“Wise hermits, even in those days, overgrown with their past,
they used to say - the Cossacks are the salt and honey of the Orthodox land, its
knights and defenders, God-loving warriors"
From the book of the Yaik Cossack A. Yalfimov
“Live, brothers, while Moscow doesn’t know”
Free communities of Cossacks formed on the river Yaik also in XIV—XV centuries. The Ural River, rich in sturgeon rocks (up to 1775 —Yaik) - “Egg-Golden Bottom” gave Tsarist Russia a rich catch of red fish and black caviar. The Ural fishery was considered advanced in Russia and was described many times in fiction - V. I. Dalem, V. G. Korolenko, K. Fedin, Urals I. I. Zheleznov And N. F. Savichev.
Other occupations of the Urals were horse breeding on steppe farms and hunting. Agriculture was poorly developed, the average plot per family was 22 hectares, and a significant part of the land was not used due to its unsuitability and remoteness. In addition to hunting and fishing, an important occupation of the Yaitsky Cossacks was trade with Central Russian cities and Central Asian merchants - the Yaitsky town lay on an ancient caravan route.
From the second half XVI century, the tsarist government began to attract Yaik Cossacks to guard the southeastern borders. IN end XVI V. The army was geographically the farthest Russian outpost - it closed the Caspian gates from the raids of nomads from Central Asia to the Lower Volga region.
The Ural Cossack army took part in almost all the wars waged by Russia. IN 1798 two regiments were in the Italian and Swiss campaigns A. V. Suvorova. IN Patriotic War 1812 Ural 3rd and 4th Cossack regiments - as part of the Danube Army of the Admiral Chichagova, in foreign campaigns - in the corps of generals F. K. Korfa And D. S. Dokhturova. Cossacks took part in the Russian-Turkish war 1828-1829 and suppression of the Polish uprising 1830. During the Crimean War, two regiments were sent from the Ural Cossack Army.
The Ural Cossacks regulated nomadic movements across the Ural River and back, took on the occasional raids of Kokand, Bukhara and Khiva detachments, and participated in the suppression of periodic uprisings. During the Central Asian campaigns, the Ural Cossacks were the main cavalry force; many songs about the capture of Tashkent and Kokand are still preserved. One of the most famous episodes during the conquest of Kokand is the Ikan affair - a three-day battle of hundreds of Cossacks under the command of the captain V. R. Serova near the village of Ikan near the city of Turkestan. The Ural hundred sent on reconnaissance met the army of the Kokand Khan, who was heading to take Turkestan. For two days the Urals held a perimeter defense, using the bodies of dead horses as protection, and then, without waiting for reinforcements, they lined up in a square and fought their way through the Kokand army until they connected with the detachment sent to the rescue. In the battle, the Ural Cossacks lost more than half of their people killed, almost all of the survivors were seriously wounded. All of them were awarded soldiers' Georges, and Captain V. R. Serov - Order of St. George 4th class.
The Ural Cossacks served the throne of the Russian Empire a lot, supplying hundreds of soldiers to guard borders and participate in military campaigns. The role of the Cossacks in the structure of the state and in the preservation of the Fatherland is special.
If the Chinese erected the Great Wall of China to protect their borders, the Ural Cossack people created a living Great Cossack Wall, and this is one of the feats of the Ural Cossacks in history.
Unlike a soldier in the regular army, from birth the Ural Cossack was formed in an environment with a high sense of military honor and the tradition of earnest service, and was distinguished by a more conscious attitude towards military affairs. The Urals did not need external discipline at all; they were an example of diligence and strict fulfillment of military duty. A more conscious attitude to service helped the Cossack become an excellent single fighter - proactive, quick-witted, and not lost in the most difficult situations. This was also facilitated by constant combat practice, as well as life full of dangers and anxieties on the border with the Kyrgyz steppe.
« The Ural people have a unique character, the central quality of which is a sense of independence and pride. Urals are smart - all ministers,- noted General K.N. Hagondokov, who met them during the Russian-Japanese War. — When giving an order, you need to be very precise, because anything left unsaid or erroneous will be immediately discovered by the Urals».
Orenburg Governor General V. A. Perovsky, who led the Khiva expedition, which included 2 regiments of Ural Cossacks, noted: “ Here are the miracle Cossacks: cold, snowstorms are nothing for them, there are very few sick people, the dead... no, while they walked forward, no matter what the weather was, they sang daring songs... they work more, better and more willingly than anyone else. Without them, it would be bad for the whole squad!»
Historically, during Nikon’s reforms, the Ural army had complete autonomy, and was also territorially far removed from the Muscovite kingdom, as a result of which the innovations of Patriarch Nikon never reached the shores of the Urals, and the Cossacks themselves kept their faith and rituals unchanged, such as they were in XIV—XV centuries, during the appearance of the first Cossacks on the banks of the Yaik. The firmness and tenacity of the Ural bearded Old Believers were hereditary traits. The Cossacks remained faithful to the pre-Nikon rites of the Orthodox Church, and the military way of life contributed to the defense of their religious beliefs.
All attempts by government and church authorities to introduce Nikon's innovations into the practice of worship ended in vain. IN XVII And XVIII For centuries, Old Believer monasteries on Irgiz and Yaik remained active, while on the Don and Medveditsa the monasteries had already been destroyed. The existence of Old Believer hermitages in the Urals became possible thanks to the fact that they were stubbornly defended and defended by the Yaik Cossacks. This made it possible to provide shelter for Old Believers who fled the Don and Ursa. The Cossacks were zealous about preserving the established order, both in military service and in observing Old Believer traditions.
Peter Simon Pallas- encyclopedist scientist and traveler who visited Yaik in 1769, noted that “ Cossacks rarely go to church, because they are Old Believers; for the most part they pray at home" The efforts of the government and the dominant church to introduce a new ritual in the Ural churches were perceived by the Cossacks as an attempt on their “ Cossack liberty“, which caused among them refusals to perform official duties in the performance of government service. Thus, in 1769, several hundred Yaik Cossacks refused to serve in Kizlyar, explaining the refusal “ incompatibility with the permanent deployment of the Yaitsky army».
IN 1770 The Yaik Cossacks did not comply with the orders of the authorities to forcefully return the Kalmyks to the North Caucasus, from where they voluntarily migrated to Central Asia, unable to withstand the unaffordable taxes levied by tsarist officials. The Kalmyks were returned with the help of army units, and 2000 Yaik Cossacks for " disobedience"were subjected to corporal punishment and exiled, 20 people are sentenced to hard labor.
The government deliberately attached political significance to religious matters, considering the speeches of the Old Believers as “blasphemy against the Tsar and God.” Senator, Prince M. Shcherbatov, inspecting the Yaitsky army after the suppression of the Pugachev uprising, in which the army took part " almost in full force", wrote about the Cossacks-Old Believers: " Wherever they can show their hatred against the sovereign and the Russian church, they do not miss the opportunity. This is evidenced by former riots... the uprising of 1772 on Yaik, of which the Cossacks, having been infected with this heresy, did not consider it a criminal act to arm themselves against the legitimate authorities».
Zealously defending their original customs, the Cossacks treated pain, physical suffering and even death with contempt. It was easier to destroy or resettle the Cossacks, as happened more than once in the history of the Yaitsk army, but it was impossible to overcome the power of the old faith, with which their ancestors had been armed since ancient times.
In the Yaik army, the Old Believers were firmly in their place and in their midst: there was no persecution here, they freely made the sign of the cross with two fingers, had old printed books and carried out service using them. The old Old Believers were the conservative force that prevented the transformation of the economic and social life of the army.
The foundation of the Cossack Old Belief was the old Cossacks, officers and atamans, constables and especially their wives - the main guardians of the Old Believers on the Ural River. There were reasons for this: they did not serve and did not leave the army, they were fluent in Church Slavonic literacy, read a lot of patristic books, they taught their children to read and write, they spent their days in work and prayer, waiting for their husbands from service.
