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, not at all like a Russian hut or a Ukrainian hut. The kuren was built from local forest: 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's inside?
In large villages, such as Aksayskaya, Gnilovskaya, Starocherkasskaya and Kamenskaya, one could see two-story houses, where the upper one (tops) is divided into two halves, in the first there is an entrance hall, a hall and a bedroom, and in the second half there are three more rooms. On the ground floor (downstairs) there were three more rooms, a cellar and a glacier. Ice has been collected into the glacier since winter; the temperature here has been below freezing all year. 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 external corridor covered with boards. In addition, the kuren was equipped with a “locker” - a canopy on poles, similar to a covered balcony. You could enter the kuren via an open porch with railings. 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 in the “galdareyka”. In winter, the whole Cossack family dined in a “cook.” In the kitchen, in addition to the stove and a lot of utensils, one could find a samovar and a coffee pot. By the way, the Cossacks loved to drink tea and coffee brought from military campaigns.
Balconies were often richly decorated with flowers in pots. Balconies and shutters were decorated with simple carvings.
Decoration
The decoration of the house was clean and simple. On the yellow walls of the kuren hung paintings and portraits of military chieftains and royalty, and sometimes there were checkers, rifles and souvenirs from overseas countries. There were icons in the corner of the hall. In almost all the rooms there were wooden chests covered with 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 stand or cabinet with different 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 there was 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 multi-colored blankets, the owners of the house slept until they married their son or accepted their son-in-law into the house, then 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. This is how the Cossack kuren was described by Mikhail Sholokhov in the novel “ Quiet Don“: “In the upper room, in addition to the painted wooden bed with turned pine cones in the corners, there is a bound, heavy chest with Aksinya’s dowry and outfits near the door. At the front angle there is a table, an oilcloth with General Skobelev galloping on terry banners bowed in front of him; two chairs, at the top - images in bright, miserable paper halos. On the side, on the wall, there are photographs spotted with flies.”
What did you eat?
Visiting a Cossack for lunch, you could enjoy noodles, borscht or freshly cooked fish soup. For the second course, the Cossack “amused his darling” with a pie with cheese, jelly with kvass or kaymak - one of the Cossack’s favorite dairy delicacies. Meat dishes were rare, only during the season or on exceptional occasions, for example, at a wedding or funeral. The Cossack menu also depended on Orthodox holidays and fasts. The Don Cossacks took all fasts very seriously.
Unlike the house, the yard was not as clean. In the yard there was a cattle station, a threshing floor and a small garden.
This is how historians remember the Cossack kuren, which stood somewhere on the Don 100-200 years ago. Although, in distant villages you can still find real Cossack kurens, in which the very atmosphere is reminiscent 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.
The history of the Cossacks is... "a side river flowing into the great river of Russian history."
V. G. Belinsky
The Slavs, as a special people, were first mentioned in the narratives of Roman scientists of the 1st-2nd centuries. AD Pliny the Elder and Tacitus under the name of the Wends. In other sources, these people were called Vinids, Sklavins and Antes. Calling the Slavs a great people, most ancient historians single out the Antes, characterizing them as the bravest people. The latest research allows us to talk about the genetic connection of the Slavs with the Scythian-Sarmatian and other tribes that lived in Eastern Europe.
Traces material culture indicate that the Antes lived in dugouts, practiced fishing, agriculture and crafts.
Among the Slavs of the ancient and early feudal periods, there was a tribe called the Rhodians, Rosses or Russes, who lived in the Middle Dnieper region. They gave the name to the state with its center in Kyiv - Kievan Rus. From here the word “Rus” spread to all lands and peoples that were part of the Russian state. The Russians gradually penetrated the Don. In 965 the squads Prince of Kyiv Svyatoslav Igorevich, founded by the Khazars in the 30s of the 9th century, was captured in the area of present-day Tsimlyansk. city of Sarkel. The destroyed city was restored, significantly rebuilt and turned into an outpost called Belaya Vezha, which translated into modern language means "White Tower" or "White Fortress". This was the first permanent Slavic settlement on the Don, created from dry brick. Firing adobe was not yet known at that time. Later, other settlements arose nearby - on the left bank of the Don and under the current village of Blizhnaya Melnitsa. Unfortunately, the excavations of Belaya Vezha are now located at the bottom of the Tsimlyansk Reservoir. This city served important strategic and trade functions until mid-XII century.
Nowadays, irrefutable evidence has been found that already during the Battle of Kulikovo in 1380 there were Don Cossacks. There is evidence about the Don Cossacks from an even earlier time - the 12th-13th centuries, written by foreign merchants, diplomats, and travelers. They claimed that Christians “Azsaks”, “Kazs”, “Azaks” lived in the Don steppes. In Russian chronicles they were called “Tmutarkhans”, “Tmutarakans”, “brodniki”, that is, living in the outskirts, in the wilderness. All this indicates that the Don Cossacks are descendants the most ancient Slavs"Tmutarkhan-Brodnikov" with a fair admixture of the blood of local nomads: Polovtsians, Nogais, Bulgars, Khazars and even Hungarians, who roamed the Don steppes in the 10th-11th centuries. Thus, the version about the origin of the Don Cossacks from fugitive Moscow slaves turned out to be untenable.
