Cossacks emerged at the edge of forest and steppe at the historic turning point that we have highlighted, when agrarian, bureaucratic settled empires were pushing south and east. Cossacks were renegades who fled to the borders, lured by profits in trade or escaping taxation and enserfment. They appeared from the late fifteenth century across the arc of Eurasia, from the Danube in Moldova outside Habsburg realms, to the Dnieper south of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, to the Don, Kuban, and Terek Rivers of the Pontic and Caspian steppe, to the Yaik (later Ural) and Irtysh Rivers in western Siberia. In addition, bands of men living a Cossack lifestyle trail-blazed into Siberia in search of furs and riches. Similarities in lifestyle were a common denominator in the tremendous diversity ofCossacks; there was no single "cossackdom." They ranged from free-booting adventurers in Siberia to garrison troops to founders of a Ukrainian sovereign state in the Hetmanate, with many gradations of political consciousness and autonomies in between.
In all these places, Cossacks were male confraternities of land-bound or river- cruising bandits: the word "Cossack" is derived from Arabic, used by Turkic speakers to mean freebooter. These men were highwaymen, armed and dangerous, making their livings by banditry and extortion, by slaving and trading. As military units, they emulated their rivals: on the steppe they were lightly armored, mobile, armed with bow and arrow on small fast horses; on the Dnieper, Don, and Volga Rivers and Caspian Sea, they were expert sailors, capturing and ransoming vessels in classic pirate fashion; in Siberia they sailed the rivers and broke through forests on foot and horse. Their paramilitary encampments offered relative security to others escaping settled society: runaway peasants fleeing serfdom, slaves fleeing captivity, religious dissidents fleeing persecution, economic migrants—all often sought protection around a Cossack fortress.
In classic "middle ground" style, Cossack communities adopted language, culture, dress, diets, and trade patterns from their surrounding culture. On the Dnieper, Cossack communities used Ukrainian, while to the east on the Don and in Siberia, they used Russian. But in each case the group was ethnically diverse, drawing Turks, Tatars, Russians, Ukrainians, Kalmyks, Nogais, and others to their hearty bands. A sixteenth-century register of Cossacks in Ukraine, for example, lists origins from seventy-four different towns in the Grand Duchy and seven in Poland, as well as from Muscovy, German principalities, Serbia, and the Crimean Tatars. A group of Siberian Cossacks in 1587 similarly included 50 Polish soldiers, 100 Polish- Lithuanian Cossacks, 1,000 Tatar Cossacks, and 300 Bashkirs. Cossacks on the Irtysh line in western Siberia included Germans, Swedes, and Ukrainians, along with Russians and Kazakhs. To be a Cossack was a way of life, not an ethnic identity.
Cossack communities varied according to the military and economic circumstances oftheir location, but all shared some characteristics. One was a free-booting economy: Guillaume de Beauplan, observing Dnieper Cossacks in mid-seventeenth century, remarked that they worked only as much as they needed to. Not tied to the agrarian life cycle, they enjoyed life until they needed more income, at which time they would set off on another raid. They exhibited sheer disdain for agricultural labor; as Cossack communities became more established, they deigned to own land but hired labor to work it. Cossack economies reflected local resources: in some areas Cossacks raised grain (Dnieper and Don River basins), in others they practiced viticulture (the Terek) or horticulture and animal husbandry (the Irtysh).
Another common characteristic of Cossacks across Eurasia was rowdy self- government by mass democratic council. They had the esprit de corps of a Mannerbund, a warrior band: they elected a leader (ataman, hetman) for each year's campaign and summarily dismissed him if he did not win in battle or bring in enough booty. They distributed spoils of battle and raiding evenly among themselves; they fought for the honor oftheir name, their clan, and their band. Cossacks across Eurasia prided themselves on independence and fraternal loyalties; their political consciousness was personal and local.
Cossacks constituted a middle ground, interacting with peoples ofthe steppe and Siberia decades before Russian sovereign power made an appearance. Approaching the steppe, Russia and Poland-Lithuania enlisted Cossacks into military service, recruiting them as mercenary border guards to block nomadic raids and protect new fortified lines. Some became dependent on Russia, as they received supplies of grain, ammunition, and weapons. But since their service was so valuable to Russia, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries many groups of Cossacks were able to negotiate what Brian Boeck calls "separate deals," usually including political and military autonomy, freedom from direct and from many indirect taxes, the right to distill and sell alcohol, grants ofland farmed collectively, freedom from enserfment, the rights to distinctive dress, religion, or other cultural markers. Cossacks became agents of the subjugation of the steppe and Siberian forest, but they also became subjects of the state and constantly faced challenges to their prized independence. Each group negotiated these challenges differently as, between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, sedentary political authority began to tilt the balance of the middle ground with superior gunpowder armies, bureaucratic record keeping, and enhanced means of communication. By the end of the eighteenth century, much of the world that supported Cossack communities had disappeared and traditional Cossackdom had been transformed—their bands were integrated into Russian or Polish armies and elites or destroyed altogether.
Perhaps the first "middle ground" forged in the lands of the future Russian empire was the Novgorodian hinterland leading towards Siberia (Map 3). Novgor- odian lands stretched from the primarily East Slavic north (the Northern Dvina basin, called in contemporary sources Pomor'e) to the Perm' and Viatka lands (settled by Turkic and Finno-Ugric speakers). As early as the eleventh century, East Slavic hunters and trappers penetrated these lands in search of furs, approaching from different directions: up the Sukhona and Vychegda Rivers; up the Kama and Viatka Rivers; along the Ob and Irtysh; paralleling the White Sea. As noted, Muscovy ventured into Perm and Viatka in the 1380s and had firmly established control by a century later, about the time that it conquered Novgorod and won its hinterland in the process. Still, conquest and Christianization did not displace local animism, nature cults, and shamanism.
With the conquest of Kazan in 1552, Moscow was in a position to move more aggressively beyond the Perm lands into the Urals and Siberia. With the Kazan conquest, Nogai and Bashkir Hordes in the lower Volga and Urals declared loyalty to Russia, as did Khan Ediger of Siberia in 1555. Its Muslim Tatar elites ruled over native tribes including Ostiaks (Khanty) and Voguly (Mansi). In 1558 Russia awarded Grigorii Stroganov (from a prosperous Novgorod merchant family) monopolies to exploit fur, salt, and mineral resources in Perm lands in the upper Kama and beyond, creating yet another intermediary in the middle ground. With their own paramilitary forces, including Cossacks from the Volga and Urals who signed on to profit from the fur trade, the Stroganovs constructed forts, subdued villages, and asserted control. With tacit Muscovite approval in 1582 a Stroganov expedition, led by the Cossack Ermak, defeated the forces of Siberian Khan Kuchum (who had ousted Ediger and rejected subordination to Russia). Official Muscovite troops quickly followed, deposed Kuchum, and proceeded—aided by Cossacks who rushed to get in on the profits—to construct fortresses in western Siberia: Tiumen and Tobolsk in 1586 and 1587. Challenged by Kirghiz and other nomads on the southern frontier, Russians approached through the Arctic, founding forts in 1593 Berezov on the Northern Sosva, Obdorsk at the mouth of the Ob in 1595, and Turukhansk in 1607 on the lower Yenesei. Grain shipments, trappers, and Muscovite detachments traversed these tedious routes until the western Siberian border was stabilized against nomads by the 1660s. After that, more direct routes