Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Cossacks: Guardians or oppressors?

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Cossacks: Guardians or oppressors?

    Chicago Tribune, IL
    Aug 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."
Working...
X