Cossacks Gallop From Mists of Oblivion Into Russia’s Present

At a bend in the road, two men in green combat fatigues stand in the middle of the dusty asphalt, clutching white batons.

The spot is nearly desolate. In one direction, an abandoned mine shaft overshadows a ramshackle cemetery. In the other, a small Ukrainian customs post sits in tall grass.

But it’s here, on a nearly unmarked stretch of Russia’s southwestern border, that the future of the Don Cossacks begins, says Ataman Vladimir Fetisov.

“Next year we hope to have horses,” Fetisov says, gesturing at the golden fields of the steppe. “That’s the real way to patrol this border.”

Fetisov is the local Cossack chief, or ataman. And his men are some of the first Cossacks--the legendary “Horsemen of the Steppes”--to return to their people’s traditional vocation of protecting the long borders of the Russian motherland.

They’ve been at it for about six months at Stanitsa Gundarovskaya, a village of 3,500 Cossacks snuggled alongside a river.

Until this summer, the Cossack border patrols here and a few other places were just an experiment. But step by step, the Russian government has been bestowing legitimacy on the Cossacks, and in July, President Boris Yeltsin formally reinstated Don Cossack regiments in Russia’s armed forces.

Decades after the Communists tried to wipe them out, the Cossacks are riding again. So far, about 120,000 Cossacks from across Russia have signed up, more than 30,000 of them from the Don River region.

“If the Communists destroyed the Cossacks, then this president is bringing them back to life,” says Sergei Dontsov, a Cossack who serves as deputy chief of the president’s commission on Cossack forces.

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The fearsome Cossack is a Russian archetype--a large, mustachioed man in a lambskin hat astride a raging stallion, cutting down enemies of the motherland with a flashing sword.

Descended from nomads, escaped serfs and fugitives, the Cossacks call themselves a “volnyi” people--free, independent, willful.

For centuries they carved out a special way of life on Russia’s untamed borderlands. In return for a commitment to military service, the czars granted the Cossacks a large degree of autonomy.

It was a good deal for the horsemen, and they fiercely defended their privileges. When the Bolshevik Revolution struck, Cossacks formed one of the main anti-Bolshevik armies. After the war, the Communists set out to exterminate them. Along the Don, as many as 70% were killed.

Two decades later, during World War II, anti-Soviet feeling was still so high that many Cossacks took part in a short-lived Nazi effort to establish a Cossack state in occupied southern Russia.

This August, Fetisov and his “stanitsa,” or village, consecrated the region’s first anti-Bolshevik monument: a hilltop memorial to a husband and wife who perished trying to save Gundarovskaya from the Red Army.

“We’re kind of like your Indians,” Fetisov tells an American. “They tried to wipe us out, but we survived.”

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The men of Gundarovskaya battle smaller foes these days, mostly petty smugglers trying to make a quick ruble by trading in alcohol or metal. Each of the village’s men donates two days a month to the task, helping guard five checkpoints on small roads near the village.

Today it’s Aleksei Shurupov’s turn. He stands in the road, studying the numbers of cars as they appear around the bend. He recognizes many, and seems to wave down some drivers as much to chat as to check their documents.

“Look, there’s a woman behind the wheel. And where’s the master?” he teases one acquaintance. “Oh, he’s drunk already,” she says, rolling her eyes. He waves her on with a smile.

The guards provide their own uniforms and transportation. All they have from the government is an ID card that gives them the right to detain drivers, passengers and cargo. Their only weapon is a baton.

That may soon change. As the Cossacks integrate into the regular armed forces--the army, border guards and other branches--their units will be trained and armed by the government.

The underfinanced, low-spirited Russian military is hoping to ease its manpower problems by using the Cossacks as something of a National Guard, a part-time army that can take on light duties or mobilize during emergencies.

Fetisov wants to see the Cossacks of Gundarovskaya become a full-fledged unit of the Russian border guards, which have already put 25 miles of the frontier under Cossack control.

“We’re patriots. We have a responsibility to society as border protectors,” he says. “And they have a responsibility to us.”

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The Cossacks have always been a politically volatile element in Russia. Although their units buttressed the regime, Cossacks led a series of peasant rebellions over the centuries that more than once nearly toppled the czars.

All the same, they showed little mercy for peoples who fell out of favor with Russia’s autocrats. It was the Cossacks that the czars sent out decade after decade to suppress various minorities, including Jews, Tatars and Chechens, earning the Cossacks a reputation for savagery.

The big question these days for observers--and many Cossacks--is where the Cossacks’ loyalties now lie.

During last year’s presidential election, all the major candidates, including Yeltsin, made a pilgrimage to Novocherkassk, the Don Cossack capital. But only one--Alexander Lebed, a former paratroop general who is a Cossack--got an open embrace.

Lebed’s campaign posters still hang in local offices. The rebuilt Cadet Training School in Novo-cherkassk, named after Czar Alexander III, features a photo of Lebed in its brochure.

“We call him Alexander IV,” quips the school’s deputy director, Yury Fileyev.

In the years since the Soviet collapse, some Cossacks have been willing to take up arms to defend ethnic Russians on what they consider traditional Cossack territories, including Chechnya and Moldova.

Not all of Russia’s 2 million to 3 million Cossacks approve of those actions, and many oppose the idea of reestablishing Cossack military units.

But the militarists are clearly ascendant. This summer the council of Don Cossack atamans elected pro-service Ataman Vyacheslav Khizhnyakov as their leader.

Khizhnyakov, appointed deputy governor by Yeltsin, is trying to forge a new relationship with the government. But even he stresses that military service is only one part of rebuilding Cossack society.

“We have to revive our traditions, preserve our culture, our history, and pass it on to our children,” he says. “That’s what is most important, not military service.”

All the same, Khizhnyakov adds, Moscow again views the Cossacks much as the czars did: It is better to make a deal with the Cossacks and channel their powers toward the state than risk their rebellion.

“Of course they fear us,” the ataman says.

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Shurupov returns from guard duty, driving along a rough dirt track.

He makes his home in Khutor Stepnoi, an outpost of Gundarovskaya that is little more than a handful of brick huts in the rolling fields. There is no electricity or telephone. Water comes from a well.

Shurupov, 42, moved there two years ago with his wife and two children to re-create a traditional Cossack community on the open steppe.

“It will work,” says Fetisov, who plans to move to the hamlet himself. “The main thing is that nobody bothers us.”

At the end of the day, Shurupov heads down to the well with his neighbors and his ataman to share bread, some chocolate and a few bottles of vodka.

They toast the ataman, women and the well’s clear water. Then with a rough-edged rumble, Shurupov begins to sing:

“When the Red Guards ride in, they will cut down my father and steal my horse.”

The other men join in, singing louder as the wind grows colder.

“Aye, aye. How good it is to live this life. Our ataman keeps our spirits high.”