How the Ukrainians began the development of the Kuban. Kuban - a historical region of Ukraine - How they settled in new lands
In Ukraine, there are again demands to return the "captured Kuban". This time, a high-ranking official, the head of the Ministry of Infrastructure Vladimir Omelyan, spoke on the topic of return, who called the "return of the Kuban" a condition for the resumption of air traffic with Russia.
“I think that we will restore air communication with Russia only and other Ukrainian territories that were captured by Russia at one time,” Omelyan said in an interview with one of the Ukrainian publications. The main topic of this interview was… the appearance of the European low-cost carrier Ryanair in Ukraine.
Generally speaking, it cannot be ruled out - most likely, it is so - that the minister was not completely serious, but decided to demonstrate that officials are not alien to humor. In its specific manifestation that now dominates in Kyiv.
But generally speaking, it was not only Omelyan who spoke about the return of "original Ukrainian territories". That is why there are still slight doubts that the minister was joking.
For example, periodic "overrides" wins. For example, at the end of April, he announced that he supported the return Rostov region in the "bosom of Ukraine". And before that, the same Zhebrevsky dreamed, the Kursk, Bryansk, Voronezh regions and the Krasnodar Territory should return to the "bosom". “This is where there is a Ukrainian essence, a Ukrainian mentality,” Zhebrivsky explained.
MP Verkhovna Rada Yuri Bereza exactly two years ago, on the air of one of the Ukrainian TV channels, he said that "we have questions about the Kuban and many other questions." Although, to begin with, he promised to appear in the Crimea and, if necessary, "burn everyone."
In May of the same 2015, NSDC Secretary Oleksandr Turchynov said he was ready to agree with the idea. This was said to the fact that this statesman, on the contrary, categorically disagrees with the proposal to grant autonomy to Donetsk and Lugansk.
One could, of course, say that all these fantasies are the product of the current very tense relations between Russia and Ukraine. However, this is far from being the case. For example, back in 1920, cartographer Stepan Rudnitsky mapped out where ethnic Ukraine occupies most of the northern Caucasus and reaches the Caspian Sea. In the west, by the way, judging by the map, the borders of "Ukrainianism" practically reach Warsaw.
Image source: loc. gov
In June 2010, in Lvov, Yuriy Shukhevych delivered a speech on military accession of the Kuban to Ukraine. He proved to those who gathered at the rally that the Kuban Cossacks remember their origin and will definitely join Ukraine in the near future. And in 2013, a rally was held in Kyiv, at which the chairman of the Union of Officers of Ukraine, retired captain of the first rank Yevgeny Lupakov, the head of the secretariat of the main wire of the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists Volodymyr Manko and even the head of the Kuban community Ivan Petrenko spoke. They all declared in unison that the Kuban is Ukraine.
Claims to the Kuban are also justified by the fact that at the end of the 18th century the Cossacks of the Black Sea Cossack Host were resettled here. And in 1918, the Kuban People's Republic concluded an alliance with the UNR against the Bolsheviks. Moreover, modern Ukrainian historiography claims that this was not a situational union of two quasi-state formations, but a full-fledged federation - the idea of which, by the way, is so hated by modern Kyiv politicians.
In principle, these are just two examples, there are many more. So this topic did not arise today, and not even in 2014. Just until recently, figures of varying degrees of marginality dreamed about the Kuban in Ukraine, and now it is, let's say, their mainstream. Having nothing to do with reality - but still.
And finally, some statistics. According to the 2002 census, 131,000 residents of the Krasnodar Territory identified themselves as Ukrainians (or 2.57% of the total number of people who participated in the census). In 2010 - already 83 thousand people, 1.6 percent.
Something is clearly wrong with the "Ukrainian essence" in the Kuban ...
How did the Kuban become part of Russia? And why Ukraine ... considers these lands its own
Before 1930s Ukrainian language was official in the Kuban along with Russian, and many Kuban Cossacks considered themselves ethnic Ukrainians. This gave modern Ukraine a reason to consider this territory historically its own, unfairly given to Russia.
Kuban Cossack army
How did the Kuban Cossack army appear? Its history begins in 1696, when the Don Cossack Khoper regiment took part in the capture of Azov by Peter I. Later, in 1708, during the Bulavin uprising, the Khoper people moved to the Kuban, giving rise to a new Cossack community.
