Story. Brief description of the Cossacks - Cossack village

The Cossacks are not some special nationality, they are the same Russian people, however, with their own historical roots and traditions.

The word "Cossack" is of Turkic origin and figuratively means "free man". In Russia, the Cossacks were called free people living on the outskirts of the state. As a rule, in the past these were runaway serfs, serfs and the urban poor.

People were forced to leave their homes due to their disenfranchised position, poverty, serfdom. These fugitives were called "walking" people. The government, with the help of special detectives, tried to search for those who had gone on the run, punish them and put them back in their old place of residence. However, mass escapes did not stop, and gradually entire free regions with their own Cossack administration arose on the outskirts of Russia. The first settlements of the settled fugitives were formed on the Don, Yaik and in Zaporozhye. The government eventually had to come to terms with the existence of a special estate - the Cossacks - and try to put it at its service.

Most of the “walking” people went to the free Don, where the native Cossacks began to settle in the 15th century. There were no duties, no compulsory service, no governor. The Cossacks had their own elected administration. They were divided into hundreds and tens, which were led by centurions and foremen. To resolve public issues, the Cossacks gathered for gatherings, which they called "circles". At the head of this free estate was an ataman chosen by the circle, who had an assistant - Yesaul. The Cossacks recognized the power of the Moscow government, were considered to be in his service, but were not distinguished by great devotion and often participated in peasant uprisings.

In the 16th century, there were already many Cossack settlements, whose inhabitants, in accordance with the geographical principle, were called Cossacks: Zaporozhye, Don, Yaik, Grebensky, Terek, etc.

In the 18th century, the government transformed the Cossacks into a closed military estate, which was obliged to carry out military service in the general system of the armed forces of the Russian Empire. First of all, the Cossacks had to protect the borders of the country - where they lived. In order for the Cossacks to remain loyal to the autocracy, the government endowed the Cossacks with special benefits and privileges. The Cossacks were proud of their position, they had their own customs and traditions, which were passed down from generation to generation. They considered themselves a special people, and the inhabitants of other regions of Russia were called "out-of-town". This continued until 1917.

The Soviet government did away with the privileges of the Cossacks and liquidated the isolated Cossack regions. Many of the Cossacks were subjected to repression. The state has done everything to destroy the traditions that have developed over the centuries. But it could not completely make people forget about their past. At present, the traditions of the Russian Cossacks are being revived again.

Probably about no Russian ethnic group, there are as many fictions, legends, lies and fairy tales as about the Cossacks.
Their very origin, existence, role in history - serve as the object of all kinds of political speculation and pseudo-historical machinations.

Let's try calmly, without emotions and cheap tricks, to figure out who the Cossacks are, where they came from, and what they are today ...

In the summer of 965, the Russian prince Svyatoslav Igorevich moved his troops to Khazaria.
The Khazar army (reinforced by detachments of various Caucasian tribes), together with their kagan, came out to meet him.

By that time, the Russians had already defeated the Khazars more than once - for example, under the command of the Prophetic Oleg.
But Svyatoslav put the question differently. He decided to eliminate Khazaria completely, without a trace.
This man was not like today's rulers of Russia. Svyatoslav set himself global tasks, acted decisively, quickly, without delay, hesitation and looking back at someone's opinion.

The troops of the Khazar Khaganate were defeated and the Russians approached the capital of Khazaria, Sharkil (known as Sarkel in Greek-Byzantine historical documents), located on the banks of the Don.
Sharkil was built under the guidance of Byzantine engineers and was a serious fortress. But apparently the Khazars did not expect that the Russians would move deep into the Khazars, and therefore they were poorly prepared for defense. Speed ​​and onslaught did their job - Sharkil was taken and defeated.
However, Svyatoslav appreciated the advantageous location of the city - therefore he ordered the foundation of a Russian fortress on this place.
The name Sharkil (or, in Greek pronunciation Sarkel), in translation means "White House". The Russians, without further ado, simply translated this name into their own language. So the Russian city of Belaya Vezha was born.

Aerial photograph of the former Belaya Vezha fortress, taken in 1951. Now this territory is flooded with the waters of the Tsimlyansk reservoir.

Having passed the entire North Caucasus with fire and sword, Prince Svyatoslav achieved his goal - the Khazar Khaganate was destroyed.
Having conquered Dagestan, Svyatoslav moved his troops to the Black Sea.
There, in parts of the Kuban and the Crimea, there was the ancient Bosporan kingdom, which fell into decay and fell under the rule of the Khazars. Among others, there was a city there, which the Greeks called Hermonassa, the Turkic nomadic tribes - Tumentarkhan, and the Khazars - Samkerts.
Having conquered these lands, Svyatoslav transferred a certain amount of the Russian population there.
In particular, Germonassa (Tumentarkhan, Samkerts), turned into the Russian city of Tmutarakan (modern Taman, in the Krasnodar Territory).

Modern excavations in Tmutarakan (Taman). 2008

At the same time, taking advantage of the fact that the Khazar danger had disappeared, Russian merchants founded the Oleshye fortress (modern Tsyurupinsk, Kherson region) at the mouth of the Dnieper.

So Russian settlers appeared on the Don, Kuban and in the lower reaches of the Dnieper.

Exclaves Oleshye, Belaya Vezha, and Tmutarakan on the map of the Old Russian state of the 11th century.

Subsequently, when Russia broke up into different principalities, the Tmutarakan principality became one of the strongest.
The princes of Tmutarakan took an active part in the inter-princely civil strife of Russia, and also pursued an active expansionist policy. For example, in alliance with the North Caucasian tribes dependent on Tmutarakan, they organized, one after the other, three campaigns against Shirvan (Azerbaijan).
That is, Tmutarakan was not just a remote fortress on the edge of the Russian world. It was a fairly large city, the capital of an independent and fairly strong principality.

However, over time, the situation in the southern steppes began to change for the worse for the Russians.
In place of the defeated and destroyed Khazars (and their allies), in the deserted steppes, new nomads began to penetrate - the Pechenegs (ancestors of the modern Gagauz). At first little by little - then more and more actively (does this remind contemporaries of anything? ..). Year after year, step by step, Tmutarakan, Belaya Vezha and Oleshye were cut off from the main territory of Russia.
Their geopolitical situation has become more complicated.

And then, the Pechenegs were replaced by much more militant, numerous and wild nomads, who in Russia were called Polovtsy. In Europe they were called Cumans, or Comans. In the Caucasus - Kipchaks, or Kypchaks.
And these people have always called themselves and still call themselves - COSSACKS.

Take an interest in how the republic is CORRECTLY called today, which we, Russians, know as Kazakhstan.
For those who do not know, I explain - KAZAKHSTAN.
And the Kazakhs themselves are called - COSSACKS. We call them Kazakhs.

Here on the map - the territory of the Kazakh (Polovtsian, Kypchak) nomad camps, at the end of the XI - beginning of the XII centuries.

The territory of modern Kazakhstan (correctly - Kazakhstan)

Cut off by nomads from the main territory of Russia, Oleshye and Belaya Vezha began to gradually decline, and the Tmutarakan principality eventually recognized the sovereignty of Byzantium over itself.
It should be especially taken into account that in that era, no more than 10% of the total population lived in cities. The bulk of the population, even in the most developed states at that time, consisted of peasants. Therefore, the desolation of cities did not entail the death of the entire population, cleanly - especially since none of the nomadic peoples ever set a goal to arrange genocide for Russians.
Russians, as an ethnic group, on the Don, Kuban, Dnieper (especially in remote, secluded places) never completely disappeared - although, of course, they mixed with different peoples and partially adopted their customs.

Plus, it should be borne in mind that the Pechenegs and Polovtsy sometimes drove into slavery the inhabitants of the border Russian lands - and mixed with them.
And later, having become relatively civilized, the Polovtsy began to slowly adopt Orthodoxy, concluded various agreements with the Russians. For example, a baptized Polovtsian named Ovrul helped Prince Igor to escape from captivity (about whom the Tale of Igor's Campaign tells).

A certain number of Russian vagabonds, people with a dubious past - always flowed in thin streams into the Polovtsian steppes. There, the fugitives tried to settle in an area where a certain number of Russians were present.
Such an escape was facilitated by the fact that it did not require knowledge of the road - it was enough just to go along the Don, or Dnieper.

It certainly didn't happen in one day. But as they say, a drop wears away a stone.

Gradually, there were so many such marginal vagabonds that they began to allow themselves organized attacks on some areas. For example, in 1159 (note that this was still the PRE-MONGOLIAN period), Oleshye was attacked by a strong detachment of such vagabonds (at that time they were called "berladniks", or "wanderers"; as they called themselves - it is not known) who captured the city and inflicted serious damage to merchant trade. The Kiev prince Rostislav Mstislavovich, as well as the governors Georgy Nesterovich and Yakun, were forced to go down the Dnieper with a navy in order to return Oleshya to princely power ...

Of course, that part of the Polovtsians who roamed east of the Volga (in the region of modern Kazakhstan) had contact with the Russians to a much lesser extent, and therefore better preserved their national features ...

In 1222, on the eastern borders of the Polovtsian nomad camps, immeasurably wilder and more formidable conquerors appeared - the Mongols.
By that time, relations between the Polovtsy and the Russians were already such that the Polovtsy called the Russians for help.

On May 31, 1223, the Battle of the Kalka River (modern Donetsk region) took place between the Mongols and the combined Russian-Polovtsian forces. Due to disagreements and rivalry between the princes, the battle was lost.
However, then, the Mongols, tired of a long and difficult campaign, turned back. And for 13 years nothing was heard about them ...

