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.

This definition was greatly exaggerated. The bard of the Don Cossacks, Mitrophan Bogayevsky, says of the political character of the Cossacks: "The first and fundamental condition which prevented the Cossacks, at least in the beginning, from breaking up was the idea of the State, a lawful order, a deep-seated realisation of the necessity of a life within the bounds of law. This seeking of a lawful order runs, and has run, like a scarlet thread through all the circles of all the Cossack Armies." But such altruistic motives, by themselves, do not exhaust the question. Notwithstanding the grievous weight of universal military service, the Cossacks, especially those of the South, enjoyed a certain prosperity which excluded that important stimulus which roused against the Government and the régime both the workers' class and the peasantry of Central Russia. An extraordinarily complicated agrarian question set the caste economic interests of the Cossacks against the interests of the "outsider"[31] settlers. Thus, for instance, in the oldest and largest Cossack Army, that of the Don, the amount of land secured to an individual farm was, on the average, in _dessiateens_: for Cossacks, 19.3 to 30; for native peasants, 6.5; for immigrant peasants, 1.3. Finally, owing to historical conditions and a narrow territorial system of recruiting, the Cossack units possessed a perfectly homogeneous personnel, a great internal unity, and a discipline which was firm, though somewhat peculiar as to the mutual relations between the officers and the privates, and therefore they conceded complete obedience to their chiefs and to the Supreme Power.

With the support of all these motives, the Government made a wide use of Cossack troops for suppressing popular agitation, and thus roused against them the mute exasperation of the fermenting, discontented masses of the population.

In return for their historical "liberties," the Cossack Armies, as I have said, give all but universal military service. Its burden and the degree of relative importance of these troops among the armed forces of the Russian Empire are shown in the following table:

COMPOSITION OF THE COSSACK TROOPS IN THE AUTUMN OF 1913.

---------------+------------+---------------+------------- Armies. | Cavalry | Sotnias not | Infantry | Regiments. | included | Battalions. | | in Regiments. | ---------------+------------+---------------+------------- Don | 60 | 72 | -- Kouban | 37 | 37 | 22 Orenburg | 18 | 40 | -- Terek | 12 | 3 | 2 Ural | 9 | 4 | -- Siberian | 9 | 3 | -- Trans-Baikal | 9 | -- | -- Semiretchensk | 3 | 7 | -- Astrakhan | 3 | -- | -- Amur | 2 | 5 | -- ---------------+------------+---------------+------------- TOTAL[32] | 162 | 171 | 24 ---------------+------------+---------------+-------------

Partly as cavalry of the line--in divisions and corps, partly as Army corps and divisional cavalry--in regiments, sub-divisions and detached _sotnias_, the Cossack units were scattered over all the Russian fronts, from the Baltic to Persia. _Among the Cossacks, as against all the other component parts of the Army, desertion was unknown._

At the outbreak of Revolution all the political groups, and even the representatives of the Allies, devoted great attention to the Cossacks--some building exaggerated hopes on them, others regarding them with unconcealed suspicion. The circles of the Right looked to the Cossacks for Restoration; the Liberal Bourgeoisie, for active support of law and order; while the parties of the Left feared that they were counter-Revolutionary, and therefore started a strong propaganda in the Cossack units, seeking to disintegrate them. This was to some extent assisted by the spirit of repentance which showed itself at all Cossack meetings, Congresses, "Circles" and "Radas" at which the late power was accused of systematically rousing the Cossacks against the people. The mutual relations between the Cossacks and the local agricultural population were unusually complicated, especially in the Cossack territories of European Russia.[33] Intermingled with the Cossack allotments were peasant lands--those of whilom settlers (the indigenous peasantry)--lands let on long lease, on which large settlements had sprung up, finally lands which had been granted by the Emperor to various persons and which had gradually passed into the hands of "outsiders." On the basis of these mutual relations dissension now arose which began to assume the character of violence and forcible seizures. With respect to the Don Army, which gave the keynote to all others, the Provisional Government considered it necessary to publish on April 7th an appeal in which, while affirming that "the rights of the Cossacks to the land, as they have grown historically, remain inviolable," also promised the "outsider" population, "whose claim to the land is also based on historical rights," that it would be satisfied, in as great a measure as possible, by the Constituent Assembly. This agrarian puzzle, which surrounded with uncertainty the most tender point of the Cossacks' hopes, was explained unequivocally, in the middle of May, by the Minister of Agriculture, Tchernov (at the All-Russia Peasant Congress), who stated that the Cossacks held large tracts of land and that now they would have to surrender a portion of their lands.

