OK one more thing. The article says:
"Their culture and way of life was brutally suppressed under the Soviet Union."
Actually this isn't true from what I've been reading. There was a brief campaign of violent razkazachenie (docossackization) in 1919, which ended due to Cossack resistance and opposition in the Party. In 1936, Pravda ran a front-page article declaring that the Cossacks had been Sovietized, retaining their old nature but having taken a "socialist form." Interestingly, it was during the Soviet period that Cossacks began to be reconceived as an ethnicity rather than an Estate, starting in 1926 when the North Caucasus census listed "Cossack" as a separate ethnicity. Previously, in fact, the Mongol Buddhist Kalmyks were part of the Don Cossack Host, but they dropped out due to "Kalmyks" being listed as a nationality separate from Cossacks. As of 1998 at least, they were organized in the Union of Kalmyk Cossacks, as distinct from the Don Host.
Wow, I feel almost like an expert on something! ;)
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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