> One problem is that Westerners see the Cossies through the eyes of the
> late 19th-century pogroms and Bolshevik propaganda
You might also add to that thought (if not to that paragraph, which is fine as is): as well through the eyes of their greatest universally acknoweldged greatest proponent and celebrator, Gogol, in Taras Bulbas. He's probably branded their image as much as anyone, on the basis of, if this is what their friends say they're like when they're praising them, god only knows the depths of their savagery.
Michael