View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE 『社会科学ジャーナル』56〔2005〕 The Cossacks of Siberia The Journal of Social Science 56 [2005] pp. 29-48 The Cossacks of Siberia: Tailoring Identity in Post Soviet Space Elena Kozoulina * The Czarist Russian Cossacks invaded our Heilongjian province and built a fortress in Yakutsk and Nerchinsk as a base for further expansion. They looted and killed in Chinese lands, and even ate human flesh like animals. The Manchu troops and various ethnic groups resisted heroically. (From a 7th grade Chinese history textbook, 2002) Indeed, in the 21st century, this description of the Cossack people sounds odd, outdated and politically incorrect. As Horvat and Hielscher (2003) document, the depiction of different groups of people in history textbooks is a common source of controversy both within and between nation states. Evidently, current Chinese nationalistic rhetoric describes the Cossack people as savage outsiders to induce a sentiment of solidarity in the face of an unknown and, thus, dangerous enemy. How much do we know about the Cossack people today and what niche do they occupy in the current Russian society? The answers to these questions are still largely unknown. The questions of who the Cossack people are and how to reveal their human face to the rest of an unaware society captured my consciousness since I first met these people during my fieldwork in Eastern Siberia, in the town of Ulan-Ude, in July 2004. The fieldwork was part of the research leading to a doctoral degree at the International Christian University in Tokyo, Japan. The data were collected in a series of in-depth interviews with the “native” people of the Republic of Buryatia, namely, the Evenki, Buryats and mainstream Russians. Upon arrival to the main site of my research, I realized the actual complexity of the category, * Graduate of GSPA 29 The Cossacks of Siberia “mainstream Russians.” This category fell into three subcategories, namely, the Old Believer people, ethnically mixed Russians (called Siberians) and the Cossack people. Two male Cossacks, Kisilev Evgenii Viktorovich and Kasyanov Yurii Leonidovich, both leaders in the Cossack cultural revival movement (and, thus, willing to be identified by name), participated in my research and agreed to do in-depth interviews and shared much documentary material on Cossack history. The main purpose of this article is to look at the current Cossack people’s cultural revival movement and the reconstruction of their identity in post-Soviet space. This article is also part of research in progress on the identity continuity of the people of Eastern Siberia, among whom are the Cossack people. To be correct, they are called the Zabaikalye Cossacks (Zabaikalye literally means the area behind Lake Baikal). The major source of data in this article is based on the informal interviews with the Cossack people, documentary review and the analysis of the revival movement of the Cossacks of Russia, particularly in Siberia. The story of the Zabaikalye Cossacks is covered in seven sections. The first section analyses the milestones of Cossack history and their arrival in Siberia. The second section considers the foundation of the Zabaikalye Cossack Army. The third section discusses the problem of the erasure of Cossack identity during the Soviet era. Section four analyses the current identity dynamics and cultural revival movement of the Cossacks. Section five considers the role of the Cossack organizations in the cultural revival movement. Section six discusses the internal and external threats to Cossack identity in the post-Soviet space of the Russian Federation. And finally, section seven provides general conclusions to this article. *** The first Cossack I interviewed, presented a startling combination of symbols of the bygone Soviet era, Cossack culture and the emerging neo-Russian culture which were interwoven into an intricate web of meanings, unintelligible to outsiders. I met Cossack Kisilev Evgenii Viktorovich in his office. The office 30 31 The Cossacks of Siberia would have been a typical one in a former Soviet state enterprise, but with one exception. The then mandatory portrait of Lenin and other Communist Party leaders had been discarded. Instead, a huge oil portrait of the Emperor Nicolas II was installed. In the corner of the office there were two icons of the Virgin Mary and of Saint George the Victor. As was revealed in the interviews later, the Czar and the Virgin Mary are two essential symbols of Cossack spiritual culture. The Cossack’s face was maimed with a scar which ran across his eyebrow. I saw the scar and thought that this man had teleported from old Soviet films (then the only available source of information about the Cossacks) which portrayed them as merciless, unintelligent and brutal people who fought against the Bolsheviks to stop the rise of Soviet power in Siberia. The whole picture was an oxymoron in the 21st century. In reality, the scar was the price which Mr. Kisilev