And in 1237 they returned. And everything was remembered to the Polovtsy, who were staged a uniform genocide.
If on the territory of modern Kazakhstan, the Mongols treated the Polovtsy relatively tolerantly (and therefore the Polovtsy, they are Kazakhs, survived as a nation), then in the southern Russian steppes, between the Volga, Don and Dnieper, the Polovtsy underwent a total massacre.
At the same time, the events that took place were of little concern to the Russians (all these berladnik roamers), because such vagrants lived mainly in hard-to-reach places that were simply uninteresting to nomads - for example, in floodplains, on islands, among swamps, floodplain thickets ...

One more detail should be noted: after the invasion of Russia, the Mongols themselves sometimes resettled a certain number of Russian people in places where there were important roads and crossings. These people were given certain benefits - and the settlers, in turn, were required to maintain roads and crossings in good condition.
It happened that Russian peasants were resettled in some fertile area so that they would cultivate the land there. Or they didn’t even resettle, but simply gave benefits and protected them from harassment. In return, the peasants supplied a certain part of the harvest to the Mongol khans.

Below I give verbatim an excerpt from the 15th chapter, the book "Journey to the Eastern Countries of Wilhelm de Rubruck
in the summer of Goodness 1253. Message from William de Rubruck, Louis IX, King of France.

“So with great difficulty we wandered from camp to camp, so that not many days before the feast of the blessed Mary Magdalene we reached the great river Tanaida, which separates Asia from Europe, like the river of Egypt Asia from Africa. In the place where we landed, Batu and Sartach ordered to arrange on the eastern coast a village (sasale) of Russians who transport ambassadors and merchants in boats. They first transported us, and then carts, placing one wheel on one barge, and the other on another; they moved, tying the barges to each other and so rowing. There our guide acted very stupidly. It was he who thought that they should give us horses from the village and let go on the other side of the animals that we brought with us to return to their owners; and when we demanded animals from the inhabitants village, they replied that they had a privilege from Batu, namely: they were not obliged to do anything, but to transport those traveling back and forth. Even from merchants they receive a large tribute. So there, on the river bank, we stood for three days . On the first day they gave us a large fresh fish - chebak (borbotam), on the second day - rye bread and some meat, which the ruler of the village collected, like a sacrifice, in various houses, on the third day - dried fish that they had there in a large quantity. This river was there the same width as the Seine in Paris. And before reaching that place, we crossed many rivers, very beautiful and rich in fish, but the Tatars do not know how to catch it and do not care about fish if it is not so big that they can eat its meat, like sheep meat .. So, we were there in great difficulty, because we could not find either horses or bulls for money. Finally, when I proved to them that we were working for the common good of all Christians, they gave us bulls and men; we ourselves had to walk. At that time they were harvesting rye. Wheat was not born well there, but millet they have in abundance. Russian women remove their heads in the same way as ours, and decorate their dresses on the front side with squirrel or ermine furs from legs to knees. Men wear epanchi, like the Germans, and on their heads they have felt hats, pointed at the top with a long point. So we walked for three days, not finding people, and when we ourselves were very tired, as well as the bulls, and did not know in which direction we could find the Tatars, two horses suddenly ran up to us, which we took with great joy, and on them our guide and interpreter sat down to find out in which direction we could find the people. Finally, on the fourth day, having found people, we rejoiced, as if after a shipwreck we landed at the harbor. Then, taking horses and bulls, we rode from camp to camp until, on July 31, we reached the seat of Sartakh.

As we can see, according to the testimony of European travelers, it was quite possible to meet completely legal Russian settlements in the southern steppes.

By the way, this same Rubruk testifies that those Russians whom the Mongols drove away from Russia were often forced to graze cattle in the steppes. It is understandable - the Mongols did not have such institutions as hard labor, prisons, or mines. Slaves did the same thing as their masters - grazing cattle.
And of course, such shepherds often ran away from their owners.
And sometimes they didn’t run away - they simply remained without owners when the Mongols began to cut each other during civil strife ...
And these strife occurred - the farther, the more often.
Companions of civil strife were often all kinds of epidemics. Medicine, of course, was in its infancy. The birth rate was high, but children often died.
As a result, there were fewer and fewer nomads in the steppe.
And the Russians kept coming. After all, the stream of fugitives from the Russian lands never dried up.

It is clear that the fugitives themselves, having looked around a little, began to navigate the local realities. Of course, they found a common language with the remnants of the surviving Polovtsians. They were related to them - after all, men predominated among the fugitives.
And they quickly learned that, in fact, there were no Polovtsians - there were COSSACKS.
Even those Russians who did not mix with the Cossacks (Polovtsy) still actively used such a word as a Cossack.
After all, this was still the land of the Cossacks, albeit subjected to genocide, albeit interfering with the Russians.
They went to the Cossacks, they lived among the Cossacks, they became related to the Cossacks, they themselves eventually, albeit not immediately, began to call themselves Cossacks (at first - in a figurative sense).

Gradually, over time, the Russian element in the basins of the Don and Dnieper began to prevail. The Russian language, which was already familiar to the Polovtsy in pre-Mongolian times, began to dominate (not without distortions and borrowings, of course).

It is pointless to argue today - where exactly the "Cossacks" originated: On the Dnieper, or on the Don. This is a pointless debate.
The process of development by the new ethnic group of the lower reaches of the Dnieper and Don took place almost simultaneously.

It is equally pointless to argue who the Cossacks are: Ukrainians or Russians.
The Cossacks are a separate ethnic group that was formed as a result of mixing people from the territory of Russia (however, people from other countries were also present) with those peoples with whom they neighbored (for example, through mutual abductions of women). At the same time, some groups of Cossacks could cross from the Dnieper to the Don, or from the Don to the Dnieper.

A little slower, but also almost simultaneously - the formation of such groups of Cossacks as the Terek and Yaik was going on. It was somewhat more difficult to get to the Terek and Yaik than to the lower reaches of the Don and the Dnieper. But slowly they got there. And there they mixed with the surrounding peoples: on the Terek - with the Chechens, on Yaik - with the Tatars and the same Polovtsians (Cossacks).

Thus, the Polovtsy, who were present in the vast expanses of the great steppe, from the Danube to the Tien Shan, gave their name to those settlers from among the Slavs who settled on the former Polovtsian lands, west of the Yaik River.
But to the east of Yaik, the Polovtsians as such survived.
Thus, two very different groups of people appeared who call themselves the same, COSSACKS: the Cossacks proper, or Polovtsy, whom we call Kazakhs today - and the Russian-speaking ethnic group, mixed with the surrounding peoples, called the Cossacks.

Of course, the Cossacks are not homogeneous. In different territories, mixing went on with different peoples and with varying degrees of intensity.
So the Cossacks are not so much an ethnic group as a group of related ethnic groups.

When modern Ukrainians try to call themselves Cossacks, it causes a smile.
Calling all Ukrainians Cossacks is the same as calling all Russians Cossacks.

At the same time, it is pointless to deny a certain relationship between Russians, Ukrainians and Cossacks.

So - gradually, from different groups of the mixed population of the outskirts (with a clear predominance of Russian blood and the Russian language), various hordes were formed, so to speak, partly copying the lifestyle of neighboring Asians and Caucasians. Zaporizhzhya horde, Don, Terek, Yaik ...

Meanwhile, Russia was recovering from the Mongol invasion and began to expand its borders - which eventually came into contact with the borders of the Cossack hordes.
It happened during the reign of Ivan the Terrible - who came up with the idea, simple as everything ingenious, - to use the Cossacks as a barrier against Asian raids on Russian lands. That is, semi-Asians, close to Russia in language and faith, were used as an airbag against real Asians.

Thus began the gradual domestication of the Cossack freemen by the Russian state ...

After the Black Sea region was annexed and the danger of Crimean Tatar raids disappeared, the Zaporozhian Cossacks were resettled in the Kuban.

After the suppression of the Pugachev rebellion, the Yaik River was renamed the Urals - although, in general, it has almost nothing to do with the Urals as such (it only starts in the Ural Mountains).
And the Yaik Cossacks were renamed into Ural Cossacks - although they live, for the most part, not at all in the Urals. Some confusion results from this - sometimes the inhabitants of the Urals, who have nothing to do with the Cossacks, are considered to be Cossacks.

When the Russian possessions expanded to the east, part of the Cossacks was resettled in Transbaikalia, on the Ussuri, on the Amur, in Yakutia, on Kamchatka. However, in those places, sometimes purely Russian people were enrolled in the category of Cossacks, who had nothing to do with the Cossacks. For example, the pioneers, associates of Semyon Dezhnev, people from the city of Veliky Ustyug (that is, from the Russian North) were dubbed Cossacks.

Sometimes representatives of some other peoples were enrolled in the category of Cossacks.
For example - Kalmyks ...

In Transbaikalia, the Cossacks pretty much mixed with the Chinese, Manchus and Buryats, learned some of the habits and customs of these peoples.

In the photo - a painting by E. Korneev "GREBENSKY COSSACKS" 1802. Grebensky is an "offshoot" of the Terek.

Painting by S. Vasilkovsky "ZAPORIZHIA ON PATROL".

"Enrollment in the Cossacks of the captured Poles of Napoleon's army, 1813" The drawing by N. N. Karazin depicts the moment the captured Poles arrived in Omsk after they, already deployed among the Cossack regiments, under the supervision of the Siberian army of the Cossack captain (esaul) Nabokov, one by one change into Cossack uniforms.

Officers of the Stavropol and Khoper Cossack regiments. 1845-55

"BLACK SEA COSSACK". Drawing by E. Korneev

S. Vasilkovsky: "HARMASH (COSSACK ARTILLERIST) IN THE TIMES OF HETMAN MAZEPA".

S. Vasilkovsky: "UMAN'S SENIOR IVAN GONTA".

Cossacks of the Life Guards of the Ural Cossack Hundred (this, of course, is already a photograph, not a drawing).

Kuban Cossacks in May 1916.

