Chicago Tribune, IL
Aug 7 2005
Cossacks: Guardians or oppressors?
Putin wants to legitimize the warriors, but the Muslim groups they
persecute don’t feel the same
By Alex Rodriguez
Tribune foreign correspondent
KRYMSK, Russia — Ivan Bezugly hoisted an oversize bottle of 160-proof
Kazachya vodka across his desk. “Have a drink!” Behind him a hodgepodge
of Cossack kitsch suggested a room that was more shrine than office.
Meticulously polished scabbards hung on the wall next to submachine
guns. A bullwhip dangled in the corner, a few feet from a large,
cream-colored flag with an image of Christ in the center.
“If the country finds itself in a critical situation, the Cossacks
will always be here to defend their Motherland,” boomed Bezugly, a
Cossack chieftain who speaks in a baritone that could fill Carnegie
Hall. “But the most important thing is that we revive Cossack
traditions, because we deeply respect these traditions.”
For years, Bezugly and thousands of other Cossacks here in the steppes
of southern Russia have clung tightly to their warrior past, hoping
for a day when authorities restore their status as revered guardians of
Russian society. In their heyday they were the czar’s Secret Service;
today Cossacks exist as half-legal vigilantes, something between
everyday citizen and beat cop.
Soon, Cossacks may get their wish for resurrection. Earlier this
year, Russian President Vladimir Putin asked parliament to enact
a law legitimizing the role of Cossacks in law enforcement, paving
the way for the use of Cossacks in everything from border patrol to
fighting terrorism.
“There is a long-felt need to confer legal status onto the activity
of Cossack units,” Putin said during a spring visit with Cossack
chieftains in southern Russia’s Rostov region. “Today, the Cossack
movement is reviving.”
Volatile mix in region
In southern Russia, enthusiasm for a Cossack revival is far from
unanimous. The region is a volatile, Muslim-Christian soup of
ethnic groups: Ossetians, Adygeans, Chechens, Ingush, Dagestanis,
Kabardinians, Cherkessk, Meskhetian Turks, Armenian Kurds, as well
as ethnic Russians. Cossacks are devout Russian Orthodox and rarely
disguise their disdain for Muslims in southern Russia.
No group knows this better than Meskhetian Turks, a Muslim enclave
in the Krasnodar region that Cossacks and local authorities have
been systematically forcing out of jobs, farm fields and homes for a
decade. In 2000, nearly 13,000 Meskhetian Turks lived in the Krasnodar
region. Today, 6,000 remain.
Those who left were granted refugee status by the U.S. The rest tough
it out in Krasnodar villages, waiting for U.S. officials to approve
their immigration requests.
They rarely find work, because Krasnodar authorities will not
grant them residency status despite a 1991 decree that gave them
citizenship. Local authorities also assign Cossacks to conduct document
checks on Meskhetian Turks and other Caucasian minorities, essentially
giving Cossacks license to raid villages and harass Meskhetian Turks
under the guise of checking their papers.
Bezugly describes how he feels about Meskhetian Turks in crude,
blunt terms.
“We consider it our mission and our duty to coerce Meskhetian Turks
to leave the Krasnodar region,” he said. “Their birthrate is very
high. They have 10 or 11 kids in their families. If this prevails,
they could soon outnumber Russians.”
That kind of mentality has convinced Marina Dubrovina, a human-rights
lawyer who routinely represents Meskhetian Turks and other Caucasian
minorities, that Putin’s push to legitimize the Cossack role in law
enforcement looms as a dangerous gaffe.
“He’s merely legitimizing Cossacks’ unlawful behavior,” Dubrovina
said. “Many of them live on the money they extort from people, and
this decision just gives them more opportunity to do that.”
For Putin, a Cossack revival marks another in a series of attempts
at revving up patriotism in Russia, where cynicism and mistrust of
government run deep. The group called Nashi–the Russian word for
“ours”–a Kremlin-backed movement aimed at stoking patriotic sentiment
among Russian youths, is picking up steam.
The Russian government also recently set aside $17 million to
infuse Russian television with patriotic themes and establish a
network of offices to oversee the spread of “patriotic education”
in the provinces.
