s essential.
The following pages only attempt to sketch the outlines of their subject, yet s) far as the author is aware no more comprehensive study of Cossack
FOREWORD IX
life and history has appeared in English. The chapter which traces the early historj^ and development of the Cossack race is little more than a s\tiopsis of facts forming part of a much broader subject: the historj^ of the growth and expansion of Modem Russia. Elsewhere in this narrative, an effort has been made to follow, whenever possible, the colourful style of the original Cossack legends and sources. These latter are almost always biographical and fragmentary yet they give a vivid picture of their time and subject. The story of. Yermak's heroic march through the twilight of the • northern forests and his discovery and conquest of. Siberia; of Bogdan's fight for the Cossack liberties against the proud nobles of Poland; of Mazeppa's almost forgotten part in the epic struggle between Charles XII of Sweden and Peter the Great for the / Empire of the North; of the strange outbreak of \ savagery led by the "False Tsar" Pougatchev — | the eighteenth century forerunner of the mob- / leaders of our own day — are matters of interest to,the general reader.
Recent ©v^ents show the importance of a better understanding of the facts of Cossack history.
One qualification at least the author may claim for the task he has undertaken. Many miles of travel in Cossack country during two fateful years — just before and after the Russian Revolution — brought him into familiar and friendly contact with the Cossacks of the present day. Out of a desire to
X FOREWORD
acquaint himself more thoroughly with their story and the part they have played in Russia's development grew the notes and studies from which the present volume has been written.
W. P. C.
Princeton University,
September, 1919.
THEIR HISTORY AND COUNTRY
F THE ''FREE PEOPLE"
THE level plains and steppes of South Russia were known to the ancients as the broad channel followed by the ebb and flow of every fresh wave of conquest or migration passing between Europe and Asia. The legions of Rome and Byzance found this territon^ as impossible to occupy by miUtary force as the high seas. The little known history of "Scj-ihia" — from the earliest times imtil the thirteenth centurj- of the Christian era — presents a confused picture of barbarous tribes pressing one upon another, the stronger driving the weaker before them from the more favoured hunting grounds. Often, voluntarily or by force, the victors included the vanquished in their own ''superior" civilization. There are many reasons why it is difficult or impossible to follow with any degree of certainty the national history of these races. "Their long-forgotten quarrels, their interminglings and separations, above all the constant changes in their names and habitat make the study of their history as difficult as it is unprofitable." (Lesur, Histoire des Kosaques,)
This ignorance of the changes — political and economical — which are constantly taking place along the amorphous racial frontiers of Eastern Europe, has continued to our own times. But at recurrent intervals these Slav borderlands separating the Occident from the Orient become the scene of political upheavals so vast in their consequences that the very foundations of European civilization are shaken in their turn.
The great Tartar invasion which, during the thirteenth century, swept out of Asia and spread across the steppes of Southern Russia, was an occurrence of such magnitude that its echoes travelled to the most distant states of Europe. The arrival of fugitive bands of Khomans, Black Bulgars, and other wild steppe tribesmen at the court of Bela IV, King of Hungary, first spread the fame and terror of these new invaders. From these refugees and their descriptions of the enemy the sovereigns of Christendom learned with horror of the fate which in the short space of a few months had overtaken the most powerful strongholds of the princes of Bus and Muscovy. Even the Poles — whose more civilized and warlike state was generally considered the bulwark separating the "barbarians" of ancient Scythia from the communities of Europe — had been forced to make the best terms possible: by paying a degrading tribute to the invaders.
F THE "FREE PEOPLE" 3