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Socio-historical portrait of the Don Delta: Cossack farm Donskoy
G.G. Matishov, T.Yu. Vlaskina, A.V. Venkov, N.A. Vlaskin
Rostov n/a: YuNTs RAN, 2012
The traditional residential buildings of the farm are represented by two main types, for the designation of which the terms are used house and outbuilding. As the common name of the dwelling is known the word hut.
Until the middle of the 19th century, the most common among the grassroots Cossacks were square two-chamber dwellings (kurens), in which an additional, cold one (senii, closet, corridor) was attached to the main living quarters, and elongated huts with a vestibule - outbuildings.
The Cossack kuren was distinguished not only by its square shape and round (four-pitched) roof. It also had a very specific internal layout that distinguished it from the dwellings of Russian peasants. The Russian stove in the kuren was located in the center of the main living quarters, and not in the corner, as in the dwellings of peasants (or most of the mounted Cossacks).
Over time, in the kuren, they began to allocate separate rooms with partitions ( cooker, bedroom, hall), instead of the Russian stove, urban-type stoves appeared - Swiss, Dutch, stoves with a flood. Wealthy Cossacks began to build large kurens from imported pine forests. From the end of the 19th century, brick dwellings became widespread. Such buildings eventually became known as round houses.
Term chicken over time, it was erased from the memory of the inhabitants of the Donskoy farm. At the same time, most of the residential buildings in the farm retain a round (square) layout with a stove in the center. The rooms allocated by partitions are walk-through and are connected in a circle. This is typical for the entire zone of residence of the Don Cossacks: having the material ability to build multi-room houses, they still retained the idea that the private zone should also be controlled by the family.
The outbuildings consist of two living rooms, their usual names are kitchen and hall. In the attached cold corridor, a pantry was sometimes allocated. Often the corridor was attached to the entire length of the outbuilding, and then in terms of such a dwelling it turned out to be almost square, that is, close to the classical model of a Cossack house.
Furnaces, heating systems
Until recently, Ukrainian stoves were found on the same farmstead in the Donskoy farm ( cabins), Russian ovens ( bakers) and the Dutch. They are heated in the farm with stoves with ovens - boxes. Coal, firewood, bottled gas are used for heating. Previously, reeds and dung served as fuel. Free fuel - reeds - was placed in the firebox of the cabin with one end of a 4-meter bundle, which, as it burned, was moved inside.
The popularity of handling reeds caused a slight adjustment in the shape of the Ukrainian stove: the firebox of local cabins is noticeably lower than that of stoves of this type that existed in Ukraine and in the Kuban villages. Kizyak slabs were made from manure, which was either simply chopped with a shovel, or molded in special machines and carefully dried in the sun in pyramids. The stock of dry fuel, as well as the stock of hay for livestock, was stored in a special room protected from flooding.
We know a lot about the Cossacks ... About their services to the Fatherland or heroism on the battlefields. But practically nothing is known about the everyday life of a simple Cossack, how and where did he live?
What were they built from?
Kuren is the dwelling of the Don Cossacks, which is not at all like a Russian hut or a Ukrainian hut. The kuren was built from local forests: oak, poplar, alder, but log walls were quite rare. A simple Cossack used clay, stone, brushwood and even chalk to build a dwelling. Brick was used in construction only by very wealthy inhabitants of the villages.
What is inside?
In large villages, such as Aksayskaya, Gnilovskaya, Starocherkasskaya and Kamenskaya, one could see two-story houses, where the upper (tops) are divided into two halves, in the first - an entrance hall, a hall and a bedroom, and in the second half there are three more rooms. On the ground floor (bottom) there were three more rooms, a cellar and a glacier. Ice was collected in the glacier in winter, here the temperature was below zero all year round. One-story "round houses" of four rooms with 3-4 windows to the street, and one "blank" wall were common. The main feature of the Cossack kuren was a balcony and a "galdareyka" or "balusters" - an outdoor corridor covered with boards. In addition, the hut was equipped with a "locker" - a canopy on poles, similar to a covered balcony. It was possible to enter the kuren through an open porch with a railing. Near the kuren there was a kitchen or "cook" built of adobe and covered with reeds and earth. In the summer, the Cossacks prepared food in the kitchen, and ate in the house or on the "galdareika". In winter, the entire Cossack family dined in the "cook". In the kitchen, in addition to the stove and a mass of utensils, one could find a samovar and a coffee pot. By the way, the Cossacks were very fond of drinking tea and coffee brought from military campaigns.
Balconies were often richly decorated with potted flowers. Balconies and shutters were decorated with unpretentious carvings.
decoration
The decoration of the house was clean and simple. Paintings and portraits of military atamans and monarchs hung on the yellow walls of the kuren, and sometimes sabers, rifles and souvenirs from overseas countries hung. There were icons in the corner of the hall. In almost all rooms there were wooden chests upholstered in tin. Cossack brides had their own chest, where the "dowry" was kept. In the first room, in the left corner from the entrance, there was always a large cabinet or cupboard with various plates, spoons and utensils. There was also a large mirror on which photographs of family members were sometimes pasted. In the middle of the hall stood a table covered with a white tablecloth. In the hall, the Cossack received guests and treated them to wine and tea. In the front bedroom, where there was a bed with a bunch of feather beds, pillows and colorful blankets, the owners of the house slept until they married their son or took their son-in-law into the house, at the same time the front bedroom was intended for newlyweds. The largest room was the common bedroom, in which all the children of a large Cossack family lived. Here is how the Cossack hut Mikhail Sholokhov described in the novel “Quiet Flows the Don”: “In the upper room, in addition to a wooden painted bed with chiseled bumps in the corners, there is a shackled, cramped chest near the door with Aksinya’s dowry and outfits. At the front angle - a table, an oilcloth with General Skobelev, galloping on terry banners bowed in front of him; two chairs, at the top - images in brightly miserable paper halos. On the side, on the wall, there are photographs infested with flies.
What did they eat?
