COSSACKS PATROLLING THE STREETS
Cossacks were not only active in the “frozen conflicts” in the former Soviet space. According to Israpilov, Russia needed “more urgently a filter against threats coming from within the country, than from the external borders.”[33] In effect, inside Russia’s frontiers also the Cossacks proved to be useful to the authorities, taking on tasks that the authorities preferred to outsource. In the southern Krasnodar province, a Cossack region that includes Sochi, the site of the 2014 Winter Olympics, such practice was already long established. The regional government’s program “Cossack Participation in Protecting Public Order” allowed Cossacks “to be used as the main force for displacing the targeted ethnic minority of Meskhetian Turks. The Cossacks were not too picky about the means they used to do their job: ethnic Turks were subjected to mass beatings and ambushes, their gardens were destroyed, homes looted, and the goods and market stalls of Turkish traders were confiscated.”[34] The Cossacks’ efforts were successful, and the Turks left the Krasnodar region after the U.S. government granted them asylum. “The exercise in displacing the Turkish minority,” wrote Fatima Tlisova, “became an example of how effective Cossacks may be in dealing with the sensitive task of making people’s lives hell while maintaining the appearance of law and order and non-involvement on the part of the Russian government.”[35]
In the meantime Cossacks patrolling the streets have become a familiar sight in Krasnodar. Aleksandr Tkachev, the governor of the Krasnodar region, said the Cossacks were entrusted with “forcing out” from his region the unwelcome “intruders” (i.e., Muslim migrants) from adjacent Russian territories of the North Caucasus.[36] To clarify further, he went on to explain “that the Cossacks should act more freely than the police, whose operations are constrained by ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights.’”[37] “What they can’t do, he said, a Cossack can.”[38] After the mass demonstrations in Moscow and St. Petersburg in December 2011 and the spring of 2012 it became clear that the Cossacks, with their sabres, high fur caps, epaulettes, and impressive, broad shouldered uniforms, could be useful also in the rest of the Federation. They displayed all the characteristics necessary for a pro-Kremlin militia with their militant tradition, their socially conservative attitude, their patriotism, their supposed strict observance of the Russian Orthodox faith, and their staunch support for Vladimir Putin. Moreover, they had still another additional advantage that the Kremlin could not neglect: they could more easily be controlled than Nashi hooligans, while in the population at large they enjoyed a rather positive image.
A NEW PRAETORIAN GUARD?
The potential of the new Cossack reservoir is impressive. About 7 million Russians consider themselves Cossacks, which is approximately 5 percent of the population.[39] This does not mean that the whole group will be engaged by the state. According to Alexander Beglov, the chairman of the President’s Council on Cossack Affairs, there are three ways to be a Cossack. The first is to be active as a member of a Cossack community in order to preserve its traditions; the second is more passive—to be “just a Cossack”; the third is to sign up on the state’s Cossacks register. Only by choosing this last option does a Cossack oblige himself to serve the state. In order to be accepted, a candidate must be a Russian citizen older than eighteen years, he must have no criminal record, drink no alcohol, “share the ideas of the Cossacks,” and be a Christian Orthodox believer, because “a Cossack cannot be an atheist.”[40] In 2012 the state register counted 426 organizations with a total of 937,000 active members.[41] At the end of 2012 the eleven existing Cossack armies were merged into a single All-Russian Cossack Army. The army leader (ataman) has his headquarters in Moscow and will directly report to the commander-in-chief, Vladimir Putin. In this way the Kremlin leader will have—like the tsars before him—his own army, loyal only to him. The Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church form the two pillars of this new praetorian guard, which functions as a “cordon sanitaire” around Putin. The haste with which Putin is building this personal army is a sign that, weakened after the mass protests of 2011–2012, he wants to strengthen his position in the “internal war” with the opposition. It is, furthermore, a sign that, due to growing dissensions amongst the political elite, he is placing less trust in the traditional vestiges of power: the military, the police, and even the secret service.
A COSSACK POLITICAL PARTY
To test the ground in 2011 Cossack squads had already become active in the southwest district of Moscow. On September 12, 2012, a new step was taken when they made their first appearance in the center of the Russian capital. About six hundred Cossacks were assigned to Moscow, which is fifty per district.[42] The Cossacks took their new role of moral police seriously, barring visitors from entering a Moscow art exhibition in which the female punk group Pussy Riot’s woollen balaclavas were put over Orthodox Christian icons.[43] Cossack activists also led a campaign to cancel a staging of Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita in St. Petersburg, accusing the organizers of “propaganda for paedophilia.” Their action was successfuclass="underline" the play was canceled. This new moral police could also play a prominent role in the homophobic campaign initiated by the “gay propaganda bill,” introducing heavy fines for providing information about homosexuality to minors, which was signed by Putin on June 30, 2013. Alexander Mikhailov, a regional deputy from the Zabaikalsky region, said Cossacks should be allowed to punish gay people physically by flogging them in public with a leather whip.[44] How privileged the Cossacks’ position has become in Putin’s Russia became clear when on November 24, 2012, the Cossacks founded their own political party. According to the official website the program of the party is “based on the traditional values of the Cossacks. This is patriotism, the defense of the interests of the government, and the moral principles of society.”[45] The party’s chairman, Sergey Bondarev, is a former member of the pro-Kremlin party United Russia and deputy governor of the Rostov region.[46] The abbreviation of this new Cossack Party of the Russian Federation is CaPRF, which resembles the abbreviation of the Communist Party: CPRF (in Russian, respectively, KaПРФ and KПРФ). It has led to protests from the Communists against this “spoiler project.” Vadim Solovyev, secretary of the central committee of the Communist Party, accused the Kremlin of wanting to siphon off voters: “They seek to water down the electorate.”[47] According to the Russian analyst Alexander Golts, “All the talk that Cossacks represent generations of pedigreed fighters imbued with a burning desire to defend the motherlands is nonsense.”[48] “The Kremlin,” he said, “wants to incorporate an invented ‘elite’ group of Russians into the siloviki.”[49] Golts saw the Cossack patrols as the first step in the creation of a new mafia: the “first step toward their control over such profitable sectors as collection of parking fees in the city center.”[50] While these profitable practices might motivate individual Cossacks to enter Putin’s Cossack squads, their importance for the Kremlin lies elsewhere: to build a reliable force that is able to prevent and repress mass protest movements.
34
Fatima Tlisova, “Kremlin Backing of Cossacks Heightens Tensions in the North Caucasus,”
36
Quoted in Masha Lipman, “Putin’s Patriotism Lessons,”
39
Olesya Gerasimenko, “Kazak: eto ne natsionalnost, eto rytsar pravoslaviya” (A Cossack: this is not a nationality, this is a knight of the Orthodox religion),
43
“Russia’s Cossacks Take on New Foes in Moscow: Beggars, Drunks and Illegally Parked Cars,”
44
“Cossacks Should Be Allowed to Flog Gays, Siberian Lawmaker Says,”
46
Julia Smirnova, “Wie Russlands patriotische Kosaken Moskau erobern,”
47
Lyudmila Alexandrova, “Russian Cossacks Want to Have More Say in Russia’s Social and Political Life,”