In April 1918, after the liberation of
Novocherkassk from control of the
Don Soviet Republic, a Don Provisional Government was formed under Georgy Petrovich Yanov. On 11 May, the "circle for the Salvation of the Don" opened, which organized the anti-Bolshevik war. On 16 May,
Pyotr Krasnov was elected
Ataman. On 17 May, Krasnov presented his "Basic Laws of The All Great Don Host." Its 50 points included the inviolability of private property and abolished all laws promulgated since the abdication of
Nicholas II. Krasnov also encouraged nationalism. According to
Peter Kenez, "This new preoccupation with the glories of the past allowed the Cossacks to regard the struggle against their enemies as a war of national liberation, not merely one for defending their private interests against their fellow citizens." The Don Republic claimed the territory of the
Don region with the city of
Novocherkassk as its capital. Administratively, the Don Republic was divided into ten
okrugs, covering an area located in the
Rostov and
Volgograd Oblasts of
RSFSR and in the
Lugansk and
Donetsk Oblasts of the neighboring
Donetsk–Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic. According to
Peter Kenez, "Krasnov named Semenov, one of the army officers, 'governor' of Voronezh province (the part that had been liberated) and Colonel Manakin 'governor' of Saratov province." The Don Republic ceased to exist after the Don Cossacks, who formed an essential part of the
White Army, were defeated by the
Red Army in the
Russian Civil War. Many of the Russian Cossacks on Don were subjected to the
Decossackization in 1919–1921, during the
Soviet famine of 1932–33 and because of the
repatriation of Cossacks after the Second World War by the
United Kingdom to the
Soviet Union, resulting in the eventual disappearance of the Don Cossacks' movement of resistance to the Soviet Union. ==Gallery==