Old Belief was firmly preserved in the army thanks to the social system, which sought to “ at all costs to support the former structure of the community, the former orders and customs of the country, the former spirit of the Cossacks».
Several measures on the part of the tsarist government and the autocrats themselves also contributed to the preservation of the Old Believers on Yaik. IN 1709 after the Battle of Poltava, where the Ural Cossacks showed their heroism, by a special decree Peter I they were given the right to wear a beard and remain in their faith. Tsar Peter I left all the Yaik Cossacks “ cross and beard", thereby protecting them from persecution for their faith for a whole century.
Cossacks-Razin centurions Samuylo Vasiliev, Isai Voronin And Loggin were military leaders of the famous Solovetsky uprising and, together with the former confessor of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, archimandrite Nikonor They stood until the end, and after the treacherous capture of the monastery they together suffered terrible torment. They are canonized as saints by the Russian Orthodox Old Believer Church (ROC).
Empress Catherine II, having survived the Pugachevism, did not persecute the Yaik (Ural) Cossacks for their faith even after the riot 1773-1775, and in 1795 officially legalized the right of the Ural Cossacks to use old printed books and old rituals. However, she issued a decree that, in order to completely obliterate the Pugachev uprising, the Yaitsky army was renamed the Ural Cossack army, and the Yaitsky town was renamed Uralsk, and the army itself was losing its former autonomy. At the head of the Ural Cossacks were appointed ataman and military command.
Son Catherine II — Paul, having become emperor, he created a life hundred from the Ural Cossacks, thereby showing them his trust and mercy.
In fact, the religious freedom of the Ural Cossacks was a consequence of the government’s need to have in them a reliable military force in the northern Caspian region. Initially, the reasons for the appearance of a split in the army were the same as in other places in Russia, but later local conditions gave them a political character. Fearing that the true faith on Yaik would be exterminated, and the old veche system of the Cossack community destroyed, the Cossacks firmly and energetically defended their rights and privileges. Old Believers fugitives from all regions, seeking spiritual freedom and refuge, flocked to the Ural River.
IN 1868 a new one was introduced "Temporary position", according to which the Ural Cossack army was subordinated to the ataman of the newly formed Ural region. The territory of the Ural Cossack army was 7.06 million hectares and was divided into 3 sections ( Ural, Lbischensky And Guryevsky) with population 290 thousand people, including Cossack - 166,4 thousand people in 480 settlements united in 30 villages
In the middle of the last century, almost all Ural Cossacks were Old Believers, and the Ural governor A. D. Stolypin, father of the famous P. A. Stolypina, noted the unity and perseverance in the faith of the Ural and Orenburg Cossacks, comparing them for their devotion to old Russian ideals with contemporary Slavophiles, and even offered the Metropolitan Anthony do not exhort schismatics: “ With the Cossacks, Your Eminence, you have to be very careful: you have to bend, but you also have to soar, it’s very, very easy to incite Pugachevism!»
The missionaries of the Nikonian Church forgot for a while about the remote outskirts, surrounded by warlike uluses of Kalmyks and Bashkirs. The number of Yaik Cossacks-Old Believers in the Urals not only remained unchanged, but constantly grew due to fugitives who sought and found refuge in Cossack villages. A significant influx occurred after the defeat of the Kerzhensky monasteries in the Nizhny Novgorod province; Old Believers from those places settled in a special Old Believer settlement of the Cossack army - the Shatsky Monastery, where the Yaik Cossacks prayed.
Secret Old Believer monasteries in the Ural region have been known for a long time, and repressive measures have been taken against them more than once. So, in 1741, during the persecution of Old Believers hiding on Yaik and in the Irgiz monasteries, was destroyed Shatsky Monastery. Persecution and torture did not weaken faith, and in the second half XVIII V. The famous Irgiz monasteries appeared, leaving a huge mark on the history of the entire Old Believers. Since the establishment of the monasteries, active contacts have been established between them and the Old Believer centers of the Ural region.
IN 1756 at the request of the Orenburg governor I. I. Neplyueva, The Military Collegium ordered " stop all searches and persecutions of schismatics on Yaik" The borderline state of the Ural army lasted until the middle XIX century, that is, until Russia conquered the Central Asian khanates. The Sergius monastery was formed in the army, which became the founder of other monasteries along the Ural River. Sergius monastery could " its profitability surpasses any of the most ancient Orthodox monasteries in Russia" and was " the main breeding ground for Ural fugitive popovism", he was also repeatedly destroyed. IN 1830, together with the Gnilovsky women's monastery, it was destroyed, some of the monks and the abbot were imprisoned in the monastery of the dominant church.
However, the restoration of the monasteries occurred quite quickly, according to archival data, in 1848 in the Gnilovsky monastery there was already 16 cells, and in Sergievsky - 11 . This is also explained by the fact that the Old Believers were not only ordinary Cossacks, but also the Ural aristocracy, which was not always convenient to fight.
IN 1848 on the territory of the Ural army there was 7 monasteries They were located in close proximity to Cossack settlements, they had 6 prayer houses, as well as wooden huts-cells. The largest Sadovsky women's monastery consisted of 40 huts and 2 houses of worship, Kizlyarsky - from 20 residential buildings, the rest had from 10 before 15 cell. The total number of inhabitants was 151 person, of them 118 women and 33 men, there were novices and novices.
There was a close connection between the monasteries on the territory of the Ural Cossack army. Materials from interrogations of believers captured by the authorities on the way to a pilgrimage make it possible to trace the direction of their movements, as well as the approximate path from the starting point to the final point. The geography turns out to be extensive. The spiritual center for the Cossacks-beglopopovtsy was Irgiz, from it connecting threads stretched to the monasteries located in the Ural region, in the west of the Ufa province, and further to the Isetsky region.
In the middle XIX V. in the Orenburg and Ufa provinces appears " Austrian faith" At this time, the Simbirsk bishop visited the famous monasteries of the Ural region - Sergievsky and Budarinsky Sofroniy (Zhirov), however, his missionary work was not successful. The new movement became widespread among the Ural Cossacks only after a bishop visited them Arseny (Shvetsov). IN 1898 he visited the village of Rassypnaya for missionary purposes, and “ Some of the schismatics reacted sympathetically to him, and he, leaving Rozsypnaya Stanitsa, took with him the Cossack Nazariy Nikitin Sekretov with the intention of making ... priest».
The destruction of Old Believer monasteries led to an increase in the number of priestless concords, the appearance in the Urals of " Austrian faith", the other part switched to the same faith. On the territory of the Ural army there were various non-priest agreements - Fedoseevsky, Pomeranian, chapel, wandering. The self-identification of the priestless Old Believers always remained clear; they always separated themselves from those around them on religious grounds, for example they said: “ We are Pomeranian true faith" For the purpose of self-preservation, priestless communities were as closed as possible; there was strict regulation of all aspects of life: “ We were called “clean” because we separated from everyone and never made peace».
In addition, among the Ural Cossacks there were the so-called “ no good" These are Old Believers who did not recognize the modern priesthood of the Greek-Russian Church and did not join any of the priestly Old Believers' agreements. At first XX V. in the Cossack villages there were 769 good-for-nothings.
Lieutenant Colonel of the General Staff, writer and geographer Alexander Dmitrievich Ryabinin, who used reports from local authorities, gave a comprehensive picture of the religious affiliation of the Ural Cossacks. IN 1865 A. D. Ryabinin was sent to the Urals, he wrote: “ There are three main types of Christian religion: Orthodoxy, Edinoverie and Schism. The mass of the Russian Cossack Christian population belongs to the last two types. A very small part of it adheres to Orthodoxy, mainly from the upper bureaucratic class. Old Believers belong to two schismatic factions: those who accept the priesthood and those who do not accept the priesthood. The last sect is completely insignificant in number».