By 1570, there were already over 30 large Cossack settlements on the Don land. In addition, there were many camps and winter quarters. The formation of administrative centers, first in Razdory in 1549, and then in Cherkassk from 1644, intensified the process of land development by the Cossacks.
Cossacks settled both in the floodplain of the Don, for example, in Cherkassk, and on the high banks. From here two different types of Cossack houses were formed. But both of them had a lot in common. This common feature sharply distinguished the Cossack house from typical buildings Central Russia. An Old Russian house is a wooden log hut with four walls, consisting of a living cage and a small vestibule. The hut was installed on a high basement, used for storing food supplies and other household needs, in order to isolate the housing from dampness and not experience inconvenience in winter due to snow drifts. In one of the corners of the single space of the hut, an adobe stove was placed on a wooden platform, near which there was a wooden box that hid the stairs to the basement. The stove was placed in the corner opposite to the red one, i.e. the most illuminated, the “goddess”. This type of building was typical for the poorest families.
Wealthier people built five-wall huts, i.e. a residential building consisting of two adjacent rooms separated by a solid log wall. The fifth wall separated the hut with the stove and the upper room from the entryway. The basement under the living quarters had a direct connection with the outbuildings, which were connected under a common roof with the housing. This type of building has found wide use not only in European Rus', but also in the Urals and Siberia.
Cossack kurens appeared on the Don in the second half XVII century, when the life of the Cossacks became more sedentary. Previously, the unpretentious military life did not require special home comfort, and they lived in hastily made dugouts, which in case of danger they left and went to a new place. After all, military clashes with the Azov Turks often arose over the most insignificant reasons.
During their stay in Azov, conquered from the Turks, the Cossacks could not help but appreciate the amenities of the houses they left behind and took advantage of this when building their homes. But it is important to note that the Cossacks borrowed from the Turks only the idea of comfortable housing, and not planning structure. For all Muslims, the house is necessarily divided into male and female halves. The Cossacks began to build not long rectangular houses, but almost square ones in plan, calling them “round.” Their layout was cross-shaped: the entire space of the house was divided by transverse partitions into four rooms, and the stove that heated them served as the compositional center. There was no trace of any division into male and female halves.
In contrast to the huts called “holobuds”, the Cossacks dubbed the heated hut “kuren.” This word apparently came from the combination “kurnaya izba” - the smoke in such buildings escaped from the stove outside not through the chimney, but through windows and doors. Initially, “kurens” were simple mud huts made of adobe or clay. Later, this term was also used for houses heated "white".
The main building materials for the construction of kurens in the Don steppes were clay and wood, less often stone. Bricks and tiles, as more expensive materials, were used mainly for masonry and lining of stoves.
When developing floodplain lands, the kuren was placed on a high stone basement (omshanik). It served at the same time as a fortress and a storage facility for supplies and household utensils, and protected the house from destruction during prolonged flooding. Before the commissioning of the Tsimlyanskaya hydroelectric power station in 1952, the Don flooded annually in March-May for one and a half to three months, covering a floodplain 10-30 kilometers wide with water. Floodplain settlements, including Cherkassk, found themselves cut off from the rest of the Don Army Region. The only means of transportation in such settlements were boats. Hence the uniqueness of the Cossack kurens - the presence along the perimeter at the level of the residential floor of a balyasnik - a spacious balcony with a GaldaReya. To get to the residential floor, you first had to climb the stairs to the gallery. It also served as a berth for boats during river floods, for sleeping or resting, of course, in the warm season, and also for passage “to the outer window shutters. Annual floods led to the uniformity of Cossack kurens.
Since timber was floated in abundance from the north both along the Volga and Don, wood was used as a cheap building material to the very southern borders of Russia. In families with little income, even in flooded Cossack villages, the basement of a residential building was also made of timber. Two rows of wooden piles were driven in, and the space between them was filled with any material. The abundance of wooden houses and structures turned settlements into ready-made bonfires for fires. If we take into account the very dense development due to the saving of land within the fortified towns, then the scale of the fire hazard is obvious. According to the recollections of contemporaries who visited Cherkassk in the 17th-18th centuries, the streets were so narrow that it was possible to shake hands with each other from opposite streets. Therefore, the kurens that have come down to us date mainly to the second half of the 19th century. Compared to the ancient ones, which had almost no decorations, they are richly decorated with applied and through-cut carvings. The wide, openwork carving a board - a valance, which is nailed to the eaves under the overlap of a hipped roof. The rapid running of the complex floral ornament, varying characteristic in applied arts The Don motif is a grape mustache; it emphasizes the compositional completeness and makes the image of the kurens unique. The uniqueness of the kurens is also in the shape of the roof. If in the center of Russia the roof of a hut, as a rule, is gable and a lighthouse was often built in the attic, then the straw, reed or, less often, wooden roof of kurens is hipped, perceived from a distance as round. Hence the common name on the Don - " round house"In addition, all the rooms of the kuren had doors between them, i.e. you could walk in a circle."
