Читать онлайн "Putin's Wars: The Rise of Russia's New Imperialism" - Herpen Marcel H. Van - RuLit

Like the Tsars, today’s Russian leaders have turned to the Cossacks for internal and external security. Since 1990, Cossack vigilantes have patrolled the streets of many Russian cities, armed with clubs, sabres and nagaykas (traditional whips). The regional administration in the southern Russian region of Krasnodar went further, in 1992 hiring armed Cossack units to patrol the countryside on horseback and in armoured vehicles…. The section on law enforcement in the Law on Cossacks—drafted by the Interior Ministry—formalises this role, establishing the dubious precedent of giving full police powers of search and arrest to untrained, armed vigilantes responsible to their elders rather than the authorities.[9]

Yeltsin’s reforms led also to the creation of Cossack regiments, and some Cossack units were formed within the Border Troops.[10] Cossacks also got the right to set up security companies, and in 1997 several of these companies were working for the Moscow city government.[11] However, the rehabilitation of the Cossacks under Yeltsin still remained uncompleted, and their new status was only a pale reflection of their privileged position in the former tsarist Empire. Their real chance, therefore, came with the arrival of Vladimir Putin. The new president was highly appreciative of the Cossacks. He attached great importance to this group and wanted to restore the Cossacks to their traditional function of pillars of the regime. In 2003 he appointed Gennady Troshev, a Cossack general who had served as commander of the military operations in Chechnya, as special adviser for Cossack Affairs in his presidential administration. In 2005 Putin signed the bill “On the State Service of the Russian Cossacks,” which offered the Cossacks privileged entry to the state service.[12] Draft-age Cossacks would “gain the right to serve in traditional Cossack military units, as well as frontier and internal forces.”[13] Lev Ponomaryov, head of the NGO “For Human Rights” did not conceal his concern. “If they want to guard the borders,” he said, “let them do this…. [However], it is alarming that they may be given the right to maintain law and order within these borders. Experience shows that the Cossacks have their own interpretation of law and order.”[14] But the Cossacks were satisfied. They showed their gratitude by granting Putin the title of ataman—Cossack colonel—a title previously reserved for the Russian tsars. Putin himself became the highest Cossack leader. In 2005 a Cossack regiment was founded in the army together with Cossack military schools where pupils—ages seven to seventeen—attend classes in army fatigues. The curriculum includes military tactics, patriotism, and moral (i.e., Orthodox) education. In 2013 there existed thirty such Cossack schools in the Russian Federation.[15] The southern town of Krasnodar, the centre of the Don Cossacks host, became a testing ground for the new Cossack activities. In February 2012, during the presidential election campaign, Putin once more stressed the importance of the Cossacks in an article in Izvestia:

Now, a few words about the Cossacks, a large group counting millions of Russians. Historically, Cossacks served the Russian state by defending its borders and taking part in military campaigns of the Russian Army. Following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, the Cossack community was subjected to brutal repression, which was actually genocide. But the Cossacks survived and retained their culture and traditions. The mission of the state now is to help the Cossacks, draw them into military service and educational activities for youths, involving a patriotic upbringing and initial military training.[16]

TOUTING “COSSACK VALUES”

The comeback of the Cossacks into Russian public life after an absence of ninety years was accompanied by much publicity, culminating in a Cossack media frenzy in which their martial traditions and supposed virtues, such as courage, loyalty, patriotism, and observance of “traditional values” were touted. “Cossacks protected the Russian Orthodox Church and the Motherland during difficult times,” wrote Olivia Kroth in the pro-Kremlin paper Pravda.[17] “Today Cossacks continue doing so, educating children and young people according to their high ethical standards.”[18] Another author, Sergey Israpilov, saw in the Cossacks a bulwark against the decay of modern Russian society, characterized by individualism that “arrived in Russia from the West” and by a low birth rate. According to him, Russia needed to build “enclaves of traditionalists, who defend or create anew traditional society with its strong family and great fecundity.”[19] Improving the birth rate and “bearing children for Russia” is also one of the objectives of Putin, who, in his address to the Federal Assembly, in December 2012, said people should “believe that families with three children should become the standard in Russia.”[20] A BBC correspondent, who visited some Cossack villages in southern Russia, saw families there with seven children. He was told “that Cossack families should be as large as possible.”[21] He wrote that “Cossack family values are simple, rigid, and to a Western eye, seem to come from another era. The men build the home and provide an income; the women cook, clean and give birth to children. Traditional Russian values, culture, and Orthodoxy form the bedrock of their beliefs.”[22] Russian authors and intellectuals, touting the purported traditional values of the Cossacks, resemble the nineteenth-century narodniki, urbanites who idealized the supposedly high ethical standards and deep spiritual life of the simple Russian peasant. In 2009, in a speech before the Presidential Council for Cossack Affairs, Patriarch Kirill also contributed to this moral glorification of the Cossack. “Without faith, without spiritual eagerness, without true reliance upon spiritual and moral values,” declared the Patriarch, “it is not only impossible to revive the Cossacks, but the Cossack culture itself cannot exist.”[23] This culture, he added, is “a lifestyle, formed under the spiritual influence of the Orthodox faith.”[24]

THE ROLE OF THE COSSACKS IN POST-SOVIET LOCAL WARS

However, are the Cossacks really these so-called white knights as depicted by their admirers? It is, for instance, a well-known fact that in the latter half of the nineteenth century the tsarist government used Cossack troops not only to repress uprisings against the state, but also to perpetrate pogroms against the Jews. An Israeli paper expressed its concern. “Famed for leading anti-Jewish pogroms and close ties to the czar,” wrote the paper, “the group is making a comeback with Vladimir Putin’s support.”[25] In a 1998 Human Rights Watch report the Cossack ideology is described as “virulently anti-ethnic migrant which often degenerates into a general hatred of all minorities.”[26] After the fall of communism Cossacks became active as mercenaries in conflict zones. They fought in the Georgian breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, in Chechnya, in Transnistria (Moldova), and in the former Yugoslavia. During the Russian invasion of Georgia in August 2008 Human Rights Watch reported that “officials in Java [South Ossetia] also said that Russian Cossacks were fighting alongside Ossetian militias.”[27] This was confirmed by other sources. The Nezavisimaya Gazeta wrote on August 6, 2008, that Cossack atamans (leaders) had announced “that in case of necessity the Cossacks could send 10,000 to 15,000 volunteers to the war, and this will be fighters with lengthy experience in active service.”[28] This announcement was immediately put in practice. “[I]rregular Cossack paramilitaries, said by some reports to have numbered in the thousands, fought on the Russian/separatist side in the 2008 Russo-Georgian War.”[29] “Cossack volunteers… crossed the borders to engage Georgian forces. Cossacks in nearby North Ossetia apparently organized a relatively efficient and rapid system for clothing, equipping and transporting their paramilitaries into the breakaway province to feed them onto combat.”[30] “Cossack volunteers formed the second major paramilitary force in the war, the first being the South Ossetian militias. According to reports, the Cossack forces fought with dogged determination.”[31] Militias, active in South Ossetia in August 2008, have been accused of war crimes. Shortly after the war The Guardian’s Luke Harding wrote: “South Ossetian militias, facilitated by the Russian army, are carrying out the worst ethnic cleansing since the war in former Yugoslavia.”[32]