AT HOME WITH COSSACKS
A Cossack village--An exhibition of horsemanship--An accident--How
Cossacks are trained for service--Cossack local government--Basis
of Cossack loyalty--Their attitude toward massacres--Cossacks of
the Caucasus, like other tribes of the mountains, still
unconquered--Back to Vladikavkaz.
There is nothing straggling about a Terek Cossack stanitza. The houses
run as a line, east and west, north and south. A paling defines the
line. Without the pale is the steppe and the forest, within is the
village. There are no scattering houses to mark that the village is
near. The fence surrounding the village like a kraal is broken at either
end of the village by a huge double gate.
A sentry stood by the right gate-post as we entered the village of
Terek, in the Province of Terek.
Over under the arch the wood seemed lost in a stretch of bog. Mud, black
and oozy, tempted heavy pigs from the house yards, where they are wont
to wallow. Pigs are not confined to pens in Russia: they run loose like
dogs and chickens. But this is Russian and not characteristically
Cossack. Narrow paths edged the house fences and people passing on foot
worked slowly along this less muddy marge, sometimes clinging to the
fence lest a misstep land them in muck, ankle deep, or, not improbably,
knee deep.
[Illustration: A Cossack house]
[Illustration: Interior of the above]
Our wagon clung to the narrow pathway also. A wheel once sunk in the
soft, black depths of the road would be difficult to free. Turning to
the right near the center of the village we approached the great square,
which, so I soon learned, is invariably the heart of the villages of the
Mountain Cossacks. The distance from side to side was fully two hundred
yards. In the square, somewhat to one side, the church. A large, white
church with domes and turrets painted green, and these surmounted by
crosses of gold which caught the glint of the sun and seemed to crackle
with flashes of golden light, like some heliograph left exposed, but
uncontrolled. The largeness of the square in so small a village amazed
me. And I wondered why so large a free space was left. There was no
paving here, but the earth was hard and trampled as by the hoofs of many
horses. As we drew nearer, a neat iron railing, painted green, set upon
a brick foundation and encircling the church, caught my eye. A furious
clanging of bells, wild, loud, disordered, proved distracting. Then the
church doors seemed to belch forth people--women and girls mostly, with
a few old men. The girls were bedecked with color, as bright and varied
as girls in an Italian village. Gaudy yellows and deep oranges,
startling reds and soft blues. Kerchiefs, scarfs, and aprons. The horses
were stopped that I might watch the procession. It was a pretty sight.
Twenty or more came in a party toward the street where we were halted,
and I hastily made ready my camera. They passed us within a few yards
and I stepped to the ground, that I might gain a better focus. As I
looked into the finder, a piercing shriek from one of the girls startled
me, and looking up I saw the entire group start madly down the road.
Whether they mistook my camera for an infernal machine, I do not know,
but their alarm was genuine. Some young Cossacks who were standing near
laughed boisterously and pursued the girls and brought them back. When
they had been made to understand what it all meant, they were highly
pleased, and they stood round in all kinds of groups to be photographed.
When I secured as many pictures as I wanted we continued across the
square, and passed two high, heavy, wooden doors that barred the
entrance of a yard. This was the home of my guide. A comely buxom girl
of about seventeen, with red cheeks and eyes as blue as my guide’s,
threw open the great doors, and we drove into a confusion of sledges and
carts, broken hayricks, horses, cattle, pigs, and dogs. A more untidy
yard I never saw. Cows and pigs adjusted themselves according to
inclination. Mud, filth, straw, littered the whole place.
The yard was a small enclosure. A paling ten feet high on the side where
we entered. On the right a house of stone and mud, whitewashed, with a
thatched roof, an ornamented ridge pole and elaborate gables. A singular
place to look upon. On the left a similar house. Immediately ahead,
opposite the entrance, a crude shed with simple plank and railing stalls
for horses and cattle. Two strong housewifely women stood on the porch
of the house in the light, watching our entrance. Their sleeves were
rolled up above the elbows, and their arms were folded--heavy, muscular
arms, developed by constant toil. They greeted us kindly, even warmly,
and bade us enter. Within I started in veritable surprise. The little
kitchen with its Russian oven and sleeping box above for the young and
the aged in one corner, a home-fashioned bed in another, was as clean as
a drawing-room. Scrubbed, dusted, polished. The big brass samovar on the
table shone like a door plate. Three icons were secured to the wall in
one corner, next to the ceiling. Before them the perpetual light was
burning, the oil cup suspended from a nail driven into the ceiling.
