; (2) they used scythes to make hay, as well as in battle; (3) their first colonies were on the river banks, which abounded in promontories. In these days, when etymological study has made such great progress, the word cossack is generally accepted as derived from the Turkish. In that language cazak signifies marauder, plunderer, soldier of fortune. Such were in effect the first Cossacks established on the banks of the Dnieper and its tributaries, between the Polish, the Tatar, and the Muscovite territories. Their customs greatly resembled those of the inhabitants on the Border, or Scottish frontier; and the name of the country where they first appeared, Ukrania (Pokraina) signifies border, frontier, in the Slavonic dialects.
The Cossacks have never formed a distinct nationality, but their manners and institutions separate them from the rest of the Russian people. The Cossackry—to translate by a single word all that the Russians understand by Kazatchestvo—is the species of society, government, political organisation which the Russian peasant understands by instinct, so to speak, to which he conforms most easily and which he probably regards as the best. The different fractions of the Cossacks were designated as armies according to the provinces which they occupied. There was the army of the Dnieper, the army of the Don, that of the Iaïk (Ural), etc. Each of these armies was divided into small camps or villages, called stanitsas. The ground round the stanitsa, the flocks which grazed on its meadows, formed the undivided property of the commune. At regular intervals equal partitions took place for cultivation; but each gathered the fruit of his own labour and could increase his share in the common fund by his private industry. Every man was a soldier and bound to take up arms at the word of the chief whom the public suffrage had designated. There was one of these for each expedition and he bore the name of “errant captain,” ataman kotchévoï, which was distinct from the ataman or political chief for life of the whole army. This captain had under his orders an adjutant or lieutenant, iéssaoul, then centurions, commanders of fifties, and commanders of tens. During peace the administration of each stanitsa belonged to the elders, startchini; but every resolution of any importance had to be submitted to a discussion in which all the men of the community could take part and vote. The political or administrative assembly was called the circle, kroug. There were no written laws, the circle being the living law, preserving and adding to the traditions. It left, moreover, complete liberty to the individual, so long as this was not harmful to the community. As to the foreigner, anything, or almost anything, was permitted. Such institutions find fanatics amongst men in appearance the most rebellious against all discipline. The filibusters at the end of the seventeenth century had similar ones.
We are ignorant of the period of the first organisation of the Cossacks; it appears, however, very probable that it is contemporary with the Tatar conquest. The little republic of the Zaparogians in the islands and on the banks of the Dnieper seems to be the model on which the other Cossack governments were formed; for their dialect, the Little Russian, has left traces amongst the Cossacks most remote from Ukraine. There is no doubt that the first soldiers who established themselves in the islands of the Dnieper were animated by patriotic and religious sentiments. Their first exploits against the Tatars and Turks were a protest of the conquered Christians against their Mussulman oppressors. In consequence of having fought for their faith they loved war for its own sake and pillage became the principal object of their expeditions. In default of Tatars their Russian or Polish neighbours were mercilessly despoiled.
Michael Romanov
Formerly the Cossacks had been recruited by volunteers arriving on the borders of the Dnieper—some from Great Russia, others from Lithuania or Poland. The association spread. It colonised the banks of the Don and there instituted the rule of the stanitsas and the circle. The czars of Muscovy, while they sometimes suffered from the violence of the newcomers, beheld, with pleasure the formation on their frontiers of an army which fought for them, cost them nothing, and founded cities of soldiers in desolate steppes.
From the Don the Cossacks carried colonies along the Volga, to the Terek, to the Ural; they conquered Siberia. In 1865 descendants of these same men were encamped at the mouths of the Amur and fringed the Chinese frontier. The Don Cossacks, conquerors of a country subdued by the Tatars, submitted to Russia in 1549, but they enjoyed a real independence. It is true that in war-time they furnished a body of troops to the czar; but war was their trade and a means of acquiring fortune. They appointed their own atamans, governed themselves according to their own customs, and scarcely permitted the Moscow government to interfere at all in their affairs. They even claimed the right to make war without command of the czar, and in spite of his injunctions devoted themselves to piracy on the Black Sea and even on the Caspian Sea. In 1593, when Boris Godunov instituted serfdom in Russia, by a ukase which forbade the peasants to change their lord or their domicile, the Cossacks received immense additions to their numbers. All those who wished to live in freedom took refuge in a stanitsa, where they were sure of finding an asylum. In their ideas of honour, the atamans considered it their first duty to protect fugitives. Consequently the most usual subject of disputes between the government of Moscow and the hordes of the Don was the restoration of serfs. At times exacted by the czars, when they had no foreign enemy to fear, it was evaded by the atamans; at times it was in some sort forgotten, whenever the services of the Cossacks became necessary. Practically it was considered impossible to get back a serf once he had procured his adoption into a stanitsa.