Chicago Tribune August 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."
--- Carl Remick <carlremick at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >From: "James Heartfield"
> <Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk>
> >
> >Carl qestions my assertion: 'Cook's role as
> architect of New Labour's
> >ethical imperialism was promptly forgotten by the
> left ...'
> >
> >But here is 'Stop The War Coalition convenor
> Lindsey German' saying 'Mr
> >Cook had set a good example and would be "sorely
> missed". '
> >http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4128718.stm
>
> I also see from that piece that George Galloway
> eulogizes Cook as "Labour to
> his fingertips," which strikes me as equivocal
> praise since Galloway is now
> affiliated with Respect, not Labour.
>
> Carl
>
> VOTE RESPECT 2005
> Are you fed up with the main political parties?
> Labour, Lib Dems,Tories – sound the same, say the
> same thing and offer
> nothing to working people in this country.
> -- From
> http://www.respectcoalition.org/elect/index.php
>
>
> ___________________________________
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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