Looking at the Cossack for lunch, one could feast on noodles, borscht or freshly boiled fish soup. For the second, the Cossack “amused his darling” with a pie with cheese, jelly with kvass or kaimak - one of the Cossack’s favorite dairy delicacies. Meat dishes could be found rarely, only during the season or in exceptional cases, for example, at a wedding or commemoration. The Cossack's menu also depended on Orthodox holidays and fasts. The Don Cossacks took the observance of all fasts very seriously.
Unlike the house, the yard was not as clean. In the courtyard there was a base for livestock, a threshing floor and a small garden.
This is how historians remember the Cossack hut, which stood somewhere on the Don 100-200 years ago. Although, in distant farms you can still find real Cossack huts, in which the very atmosphere reminds of the past of the Cossacks. But in a couple of decades, even these farms will not remain, not to mention the old Cossack kurens.
FATHER'S HOUSE
KUREN
“My house is my fortress” - the Cossacks could justifiably subscribe to this saying. The Cossack dwelling combined both the habitat and the defensive structure. In addition, it clearly traces the features of the most ancient original history. Cossack kuren is another argument against the theory of the origin of the Cossacks from the fugitive population of Russia.
The name "kuren" is Mongolian. The word “smoke”, that is, let out a light smoke, to which the name of a Cossack dwelling is sometimes erected, has nothing to do with it. The word "kuren" means "round", even wider - "harmonious". The Mongols called a nomad camp surrounded by carts a kuren. The detachment that defended this fortified camp was also called a kuren. In this sense, the word existed among the Cossacks. Kuren among the Cossacks and the Kuban was called the regiment.
On the Don, on the Dnieper, in the Caucasus, on the Terek, people have lived since ancient times. The simplest dwelling was a semi-dugout, covered with reeds or straw. Stepnyaks - nomads lived in "tents" (yurts) or in booths. Such tents - booths are still put up by the Cossacks on mowing or on field camps.
Kuren in the classical, ancient form, forgotten already in the time of the Polovtsy and unknown to the Cossacks, is a hexagonal or octagonal log yurt, which is still found in Yakutia.
The design of the traditional Cossack dwelling, which they call a kuren, was influenced by the river culture of the Lower Don and Ciscaucasia, which, by the same construction methods, makes these places distant from each other related to Dagestan and the Caspian.
The first settlements arose in floodplains - river reed thickets, where you can’t dig a dugout - the water is close. Therefore, the dwellings were made turluch. The walls were woven from two rows of rods or reeds, and the space between them was filled with earth for warmth and strength. The roof was, of course, reed, with a hole for smoke to escape.
But living in such structures was also not possible everywhere. Wide, multi-kilometer river floods required special buildings - piles. Memories of them are preserved in the names. "Chiganaki" - this is the building on stilts. And people of the Chigov tribe lived in them. It is no coincidence, apparently, that the Upper Don Cossacks are teased by the “chiga vostropuza”.
The features of the pile construction are easily read in the modern Cossack dwelling. Cossack kuren - two-story. Most likely, this is not a “basement” that has grown to the second floor, but a memory of the piles on which dwellings once stood. The oldest settlements of the Khazars were located in the lower reaches of the rivers. And quite recently, back in Cherkassk, in spring and autumn, the Cossacks went to visit each other by boat, and the town itself was impregnable during periods of floods.
The modern kuren is two-story, “semi-stone”, that is, the first floor is brick (formerly adobe, made of raw brick), the second is wooden.
The further north, the lower the first floor.
And on the Seversky Donets, it already looks more like a basement, although the characteristic features of a Cossack building are visible here too. The first floor, as a rule, is not residential, but economic. It was believed that "you need to live in a tree, and store supplies in stone."
In the center of the first floor there is a windowless room, which the Don Cossacks call "cold" (perhaps, this is where this word migrated to the name of the pre-trial detention cell that was in every village), the Kuban - "topping up" (that is, the lower, "down", in contrast to the upper room: "mountain" - high, upper). For centuries, construction techniques worked out made it possible to build a top-up in such a way that a light draft of air cooled in the surrounding “cold” chambers constantly blew in it. Oh, how sweetly bunches of herbs smell, mountains of apples, watermelons, grapes hung on threads, on a twinkle! And the whole family gathers, spreading a felt mat on a cool clay floor, drinking "uzvar" or eating icy sizzling salted watermelons at noon, in the very heat, when the sizzling sun floats over the steppe in a dusty haze of heat.
The chambers border the cold one along the perimeter with a narrow corridor.
Once upon a time, weapons were stored in niches here. A narrow single door (necessarily opening inward, so that it was easy to support it with a log or stone) led to the first, recessed, floor. It was possible to enter here only one at a time, bending under a low lintel, and immediately go down two steps: my house is my fortress. And in the old days it was possible to crash down even lower: right in front of the door they arranged a “hunting cellar” - a pit with a stake in the middle, closed at normal times with a wooden shield. The enemy who broke into the hut immediately fell there. Was it not there that Kondraty Bulavin fired back from enemies? In general, strangers did not go to this part of the hut.
Guests usually climbed the wide steps (“sills”) to the second floor and got to the “balusters” - a balcony-gallery, a terrace, which sometimes surrounded the whole house. In the houses of the Caucasian Cossacks, this staircase to the second floor was easily removed, and the bottom door was locked with a log from the second floor.
Like the nomads' yurt, the hut was clearly divided into left, female, and right, male, halves. Directly behind the senets is the largest room, the hall where guests were received. Here stood the best furniture and the best dishes.
In a small chicken, the main core, around which the premises were located, was a stove - coarse. From it to the right was Kunatskaya, where the unmarried sons of the owner, the head of the family, lived in barracks simplicity. To the left - a girl's, a child's and a cook. The left side is warmer.
In the large kuren of a wealthy Cossack, all the rooms were strictly divided. Women and small children never entered the kunatskaya: there were weapons - they could be crippled. Children without permission did not enter the parents' room.
Covered kurens were reeds or straw. Such a roof without repair costs forty years. One problem - it burns like gunpowder. And this forced the Cossacks to spend money on iron. The red-hot iron roof is perfectly used for drying fruit.