However, as the Old Believer monasteries and chapels closed, the number of non-priests began to increase more and more.
IN 1853 in order to limit the influence of the Old Believers’ creed on other Cossacks, admission to the Orenburg Cossack army was prohibited “ schismatics from the tax-paying classes».
IN Ural And Orenburg By this time, the Cossack military departments already had an established system of control over the religious affiliation of military personnel. Every year the provincial administration was provided with “ Newsletter about the movement of the schism", where, in addition to the total number of Old Believers in the Cossack class, statistical reports on their movement - arrival and departure - were given in counties and individual villages. Columns were identified where natural increase and decrease (birth and death), change of religious beliefs (transition to the Old Believers or the Nikonian Church), marriage, resettlement to other places (migration, escapes, deportations to prison companies), newly discovered, unknown Previously, the authorities were Old Believers. There was also a section indicating errors in previous reports.
« Newsletter about the movement of the schism"have high information value, despite the fact that they have not been preserved in full. Analysis of these documents shows that in the second half of the 19th century. There is a gradual increase in the number of Old Believers. The rate of increase is small, but there are no declines either, which indicates the stable position of the Ural Old Believers. The increase, in addition to the natural factor, was due to resettlement, missionary activity of the Old Believers, as well as the discovery of previously unregistered adherents of the old faith.
IN " Vedomosti“The number of investigative cases opened during the year with a list of religious crimes of the Cossacks was also indicated. Only in 1848 was condemned " for apostasy - 20 Old Believers, persistence in not baptizing their children - 99 , for denying this signature, by which they pledged to be members of Orthodoxy - 18 , for deviation from Orthodoxy into schism - 290 , for disobedience to the government in accepting a priest of the same faith - 2 ».
IN 1851 more than one was under investigation 540 Yaik Cossacks-Old Believers. Old Believers were sent to the Spiritual Board so that they could “ make an admonition about leaving it».
Government decrees prohibited the construction of Old Believer prayer buildings, and the organization of prayer houses in private houses was also prohibited. The religious centers of the Ural Cossacks-Old Believers were monasteries and secret monasteries, which 1745 were also banned and subjected to constant destruction. Both the author’s historical evidence and later archival materials confirm the data on the belonging of the Yaik Cossacks to the Old Believers. IN " Report of the Orenburg province for 1832 regarding the Executive Police Department" it was said: " ... the Cossacks of the Ural Army, with their wives and children, are all Old Believers" Statistical reports for 1840 recorded the presence of more 30 000 Old Believers in 126 Cossack settlements of the Ural region (stanitas, outposts, villages and farmsteads).
The largest number of Old Believers were in the cities of Uralsk - 6465 and Guryev - 1433 , Sakmarskaya village - 2275 , Rubezhny outposts - 765 , Genvartsovsky - 699 , Large grain - 681 , Irtetsky - 561 , Round - 405 , Sugar fortress - 501 .
According to 1872, there were more Old Believers in the Ural Cossack army (!) than adherents of official Orthodoxy - 46347 And 32062 person accordingly. The Orenburg Cossack army, which arose much later than the Ural army, 1748, and formed mainly from the alien element, was less homogeneous in religious affiliation, and the Old Believers did not play a dominant role in it - in the same 1872 here on 61177 people of the Orthodox population accounted for only 8899 Old Believers.
A document has been preserved that describes a situation that clearly illustrates the attitude of the population towards the official church. From the report of Prince A.A. Putyatin to the Isetsky voivode Khrushchev it follows that the 1748 stone church in the Chelyab fortress " for failure to work people" even in 1764, after 16 years, was not built. The reason for this was known: “ Since the Cossacks there are inclined towards schism, it may turn out that they are not zealous about the construction of that church».
In addition to the absolute majority of Old Believers in the Ural army, the Ural Cossacks were independent in their spiritual affairs from the spiritual government in Orenburg. Such self-government was a source of special pride for the Cossacks; it also found support in the military college, to which the Cossack army was subordinate. Any attempt on the principles of Cossack self-government, any attempts to reorganize it, were met with rebuff from the entire army.
In accordance with this, the Military Collegium of the presentation, in the aforementioned Yaitsky army, does not now establish a Spiritual Board and the archpriest, priests and clerks appointed by Your Eminence should not be assigned there, and henceforth, until the consideration of that army for the priesthood, at the discretion of Your Eminence, worthy ones from there according to -to continue to produce, so that this army, as the said Military Collegium demands, can remain on the same basis. And for this purpose, if before those mentioned to Your Eminence, those who were taken from that army and, after being banned, were sent to the monasteries under the command of the archpriest and priest, of which there are no obvious contradictions to the holy church, release them to that army as before.
This decree was always considered by the Cossacks as confirming and protecting their rights and features of church order and governance. The Cossack army had to resort to this Decree more than once, in cases where attempts were made to change the previous church practice, which they stubbornly clung to.
Everyone knows the caviar of the Urals
and Ural sturgeons,
Only a few have heard everything
about the Ural Cossacks.
The first half of the 16th century was the time of the emergence of Cossack communities on the banks of the Yaik River (Ural). Tradition says that between 1520 and 1550, Ataman Vasily Gugnya brought a detachment of 30 people from the Don and from “other cities”. Historical evidence of the appearance and residence of the Cossacks on Yaik is a document dating back to 1571–1572. The Nogai Murzas wrote: “Now the sovereign orders the Cossacks to take away the Volga and Samara and Yaik from us, and for this we are to be separated from the Cossacks: our uluses will kill our wives and children.” The second half of the 16th century is the period when many Cossack towns began to appear on the banks of the Yaik and Emba.
The first chronicle mention of the Yaik Cossacks dates back to July 9, 1591. The order of Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich to the Astrakhan governors who went on a campaign across the Terek River reads: “... May the memory of the boyar and the governor Prince Ivan Vasilyevich Sitsky and his comrades be remembered: the Sovereign pointed out ... to send his army to Shevkalsky for seven years, from Terk, and for that service the Sovereign ordered the Yaitsky and Volga atamans and Cossacks to go to Astrakhan to the camp... gather all the Cossacks in Astrakhan for the Shevkalsky service: Volga 1000 people and Yaitsky 500...” Thus, the mention of the Yaitsky Cossacks in the chronicle helped determine the day of the founding of the Ural Cossack troops, this holiday is celebrated on July 9th. In terms of seniority and richness of pedigree among the Cossack troops of the Russian Empire, the Ural Army is comparable only to the Don Army. The Ural Cossacks celebrate the military holiday on November 8 (21), the day of the Holy Archangel Michael.
In 1613, the Yaik Cossacks were accepted into the citizenship of the Moscow state, but they retained their “freedom”. Already in 1615, the army was granted a royal charter for “eternal” possession of the Yaik River. By this time, the local Cossacks had their own capital, a fortified town at the confluence of the Chagan River with the Yaik. The capital of the Yaik Cossacks began to be named after the river - Yaik, or Yaitsky. In 1622, the Cossack settlement was moved to the territory of modern Uralsk, which is located on the territory of Kazakhstan.
At the legislative level, the Yaitsky (Ural) army was assigned the territory that the Cossacks occupied themselves, and only that territory that was uninhabited before the appearance of the Cossacks. Modern historians of Kazakhstan claim that the Russian Empire once took their lands from the nomadic Kazakhs and gave them to the Cossacks. But according to history, for the first time the nomads of the Younger Zhuz with Khan Nurali appeared on the left bank of the Urals only in 1785. The nomads came to the Urals only with the written permission of the Orenburg governor-general, who allowed 17 elders of the Kazakh clans to settle on the right bank of the Ural River (Russian territory) for the winter.
Battle glory
Yaik Cossacks took part in many military operations, showing the glory and valor of the Cossack spirit! They took part in the Northern War (1700–1721), the Kuban campaign of General Apraksin (1711), and the campaign against the Khiva Khanate as part of the army of Prince Bekovich of Cherkassy (1717).
