That whole part of the Térek line (about fifty miles) along which lie
the villages of the Grebénsk Cossacks is uniform in character both as
to country and inhabitants. The Térek, which separates the Cossacks
from the mountaineers, still flows turbid and rapid though already
broad and smooth, always depositing greyish sand on its low reedy right
bank and washing away the steep, though not high, left bank, with its
roots of century-old oaks, its rotting plane trees, and young
brushwood. On the right bank lie the villages of pro-Russian, though
still somewhat restless, Tartars. Along the left bank, back half a mile
from the river and standing five or six miles apart from one another,
are Cossack villages. In olden times most of these villages were
situated on the banks of the river; but the Térek, shifting northward
from the mountains year by year, washed away those banks, and now there
remain only the ruins of the old villages and of the gardens of pear
and plum trees and poplars, all overgrown with blackberry bushes and
wild vines. No one lives there now, and one only sees the tracks of the
deer, the wolves, the hares, and the pheasants, who have learned to
love these places. From village to village runs a road cut through the
forest as a cannon-shot might fly. Along the roads are cordons of
Cossacks and watch-towers with sentinels in them. Only a narrow strip
about seven hundred yards wide of fertile wooded soil belongs to the
Cossacks. To the north of it begin the sand-drifts of the Nogáy or
Mozdók steppes, which fetch far to the north and run, Heaven knows
where, into the Trukhmén, Astrakhán, and Kirghíz-Kaisátsk steppes. To
the south, beyond the Térek, are the Great Chéchnya river, the
Kochkálov range, the Black Mountains, yet another range, and at last
the snowy mountains, which can just be seen but have never yet been
scaled. In this fertile wooded strip, rich in vegetation, has dwelt as
far back as memory runs the fine warlike and prosperous Russian tribe
belonging to the sect of Old Believers, and called the Grebénsk
Cossacks.
Long long ago their Old Believer ancestors fled from Russia and settled
beyond the Térek among the Chéchens on the Grebén, the first range of
wooded mountains of Chéchnya. Living among the Chéchens the Cossacks
intermarried with them and adopted the manners and customs of the hill
tribes, though they still retained the Russian language in all its
purity, as well as their Old Faith. A tradition, still fresh among
them, declares that Tsar Iván the Terrible came to the Térek, sent for
their Elders, and gave them the land on this side of the river,
exhorting them to remain friendly to Russia and promising not to
enforce his rule upon them nor oblige them to change their faith. Even
now the Cossack families claim relationship with the Chéchens, and the
love of freedom, of leisure, of plunder and of war, still form their
chief characteristics. Only the harmful side of Russian influence shows
itself—by interference at elections, by confiscation of church bells,
and by the troops who are quartered in the country or march through it.
A Cossack is inclined to hate less the _dzhigit_ hillsman who maybe has
killed his brother, than the soldier quartered on him to defend his
village, but who has defiled his hut with tobacco-smoke. He respects
his enemy the hillsman and despises the soldier, who is in his eyes an
alien and an oppressor. In reality, from a Cossack’s point of view a
Russian peasant is a foreign, savage, despicable creature, of whom he
sees a sample in the hawkers who come to the country and in the
Ukrainian immigrants whom the Cossack contemptuously calls
“woolbeaters”. For him, to be smartly dressed means to be dressed like
a Circassian. The best weapons are obtained from the hillsmen and the
best horses are bought, or stolen, from them. A dashing young Cossack
likes to show off his knowledge of Tartar, and when carousing talks
Tartar even to his fellow Cossack.