A new stage in the history of the Kuban Cossacks began at the end of the 18th century, when, after the Russian-Turkish wars of 1768-1774 and 1787-1791, the Russian border moved closer to the North Caucasus, and the Northern Black Sea region became entirely Russian. The need for the Zaporizhzhya Cossack army disappeared, but the Cossacks were required to strengthen the Caucasian borders.
In 1792, the Cossacks were resettled in the Kuban, having received land in military ownership.
This is how the Black Sea Cossacks were formed. In the southeast of it was located the Caucasian linear Cossack army, formed from the Don Cossacks. In 1864 they were merged into the Kuban Cossack Army.
Thus, the Kuban Cossacks turned out to be ethnically two-part - Russian-Ukrainian. Truth,
Until the beginning of the 20th century, class consciousness rather than ethnicity prevailed among the Cossacks.
Changes made themselves felt already at the end of the 19th century, when two completely new “trends” emerged. On the one hand, the military ministry of the Russian Empire began to think about the elimination of the Cossack class - in the conditions of the beginning of the 20th century, the cavalry faded into the background. On the other hand, in the Cossack environment, the number of people not associated with military service but engaged in intellectual work. It was in their midst that the idea of the “Cossack nation” was born. Its development was accelerated by the connection of the Black Sea with the Ukrainian national movement.
Fragile neutrality was destroyed by the October Revolution, which the Kuban government did not recognize. Soviet Decree on Land, the Kuban Rada announced the formation of an independent Kuban People's Republic. It was stipulated that the republic was part of Russia on federal rights, but what kind of Russia was it? It wasn't clear.
Neither white nor red
The new Republic was constitutional. Its main legislative body was the Regional Rada, but the Legislative Rada, elected from among its members, was constantly in operation, implementing the current legislation. The Regional Rada elected the Head Ataman (the head of the executive branch), and the Ataman appointed the government responsible to the Legislative Rada. Kuban intellectuals - teachers, lawyers, employees of transport services, doctors - joined the work of the new institutions.
In March 1918, the Kuban Rada and the government had to leave Ekaterinodar. The government convoy united with the Dobrovolsky army of Lavr Georgevich Kornilov, who soon died and General Anton Ivanovich Denikin took his place. Since the Kuban government did not have its own army, an agreement was concluded according to which the Volunteer Army recognized the powers of the Kuban authorities, and the Kuban agreed to the military leadership of the volunteers. The agreement was made when both forces had no actual power and nothing to share.
The situation changed in the autumn of 1918, when the Volunteer Army was able to occupy most of the Kuban region and some territories in Stavropol. The question arose about the organization of power. First of all, he concerned the relationship between the Volunteer Army and the Kuban, since the region was the most important rear for Denikin's troops. In the army itself, the Kuban made up to 70% of the personnel.
And here a conflict began between the volunteers and the Kuban Rada on the balance of powers. The conflict went along two lines. First, it was political and legal in nature.
Kuban politicians associated Denikin's army with old, tsarist Russia and its inherent centralism.
The traditional mutual hostility between the military and the intellectuals had an effect. Secondly, representatives of the Black Sea Cossacks saw the Volunteer Army as a source of national oppression. In Denikin's army, indeed, the attitude towards Ukraine was negative.
Failed Denikin project
As a result, any attempt by A.I. Denikin to extend his power to the territory of the Kuban was perceived as reactionary. This had to be taken into account by the lawyers responsible for the agreement between the "unwilling allies." As one of them, Konstantin Nikolaevich Sokolov, wrote:
"It was difficult to get the Kuban to delegate part of the powers to Denikin."
During 1918-1919, several meetings of commissions were organized to regulate the structure of the white South.
But the debate each time came to a standstill. If Denikin's lawyers stood for dictatorial power, unity of command in the army and common citizenship, then the Kubans demanded to preserve parliamentarism, form a separate Kuban army and protect the privileges of Kuban citizens.
The fears of the Kuban politicians were justified: in the volunteer environment, they were irritated with parliamentary democracy and the Ukrainian language, which was used in the Rada along with Russian. In addition, the conditions of the civil war required Denikin and his entourage to concentrate power and resources in their own hands. The coexistence of several, albeit united by the struggle with Moscow, state entities complicated the adoption and implementation of any decision.
As a result, an agreement was reached when it was already too late. In January 1920, the "South Russian Government" was created, headed by Denikin, the Council of Ministers, the Legislative Chamber and the autonomy of the Cossack troops. But the front at that moment was already collapsed, the white armies were retreating to the Black Sea. In the spring of the same year, Yekaterinodar fell, and the Kuban statehood was virtually eliminated.