After the filth and mud of everything in the yard, and the village, the
cleanliness of the three simple rooms which made up the house was
marvelous. They were models of household industry.
If it had developed that this condition was due to any special reason,
or was in any way exceptional, it would not merit this notice. But our
coming was not announced. In the afternoon I visited many houses in the
village with my guide, who was now my host, and in nearly every one I
found a similar degree of cleanliness. During the following days I
visited homes in other stanitzas and cleanliness within the house, if
not universal, was at least the rule. Since then I have been in so many
Cossack homes that I know a typical one. Of the Terek and Kuban Cossacks
my host’s house was fairly representative. In design and arrangement, in
cleanliness, in the food we ate, it was neither better nor worse than
the average. It was typical. Hence the minute details of my visit here
may be taken as a description of an average household. In nearly every
Cossack house in the Don country, as well as the Caucasus, one room is
set apart as a sitting-room, or living-room. This room is left spotless.
Flowers brighten the windows through the winter, and often tidy muslin
draperies screen, or partially screen, the beds. Icons, elaborate
according to the riches of the household, adorn the walls, one
invariably across one of the corners and close to the ceiling, and
others on the walls on either side of the center-piece. The ever present
samovar with its cheery companionableness is always in evidence.
An hour after our arrival my host and all his family were transformed by
a change of costume. The rough, home-made coat and worn shirt and the
ancient cartridge-belt all disappeared, and instead he donned a
cream-white _tcherkaska_, trimmed with blue. It was a very long garment,
and hung to his ankles. This was evidently reserved for very special
occasions. Indeed it could not be worn many times without becoming
hopelessly soiled. He also brought out a special dagger and attached it
to his belt. It bore an elaborate ornamentation in hand-worked silver of
Circassian design and workmanship. Most of the arms worn by the Mountain
Cossacks are obtained from their Circassian neighbors.
In the afternoon my curiosity regarding the great square was appeased.
My host sent for his friend, the riding-master of the Cossack recruits,
and he, desirous of doing what he could for the stranger, proposed a
“jigitoffka,” or exhibition of horsemanship. At this I expressed my
interest, and a messenger was sent to summon the young Cossacks left in
the stanitza. They are famous horsemen, the Cossacks, and from their
very cradles are trained to the saddle. The dexterity of some of the
riders was quite remarkable. The first exhibition was a so-called
“attack.” The riders divided into two ranks and charged each other at
full gallop, separating just before they met, barely enough for the
ranks to go through each other. Once two of the horsemen miscalculated
and the horses came fairly together, one of them going over like a horse
of wood. The riders remounted and continued their sport. After the men
had got well limbered they went on to more difficult feats--leaping from
the saddles, while the horses were going at full gallop, and then
remounting; springing from one horse to another; riding double; one
rider carrying another who was supposedly wounded. Snatching up coins
from the ground, while a crowd of men, women, and children
[Illustration: Outside a Cossack yard]
[Illustration: My Cossack driver at home with his family]
stood by urging the horses to greater speed. The interest in these
performances soon became most intense and I found myself, quite
unconsciously, cheering as lustily as if it were a Varsity football
match.
One trifling incident revealed a trait of Cossack character that would
scarce find approval in England or in America. A young Cossack, reaching
for a coin on the ground, almost succeeded in grasping it, but he lost
his balance and fell to the ground amid the loud jeers of the people.
Jumping to his feet he ran back to where the coin lay, picked it up, and
ran off with it. The crowd laughed uproariously at this and did not call
to him to come back with the prize thus unfairly captured. A moment
later another rider failed completely in snatching at another coin which
was thrown down, and he threw himself from the saddle and secured the
money. This was a little strained, it seemed to me, so I asked a man
near me why the crowd did not protest, and he answered: “Once a Cossack
gets his fingers on money he never lets go. It does not matter how he
gets it.”
