Stanitsa: Difference between revisions

In the aftermath of the 1917 [[October Revolution]] in Russia, a new [[Soviet]] regime took power. Beginning in 1919, the Soviet regime pursued a policy of [[genocide]]<ref name="Figes">{{cite book|first=Orlando|last=Figes|author-link=Orlando Figes|title=A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891–1924|publisher= Penguin Books|year=1998|isbn= 0-14-024364-X}}</ref><ref name="Rayfield">{{cite book|first=Donald|last=Rayfield|author-link=Donald Rayfield|title=Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him|publisher=Random House|year=2004|isbn=0-375-50632-2}}</ref><ref name="Nekrich">{{cite book|first1=Mikhail|last1=Heller|first2=Aleksandr|last2=Nekrich|author-link2=Alexander Nekrich|title=Utopia in Power: The History of the Soviet Union from 1917 to the Present}}</ref><ref name="Rummel">{{cite book|first=R. J.|last= Rummel|author-link=R. J. Rummel|url=http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE4.HTM|title=Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917|publisher=[[Transaction Publishers]]|date=1990|isbn=1-56000-887-3|access-date=2014-03-01}}</ref><ref name="Extermination order">[http://www.york.ac.uk/admin/presspr/pressreleases/cossacks.htm Soviet order to exterminate Cossacks is unearthed] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091210025518/http://www.york.ac.uk/admin/presspr/pressreleases/cossacks.htm|date=December 10, 2009}} [[University of York]] Communications Office, 21 January 2003</ref> and systematic repression against Cossacks known as [[De-Cossackization]]. The policy aimed at the elimination of the Cossacks as a distinct collectivity by exterminating the Cossack elite, coercing all other Cossacks into compliance and eliminating Cossack distinctness.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|last=Schleifman|first=Nurit|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FTpdAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT114|title=Russia at a Crossroads: History, Memory and Political Practice|date=2013|publisher=[[Routledge]]|isbn=978-1-135-22533-9|pages=114|language=en}}</ref> As part of this policy, the Soviet forces sought to erase Cossack administrative structures, especially of the Don Cossacks.{{sfn|Holquist|19981997|pages=139–140}} The purpose of this was to "deny Cossacks any Don structure as a point of identification and to 'dilute' the Cossack population by appending portions of neighboring non-Cossack provinces".{{sfn|Holquist|19981997|page=140}} This included distinctly Cossack names for administrative units, as the Cossacks were fond of these names "as markers of their distinctiveness from peasants." The Soviets sought to erase these identities.{{sfn|Holquist|19981997|page=140–141}} On 20 April 1919, the [[Red Army]]'s [[Southern Front (RSFSR)|Southern Front]] issued an order renaming the stanitsas to generic [[volost]]s, or counties. Local [[revolutionary committee (Soviet)|revolutionary committee]]s assisted in this, passing resolutions in parallel to destroy the stanitsa as a social unit.{{sfn|Holquist|19981997|page=141}} The ''[[Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine]]'' lists the specific end date of the existence of the traditional stanitsa as 1920.<ref name=eou/>