Cossacks: who are they?
Many Hollywood movies depict fearless, captivating warriors, quite lively, dancing with their sabers, on fiery horses. The Cossacks are similar to these warriors and are indeed remarkable Russians. With the rites and chants of the Orthodox church they symbolize “the old Russia” for millions of people, which for the inhabitants of Western Europe is just far away enough to satisfy their curiosity for strange, different cultures and people in a pleasant way.
The Netherlands and Germany were introduced to the Cossacks at the end of the Napoleonic occupation. After the fall of the French empire in 1813, which began with the battle near Leipzig , many Russian army troops, composed primarily of Cossacks, moved through Germany and the Netherlands to rid towns of their French oppressors. The Cossacks, with their bearskin caps and readiness to fight, kindled the imagination of the people, much as the Americans and Canadians did in 1945 when they rid Western Europe of Nazism. Every liberator provided he himself doesn't turn into the next oppressor is of course a hero.
The Cossacks have existed for over five hundred years, and during that half millennium, they have had a great influence on the development of Moscow , the Russian empire, and the Russian emporium as a whole.
The word Cossack itself comes from Turkish and denotes a free, independent man, a concept quite significant for a country and a time when servitude was the norm. These free, independent Russian men were actually a sort of vagabond who lived in the wild, beyond the reach of the Russian government. Living primarily on the banks of the river Don and its tributaries, these people managed to survive by hunting, fishing, and foraging for what food they could find. They did not know agriculture or farming theirs was truly a wild life, in which forming and building families and social structure had little importance. The Cossacks acquired clothing and weapons both by raiding Turkish and Krimtartar villages on the coast of the Sea of Azov, and by attacking merchant caravans that traveled along the banks of the Don and the Volga . With light sailboats they sailed the Caspian Sea, the Sea of Azov, and the Black Sea all the way to Constantinople, now known as Istanbul .
The Cossacks never forgot their blood relationship with the Russian people, however. As the Cossacks matured as a society and started to form military-like organizations, they began to aid the Russian troops against Czar Ivan the Terrible , who eventually conquered the city Kazan . The Cossacks also battled on the eastern seaboard to help Moscow gain control over other empires. It was the Cossacks who fiercely and successfully defended Russia from the invading Swedish armies, driving the Swedes back to their homeland, off of Russian territory.
Throughout the centuries, Russian rulers were well aware of the substantial military role the
Cossacks had played: freeing the Russians from the tight grip of the Tartars, winning wars against the Turks, and dislodging Napoleon and his troops were possible largely because of the Cossacks.
The Russian czars did everything they could to enlist the formidable power of the Cossacks, keeping the Cossacks content by sending to the Don weapons, ammunition, money, goods, and food. In fact, this appeasement was the only way to have some sort of control over the turbulent Cossacks. With so many armed forces in their backyard, the czars really had no other choice but to try to keep the Cossacks happy. Just imagine if the Cossacks had decide to turn against the Russians the Cossacks were truly loyal to only one person, their appointed chief, the Ataman!
Around 1800, the Cossack's fame, especially that of the Don Cossacks, reached its high point . Side-by-side with the regular Russian troops, they fought under the leadership of Suworof. They reaped everlasting fame during the Italian campaign after an agonizing expedition through the Alps . In Austria and Prussia , they fought against Napoleon and his armies, and moved toward the shores of the North Sea, continuing as far as Paris .
The cradle of all Don Cossacks is on the river Don. At the beginning of the last century they were divided over eleven armies: on the Don, on the Kuban, in Astrachan, on the Terek, in Uralsk , in Orenburg , in Semiretsjensk, on the Usuri, on the Amur, in Siberia and on the Trans-Baikal. All of these armies consisted of so-called sotjen (hundreds) and regiments of the Don army. They settled there where borders had to be guarded and, if necessary, defended. On the Don alone it was possible to mobilize 70,000 “sabers,” or skilled horsemen. 
The Cossacks played a vital role in Russian history the Russian empire fought no wars in the 19th and early 20th century without the participation of the Cossack troops: they fought in the Caucasus, on the Crimea, and during the Russian-Turkish war; they fought for the liberation of Bulgaria; they fought against the German imperial armies during the First World War from 1914 to 1918.
The communist revolution of 1917 caused a certain split in the Cossack community: only the posessionless among them followed the Bolshevists, the others took up a neutral and passive position. For them, loyalty to their country was more important than loyalty to the czar (who would soon be deposed). However, that reservedness didn't last long. People who were accustomed to stating their opinions clearly quickly met trouble under the new communist, dictatorial rulers. From 1919 on, a sort of “de-cossackization” took place, a governmental policy under which the Cossacks were bloodily persecuted, resulting in the ultimate destruction of the Cossacks as a military power. The proud Cossacks were give only two choices flee the new Russia as emigrants or renounce their heritage.
The remaining Cossacks in Russia therefore went underground as a community, where they remained for some seventy years.
With the fall of communism, descendants of the former Cossack army immediately returned. These descendants have returned to the banks of the Don and elsewhere, the land of their forebears. These Cossack settlements, called stanitsas and headed by chiefs called atamans, represent the return of the Cossacks to the Russian