Galdarea and the baluster most often had a roof in common with the house. This was achieved without much difficulty, since they had a small width - from 70 to 200 cm. Hanging the roof over the baluster below the house eaves made it possible to protect the kuren from overheating in the summer heat, in winter and spring - from the winds traditional in our area and increased the protection of the coated or walls whitewashed with yellow clay from dampness and rain. In everything we see the wisdom of the builders, accumulated over centuries.
In an ordinary Cossack home, in addition to the kitchen and one or two bedrooms, there was always a room. This word comes from the Old Russian "gorneye", which means "especially solemn", upper, best (compare with the mountainous place in the altar part of churches). The room was always clean and ready to receive guests.
The development of villages on the terraces above the floodplain largely preserved the features of the first kurens in the flooded meadows. True, the basement has noticeably decreased, turning into a high basement. Due to deep groundwater, food supplies began to be stored in cellars, no longer in basements, but in the courtyard of the estate. The baluster has noticeably shortened and covers only one or two sides of the building: in the courtyard and on the main facade. Often, on the main façade, the gallery is pushed forward by a wide balcony, popularly called a “porch.”
If the first type of development is preserved in abundance in Starocherkassk, then the second type is preserved in Nedvigovka and Tanais. Even today they form the architectural background of these villages, noticeably different, for example, from the neighboring Little Russian Sinyavka. Leaning from time to time, faded by the sun, partially losing their carved decor, the kurens with dignity bear the memory of the past. As if highlighting the independent character of the Cossacks, they do not recognize the red line of construction. On the streets they either come forward in a compact, solid mass, or hide in the depths of the yard under the canopy of centuries-old acacias.
There is another type of Cossack residential building, common in the Upper Don. This is the so-called "connection house". In it, the vestibule was turned into a middle room, and along the entrance a gallery was built in the form of a long corridor opening onto the facade with a wide porch. There is no clearly defined basement; it is transformed into a high plinth.
On Lower Don, especially in the villages of Bessergenevskaya, Bagaevskaya, Krivyanskaya, Grushevskaya and in the city of Novocherkassk itself, wooden houses were not painted oil paint, and before major holidays they were “whitened” with local yellow clay. In most villages, houses were painted blue, an unusual color for Russia in general. This daring color scheme can still be seen in abundance in Bataysk, built up with one-story Cossack wooden kurens. Along with red, ultramarine was a favorite color on the Don: the natural environment and love for sea elements, trade relations with the peoples of the East. Everything, as we see, was mixed up in the formation of everyday life and aesthetic taste Cossacks.
Unlike Central Russian buildings located in cold winter conditions, utility buildings in Cossack estates were usually located independently of the residential building, in the depths of the courtyard. Moreover, in hot summer conditions, it was important to have not only a summer kitchen, but also, in addition to winter sheds, summer sheds and pens for animals. Since 8-9 months of the year people lived not in the smoking area, but in the yard, it was important to have reliable (up to 30 meters) sanitary gaps. Therefore, bases, compost pits and a toilet were located at the very end of the estate.
Literature:
Kulishov V.I. In the Lower Don. - M.: Art, 1987.
Pilyavsky V.I., Tits A.A., Ushakov Yu.S. History of Russian architecture. - L.: Stroyizdat, 1984.
Pyavchenko E. Cossack kuren // Rich well. Issue 1. - Rostov n/d: Rostizdat, 1991.
FATHER'S HOUSE
SMOKE
“My home is my fortress” - the Cossacks could rightfully subscribe to this saying. The Cossack dwelling combined both a habitat and a defensive structure. In addition, it clearly shows the features of the most ancient and original history. The Cossack kuren is another argument against the theory about the origin of the Cossacks from the fugitive population of Russia.
The name "kuren" is Mongolian. The word “smoking,” that is, blowing light smoke, to which the name of the Cossack dwelling is sometimes attributed, has nothing to do with it. The word "kuren" means "round", even more broadly - "harmonious". The Mongols called a kuren a nomadic camp surrounded by carts. The detachment that defended this fortified camp was also called kuren. The word was used in this meaning among the Cossacks. The Cossacks and Kubans called a regiment a kuren.
People have lived on the Don, on the Dnieper, in the Caucasus, on the Terek since ancient times. The simplest dwelling was a half-dugout, covered with reeds or straw. Steppe nomads lived in “wagons” (yurts) or booths. Cossacks still set up such tents - booths - in their meadows or field camps.
