bravery but also for the excesses which they are reputed to commit in enemy territory. Few, if any, of these troops are Cossacks, and only the similarity of dress and equipment causes them to be confused with the latter. On the other hand a bitter rivalry exists between them and the true Cossack troops against whom their ancestors were so long engaged in frontier feuds and skirmishes. (This is the division which General Kornilov was reported to be leading in his much misunderstood movement against the former Provisional Government.)
The Cossack divisions preserved their discipline to the last during the terrible moments when Bolshevik propaganda was successfully sowing disorder in the Russian lines. As noted elsewhere, the Cossack regiments everywhere gave their support to the changes brought about by the constructive revolution of March 1917 (conducted along lines so acceptable to the traditions of the "Free People"). By keeping intact military organization most of the Cossack regiments were able then to reach their own territory during the horrors of the Bolshevik demobilization. They thus escaped the lot of so many wretched peasant soldiers of the old regime, who found it necessary to enlist in the ragged regiments of the Red Guards in order to keep body and soul together. When the Bolshevik directorate, which had replaced the officialdom of the old regime at Petrograd, sought to obtain Cos-
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sack support, they found the Cossack territories organized, not only to conduct their own affairs, but also to resist dictation from without.
It is perhaps premature to consider here the problem of the place which the Cossacks will occupy in relation to the rest of "What was Russia." When the ominous sjTnbol of the red flag everj^where replaced the national standard tliroughout Xorthem Russia — through the teachings of materiahstic Socialist doctrines — "class consciousness" took the place of patriotic ideals. The blue and yellow flag of the old Cossack Ukraine immediately appeared in the south, an unmistakable answer to these denationalizing influences. The ideal maintained in all the Cossack territories is that of a Russian federal republic, wherein a large measure of autonomy will be allowed the widely differing peoples and districts who were "gathered together" by the long imperialistic process of the old regime. The opposition of the Bolsheviki at Petrograd to this logical desire for decentralization, and the eagerness with which Lenine and his associates seized upon the machinery' and methods of Tsardom for their own form of "government," will probably for some time form an obstacle to any close union between north and south. Here again, however, geographical factors, notably the absence of any natural frontiers separating the older provinces of "Muscovy" from "Xew Russia," will be a force making for future reunion.
At a time when Russia is distracted by the attempts of doctrinaires to solve the vast problems of land tenure left by the collapse of the imperial regime, it is interesting to consider the present situation of the Cossack land holder. The stanitzi represent a system of communal ownership developed by practical experience and adjustment through a long period of time, and thoroughly adapted to the needs of the Cossack community. Unlike the grinding tyranny of the mir — the primitive communal system under which the Russian peasants of the north sought to administer their own affairs — the Cossack system has been able to give wide latitude to individual effort, and even to adapt itself to the passing of frontier conditions by frankly admitting the right to private ownership. Thus land (such as orchard and homestead land) where permanent improvements have been made through the owner's own outlay of work or capital becomes, with certain restrictions, private property. It is, therefore, easy to understand why Bolshevik propaganda has met with so little success, not only among the peasant proprietors of the Ukraine, where Cossack civilization ceased to exist many years ago, but also in the newer Cossack territories, of the "armies" established during the last century along the eastern frontiers of New Russia. In spite of the infiltration of landless peasants from the North among the Cossack settlements, the doctrines of Marxian Socialism have generally met with a hostile reception throughout the Cossack territories.