In spite of all these things this small Christian clan stranded in a
tiny corner of the earth, surrounded by half-savage Mohammedan tribes
and by soldiers, considers itself highly advanced, acknowledges none
but Cossacks as human beings, and despises everybody else. The Cossack
spends most of his time in the cordon, in action, or in hunting and
fishing. He hardly ever works at home. When he stays in the village it
is an exception to the general rule and then he is holiday-making. All
Cossacks make their own wine, and drunkenness is not so much a general
tendency as a rite, the non-fulfilment of which would be considered
apostasy. The Cossack looks upon a woman as an instrument for his
welfare; only the unmarried girls are allowed to amuse themselves. A
married woman has to work for her husband from youth to very old age:
his demands on her are the Oriental ones of submission and labour. In
consequence of this outlook women are strongly developed both
physically and mentally, and though they are—as everywhere in the
East—nominally in subjection, they possess far greater influence and
importance in family-life than Western women. Their exclusion from
public life and inurement to heavy male labour give the women all the
more power and importance in the household. A Cossack, who before
strangers considers it improper to speak affectionately or needlessly
to his wife, when alone with her is involuntarily conscious of her
superiority. His house and all his property, in fact the entire
homestead, has been acquired and is kept together solely by her labour
and care. Though firmly convinced that labour is degrading to a Cossack
and is only proper for a Nogáy labourer or a woman, he is vaguely aware
of the fact that all he makes use of and calls his own is the result of
that toil, and that it is in the power of the woman (his mother or his
wife) whom he considers his slave, to deprive him of all he possesses.
Besides, the continuous performance of man’s heavy work and the
responsibilities entrusted to her have endowed the Grebénsk women with
a peculiarly independent masculine character and have remarkably
developed their physical powers, common sense, resolution, and
stability. The women are in most cases stronger, more intelligent, more
developed, and handsomer than the men. A striking feature of a Grebénsk
woman’s beauty is the combination of the purest Circassian type of face
with the broad and powerful build of Northern women. Cossack women wear
the Circassian dress: a Tartar smock, _beshmet_, and soft slippers; but
they tie their kerchiefs round their heads in the Russian fashion.
Smartness, cleanliness and elegance in dress and in the arrangement of
their huts, are with them a custom and a necessity. In their relations
with men the women, and especially the unmarried girls, enjoy perfect
freedom.
Novomlínsk village was considered the very heart of Grebénsk
Cossackdom. In it more than elsewhere the customs of the old Grebénsk
population have been preserved, and its women have from time immemorial
been renowned all over the Caucasus for their beauty. A Cossack’s
livelihood is derived from vineyards, fruit-gardens, water melon and
pumpkin plantations, from fishing, hunting, maize and millet growing,
and from war plunder. Novomlínsk village lies about two and a half
miles away from the Térek, from which it is separated by a dense
forest. On one side of the road which runs through the village is the
river; on the other, green vineyards and orchards, beyond which are
seen the driftsands of the Nogáy Steppe. The village is surrounded by
earth-banks and prickly bramble hedges, and is entered by tall gates
hung between posts and covered with little reed-thatched roofs. Beside
them on a wooden gun-carriage stands an unwieldy cannon captured by the
Cossacks at some time or other, and which has not been fired for a
hundred years. A uniformed Cossack sentinel with dagger and gun
sometimes stands, and sometimes does not stand, on guard beside the
gates, and sometimes presents arms to a passing officer and sometimes
does not.
Below the roof of the gateway is written in black letters on a white
board: “Houses 266: male inhabitants 897: female 1012.” The Cossacks’
houses are all raised on pillars two and a half feet from the ground.
They are carefully thatched with reeds and have large carved gables. If
not new they are at least all straight and clean, with high porches of
different shapes; and they are not built close together but have ample
space around them, and are all picturesquely placed along broad streets
and lanes. In front of the large bright windows of many of the houses,
beyond the kitchen gardens, dark green poplars and acacias with their
delicate pale verdure and scented white blossoms overtop the houses,
and beside them grow flaunting yellow sunflowers, creepers, and grape
vines. In the broad open square are three shops where drapery,
sunflower and pumpkin seeds, locust beans and gingerbreads are sold;
and surrounded by a tall fence, loftier and larger than the other
houses, stands the Regimental Commander’s dwelling with its casement
windows, behind a row of tall poplars. Few people are to be seen in the
streets of the village on weekdays, especially in summer. The young men
are on duty in the cordons or on military expeditions; the old ones are
fishing or helping the women in the orchards and gardens. Only the very
old, the sick, and the children, remain at home.