In the Cossack territories meanwhile work was in full swing in the sphere of self-determination and self-government; the information supplied by the Press was vague and contradictory; no one had yet heard the voice of the Cossacks as a whole. One can understand, therefore, that general attention which was concentrated on the All-Russia Cossack Congress, which gathered in Petrograd in the beginning of June.

The Cossacks paid a tribute to the Revolution and to the State, referred to their own needs (after all, the question of their holdings was the most vital one), and ... smiled to the Soviet....

The impression thus produced was indefinite; neither were the hopes of the one side fulfilled nor the fears of the other dissipated.

Meanwhile, at the initiative of the Revolutionary Democracy, a violent propaganda was set on foot for introducing the idea of doing away with the Cossacks as a separate caste. But, on the whole, this idea of self-abolition had no success. On the contrary, a growing aspiration spread among the Cossacks for maintaining their internal organisation and for the union of all the Cossack Armies.

Cossack Governments sprang up everywhere, elected Hetmans and representative institutions ("Circles" and Radas), whose authority increased in accordance with the weakening of the authority and power of the Provisional Government. Such eminent men appeared at the head of the Cossacks as Kaledin (the Don), Doutov (Orenburg), and Karaoulov (the Terek).

A triple power was formed in the Cossack territories; the Hetman with his Government, the commissary of the Provisional Government, and the Soviet.[34]

The Commissaries, however, after a short and unsuccessful struggle, soon subsided and exhibited no activity. Far more serious became the struggle of the Cossack authority with the local Soviets and Committees, which sought support in the unruly mob of soldiers who flooded the territories under the name of Reserve Army Battalions and Rear Army Units. This curse of the population positively terrorised the land, creating anarchy in the towns and settlements, instituting sacks, seizing lands and businesses, trampling upon all rights, all authority, and creating intolerable conditions of life. The Cossacks had nothing with which to combat this violence--all their units were at the Front. Only in the Don territory, accidentally, in the autumn of 1917, not without the deliberate connivance of the Stavka, a division was concentrated, and afterwards three divisions, with the aid of which General Kaledin attempted to restore order.

But all the measures taken by him, as for instance the occupation by armed forces of railway junctions, of the more important mines, and of large centres, which secured normal communication and supplies for the centre and the fronts, were met not only with violent resistance on the part of the Soviets and with accusations of counter-revolutionism, but even with some suspicion on the part of the Provisional Government. At the same time the Cossacks of the Kouban and of the Terek asked the Don to send them if only a few _sotnias_, as it was "becoming impossible to breathe for _comrades_."

The friendly relations, instituted in the early days of the Revolution, between the general Russian and the Cossack Revolutionary Democracies were soon broken off finally. "Cossack Socialism" turned out to be so self-sufficing, so concentrated in its own castes and corporation limits, that it could find no place in that doctrine.

The Soviets insisted on the equalising of the holdings of the Cossacks and the peasants, while the Cossacks vigorously defended their right of property and disposal in the Cossack lands, basing it on their historical merits as conquerors, protectors, and colonisers of the former marches of Russia's territory.

The organisation of a general territorial Government failed. An internecine struggle began.

The consequences were two-fold: The first was a painful atmosphere of estrangement and hostility between the Cossacks and the "outsider" population, which later, in the swiftly changing kaleidoscope of the civil war, sometimes assumed monstrous forms of mutual extermination, as the power passed from the hands of one side into those of the other. Along with this, one or the other half of the population of the larger Cossack territories were generally deemed as participating in the building up and the economy of the land.[35] The second was the so-called Cossack separatism or self-determination.

The Cossacks had no reason to expect from the Revolutionary Democracy a favourable settlement of their destiny, especially in the question most vital to it--the land question. On the other hand, the Provisional Government had also assumed an ambiguous attitude in this matter, and the Government power was openly tending to its fall. The future assumed altogether indefinite outlines. Hence, independently of the general healthy aspiration towards decentralisation, there appeared among the Cossacks, who for centuries had been seeking "freedom," a tendency themselves to secure the maximum of independence, so as to place the future Constituent Assembly before an accomplished fact, or as the more outspoken Cossack leaders put it, "that there should be something from which to knock off." Hence a gradual evolution from territorial self-government to autonomy, federation, and confederation. Hence, finally--with the intrusion of individual local self-love, ambition, and interests--a permanent struggle began with every principle of an imperial tendency, a struggle which weakened both sides and greatly prolonged the civil war.[36] It was these circumstances, too, that gave birth to the idea of an independent Cossack army, which first arose among the Cossacks of the Kouban and was not then supported by Kaledin and the more imperialistic elements of the Don.