There were several accidents. In no case was the slightest sympathy
manifested toward the injured man. Once, when a man fell from his horse
and was stepped on, the crowd laughed and even jeered as he dragged
himself off. In another instance a young fellow of not more than twenty
lost his balance while reaching for a coin on the ground. As he fell his
foot slipped through one of the stirrups, and he was dragged several
yards, and in full view of us all the horse stepped squarely on him. The
crowd laughed uproariously at this and one old woman toddled up to him
and handed him a rag with which to wipe the blood from his face. But she
did not offer to assist him. The poor fellow was left quite by himself
and after a few minutes I saw him climb slowly on to his horse and
canter off. That evening I inquired about him and was told that he was
all right. The men expressed surprise that I should have thought of him.
About nine o’clock, however, he was brought in to me. “He is much worse
than we thought,” said the men who brought him, “and there is no doctor
within twenty versts.” They laid him on the bed, and upon examination I
found the print of a hoof clearly on the man’s face, his nose being
crushed flat to his cheeks. He complained of his chest, so I loosened
his clothing and found another hoof-print. This one not so clearly
outlined, nor was the skin bruised, but there was swelling and
inflammation, and, as nearly as I could discover, two ribs broken. The
nose I could do little about. It looked to me as if a very considerable
amount of skill, and certainly instruments, would be needed to set it
right. The ribs I was able to set, however, and, with poultices and
massage, to reduce the inflammation and relieve the sharper pain. I
found this injured Cossack every bit as susceptible to human pains as
the rest of men, and every bit as appreciative of the little relief
which I was able to give him. Their games are of the roughest and thus
are they trained to that bigger game which is their life, the war game,
but their feelings and sufferings prove them normal. The government of
the country, as well as their local customs, encourage the most brutal
sports, and roughest treatment of men, for the crueler and more callous
they are the better soldiers do they make.
Each Cossack stanitza is provided with a government riding-master, who
drills young Cossacks in rough riding. All young Cossacks eligible for
military service are obliged to spend one month each year in rigorous
training, so that when the call to arms comes to them they shall not be
like new recruits. A Cossack soldier is never a recruit, really. He
enters the service hardened by the experience of much training--and with
the blood and spirit of the Cossack free and easy soldiering urging him
to meet the expectations of his masters.
During the two days that I lingered at this village I found the meals
were jolly times, though the food was neither delicate nor varied. The
women did not sit at table with us, though in other houses I sometimes
saw the women and men eating together. Nor did the children have places
with us. The season being Lent, when a strict fast is prescribed, there
was no meat on the table. Black bread, cakes of maize and chopped
cabbage were the chief foods, followed by a kind of pie or tart. This
consisted of an upper and lower crust with preserved grapes between. Tea
was drunk freely. Likewise a light beer. Before meals, vodka. It must
not be gathered from this, however, that moderation in drinking is the
rule. When I asked several men if they were fond of drink, they laughed
and replied: “We drink vodka at a birth, at every feast, during every
fast, at every marriage, and every meal.” There appear to be no
sentiments whatever with regard to temperance. There is a famous Cossack
ballad ascribed to a Cossack leader named Davidoff, which runs,
Happy he who in the strife
Bravely, like a Cossack, dies.
Happy he who, at the feast,
Drinks till he can’t ope’ his eyes.