The Yaik Cossack army carried out border and guard duty along the Yaik River. Since the territory of the Yaitsky army was not far from the Siberian land, the Yaitsky Cossacks also served on the Siberian fortified line. In 1719, the Yaik Cossack army was transferred under the control of the College of Foreign Affairs. The very next year, Yaik Cossacks also served on the Irtysh fortified border line. By decree of Peter I in 1721, the Army was transferred to the subordination of the Military Collegium. In 1723–1724, Yaik Cossacks took part in the battles against the Nogais and Karakalpaks on the Utva River. Beginning in 1724, the Yaik army began to serve in the Caucasus. Already by 1743, the Army constantly maintained garrisons on the Yaitskaya lower border line.
In 1773, the Yaitsk Cossack Army supported the Don Cossack Emelyan Pugachev. The “Pugachev rebellion” changed the history of the Yaitsky Cossack army. For the support of Emelyan Pugachev and participation in his rebellion, Empress Catherine, by her Decree of January 15, 1775, ordered “to henceforth call this army the Ural, the Yaik River the Ural, and the city of Yaik the Ural.” But this was not the end of the empress’s “dissatisfaction,” since she decided to completely remove the memory of the Yaitsky Cossack army from history. In 1775, the names of the Yaik River and the Yaitsky town, as well as the name of the Cossack army, disappeared from geographical maps and from state documents; mentioning them was strictly forbidden. Thus, the modern name “Ural Cossack Army” is a replacement for the “Yaik Cossack Army” from Catherine’s times.
By order of the Empress, the Ural Cossack Army began to submit to the Astrakhan or Orenburg Governor-General, and control of the Army passed to the commandant of the Uralsk garrison.
Since 1798, the Ural Cossacks began to serve in the Russian guard. In 1799, the ranks of officers of the Ural Cossack Army were equalized with the general army ranks. In the same year, the Ural Cossacks, together with the Don Cossacks, took part in the Italian and Swiss campaigns under the command of the marching chieftain Adrian Karpovich Denisov, as well as in the secret Dutch expedition against the French.
In 1803, the “Regulations on the Ural Cossack Army” were approved and its composition was determined: one Life Guards Ural Hundred and ten mounted Cossack regiments. The shelves were numbered - from No. 1 to No. 10.
In subsequent years, the Ural Cossacks took part in many wars against the Swedes, Turks, Poles, Persians, British, French (including the Patriotic War of 1812), etc.
In 1819, the Cossacks of the Ilek and Sakmara villages were added to the Ural Cossack Army, thus forming two new regiments - No. 11 and No. 12.
In 1837, the Ural Cossacks were sent to the Caucasian War, to Bessarabia, Finland and to the Lower Ural border line. The Ural Cossacks fought in the steppes of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, in the Caucasus and Turkestan, performing feats that surprised even their enemies.
During the Crimean War of 1853–1856, the Cossacks of the Ural Cossack Army fought with the British and French on the land of Crimea, distinguished themselves at Balaklava and on the Black River, and carried out patrol duty near the besieged Sevastopol.
In 1865, the Urals took part in the capture of the city of Tashkent and the Niazbek fortress. The following year, the Ural Cossack hundreds distinguished themselves in the battle against the army of the Bukhara emir Muzzafar at the Irjar tract and the capture of the fortified cities of Khujand, Ura-Tyube and Jizzakh.
In 1868, two hundred Ural Cossacks became famous in the assault on the city of Samarkand and in the battle against the army of the Bukhara emir on the Zera-Bulak heights, which ended in the complete defeat of the enemy.
In 1874, the “Regulations on the Ural Cossack Army” were published. According to him, the Ural Cossack army consisted of the Life Guards of the Ural Cossack squadron, nine numbered cavalry regiments and a training hundred.
In subsequent years, the Cossacks of the Ural Cossack Army showed examples of courage and perseverance, devotion to the Fatherland and the people in many wars and military operations, including during the Russo-Japanese and Great Wars, as well as the Civil Fratricidal War.
In 1920, by decree of the Soviet government, the Ural Cossack Army was abolished. The civil war and repressions against the Cossacks not only “decimated” the male population of the Ural Cossack army, but also influenced its further development and formation as a historically established cultural and ethnic community, rich in its traditions, customs, religiosity and, of course, a special history!
Igor MARTYNOV,
Cossack Colonel,
Ataman of the Interregional
public organization
"Union of Don Cossacks"
Who are the Ural Cossacks
The military harness is strong and reliable,
My horse is a dashing argamak,
A hardened pike, a damask saber,
I myself am a Ural Cossack!
The Ural Cossack Army is rightfully considered one of the oldest, and, perhaps, the most original of all the Cossack Troops of pre-revolutionary Russia. The Urals were among those few Cossacks who themselves formed on the borders of Rus', being “natural” Cossacks, and not peasants and soldiers settled at the tsar’s orders and called “Cossacks”.
The time of settlement of the territories of the lower reaches of the Ural River (Yaika) by bands of free people has not been precisely established. Historians name different time frames for the appearance of the Cossacks in the Urals: from the 14th to the 16th centuries. The Yaik Cossacks were first mentioned in official documents in the 30s of the 16th century. It is believed that their detachments took part in the capture of Kazan in 1550, however, the first documented service of the Yaik Cossacks is 1591, when, on the “order of Fyodor Ioanovich,” they participated together with the Streltsy regiments in hostilities against Shamkhal Tarkovsky, the ruler of Dagestan. From this year the seniority of the Ural (Yaik) Cossack Army is considered.
The opinions of researchers are equally different regarding where the Yaik Cossacks came from. Some trace their ancestry to Turkic tribes, others talk about detachments of Cossacks who moved to Yaik from the Volga or Don. This question still remains open, but it is obvious that the Yaik Cossack community was formed by free people who, having settled on Yaik, set up a number of towns along the river, on its right bank. From the very beginning of their existence, the Yaik Cossacks encountered their restless neighbors, first the Nogais, then the Kyrgyz-Kaisaks. Their hordes, wandering along the left bank of the Yaik, crossed the river and attacked Cossack towns and outposts, stole livestock, set fire to houses, and took people into slavery. Therefore, from the beginning of their existence, the Yaik Cossacks were all warriors; from childhood they learned to ride a horse, hold a weapon in their hands and defend their home and their farm. Battles with nomads continued until the middle of the 19th century. With the beginning of the service of the Cossacks to the Moscow sovereigns, the functions of protecting their own territories grew into the functions of protecting the entire Moscow state. To protect the borders, the tsars paid the Cossacks a salary, sent gunpowder, weapons, etc. to Yaik. Along the Yaik from the Yaitsky town to Guryev down the river, the Nizhne-Yaitskaya line was built, consisting of a number of fortresses and outposts, erected in places where nomads could cross the Yaik and performing protective functions. The Verkhne-Yaitskaya line was built up the river from the Yaitsky town to Iletsk. Subsequently, when the need to defend their lands disappeared, these fortresses and outposts turned into Cossack villages and villages.
So, the Yaik (Ural) Cossacks from the very beginning of their settlement on Yaik were, first of all, warriors. Therefore, it is not surprising that they participated in almost all the wars waged by the Russian Empire. They fought against the Crimean Tatars, Poles, Swedes, Turks, French, Germans and many other peoples, fought bravely near Smolensk, Poltava, Zurich, Leipzig, Balaklava, Ikan, Mukden, etc., took Silistria, Paris, Samarkand, Geok -Tepe, Przemysl and other strongholds repeatedly went to war against the Khiva and Kokand khanates. Many Cossack bones are scattered from the Caucasus to Turkestan; hundreds of Cossacks died in the First World War, thousands in the Civil War.