It must be said that gradually, with the development of progress, wars have become more and more man-made. In these wars, the Cossacks were assigned a purely secondary, and even a third-rate role.
But the Cossacks were increasingly involved in the dirtiest, "police" work - including for suppressing uprisings, dispersing demonstrations, for terror against potentially dissatisfied, even for repressive actions against the unfortunate Old Believers.

And the Cossacks-quite justified the expectations of the authorities.
The descendants of the fugitives from captivity - became royal lackeys. They zealously slashed with whips and slashed the dissatisfied with sabers.

Nothing can be done - mixing with Caucasians and Asians, the Cossacks also absorbed some features of the Asian-Caucasian mentality. Including such as cruelty, meanness, cunning, deceit, venality, hostility towards Russians (or, as the Cossacks say, "outsiders"), a passion for robbery and violence, hypocrisy, duplicity.
Genetics is a tricky thing...

As a result, the population of Russia (including Russians) began to look at the Cossacks as foreigners, bashi-bazouks in the service of the autocracy.
And the Jews (who do not know how to forgive at all and in terms of cruelty will surpass any Cossacks) - they hated the Cossacks to the point of trembling in the knees.

It is believed that after the October Revolution of 1917, the Cossacks resolutely sided with the autocracy and were the backbone of the white movement.
But here much is exaggerated.
In fact, the Cossacks were not at all eager to fight for the interests of the whites. There were strong separatist sentiments in the Cossack regions.
However, when the Bolsheviks came to the Cossack lands, they instantly set the Cossacks against themselves with the wildest repressions and extreme cruelty. It quickly became clear that the Cossacks did not have to wait for mercy from the Bolsheviks. Jewish commissars, who in other situations were afraid of Great Russian chauvinism like fire, in this case, on the contrary, actively fueled the hostility of Russian peasants to the Cossacks.
If the Bolsheviks willingly gave autonomy to other peoples (even those who did not ask for it at all), proclaiming a bunch of all sorts of national republics (however, as a rule, Jews were at the head of all these republics) - then no one with the Cossacks on this topic didn't even try to talk.
That is why, and only therefore, the Cossacks were FORCED to support the white movement. At the same time, they brought the White Guards - how much good, so much harm.
Cossack intrigues behind the backs of the Russian leaders of the white movement never stopped.

In the end, White was defeated.
Repressions fell upon the Cossacks. Up to the point that in other areas the entire male population over 16 years of age was shot.
Until 1936, the Cossacks were not drafted into the Red Army.

Cossack regions - were carefully renamed. No Transbaikalia - only the Chita region! No Kuban - only the Krasnodar Territory. No Don region, or Don region - only the Rostov region. No Yenisei province - only the Krasnoyarsk Territory. Instead of the Ussuri Territory - Primorsky Territory (although Primorye can generally be called any territory located near the sea - for example, Murmansk, or the Kaliningrad Region).
The lands of the Semirechensky and Ural Cossacks - generally became part of other republics (Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan).

But the most terrible fate befell the Terek and Grebensky Cossacks. First, with the full approval of the Soviet government, they were slaughtered by neighboring peoples (primarily the Chechens and Ingush, whom, by the way, Trotsky loved very much), and then the miraculously surviving remnants of the Cossack population were evicted by the Bolsheviks from their places of permanent residence - so that, according to Bolsheviks, "eliminate through the strip."
Of all the peoples of the North Caucasus, only Ossetians objected to such a decision.
This is somehow forgotten today by those Chechens, Ingush, and other Karachais, who later, already in the time of Stalin, were themselves evicted from the Caucasus - including from those houses that they once took away from the Terek and Grebensky Cossacks .. .

For some time, the very word "Cossack" was excluded from everyday life. Cossacks in the media and literature were called purely Kazakhs.
The attitude towards the Cossacks warmed up only in the thirties, after Stalin consolidated his power and firmly stood on his feet, defeating all his enemies ...

Later, under the late Soviet regime, the Cossacks were completely loyal to her and, along with the Ukrainians, were one of her most faithful lackeys.
But the standard of living, under the late Soviet regime, in the traditionally Cossack regions, was quite high.
People in the Kuban were immeasurably more prosperous than in Tver or Ryazan...

Today it is generally accepted that the Cossacks are assimilated into the Russian environment.
In reality, nothing of the kind. If an ethnic group does not have national-political autonomy, this does not mean that there is no ethnic group.
Cossacks are clearly different from Russians - both in mentality and appearance.

Often some disguised clowns pretend to be Cossacks, who seriously think that the Cossacks are just such a military class. Therefore, they say, it is enough to put on a uniform, a bunch of orders (it is not clear why received) and take a certain oath - that's it, you have already become a Cossack.
Nonsense, of course. It is impossible to "become" a Cossack, just as it is impossible to "become" a Russian or an Englishman. You can only be born a Cossack...

The role of the Cossacks in Russian history is often exaggerated.
And sometimes the opposite is true - the misfortunes brought to our country by the Cossacks are exaggerated.
In fact, the Cossacks brought significant benefits to Russia, at a certain stage of its development. But even without them, Russia would not have perished at all.
There was harm from the Cossacks - but there was also a benefit.

Cossacks are not heroes and not monsters - they are just a separate ethnic group, with their own advantages and disadvantages. More precisely - a group of closely related ethnic groups.
And it would be nice if the Cossacks had their own state - for example, somewhere in Asia, Africa, Latin America, or maybe in Australia. If they all moved to this state, I would wish them happiness and prosperity in their new homeland.
Still, we are different. Really different...

P.S. At the top is I. Repin's painting "COSSACKS WRITE A LETTER TO THE TURKISH SULTAN". 1880

Who are the Cossacks? There is a version that they trace their lineage from fugitive serfs. However, some historians argue that the origins of the Cossacks go back to the 8th century BC.

The Byzantine emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus in 948 mentioned the territory in the North Caucasus as the country of Kasakhia. Historians attached particular importance to this fact only after Captain A. G. Tumansky in 1892 in Bukhara discovered the Persian geography Gudud al Alam, compiled in 982.

It turns out that “Kasak Land”, which was located in the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov, is also found there. It is interesting that the Arab historian, geographer and traveler Abu-l-Hasan Ali ibn al-Hussein (896-956), who received the nickname of the Imam of all historians, reported in his writings that the Kasaks who lived beyond the Caucasus Range are not mountaineers.
A parsimonious description of a certain military people who lived in the Black Sea region and in the Transcaucasus is also found in the geographical work of the Greek Strabo, who worked under the “living Christ”. He called them cossacks. Modern ethnographers provide data on the Scythians from the Turanian tribes of Kos-Saka, the first mention of which dates back to about 720 BC. It is believed that it was then that a detachment of these nomads made their way from Western Turkestan to the Black Sea lands, where they stopped.

In addition to the Scythians, on the territory of the modern Cossacks, that is, between the Black and Azov Seas, as well as between the Don and Volga rivers, the Sarmatian tribes ruled, who created the Alanian state. The Huns (Bulgars) defeated it and exterminated almost all of its population. The surviving Alans hid in the north - between the Don and Donets, and in the south - in the foothills of the Caucasus. Basically, it was these two ethnic groups - the Scythians and Alans, who became related to the Azov Slavs - that formed the nationality, which was called the Cossacks. This version is considered one of the basic ones in the discussion about where the Cossacks came from.

Slavic-Turanian tribes

Don ethnographers also connect the roots of the Cossacks with the tribes of northwestern Scythia. This is evidenced by burial mounds of the III-II centuries BC. It was at this time that the Scythians began to lead a sedentary lifestyle, intersecting and merging with the southern Slavs who lived in Meotida - on the eastern coast of the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov.

This time is called the era of "the introduction of the Sarmatians into the Meotians", which resulted in the tribes of the Torets (Torkov, Udz, Berenger, Sirakov, Bradas-Brodnikov) of the Slavic-Turanian type. In the 5th century, the Huns invaded, as a result of which part of the Slavic-Turanian tribes went beyond the Volga and into the Upper Don forest-steppe. Those who remained submitted to the Huns, Khazars and Bulgars, receiving the name Kasaks. After 300 years, they converted to Christianity (about 860 after the apostolic sermon of St. Cyril), and then, by order of the Khazar Khagan, they drove out the Pechenegs. In 965, Kasak Land came under the control of Mctislav Rurikovich.

Darkness

It was Mctislav Rurikovich who defeated the Novgorod prince Yaroslav near Listven and founded his principality - Tmutarakan, which stretched far to the north. It is believed that this Cossack power was not at the peak of power for long, until about 1060, but after the arrival of the Polovtsian tribes, it began to gradually fade away.

Many residents of Tmutarakan fled to the north - to the forest-steppe, and together with Russia fought with the nomads. This is how the Black Hoods appeared, which in the Russian chronicles were called Cossacks and Cherkasy. Another part of the inhabitants of Tmutarakan was called the Podon wanderers.
Like the Russian principalities, the Cossack settlements ended up in the power of the Golden Horde, however, conditionally, enjoying wide autonomy. In the 14th-15th centuries, the Cossacks were talked about as a formed community, which began to accept fugitive people from the central part of Russia.

Not Khazars and not Goths

There is another, popular in the West, version that the Khazars were the ancestors of the Cossacks. Its supporters argue that the words "Khusar" and "Cossack" are synonyms, because in both the first and second cases we are talking about fighting horsemen. Moreover, both words have the same root “kaz”, meaning “strength”, “war” and “freedom”. However, there is another meaning - it is "goose". But even here, the champions of the Khazar trace speak of horsemen-hussars, whose military ideology was copied by almost all countries, even foggy Albion.

The Khazar ethnonym of the Cossacks is directly stated in the “Constitution of Pylyp Orlik”, “... the fighting old Cossack people, which used to be called the Kazar, was first raised by immortal glory, spacious possessions and knightly honors ...”. Moreover, it is said that the Cossacks adopted Orthodoxy from Constantinople (Constantinople) in the era of the Khazar Khaganate.

