The Cossacks by graf Tolstoy Leo (best book series to read TXT) 📕

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 deprive him of all he possesses. Besides, the

continuous performance of man’s heavy work and the

responsibilities entrusted to her have endowed the Grebensk women

with a peculiarly independent masculine character and have

remarkably developed their physical powers, common sense,

resolution, and stability. The women are in most cases stronger,

more intelligent, more developed, and handsomer than the men. A

striking feature of a Grebensk woman’s beauty is the combination

of the purest Circassian type of face with the broad and powerful

build of Northern women. Cossack women wear the Circassian dress—

a Tartar smock, beshmet, and soft slippers—but they tie their

kerchiefs round their heads in the Russian fashion. Smartness,

cleanliness and elegance in dress and in the arrangement of their

huts, are with them a custom and a necessity. In their relations

with men the women, and especially the unmarried girls, enjoy

perfect freedom.

Novomlinsk village was considered the very heart of Grebensk

Cossackdom. In it more than elsewhere the customs of the old

Grebensk population have been preserved, and its women have from

time immemorial been renowned all over the Caucasus for their

beauty. A Cossack’s livelihood is derived from vineyards, fruit-gardens, water melon and pumpkin plantations, from fishing,

hunting, maize and millet growing, and from war plunder.

Novomlinsk village lies about two and a half miles away from the

Terek, from which it is separated by a dense forest. On one side

of the road which runs through the village is the river; on the

other, green vineyards and orchards, beyond which are seen the

driftsands of the Nogay Steppe. The village is surrounded by

earth-banks and prickly bramble hedges, and is entered by tall

gates hung between posts and covered with little reed-thatched

roofs. Beside them on a wooden gun-carriage stands an unwieldy

cannon captured by the Cossacks at some time or other, and which

has not been fired for a hundred years. A uniformed Cossack

sentinel with dagger and gun sometimes stands, and sometimes does

not stand, on guard beside the gates, and sometimes presents arms

to a passing officer and sometimes does not. Below the roof of the

gateway is written in black letters on a white board: ‘Houses 266:

male inhabitants 897: female 1012.’ The Cossacks’ houses are all

raised on pillars two and a half feet from the ground. They are

carefully thatched with reeds and have large carved gables. If not

new they are at least all straight and clean, with high porches of

different shapes; and they are not built close together but have

ample space around them, and are all picturesquely placed along

broad streets and lanes. In front of the large bright windows of

many of the houses, beyond the kitchen gardens, dark green poplars

and acacias with their delicate pale verdure and scented white

blossoms overtop the houses, and beside them grow flaunting yellow

sunflowers, creepers, and grape vines. In the broad open square

are three shops where drapery, sunflower and pumpkin seeds, locust

beans and gingerbreads are sold; and surrounded by a tall fence,

loftier and larger than the other houses, stands the Regimental

Commander’s dwelling with its casement windows, behind a row of

tall poplars. Few people are to be seen in the streets of the

village on weekdays, especially in summer. The young men are on

duty in the cordons or on military expeditions; the old ones are

fishing or helping the women in the orchards and gardens. Only the

very old, the sick, and the children, remain at home.