ESTATE
“Every Cossack is a sovereign in his own court,” says the proverb. If from a legal point of view this was true, and even the chieftain could not enter the courtyard of the Cossack without the permission of the owner, there were still instructions that all "citizens of the village society" strictly followed. The first such requirement, the custom, was: for each service - a separate building, that is, a separate stable - the most expensive building on the estate (sometimes more expensive than a kuren), as a rule, stone - brick, separately - a cowshed, a chicken coop, a pigsty, etc. Several yards: in front of the kuren - bases (Turk: sandy), behind the kuren - levada, and the kuren itself - a porch to the street, windows into the field - just like the Cossacks went to bed around the fire: facing the enemy. At the back are vegetable gardens. But the vineyards, orchards and melons in the villages and large farms were located not in the estates, but separately, in specially designated convenient places. Allotments were cut there for garden plots and vineyards. They were either common - farm, stanitsa, or privately owned. Under the melons, the land was allotted and distributed on shares annually.
This location of the estate and farms was explained by the relative abundance of free land, the unwillingness of the villagers to live "in oppression" (they would rather move to farms than reduce the estate territory) and the fear of fire.
COOKING
With the advent of spring, for the sake of fiery fear, they stopped cooking in huts, and the whole kitchen migrated to the summer kitchen - the cook.
The stove in the summer kitchen was the same as in the kuren, maybe a little smaller. They did not sleep on it, and it did not serve for heating. Although they could wash in it. She drowned herself with dry brushwood, straw, corn logs, and most often with dung. Kizyaks were made (trampled) in the far backyard from manure and chopped straw. The resulting mass was molded or cut and dried. The resulting fuel was stored like piles of firewood in the north of Russia.
Kizyaki burned hot and gave a special ash, which kept the heat for a long time. The entire Cossack cuisine is designed for the temperature regime of the combustion of dung.
A distinctive feature of the kitchen and all Cossack housing was sterile cleanliness. They kept a lot of cattle, and in the absence of cleanliness, life in the kuren and on the base would have been impossible. The stove was whitewashed after each cooking - a bucket of whitewash and kwach always stood under the stove. Above the stove mouth closed with a black iron damper - a hub - there was always a piece of a mirror smeared: the cook should look to see if she was smeared with soot. Near the summer kitchen there was a fire, on which stood a three-legged tagan, and on it was either a cauldron (a cauldron with a large bottom), or rings of different diameters to put cast iron. Samovars were placed right there and there was iron tackle: samovar pipes, stove dampers, tongs (stags), frying pans (chapalniks). The stove in the summer cooker looked elegant: it was decorated with a blue border, in those places where clay or pebbles could be used, the stove was painted with images of horses, Cossacks, and flowers. At the cheerful Cossack woman, every Saturday the kids bred new “Babylons” on the bleached sides of the stove ... On Sundays, the stove was not heated and the food was heated on the tagan.
There was a table next to the stove so that the food was "hot, hot." And a few steps from the cooker was a cellar, or cellar, where meat and dairy products were stored in the cold and on ice. Over the summer cooker, under a canopy, hung bunches of onions, peppers, and dried fish. All this blazed in the sun with golden or scarlet sides, teasing the appetite. With all the variety of Cossack cuisine (food cannot be the same in the territory from the Carpathians to the Pacific Ocean), there are common features for all Cossack cooking. The main thing is that it is preferable to cook the product as a whole. This applies not only to sheep, piglets, geese and other birds. Even cabbage is fermented with whole heads of cabbage. All side dishes and seasonings are served separately.
Almazov, B. Cossacks. Father's house / B. Almazov, V. Novikov. - St. Petersburg: Golden Age, 2013. - P. 36-43.
An army of fifty thousand people with a billion a year and training at the best military training grounds. The correspondent of "Kommersant" went to study what the Kuban Cossacks are.
EKATERINA DRANKINA
On a stuffy August day, 30 km from Krasnodar, I sit at the board of a local collective farm and for the second hour in a row I listen to how two men - one, about fifty, in civilian clothes, the other, about seventy, in camouflage - yell at each other.
In camouflage - the ataman of the Cossack society of the village of Platnirovskaya Vladimir Zakharovich Tikhiy. He corresponds to his formidable rank less than his surname, and here they are more likely to yell at him, and from time to time he only cries plaintively:
Petrovich, well, this is too much! Here I disagree with you! The people were at work. They were following orders. Pre-ka-zy, you understand?
Yeah, orders? - soars his interlocutor, Valery Petrovich Kolpakov, the owner of this office. A group of companies located in the village has a long-standing confrontation with the local court, and not so long ago, the director of one of the companies was arrested on charges of illegally organizing a rally. The judge, making a decision, was based on the testimony of witnesses - the Cossacks. In this connection, agricultural producers were somewhat angry with the Cossacks.
This is it, your free Cossacks? - Kolpakov slams his fist on the table. - Work as witnesses, give false evidence?
Our Cossacks, ours! - the chieftain draws plaintively. - You are also a Cossack, you have a certificate! And there were no false statements. It was the performance of the service.
Yes, shove this certificate to yourself, Zakharych! - Kolpakov makes noise. - I don’t want to be in such a Cossacks! Our grandfathers were shot - over there they are buried on the edge of the village. Grandfathers were farmers and warriors, not witnesses on duty!
On the left - the owner of the cabinet Valery Petrovich Kolpakov, in the center - Viktor Ilyushin, Kolpakov's deputy for production, on the right - ataman of the village of Platnirovskaya Vladimir Zakharovich Tikhy
It’s scary to listen to raging men, but I don’t want to interrupt them either. I came to the Kuban to find out what the revived Cossacks are like.
They revive him here in earnest:
The Kuban Cossack army, according to documents, is the largest in Russia, it has about 50 thousand people, and the most expensive. The official budget of the troops is 1 billion rubles. in year.
Judging by the fact that the vice-governor of the region Nikolai Doluda is leading the army, this is a necessary thing for the authorities. The Kuban Cossacks no longer dance, they don’t sing, as in the film of the same name - they are strong, they took the Crimea, they threaten Pussy Riot, Navalny’s headquarters and everyone who misbehaves with whips.
