The Russian Cossacks in the processes of searching for group identity and ethno-cultural construction

Abstract

The article presents an analysis of the ethnic trend in the modern movement for the revival of the Cossacks. Representatives of this trend, called "social activists", have been trying for almost forty years to find their place in the ethno-cultural space of modern Russia, dissociating themselves from those who entered the so-called Cossack register, demonstrating various practices of ethno-cultural construction and formation of their group identity.

The search by "social activists" for their group identity is reflected in terms of their self-identification: for self-designation, they use terms that fix their ethnicity, involvement in a single Cossack group of Russian Cossacks, proclaimed either as an ethnos or a subethnos as part of the Russian people (ethnic, tribal, hereditary Cossacks, and kazarla).

Defining their identity, "ethnic Cossacks" construct images and symbols of their movement that have precisely ethnic characteristics, relying either on the real traditional culture of the Russian Cossacks or on the mythologems they create. They are engaged, for example, in the search for gold, defining it in the pre-genealogical period of Cossack history. In accordance with this image, the symbolic boundaries of the group are also built, defining, for example, Cossack religiosity either as pure Orthodoxy or with an admixture of paganism ("the faith of the forefathers"), traditional culture as rather non-Russian, with a predominance of Turkic and Caucasian elements, which allows emphasizing its identity.

Pagan practices, references to ancient times, statements about the presence of a special Cossack language, etc. are widely used in the processes of myth-making. However, recently, more and more solid positions among the designers of modern Cossack ethnicity are occupied by those who position the Cossack culture as part of the all-Russian and are focused on the careful revival and popularization of really existing, but lost traditions.