It’s a paradox, but despite the fact that the Urals were faithful servants of the tsar and the throne, who had repeatedly proven their loyalty on the battlefield, the Yaitsk (Ural) Cossack Army was considered the most “rebellious”. The disobedience of the Urals people manifested itself at the slightest intention of the authorities to infringe on their rights and freedoms. Free people could not come to terms with this. Unrest and unrest, sometimes turning into open disobedience and armed confrontation with the tsarist troops, occurred regularly on the lands of the Ural Cossacks. Everyone knows that the Yaik Cossacks were the driving force behind the uprising of E.I. Pugachev in 1773-1775, and after his suppression they wanted the whole Army, like the Don Ataman Ignat Nekrasov, who took K.A. away after the uprising. Bulavin part of the Don Cossacks to Turkey, go abroad. For the edification of descendants, and in order to forever eradicate the memory of the Pugachev uprising on Yaik, Catherine II ordered in 1775 to rename the Yaik River to the Ural, the Yaitsky town to the Ural, and the Yait Cossack Army to the Ural. This is how the Yaik Cossacks became the Ural Cossacks.
Among peaceful professions, first of all, the Ural Cossacks were engaged in fishing. This is not surprising, knowing what gifts the Ural (Yaik) concealed within itself, which the Cossacks worshiped as a deity. They guarded and protected the river, protected it, cherished it like their own child and loved it endlessly. And the river paid the Cossacks for this with its treasures. Since 1732 Every year, the Ural Cossacks sent summer and winter “stanitsa” (embassies) to the capital to the royal court with gifts from the Urals - sturgeon and black caviar. It is not for nothing that the ancient coat of arms of the Ural Cossacks depicts a sterlet, and under it the legendary Ural warrior Ryzhechka, who defeated the Swedish hero in the Battle of Poltava. In addition to fishing, the Urals were engaged in hunting and animal husbandry, but the land in the Army was for general, communal use.
The Ural Cossacks have always been famous and proud of their originality. They always sought to emphasize their characteristics, their difference from the “Russian people,” their superiority over other classes. Until 1917, more than half of the Troops were Old Believers. Orthodoxy took root among the Cossacks extremely slowly and reluctantly; there were always much fewer Orthodox churches on Cossack territory than Old Believers.
Repeated, at different times, “persecution of faith” also served as a catalyst for unrest and discontent among the Cossacks; suffering for the “true” faith was considered among them a “godly deed.” In this regard, it becomes clear why they greeted the apostate Bolsheviks as the coming of the Antichrist, and almost all of them took up arms. For two whole years the Army heroically fought for its freedom, for the right to be called “Cossacks”. The history of this heroic struggle, full of exploits and courage, has not yet been written and practically not studied. Many Urals died in the winter of 1919-1920. retreating with families, livestock and property along the Urals to the Caspian Sea. It was not the Reds’ bullets that defeated the Urals, but typhus and frost, which were rampant in those years. Betrayed by its allies, the Ural Cossack Army chose not to surrender, but to die in an unequal struggle.
Nowadays, the remaining descendants of the Ural Cossacks live on the territory of the state of Kazakhstan. The territory of the Ural Cossack Army was shredded by the Bolsheviks - a small part was given to the Orenburg region, the rest - to the Kazakh SSR, including the richest Urals, the large city of Guryev with access to the Caspian Sea, numerous oil fields. The new owners of the land started with the main thing, they wanted to erase all memory of the Cossacks, as if they had never been on these lands. They renamed the Urals for the third time in a short period of time, now it is in the Kazakh manner - Oral, there is no longer the city of Guryev - there is Atyrau, there is no Ural region - there is West Kazakhstan. In Uralsk there are still streets named after the executioners of the Cossacks - Chapaev, Furmanov, Petrovsky (chairman of the local Cheka). Monuments to new heroes are erected on them - Abai, Syrym Datov and the like. The existing Ural Cossack community is split, there are two chieftains, two newspapers, several Cossack organizations, each of which solves different goals and tasks. But no matter what they call us, no matter how they humiliate us and bring us to our knees, we have something to be proud of, because we are the descendants of the glorious Ural Cossack Army, and, as you know, “there is no translation for the Cossack family.”
Both in tsarist times and today, the Ural Cossacks remain the most deprived in terms of information. There is neither a partial nor even a complete history of the Army, there is practically no description of the military service, campaigns and exploits of the Cossacks, there is practically no literature of a memoir nature. There is no reference literature about the Ural heroes, no biographical publications. The Most Ancient Army seems to have been forgotten, and many do not even know that such a thing existed. Our task is to eradicate this injustice, restore the names of the forgotten Ural heroes - “Gorynychs”, remember their exploits and pass on the Ural Cossack spirit to the future generation.
URAL COSSACKSOn the edge of vast Rus',
Along the banks of the Urals,
Lives quietly and peacefully
An army of blood Cossacks.
Everyone knows the caviar of the Urals
And Ural sturgeons,
They just know very little
About the Ural Cossacks.
Ural Cossack song.
That's how it really was. The purpose of my essay is to tell the reader who the Ural Cossacks were, where they lived, what they lived with and how they lived.
N. S. Samokish. Ural Cossacks.
The land of the Ural Cossack army was located on the right bank of the Ural River, it began from the borders of the Orenburg Cossack army and stretched to the shores of the Caspian Sea. From the west, the Urals had the Samara province and the Bukey Kirghiz as neighbors; on the left bank of the Ural River, the Cossacks owned a narrow strip of meadows. There was a country of Trans-Ural Kyrgyz.
A. O. Orlovsky. The battle of the Cossacks with the Kirghiz. 1826.
The Ural Cossacks lived in a dead end among their vast steppes, surrounded two-thirds by Kyrgyz tribes. Thanks to such isolation, the Urals, more than other Cossack troops, preserved the life and customs of the ancient Cossacks. From its very inception, the Ural army showed itself as a rebellious army. It always had great friction with the central Russian government, which throughout history tried to completely subordinate it to its will.
The banner that the Yaik Cossacks had near Azov in 1696/97
Carrying out the orders of the Russian state in its own manner, the army took part in literally all foreign wars and enjoyed great well-deserved military glory. But as soon as the State began to introduce any changes in the life of the Cossacks, the Cossacks saw this as an encroachment on freedom, rebelled, and their “not wanting” brought a lot of trouble, and was always very costly for the Cossacks themselves.
In one of the next uprisings, Peter the Great only miraculously did not destroy the army of Yaitsk at that time. He was saved from death by the reformer of the southeastern region Neplyuev, an associate of Peter.
He proved that such an energetic, united people, useful for the state, cannot be destroyed. Subsequently, there were great unrest because of the elected chieftains and because of religion.
In the Yaitsk army there were a lot of Old Believers who fled from persecution from Russia, and so they wanted to forcibly convert them to the Nikon faith at all costs.
Government troops from Orenburg were almost continuously introduced into the Army.
And in 1772, when General Traubenberg came to Yaik, with artillery and infantry, the Cossacks attacked him, killed the artillerymen, tore apart Traubenberg himself and the military ataman Tambovtsev, who was on the side of the government. This event was followed by the fact that, by order of Catherine, a detachment of 3,000 people came, under the command of General Freiman, and brutally punished the Cossacks, executed many, flogged and imprisoned many, and sent many to Siberia to settle.
It was at such an alarming time that the Cossack Emelyan Pugachev came to Yaik-Don. The Yaik Cossacks, doubting that he was really an emperor, nevertheless found that the moment was right and decided to shake Moscow.
It is not my plan to describe this rebellion; we can say that the Army, after the suppression of this rebellion, suffered greatly and was completely depopulated.
And the Yaitsky Army, by order of Catherine II, began to be called the Ural Army, the Yaik River the Ural River, and the Yaitsky town - the city of the Ural. Catherine the Great was greatly disliked by the Cossacks and, on the contrary, Paul I enjoyed great sympathy, probably because he consigned the Pugachev rebellion to oblivion and expressed a desire to have with him a guard hundred of the Urals.
The Hundred was formed under the command of Sevryugin and was in great favor with the emperor.
