Russia's Eastward Expansion

The Crimea

The Cossacks

The strategy of nomadic warrior-fighters, such as the Tatars and Ottoman Turks, was to raid areas before subjugating them and taking them under full control. The Golden Horde regarded the core regions of the Russian steppe - Volga Bulgaria, the region along the lower Volga and Don, the Crimea, as such core regions. However, vast stretches of land located between the Tatar pastures and the Russian principalities had been a buffer zone, not Tatar pastures, but not part of any other state either. The population had to live in the contant threat of a Tatar raid.
Here a new people emerged, the COSSACKS. They were mostly Russians who had adopted the nomadic lifestyle of the Tatars (some were farming, as the black soil of Ukraine is very fertile). The Cossacks became highly skilled horse riders. They formed their own political organizations, resembling the hordes of the Tatars, and elected their leader, the HETMAN.
In 1581 the STROGANOV family hired a band of Cossacks to conquer the Khanate of Sibir (conquest achieved in 1584) and to explore the vast lands to the east of that, Hetman YERMAK thus gaining lasting fame.
From the 16th century onward, the Cossacks lived in the border region of Poland-Lithuania, the Ottoman Empire and Russia. They were often split in a number of distinct hordes. When the Jesuits attempted to convert the Cossacks to Catholicism, the ZAPOROZHIAN COSSACKS switched their allegiance to Moscow (1648). The Cossacks were unruly, difficult to tame, often utilized by Russia's rulers as cavalry soldiers in faraway campaigns.

EXTERNAL
FILES

The Cossacks Page, by Artiom Kochukov
Cossack, database entry from NUPI, ethnologic-historical

DOCUMENTS

The Cossack Letter, from InfoUkes, a letter said to have been sent by the Zaporozhian Cossacks to the Sultan, c. 1660
Nikolay Gogol, Taras Bulba, English and Russian edition

REFERENCE

This page is part of World History at KMLA
Last revised on January 11th 2002