In Russia, this version in the Cossack environment causes fair abuse, especially against the background of studies of Cossack genealogies, whose roots are of Russian origin. So, the hereditary Kuban Cossack, Academician of the Russian Academy of Arts Dmitry Shmarin, spoke out in this regard with anger: “The author of one of these versions of the origin of the Cossacks is Hitler. He even has a separate speech on the subject. According to his theory, the Cossacks are the Goths. The West Goths are Germanic. And the Cossacks are the Ost-Goths, that is, the descendants of the Ost-Goths, allies of the Germans, close to them in blood and in a warlike spirit. By militancy, he compared them with the Teutons. Based on this, Hitler proclaimed the Cossacks the sons of great Germany. So why should we now consider ourselves descendants of the Germans?

rev. from 03/18/2016 - (times of Great Scythia)

The view of modern historians on the origin of the Cossacks, it must be said, is peculiar. The places of origin and settlement of the Cossacks are Don, Kuban, Terek, Ural, Lower Volga, Irtysh, Amur, Transbaikalia, Kamchatka. In fact, the territory of Alaska and even California can also be attributed here.

The origin of the word Cossack is also explained in different ways. Modern researchers unanimously say that the Cossacks are people who, starting from the 16th century, went to the outskirts of Russia, being runaway serfs. Some say they were hunters. Someone says that they became wild and became robbers, getting involved in a war with Muslims. But these are fairy tales, unscrupulous, far-fetched and invented.

The Cossacks are a peculiar, interesting and not understood people or ethnic group in the West and even in Russia. Although they speak Russian, they are not exactly Russian people. Until the 17th century, they themselves did not even consider themselves to be the Russian people, that is, the Great Russians. They were different. They were proud that they were Cossacks.

They did not know what betrayal is, they did not know what cowardice is, but in fact, they were warriors from the cradle. This also determined a completely different mentality of behavior. The psyche is not of slaves, but of free people, masters of their lives. Therefore, the question arises - where do they come from? Because they don't remember it.

Take the Germans. They call themselves Deutsch, the Italians call them Germans, the French Alamanni. Or Turks. They are offended that they are called Turks. In Persian, a Turk is a vagabond and a thief. And the Cossacks, all, are called in one word - a Cossack.

At one time, Siberia was conquered by the Cossacks, all attempts by the Turks to attack the south of Russia and the Crimean Khan were repulsed. The war, which lasted no less than 500 years, ended with the victory of the Cossacks. In fact, Russia itself did not actually defend itself in the south. Everything was thrown to the war with the West, while in the south they did not even try to help the Cossacks. The surrender of the fortress of Azov under the Romanovs is very indicative in this respect.

Turkey and the entire Muslim world were held back only by the Don and Zaporozhye Cossacks, holding everything on their shoulders. At the same time, it was unbearably difficult, it was a war that lasted from century to century. The Turks destroyed half of Europe, they even reached Vienna. They took Hungary and Romania. But here they could only reach the Crimea. And then, already in the XVIII century, it became ours, Sevastopol was founded. And this happened only thanks to the support of the Cossacks.

Around the 3rd millennium BC. e. the Aryan population penetrates the territory of the modern Taklamakan desert, western China, and builds a powerful empire there. In Chinese mythology, she is called Laolong. The Chinese themselves, when they dug up this territory, were very surprised to find the skulls of pure Caucasians and huge, huge cities. Now it's all gone under the sand. Therefore, in order not to further upset the Chinese, Takla-Makan, Gobi, the Yellow River, were closed to the public after a powerful underground test of nuclear weapons.

When this territory began to turn into a desert, the Aryan population was forced to move further to the West and to Hindustan, where the climate is more humid, rivers flow, and it rains. The same Veles book writes about this. At the same time, one should not forget that Ural Rus was already in Europe. The first wave reached the territory of the Danube and Pannonia.

But in the Vedas, one can find references to the fact that Dasyu lived in the territory of Eurasia in those days. Inhumans, shaggy scary monsters with incredible strength, which are also called Rakshasas in the Vedas. They are sometimes called Paleo-European tribes. This is a mixed Cro-Magnon-Neanderthal population, which prevented the settlement of the Aryan people.

It turns out that the military estate moved ahead of the Aryan tribes on horseback, freeing the territory from Dasyu. At the same time, these were horses, which we do not even know now. The horses that are found in the burial mounds did not look like Mongolian ones. They were high gait, fast, very high, similar to Akhal-Teke. Remember, all our heroes are horsemen. Such as Hercules, on foot, we have no heroes.

These pioneers were then called horse aces. And their leader was called the prince - the horse ace. A prince was determined in battle by a black or white horse.

As a result of this resettlement, the remnants of the Dasyu or dogheads were driven either into the mountains of the Caucasus, Pereneev, Palmyra, or into other impassable places. And on the outskirts of the settlement of the Aryans, that force settled, which subsequently formed the Don army, the Kuban army, the Terek army and the Siberian army.

Persian sources call the population of southern Siberia, Central Asia, the population of the Gobi in one word - Saks or Saxons. And the sword of this people has always been called kromosaks - cutting edge. Sax is a sec. People who were able to fight alone with a hundred such as Dasyu were called Asses. This is how the word kassak, horse ace, appeared. Later it was transformed into a Cossack, apparently in the same way as Asia in Asia. Moreover, according to the initial letter, Az is a descendant of the gods, an earthly form that benefits the Earth itself.

It turns out that the Cossacks are a pure Aryan population of the military class, which continued to live in their way of life, in their life, which they always lived. Everything was decided by the Cossack circle, where everyone was equal. Ataman was elected for one year. In field conditions, they obeyed him unconditionally, the discipline was iron. If there was peacetime, the ataman was the same as everyone else. It was the highest democracy, if I may say so.

By the way, Veliky Novgorod has preserved exactly the same democracy in his city. In fact, Novgorodians can be considered the same Cossacks from the military class, but who came from the Baltic.

The descendants of those Dasyu who survived that war were obviously the Kartvels. The Chinese language has Georgian roots, the roots of the Basques, who lived in Spain. Once the Paleo-Asiatics spoke the same language, and fragments of this language fell into both the Chinese language and the languages ​​of the Georgians and Basques.

Now there are eight language groups in the Caucasus. Of particular note is the Ossetian family, which speaks the Old Persian language. We can recall Afanasy Nikitin, XV century, when he visited the territory of India. He calmly spoke with the Iranians in Russian, in India he was also calmly understood without any translators.

In Old Russian, the river was called in one word - don. Therefore, Ossetians still have Sadon, Nandon, Vardon (Kuban), Danat (Danube), Eridan (Rhine). Where is Rein? Already Western Europe.

Do not forget about the Hercynian forest, between France and the Elbe (Labe), where the Rhine flows. Roman authors wrote about him. It is even called the cradle of the German people.

When Charlemagne unites three territories, Germany, France and Italy, in the 9th century, a powerful empire is created. As a result, this entire empire, united by the Merovingians, collapsed on the western Slavic tribes. Many scientists, since the 19th century, including Saveliev, Lomonosov, believed that the territory of Germany is a cemetery of the Slavs. “Where the strength of the Germans passed, there the whole region is already a grave”. There was a total extermination, cutting to the last man. There was cannibalism. Read the national German epic, it's all there and they are proud of it. The predatory warlike gene pool has been preserved in the Germans to this day.

Interesting fact. In the trilogy "The Matrix" there is such a hero as Merovingian. A very ancient program that has survived several versions of the matrix. The Merovingian loves to speak French and sells information. Is it a coincidence? But this is so, for lovers of figurative thinking. Reason for reflection.

Braniborg - Brandenburg, Nikulinborg - Mecklenburg, Pomerania - Pomeranian, Strelov - Stelets, Drozdyany - Dresden. The Laba River became the Elbe, the Rhone became the Rhine. You can also remember Arkona, Retra.

Why are we talking about this now? And to the fact that there were no aces on this territory, that group of the military class that could give them worthy resistance.

Even Herodotus, on the territory of the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov, the northern part of the Black Sea and the mouth of the Kuban, describes an interesting people - Meots and Sinds or Indus. They had a slightly different anthropology. They made up the Azov army of the Kuban Cossacks. This is the only people of the Cossacks who had dark hair and skin. Correct Aryan features of the body and face, but dark eyes. Apparently, having been in India, this ethnic group adopted the blood of the Indians or Dravidians. By the way, Ermak Timofeevich was from this group. Part of the Sinds and Meots, having left the Kuban in the 13th century at the mouth of the Dnieper, created the Zaporozhye Cossacks.

THE TIMES OF GREAT SCYTHIA AND SARMATIA

We do not know the real self-names of the Scythians and Sarmatians. Only one thing can be said, the father of Aeneas, the hero of the Trojan War who built Rome, with all his family on 30 ships 1200 BC. left for Troy. The ancient Cossack clan left under Troy to help the Trojans in the fight against the Achaean Union (the military-political association of the cities of Ancient Greece on the Peloponnese peninsula).

And Aeneas, after the defeat at Troy, on 20 ships goes first to Carthage, and then to Italy, crosses the Tiber and there, thanks to his efforts, Rome is built. It has now been proven that the Etruscans spoke the Old Russian language. Obviously their resettlement was during the Trojan War.

Slavomysl writes about this in Svetoslav's monologue:

"... I honor the Romans, they are kindred to us, Aeneas is remembered, like us,
The absurd fiction about him was rejected by Virgil, having measured the myth with the common sense of the Hellenes.
I don't blame Trojans either. Knowing the harmony of Svarogia, they rewarded Rome from the ashes of Troy
And the land was not taken away from the Etruscans: without grumbling, those brothers by blood were brotherly accepted .. ".

