DON KOZAKS.
Since the flight of their countrymen under Ubasha, the Kalmuks have
been closely pressed by their Moslem foes.
Their chief tormentors came from the Caucasus; from the hills of which
countries, Nogays and Turkomans, eternal enemies of their race and
faith, descended on their pasture lands, drove out their sheep and
camels, broke up their corrals, and insulted their religious rites. No
government could prevent these raids, except by following the raiders
home. But then, these Nogays and Turkomans were independent tribes;
their homes were built on the heights beyond the Russian lines; and
the necessities under which Russia lay--first, to protect her own
plains from insult; next, to preserve the peace between these
Buddhists and Moslems, gave her a better excuse for occupying the
hill-countries in her front than the sympathy felt in high quarters
for the Georgian Church. Pressed by these enemies, some of the Kalmuks
have appealed to the crown for help, and have even quitted their
camps, and sought protection within the Kozak lines.
The Kozak camps along the outer and inner frontiers--the Ural line and
the Volga line--are peopled by a mixed race of Malo-Russians, Kalmuks,
and Kirghiz; but the element that fuses and connects these rival
forces comes from the old free Ukraine, and is thoroughly Slavonic in
creed and race.
A Kozak of the Volga and the Don is not a Russian of Moscow, but of
Novgorod and Kief; a man who for hundreds of years has held his own.
His horse is always saddled; his lance is always sharp. By day and
night his face is towards the enemy; his camp is in a state of siege.
Compared with a Russian of Moscow, the Kozak is a jovial fellow, heady
and ready, prompt in remark, and keen in jest; his mouth full of song,
his head full of romance, and his heart full of love.
On the Ural River the Kozak has a little less of the Kalmuk, a little
more of the Kirghiz, in his veins; but the Ukraine blood is dominant
in both. It would be impossible for the Kalmuk and Kirghiz to live in
peace, if these followers of the Grand Lama and the Arabian Prophet
were not held in check by the Kozak camps.
First at St. Romanof, afterwards at Cemikarakorskoe, and other camps
on the Don, I find the Kozaks in these camps; eat and drink with them,
join in their festivals, watch their dances, hear their national
songs, and observe them fight their fights. An aged story-teller comes
into my room at St. Romanof to spin long yarns about Kozak daring and
adventure in the Caucasian wars. I notice, as a peculiarity of these
gallant recitals, that the old warrior's stories turn on practices and
stratagems, never on open and manly fights; the tricks by which a
picket was misled, a village captured, a caravan cut off, a heap of
booty won. As the old man speaks of a farm-yard entered, of a herd of
cows surprised, his face will gleam with a sudden joy; and then the
younkers listening to his tale will clap their hands and stamp their
feet, impatient to mount their stallions and ride away. When he tells
of harems forced and mosques profaned, the Kalmuks who are present
color and pant with Asiatic glee.
These Kozaks live in villages, composed of houses and gardens built in
a kind of maze; the houses thatched with straw, the walls painted
yellow, and a ring-fence running round the cluster of habitations,
with an opening only at two or three points. The ins and outs are
difficult; the passages guarded by savage dogs; the whole camp being a
pen for the cattle as well as a fortress for the men. A church, of no
great size and splendor, springs from the highest mound in the hamlet;
for these Kozaks of the Eastern Steppe are nearly all attached to the
ancient Slavonic rite. A flock of sheep is baa-ing on the steppe, a
train of carts and oxen moving on the road. A fowler crushes through
the herbage with his gun. On every side we see some evidence of life;
and if the plain is still dark and bare, the Kozak love of garden,
fence, and color lends a charm to the Southern country never to be
seen in the North.
A thousand souls are camped at St. Romanof, in a rude hamlet, with the
usual paint and fence. Each house stands by itself, with its own yard
and garden, vines, and melon-beds, guarded by a savage dog. The type
is Malo-Russ, the complexion yellow and Tartar-like; the teeth are
very fine, the eyes are burning with hidden fire. Men and boys all
ride, and every child appears to possess a horse. Yet half the men are
nursing babies, while the women are doing the heavier kinds of work. A
superstition of the steppe accounts for the fact of half these men
carrying infants in their arms, the naked brats pressed closely
beneath their coats. They think that unless a father nurses his
first-born son his wife will die of the second child; and as a woman
costs so many cows and horses, it is a serious thing--apart from his
affections--for a man on the Eastern Steppe to lose his wife.