When it was decided to strangle Pavel in the palace, Count Panin prudently sent the Ural hundred to Tsarskoye Selo, fearing that the Ural people would stand up for him. And until recently, many treasured Paul’s irreplaceable silver ruble with the saying “Not to us, not to us, but to Your name.”
Subsequently, the Cossacks had a persistent opinion that all insults and injustices came from the Emperor’s proteges and that the Emperor knew nothing about this, so they often sent delegates to the Emperor, but they were always intercepted and punished.
In 1803, a new position and form were introduced. An uprising occurred, and when Prince Volkonsky, sent to pacify, began to interrogate the instigator Efim Pavlov, a Cossack, the latter, as the song says, gave the following answer:
In 1837, the heir to the throne Alexander visited Uralsk.
During this period, the people of the Urals were very dissatisfied with the appointed ataman. In a square crowded with people, a group of old Cossacks, at a signal, grab the wheels of the royal carriage and stop it. They fall to their knees and submit a petition to the frightened heir who looks out. The result was disastrous. All these old men were ordered to be flogged and sent to Siberia. The hundred that escorted the Heir was disbanded.
The last turmoil occurred with the introduction of universal conscription in 1874. This year, various reforms were introduced into the lives of the Urals residents regarding their military service and self-government. By the way, military service was introduced for every Cossack, which radically changed the previous procedure for serving military service. The Ural Cossacks grew up with distrust of the central government and, like fire, were afraid of its interference in their internal affairs. When the authorities learned that there was discontent among the Cossacks, mainly among the elderly, who always played a large role among the Old Believer patriarchal population, they ordered that the “subscription” to accept the new position be taken from everyone, and they were asked to sign on blank sheets of paper.
This is where the mess started, which the authorities had to sort out for ten years and as a result of which there was a massive administrative exile of Cossacks with their families to the deserted parts of the Syrdarya and Amudarya regions of the Turkestan region.
The Ural residents resolutely refused to give signatures, citing two reasons for their refusal: firstly, they do not know what they are signing on the white sheets, and secondly, due to their religious beliefs, which prohibit them from making oath promises, etc. This second reason, based on religious superstition has become widespread. The threats and violent measures of the authorities only strengthened the passive resistance, which took on the character of martyrdom for the faith! Women forbade their sons and husbands to submit to the new position and sign a subscription, considering this a great sin. The fathers threatened their sons with curses and were the first to go under arrest; the processions of arrested, venerable bearded old men, escorted by military guards, only added fuel to the fire, and almost everyone had to be arrested.
To intimidate, they decided to exile the first parties. This was in 1875. The arrested resisted, they had to be dragged by force, which, with hundreds of arrestees, was not an easy task for the convoy. The old people were tortured and then forcefully dragged onto carts and taken away. In general, the picture of all this violence was wild and outrageous.
These Ural Cossacks, who went into exile, were called “departures.” The link was permanent. About three thousand Cossacks were deported, and in 1875 their families were sent to them, about 7 and a half thousand in total. There was no railway then, so this unprecedented horde marched in marching order; of course, quite a few old people and children died on the road. The Cossacks endured a lot of grief and need in a foreign land. The governor of the region has repeatedly appealed to the government to improve their situation, but to no avail. In 1891, on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the Ural Cossack army, the appointed ataman, General Shipov, who had great sympathy for the Urals, petitioned the government for the return of the Cossacks who had left to the Urals. The government agreed on the condition that the Cossacks submit a statement of complete repentance for their actions. The departed people neglected this royal favor. Only when the revolution happened in 1917 did the Urals send an invitation to the refugees and many returned to the Urals. Of course, of those who were expelled in 1875, almost no one remained alive, but their children and grandchildren returned and immediately had to take part in the civil war.
In 1914, when the German War began, 6 more preferential regiments were mobilized in addition to the three active service regiments.
When the preferential division was announced that the division would be commanded by the general. Kaufman-Turkestansky, - the Cossacks said that they did not want to have a German commander. The ordered ataman was forced to ask the government, from where came an explanation of who Kaufman-Turkestansky was, and only then did the Cossacks calm down.
Cossacks of the Ural Hundred of the Consolidated Life Guards Cossack Regiment
As I already said, the Urals. despite all the troubles, they were faithful servants of the Emperor and on their steppe scales they were on all the battlefields of the Russian state and the glory of the soldiers was magnificent.
The Emperor magnificently rewarded the hundred and a monument was erected to those who died at the site of the battle.
Monument erected on a mass grave on the battlefield of Ikan
In the wide steppe near Ikan
We were surrounded by an evil Kokand
And three days with the infidel
A bloody battle was raging...
As already said, among the Urals there were many Old Believers of various persuasions, and they were mainly zealots of antiquity and were always against any innovations. Religious issues were of great importance among them.
Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
In the sixties of the last century, after one of the religious oppressions by the government, the Cossacks decide to go to another land where there is real Orthodoxy. To find this holy country, called the “Belovodsk Kingdom,” they send the Cossack Baryshnikov. The Cossack traveled all over the world, but did not find such a country. The Old Believers made a second attempt in 1898. They sent three Cossacks, led by Khokhlov, to finally find this land. They visited many countries, but again found nothing. This event is described with great sympathy by the writer Korolenko. Until very recently, missionaries from the Holy Synod came to Uralsk every year during Lent and held debates in one of the churches with the goal of converting the Old Believers to the Nikonian faith. The Old Believers were represented annually by the old man Miroshkhin, a blind man, who responded to his speeches with theses from the Holy Scriptures, and this happened in this way; with him was a young man, to whom Miroshkhin ordered: “Open such and such a stranger and read from such and such a line.” His memory was phenomenal and he always had great success with the Old Believers.
Despite. that in all clashes with the government, the government was the winner, yet the Urals managed to preserve some Cossack customs.
The Ural Army is the only army of the Russian Empire that until the last day retained its communal structure and had common land, the reserved Ural River, which within the Army belonged exclusively to the Urals and fishing on it was carried out exclusively by the Urals. And the Urals themselves used it only during certain periods of the year. In winter there is purple fishing, in spring and autumn there is flooding and some other fisheries. Since the Urals have been fishermen since ancient times, they have developed the strictest rules and techniques for these fisheries.
When the German scientist Pallas visited the Yaik army in 1769, during the reign of Catherine II, he described in detail some of the Cossack fisheries; they have remained unchanged since then. The rest of the time the Urals were heavily guarded, preventing poachers from entering. This was caused by necessity, since the lower line of the earth had, one might say, a desert, a former seabed, where nothing grew; Fishing among the lower Cossacks was almost the only means of subsistence.
The Cossacks carried out the equalization of the benefits of their land. Since the villages located above Uralsk had good land and, engaged in arable farming, could do without fishing, the Cossacks decided not to allow red fish above Uralsk. For this purpose, they quite often lowered iron rods from a narrow wooden bridge across the Urals to the bottom. The fish, going upstream, reaches this obstacle, stops and returns back, looking for other places. This structure is called “uchug”.
New iron iron
Above that, Ural fishing is free and whatever you like.
Each village used the land as it wanted, in its own way, even the congress of elected representatives of the village societies, the so-called Military Congress, or otherwise the Military Circle, did not interfere with the resolutions of the village gatherings, it approved them without hindrance. By the way, this Military Congress existed among the Urals until the very end, but its functions were exclusively of an economic nature and even the appointed ataman had no right to interfere in its affairs.
The only property the Ural residents could have was an orchard. The Cossack submitted a request to the village meeting to allocate space for his garden. Usually there were no obstacles, the assembly decided, the Military Congress approved, a land surveyor came from Uralsk, measured out the five dessiatines, and this was the property of the Cossack forever and even his descendants. But it is surprising that very few started these gardens.
The Cossacks were so jealous of the fact that the land was common that they did not want to sell it to anyone or even rent it out.