As part of the RSFSR
The Soviet government transferred the Kuban to the RSFSR, forming the Kuban-Black Sea region.
The Soviet authorities went to meet the Cossacks: for the first 12 years, the Soviet authorities in the Kuban used the Ukrainian language on a par with Russian.
It taught, conducted research, office work, issued the press. True, it did not end with anything good - a real confusion began, since the locals spoke it, and few owned literary. As a result, there was a shortage of staff. In 1924, the Kuban became part of the North Caucasus Territory, which also included the Don and Stavropol, which contributed to further Russification. Already in 1932, the Ukrainian language in these places lost its official status.
Thus, the Kuban for the first quarter of the twentieth century. passed a difficult evolution from the region of the Russian Empire with the special status of the Cossack estate to the subject of the RSFSR, bypassing the specific periods of Cossack statehood and the experiment of Ukrainian national and cultural self-determination within the framework of Soviet society.
Almost a hundred years ago, a stubborn struggle for influence over the Kuban began between Ukraine and the pro-Russian Don. January 4, 1918, to the call of the Ukrainian Black Sea Rada 29 political parties and organizations supported the Third Universal of the Central Rada of Ukraine and appealed to the Kuban Military Government with an appeal to join the once torn away Kuban to Mother Ukraine. As always, such accession was hindered by people from other cities who had come in large numbers from the Russian hinterland, as a rule, persons infected with imperial Bolshevism, who muddied the waters and fooled the common people.
But be that as it may, and on January 28, 1918, the Kuban Regional Military Rada, headed by N.S. Ryabovol on the lands of the former Kuban region, an independent Kuban People's Republic was proclaimed as part of the future Russian Federal Republic.
But the "love" for Muscovy ended very quickly and already on February 16, 1918, the Kuban was proclaimed an independent independent Kuban People's Republic (from December 4, 1918 officially - the Kuban Territory) a new state formation on the territory of the former Kuban region and the Kuban Cossack army, created after the collapse Russian Empire and existed in 1918-1920. The most influential political forces of this public education there were "Chernomortsy" and "linetsy". "Chernomortsy", stronger economically and politically, represented the Ukrainian-speaking Black Sea Cossacks and stood on pro-Ukrainian positions. "Lineytsy" represented the Russian-speaking linear Cossacks and focused on "one and indivisible Russia."
Despite the powerful Bolshevik propaganda, from spring to autumn 1918 in the Kuban there was a transition of the majority of the Cossack population to oppose the Bolsheviks. This was facilitated by the confiscation and redistribution of military lands, the looting of some Red Army detachments, which consisted of non-residents, and acts of decossackization.
On May 28, 1918, a delegation of the head of the Regional Rada, Ryabovol, arrived in Kyiv. The subject of negotiations was the establishment of interstate relations and Ukraine's assistance to the Kuban in the fight against the Bolsheviks. At the same time, negotiations were underway on the accession of the Kuban to Ukraine. Already at the end of June, the Ukrainian state delivered 9700 rifles, 5 million cartridges, 50 thousand shells for 3-inch guns to the Kuban.
Similar deliveries were carried out in the future. At a time when the Volunteer Army was preparing to march on Yekaterinodar, the Ukrainian side offered to land troops on the Azov coast of the Kuban. At this time, the prepared Cossack uprising was to begin. It was planned by joint efforts to expel the Bolsheviks and proclaim the unification of Ukraine and Kuban. Natiev's division (15 thousand people) was transferred from Kharkov to the Azov coast, but the plan failed both because of the double game of the Germans and because of the delay of the highest ranks of the military ministry.
At that time, priority areas domestic policy Kuban region were: the solution of socio-economic problems, activities for the translation into the Ukrainian language of educational institutions in areas where Ukrainians were the vast majority. In foreign policy- the fight against Bolshevism, orientation towards Ukraine, in particular support for the movement for unification with Ukraine, initially on a federal basis.