No smoking is allowed in a Kozak camp, for dread of fire; though my
host at Cemikarakorskoe smokes himself, and invites his guests to
smoke. Outside the fence the women are frying melons and making
wine--a strong and curious liquor, thick as treacle, with a finer
taste. It is an ancient custom, lost, except on the Don. A plain
church, with a lofty belfry, adorns the camp; but a majority of the
Kozaks being Old Believers, the camp may be said to absent itself from
mass. These rough fellows, ready as they seem for raiding and
thieving, are just now overwhelmed with sorrow on account of their
church affairs!
Their bishop, Father Plato, has been seized in his house at Novo
Cherkask, and sent up the Don to Kremenskoe, a convent near Kalatch. A
very old man, he has now been two years a prisoner in that convent;
and no one in the camp can learn the nature of his offense. The Kozaks
bear his trouble with saddened hearts and flashing eyes; for these
colonists look on the board of Black Clergy sitting in St. Isaac's
Square, not only as a conclave going beyond its functions, but as the
Chert, the Black One, the incarnate Evil Spirit.
Cemikarakorskoe is a chief camp or town on the Lower Don. "How many
souls have you in camp?" I ask my host, as we stroll about. "We do not
know; our folk don't relish counting; but we have always five hundred
saddles ready in the stalls." The men look wild, but they are
gradually taming down. Fine herds of cattle dot the plains beyond
their fence, and some of the families sow fields of corn and maize.
They grow abundance of purple grapes, from which they press a strong
and sparkling wine. My host puts on his table a vintage as good as
Asti; and some folk say the vineyards of the Don are finer than those
of the Garonne and the Marne!
These Kozaks have soil enough to grow their food, and fill the markets
with their surplus. No division of land has taken place for thirty-two
years. A plain extends in front as far as the eye can reach; it is a
common property, and every man can take what he likes. The poorest
fellows have thirty acres apiece. In their home affairs, these
colonists are still a state within the state. Their hetman has been
abolished; their grand ataman is the crown prince; but his work is
wholly nominal, and they elect their own atamans and judges for a
limited term. Every one is eligible for the office of local ataman--a
colonel of the camp, who commands the village in peace and war; but he
must not leave his quarters for the whole of his three years. An
officer is sent from St. Petersburg to drill and command the troops.
Every one is eligible as judge--an officer who tries all cases under
forty rubles of account, and, like an ataman, the judge may not quit
his village even in time of war.
A great reform is taking place among these camps. All officers above
the rank of ataman and judge are now appointed by the crown, as such
men are in every branch of the public force. An ataman-general resides
with an effective staff at Novo Cherkask, a town lying back from the
Don, in a position to guard against surprise--a town with streets and
houses, and with thoroughfares lit by lamps instead of being watched
by savage dogs. But Novo Cherkask is a Russian city, not a Kozak camp;
the ataman-general is a Russian soldier, not a Kozak chief; and the
object kept in view at Novo Cherkask is that of safely and steadily
bringing these old military colonists on the Eastern Steppe under the
action of imperial law.
But such a change must be a work of time. General Potapoff, the last
ruler in Novo Cherkask, a man of high talents, fell to his work so
fast that a revolt seemed likely to occur along the whole line of the
Don. On proof that he was not the man for such a post, this general
was promoted to Vilna, as commander-in-chief in the fourth military
district; while General Chertkoff, an old man of conservative views,
was sent down from St. Petersburg to soothe the camps and keep things
quiet in the steppe. The Emperor made a little joke on his officers'
names:--"After the flood, the devil;" Potap meaning deluge, and Chert
the Evil One; and when his brave Kozaks had laughed at the jest, every
thing fell back for a time into the ancient ruts.
Of course, in a free Russia all men must be put on an equal footing
before the law, and Kozak privilege must go the way that every other
privilege is going. Yet where is the class of men that willingly gives
up a special right?
A Kozak is a being slow to change; and a prince who has to keep his
eye fixed day and night on these Eastern steppes, and on the cities
lying beyond them, Khiva and Bokhara, out of which have come from age
to age those rolling swarms of savage tribes, can hardly be expected,
even in the cause of uniform law, to break his lines, of defense, and
drive his faithful pickets into open revolt against his rule.