One man explained to me, when I was questioning him about Cossack
massacres of Jews, that when the Cossacks were called upon to do
particularly disagreeable work, that it was customary for them to get
drunk first. Vodka looks like simple water or gin. The taste, to me, is
of wood alcohol. It is gulped rather than drunk, as is an ordinary
beverage, consequently vodka drinkers seek only the effect. It is
slightly warming, though not so strong as whisky, being only forty, or
little over forty, per cent. alcohol. The effects are marked. First a
warming, then a numbing, dulling sensation. In excess it produces wild
hilarity and jocularity, and intensifies the passions. In later stages
it besots. Vodka drinkers soon become overpowered by sleep. This is why
so many drunkards in Russia lie about the streets. Overcome by
drowsiness they sink into sleep wherever they fall. The Cossack looks
upon excessive drinking as his prerogative. Drink and plunder were what
his ancestors fought for and in this the Cossack of to-day has not much
altered. In the Don country the Cossacks are of distinctly inferior race
to the Mountain Cossacks. There I saw excessive drinking among women as
well as men. In the Terek and Kuban I saw none. This does not mean that
it does not exist, but simply that I did not see it, and, therefore, it
is probably less common.
In the late afternoon my Cossack host announced that it was time for him
to attend the local Duma meeting, and I was invited to accompany him. It
was held in a small building at one corner of the great square, and was
attended by all the males resident in the stanitza, and then at home.
There are always many young men absent from the Cossack stanitza, owing
to the military obligations which fall upon them all.
The meeting was conducted not in the building but in the yard behind. As
nearly as I could follow the proceedings they were as follows: The
ataman, or chief, who is elected by popular vote, stood upon the steps
of the building and addressed the “meeting,” which was gathered about
him. The ataman announced the topic to be
[Illustration: Cossack women on frontier duty in the Province of
Assouri]
discussed and stated his views. He then retired and little knots of men
discussed the matter with greater or less vehemence. Standing apart, the
scene looked like a score of little meetings in one. After a lengthy
wrangle a vote was taken and the matter ended. It was all very
primitive, but very like a New England town meeting. In main features
and principles I could discover no difference.
One matter that came up for discussion was the cutting of wood from the
stanitza forests. My host was one of those elected to do this work.
The land belongs to the stanitza. When a lad becomes of age he is given
his share. This may be used by him as he chooses, either for agriculture
or grazing. The lands owned by the Cossacks originally were so vast that
each Cossack had more than enough for his needs. But of late the
stanitzas have been growing more rapidly and there has begun to be
complaint from the Cossacks that they have not enough land. The average
amount held by each Cossack is several times greater than that held by
the common peasants, or muzhiks, but in many places the stanitzas have
been obliged to re-allot the land and to cut down the individual
allotments in order to supply those just coming of age. In some sections
the land thus allotted is held through life, and at death it reverts to
the stanitza, though provision is made for the widows. In other places
it is re-allotted at the end of every few years, or even annually.
Greater system exists among the Terek and Kuban Cossacks owing to the
penalty of death which was long imposed upon the Don Cossacks for
engaging in agricultural pursuits. This was many generations ago and
only the effects are now found in the economic organization of the Don
Cossack life. When the Don Cossacks were increased by serfs and others
who fled, or emigrated, from Russia, people who had been accustomed to
till the soil, this old idea gave way and more and more the Cossacks of
the Don have been engaging in husbandry. To-day there is a large export
of grain from the Don country as a result of the cultivation of the
steppe by the Cossacks.
The splendid physique of the men, the strong wholesomeness of the women
in my host’s stanitza, won my complete admiration. I have never seen a
better average of the human animal. The weak, or sickly, if they
existed, remained at home and out of sight. There was, too, a geniality,
a cordiality, which little suggested the proverbial brutality of the
Cossacks. On the Sunday afternoon the young people of the stanitza
congregated together at one corner of the great square and sang
folksongs. They have rare voices, the Cossacks, and from across the
square the sound of their combined voices was thrilling. The picture
they presented was a gay one, for the girls without exception wore
dresses and scarfs of brightest colors.
My host was as good as his word in taking me to call among his friends.
We went into houses in every quarter of the village, drank tea, and,
through my interpreter, I told them about that far off place which to
them was but a mysterious name--America. The stories of darkest Africa
which were told me as a child never fascinated me more nor seemed more
wonderful than did the things they heard about America seem to them. In
every house I remarked upon the cleanliness of the interior. The floors
in the crudest houses were scrubbed and polished, and the assortment of
holy pictures near the icon was in some instances quite astounding. They
were always pleased when I noticed their icon and holy pictures.
