--- Dwayne Monroe <idoru345 at yahoo.com> wrote: Of course, you won't have that kind of marketing juggernaut at your disposal but I imagine the Don Cossacks have accumulated a wealth of astounding but true tales over the years (centuries?) that, framed in the right way, would be of great interest to many people. ---
Thanks! They sure do: The settlement of the territory by escaped serfs; the establishment of kazachestvo (Cossackdom -- I hate that word); the incorporation into the Russian Empire as an Estate; the Civil War; the deportations, collectivizations, and mass killings during the Stalin era (and before); and the Gorbachev-era and post-Soviet national revival.
One problem is that Westerners see the Cossies through the eyes of the late 19th-century pogroms and Bolshevik propaganda and think they're some tsarist version of Nazis, when in fact they're a people (quasi-people) with a 500-year history. It's like equating Germans with Nazis... Oh well. I mentioned this to a friend from Rostov (part Cossack herself) and she said "who the fuck cares what Westerners think?" ;)
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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