Putin's Wars

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 successful: 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.

Notes

1.

Cf. Shane O’Rourke, “From Region to Nation: The Don Cossacks 1870–1920,” in Russian Empire: Space, People, Power, 1700–1930, eds. Jane Burbank, Mark von Hagen, and Anatoliy Remnev (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 221.

2.

Vladimir Sineokov, Kazachestvo i ego gosudarstvennoe znachenie (Paris: Prince Gortchakoff, 1928), 44.

3.

Sineokov, Kazachestvo i ego gosudarstvennoe znachenie, 28.

4.

O’Rourke, “From Region to Nation,” 232. O’Rourke wrote: “This was not a clinical exercise in removing inveterate opponents of the Soviet regime, but the wholesale slaughter of a people” (233).

5.

Lester W. Grau, “The Cossack Brotherhood Reborn: A Political/Military Force in a Realm of Chaos,” Low Intensity Conflict & Law Enforcement 2, no. 3 (Winter 1993). http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/documents/cossack/cossack.htm.

6.

Grau, “The Cossack Brotherhood Reborn.”

7.

Mark Galeotti, “The Cossacks: A Cross-Border Complication to Post-Soviet Eurasia,” IBRU Boundary and Security Bulletin (Summer 1995), 56.

8.

Galeotti, “The Cossacks: A Cross-Border Complication to Post-Soviet Eurasia.”

9.

Galeotti, “The Cossacks: A Cross-Border Complication to Post-Soviet Eurasia.”

10.

Galeotti, Mark. “The Cossacks Are Coming (Maybe),” Moscow News (February 22, 2012).

11.

Galeotti, “The Cossacks Are Coming (Maybe).”

12.

Olga Dorokhina, “Kratkiy kurs istorii kazachestva,” Kommersant Vlast (November 19, 2012).

13.

“Cossacks Return to State Service,” RIA Novosti (June 30, 2005).

14.

“Cossacks Return to State Service.”

15.

Marie Jégo, “Le renouveau cosaque,” Le Monde (February 3–4, 2013).

16.

Vladimir Putin, “Being Strong: National Security Guarantees for Russia,” RT (February 20, 2012).

17.

Olivia Kroth, “Moscow Police Shall Revive the Great Cossack Tradition,” Pravda (November 20, 2012).

18.

Kroth, “Moscow Police Shall Revive the Great Cossack Tradition.”

19.

Sergey Israpilov, “Rossii neobkhodimo ‘Novoe kazachestvo,’” Krasnoyarskoe Vremya (December 17, 2012).

20.

Vladimir Putin, “Address to the Federal Assembly” (December 12, 2012).

21.

Steven Eke, “Russia’s Cossacks Rise Again,” BBC News (August 9, 2007).

22.

Eke, “Russia’s Cossacks Rise Again.”

23.

“The Patriarch on the Cossacks” (October 14, 2009), speech by Patriarch Kirill at the session of the Council for Cossack Affairs under the President of the Russian Federation in Novocherkassk on October 14, 2009. http://www.fondkazachestva.org/patriarcheng.htm.

24.

“The Patriarch on the Cossacks.”

25.

Max Seddon, “Russia Restores Cossacks to Positions of Power,” Times of Israel (November 28, 2012).

26.

Quoted in US Citizenship and Immigration Services, Resource Information Center (August 27, 1999).

27.

“Georgia/Russia: Use of Rocket System Can Harm Civilians,” Human Rights Watch (August 12, 2008).

28.

“Shashki nagolo: Donskie Kazaki gotovyatsya voevat v Yuznoy Osetii” (Swords drawn: Don Cossacks preparing themselves to fight in South Ossetia), Nezavisimaya Gazeta (August 6, 2008).

29.

“The Cossacks Return,” StrategyPage.com (September 17, 2010).

30.

“The Cossacks Return.”

31.

“The Cossacks Return.”

32.

Luke Harding, “Russia’s Cruel Intention,” The Guardian (September 1, 2008).

33.

Israpilov, “Rossii neobkhodimo ‘Novoe kazachestvo.’”

34.

Fatima Tlisova, “Kremlin Backing of Cossacks Heightens Tensions in the North Caucasus,” North Caucasus Analysis 9, no. 14 (April 10, 2008).

35.

Tlisova, “Kremlin Backing of Cossacks Heightens Tensions in the North Caucasus.”

36.

Quoted in Masha Lipman, “Putin’s Patriotism Lessons,” The New Yorker (September 24, 2012).

37.

Lipman, “Putin’s Patriotism Lessons.”

38.

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), Kommersant Vlast no. 46 (November 19, 2012).

40.

Gerasimenko, “Kazak: eto ne natsionalnost, eto rytsar pravoslaviya.”

41.

Dorokhina, “Kratkiy kurs istorii kazachestva.”

42.

Kroth, “Moscow Police Shall Revive the Great Cossack Tradition.”

43.

“Russia’s Cossacks Take on New Foes in Moscow: Beggars, Drunks and Illegally Parked Cars,” Associated Press (November 27, 2012).

44.

“Cossacks Should Be Allowed to Flog Gays, Siberian Lawmaker Says,” Moscow News (July 5, 2013).

45.

http://www.kazakirossii.ru.

46.

Julia Smirnova, “Wie Russlands patriotische Kosaken Moskau erobern,” Die Welt (November 28, 2012).

47.

Lyudmila Alexandrova, “Russian Cossacks Want to Have More Say in Russia’s Social and Political Life,” Itar-Tass (November 26, 2012).

48.

Alexander Golts, “A Cossack Mafia in the Making,” Moscow Times (December 4, 2012).

49.

Golts, “A Cossack Mafia in the Making.”

50.

Golts, “A Cossack Mafia in the Making.”