I tried never to lose sight of the fact that I was among “Cossacks,”
but I must confess that this often required an effort. The kindliness of
the men, the hospitality of the women, was constantly giving the lie to
the traditions of these heartless people. Whenever I could I asked the
men to tell me of their exploits--their soldiering, and of massacres and
pogroms that they had taken part in. They would always relate these
experiences in a matter-of-fact way, emphasizing that they did what
their officers told them to do. Their disputes with their own
neighbors--the Circassians, Ingoosh, and other Caucasian tribes--they
viewed differently. These half-civilized people who live by brigandage
and raiding they deemed it a mere matter of course to kill whenever they
got the chance. On the other hand, they regretted that they were
sometimes sent to massacre women and children, but, as the riding-master
explained to me, it was the will of the Czar. That is one of the
terrible things of czardom. In the name of the Czar are perpetrated the
foulest deeds ever conceived by the diabolical minds of men. “It is a
point of honor with us,” said the riding-master, “to obey. We are given
our lands free. We have much freedom and many privileges--and in return
we give our services. It is not our business, these massacres and
pogroms. It’s the Czar’s. He gives us what we want and we in turn give
him what he wants.”
“If your officers commanded you to run through school-children with your
saber, would you do it?” I asked. The man colored perceptibly as he
answered:
“Certainly. I would obey.”
Others in the room hastened to add that they would not do such things of
their own accord, but only at the command of their officers, whom they
were sworn to obey, or unless they were well plied with vodka.
The morning I left this stanitza a snow-storm was raging and our
progress down from the Cossack plateau to the plain below was slow and
labored. Part way down we passed another Cossack stanitza, and at the
suggestion of my blue-eyed driver we halted here for a time to rest the
horses and call on two or three of his friends. One man was building
himself a new house. For the materials and workmen whom he was hiring he
was paying five hundred rubles--two hundred and fifty dollars.
This brief experience among the Cossack villages I later followed up by
visiting other villages in different parts of Russia--in the Kuban in
the territory of the Don, in Orenburg, and in Siberia--and my
conclusions in regard to Cossacks in general are summarized pointedly:
The Cossack is a survival of medievalism, kept alive only by a
government which finds it to its interest to employ medieval methods
against its own subjects. After the Russo-Japanese war the Cossack will
never again be relied upon in regular warfare. He won’t do. But as a
particularly severe and drastic policeman, he is better than any one.
Where there is an unarmed mob to quell, or crowd to disperse, where
there is a village to “pacify”--there send the Cossack. If the job
happens to present difficulties, dole out vodka to the Cossacks and they
become dare-devils. But devil-may-care methods are no longer effective
against a regular army. The Cossack is not scientific, and therein he
fails. His hour has struck. Another generation will know him not. For
several hundred years the Cossack has continued to maintain his own, but
for such methods as his the twentieth century has no place.
I found the Cossacks of the Caucasus splendid raw material for the
development of good citizens. They are physically strong and good. They
have dash and daring. Their home life is clean. They have a
superstitious
[Illustration: Orenburg Cossacks--a family group
(Not posed for the author)]
loyalty to God and to the Czar--so long as the government continues to
give them their land free, and attempts to exact no other tax from them
than their military service, which they now render because it is a
tradition among them.
The Cossacks are to-day as much of an unconquered people as the tribes
of the Caucasus--or of Central Africa. But they are not of the same
aggressive character as the other Caucasus people. They must be
conquered by diplomacy. The Cossacks will not submit easily to a yoke,
and not at all to a yoke which gives them no interest or occupation in
life. To-day Cossack towns have neither mills nor factories. They are
purely rural communities. They cannot subsist on this alone, and the
young Cossacks who are ready for military service will not readily
change their outlook and take up the peaceful pursuits of the farm. The
wandering spirit is in his blood as much as in the blood of the gipsies.
Yet he is so purely a survival of the past, maintained until the present
time by so absolutely an unnatural system and combination of
circumstances, that the continuance of his existence is unthinkable.