Starting this year, every school in the Kuban will have a Cossack class, and every Cossack (according to amendments to the regional law on land adopted last year) will receive land. How this is treated in a region where a hectare costs more than $2,000 was also an open question for me.
Since the end of last year, Cossack societies have begun to allocate land: in total, Cossacks can receive up to 500 hectares for free
Photo: Alexander Miridonov, Kommersant
Meanwhile, the men shouted to the ground:
Where were your Cossacks when children and women were killed in Kushchevskaya? Is there an ataman in Kushchevskaya? What is he there? Also, like you, is the “earth” waiting? Give you land...
Petrovich, why are you talking about Kushchevskaya? Well, there is an ataman! He is afraid, always afraid. The Cossacks escorted his daughter to school so that nothing would happen. We have no rights, Petrovich! - Zakharych beats his chest. - What can we do? As for the land, it's up to them to decide... So they gave us sixteen hectares, they need to be cultivated. Pay tax on them! They asked for a tractor - they didn't give it. They came to the collective farm to you, what to do, you know how - you process it.
A? Fine? - Kolpakov turns to me. - Here are the people. Cossacks - what is it? Community farming. After all, since the 90s, everyone has land shares! Who hasn't drunk yet. They would add up the shares, collect the Cossack economy, and here is the revival of traditions for you. We would have helped: rather than walking arm in arm with the police, it would be better to plow the land. So no: “Well, this is mine, this is worth 200 thousand!” Those shares are lying, and now money is again for fish - we are Cossacks, give us “land and bread”! Yes, and give the tractor, and forgive the tax. Who would forgive us what, eh?
Shouting a little more, the odnostanniks went about their business: Quiet - to the church to help the local priest unload building materials, Kolpakov - to visit the agronomists in the fields. They said goodbye by the hand - they argued, obviously, not for the first time and not for the last.
Black boards, Yulkin's robe
Platnirovsky kuren was founded in 1794, 20 years after the destruction by order of Catherine II of the Zaporizhzhya Sich (and the kuren with the same name that was part of it), by resettling the surviving Cossacks to the lands of the Kuban.
Thus, Catherine thanked the Cossacks for participating on her side in the Russian-Turkish wars: she granted the right bank of the Kuban to 38 kurens of the Cossacks, who by that time were already called the Black Sea Cossack Host. Subsequently, having replenished their ranks with Don Cossacks and other newcomers, the former Cossacks created the Kuban army.
Outwardly, these Cossacks differed from the other large army - the Don - in that they still spoke Ukrainian (still the language spoken in everyday life in the Kuban is actually surzhik, or, as the locals call it, balachka). Well, the form - Circassian and hat.
Kuban Cossacks never had problems with employment. Russian-Turkish and Russian-Polish wars, military operations in the Caucasus, Russian-Japanese and World War I - everywhere the Kuban army sent its divisions and regiments. For this they were lavishly repaid. Each Cossack who reached the age of 18 received ten acres of land, so that by the age of 19, when he went to serve, he would acquire ammunition from the income from this land.
Kurenya, formed by the Cossacks, also grew rich. Platnirovsky kuren in 1842 received the status of a village, by the beginning of the 20th century more than 10 thousand people lived in it.
Trouble came along with the revolution. The highest Cossack governing body - the Kuban Rada - decided that the time had come to realize the idea of independence for the Kuban, and proclaimed the Kuban People's Republic with its capital in Yekaterinodar (present-day Krasnodar).
The republic lasted until 1920, and its fall was followed by repressions and decossackization. The directive on decossackization was signed by Sverdlov on January 24, 1919. All Cossacks between the ages of 18 and 50 were to be taken to the North, and mass terror was to be carried out against the rich Cossacks, "exterminating them without exception."
They started with the Terek Cossacks, it only came to the Kuban Cossacks by the beginning of the 30s - by the time of the famine. In 1933, the village of Platnirovskaya, along with 12 others, was listed on the "black boards" for "sabotage". The surviving Cossacks tried to save their families by burying grain. Residents of the villages included in these lists were threatened with deportation.
From the villages of Poltava, Medvedovskaya, Urupskaya (according to reports, riots were being prepared there) almost all the inhabitants were deported - several tens of thousands of people. In other villages, including Platnirovskaya, the eviction was carried out partially. There are 600 families left - out of 18 thousand people ...
Families began to return pretty soon.
My grandfather and grandmother returned in the 39th, - Ivan Yaroshenko (another ataman, Zakharych's predecessor in this position) tells us while we are walking around the village. - First, the grandmother came to investigate whether it was possible to return. And behind her is her grandfather. Their hut was occupied, of course, but they settled in the neighborhood.
Most of all, those who returned were afraid that 1932 would repeat itself. Therefore, the Cossack roots were hidden as best they could: they covered the walls with photographs, checkers, hats. They didn’t sing songs when they talked about the Cossacks - they bit their tongues.
I asked my grandmother: “Grandma, am I a Cossack?” And she quietly told me: “Yes, all the Cossacks were gone,” says Ivan Alekseevich.
This fear persisted for a long time. Already when the Cossack movement began, in the early 90s, people went to meetings with caution.
I’ll put on everything there - well, a Circassian coat, a hat, and put on Yulka’s dressing gown and go like that, - Grandfather Nikolai, a cunning old man born in 1936, who survived both famine and deportation, laughs a little.
Grandfather Nikolai is now also a registered Cossack of the Kuban army. Once a year he goes to the training camp, he goes to the Cossack circle. He does not receive a salary - it is due only to those who are members of the Cossack squad, 22 thousand rubles. per person.
"Crimea to take" also did not go. No one reached Platnirovskaya: when the Cossacks were called, they were ordered to have money with them (they would return it later, but so that they would not be begged on the road), but the Platnirovskys, says grandfather Nikolai, did not give up their wife, they had to return back.
The former ataman of the Kuban army, 67-year-old Vladimir Gromov, has a large beautiful house in a prestigious place near Krasnodar - Lenin's farm on the edge of the village of Pashkovskaya. There is a garden around the house, which he, groaning, cultivates: “Foolishly took the largest plot, when the Cossacks were given land, I thought health would be enough for another hundred years - but no!”
