Don Cossacks

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Cossacks
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Azov · Black Sea · Bug · Caucasus Line · Danube· Hetmanate · Tatar Cossacks · Nekrasov · Persia · Turkey · Jewish Cossacks · Zaporozhia
History of the Cossacks
Colonisation of Siberia · Khmelnytsky Uprising · Treaty of Hadiach · Bulavin Rebellion · Pugachev's Rebellion · 1st Cavalry Army · Decossackization · Betrayal of the Cossacks · XVth SS Cossack Cavalry Corps · 1st Cossack Division
Famous Cossacks
Andrei Shkuro · Bohdan Khmelnytsky · Ivan Mazepa · Ivan Sirko · Pyotr Krasnov . Stenka Razin · Yemelyan Pugachev · Yermak Timofeyevich
Cossack terms
Ataman · Hetman · Papakha · Plastun · Shashka · Stanitsa
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Don Cossacks (Russian: Донские Казаки) were Cossacks who settled along the middle and lower Don River, Russia. The earliest Don Cossack records date to 14th centuries.

The Don Cossack Host, (Russian: Всевеликое Войско Донское, Vsevelikoye Voysko Donskoye) was a frontier military organization since the end of the sixteenth century.

Since 1786 the territory was officially called Don Voisko Lands, and was renamed Don Voisko Province (Russian: Oblast’ Voyska Donskogo) in 1870 (presently shared by the Rostov, Volgograd, and Voronezh regions of the Russian Federation as well as Luhansk and region of Ukraine). In 1916 the Don Host enlisted over 1.5 million cossacks. It was disbanded on Russian soil in 1918, after the Russian Revolution, but the Don Cossacks in the White Army and those who emigrated abroad continued to preserve traditions of their host.

Following the defeat of the White Army in Russian Civil War, a policy of decossackization (Raskazachivaniye) took place on the surviving Cossacks and their homelands since they were viewed as potential threat to the new Soviet regime.^[1] The Cossack homelands were often very fertile, and during the collectivisation campaign many Cossacks shared the fate of kulaks. The Soviet famine of 1932-1934 hit the Don and Kuban territory the hardest. According to historian Michael Kort, "During 1919 and 1920, out of a population of approximately 1.5 million Don Cossacks, the Bolshevik regime killed or deported an estimated 300,000 to 500,000".^[2]

During World War II the Don Cossacks mustered the largest single concentration of Cossacks within the German Army, the XVth SS Cossack Cavalry Corps. A great part of the Cossacks were former Soviet citizens who elected to fight not so much for Germany as against Joseph Stalin. The XVth Cossack Cavalry Corps included the 1st Cossack Division and the 2nd Cossack Division.

1 Don Cossack Chorus
2 Don Cossacks houses (Kuren')
3 See also
4 References

The Don Cossack Chorus was a group of former officers of the Russian Imperial Army, discovered singing in Constantinople, where they had fled after the defeat of their army unit in the Crimea. They made their formal concert debut in Vienna in 1923, led by their founder, conductor and composer, Serge Jaroff.

They were immensely popular in American and international tours in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. The men, dressed as Cossacks, sang a cappella in a repertory of Russian sacred and operatic music, army songs and folk songs. Cossack dancing was eventually added to their programmes.