The Greeks called them Scythians. They were also called chips. Translation from Russian is not required, but in English there is a consonant word school - school. But this is so, again from figurative thinking.

"... The Scythians are barbarians, but the maidens of the Scythians, shut up in temples, at the feet, washed by Nepro, Hellas is thrown down ...
... But the Magi from Nepra will be called and they will dress up as Hellenes: Vseslav the prophetic was called Anacharsis,
Lubomud, the Russian from Golun, is Heraclitus of Ephesus ... The Slavic breed is prolific,
Lubomudry, Svetozary and Vseslav are not uncommon in Russia
And mothers will not stop giving birth on Nepre and Ros.
Neighbors are a consolation, well, the Russians are not a loss ...
... The face of the Hellene is wonderful, like the fables of Herodotus about the Scythians ... "

Therefore, the Scythian, translated from Greek, is a shield-bearer. It's just that they were the first to have shields, wooden shields covered with bull skin. Neither the Assyrians, nor the Greeks, nor even the Egyptians had shields then. If anyone made them, then they were woven from a vine. And the Sarmatians, among other things, were engaged in leather dressing.

The Scythians and Sarmatians are actually one people who called themselves Russ, and their military class was Assaks. The Turks, in the XIII century, having come to the territory of Kazakhstan, began to call themselves Assaks or Cossacks, imitating the Scythian tribes.

The word Russa is a sacred word, so it is read in two directions. Ur is the sky. Uranus is the god of the sky. Therefore, Russa is an ace who came from heaven through the light. This word has been known since the time of Oriana. Therefore, both the Scythian army and the Sarmatian were called that.

Getae - one of the names of the military class. From it was born the word hetman. In the 8th century BC, when the Scythians crossed the Volga, the Tagar culture, they attacked the Cimmerians, who lived in southern Europe up to the Danube. The Cimmerians were tribes related to the Scythians, but refused to obey them. As a result, the Cimmerians leave for Asia Minor. The Scythians through the Caucasus invade the territory of Media. They defeat the Medes, defeat the Persians, defeat the Assyrian troops and reach the borders of Egypt. For 28 years they have reigned in this territory without fear that they will be attacked by the Slavs. This suggests that it was one people. Then they again return to Eastern Europe and up to the III century BC. live on this earth.

Interestingly, all the jewelry of those times, the purely animal style that existed among the Scythians, is attributed to the Greeks. Until now, vases, pendants, various products are found, and everything is made superbly. The Greeks did not have a jewelry school of this level.

Not in a single Greek colony, not in Chersonesos, not in Phanagoria, not in Phasis, not a single workshop was found anywhere where this gold or silver was cast. When Scythian mounds began to be excavated in Siberia, they began to find jewelry made in the same style, but even more beautiful. How could the Greeks reach out to Central Asia, to Kazakhstan, to Altai?

But all culturologists unanimously say: the work of Greek masters. And the Scythians, it turns out, had huge cities. Houses were built in the cities, skins were dressed, weaving and metallurgy were developed. The population did not know what the west was, and no one from the west was allowed to enter them. The military estate closely watched the progress of the Greeks. Herodotus, having arrived and studied the Scythians, did not even know that all of Scythia was covered with gigantic cities, and without walls. They didn't need walls. If the people are powerful, they do not need fortress walls. Remember Sparta - they did not have fortress walls.

The Kushans who went to India, the Parthians who left in the 3rd century B.C. to Iran, the Massagets, whom the Greeks, Sakas or Saxons spoke of, are all one and the same people. The people who spoke the same language, had one faith, simply settled on a vast territory.

Incredibly, the Scythians defeated the 700 thousandth army of Darius, and defeated the Macedonian. Moreover, the Macedonian itself was defeated first, crossing the Danube with 40,000 army. Then he moved to Persia, and from Persia he is again going to oppose the Scythian people. This battle is described by Nizami, an Azerbaijani poet, in the work "Iskander". But nobody talks about it. It is not customary to say that Macedonian was defeated and stopped in this territory, while being captured.

An interesting thing, in 320 BC, when Macedonia was defeated by Rome, part of the Macedonians, 70 percent, moved to the Baltic. They left and created the Principality of the Obodrites there. Niklot is the prince of the Obodrites. Then they move to the territory of Novgorod and build Pskov. It turns out that Macedonian did not even understand with whom he was fighting.

In the III century BC. Sarmatians cross the Volga and fall on the Scythians. The Scythians, in fact, deserved it. They began to imitate the culture of the West and dragged the Greek gods to their territory in Eastern Europe. By this they provoked the blow of the Sarmatians. The Sarmatians swept through their territory up to the Danube. In fact, there was a civil war.

As a result, the pro-Western Scythians fled to the Crimea, some beyond the Danube. The rest went to the North, mixing with the Russian population. Lomonosov called them the white-eyed Chud.

Thus, the Sarmatians put a dead barrier on the advance of the west to the east. They stopped in due time and Rome. The Parthians beat Rome in the south, the Sarmatians beat Rome in the west, on the Danube, and the Kushans crush the Indian kingdoms, creating there a surge of new Aryan blood and a new direction in the development of religion.

The Huns at this time move across Central Asia, take possession of modern Kazakhstan and approach the banks of the Volga.

And all this is led by the military class, which we called the Cossacks, Assaks or Getae.

Mark Crassus in 57 BC marched with his legions to Parthia. Against Crassus, the Parthian king sends his commander Suren. The Parthians attack Crassus and all his 22 legions who are still alive are sent in chains through the deserts of Iran to work for the Parthians. Rome had never known such a defeat before.

At this time, Aorses, Roxalans, Alans, Yazygs, attack the Roman borders beyond the Danube. Trajan in one of the battles in the Carpathians loses seven legions at once during the battle with the legendary Carpathian prince Igor. For the first time, the Roman legions fell under the blows of the Russians not with swords, but with axes. For the first time, the invincible Roman infantry and the infantry of the Carpathian people met. In this battle, the Carpathian cavalry did not fight. The heavy, armored cavalry of the cataphracts, with spears of 4-5 meters each, lamenar armor and people in armor, stood aside and simply looked at the many hours of cutting infantry with infantry.

At that time, not a single army could withstand the blow of the Sarmatian cavalry. The Russian heavyweight is the warhorse of those times. But here the Russian infantry destroyed the Roman infantry, ending Rome's advance north into the Carpathians.

Modern historians believe that the Sarmatian yoke hung over Eastern Europe for 600 years. Six centuries of blood. Academician Rybakov also thinks so, explaining this by the fact that the Chernihiv culture moved 100 km to the north after the invasion of the Sarmatians. What kind of yoke can there be if the language is one, the culture is one, the race is one, everything is one.

But the Chernihiv culture really departed, because it was not needed in the steppe. The Sarmatians who came are a nomadic people, and they needed huge pastures to supply themselves with food and cattle with pastures. Rome moved millions, and it was also necessary to fight with it by millions.

The Scythian kingdom, which was formed on the territory of the Crimea, was completely subordinate to the Sarmatians. Or rather, even to the Sarmatian queens, because among the Sarmatians, the queens had more power than the kings. The female half was free, like the men, they were warriors. The memory of the Amazons is also the memory of the Sarmatians.

In fact, the heavy Sarmatian cavalry consisted of the ancestors of the Cossacks, and they inherited their skills in managing a horse, managing a battle. A powerful heavy spear remained on the Don until the 20th century. If the Kuban Cossacks were considered light cavalry, then the Don Cossacks were heavy. Back in 1914, during the First World War, the Cossacks raised the Germans in Austria, Romania and Germany itself on these peaks. This tradition has been preserved since those very times.

THE INVASION OF THE GOTHIC UNION

IV century. Historians do not say who the Goths are and where they came from. We know that they are Germans: Visigoths and Ostrogoths. But where did they come from in the Black Sea region? They have their own historian - Jordan. But the name Jordan is not Gothic, rather southern. He wrote a gothic history. But under the Jordan you could write anything.

He writes that Germanaric conquered all the Slavic peoples, he crushed the Roxalans, the Aorsi, subjugated the Slavs from the Black Sea to the Baltic.

But the Goths were not Germans then, they were Iranians. Iranians who did not want to live among their peoples on the territory of Bactria and Sogdiana (modern Turkmenistan). They moved north. They bypassed the Caspian, crossed the Volga and came out at the mouth of the Don, spreading across the territory of southern Russia. During the arrival of the Goths, there was not a single serious battle. Not a single chronicle tells of battles with the Goths.

The fact is that the Goths spoke the Old Russian language. Even Jordan himself writes that the Gothic warrior easily talked with the Slavic warrior, with Alan, with Roxalan. But the problem is that the Goths, having come to the Crimea, adopted Christianity. Jordan is silent on this. They became Christians by the Arian rite. This made them treat their fellow tribesmen as enemies. The Goths came as a close people, but having adopted Christianity, they became enemies. They left Central Asia precisely because they did not accept Zoroastrianism. Then they still retained the Vedic worldview. But apparently lost their priests. There was a military class, but there was no priestly class. And having come to the Crimea, they accepted the priestly estate in the form of Christians.

Read Shambarov, Jordan - each Goth had 4-5 wives. There was a polygamous family, so the army was huge.

We have already said that there is the concept of get or assak. The hetman is the one who rules the geth. Therefore, the Goths are apparently a transcription of Jordan. In fact, these were the same Getae, a military estate, but which changed the principles of Vedic civilization. And again, it was a war and a civil war. Terrible and terrible war. With the Goths were the Alans - heavy, powerful cavalry. On the Vedic side, too, there was a most powerful cavalry, the same as that of the Goths.

When two cavalry of the Sarmatians and Goths converged in battle, the clang of weapons was heard for many kilometers around. Jordanes writes that for a short time Germanaric subjugated the peoples of the north. But apparently it was just a truce. There could not be complete submission, because Christianity did not go to the North.