Gromov did not offend his Pashkov Cossacks with the land either: under his leadership, they got one of the largest allotments - 400 hectares.
They are farmers, of course, so-so - they grew only weeds, but while I was chieftain, they did not touch them, they did not take away the land. And when my time was up, they had to fuss. The land was quickly re-registered, turned into a garden partnership. Well anyway...
Gromov's library has many icons, Cossack photographs and a real throne - a gift from the grateful Cossacks.
He is a well-known and respected figure: it all started with him. In the mid-1980s, Vladimir Gromov, associate professor at the Faculty of History of the Kuban State University, created a circle to study the history of the Cossacks. In 1989, on its basis, the Kuban Cossack club was formed, and then - the Cossack amateur association at the house of culture.
Those who say that the revival of the Cossacks in the 90s is a project of the Kremlin simply did not visit us, in the Kuban. It was so massive! Such a powerful explosion! The authorities did not like this for a long time, it was then that they already realized that they had to be friends with the Cossacks ...
In the summer of 1990, the Great Cossack Circle took place in Moscow. The Kuban Cossacks were numerically superior to the Don Cossacks, but the Don Cossack, Alexander Martynov, was chosen as the leader of the Union of Cossacks, created on this circle.
Of course, I had authority, - Vladimir Gromov recalls. - But Martynov had the opportunity to receive everyone in Moscow, to accommodate them. He had a business - a large car company, and in Moscow they had a hostel, I think, in 1905. So he became the leader.
Cossacks and power: the history of interaction
In November 1989, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR secured the right to rehabilitation for the Cossacks. The party authorities showed a keen interest in the revival of the Cossacks: the first constituent congress of the Union of Cossacks was prepared by employees of the apparatus of the Central Committee of the CPSU. Subsequently, it became clear that, supporting the Cossacks, the Communists expected their help in resisting the reformers.
The August putsch of 1991 split the Cossacks into two camps. Not a single association openly supported the GKChP, but the Union of Cossacks of Russia (TFR), led by Alexander Martynov, under whose auspices the revival of the Cossacks began in 1990, took a wait-and-see attitude. Another part of the Cossacks took an active part in the defense of the White House. Those who then separated from the TFR subsequently created their own public organization - the Union of Cossack Troops of Russia, Georgy Kokunko became its leader. It is believed that the law on the Cossacks, designed to return them to pre-revolutionary tax and other benefits, has not yet been adopted precisely because of the disagreements and confrontation between these two organizations.
Photo: V. Mashatin / Photo archive of the Ogonyok magazine
After the collapse of the USSR, Cossack organizations, having received the opportunity to engage in social and political activities, launched a stormy work. The emerging public associations, relying on the enthusiasm of their leaders, began to actively influence the policy of local authorities, especially in the regions of traditional residence of the Cossacks (Krasnodar, Rostov-on-Don). The Cossacks perceived the decrees “on rehabilitation” in their own way: they began to demand budget money, the return of buildings and lands. Created in the early 1990s, the “Council of Atamans of the South of Russia” demanded in an ultimatum form that President Boris Yeltsin recognize the five self-proclaimed Cossack republics. The authorities abruptly stopped supporting the Cossacks both at the legislative and departmental levels.
By the mid-90s, through the efforts of some Cossack public figures (including Ataman Alexander Martynov, who had connections in power structures), the Cossacks managed to restore the structure of the historical Cossack troops of Russia. To date, there are 11 Cossack troops, almost all of them (with the exception of the Central Army, created on the basis of the Moscow community) existed historically.
Since the mid-90s, the state, fearing the influence of Cossack organizations, began to regulate their activities. In 1996, the Main Directorate of the Cossack Troops of Russia (GUKV) was created - an independent division of the presidential administration. The GUKV does not particularly consider the opinion of the leaders of the Cossack organizations and holds back their initiatives. At the same time, the idea of state registration of Cossack associations arises - the creation of a common register, which subsequently will actually divide the Cossacks into “registered”, which has advantages in the form of the right to public service, funding and economic benefits, and “public”, deprived of all these benefits.
Photo: A. Lyskin / Photo archive of the Ogonyok magazine
In the second half of the 1990s, the Cossacks actively, but unsuccessfully, struggled to enshrine their status and their rights in the legislation, trying to achieve the adoption of a law on the Cossacks. Relations within the Cossacks are not easy: there is a struggle for power, benefits and privileges, scandals and revelations in the press are constant. All this is exacerbated by disagreements between the main Cossack unions, as well as the confrontation between the president and the State Duma. Both organizations - the Union of Cossacks of Russia and the Union of Cossack Troops of Russia and Abroad - are preparing their own bills "On the Russian Cossacks" and "On the Cossacks of Russia". Both bills do not pass against the backdrop of conflicts. After that, legislative activity in relation to the Cossacks begins to fade.
By 2000, the state register of Cossack societies was nevertheless approved. Due to the split into “registered” and “public” and numerous disagreements, the Cossack movement is actually losing influence. Ordinary members and chieftains of the Cossack organizations included in the register are fighting for their financial situation. The Union of Cossacks of Russia is not included in the register, which is why a split begins in the organization itself.
Photo: V. Bushukhin / Photo archive of the Ogonyok magazine
In 2003, President Vladimir Putin liquidated the GUKV, replacing this administrative unit with the post of adviser to the President of Russia on Cossack affairs. By the end of 2005, Colonel-General Gennady Troshev, who was appointed to this position, is still seeking the signing of the law “On the Civil Service of the Russian Cossacks” by the end of 2005. This becomes a milestone in the interaction of the Cossacks with the authorities - in the future, new norms are fixed by a number of official documents.
Today, the political position of the Russian Cossacks is quite strongly controlled by state structures and the framework of the legislation of the Russian Federation. Atamans are not elected, but appointed from Moscow. Cossack organizations remained strong only in their traditional regions. The richest are the Kuban Cossacks. In 2014-2016, their funding amounted to 3.1 billion rubles, for 2016-2021 it is planned to allocate 6.2 billion rubles from the regional budget. A little less than in the Kuban, the budget of the Don Cossacks. According to the regional program, for 2014–2020, about 4.7 billion rubles, or about 700 million rubles, have been allocated to support the Cossack communities of the Rostov region. in year. In other regions, the budgets are much smaller. In the Volgograd region, the program for the development of the Cossacks for 2015-2020 provides for a total of 1 billion rubles.