On June 23, a meeting of the Kuban government was held in Novocherkassk, at which the question of who to focus on in the future was decided - to Ukraine or the Volunteer Army. The well-paid supporters of association with volunteers took over, but in the future, relations between the Volunteer Army and the Kuban leaders sharply escalated. Volunteers considered the Kuban as an integral part of Russia, sought to abolish the Kuban government and the Rada and subordinate the ataman of the Kuban Cossack army to the commander of the Volunteer Army. The Kubans, on the other hand, sought to defend their independence, oriented towards Ukraine. The Kuban-Denikin confrontation escalated especially after June 13, 1919. On this day, at the South Russian Conference, the head of the Kuban Regional Council, Nikolai Ryabovol, delivered a speech in which he sharply criticized the Denikin regime. That same night, he was shot dead in the lobby of the Palace Hotel by an employee of the Denikin Special Meeting. This murder caused incredible indignation in the Kuban. Kuban Cossacks began to leave the army; subsequent events led to the fact that the desertion of the Kuban became massive and their share in Denikin's troops, which at the end of 1918 was 68.75%, fell to 10% by the beginning of 1920, which became one of the reasons for the defeat of the white army, bleeding it.
Now the Kuban Territorial Rada has already openly announced that it is necessary to fight not only with the Red Army, but also with monarchism, based on Denikin's army. In early autumn, the deputies of the regional council carried out active propaganda on the separation of the Kuban from Russia, active negotiations began with the Ukrainian People's Republic on accession. At the same time, the Kuban delegation at the Paris Peace Conference raises the question of admitting the Kuban People's Republic to the League of Nations.
But, on March 3, 1920, the strengthened Red Army began the Kuban-Novorossiysk operation. The volunteer corps, the Don and Kuban armies began to withdraw. On March 17, the Red Army entered Yekaterinodar. The Kuban army was pressed to the border of Georgia and capitulated on May 2-3. The Kuban People's Republic, its government and the Kuban Cossack army were abolished. Kuban, together with the Black Sea, forcibly became part of the RSFSR in the form of the Kuban-Black Sea region. However, the mass Cossack insurrectionary movement continued until 1922, and individual rebel detachments operated until 1925. Throughout the 20s and 30s of the 20th century, the Kuban remained the scene of mass repressions, decossackization, dekulakization and large-scale famine.
From not so long ago historical events correct and timely conclusions should be drawn. If the Kuban People's Republic, despite the subversive actions from within its pro-Russian elements, both white and red, took a decisive step towards unification with the UNR, it would have kept itself and the UNR as part of a united Ukraine. Then neither Bolshevik Moscow nor the White movement could prevent them from gaining real independence recognized by the world community. Without Ukraine and Kuban, there would be neither imperial Soviet power nor the imperial white movement. At best, they would fight among themselves, weakening and destroying each other.
On August 25, 1792, the first Ukrainian settlers, led by Colonel Savva Bely, crossed the Kerch Strait and landed on Taman Island at the mouth of the Kuban River.
Since that time, it has been customary to count down the development North Caucasus European, Christian civilization, which, according to the decision of the Russian imperial court, was done by ethnic Ukrainians from the Middle Dnieper region.
The calculation of Catherine II was simple: after the final defeat of the Crimean Khanate (1783), to push the local settled pagan Adyghes (Circassians) and nomadic Muslim Nogais into the mountains. It was only necessary to find the performers of such a rather difficult mission. However, they must be 1) local; 2) devoted to Her Majesty and the values that she personified.
Favorites from among the Ukrainian oligarchy, close to the queen, quickly convinced her that there was no alternative to her own services. They decided to populate the newly conquered region with "their own" - free Orthodox Cossacks, who, in turn, voluntarily agreed to mass resettlement.
For them, it was an opportunity to escape from the unacceptable consequences of the liquidation of the autonomy of the Hetmanate (until 1783) and the destruction of the Zaporozhian Sich (1775), namely, from enslavement and the prohibition of Cossack self-government.
The special operation to settle the Kuban in St. Petersburg was commanded by the former colonel of Nizhinsky and Kyiv, at that time already the prime minister (chancellor) Vasily Bezborodko, and directly on the spot - the ataman Anton Golovaty, who was most helped by the centurions Zakhary Chepiga and the already mentioned Bely.
An offer you can't refuse
Documentary film directed by Valentin Sperkach "Kuban Cossacks. And already two hundred years ...". Studio "Ukraine-Mir" (1992)
The Cossacks no longer had a place on the Dnieper. They did not consider it necessary to leave them in the modern Odessa, Nikolaev and Kherson regions conquered by their own lives, which, again with the help of yesterday's Sich soldiers - the same Golovaty and his people, were occupied by Russia.
It was they who knocked out the Turks from Ochakov, Khadzhibey (renamed Odessa) and Ishmael, thus earning the favor of the queen and a pleasant bonus in the form of a letter of "perpetual possession" of the Black Sea Cossack army of the lands of the Kuban.