Kuren in its classic, ancient form, forgotten already in the times of the Polovtsians 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, using the same construction techniques, makes these distant places related to Dagestan and the Caspian region.
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 of turkish ones. The walls were woven from two rows of twigs or reeds, and the space between them was filled with earth for warmth and strength. The roof was definitely reed, with a hole for the smoke to escape.
But it was not possible to live in such buildings everywhere either. Wide, many-kilometer river floods required special buildings - piles. Memories of them are preserved in the names. “Chiganaki” is a building on stilts. And the people of the “Chig” tribe lived in them. It is no coincidence, apparently, that the Upper Don Cossacks are teased with “chiga vostropuzoy”.
The features of a pile construction are easily read in a modern Cossack dwelling. The Cossack kuren is two-story. Most likely, this is not a “basement” that has grown to the second floor, but a memory of the stilts on which dwellings once stood. The most ancient settlements of the Khazars were located in the lower reaches of rivers. And quite recently, in Cherkassk, in the spring and autumn, Cossacks visited each other on boats, and the town itself was impregnable during periods of floods.
The modern kuren is two-story, “half-stone,” that is, the first floor is brick (formerly adobe, made of raw brick), the second is wooden.
The further north you go, the lower the first floor.
And on the Seversky Donets it already looks more like a basement, although characteristic features Cossack buildings are visible here too. The first floor, as a rule, is not residential, but utility. It was believed that “you need to live in a tree, and store supplies in a stone.”
In the center of the first floor there is a room without windows, which the Don Cossacks call “cold” (maybe this is where the word migrated to the name of the pre-trial detention cell that was in every village), the Kuban people call it “topping up” (that is, lower, “down”, in contrast to the upper room: “mountain” - high, upper). Construction techniques developed over centuries made it possible to build the refill in such a way that a light draft of air that had cooled in the surrounding “cold” chambers constantly blew through it. Oh, how sweet the smell of bunches of herbs, mountains of apples, watermelons, grapes hanging on threads in the wind! And the whole family gathers, spreading felt felt on the cool clay floor, drinking “uzvar” or eating ice-cold 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 perimeter of the cold room with a narrow corridor.
Once upon a time, weapons were stored in niches here. A narrow single door (necessarily opening inward so that it could be easily supported with a log or stone) led to the first, recessed floor. You could only enter here one at a time, bending under the low ceiling, and immediately plummet two steps down: my home is my fortress. And in the old days it was possible to crash even lower: right in front of the door they built a “hunter’s cellar” - a pit with a stake in the middle, closed in normal times with a wooden shield. An enemy who burst into the kuren immediately ended up there. Isn’t that where Kondraty Bulavin shot back from his enemies? In general, strangers did not go to this part of the smoking area.
Guests usually climbed wide steps (“thresholds”) to the second floor and found themselves on the “balusters” - a balcony-gallery, terrace, which sometimes surrounded the entire house. In the houses of the Caucasian Cossacks, this staircase to the second floor was easily removed, and the lower door was locked with a log from the second floor.
Like the nomadic yurt, the kuren was clearly divided into left, female, and right, male halves. Directly behind the entrance is the largest room, the hall where guests were received. There was the best furniture and the best dishes here.
In the small hut, the main core around which the rooms were located was the rude stove. To the right of it was the kunatskaya, where the unmarried sons of the owner, the head of the family, lived in barracks-like simplicity. To the left are the girls', children's and cooking rooms. The left side is warmer.
In the large kuren of a rich Cossack, all the rooms were strictly separated. Women and small children never entered the kunatskaya: there were weapons there and they could get hurt. Children did not enter their parents' room without permission.
The roofs of the kuren were reeds or straw. Such a roof lasts forty years without repair. One problem - it burns like gunpowder. And this forced the Cossacks to spend money on iron. A hot iron roof is excellent 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 indeed the case, and even the ataman could not enter the Cossack’s yard without the owner’s permission, there were still regulations that were strictly followed by all “citizens of the village society.” The first such requirement-custom was: for each service - a separate building, that is, a separate stable - the most expensive building in the estate (sometimes more expensive than a chicken barn), as a rule, stone - brick, separately - a cowshed, a chicken coop, a pigsty, etc. Several courtyards: in front of the kuren there is a base (Turkic: sandy), behind the kuren there is a levada, and the kuren itself has a porch on the street, windows on the field - just like the Cossacks went to sleep around the fire: facing towards the enemy. There are vegetable gardens in the back. But vineyards, orchards and melon fields in villages and large farmsteads were located not in estates, but separately, in specially designated convenient places. Allotments for garden plots and vineyards were cut there. They were either common - farmstead, stanitsa, or privately owned. Land was allocated for melons and distributed in shares annually.
This placement of the estate and farms was explained by the relative abundance of free land, the reluctance of the villagers to live “in oppression” (they would rather move to farms than to reduce the estate territory) and the fear of fire.
