Word on the street is that Jews don’t like Cossacks, and Cossacks don’ t like jews.
So what was the source of this enmity? The cossacks were Ukrainians on horseback or something like that, what did it have to do with the Jews?
Really? Even the Jewish Cossacks?
“It’s first and ten, Jews on the Cossacks one-yard line. Here’s the handoff, and…oh no! he’s running the wrong way!!!”
Actually in real life the Cossacks had guns, swords and large horsies and would ride into town to conduct pogroms and stuff, which made them unpopular with Jews.
There’s a Woody Allen movie in there somewhere.
It’s not especially the Cossacks, but rather that several Czars encouraged Antisemitism and progroms against the Jews as useful tool to divert the population away from their own draconian or incomptent management.
And for a large part of medieval and modern history, the fact that one group was fervently Christian of some sort plus bad circumstances (the plague, bad harvest…) was a good enough reason to show loyalty to God/ the Church by persecuting Jews.
With the added benefit of not only to do something against the well-poisioners responsible for the plague / the Christ-Killers/ the guys who kidnapped a Christian baby* / who did terrible things with the holy body of Christ (waifers), but also against people who had lent money to the peasants till the next harvest, so killing the lenders ended the credit problem, or killing Jews meant ransacking their houses.
- Remember the Satanist panic in the 1980s ? Not a shred of evidence, but enough peple believed for a bunch of trials and investigations, and many lives affected.
Did Cossacks take part in Russian pogroms?
Interesting.
There’s a story by Sholom Aleichem titled “A Wedding Without Musicians,” where the opposite happens - the town constable calls in Cossacks to prevent a pogrom in the town.
*“You are big fools,” he said. “Only yesterday I ordered a regiment of Cossacks from Tolchin.”
When we heard this we breathed more easily. When a Jew hears that a Cossack is coming, he takes courage, he can face the world again.*
The deal is that first, during the Chmielnicki Uprising, the Cossacks went after the Jews and killed a whole lot. Then, after the Ukraine became part of the Russian Empire, Cossacks continued to go after the Jews, both under the Tsar’s orders on on their own, most notably during the 1905 pogroms. The Cossacks also killed a whole bunch of Jews during the Russian Civil War.
What sparked the whole thing was that, in Poland-Lithuania, of which the Ukraine was part during the Chmielnicki uprising, the big Polish landowners would use Jews as estate managers. This was something called the arendator system. See, large portions of the Ukraine was at that time, owned by Poles, who were, for the most part absentee landlords, because who wants to live on a Ukrainian farm when you can be enjoying the culture of Warsaw or Kiev. So, they’d basically rent out the rights to do things on the land (collect taxes, operate distilleries or breweries, own mills, etc) to other people.
A lot of those people were Jews, because in Poland during the middle ages and Renaissance, unlike most of Western Europe, there wasn’t much legal antisemitism. You see, in the 13th century, Poland had a leader, called Boleslav the Chaste (he was called that because his wife, being really religious, didn’t want to have sex, and he not only went along with that, he never took any mistresses, which is neither here nor there, but interesting), and Boleslav issued a document, called either the Statute of Kalisz or the “General Charter of Jewish Liberties”, inviting Jews into Poland, and saying, among other things, “It’s illegal to kill Jews, it’s illegal to steal from Jews, it’s illegal to mock Jewish worship or stop Jews from worshiping”, and so on, which basically made Jews pretty much legally equal to Christians. This was significant, because in most of Europe, Jews weren’t equal to Christians. So a lot of Jews came to Poland, where they could be free, and this meant that Poland-Lithuania, of all of Europe, actually had a Jewish lower-middle and middle class, which was able to participate in the arendator system.
Unfortunately, for the poor Cossack, that meant that pretty much everybody who was the visible source of his oppression was Jewish. The guy who collected rents and duties? Jewish. The guy who charged too much for vodka? Jewish. The guy who held the village monopoly on grinding the grain the Cossack grew? Jewish. One of the big rallying points Chmielnicki used in the rebellion was that the Poles “sold us into the hands of the accursed Jews”, and Jews were specifically targeted.
The Cossacks were the available ‘mercenary soldiers’ of the Russian Tsars. Whenever the Tsars needed to put down a peasants revolt, or run an anti-semitic pogrom to distract the peasants, or kill off the lenders that the Tsar or his nobles owed money to, the Cossacks were the ones called in for the task.
They were outsiders, so little chance of them joining in the revolt (which was a risk if the Tsar used his own local soldiers). And when they were done, the Tsar could send them back to the Ukraine, so no local group hostilities leading to unrest. Good deal for the Ysar & his nobles.
But many times, the people the Cossacks were used against were Jews. So it didn’t take long for hatred to grow up between the groups.
They kicked my great grandfather off his dirt farm and I’m still pissed!
Not exactly. When you are saying ‘Cossacks’ in the above, you really mean Ukrainian Peasants. The Cossacks had their own culture and society and they did not see themselves as being oppressed by the Jews. I don’t think the Cossacks saw themselves as being oppressed by anyone.
I think that would really depend on the time period. By 19th century the Cossacks became strongly distinguished from the “peasants” and, inter alia, got laws passed that prohibited most Jews living in their areas. And whatever landowners they had where they lived would likely be their fellow Cossacks; in general, they did not like any non-Cossack migrants either. (nevertheless, this salutary separation did not make them philo-semitic or even don’t-care-about-semitic all of a sudden, and Russian Civil War in Ukraine was an exceptionally ugly time for the Jews).
But in earlier centuries, such as under the Polish rule, lots of people who may have to some extent identified as Cossacks would indeed live in these estates ran by Jewish trustees of Polish nobles or otherwise end up doing business with Jews. And that, of course, does not always engender friendship, as witness the blacks vs Koreans riots.
The Cossacks were used in the Russian Empire to repress internal dissent. They had risen against the Czars several times in the 17th and 18th centuries. With a strong sense of ethnic loyalty and strong military traditions, they were very hard to supress. In a “if you can’t beat them join them” mode, the Imperial Government decided in the 19th century to give the Cossacks large amounts of land and a significant level of self government in their Southern Russia homelands. They were used both against Jews and non-Jewish peasants, but we tend to remember pogroms more because they were a major cause of Jewish emigration to the US.
We should also remember that the pogroms of the Russian Civil War weren’t limited to the Cossacks. They were carried out by Cossacks, Whites (anti-Communists), Ukranian nationalists, invading Polish troops, “green” peasant uprisings, anarchists–even occasionally by the Bolsheviks. The Jews were heavily concentrated in war zones like the Ukraine and Belorussia. Law and order had essentially collapsed in these areas, so the armies were essentially free to indulge in their anti-Semetic hate.
I don’t understand is this right sort of?
Simply: The Cossaks were a rebellion group in Russia against ____________(czars in Russia?) Who tergeted everyone in Russia but mostly Jews and threw pogroms against them?
Is that right or am I totally off here?
You’re kind of off; the Cossack rebellions and the pogroms were two separate things. Take a look at posts #8 and #12 again.
The simplified version is that early in their history, the Cossacks rebelled many times against the Tsar. They were sufficiently good at it that they gained the respect of the Tsar, and eventually ended up working for him. So by the beginning of the 19th century, they were essentially the elite shock troops of the Russian Army, putting down rebellions and such. So when the Tsar decided to incite violence against the Jews, the Cossacks were the ones wielding the swords.
ok turns out I mixed up the cossacks with the Pogroms!! but a little extra knowledge never hurt anyone right?? Thanks so muchanyway I really appreciate it!!