The first Cossack church on Taman. Preserved to this day
At the same time, in the new territories, Ukrainians were allowed to preserve the traditional regimental way of life, their own social system, language, and customs.
In response, of course, participation in further military scams of the empire and certain things of a ceremonial plan were required: the capital named after Catherine, belonging to a de facto state church, and the like. Otherwise, freedom of action was not particularly guaranteed, but not limited either.
Researchers count 5 waves of Ukrainian migration to the Kuban: 1792, 1803-1809, 1810-1811, 1820-1825 and 1848-1849. Starting from 1810, when almost all the Cossacks moved there, the Russian administration began to move registrars from the current Chernihiv, Poltava, Kyiv and Cherkasy regions to the east coast of Azov.
Katerino-Lybedskaya St. Nicholas Wasteland is the greatest shrine of the Kuban Ukrainians, the architecture of which exactly repeated the Mezhyhirsky Transfiguration Monastery. The iconostasis there was also from Mezhyhirya. This temple complex destroyed by the Bolsheviks almost simultaneously with Mezhyhirya in the Kiev region
The Sea of Azov thus became the inland sea of Ukrainians. At the same time, they had much more rights and opportunities on the other side than on this one.
The Kuban Cossacks called their first villages (villages) after the kurens in the Sich, and only then - after that city or village in Great Ukraine, from where the settlers arrived (Khmelnitskaya, Dneprovskaya, Bryukhovetskaya, Starokorsunskaya, Novonikolaevskaya, etc.). The largest population in Krasnodar Territory Russia is still the village of Kanevskaya, which owes its name to Colonel Pavel Zhivotovsky and the Kanevsky kuren of the Sich.
Among the titles settlements in the Krasnodar and Stavropol Territories, such exotic things as the Mova farm or the village of Plastunovskaya still come across.
Kuban People's Republic: birth and death
State symbols of KubNR
The traditional Cossack way of life, the Ukrainian language, exactly the same names as in the historical Motherland, surnames supported the Kuban people's sense of political and cultural continuity with the Dnieper region. This was especially pronounced during the First and Second World Wars, when all Ukrainians had a chance to free themselves from enslavement by Russia.
It is worth noting that in Kyiv, the Kuban lands were considered an integral part of Ukraine by both the then left and right. The only fundamental disagreement between them on this issue was the methods of recapturing the Kuban: Grushevsky and Vinnichenko preferred diplomacy, while Skoropadsky relied on an uprising against the "White Guards" and the landing of the hetman's troops.
On January 4, 1918, the Kubans, or, as they then called themselves, the "Black Sea" supported the III Universal of the Central Rada and asked for reunification with Mother Ukraine.
February 16 - KubNR announces its secession from federal Russia (the UNR, as is known, had been ill and successfully recovered from "federalization" a year earlier);
May 28 - A delegation of the Kuban Rada visited the Ukrainian capital for negotiations. Skoropadsky agreed with its leader Nikolai Ryabovol on the supply of weapons and a joint military campaign against Denikin.
Nikolai Stepanovich Ryabovol
According to the latest historical data, in the summer of that year, KubNR received from the Ukrainian state 9700 rifles, 5 million cartridges, 50 thousand shells for 3-inch guns. Everything went according to plan.
15 thousand soldiers of the division of General Zurab Natiev, well trained in battles with the Bolsheviks, were supposed to come to the aid of the Kuban, but at the last moment Skoropadsky was let down by his strategic partners - the Germans. Then the Kuban realized that they should rely solely on their own strength.
Not receiving the full support promised by Kyiv and torn in the struggle between two insidious enemies ("reds" and "whites"), the young republic fell.
On the night of June 13-14, 1919, Denikin's men shot dead Ryabovol at the Palace Hotel in Novocherkassk, and on March 17 the Red Army entered Katerinodar (the modern name is Krasnodar).
Dialectological map of Ukraine. 1926
Ethnographic map of Ukraine. 1949
Together with the invaders, collectivization, deportation, Russification, artificial Holodomor and mass executions came to the Cossack villages. Today there is not a single Ukrainian school, not a single Ukrainian theater or periodical.
The song "The Kuban Flows" is about the genocide of the Ukrainian people arranged by the Soviet authorities. Performed by the Kuban Cossack Choir
However, out of the 5 million population of the Krasnodar Territory, half a million consider "Balachka" (a local dialect of the Ukrainian language) to be their mother tongue and continue to freely use it in everyday life.