COOK
With the arrival of spring, for the sake of fiery fear, they stopped cooking in the smoking areas, and the entire kitchen migrated to the summer kitchen - cooking.
The stove in the summer kitchen was the same as in the smoking room, maybe a little smaller. No one slept on it, and it did not serve for heating. Although they could wash in it. It was heated with rubbish, straw, corn husks, and most often with dung. The dung was made (trampled) in the distant backyard from manure and chopped straw. The resulting mass was molded or cut and dried. The resulting fuel was stored like woodpiles of firewood in northern Russia.
The dung burned hot and produced a special ash that retained the heat for a long time. The entire Cossack kitchen is designed for the temperature regime of combustion of dung.
A distinctive feature of the kitchen and all Cossack housing was sterile cleanliness. They kept a lot of livestock, and in the absence of cleanliness, life in the kuren and at the base would have been impossible. The stove was whitened after each cooking - a bucket of white and kvach always stood under the stove. Above the stove vent, the hub, which was closed with a black iron damper, there was always a piece of mirror smeared: the cook could look to see if it was smeared with soot. Next to the summer kitchen there was a fireplace on which stood a three-legged tagan, and on it either a cauldron (a cauldron with a large bottom) or rings of different diameters for placing cast iron. Here samovars were placed and iron gear stood: samovar pipes, stove dampers, grips (slings), frying pans (chapalniks). The stove in the summer cook 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. Every Saturday, the children of a cheerful Cossack woman built new “Babylons” on the bleached sides of the stove... On Sundays the stove was not heated and the food was heated on a tagan.
There was a table next to the stove so that the food was “piping hot.” And a few steps from the cooking room there was a cellar, or cellar, where meat and dairy products were stored in the cold and on ice. Bundles of onions, peppers, and dried fish hung above the summer cooking area under a canopy. All this blazed in the sun with golden or scarlet sides, teasing the appetite. With all the diversity 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 cuisine. The main thing is that it is preferable to cook the product 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.
Source:
Socio-historical portrait of the Don Delta: Cossack farm Donskoy
G.G. Matishov, T.Yu. Vlaskina, A.V. Venkov, N.A. Vlaskina
Rostov n/d: Publishing house of the Southern Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 2012
The traditional residential buildings of the farm are represented by two main types, for which the terms are used house and outbuilding. How common name home the word is known hut.
Until the middle of the 19th century, the most common among the lower-ranking Cossacks were square two-chamber dwellings (kureni), in which an additional, cold room was attached to the main living space (senior, closet, corridor), and elongated huts with vestibules - outbuildings.
The Cossack kuren was distinguished not only by its square shape and round (hatched) 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 space, and not in the corner, as in the dwellings of peasants (or most of the mounted Cossacks).
Over time, the kuren began to separate separate rooms with partitions ( cookhouse, bedroom, hall), instead of the Russian stove, urban-type stoves appeared - Swiss, Dutch, stoves with flood. Prosperous Cossacks began to build kurens from imported pine forest, large sizes. WITH late XIX centuries, brick dwellings became widespread. Over time, such buildings began to be called round houses.
Term smoking Over time, it was erased from the memory of the residents of the Donskoy farm. At the same time, most of the residential buildings in the farmstead retain a round (square) layout with a stove in the center. The rooms separated by partitions are walk-through and connected in a circle. This is typical for the entire residential area Don Cossacks: having the financial opportunity to build multi-room houses, they still retained the idea that the private zone should be under the control of the family.
The outbuildings consist of two living rooms, their usual names are kitchen and living room. Sometimes a storage room was allocated in the attached cold corridor. Often a corridor was built along the entire length of the outbuilding, and then in plan such a dwelling turned out to be almost square, that is, close to the classic example of a Cossack house.
Stoves, heating systems
Until recently, Ukrainian stoves were found in the same farmstead in the Donskoy farm ( cabins), Russian stoves ( bakers) and Dutch women. The farm is heated by stoves with ovens - boxes. Coal, wood, and 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 was moved inside as it burned.
The popularity of working with reeds led to 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. Dung slabs were made from manure, which was either simply chopped with a shovel, or molded in special machines and carefully dried in pyramids in the sun. The supply of dry fuel, like the supply of hay for livestock, was stored in a special room, protected from flooding.
What is the revived Cossacks
An army of fifty thousand people, supported by a billion a year and trained at the best military training grounds. A Kommersant correspondent went to study what the Kuban Cossacks are like.
EKATERINA DRANKINA
On a sultry August day, 30 km from Krasnodar, I am sitting in the boardroom of a local collective farm and for the second hour in a row listening to two men - one, about fifty years old, in civilian clothes, the other, about seventy years old, in camouflage - yell at each other.