The main funding of the Cossack troops comes through regional budgets, but since 2014, when the plan for implementing the presidential strategy for the development of the Cossacks until 2020 was approved, several million rubles have been provided for these purposes in 28 FTPs. So, for example, about 7-10 million rubles are allocated annually for the festival "Cossack Freemen" under the FTP "Culture of Russia". At the same time, private companies not connected with the Cossacks can win tenders for holding such events. Cossacks in such cases often scold the organizers and participants, calling the latter "mummers".
The Cossacks have their own university - Moscow State University of Technology and Management named after K. G. Razumovsky, which trains specialists in economic, technological, mechanical, biological and humanitarian profiles for the food and processing industry. Targeted training of Cossack students here began in 2010, and in May 2014, at the suggestion of Vladimir Putin, the university received the status of the first Cossack university. It is assumed that the Cossack component in education will only increase here - in particular, "modules of the science of the Cossacks" and military-patriotic education are being actively introduced.
By common efforts, by April 1991, the law "On the rehabilitation of the Cossacks" was issued. And three years later there were not dozens, but hundreds of Cossack associations in the Kuban.
Gromov became the ataman of the Kuban army, but there was also the "all-Kuban army", and dozens of individual chieftains with their own units.
The ideas for which the chieftains fought were mostly nationalist: to prevent the “Caucasian caliphate”, to resist “Islamization”, to punish guest workers who “behave badly”.
The most sensational story of those years is the case of the Domanin gang. Sergei Domanin, a participant in the Chechen wars, returned to the Kuban, to his hometown of Timashevsk, in the mid-90s. Under the slogans of the revival of the Cossacks and law enforcement, he put together a gang that was engaged in kidnapping, murders and robberies for several years.
Domanin died in April 1997 during a clash with policemen. Representatives of the Cossacks from all over the region came to his funeral.
In front of the funeral procession, according to Cossack customs, they led the orphaned white horse Domanin, carried his saber and all his awards.
A few months later there was a trial of gang members, 22 people received terms from eight to 20 years.
There were many frankly gangster stories in the 90s, and yet the current Cossacks have no unity in their assessments of that period.
Then why did people go to the Cossacks? To fight the bandits, - explains to me the captain Vladimir Petrovich Zatsepsky, a resident of the village next to Platnirovskaya. - And they fought. I remember that they caught an Armenian, a rapist - he raped a girl in our place, they retreated with whips as they should. So they were imprisoned for six years! There were also fighting Cossacks in the Temryuk region - they were simply killed like that. And Gromov's - they were sitting on the budget. No, Gromov is a good man, but he stopped us all... And why should a Cossack sit idle? He needs to fight, to protect order ...
Gromov says that under him there was not a lot of budget for the Cossacks, not like now, but his army really had power, and considerable:
Can you imagine when a thousand Cossacks demand the governor's resignation on the square? Can deputies raise their hands against? And so it was on June 30, 1992. The army demanded their resignation, and Governor Dyakonov was removed!
However, the former ataman is also proud of the fact that he fought off the claims of politicians to the Cossacks for a long time:
Serious people came and tried to negotiate for the Cossacks to go to the Caucasus to fight.
Berezovsky tried to seat me next to him on the presidium, but I did not go. I told them all this: you will leave, and we will stay. The Caucasian peoples are our neighbors. We have to be very careful with them.
Gromov was chieftain for 17 years. About what preceded his non-nomination in 2007, he speaks evasively: “I knew that I would no longer be an ataman. The government decided so. Am I going to throw myself under this train? Move and forget! And I also knew that my atamans would not support me. They have already acquired something: someone has a shop, someone has a market, someone has land - there was something to hook them on, so I just didn’t begin to advance myself. ”
There were rumors that they threatened to open a criminal case against Gromov, but these rumors were not confirmed in any way, and since 2007 he has been a deputy of the legislative assembly of the Krasnodar Territory.
Gromov is critical of the current Cossacks. I don’t like that I’ve become too close to the state, I’ve lost my freedoms, but I’m most outraged by whips:
Now you go to any Cossack store - whips hang of all stripes. What is it for? I am categorically against the Cossacks with whips coming out. The Cossack took the whip in his hands when he mounted the horse. And now here and there you hear that someone was whipping someone with a whip. Is it like this? Did the person break the law? Attract according to the law, and brandish whips, disgrace the Cossacks - this is not necessary.
In 2007, the Cossack circle supported the candidacy of the vice-governor of the region Nikolai Doluda. He comes from the Kharkov region, not of Cossack origin, a regular military man. But the closest associate of the former governor Tkachev (evil tongues even talk about joint property recorded on children) and permanent vice-governor already under his successor.
Two worlds, one camouflage
I wish you good health, gentlemen Cossacks! - shouts Nikolay Doluda, military ataman of the Kuban Cossack army.
We wish you good health, Mr. Ataman! - lining up clumsily, the Cossacks of different ages answer.
Over the next ten minutes, Doluda raises the morale of those gathered with a slogan about how the Cossacks “in the fourteenth year they closed the borders of their homeland with their breasts”, “they didn’t let these Bandera people on Russian soil”, that the Cossacks are “first of all warriors” and should always be ready.
Ataman and vice-governor of the Krasnodar Territory Nikolai Doluda (center) at the traditional annual military field training of the 1st historical Yekaterinodar Cossack regiment named after Zakhary Chepega
Photo: Alexander Miridonov, Kommersant
Doluda bypasses the army, paternally wondering if everyone is full, if it was cold to sleep at the training camp, if the Cossacks liked dinner. He proposes to continue the exercises - and the Grushniks take their places at the sites, explain how to use different types of ammunition:
To undermine this steel cable, three TNT blocks are needed, they interrupt both the cable and the rod ...