In addition, the authorities do not interfere with the activities of the Cossack folk amateur performances, the repertoire of which is 100% Ukrainian folklore.
Own UPA
The second time in the twentieth century. Kuban sent a signal to Great Ukraine about their readiness for a joint struggle against the USSR after the Second World War. On this topic, several publications were published in the media, which reported on the activities of the partisan "Cossack Insurgent Army" (CoPA) in the vicinity of Krasnodar, whose fighters allegedly coordinated their actions with the leadership of the UPA.
At the same time, the complete secrecy of the archives of the Russian special services and the "taboo" imposed on "Ukrainian separatism" in the Kuban are doing their job. Scientists have not yet been able to either refute such fragmentary evidence, or confirm them.
"Kuban demands joining Ukraine"
The third and so far the last symbolic "signal" from the Kuban can probably be considered the position of several young people at the beginning of the Russian military invasion of Crimea and the Donbass.
The most active of them, 28-year-old Daria Polyudova from the village of Poltavskaya (the same one from which the entire 27,000th population was deported in 1932) was sentenced to 2 years in prison for a seemingly innocent post on the VKontakte network - settlement.
The court found that the girl made and posted a demotivator with the words:
"SOS. Kuban: Ethnic Ukrainians of Kuban ask Ukraine and the world community to protect them from the oppression of Russian chauvinism. Kuban demands joining Ukraine - their historical homeland!"
When preparing the article, a reproduction of the painting by the artist Gennady Kvashura "Resettlement of Zaporizhzhya Cossacks to the Kuban" was used. The artist lives and works in the village of Pashkovskaya. By Presidential Decree No. 684/2006 of September 17, 2006, he was awarded the honorary title "Honored Worker of Culture of Ukraine"
220 years ago, the first batch of Ukrainian settlers arrived in the Kuban. How did the former Cossacks first become the Black Sea people, and then the Kuban Cossacks? Why were the lands they colonized not annexed to Ukraine? The historian Dmitry Bely from Donetsk, a Kuban by origin, tells.
DMitriy Bily, 45 years old, doctor historical sciences. Born in the city of Makeevka. My parents moved to Donbass from Kuban. Graduated from the Faculty of History of Donetsk state university. FROM 1989 before 1997 worked there as a teacher. Since 1997 - teacher of history at the Donetsk Law Institute. In 2010 he defended his dissertation “Ukrainians of Kuban in 1792-1921. The evolution of social identities”. He teaches at the Donetsk Law Institute. Author of the novels "Basavryuk XX", "Hallowed Soul", "Black Wing", "Cossack Oberig", "Way of the Silver Hawk". Member of the Donetsk Literary Association "OST" and the Association of Ukrainian Writers. Speaks Ukrainian, English, German, Polish and Russian. Married. Has two children - 18 year old Love and 5 year old Alexey.
- After the liquidation of the Zaporozhian Sich, several Cossack foremen - Anton Golovaty, Zakhary Chepiga and Savva Bily - waited for the moment when Prince Grigory Potemkin added the word "hetman" to his title. He himself is one of the participants in the destruction of the Sich. But it was already the time before the upcoming division of the Commonwealth, a PR was required to show the Right-Bank Ukraine: they say, our Cossacks are reviving.
On the other hand, Potemkin himself owned a huge Black Sea territory - the so-called "Novorossia", and he needed to rely on someone there. The foremen of the former Zaporizhzhya Army turned to Potemkin with a petition: they offered to create from the Cossacks "Okhochecomon" - voluntary - teams that would become his support. In return, he had to return them their former rights and liberties. Gradually, these teams gained strength.
And then came the Russian-Turkish war of 1787-1792. Its arena, apart from the Western Caucasus, was the Danube region: Russia conquered the remnants of present-day Southern Ukraine. We needed cavalry, which the Russians did not have, light cavalry, scout scouts, people who knew the area well. Began recruiting former Cossacks. During that war they were issued as the Black Sea Cossack army. It received Kleinodes from Empress Catherine II, and with them official status.
- How and when did these former Cossacks, and now the Black Sea, ended up in the Kuban? Why did Catherine decide to give them these particular lands?
“It wasn’t her decision, they got it themselves. After the war, they were given the territory of present-day Transnistria - Slobodzeya, Kamenka and other settlements. They had to live there, restore their palanques and develop the structure. Because they could no longer return to the Dnieper - the former Sich lands were distributed among themselves by Russian nobles. But shortly after the war, several problems arose. Transnistria turned out to be cramped, and there was no certainty that these lands would not be taken away from the Cossacks. And most importantly, Grigory Potemkin himself, their patron, died. The Cossacks chose Zakhary Chepiga as Koshevoi and, in the words of the historian Fyodor Shcherbina, decided to "seek lands for themselves in St. Petersburg."