In camouflage - ataman of the Cossack army of the village of Platnirovskaya, Vladimir Zakharovich Tikhy. He lives up to his formidable title less than his surname, and they shout at him rather, and from time to time he only cries out pitifully:
Petrovich, this is too much! Here I disagree with you! People were at work. They followed orders. Come on, you understand?
Yeah, orders? - his interlocutor, Valery Petrovich Kolpakov, the owner of this office, soars. 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 became somewhat angry with the Cossacks.
Is this what your free Cossacks are? - Kolpakov slams his fist on the table. - Work as witnesses, give false testimony?
Our Cossacks, ours! - the ataman drawls plaintively. - You are also a Cossack, you have an ID! But there were no false testimonies. The service was being performed.
Give yourself this ID, Zakharych! - Kolpakov makes noise. - I don’t want to be a member of such Cossacks! Our grandfathers were shot - over there, on the edge of the village, they were buried. The grandfathers were farmers and warriors, not witnesses on duty!
It’s scary to listen to raging men, but you don’t want to interrupt them either. I came to Kuban to find out what the revived Cossacks were like.
They are reviving it here in earnest:
The Kuban Cossack army, according to documents, is the largest in Russia, with about 50 thousand people, and the most expensive. The official budget of the army is 1 billion rubles. per year.
Judging by the fact that the vice-governor of the region, Nikolai Doluda, is leading the army, this is a necessary matter for the authorities. The Kuban Cossacks no longer dance or sing, as in the film of the same name - they are strong, they took Crimea, they threaten Pussy Riot, Navalny’s headquarters and everyone who behaves badly with whips.
Starting this year, every school in Kuban will have a Cossack class, and every Cossack (according to amendments to the regional land law adopted last year) will receive land. How this is treated in a region where a hectare costs more than $2 thousand was also an open question for me.
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? Is he also waiting for “earth”, like you? Give you the land...
Petrovich, why are you talking about Kushchevskaya? Well, there is an ataman there! He is afraid, he has always been afraid. The Cossacks accompanied his daughter to school so that nothing would happen. We don’t have any rights, Petrovich! - Zakharych knocks on his chest. - What can we do? As for the land, that’s what they decide... They gave us sixteen hectares, but we need to cultivate them. Pay taxes on them! They asked for a tractor, but they didn’t give it. They came to you on the collective farm, what can you do, you can farm it.
A? Fine? - Kolpakov turns to me. - These are the people. Cossacks - what are they? Community farming. Everyone has had land shares since the 90s! Who hasn't drunk it yet? They would form shares, gather a Cossack household, and here you have a revival of traditions. We would help: rather than walk arm in arm with the police, it would be better to plow the land. But no: “This is mine, it costs 200 thousand!” Those shares are lying there, but now again money for fish - we are Cossacks, give us “land and bread”! And give me a tractor and forgive the tax. Someone would forgive us for something, eh?
After shouting a little more, the villagers went about their business: Tikhiy - to the church to help the local priest unload building materials, Kolpakov - to the fields to visit the agronomists. They said goodbye hand in hand - they argued, obviously, not for the first time and not for the last.
Black boards, Yulka's robe
The Platnirovsky kuren was founded in 1794, 20 years after the destruction of the Zaporozhye Sich (and the kuren of the same name that was part of it) by order of Catherine II, by relocating the surviving Cossacks to the lands of the Kuban.
Thus, Catherine thanked the Cossacks for participating on her side in Russian-Turkish wars: 38 kurens of the Cossacks, which by that time were already called the Black Sea Cossack Army, she granted the left bank of the Kuban. Subsequently, having replenished their ranks with Don Cossacks and other newcomers, the former Cossacks created the Kuban army.
Outwardly, these Cossacks differed from another 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, and the uniform - Circassian and papakha.
Kuban Cossacks never had problems with employment. The Russian-Turkish and Russian-Polish wars, military operations in the Caucasus, the Russian-Japanese and the First World War - everywhere the Kuban army sent its divisions and regiments. For this they were generously rewarded. 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 could acquire ammunition from the income from this land.
The kurens formed by the Cossacks also grew rich. The Platnirovsky kuren received the status of a village in 1842; by the beginning of the 20th century, more than 10 thousand people lived in it.
Trouble came with the revolution. The highest Cossack governing body - the Kuban Rada - decided that the time had come to realize the idea of independence of Kuban, and proclaimed the Kuban people's republic with its capital in Ekaterinodar (present-day Krasnodar).
The republic existed until 1920, and its fall was followed by repression 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, but it only reached the Kuban Cossacks in the early 30s - at the time of the Holodomor. 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 and buried 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 residents were deported - several tens of thousands of people. In other villages, including Platnirovskaya, evictions were carried out partially. There are 600 families left - out of 18 thousand people...
Families began to return fairly soon.
My grandparents returned in 1939,” says Ivan Yaroshenko (another ataman, Zakharych’s predecessor in this position) 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 next door.