The Cossacks crowd around the explainer in a crowd, the grandfather and the boy are let forward so that they can be seen better. One of those gathered is a priest, Father Nikolai, a fit, muscular young man in camouflage. He proudly informs me that he showed the best result at the shooting ranges.
But, I heard that the Cossack who supported Navalny was expelled from the army - how do you feel about this?
I have a very positive attitude towards this, - Father Nikolai willingly supports the slippery topic. - Penance was imposed on him! Because he betrayed his comrades. Betrayed the ideology... of his brothers!
After the training camp, I try to talk to Doluda. It's not so easy: unlike the ingenuous Father Nikolai, the vice-governor only wants to talk about what he wants to talk about.
As part of a tripartite agreement between the administration of the Krasnodar Territory, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Kuban Cossack Army, 1,652 Cossacks serve to protect public order as part of police squads. Other areas of work in accordance with federal law 154 - border protection, environmental and fire safety, elimination of the consequences of natural disasters, participation in combating drug trafficking, - Nikolai Aleksandrovich reported clearly, in a military way.
Regarding the attack of the Cossacks on Navalny's headquarters: "No one has proven that these were the Cossacks of the Kuban army." Whipping Pussy Riot: "I don't want to talk about it and I won't."
Even the relationship between the authorities and the Cossacks seemed to be divorced for him, the vice-governor and the ataman, in different angles: going to the Crimea in 2014, he “took a vacation at his own expense at work”, just like a thousand Cossacks who went there, because “First of all, I am a patriot.”
Unlike my acquaintance, the head of the collective farm from Platnirovskaya, Nikolai Alexandrovich believes in the prospects for Cossack agriculture: “In accordance with the changes made three years ago to the Land Code, land can be transferred to Cossack communities without auctions, and the governor of the Krasnodar Territory instructed to allocate from 300 to 500 hectares of land for each district Cossack society. At the end of last year, 13.5 thousand hectares were allocated, and this work continues. 12 Cossack agricultural cooperatives have been created on these lands, the first results of their work will appear at the end of the year.
He was accused of illegally privatizing his own dacha near Anapa. This summer the verdict was announced: six and a half years in prison.
I discuss this story with 72-year-old Zaur, sitting in his house in the Adyghe village of Psebe.
I visit Anapa a lot, we sell hazelnuts there - our whole village is engaged in this. There, people remember Nesterenko with good words, they say that the man believed in his work. He is no longer young, but he seriously fought with this mafia ... He fought, of course, there was one gang there, and they put him behind the dacha ...
Psebe - the village is rather deaf, strangers do not go here, but among the inhabitants there is one who considers himself a Cossack. He does not go to any training camps, keeps a family checker, knows songs. Anzor says that he is a good person, everyone here respects him.
And those who stand with the police in outfits - they are not very good ... They call them mummers ... We have one guy here, who, like everyone else, also sells hazelnuts. And here he is driving a car, a trunk full of hazelnuts. His outfit stops, Cossacks. The Cossack says to him: “Check on the roads! Podsaul Potapenko!” And he quickly replies: “Well, then I am Prince Shkhalakhov!”
The Cossack smiled and let him go.
The “prince” went to sell hazelnuts, and the “prince” remained to help the police.
Monument to the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks writing a letter to the Turkish Sultan, installed in the capital of the Kuban Cossacks
Photo: Alexander Miridonov, Kommersant
Maria Lieberman took part in the preparation of the material
Cossack Don: Five centuries of military glory Author unknown
Dwellings and estates of the Don Cossacks
The dwellings of different peoples, despite their great diversity, can be reduced to a limited number of types. Residential buildings are subdivided according to the signs of vertical and horizontal development, layout, correlation and connection of buildings included in the dwelling complex.
To the buildings of the Don Cossacks M.A. Ryblova applied a systematization based on three features: the shape of the dwelling (round, square, rectangular), the presence or absence of ancillary premises and the structure (the way the space of the main premises is organized).
In accordance with these features, she identified 10 groups of buildings, reducible to square, genetically ascending to round (single-chamber with a hearth in the center - shish) and rectangular.
When enlarged and regrouped, the first type includes square single-chamber with a hearth in the center - chicken, dugout; the same with the attached auxiliary room - chicken with a closet. This last later view, transformed by partitions (which could be capital) and moving the furnace, is called round house.
Rectangular single-chamber with a "diagonal" structure are called hut, hut; of a similar structure with an attached auxiliary room - hut or hut with closet. If the auxiliary premises are connected with residential premises. then they called him lingering or communication hut.
Rectangular dwellings (diagonal structure) with attached premises were transformed due to the wall ( five-wall) or partitions ( outbuilding).
Different types of residential buildings have their own names among the Cossacks: dugout, figalek, chligel, figel(outbuilding), chicken(Also chicken), house, five-wall, hut. Mostly in the upper Don districts, the names hut, communication, lingering / communication hut, hut, hut.
Residential wooden houses on piles or a stone plinth - "basements" (stone bottoms and log tops), as well as entirely stone ones, according to historians, appear on the Don at the end of the 17th-18th centuries. The lower floor ("hamshenik") was used for utility rooms. Outside, a high staircase led to the house, turning into a "gallery" (a balcony closed on all sides). As noted by V.D. Sukhorukov, "both the architecture and decorations ... have some strange mixture of Asian forms with ancient Russian taste." According to him, in the 20s. 19th century 100 out of 924 houses in the village of Starocherkasskaya were made of stone.
Several stone residential buildings of the 18th century remained in Cherkassk. One of the most interesting is the Zhuchenkovs' house. It reminds us of a kind of fortress: thick old walls, narrow windows of the lower floor, beveled inward, protected by wrought iron bars. The house had a Dutch oven, decorated with colored tiles.
The “classic” Cossack kuren is a square house on a basement (with a stone plinth), on piles (rarely) or “bottoms” and wooden “tops” covered with a hipped roof. According to A.G. Lazarev, the “bottoms” are deepened into the ground (up to 1 m), and their outer ground wall with two to four openings reaches 1.5–2 m in height. They were covered with beams protruding up to 1 m, so that it was possible to arrange a bypass gallery or veranda.