paid for being a Cossack. It turned out he was heavily beaten by some skinhead youth, yet another sad reality of contemporary Russia, for wearing the Cossack uniform and, thus, for being proud of his heritage. In that battle he nearly lost his eye. However, another battle of his life was ahead of him: the struggle to restore the Cossack identity erased by Soviet propaganda, the struggle to revive the Cossack culture and the struggle to be called a people. Conventional wisdom suggests that I look at the historical documents to shed light on some of the economic, social and political aspects of the life of Cossack communities and the role they played in the settlement of Siberia. I. The Arrival in Siberia The analysis of the documents available did not clarify this widely contested subject of the Cossacks. It is contested regarding the following issues. Firstly, whether there was a “settlement” of Siberia or there was an “invasion/conquest.” (Slezkine, 1994) Secondly, whether the Cossacks occupied “no man’s lands, empty lands” (Mastyugina and Perepelkin, 1996), or did they “push” the aboriginal Evenki and other nomadic tribes from their traditional territories. 30 31 The Cossacks of Siberia (Belikov, 1994) And finally, whether there is a Cossack peoples’ “cultural revival” (Skinner, 1994), or are the Cossacks a “discontented radical power.” (Lieven, 1998) The Cossacks made their entry into the history of Russia in the period after the rule of the Golden Horde, when the Cossacks were empowered by the Russian Czars to extend Imperial borders and guard them from intrusions. In 1582, the Cossack, Yermak, led a force that claimed all of Siberia in the name of the Russian Czar. (Stephan, 1994) The Cossack’s entrance into the Siberian realm had unexpected consequences, both for the Cossacks and for the aboriginal people of Siberia. The newly “discovered” aboriginal people, or in the rhetoric of the early 17th through 20th centuries, the “aliens”, were incorporated into the Russian Empire as “subjects” of the Czar. Since that time, the relationship between the government in Moscow and the government in other parts of the empire has been marked by a center-periphery dichotomy. Thus, the Siberian “periphery” and its numerous peoples were seen as “uncivilized,” and their age old traditions were labeled “backward.” For the aboriginal people of Siberia, the arrival of the Cossacks and various other settler groups brought about changes in the structure of their traditional societies. The analysis of the documents (Shenk and Kazin, 1912; Kozulin, 1991; Zabaikalskoe Kazachestvo, 1991; Zuev, 1994; Kasyanov, 2003; and Kazachii Vestnik, 2004) which became available during my fieldwork suggests that the Cossacks played a significant role in the settlement and development of Siberia. This can be gleaned, first, from the analysis of the functions, at times contradictory, which the Cossack people carried out, and secondly, from their settlement patterns. The multifunctional character of the services the Cossacks provided in Siberia included the following activities which have not been widely discussed in post-Imperial public and scholarly discourses. The Cossacks of Siberia: 1. kept the civil order in new settlements in Siberia (Shenk and Kazin, 1912); 2. protected silver and gold mines, factories, shops and warehouses (Kozulin, 1991); 32 33 The Cossacks of Siberia 3. suppressed spots of internal unrest; 4. were involved in the agricultural cycle in farming and tillage (Zuev, 1994); 5. convoyed trade expeditions (Zabaikalskoe Kazachestvo, 1991); 6. convoyed religious missions to China (Zuev, 1994); 7. worked as laborers and construction workers; 8. were involved in research expeditions and the secret service (Stephan, 1994); 9. convoyed fugitives, deportees and political prisoners, especially the Old Believers (Bolonev, 2001); and 10. acted as go-between interpreters. As a political tool, the Cossacks provided a link between the interests of the government in Moscow and the aboriginal peoples of Siberia. Another important niche which the Cossacks occupied in the Siberian realm was land ownership and cattle breeding. From the time of their settlement, the Cossacks, as frontier guards, received payment from the Czarist government. Initially the payment was done in money, pelts and forage. However, through the course of centuries, chunks of ‘‘empty’’ land became the major system of payment for their service as frontier guards. The government legally empowered the Cossacks to explore and occupy lands suitable for agriculture free of tax. Individual Cossacks had land possessions. However, their lands were considered to be the property of the whole Cossack regiment. (Shenk and Kazin,1912) Thus, by the end of the 19th century, the Cossacks of Siberia, along with the Russian Orthodox Church, were the biggest land owners in Siberia. (Zuev, 1994) The second factor that provides us a link to understanding the role of the Cossacks in Siberia is the complexity of their settlements.