Moscow Expands Attack on Independent Cossacks with Confiscation of Memorabilia in Key Museum

Paul Goble

    Staunton, May 5 – At a time when the Kremlin is providing ever more support to Cossacks it controls, the Russian government is making ever more moves against those it does not, a pattern that often is missed because Russian government media provide a great deal of information on the former but only independent media provide much on the latter.

    As a result, it is sometimes forgotten that there are two groups of people who identify as Cossacks, those who choose to register with the government or are formed and financed by it and who are completely loyal to the Kremlin and those who trace their ancestry to the Cossacks of the past, seek broader autonomy and even independence.

    (On this division, see jamestown.org/program/de-cossackization-modern-day-echoes-of-soviet-crime/, jamestown.org/program/moscow-tightens-control-over-its-cossacks/, jamestown.org/program/putins-pseudo-cossacks-assume-larger-role-but-real-cossacks-refuse-to-go-along/ and jamestown.org/program/cossackia-no-longer-an-impossible-dream/).

    This week, at a time when the Putin regime gives prominent coverage to a prominent role to its Cossacks in commemorating the anniversary of the end of World War II, it is working to suppress the most prominent museum of the history of independent Cossacks in the Russian Federation, some of whom fought against Stalin.

    According to a report by the Kavkaz-Uzel news portal, defenders of the latter are concerned that these attacks, which follow Russian court decisions allowing the government to seize exhibits deemed anti-Russian will in fact lead to the suppression of the Cossack Museum in Elan altogether (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/411060).