Most of all, those who returned were afraid that 1932 would repeat itself. Therefore, they hid the Cossack roots as best they could: they covered photographs, checkers, and hats in the walls. They didn’t sing songs when they talked about the Cossacks - they bit their tongues.
I asked my grandmother: “Grandmother, am I a Cossack?” And she quietly said to me: “Yes, all the Cossacks are gone,” says Ivan Alekseevich.
This fear lasted for a long time. Already when the Cossack movement began, in the early 90s, people went to meetings with caution.
I, being a seasoned person, will put on everything there - well, a Circassian coat, a hat, and throw Yulka’s robe on top and go like that,” Grandfather Nikolai, a cunning old man born in 1936 who survived both famine and deportation, laughs lightly.
Grandfather Nikolai is now also a registered Cossack of the Kuban army. Once a year he goes to training camps and 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.
I didn’t go to “take Crimea” either. No one made it from Platnirovskaya: when the Cossacks were called, they were ordered to have money with them (later they would return it, but so as not to beg on the road), but the Platnirovskys, says grandfather Nikolai, were not given their wives, so they had to go back.
The former ataman of the Kuban army, 67-year-old Vladimir Gromov, has a large beautiful house in a prestigious place near Krasnodar - the Lenin farm on the edge of the village of Pashkovskaya. There is a garden around the house, which he, groaning, cultivates: “I foolishly took the largest plot when the Cossacks were given land, I thought I would have enough health for another hundred years - but no!”
Gromov also did not offend his own Pashkov Cossacks with land: under his atamanship, they got one of the largest plots - 400 hectares.
They are, of course, so-so farmers - they grew only weeds, but while I was an ataman, they did not touch them, they did not take the land. And when my time was up, I had to help them. The land was quickly re-registered and turned into a gardening partnership. Well, at least that way...
In Gromov’s library there are 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-80s, Vladimir Gromov, associate professor of the history department of Kuban State University, created a circle to study the history of the Cossacks. In 1989, the Kuban Cossack club was formed on its basis, and then a Cossack amateur association at the house of culture.
Those who say that the revival of the Cossacks in the 90s was a Kremlin project simply were not here in Kuban. It was so massive! Such a powerful explosion! The authorities didn’t like this for quite a long time, but then they 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 Cossack Union created in this circle.
“I, of course, had authority,” recalls Vladimir Gromov. - But Martynov had the opportunity to receive everyone in Moscow and accommodate them. He had a business - a large automobile enterprise, and in Moscow they had a hostel, it seems, in 1905. So he became the main one.
By joint efforts, by April 1991, the law “On the Rehabilitation of the Cossacks” was issued. And three years later in Kuban there were no longer dozens, but hundreds of Cossack associations.
Gromov became the ataman of the Kuban army, but there was also an “all-Kuban army”, and dozens of individual atamans with their own units.
The ideas for which the atamans fought were mainly nationalistic: to prevent the “Caucasian caliphate”, to resist “Islamization”, to punish migrant workers who “behave badly”.
The most sensational story of those years was the case of the Domanin gang. Participant Chechen wars Sergey Domanin returned to Kuban, in hometown Timashevsk, in the mid-90s. Under the slogans of the revival of the Cossacks and the protection of law and order, he put together a gang that was engaged in kidnappings, murders and robberies for several years.
Domanin died in April 1997 during a clash with police officers. Representatives of the Cossacks from all over the region came to his funeral.
Ahead 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 sentences ranging from eight to 20 years.
There were many openly gangster stories in the 90s, and yet today’s Cossacks are not unanimous in their assessments of that period.
Then why did people become Cossacks? “To fight the bandits,” Vladimir Petrovich Zatsepsky, a resident of the neighboring village of Platnirovskaya, explains to me. - And they fought. I remember they caught an Armenian rapist - he raped a girl here, they beat him back with whips. So they were imprisoned for six years! There were also fighting Cossacks in the Temryuk region - they were simply killed. And Gromov's - they were on a budget. No, Gromov is a good person, but he kept putting us on edge... Why would a Cossack sit idle? He needs to fight, maintain order...
Gromov says that under him there was not a lot of budget for the Cossacks, not like now, but his army did have power, and considerable power:
Can you imagine when a thousand Cossacks on the square demand the resignation of the governor? Can deputies raise their hands against it? That's how it happened on June 30, 1992. The army demanded his resignation, and Governor Dyakonov was removed!
However, the former chieftain is also proud of the fact that for a long time he fought off the claims of politicians against the Cossacks:
Serious people came and tried to negotiate so that the Cossacks would go to the Caucasus to fight.
Berezovsky tried to seat me next to him on the presidium, but I didn’t go. I told them all this: you will leave, but we will stay. Caucasian peoples- these are our neighbors. We need to be very careful with them.
