Decossackization

Decossackization

1917-1933

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By Malcolm Willis & Kyle Jefferson

During and After the Russian Revolution the Bolshevik army, The Red Army, wanted to get rid of the Cossacks. Ten thousand Cossacks were slaughtered systematically in a few weeks in January 1919. The most reliable estimates indicate that between 300,000 and 500,000 were killed. This is out of a population of 3 million.

1917-1918 was the Russian Revolution. The two fighting armies were The White Army, or the White Movement, and The Workers and Peasants' Red Army. The Cossacks were fighting on the side of the White Movement. The Reds were the Bolsheviks and the Whites were the anti-socialist factions. After the Russian Revolution the Red Army won and after that Decossackization began. The Bolshevik wanted to dominate the Cossacks of The Russian Empire, mainly the cossacks of the Don and the Kuban.

The policy of getting rid of the Cossacks was established by a secret resolution of the Bolshevik Party on January 24, 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 February 7 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 removal of its elite. District and Stanitsa atamans ,which are Cossack settlements, are subject to unconditional elimination, khutor atamans should be subject to execution only in those cases where it can be proved that they actively supported Krasnov's, who was a Don Cossack, policies (having to offer refuge to revolutionary Cossacks or to Red Army men).

Background (continued)

There was decossackization in the Russian empire, after that, alot of Cossacks lost their military estates which turned them into peaceful dwellers. Most of the Cossack military estate members belonged to the estate of village dwellers, or peasants. This is why General Lavr Kornilov would decribe himself as the son of "a Cossack and a peasant".

Early History

Background

Decossackization is basically a mass killing of the Cossacks. But most don't classify it as a genocide. They considered it a ruthless and radical attempt to eliminate undesirable social groups.This was happening because the Cossacks were considered a seperate ethnic, political, and economic entity.

The Cossacks was an Ethnicity and a Russian Estate empire from the 16th and 20th century. The Cossacks were located mainly in southern Russia. The Cossacks are descendants from the Ukrainian regiments. The population only allowed "a Cossack" to be mentioned as a civil estate. So these Cossacks didn't serve in either the Cossack Hosts or the Cossack commands, but other Cossacks had duel estates.