By that time, Potemkin's brother was the governor of the Caucasus, which Russia received after the liquidation of the Crimean Khanate. On the left bank of the Kuban River lived Circassians - or Adygs, as they called themselves. And the right one had to be mastered. So the Black Sea people became interested in the rights to the right bank of the Kuban, so that they could begin its colonization. First, we found out everything about that territory. They sent a kind of Cossack scientific expedition led by Yesaul Mokiy Gulik. They carefully examined the region and submitted to the Black Sea foreman a detailed statistical report on it - soils, climate, water quality, plants, animals, etc.
Cossack chieftains, led by Anton Golovaty, arrived in St. Petersburg in March 1792 and obtained an audience with Empress Catherine II for large bribes. In front of her, Holovaty with a bandura began to make a speech: he thanked for the revival of the Cossack army, hinted at his current beggarly position, and that he should allocate land on Taman - a peninsula on the right bank of the Kuban. And then he sang a song about the late favorite of Tsaritsa Grigory Potemkin: “Get up, Gritsko, speak the word to us.” Catherine was empathetic. And she wrote out a letter, which she handed over to the Black Sea Cossack army “Taman with its environs”. And there "surroundings" - 28 thousand square miles! And the Black Sea people began to prepare for resettlement.
How did they settle in the new lands?
- The first batch of settlers arrived in the Kuban 220 years ago: on August 25, 1792, a landing party from the Cossack rowing flotilla moored to the Taman Peninsula - five dozen ships with more than three thousand people. Passing the Crimea, they arrived at the shores of the Kuban. The Cossack squadron was led by Colonel Savva Bily. Three other columns moved from Transnistria by land. One of them was led by ataman Zakhary Chepiga. It was an epic picture - 18,000 people moved to the Kuban: camp churches, cargo, children are born on the road, they are baptized, someone dies. Everything was organized very carefully. The first, main, stage of resettlement ended in 1794 - in two years.
One of the conditions for joining the Black Sea army was marriage. Although the last Cossacks already had families, the skeleton still remained “bachelor”. A project was created to integrate the Cossack army into the military structure of the Russian Empire. To be married and own land on contractual rights. They forbade the Cossacks to elect Kosh chieftains - they had to be approved in St. Petersburg. But if there had not been an influx of the next columns of immigrants from Ukraine, those from the first wave would have all died out there. After all, what is 18 thousand? Fighters from them - five thousand. It was necessary to develop the land in new climatic conditions.
Ukrainians settled along the Kuban River, forming kurens (Cossack settlements - "A" No.), which rather resembled fortresses surrounded by ramparts, with cannons. And a defensive line with outposts and towers was built over the Kuban itself. Yekaterinodar itself - the current Krasnodar - was founded as Novaya Sich. And they built it like the Zaporizhzhya Sich - with kurens, made a plow furrow, erected a church. Where the first street along the furrow was - there is now Krasnaya Street. But it was no longer possible to build on the principle of a single fortress center. And the name New The Russian administration did not allow the slaughter, the term "Zaporozhets" was officially banned. Kureni were scattered throughout the territory of the Kuban. Their names, according to the names of the former Zaporizhzhya villages, are now the names of the villages: Kanevskaya, Umanskaya, Poltavskaya, Medvedovskaya, Novoderevyankovskaya, etc. 1842 they were called "kurens", later "settlements", and after Russian government introduced a unified name for all Cossack settlements - "village".
After 1794, there were several more large waves of Ukrainian colonization of the North Caucasus: both spontaneous resettlement of individual families and daredevils who fled from serfdom, and organized by the authorities in 1809-1811, 1821-1822, in 1848, when 100,000 people. Mainly from the Poltava, Chernihiv provinces and Slobozhanschina. And these were precisely the Cossacks - according to the metrics, until the end of the 19th century, about a million people were listed as "Little Russian Cossacks".
So, people of the Cossack state moved to the Black Sea coast - as the Ukrainian settlers first called the Kuban - although many ordinary peasants also arrived. But from the second half of the 1860s, the government forbade the conversion of peasants who reached the Kuban into Cossacks. The waves of colonization went on, but the newcomers did not enter the Cossack village communities, but became already “out-of-town”, “town dwellers”. These are Ukrainians, peasants who could not become Cossacks and settle in villages. According to various sources, at least 200,000 Ukrainians ended up in the Kuban during the 19th and early 20th centuries.
