De-Cossackization

Cossacks were simultaneously both an ethnicity and a grouping of special social estates in the Russian Empire from the 16th to the early 20th century. Because of their military tradition, Cossack forces played an important role in Russia's wars of the 17th–20th centuries such as the Crimean War (1853–1856), the Napoleonic Wars, various Russo-Turkish Wars, and the First World War of 1914–1918. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the tsarist regime deployed Cossack detachments to perform police service and to suppress revolutionary movements, especially in 1905–1907. Following the October Revolution of 1917, a conflict broke out between the new Bolshevik Communist regime in Russia and many Cossacks. In the Don territory, the Ataman of the Don Cossacks, Alexey Kaledin, declared that he would "offer full support, in close alliance with the governments of the other Cossack hosts" to Kerensky's forces (the Bolsheviks' opponents in the civil war). Establishing ties with the Ukrainian Central Rada and with the Kuban, Terek, and Orenburg hosts, Kaledin sought to overthrow the Soviet regime in Russia. On 15 November 1917, White Generals Kornilov, Alekseev and Denikin began to organize a force that would become the Volunteer Army in the Cossack cultural capital, Novocherkassk. Imposing martial law, Cossack leader Kaledin started to advance in late November. On , after a seven-day battle, his forces occupied Rostov. However, on , Bolshevik troops pushed back successfully and occupied Rostov and Novocherkassk. The remnants of the White Cossacks, headed by Ataman , fled into the , in an event known as the Steppe March. After the Imperial German army invaded and occupied Rostov on 8 May 1918, a government headed by Ataman Krasnov was formed in the Don province. In July 1918, the White Cossack forces of Ataman Krasnov launched their first invasion of Tsaritsyn (present-day Volgograd). Soviet forces counterattacked, however, and drove out the White Cossacks by 7 September. On 22 September, Krasnov's forces launched a second invasion of Tsaritsyn, but by 25 October Soviet troops had pushed Krasnov's forces back beyond the Don. On 1 January 1919, Krasnov launched a third invasion of Tsaritsyn. Soviet forces repelled the invasion again and forced Krasnov's forces to withdraw from Tsaritsyn in mid-February 1919. == History ==

The policy was established by a secret resolution of the Bolshevik Party on 24 January 1919, which ordered local branches to "carry out mass terror against wealthy Cossacks, exterminating all of them; carry out merciless mass terror against any and all Cossacks taking part in any way, directly or indirectly, in the struggle against Soviet power". On 7 February the Southern Front issued its own instructions on how the resolution was to be applied: "The main duty of stanitsa and khutor executive committees is to neutralize the Cossackry through the merciless extirpation of its elite. District and Stanitsa atamans are subject to unconditional elimination, [but] khutor atamans should be subject to execution only in those cases where it can be proved that they actively supported Krasnov's policies (having organized pacification, conducted mobilization, refused to offer refuge to revolutionary Cossacks or to Red Army men)." There were also proposals for the "mass resettlement" of poor peasants in Cossack territories, which would ultimately result in Sovnarkom implementing the forced migration of Cossacks in April. In mid-March 1919 alone, Cheka forces condemned more than 8,000 Cossacks to death. In each stanitsa, summary judgements were passed by revolutionary courts within minutes, and whole lists of people were condemned to execution for "counterrevolutionary behavior". The Don region was required by the Soviets to make a grain contribution equal to the total annual production of the area. The families and often the neighbours of suspected rebels were taken as hostages. In November 1920, Feliks Dzerzhinsky, head of the Cheka, reported to Lenin: James Ryan argues that Lenin was aware that this policy had genocidal implications, as he was telegraphed by the Southern Front Revolutionary Military Council (RVS) who complained that the policy did not account for mass surrenders by Cossacks. Following this, indiscriminate killings were abandoned and the Southern RVS was ordered by Lenin not to antagonise the general Cossack population by "violating 'trivial' features of everyday Cossack life." However, uprisings against Bolshevik authority in the Don region that followed the killings were still heavily cracked down upon. In August, Lenin also instructed Dzerzhinsky to use "bribery and threats to exterminate the Cossacks to a man" if they attempted to destroy the oil in the city of Guryev. The Pyatigorsk Cheka organized a "day of Red Terror" to execute 300 people in one day. They ordered local Communist Party organizations to draw up execution lists. According to one of the chekists, "this rather unsatisfactory method led to a great deal of private settling of old scores. ... In Kislovodsk, for lack of a better idea, it was decided to kill people who were in the hospital." Many Cossack towns were burned to the ground, and all survivors deported on the orders by Sergo Ordzhonikidze who was head of the Revolutionary Committee of the Northern Caucasus. ==Effects on the Cossacks==

The deportations and exterminations are recognized as genocide by modern scholars. Several factors contribute to the difficulty of estimating the death toll, including exaggerated numbers published by the white movement Robert Gellately claims that "the most reliable estimates indicate that between 300,000 and 500,000 were killed or deported in 1919–20" out of a population of around three million, and Rudolph Rummel cites an estimate of 700,000 deaths in the Don Cossack genocide. Peter Holquist estimates a death toll in the thousands or tens of thousands in the period 1919–20, According to the Dictionary of Genocides, the "genocidal treatment" of the Cossacks was based on class, ethnicity and politics and part of a broader Bolshevik policy of remaking society. ==See also==