My observations would indicate that the Cossacks have all the elements
of a strong and wholesome people. Their cruelty is the result of
generations of encouragement, on the part of the Russian government. In
one city, at the time of the barricades, a fear-crazed mob rushed
forward with bared breasts, yelling, “Here we are! Strike us down!” and
the Cossacks made answer, “Why do you taunt us? We also are men!” and
rode past them without cutting down a single man.
The Caucasus Cossacks, I found, were not only men of manly feelings, but
of exceptional physique. Surely they will lend themselves to
civilization. Their land cannot be taken from them without a struggle.
Submit to the regulations of civilized people immediately they never
will. The problem is one that Russia’s next régime will have to work
out. But the organization of the Cossacks, as perpetuated down to the
present time, is without doubt one of the shrewdest and strongest pieces
of interior administration ever adopted by a nation. If Russia were not
torn from every center in the empire, the Cossacks would maintain peace
indefinitely. Without the Cossacks, Russia, long ago, would have been
overwhelmed. The Cossacks are the only branch of the army that can be
relied upon absolutely, and they because they are now in possession of
everything that the revolutionists are clamoring for. Freedom,
liberty--all the shibboleths of revolutionism--are commonplaces in the
life of the Cossacks. And when the time comes for this medieval
institution to go under, it cannot be hoped that it will surrender
without a struggle. So long as the House of Romanoff holds
supremacy--and autocracy--the Cossacks will continue to flourish. If
this régime is overthrown the next will have the Cossacks to cope with.
The Cossacks will die hard. But die they must--or at least the
institution of _Cossackdom_--and the Cossack must be saved to lend
stamina and strength to the up-building of a strong state in Russia,
whether constitutional monarchy or republic, and the individual Cossack
turned into paths of productive labor.
During the two following days I passed through countless villages of the
various tribes of the north Caucasus, and if this preliminary excursion
did nothing more it, at least, disclosed to me the tremendous
difficulties of civil administration in this wild region, and above all
else the utterly blind, fanatical policies that have been pursued by the
Russian government during the last twenty-five
[Illustration: A Cossack village--Province of the Don]
[Illustration: A group of Don Cossacks at breakfast]
years, which is the period when her armies just began their sanguinary
march into this ancient corner of the world. What these people need is
not military subjection, but education, enlightenment, and contact with
civilization, and an administration based on the principles of humanity
and the enlightenment born of learning and culture. But it is outside of
my present purpose to suggest what ought to be or what might be; it is
rather my restricted duty to give the picture of the scene as I found it
unfolded before me--all these different villages of the many tribes of
Caucasia, living in their backwardness and their idleness; knowing not
the advantages of education, consequently craving it not; crude in their
superstitions; quaint in their customs; bold and medieval in their
attitude toward their fellow-men. On the south slopes of the Caucasus as
well as here on the north slopes are these villages found; though
instead of being Circassian, Kabardine, and Ossettes, they are
Mingrelians, Kurds, Georgians, Gurians, Persians, Medo-Persians,
Tartars, Armenians, and other tribes spilled out of Asia. The crying
need universally throughout the region is for a wise administration,
making for increased enlightenment and education, instead of which is
maintained the brutal iron régime of militarism.
Upon our return to Vladikavkaz I donned my Cossack uniform, which was
awaiting me, rejoined my friends the officers, and the second day
thereafter we began our journey eastward to the oil city by the Caspian
Sea. During the first days that f appeared on the streets in uniform I
could not get over the sense of bewilderment and surprise occasioned by
the salute I received from every soldier whom I met; for it is a rule of
the Russian army that an officer shall be saluted at all times. Had any
one of these soldiers stopped to speak to me, the hopelessness of my
predicament would have overcome my wits, I am sure, for at that time I
knew scarcely any Russian at all. I certainly could not have understood
or answered a single sentence. I was saved the embarrassment of such a
situation, however, through the fact that the discipline of the Russian
army is such that no soldier would think of addressing an officer until
he was spoken to. Secure in this knowledge, I did not hesitate to go
among the men even when unaccompanied by one of my officer friends.