The Cossacks | Page 8

a road cut through the forest as a
cannon-shot might fly. Along the roads are cordons of Cossacks and
watch-towers with sentinels in them. Only a narrow strip about seven
hundred yards wide of fertile wooded soil belongs to the Cossacks. To
the north of it begin the sand- drifts of the Nogay or Mozdok steppes,
which fetch far to the north and run, Heaven knows where, into the
Trukhmen, Astrakhan, and Kirghiz-Kaisatsk steppes. To the south,
beyond the Terek, are the Great Chechnya river, the Kochkalov range,
the Black Mountains, yet another range, and at last the snowy
mountains, which can just be seen but have never yet been scaled. In
this fertile wooded strip, rich in vegetation, has dwelt as far back as
memory runs the fine warlike and prosperous Russian tribe belonging
to the sect of Old Believers, and called the Grebensk Cossacks.
Long long ago their Old Believer ancestors fled from Russia and settled
beyond the Terek among the Chechens on the Greben, the first range of
wooded mountains of Chechnya. Living among the Chechens the
Cossacks intermarried with them and adopted the manners and customs
of the hill tribes, though they still retained the Russian language in all
its purity, as well as their Old Faith. A tradition, still fresh among them,
declares that Tsar Ivan the Terrible came to the Terek, sent for their

Elders, and gave them the land on this side of the river, exhorting them
to remain friendly to Russia and promising not to enforce his rule upon
them nor oblige them to change their faith. Even now the Cossack
families claim relationship with the Chechens, and the love of freedom,
of leisure, of plunder and of war, still form their chief characteristics.
Only the harmful side of Russian influence shows itself--by
interference at elections, by confiscation of church bells, and by the
troops who are quartered in the country or march through it. A Cossack
is inclined to hate less the dzhigit hillsman who maybe has killed his
brother, than the soldier quartered on him to defend his village, but who
has defiled his hut with tobacco-smoke. He respects his enemy the
hillsman and despises the soldier, who is in his eyes an alien and an
oppressor. In reality, from a Cossack's point of view a Russian peasant
is a foreign, savage, despicable creature, of whom he sees a sample in
the hawkers who come to the country and in the Ukrainian immigrants
whom the Cossack contemptuously calls 'woolbeaters'. For him, to be
smartly dressed means to be dressed like a Circassian. The best
weapons are obtained from the hillsmen and the best horses are bought,
or stolen, from them. A dashing young Cossack likes to show off his
knowledge of Tartar, and when carousing talks Tartar even to his
fellow Cossack. In spite of all these things this small Christian clan
stranded in a tiny comer of the earth, surrounded by half-savage
Mohammedan tribes and by soldiers, considers itself highly advanced,
acknowledges none but Cossacks as human beings, and despises
everybody else. The Cossack spends most of his time in the cordon, in
action, or in hunting and fishing. He hardly ever works at home. When
he stays in the village it is an exception to the general rule and then he
is holiday-making. All Cossacks make their own wine, and
drunkenness is not so much a general tendency as a rite, the
non-fulfilment of which would be considered apostasy. The Cossack
looks upon a woman as an instrument for his welfare; only the
unmarried girls are allowed to amuse themselves. A married woman
has to work for her husband from youth to very old age: his demands
on her are the Oriental ones of submission and labour. In consequence
of this outlook women are strongly developed both physically and
mentally, and though they are--as everywhere in the East--nominally in
subjection, they possess far greater influence and importance in

family-life than Western women. Their exclusion from public life and
inurement to heavy male labour give the women all the more power
and importance in the household. A Cossack, who before strangers
considers it improper to speak affectionately or needlessly to his wife,
when alone with her is involuntarily conscious of her superiority. His
house and all his property, in fact the entire homestead, has been
acquired and is kept together solely by her labour and care. Though
firmly convinced that labour is degrading to a Cossack and is only
proper for a Nogay labourer or a woman, he is vaguely aware of the
fact that all he makes use of and calls his own is the result of that toil,
and that it is in the power of the woman (his mother or his wife) whom
he considers his slave, to