All that I have related refers mainly to the three Cossack bodies (the Don, the Kouban, and the Terek) which form more than sixty per cent. of Cossack-dom. But the general characteristic features belong to the other Cossack armies as well.

Along with the alterations in the composition of the Provisional Government and with the decline of its authority, changes took place in the attitude toward it of Cossack-dom, expressing themselves in the resolutions and appeals of the Council of the union of the Cossack armies, of the hetmans, circles, and Governments. If before July the Cossacks voted for all possible support to the Government and for complete obedience, later, however, _while acknowledging the authority of the Government to the very end_, it comes forward in sharp opposition to it on the questions of the organisation of the Cossack administration and _zemstvo_, of the employment of Cossacks for the repression of rebellious troops and districts and so forth. In October the Kouban rada assumes constituent powers and publishes the constitution of the "Kouban territory." It speaks of the Government in such a manner as the following: "When will the Provisional Government shake off these fumes (the Bolshevist aggression) and put an end, by resolute measures, to these scandals?"

The Provisional Government, being already without authority and without any real power, surrendered all its positions and agreed to peace with the Cossack Governments.

It is remarkable that, even at the end of October, when, owing to the breach of communications, no correct information had yet been received on the Don about the events in Petrograd and Moscow and about the fate of the Provisional Government, and when it was supposed that its fragments were functioning somewhere or other, the Cossack elders, in the person of the representatives of the South-Eastern Union, then gathering,[37] sought to get into touch with the Government, offering it aid against the Bolsheviks, but conditioning this aid with a whole series of economic demands: a non-interest-bearing loan of 500,000,000 roubles, the State to pay all the expenses of supporting Cossack units outside the territory of the union, the institution of a pension fund for all sufferers, and the right of the Cossacks to all "spoils of war"(?) which might be taken in the course of the coming civil war.

It is not without interest that for a long time Pourishkevitch cherished the idea of the transfer of the State Duma to the Don, as a counterpoise to the Provisional Government and for the preservation of the source of authority, in case of the fall of the latter. Kaledin's attitude towards this proposal was negative.

A characteristic indication of the attitude which the Cossacks had succeeded in retaining towards themselves in the most varied circles was that attraction to the Don which later, in the winter of 1917, led thitherward Rodzianko, Miliukov, General Alexeiev, the Bykhov prisoners, Savinkov, and even Kerensky, who came to General Kaledin, in Novotcherkassk, in the latter days of November, but was not received by him. Pourishkevitch alone did not come, and that only because he was then in prison in Petrograd, in the hands of the Bolsheviks.

And suddenly it turned out that the whole thing was a mystification, pure and simple, that at that time the Cossacks had no power left whatever.

In view of the growing disorders on the Cossack territory, the hetmans repeatedly appealed for the recall from the front of if only part of the Cossack divisions. They were awaited with enormous impatience, and the most radiant hopes were built on them. In October these hopes seemed to be on the eve of fulfilment; the Cossack divisions had started for home. Overcoming all manner of obstacles on their way, retarded at every step by the Vikzhel (All-Russia Executive Railway Committee) and the local Soviets, subjected more than once to insults, disarmament, resorting in one place to requests, in another to cunning, and in some places to armed threats, the Cossack units forced their way into their territories.

But no measures could preserve the Cossack units from the fate which had befallen the Army, for the whole of the psychological atmosphere and all the factors of disruption, internal and external, were absorbed by the Cossack masses, perhaps less intensively, but on the whole in the same way. The two unsuccessful and, for the Cossacks, incomprehensible marches on Petrograd, with Krymov[38] and Krasnov,[39] introduced still greater confusion into their vague political outlook.

The return of the Cossack troops to their homeland brought complete disenchantment with it: they--at least the Cossacks of the Don, the Kouban, and the Terek[40]--brought with them from the front the most genuine Bolshevism, void, of course, of any kind of ideology, but with all the phenomena of complete disintegration which we know so well. This disintegration ripened gradually, showed itself later, but at once exhibiting itself in the denial of the authority of the "elders," the negation of all power, by mutiny, violence, the persecution and surrender of the officers, but principally by complete abandonment of any struggle against the Soviet power, which falsely promised the inviolability of the Cossack rights and organisation. Bolshevism and the Cossack organisation! Such grotesque contradictions were brought to the surface daily by the reality of Russian life, on the basis of that drunken debauch into which its long-desired freedom had degenerated.

Now began the tragedy of Cossack life and the Cossack family in which an insurmountable barrier had arisen between the "elders" and the "men of the front," destroying their life and rousing the children against their fathers.