During the period when General N. Shipov was the appointed ataman, who, by the way, was an exceptional ataman, nothing like the others who were before and after him. Having received his appointment to this post, he began with zeal to improve the lives of the Cossacks and, among other things, planned to organize a model farm and an agricultural school with it. From this farm, each Cossack, if desired, could take improved breeders for livestock. It took General Shipov great difficulty to obtain permission from the Congress to alienate the land for this farm.
As the reader can see from my historical note, there was always a large loss of people among the Urals, but no new ones were accepted, the population was dense only in the upper villages, where there were good lands. Below Uralsk, even by 1914, the population was sparse - this probably also influenced the fact that the question of dividing up the land was never raised. There was a lot of land, and everyone plowed wherever he pleased, and everyone grazed their schools of horses, herds of cattle and chickens of rams, where the village gathering allocated a place for them.
Ural Cossack woman from a wealthy family
The Urals lived richly, and some Cossacks had a very large number of horses, cattle and sheep.
The training of horses among horse breeders was special. In the summer, the horses were always in the steppe, where they grazed and spent the night. In winter, there were rooms for them, but they were fed with hay, which was scattered on clean snow and they were not given water: along with the hay, they took the snow; and at the very beginning of winter, when the snow was not deep, they had not yet been given any hay; they, as they say, “fell”, that is, tearing apart the snow with their hoofs, they found food for themselves. And the horses were like wild ones; They only began to learn when they were four years old. When the repair commission for the army arrived, it was a spectacle when they caught these horses with a lasso and forcibly brought them to the veterinarian and, after acceptance, applied a brand. And such and such horses were distributed to Cossack recruits, and how much knowledge, patience, dexterity and courage was needed to accustom such a horse to the formation. The result of this upbringing was hardy horses that were not afraid of snowstorms or rain.
For the sheep there were reed fences without a roof, only for winter. The chicken of rams numbered 500, and the rams were driven into a fence or yard in such a way that when they lay down, they lay so close to each other that it was impossible to step between them. And in this form, no frost or rain affected them; it was very warm there. They, like horses, were fed in the snow in winter and not given water.
The Urals never served on mares.
Despite the fact that the Urals were very conservative and shunned innovations, the scythe was already being replaced by a mower; Wheat threshing was no longer carried out by horses, but by steam threshing machines; the plow was long ago replaced by a plow.
And even by the war of 1914, cars were already visible. But the patriarchal way of life was firmly established among the Cossacks.
I’ll take my village Chizhinskaya as an example. In my village, for example, for the holidays of Christmas and Easter, my father and uncle always sent half a lamb carcass, tea and sugar to many poor Cossacks to break their fast, and to some, cloth for new clothes. Also, as a custom, on the day of some kind of wake, a sweet cake with a candle and money was sent - but this was done secretly. To do this, my mother sent me when it was already completely dark, and I had to put it on the window and quickly run away.
In the spring, some Cossacks came to take bulls for all the summer work and returned them only in late autumn. I don’t know how other rich Cossacks helped because all these good deeds were done without publicity. There were many oddities among the Old Believers; someone like that would come to his father on business. You go up to him to say hello, but he doesn’t extend his hand, because I’m not of his faith. Among the Cossacks of the Old Believers there were those who, having gone somewhere far away, along the way asked someone to spend the night and this was done in this way: they would knock on the window and read the prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ. Son of God, have mercy on us!” From home they answer: “Amen!” - “Let me spend the night for Christ’s sake.”
They are allowed to spend the night, but they will not accept tea from your samovar, because we are not of their faith. They light a fire in the yard and boil water there in the kettles they brought with them. Some do not recognize the samovar at all, believing that there is something of the devil in it. The Old Believers did not allow smoking in their houses, and if, out of ignorance, you decided to smoke, the Cossack would unceremoniously knock the cigarette out of your mouth.
My family was also Old Believers, and my parents told me how in late autumn they took me on horseback in a sleigh to be baptized 400 miles to the Volga, where our priest was hiding at that time.
As a curiosity, I can point out to the reader that the Urals all wore beards. It was worn not only by Old Believers, who considered it a great sin to shave it, but also by Nikonians. Some officers left mustaches, shaved their beards, and there is a humorous poem by our poet officer A.B. Karpov.
Morning, the sun is shining,
A hundred appear in the field,
At least beat the whole hundred,
There are bearded men everywhere.
Only I disgraced them -
He shaved his beard.
During the war of 14 there were big troubles with these beards, when they had to put on a gas mask.
All the surnames of the Urals ended with the letters -ov, -ev and -in, there were no -ich, -sky, etc. Therefore, when they accepted someone into the Cossacks for military distinction or for services to the Army, they changed their surnames in their own way.
And one more curiosity. Some historians, and even Pushkin, in his “History of the Pugachev Rebellion,” believe that the Yaik Cossacks descended from the Don Cossacks. The people of the Urals categorically disagree with this. The Urals believe that such ancient free troops - Don, Tersk, Volzhskoe and Yaitsk were formed independently, but that over the course of history some Cossacks moved from army to army.
That the Don Army was the oldest and largest, and the Yaik Cossacks were in close connection with it, the Urals admit, but for what reason the Don people were drawn to go over to the Yaik Cossacks, this is unknown to them. You have to think that they left because they didn’t like something. As an example, we can point to Ataman Gugnya - he was an ushkuinik and fled from Novgorod at the time when Ivan the Terrible destroyed the Novgorod veche. He fled to the Don, but he didn’t like something about the Don, and he moved to Yaik.
By the way, he did not particularly show himself in any way on Yaik; he is known only for the fact that he violated the previous custom of the Yaik Cossacks, who, when going on a campaign, abandoned their wives, and brought new ones from the campaign. He saved his wife, but did not bring a new one, and from this very Gugnikha permanent wives appeared. The Cossacks call her great-grandmother Gugnikha and, on all convenient and inconvenient occasions, raise a glass to her.
__________
In Uralsk, equality was complete and no merit to the Army gave the right to have more.
There were no privileged classes, as there were in the Don Army, when the sovereigns gave titles to the Don people with the grant of lands and peasants, in the Ural Army.
__________
The Urals were Great Russians, there was no Ukrainian blood. The Tatars and Kalmyks were also full-fledged Cossacks, and they were magnificent Cossacks. Even the officers were from Tatars.
NEW POPULATION
By the war of 1914, the city of Uralsk had a population of 50 thousand; half of them were from other cities.
All commercial enterprises and all trade were in the hands of nonresidents. The Cossacks did not like to engage in trade. All these commercial enterprises grew rich at the expense of the Cossacks. All the artisans, all the employees of post offices, banks, etc. were from out of town.
In Uralsk there were a Cossack real school and a women's gymnasium, as well as government men's and women's gymnasiums. All the staff were from out of town. All watchmakers and pharmacists were Jews. There were up to 40 families of Jews and they lived richly.
There were few newcomers in the villages. These were mainly artisans and traders.
Russian-Kyrgyz school of craft students
Throughout the territory of the Army there were many Kirghiz of the Bukeev Horde. They had no rights, served as shepherds for the Cossacks and worked in field work, and, we must admit, the Cossacks greatly exploited them. Some lent them tea, sugar, flour and money at high interest rates during the winter; they had to work in the summer.
Among them there were many horse thieves, one of them gained great fame and was elusive, since he was being sheltered by the Kirghiz. His name was Aidan-Galiy. He managed to choose the best horses from the school, of course, his relatives helped him, and drove them beyond the Urals or to the Samara province. Once he even stole a whole school of horses, 300 head strong, but it was not possible to transport them secretly across the Urals, and the one caught was forced to abandon the school and hide. It was not possible to catch him; according to rumors, he fled to Turkey.
The Cossacks unceremoniously evicted the Kyrgyz who were found to have committed unseemly acts into the Bukeevskaya horde. All this newcomer population did not like the Cossacks and the Cossacks did not interfere with them. Cossacks married only Cossack women, with the exception of very rare cases. They never married Kyrgyz women.