An inspiring history
In Russia, Cossack history inspires and emboldens. Dating to their
settlement of the steppes of southern Russia and Ukraine in the
15th Century, Cossacks were famed for their horsemanship, valor
and ferocity. During the Middle Ages, Polish and Russian rulers
enlisted Cossacks to defend their kingdoms against marauding Tatars. A
vanguard of Cossacks conquered Siberia for Ivan the Terrible in the
16th Century. Czar Alexander I relied on Cossacks to help vanquish
Napoleon in 1812.
Cossacks fought alongside the White Army during the Russian civil
war of 1918-20. After their defeat at the hands of the Bolsheviks,
the Cossacks were declared “enemies of the state.” Thousands fled
the country. The government disbanded Cossack regiments and seized
their farms.
After the Soviet collapse in 1991, Cossack society resurfaced. Under
then-President Boris Yeltsin, they began taking on de facto
law-enforcement responsibilities. In St. Petersburg, authorities
assigned Cossacks to patrol city streets on horseback to snatch up
pickpockets and thugs. In the Krasnodar region, officials rely on
Cossacks to conduct passport and document checks.
In all, 25 Cossack groups with 660,000 members operate across the
country, from the southern provinces near the Black Sea to the Siberian
city of Irkutsk to the Amur region of Russia’s Far East.
In the region surrounding Krymsk, a city of 60,000, Cossacks are led
by Bezugly, a wiry, handlebar-mustached man with boundless energy
that belies his 56 years. He eagerly volunteers that he keeps in
shape by running 12 miles every other day and lifting weights. To
hammer the point home, he shows a snapshot of himself shirtless,
lifting two cannonball-shaped weights.
“It’s easy for Cossacks to establish order in our villages, since we
know everyone there,” Bezugly said. “We appear on the scene quicker
than the police do, so it makes sense for us to establish order. And
we do it for free. We consider it to be our moral responsibility.”
Driving out group
Their other moral responsibility, Bezugly freely admits, is to run
Meskhetian Turks out of the region. The campaign involves everything
from intimidation to beatings and raids on Turk villages. In 2002,
77 Cossacks in two buses pulled up to a party at a Meskhetian Turk
house in the village of Khutor Shkolny, said village elder Israpil
Litfiyev. The Cossacks locked up women inside the house, ordered the
men into the courtyard and clubbed them with truncheons, Litfiyev said.
“They said, `You’ve got no registration, and we think you’re all
bandits,'” Litfiyev recalled. The Cossacks took two of the injured
men and threatened to bury them alive, “but we chased after them and
prevented that from happening.”
In January, Alexander Tedorov, a 45-year-old Meskhetian Turk
father of two, was beaten to death outside his parents’ house in
Varenikovskaya. A youth from a Cossack family was convicted of the
murder and sentenced to 3 years in prison. Before the trial, local
Cossacks tried to persuade Tedorov’s family to drop the case.
“They said the boy was a good guy, with old parents that he needed
to support,” said Tedorov’s uncle, Sarvar Tedorov. “They said they
don’t want him to go to jail and asked me to sign papers saying we
refute the evidence. I refused to do this.”
“Of course, the Cossacks are defending their boy,” said Tedorov’s
mother, Valentina Tedorova, thumbing tears from her cheek. “But nobody
defends us, because we are Turks.”
Troubling encounters
Another Caucasian minority, Armenian Kurds known as Yezids, also
has had troubling encounters with Krasnodar region Cossacks. In
2003, Ishnan Khudoyan, 39, was taking a shower at his home in
Neberdzhayevskaya when five Cossacks conducting document checks
appeared in his courtyard. When he confronted them, one of the Cossacks
took his towel and used it to choke him.
“Then a Cossack pulled a gun on me,” Khudoyan said. “The neighbors
came out, and the Cossacks began to leave. But one of them said,
`If you complain about this, we know where you live.'” The next
day a local police officer visited Khudoyan and suggested that the
unemployed Armenian drop the affair. “So I kept silent.”
Cossacks say their stern treatment of Caucasian minorities is justified
because those groups are responsible for much of the crime in the
region, though Dubrovina, the lawyer, and human-rights groups say
such claims are baseless.
The way Bezugly sees it, the best solution to the conflict between
Cossacks and Meskhetian Turks is a simple one: They should leave.
“Many times we have told them, `When in Rome, do as Romans do,'”
Bezugly said. “But they ignore that.”