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A stanitsa or stanytsia (Russian: станица, IPA: [stɐˈnʲitsə]; Ukrainian: станиця) was a historical administrative unit of a Cossack host, a type of Cossack polity that existed in the Russian Empire.
Structure
The stanitsa was a unit of economic and political organisation of the Cossack peoples who lived in the Russian Empire. Each stanitsa contained several villages and khutirs.[1] The stanitsa was the primary unit of a Cossack host.
Each stanitsa held much of the local land in common, subject to annual allocation to Cossack families by the Ataman, the appointed leader of the community. This was a fully democratic, unique process, characteristic of Russia's South only. (A similar democratic system operated only in the Novgorod Republic, prior to its annexation by the Grand Duchy of Moscow in 1478.)
History
The stanitsa was first an administrative unit in the 18th century.[1]
Destruction
The stanitsa as a social unit was effectively destroyed in the aftermath of the 1917 October Revolution in Russia. The Russian Civil War (1917–1922) and subsequent collectivisation (1928–1940) of the land by the state under Joseph Stalin and the Holodomor (1932–1933) destroyed the culture and the economic foundations of stanitsas.
In the Soviet Union, the term stanitsa was used after 1929 to refer to rural settlements on former Cossack land that were governed by soviet councils.[1]
Modern usage
In modern Russia, the administration classifies a stanitsa as a type of rural locality in some federal subjects of Russia, mostly in the south. Stanitsa is a type of locality in these federal subjects:
See also
- Yurt, or Cossack stanitsa
References
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