Further, Jordan writes that Germanaric, at the age of 100, decided to marry again and a young girl was brought to him. But it so happened that she fell in love with his son. He kills his own son, and the brothers wound Germanarich himself. The girl is being torn apart by horses.

The cutting begins again. Sloven, the prince who ruled on the Volkhov in Novgorod, participates in this felling. He comes to the territory of southern Russia and on the Danube, in a fierce battle, Germanaric dies, not even realizing that his entire army was killed.

At the same time, the Alans, the allies of the Goths, are fighting the invasion of the Huns. The Huns began to cross the Volga and the Alans, being residents of the northern Caucasus, met the Hun alliance with weapons, because at that time they were already Christians.

The Huns did not go to Russia in order to conquer it, they understood what was happening in it. The Goths shed Vedic blood, and the Huns came to the aid of Russia. The surviving Alans go to the mountains, the Huns invade the territory of Eastern Europe and displace the Goths.

Some of them passed through the Taman Peninsula through the Sivash, broke into the Crimea and stabbed the Gothic alliance in the back, which Germanaric could not stand. The blow of the Slavs from the north and the blow of the Huns from the south.

The remaining Goths go beyond the Danube, this is already the 5th century, and the Huns go to the Transcaucasus. Why in Transcaucasia? And there was Armenia, a Christian state. Balamber's army completely defeated Armenia, Georgia, marched throughout Asia Minor and almost reached Egypt.

But at this time the Goths are returning, led by the grandson of Germanaric Amal Vinitar. Vinitar - conquering the Venets. The Goths trampled Austria, where there were Venets.

The Huns threatened the Byzantine Empire, the Christians in Egypt were also horrified. The Library of Alexandria was already hiding. It was necessary to force Balamber to return. And he, having learned about the invasion of the Goths, turned to the north. Doesn't this remind you of anything from the time of Batu's invasion?

At this time, Bus Beloyar is trying to stop the Goths. Bus won one battle against Amal Vinitar, the Goths were defeated. But he decides not to go out to the second battle, but to wait for Balamber. He was a strong magician and saw well that he would perish and his people perish. Therefore, Bus persuades the people to wait for Balamber.

But under his pressure, he enters the fight. As a result of a terrible battle, all his soldiers were killed. Seventy wounded elders were picked up by Amal Vinitar, including Bus himself, and crucified on a yar above the waters of the Dnieper.

When the Huns found out about this, they drove their horses day and night. They even left the infantry, there was one cavalry. At this time, Sloven came up again. At the mouth of the Dnieper, the two armies of Slovene and Balamber again converged with the Gothic alliance.

In the fiercest struggle, the battle went on for two days. The Goths were broken, Amar Vinitar died, and the Goths were thrown across the Danube. It was then that Bayan wrote his hymn of victory over Amar Vinitar. It was performed to the Russian army in the palace of the Danube Kiev. Yes, there was such Kiev.

The Goths, once beyond the Danube, moved to the Byzantine Empire. They destroyed the 40,000 army of Valens, ruined the entire north of the Byzantine Empire, broke into Gaul, into Italy, took Rome and destroyed it almost to the ground.

The West, having created an artificial people through Christian ideology, weaned them from cattle breeding and agriculture, they stopped feeding themselves. They could only rob. And when the stomach overpowered the ideology, they fell upon their own allies.

The Huns cross the Danube, and build their own state on the territory of modern Hungary. Until now, it is called Hungaria. And interestingly, when the Huns disappear from the field of history, the Hungarians still speak Russian. Why? Yes, because the Hunnic language never existed. There was only Old Russian. There, the Moravian state arises. After the death of Attila, part of the Hunnic people returned to the territory of Russia and mixed with the Russian people.

The Assacs on the one hand and the Assacs on the other, the Goth Getae and the Hunnic Getae, fought among themselves. Again we see a heavy terrible internecine struggle, which is reflected in historical chronicles as a struggle between two peoples. But in fact it was a turmoil of one people, organized, as usual, by a third party.

HAGANATES

The 6th century is coming. The Hunnic state breaks up, part of the Huns returns to the territory of Eastern Europe, having formed the Ants state. Initially, the name apparently implied the opposite of the West. An - that which is opposite is opposite.

The Middle Ages are coming to the West. Beginning of the formation of the Frankish Empire. Clovis, Pepin. They are building their empire, subjugating the Longboard, seizing the territory of Italy, Rome has long since ceased to exist. They unite modern France, Italy, Switzerland and Austria. Huge-huge power, which is subject to the emperors of the Merovingian family.

Things are no better in the East. The Hunnic union is replaced by the union of Turkic tribes or the Turkic Khaganate. Another ethnicity, another psychology. They adopted the skills of cattle breeding from the Huns, but did not know agriculture. Having excellent cavalry constantly torment China. But China still copes with them. The Turkic Khaganate splits into Western and Eastern. Their fight among themselves begins. As a result, the eastern one submits to China, while the western one flows to the west.

In the region of the northern Caspian, they stumble upon the settled tribes of the Avars. Although the Avars are considered Iranians, they are not really Iranians. In fact, these are the descendants of the Paleo-Asians, mixed with the Aryan population. Their faith and culture were not Aryan. Nobody touched them, because they were engaged in agriculture and sold their bread to semi-nomadic peoples. They were shamans. An ancient culture that has fallen out of both the western and the eastern.

But the Turks attacked the Avars, and they had to save themselves. The Avars cross the Volga in the delta region, this is 512, and stop.

The Avars are the first to use scorched earth tactics. No one has done this before them. They waited for spring, until the Antes sowed bread, until they sprout and ripen. And then they attacked, not the Antes, but their fields and cattle.

They burned all the grain fields and destroyed all the livestock. Their light patrols swept across southern Russia, destroying everything in a row. It is for this that in the Russian chronicles they were called images.

They did not touch only the Don and the Kuban, because there was the cradle of those who were called Cossacks. Avars passed to the north. They reached the Kama and the territory of Ukraine, went to the mouth of the Danube, and from there began to move back to the east.

As a result, a huge number of Russians found themselves without a livelihood. Moreover, the Avars summoned the Russian leader and killed him during the negotiations. With the onset of winter, the population began to simply die of hunger. And the Avars took entire cities absolutely without a fight.

There were no crops in the Don and the North Caucasus, the population lived by cattle breeding and fish, so the Avars did not meddle there. In addition, they had no great desire to meet the heavy cavalry of the Assakhs.

Then the Don Cossacks turned to Siberian Russia, to the tribe of the Savirs, the most powerful tribe that lived in the territory from the Urals to the Yenisei. Even the Turks did not touch the Savirs. They knew not to go north.

The Savirs receive the Assac embassy from the Don, realizing that the Avars can only be defeated together. The Savirs practically abandon western Siberia, leaving Grastiana, their capital on the banks of the Ob. The Turks open a corridor and the Savirs leave to the west.

Savirs come to the Don Assaks and Alans, uniting with them on the Northern Donets. A bloody war begins with the Avar Khaganate. The Kagan of the Avars leaves Eastern Europe for Pannonia (Pannonia) in Hungary and sets up his headquarters there.

But the blow of the Slavs from the east and Charlemagne from the west on the Danube completely destroys the Avars. The extermination was complete, not even children were spared. It was a completely different people. If it was possible to negotiate with other peoples, then it was impossible to negotiate with the Avars. They were completely destroyed. Thus ended the existence of the Avar Khaganate.

It is the military estate of the Savirs of the North and the Assaks of the Don, Kuban, Terek, the lower reaches of the Volga that saves the Slavic people. On the territory of Ukraine, 100 km from Kiev, the Savirs, together with the Assaks, are building their capital, Chernihiv, on a hill.

The Turks occupy the territory left by the Savirs. But not all Savirs left. As a result, without war there is a mixture of Turks and Savirs. In fact, this is how the ethnos of the Siberian Tatars arises, a mixture of the Turkic and Slavic population. At the same time, Slavic psychology is practically preserved. They are belligerent, inclined to argue, fight, but at the same time simple, reliable, honest.

When the Siberian cities arose, the Siberian Tatars, although they were Muslims, were quietly accepted into the Cossacks. They fought with China, Manchuria, the Japanese and never betrayed. There were cases when they even got into a fight first, and then they had to help.

In the west, the Turks, approaching the Caspian Sea, crushed a small nation of farmers who called themselves Hassaks or Khazars. There were few of them and, having lost one battle, as chronicles say, they take Turkic citizenship. Above them rises a Turkic kagan from the Ashin clan.

At the beginning of the 8th century, when Khazaria got stronger, it attacked the Bulgarian camps. The Bulgarians then were fair-haired, blue-eyed, in fact a mixture of Savirs and Turks. As a result, part of the Bulgarians went north for the Savirs, and Khan Asparukh led the other part to the Danube, where Danubian Bulgaria appeared.

When the Khazar Khagans convert to Judaism, they turn to the Vatican for help in managing the Slavic population. The Vatican sends two brothers to Chersonese: Cyril and Methodius. Knowing Greek, they learn Russian in Chersonesus, so that later they can teach Christianity to the Slavic peoples.

PECHENEGS AND POLOVETS

After the death of Khazaria, the Pechenegs come. Blue-eyed, fair-haired, remnants of the same Savirs, but who already spoke the Turkic language. They began to torment Russia from the south. But they didn’t meddle with the Don. The territories occupied by the Assaks were dangerous for them. But this was not for long, by the 10th century they became allies of Russia. Gradually, the Pechenegs move to Bulgaria, mixing with the local population, they adopt the Bulgarian language. At the same time, Turkic words appear in the Bulgarian language.

The Pechenegs are replaced by the Polovtsy, and the Mongols come after them. If the Pechenegs came with the Vedic religion, then the Polovtsy came already as Christians. They adopted Christianity in Central Asia.