Gromov was an ataman for 17 years. He speaks evasively about what preceded his non-nomination in 2007: “I knew that I would no longer be an ataman. The authorities decided so. Am I going to throw myself under this train? They will move and forget! And I also knew that my atamans would not support me. They had already acquired something: some had a store, some had a market, some had land - there was something to hook them on, so I just didn’t move forward 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 and have lost my freedoms, but most of all I’m outraged by the whips:
Now you go into any Cossack store - whips of all stripes hang. Why is this? I am categorically against the Cossacks coming out with whips. The Cossack took the whip in his hands when he mounted his horse. And now here and there you hear that someone was whipping someone with a whip. How is this? Did the person break the law? Detain them according to the law, but don’t swing whips and disgrace the Cossacks - that’s not necessary.
In the Cossack circle in 2007, the candidacy of the vice-governor of the region Nikolai Doluda was supported. He is originally from the Kharkov region, not of Cossack origin, but a career military man. But the closest associate of the former governor Tkachev ( evil tongues they even talk about joint property registered in the name of children) and a permanent vice-governor already under his successor.
Two worlds, one camouflage
I wish you good health, gentlemen Cossacks! - shouts Nikolai Doluda, military ataman of the Kuban Cossack army.
We wish you good health, Mr. Ataman! - Having lined up awkwardly, the Cossacks of different ages answer.
Over the next ten minutes, Doluda raises the morale of those gathered with a speech about how the Cossacks “in the fourteenth year closed the borders of their homeland with their breasts”, “did not allow these Banderaites onto Russian soil”, that the Cossacks are “first of all warriors” and should always be ready.
Doluda goes around the army, paternally asking whether everyone is fed, whether it was too cold to sleep during the training camp, whether the Cossacks liked their dinner. Offers to continue the exercises - and the paddlers take their places near the platforms, explain how to use different types 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 tells me that he showed the best results at the shooting ranges.
But, I heard that a 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 readily supports the slippery topic. - Penance was imposed on him! Because he betrayed his comrades. He betrayed the ideology... of his brothers!
After getting ready, I try to talk to Doluda. It's not so simple: unlike the simple-minded father Nikolai, the vice-governor wants to talk only about what he wants.
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 as security guards public order as part of police squads. Other areas of work in accordance with federal law 154 - border protection, ensuring environmental and fire safety, eliminating the consequences of natural disasters, participation in combating drug trafficking,” Nikolai Alexandrovich reported clearly, in a military manner.
Regarding the Cossack attack on Navalny’s headquarters: “No one has proven that these were Cossacks of the Kuban army.” Pussy Riot whipping: “I don’t want to talk about it and I won’t.”
Even the relationship between the authorities and the Cossacks seems to be divorced for him, the vice-governor and the ataman, in different angles: going to Crimea in 2014, he “took leave at his own expense from work,” just like a thousand Cossacks who went there because “First of all, I am a patriot.”
Nikolai Aleksandrovich believes in the prospects of Cossack agriculture, unlike my friend the head of the collective farm from Platnirovskaya: “In accordance with the changes made three years ago to the Land Code, land can be transferred to Cossack communities without bidding, and the governor of the Krasnodar Territory ordered the allocation of from 300 to 500 hectares of land for each regional Cossack community. 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.”
The attack on Alexei Navalny and several of his associates occurred at Anapa airport in May 2016. Two dozen people in Cossack hats first poured milk on the activists and then beat them.
In the video that the Anapa city Cossack society KKV posted on its page on VKontakte, Koshevoy Ataman Nikolai Nesterenko was identified in the crowd of attackers.
On the same page there is a lot of local news: the article “Kuban Cossacks are ready to liberate Zaporozhye and Ukraine”, news about ceremonial presentation September 1 of the Cossack military uniform to the 1K (Cossack) class of the local school, but there is nothing about the further fate of Nesterenko. And fate is interesting.
Nikolai Nesterenko was a well-known businessman in the city (he controlled the city market), was in conflict with local MP businessman Sergei Zirinov, became the target of an assassination attempt in 2013 (he was wounded and the driver died).
Sergei Zirinov was accused of organizing this attempt, and in the fall of this year the court sentenced him to 22 years in prison. And the very next day after the verdict was announced, a criminal case was opened against Nesterenko.
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 entire village is engaged in this. There, people remember Nesterenko with good words, they say that the man believed in his work. He’s not young anymore, but he seriously fought with this mafia... He fought, of course, there was one gang there, and they put him behind the dacha...
And those who stand with the police in finery are not very... They call them mummers... We have one guy here who, like everyone else, sells hazelnuts. And here he is driving a car, the trunk full of hazelnuts. His outfit stops him, the Cossacks. The Cossack tells him: “Check on the roads! Podesaul Potapenko!” And he quickly answers: “Well then, I am Prince Shkhalakhov!”
The Cossack smiled and released him.
The “prince” went to sell hazelnuts, and the “podesaul” stayed to help the police.
Maria Liberman took part in the preparation of the material