Now, with the permission of the reader, I will offer a description of the purple coloration among the Ural Cossacks by B. Kirov.
BAGRENIE
It seems to me that anyone who has never been to the Urals or has not met the Ural Cossacks has not even heard such a word, and, meanwhile, crimson is a whole event in the life of the Uralians.
Bagrenye is a special type of winter fishing. I think I will not be mistaken if I say that it existed only in the Urals.
Bagrenye is a celebration, a Cossack holiday.
In the fall, with the onset of the first cold weather, red fish - sturgeon, stellate sturgeon - go to winter. She gathers in pens (herds) and, having chosen a place for herself, sinks to the bottom, where she spends time until warm days. The Cossacks are watching the Urals and notice these places.
Usually, around the Christmas holidays, a special commission of old people observing the Urals determined that the ice was strong enough to withstand the entire Army. The day was set. Hooks, cradles, and picks were prepared in advance, harnesses were cleaned, sleighs were renewed, crimson rounds were baked, and the night before, the Cossacks on their best horses rode out for crimson. Wives and children also went there.
Cossacks and Cossacks are dressed in a special crimson costume: a hat with a crimson top, a black cloth jacket tucked into white canvas trousers. The Cossack women are dressed in a festive way - in velvet fur coats lined with fox fur and expensive shawls.
They rode out in entire villages, and they also rode alone, but they all merged into one stream of sleighs and moved without disturbing the order where the lead one led. There the horses were placed in strict, regular rows. The Cossacks lined up on both banks of the Urals in a long front and waited. Cossack women crowded behind in cheerful groups.
There was a Kyrgyz tent on the shore, and the senior ranks of the Army and their families gathered around it.
At about nine o'clock, in the distance, against the backdrop of the snowy steppe, a troika appeared, escorted by mounted Cossacks. The ataman was riding.
The troika rolled up to the wagon, and the ataman, getting out of the sleigh, loudly greeted the village residents. A friendly loud response from the Troops rushed through the frosty air.
Then there was a solemn silence. A crimson ataman came out onto the ice, in the middle of the Urals, and gave a sign for the beginning of the crimson ataman.
The ranks of the Cossacks swayed and ran towards the Urals. With long hooks in their hands, the Cossacks jumped from the ravine into the deep snow, rolled down it and ran across the ice to the stirrup of the Urals. They stopped and started making small holes in the ice with their picks. Several seconds passed. Thick ice has been cut through. Almost simultaneously, the shafts of the hooks rose, forming an entire forest, and immediately plunged into the ice hole. It started to turn purple.
The fish, frightened by the noise, rose and walked under the ice, but encountered hooks on its way and, hooked, was pulled towards the ice. Now a large hole was breaking through, and a moment later the fish, caught by several more fishtails, was struggling on the ice and freezing. A sleigh with a flag arrived, the Cossacks, often with difficulty, put huge fish on them and took them to a barracks on the shore, where the entire catch was stored.
The crowd on the shore watched with great attention and interest what was happening on the ice, and the appearance of each new fish was greeted with an enthusiastic roar.
The first day, according to custom, they smelted the best yatovo near Uralsk; the purple was special. Royal purple. According to tradition, the Army sent all this catch as a gift to the Tsar. Large convoys, and recently several wagons loaded with fish, went annually to St. Petersburg as a “present”.
By noon they began to leave.
The horses, stagnant in the cold, rushed forward, and the Cossacks, satisfied with the good catch, gave them complete freedom. The race began. Along a flat wide road, overtaking each other, Cossacks rushed in sleighs. Well-fed horses walked at a fast trot, throwing snow dust at their riders.
A couple in a small sled flies past you like a whirlwind. A Cossack sits bending slightly towards the front and sticking one leg out of the sleigh. His hat, eyebrows, mustache and beard are white with frost, and he, little by little lowering the reins, gives the horses more and more speed. And next to him, leaning back, turning his head from the wind and the snow flying from under his hooves, sits a young Cossack woman, squealing slightly bumpy, and her black eyes laugh from under sable eyebrows and white teeth sparkle in the sun. And behind them, catching up or already overtaking, another couple is rushing, there is a third, a fourth... and, looking at them, you feel that today is a holiday, a special, Ural holiday.
Cheerful and cheerful, the Cossacks return home. Pies, flatbreads and a cheerfully boiling samovar await them. After the frost, it’s nice to indulge in some tea and, in the warm comfort, remember and tell about what happened in the morning.
And in the evening the preparations began again, and early in the morning, often at night, the Cossacks left again to hunt, this time for themselves, to other frontiers. And this went on for several days.
The courtyards of fish merchants were filled with fish and work was in full swing there. Huge fish were ripped open and bags of caviar tumbled into the sieves. They immediately cut it up, salted it and filled large and small jars with it. They immediately fished the fish into balyks and aunts.
Every fishmonger has guests, and he proudly leads them around the yard. And there was something to boast about. There were belugas weighing 60 pounds. If you sit astride it, you won’t be able to touch the ground with your feet. After walking around the yard and examining the fish, everyone went into the rooms to try new caviar and drink tea. Caviar was served in large bowls, one bowl followed another, and the hospitable owner persuaded him to try from each:
- This one may be better, the salting is different.
When the guests left, a jar of caviar was placed in each sleigh, and no one dared refuse it.
Merchants sent Ural caviar and Ural sturgeon all over the world, and the whole world feasted on them.
But how many knew how the Cossacks got these treasures from “Yaik, the Golden Bottom”?
B. Kirov
Newspaper "Renaissance", Paris
ROYAL BURNING
The first day of purple was reserved for the king. All fish caught that day were taken to the royal table. This custom has existed since the time of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, the first of the Romanov dynasty, when the Yaik Cossacks came to the tsar with a fish gift and a bow with a request to “accept” them under his high hand. And then it happened that every year the Cossacks took this gift to the royal table. This was not difficult in the old days, when Yaik was very rich in fish and was not otherwise called in songs as the “golden bottom”, and he fed the entire Army. But when Yaik gradually began to become scarce, it became more difficult for the Cossacks to do this, and, by the way, this custom turned into an obligation and existed until the 1917 revolution. It happened like this: the military treasury released a sum of money to buy red fish from the Cossacks right on the ice, during the crimson season. But the rates were as follows: 3 rubles for barn sturgeon and 15 rubles for caviar sturgeon. The real price of caviar sturgeon was 120-150-200 or more rubles, depending on the size. Now imagine a Cossack who was lucky in the royal scarlet and unlucky in his own. How much income did he lose? They tried to hide the fish somehow, but this became completely impossible, because the authorities forbade bringing horses and sleighs onto the ice on the royal scarlet day. Special yatovs were reserved for the royal scarlet, and sometimes it turned out that there were no deposits of fish on it; then they broke another and so on until they caught enough fish.
During the period of General Shipov's atamanship, at the end of the last century, a regrettable incident occurred. Three yatovs were broken and there were no fish. It was necessary to break more, but the remaining lines were not prepared, and the Cossacks refused to continue. Despite the threats and orders of the ataman, the Cossacks flatly refused, citing the fact that there were no barriers at other lines and the frightened fish would go into the sea. About 60 people were arrested, and some were sent to Siberia.
One has to wonder how the tsarist government did not abolish this ancient custom.
This fish was brought to the Tsar by an honorable delegation of three or four people from honored Cossacks. The king gave someone a gold watch with his portrait, someone a gold cigarette case or something like that.
But, probably, the emperor distributed this fish, since there was a lot of it, but the Urals never received gratitude from anyone.
Recognized text: http://kazachiy-krug.ru
See also:
Ural Cossacks and the city of Uralsk (A.K. Gaines),
Uralsk and Orenburg as administrative centers (F. I. Lobysevich),
Bagrenye in the Urals (I. F. Blaramberg).