Therefore, the Polovtsians, together with the Russian Christian princes, are happy to storm the Vedic cities. A terrible turmoil began, which lasted a whole century. Only Yaroslav the Wise could stop her, giving all his daughters as Western rulers and marrying everyone he could.

When the Mongols arrived, they began to destroy the Polovtsians. In order to better understand who fought with whom, and who defended whom, it is necessary to approach this issue not from an ethnic but from an ideological side. In fact, there was a confrontation between the Vedic and Christian ideologies. Therefore, the Polovtsy and the Mongols, and many others, could often be seen both from one side and from the other.

We have already written about the Mongols, so we will skip this period a little. Let's start from the moment when the Mongols or Tatars accept an aggressive world religion, and attack the "infidels", eradicating them literally to the root. That's when the Don is empty. The population leaves with whole families and clans. Moscow, Ryazan, and Dnieper Cossacks appear. The Horde began to sell thousands of Kipchak Christians to Egypt and Turkey. Don could not defeat the Horde then. Novgorod could not help either. At that time he was busy fighting the Livonian and Teutonic orders. The confrontation with the Muslim world begins, which lasts from the 15th to the 19th century. In fact, 500 years of blood.

This is how Belovezhskaya Pushcha arose. The population from Belaya Vezha went to the Belarusian woodland and took refuge there. The Mongols swept across the Don, across the Kuban, but the blood of the Assaks was preserved. In order to somehow survive, the Assacs are forced to accept Christianity, but they retain the Cossack circle, retain their election, retain their military education, and retain their blood.

Circassians now live in the mountains next to the Kuban Cossacks. The Circassians have Russian blood, Tatar, Kartvelian. They speak four dialects, a lot of Turkic words. They are Muslims by faith. But natural Aryans are still periodically born among them.

And further. Before the advent of Christianity to Russia, the steppes of the Irtysh region and East Kazakhstan (Kazakhstan) were inhabited by the Slavic-Aryan caste of warriors - Cumans (Polovtsy), who guarded the southeastern border of Russia. The Cumans had a cult of the Family. His pillar-like stone sculptures, made with extraordinary skill from limestone and marble, they placed on the graves of their relatives. Tens of thousands of such statues stood on mounds and Maidans, at crossroads and river banks. Until the 17th century, they were a necessary part and decoration of the steppe. Since then, most of the statues have been destroyed and only a few thousand have ended up in museums. For example, the Assaks who lived in Kazakhstan, having become Muslims, lost their blood and turned into Kazakhs.

Numbering by 1916 4.4 million people and occupying lands from the Black to the Yellow Sea, the Cossacks in the 20th century were the most serious opponent of those who supported the idea of ​​the destruction of Russia. Even then, there were still 11 Cossack troops: Amur, Astrakhan, Don, Transbaikal, Kuban, Orenburg, Semirechensk, Siberian, Terek, Ural and Ussuri.

Therefore, in the party programs and propaganda literature of the Social Democratic parties, the Cossacks, after unsuccessful attempts to involve them in the revolutionary movement, were called the "stronghold of tsarism", and, in accordance with the party decisions of those years, were subject to destruction.

As a result: no population, no cities, no villages. Some nameless ruins. Even the memories were uprooted.

Have you ever heard that the hero of the ancient Greek epic Achilles was ... a Cossack? However, I am disappointed. This story was invented in the 17th century. Kiev Bursaks, who studied the ancient classics. And of course, they were well fed and well fed, telling it to the Cossacks. But still, the bike was not invented from scratch. The fact is that the Greeks themselves had several versions of the origin of Achilles. In Homer, he is represented by the king of the Myrmidons, he died and was buried near Troy. And Lycophron, Alkey and other authors wrote that he brought soldiers from the north and "ruled over the Scythian land." The graves where Achilles was allegedly buried were shown and revered on the islands of Zmein, at the mouth of the Danube, and Bel, at the mouth of the Dnieper - now it has turned into the Kinburn Spit. And the Tendrovskaya Spit between the Dnieper and Perekop was called "Achilles Drome" ("drome" means "running", "running ground"). And archaeological excavations on the Kinburn Spit really discovered the remains of an altar, an inscription in honor of Achilles, and three marble slabs with dedications to him were found nearby.

Obviously, in the figure of Achilles, legends combined several leaders. And the one who lived in the Dnieper region, judging by the time, was a Cimmerian. Ancient Greek images preserved the appearance of this people, dashing horsemen and indeed similar to Cossacks - bearded, in hats, clothes like zipuns, belted with sashes. Only instead of sabers in the hands of straight swords. But, of course, there is no reason to identify the Cimmerians with the Cossacks. It was the Celtic people who inhabited the Northern Black Sea region in the XIII - VIII centuries. BC.

People in these parts lived long before the Cimmerians - for example, the world's oldest sample of a boat was found on the Don and dates back to the 7th millennium BC. This is a typical dugout-odnodrevka, which were later used by the Cossacks. People lived here after the Cimmerians, in the VIII century. BC. they were partially forced out, partially mixed with them by the Scythians, who created a multinational empire, which included the Proto-Slavs. And in the II century. BC. the settlement of the Sarmatian tribes from Central Asia began, and the Savromats defeated Scythia. But they themselves were expelled by the tongues. And they, in turn, were pushed back to the west by the Roxolans, occupying the steppes between the Dnieper and the Don. Slavic and Ugric peoples settled in the forest-steppes, to the north, in the forests - Finnish and Baltic peoples.

A number of ancient tribes lived in the Sea of ​​Azov, in the Kuban and on the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus: Zigs (Chigs), Kerkets, Sinds, Achaei, Geniokhs, Aspurgians, Dandaria, Agra, etc. Of these, the Chigs were famous as sailors and pirates who went to sea on lungs boats, accommodating 25 people. But another wave of Sarmatian tribes moved from the east - Assedons, Ixamats, Pisamats, Aorses, Siraks. For the Don, the Roxolans did not let them through and they also settled in the Kuban and in the current Stavropol region. And in the I century. followed by a new wave of settlers, the Alans (yases). They used to incorporate the conquered peoples into their own, and the ethnonyms of many tribes living from Taman to the Caspian disappear from ancient sources, here a united Alania appears ...

The question is - how and by what signs among all these peoples to look for the ancestors of the Cossacks? At the beginning of the twentieth century. there were two theories of their origin - "autochthonous" and "migratory". The supporter of the first was the historian General N.F. Bykadorov. It was argued that the Cossacks were always the indigenous population of their lands (although Bykadorov himself later abandoned his theory). The “migration” version was developed by the Don historian E.P. Saveliev. He considered the Cossacks to be the descendants of the "Getae-Rus", who allegedly first lived near Troy, then in Italy, and then moved to the Black Sea region.

Both of these theories are wrong. At the time when they were created, the history of Ancient Russia was studied very little, and such a science as ethnology did not exist at all, and ideas about ethnogenesis were superficial and primitive. Although in reality these processes are always complex and ambiguous. So, if we touch on the "autochthonous" theory, then we must bear in mind that no people can live in the same places for thousands of years and remain unchanged. This is possible only for small "isolates", cut off from the world on a remote island or in a high mountain valley. But not in such a "brisk area" as the East European Plain, where a lot of large and small migrations were recorded, the peoples inevitably entered into contacts, accepted certain "additives".

Well, regarding the “migration” theory, it must be said that the people are not a soccer ball capable of rolling back and forth across the field of the earth. Migration is a difficult and painful process, usually accompanied by a split of an ethnic group. Some leave, some remain. Both parts interact with different environments, develop in different conditions and lose their relationship. A specific example: in the VII century. under the blows of the Khazars, the ancient Bulgarians inhabiting the Black Sea region were divided into three. One branch went to the mountains of the Caucasus - these are the Balkars. The other retreated to the Balkans, united the local Slavs around itself and created the Bulgarian kingdom. The third went up the Volga, in the tenth century. converted to Islam and divided again - the Chuvash tribe did not want to change their faith. And those who changed religion became the ancestors of the Kazan Tatars. Well, who will say that the current Bulgarians, Balkars, Chuvashs and Kazan Tatars are one people? Or that the Hungarians and the Bashkirs, divided in the 9th century, are one people? Moreover, if we talk about kinship, about continuity, then it is not superfluous to recall that even an individual person has not one, but two ancestors, a father and a mother. And in the processes of ethnogenesis there are many more of them. Therefore, it is completely incompetent to produce "directly" one people from another. And, say, the ancestors of the Russian people are by no means only Slavic tribes, it has numerous Finno-Ugric, Turkic, Baltic, Germanic, Sarmatian, Scythian, Celtic roots.

However, even today the science of ethnology has been developed very poorly and is not a single coherent system, but a vague set of private views of certain scientists. By now, the most complete and consistent theory seems to be the concept of one of the founders of this science, L.N. Gumilyov. Who considered the Cossacks "a sub-ethnos of the Great Russian ethnos". And the subethnos, according to the author's definition, is "a taxonomic unit within the ethnos as a visible whole, not violating its unity" . That is, a community that has the features and characteristics of a people, but at the same time is firmly connected with the main ethnic group.

We will return to this classification of the Cossacks in the course of the book, but for now we will take it as a basis. And we note one more fundamental position of Gumilyov's teaching - for any ethnic group (and sub-ethnic group) it is very important to have a connection with its native landscape. It is the landscape that determines its “face”, features, ways of managing. So, the native landscape of Tajiks is mountains, Uzbeks - irrigated valleys, Turkmens - oases of deserts. Three peoples live side by side, but differ significantly. For Russians, this is forest-steppe. And when settling to the north, they always chose similar conditions: clearings, edges, but not the depths of forests. And, say, the Jews definitely need an artificial landscape - cities, towns, but not villages.