For the construction of the "tops", as a rule, a round wood split in half was used - oak, pine, less often imported larch. The interior decoration was carried out with pine boards, the exterior - with alder. The height of the walls as a whole was about 3 m. The hearth was more often located in the center of the house, divided by walls “crosswise”. The rooms communicated in a circle.
At least three windows and a front porch with a door were arranged along the facade. On one of the end adjacent main facades there was a working porch. There were windows on at least three walls of the house.
The hipped roof was made more often without dormer windows. To illuminate and ventilate the attic space, light openings and ventilation holes were arranged in the eaves. Fruits, herbs, fish and other supplies were dried and stored in the attic. Until the middle of the XIX century. the roof was covered with reeds (reeds, chakan) or aspen boards. In the second half of the century - roofing steel sheet, which was available to wealthy Cossacks.
The design of the elements of the dwellings was such that it allowed them to be disassembled and transferred to another place, which was often used by the Cossacks when moving a village or farm to a new place. In the early 50s. 20th century when creating the Tsimlyansk reservoir, a significant part of the traditional dwellings was moved from the flood zone to other places.
Cornices, window openings, porches were decorated with sawn carvings. It was carried out by carpenters from central Russia and Ukraine. The elements of the ornament were, according to the definition of A.G. Lazarev, ivy leaf, “lamb” (a combination of teeth and arches), horns (horizontally located Greek accolade), “vine”, rhombus, triangle or arrowhead, straight and oblique cross, arrow. At the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. ornamental rows are crowned with symmetrically arranged images of birds, fish (sturgeon). The corners of the house were "protected" by stylized solar signs and "thunder" arrows.
Variations on this basic type of dwelling are associated either with the transformation of the lower floors into a full-fledged residential floor (two-story houses with top and bottom), or with the transformation of the gallery into a simple veranda supported by vertical posts. The veranda, unlike the bypass gallery, was more often one-sided.
Along with the kuren, a house was sometimes built in the upper reaches of the Don. connection when two living quarters (sometimes with internal partitions) connected a vestibule and a closet. Such a house was heated by two hearths. Despite the autonomy of the halves, the doors, just like in the kuren, linked the rooms in a circle. Connection known among Russian Old Believers (Lipovans) living on the Danube, among peasants on the Russian-Ukrainian border. Such houses were built by the Cossacks of the Orenburg army, including the Nagaybaks (baptized Tatars who served in the Cossack units).
The Cossack square 2-storey house with "bottoms" and "tops" (and a hipped roof) is distributed throughout the Don, but on the Lower Don, according to our observations, mainly in the areas where the Old Believers settled. Such a house sometimes arises as a result of the habitation of the basement.
Typical estate buildings can be considered 3-, 4-room round house and one-, two-room outbuilding(hligel). Five-walled common among poor people. This species comes from a two-chamber dwelling (a room and a canopy).
Impoverished Cossacks sometimes huddled in adobe or frame stuffed dwellings, similar in size and design to peasant huts. The rich, on the contrary, built brick houses, keeping the traditional shape and layout of the kuren.
In the interior decoration of the house, the Cossacks took a lot from the highlanders, Tatars and other peoples. Walls chambers(or halls) decorated carpets. They hung weapons and horse harness. Family portraits (photographs in the 20th century) and paintings were placed on free plots. Pillows with lace inserts were stacked on the beds - seams. From under the bedspread, the lace edge of the sheet was visible - valance. If the bed was in the upper room, the young did not sleep on it until the birth of the child; only sometimes this place was offered to a guest. In one of the corners of the room was made out holy corner with icons, which should have been visible from the entrance. A table covered with a tablecloth was placed under the icons (as a rule, only church books were placed on it). There were several icons; the quality of writing and the richness of their decoration (for example, the presence of a silver salary - vestments) was determined by the wealth of the owner. In the upper room there was a closet - "postav", slide- for dishes. Behind the glass doors were placed the most valuable porcelain, glass and silver items. Earthenware and metal utensils were used daily: makhotki, makitra, jugs, cups, bowls; knives, spoons, tongs, coffee pots, samovars. In any house there was at least one rare thing brought by the owner from afar (copper and silver vessels, dishes, art glass, etc.).
The main types of estates can be reliably described in the form in which they existed from the middle of the 19th century. The Cossack nobles of the Don Cossacks equipped their residences in accordance with the traditions of the Russian local nobility: they built large houses in the classical style, outbuildings, buildings for servants, laid out a park with a fence and an entrance gate overlooking the river. House churches or chapels were also an obligatory attribute. The estates of M.I. Platov, in particular, available for visiting "Mishkinskaya Dacha".
The estate of an ordinary Cossack was, in fact, open, since a fence made of wattle or low “walls” built of local stone (shell rock, sandstone) without mortar, had the value of a boundary rather than protection. In the front part there was a flower garden, part of the orchard, the facade of the kuren with the front porch, veranda or gallery also went out here. Household part with a well, cellar, summer kitchen or stove - rough, sheds were located behind the kuren or on the side of the non-front entrance; behind it, in the third part - a garden and a vineyard. Barnyard ( bases), usually separated by a hedge.
According to M.A. Ryblova, in the middle of the 19th - early 20th centuries. Three main types of estates were widespread on the Don: continuous - with a direct connection between residential and outbuildings (northern districts); non-merged - with outbuildings located freely, and a residential building set parallel to the street (everywhere); "yard-kuren" - with the same free arrangement of outbuildings and a house in the back of the yard.
It should be noted that the traditional dwellings and estates of the Don Cossacks have broad analogies in the everyday culture of the Slavs, the peoples of the Volga region, and the old-timers of Siberia. However, upon closer examination, they reveal constructive, finishing and other features that make it possible to accurately distinguish Cossack houses and estates from the general array of buildings.
The main type of dwelling that dominated in the development was chicken(with the central position of the hearth and the circular communication of the rooms) - in its origin goes back to the organization of semi-nomad camps, known from descriptions and medieval archaeological sites (Tsimlyansk settlement) and the archaic type of dwellings.