What kind of landscape is native to the Cossacks? These are the valleys of the great rivers of the steppe zone! Don, Dnieper, Volga, Yaik, Terek, Kuban. And what were they characteristic of in antiquity? The then steppe peoples were pastoralists, but not nomads in the full sense. In European Russia, a lot of snow falls, the cattle cannot get food from under it. And permanent settlements were required, where hay is harvested, herds and people winter. Of course, they were built not in the middle of the bare steppe, but near rivers, the valleys of which were covered with dense forests and shrubs. There were firewood, building materials, hayfields in water meadows, watering places. And archeology confirms this. Scythian cities were found on the Dnieper, their capital was located near Zaporozhye. And Roxolans wintered in towns on the Lower Don.

But the Eurasian steppes were also a "torn road" along which, smashing each other, new peoples came. And the river valleys, islands, floodplains, swamps covered with thickets were a natural shelter, where some of the defeated had the opportunity to escape. Not all. After all, this required a change in lifestyle, to get food by hunting, fishing, cattle rustling. Only the strongest and most enduring could survive in such conditions. And freedom-loving, not wanting to submit to the winners. And from the fragments of various tribes, the most ancient roots of the Cossacks grow.

There is evidence. On the Don and the Donets, archeology reveals the continuous existence of settled settlements from about the 2nd century BC. BC. Which coincides with the death of Scythia and the Proto-Slavic Milograd culture. Archaeological data are supplemented by written ones. Strabo wrote about the "mixed" tribe that lived in the arms of the Don. Arrian, who visited the Northern Black Sea region in the 2nd century AD, reported that some of the local tribes “formerly ate bread and farmed”, but after enemy invasions “swore a great oath never again to build houses, not to plow the land with a plow, not found cities ... and keep no more cattle than can be transferred from one country to another. But the same law, which categorically forbade agriculture, is known among the Don Cossacks, it lasted until 1695 and was quite rational - farms tied to the land would become easy prey for the steppe dwellers.

Another piece of evidence is a dramatic change in the stereotypes of the behavior of local residents. If in the V-IV centuries. BC. the Greeks reported on peaceful "Meots", passively passing under the rule of Scythia or the Bosporus, then Roman authors in the I-II centuries. AD warned that the settled inhabitants of the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov are no less warlike than the nomads. That is, they absorbed part of the Scythians, Proto-Slavs, Sarmatians. They also had large centers like the city of Tanais - Azov. This city was not Greek - in all documents its citizens are divided into "Tanaites" and "Hellenes", and the leaders were "Tanaites". And the Romans experienced the ability of the local tribes to fight for themselves, in 47, their legions from Taman passed along the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov, took Azov, but it became the northernmost point of their conquests. The Romans here firmly received and did not advance a single step further.

Later, foreign authors began to call the inhabitants of the Lower Don and the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov "Heruls". Jordan reported that the Heruli are a “Scythian” tribe, i.e. local, not German, that it is "very mobile." “There was not a single state then that would not recruit lightly armed warriors from them.” However, the map of the Black Sea region continued to change. In the II century. the Ruses (Rugs) came here from the Baltic, uniting into one power with the Slavs and Roxolans. And then this alliance was defeated by the Germanic Goths. With the Heruli, the Goths first entered into an alliance. From 256, joint squadrons of their boats began to attack the shores of the Caucasus, Asia Minor, and the Bosphorus. But in the IV century. The Gothic emperor Germanaric decided to finally enslave the surrounding peoples. The Heruli resisted longer than others, according to Jordanes, were "mostly killed", and only after several defeats were they forced to submit.

The triumph of the Germans was short-lived. The Huns launched an offensive from the Volga and Ural regions. They defeated Alania, and in 371 they attacked the Goths. And the Heruli, like most Slavic tribes, immediately took the side of the Huns, helping them beat their common enemies. By the way, a legend has come down to us about how the Hun warriors, hunting for Taman, wounded a deer. He rushed into the water, swimming between shallows and drifts, crossed the Kerch Strait - and showed the way to the army. The Goths concentrated their forces on the Don, and the Huns bypassed them through the Crimea and struck in the rear. Is it not this deer, wounded by an arrow and helping the Heruli to free themselves, was depicted on the ancient coat of arms of the Don Cossacks?

But it is also impossible to directly identify the Cossacks with the Heruli. Their main part, together with the Hun allies, went to the west. In 476, the Heruli, led by their leader Odoacer (in the Slavic transcription Ottokar), captured Italy, where they perished in subsequent wars. Antia arose in the Black Sea region after the collapse of the Hun empire. But in 558 Avars came from Central Asia and crushed it. And in 570, the enemies of the Avars, the Turks, moved from the east. Avar and Turkic Khaganates arose - the border between them ran along the Don.

In the 7th century both kaganates fell apart. In the steppes from the Danube to the Kuban, the Bulgarian Khanate was formed. And the Khazars, who inhabited the shores of the Caspian Sea and the Terek valley, accepted the Turkic military elite and created their own kaganate. In 670, in alliance with the Slavs and Alans, they defeated and expelled the Bulgarians. Then they defeated and subjugated Alania. And after that, the ethnonym “kasaki” suddenly spreads (in the Russian chronicles “kasogi”). It was first recorded by Strabo in the 1st century, among the tribes that inhabited the Kuban and the Caucasus, he mentions “Kossakhs”. Then this name disappears. And from the 7th century begins to be widely used in relation to the inhabitants of the Western Caucasus, the Kuban and the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov. The authors of the 10th century report about the “country of Kasakiya”. Constantine Porphyrogenitus, Al-Masudi, Persian geographer of the 13th century. Gudad al-Alem and others. And it was precisely in this news that the emigrant researchers were inclined to see the “Cossack nation”.

This is not entirely true. An ethnonym can be passed from one nation to another, as, for example, from the Romans their name passed to the Romans (Byzantines), and then to the Romanians. But if we try to understand the meaning of the word "kasaks", then we will really come to a clue, where does the name of the Cossacks come from? It is usually believed that it is Turkic and was used in the meanings of "free warrior", "tramp", and even "robber". But Strabo mentions it long before the Turkic invasion. And besides, in the Turkic languages ​​there are no close roots from which "Cossack" could be derived, there are no related words either. Consequently, it got into the lexicon of the Turkic peoples already “ready”, from somewhere outside. Where?

The origin of the word "Cossack" must be sought not in the Turkic, but in the ancient Iranian languages ​​spoken by the Scythians and Sarmatians. And to see this, I suggest the reader to look at the set of words (in the first group, ancient Iranian, in the second, later ones):

• Asias, Ases, Yases, Aspurgians, Caspians, Traspians, Asaak, Sakasenes, Massagets, Assedons, Asiaks, Yazygs, Azads, Khazars, Khorasmians, Kasogs
• Cossacks, Cherkasy, Kazakhs, Khakasses.

What do these words have in common? The root "as" (depending on the pronunciation and transmission can be transformed into "yas" or "az"). Its meaning is known - “free”, “free” (for example, “azads” - the service class of the warriors of Parthia, this word just meant “free”, in Sasanian Iran the same word was pronounced “gas”). But "aces" was also the self-name of all Sarmatian peoples! Moreover, such a designation of themselves is by no means a rarity in the world. “Franks” also means “free”, and Genghis Khan collected the Mongolian ethnic group from “people of long will” (read “free”).

The root "as" was also included in most of the Sarmatian tribal names. Almost all the words presented in the chain are ethnonyms. For example, the Alans are the name of the people, and the self-name was Ases, in the Slavic transcription - Yases. And the ending “-ak, -ah” in the ancient Iranian languages ​​was used in the formation of nouns from adjectives and verbs, it is present in the ethnonyms “yazyg”, “asiak”, “kasak”, in the name of the first Parthian capital Asaak. Thus, "Cossack" in literal translation is something like "freestyler", and if translated not in form, but in meaning - "free man". "Cherkas" is also easily translated. "Cher" is a head, and this word can be read either as "main free", "main aces", or "free heads". Let us note that the Kazakhs, Khakasses, who retained the same root in ethnonyms, live in the territories once inhabited by Sarmatian tribes. From which their names passed through the centuries, although the peoples themselves managed to change, change languages, and, of course, they have nothing to do with the Cossacks.

By the way, many other names came to us from the Scythian-Sarmatian peoples: the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov, Kazbek, the Caucasus, Asia (the words have the same root “az”), and “dan” in ancient Iranian languages ​​meant “water”, “river” - hence the Don, Dnieper (Danapr), Dniester (Danastr), Danube (Danuvius), and the Russian "bottom". As for the ancient Kasaks, we can recall once again: during the formation of Alania, it included numerous defeated tribes, both Sarmatian and pre-Sarmatian (including the “Kossakhs” mentioned by Strabo). And it is logical to assume that after the defeat of the Alans by the Khazars, these tribes separated. And now they have already generically designated themselves as “free” - “Kasaks”. Some of them called themselves "Cherkasy" (but not Circassians - this is not a self-name, but the nickname given by the Alans means "thugs") . The Arab historian Masudi described very eloquently: “Beyond the kingdom of the Alans there is a people called Kasak, living between Mount Kabkh (Kazbek) and the Rum (Black) Sea. This people professes the faith of magicians. Among the tribes of those places there is no people more refined in appearance, with purer faces, no more beautiful men and more beautiful women, more slender, thinner in the waist, with a more prominent line of the hips and buttocks. In private, their women are described as distinguished by their sweetness. The Alans are stronger than the Kasaks. The reason for their weakness in comparison with the Alans is that they do not allow a king to be placed over them, who would unite them. In this case, neither the Alans, nor any other people could conquer them. As you can see, Masudi also noted that it was not one people, but fragmented tribes.

Based on the book by Valery Shambarov "Cossacks: the path of the soldiers of Christ"