- What were the relations between the Ukrainians in the Kuban and their neighbors - the Circassians? Or the Kuban Cossacks are also to blame for the ethnocide of this people - when in 1860s almost a million Circassians were expelled from their homeland to the Ottoman Empire? After all, then Ukrainian colonization spread to the former Circassian lands.
- Not! It was even a shame when Ivan Dzyuba recently wrote in his study of Taras Shevchenko's poem "The Caucasus" that the Black Sea people are to blame for this. This is not true. The relations of the Cossacks with the Circassians were at first good. Because they were built on mutually beneficial terms. The Chernomorians did not have a forest, but they had salt. And the Circassians are the opposite. Therefore, trade between them was very lively.
Although there were mutual raids. After all, these customs are inherent in both the Cossacks and the highlanders. It should be noted that "Adyge Khabze" - the laws by which the Adygs lived - was forbidden during the attack, for example, to burn housing or crops. That is, there was a certain culture that the Cossacks adhered to - yes, we are fighting, but this is not a total war. When General Aleksei Yermolov became governor of the Caucasus and in 1816 announced an economic blockade of the region where the highlanders lived, it was the Ukrainians of the Black Sea who refused to support this siege of the Circassians.
The resistance of the Circassians was "tamed" by the Caucasian Corps of the Russian army. The war went on for over 60 years. Russia kept more than 500 thousand soldiers in the Caucasus. Chernomortsy also took part in the battles, but their number was insignificant. And they waged a predominantly defensive war - against the raids of the Circassians. Then they calculated that about 77,000 soldiers and officers of the Caucasian Corps died. And about 20,000 Cossacks. If you call the Ukrainians guilty of the expulsion of the Circassians, then the Poles can also be blamed for this. For the Poles were sent to the Caucasian Corps to serve as punishment after their uprisings of 1831 and 1863. And they were a big part of it.
- What was the national identity of the Kuban people - who did they consider themselves to be? How were the “mainland” Ukrainians treated?
– As early as the beginning of the 20th century, the Ukrainian composer Oleksandr Koshyts collected, at the request of the chief ataman of the Kuban Cossack army, Yakov Malami, folk Cossack songs of the Black Sea people. According to his stories, all the old Cossacks talked about the Kuban as "our Ukraine." That is, they did not consider themselves evicted from Ukraine, for them the Kuban was part of it. Ataman Yakov Kukharenko wrote to Taras Shevchenko in exile: "Come to our Black Sea Ukraine." It was such a show. The Ukrainian language was also preserved, because it testified to belonging to the state: I am a Cossack, therefore, I speak the Cossack language. It was a very strong incentive. And not only to preserve the language, but also culture in general.
The Caucasian governor in 1844-1856, Count Mikhail Vorontsov, wrote to St. Petersburg that the Black Sea Cossacks consider themselves a separate nation, they hate the Katsap Muscovites, and therefore they must be diluted with a Great Russian element - linear ones. The latter are the descendants of the Don and Grebensky Cossacks, among whom there were 15-20 percent Ukrainians. And they diluted it: when the Kuban Cossack army was created in 1860 - before that it was called the Black Sea - the Ukrainian Cossacks were united with the linear ones.
- Why was it not possible to annex the Kuban to the Ukrainian SSR? But at the same time, Ukrainization was allowed there?
- In the 1920s, they wanted to either create Ukrainian autonomy within Russia, or join Ukraine. After all, the 1926 census showed that the majority in the Kuban are Ukrainians. In general, according to this census, there were 3 million 106 thousand Ukrainians in the North Caucasus region. For example, in the Kuban okrug they made up 62.2 percent of the population, and in its former "Black Sea part" - about 80 percent.
The then People's Commissar of the Soviet Ukraine, Nikolai Skripnik, made a special trip to Moscow to negotiate the annexation of the Kuban. After 1925, he achieved the beginning of "indigenization", and in fact - Ukrainization in the region. Spontaneous "Ukrainization" in the Black Sea villages began as early as 1918 - according to the decisions of the communities, schools were translated into the Ukrainian language of instruction. Until 1925, the authorities strongly hampered this. But since that year, "Ukrainization" was allowed. About a thousand Ukrainian schools, 16 Ukrainian pedagogical colleges, Ukrainian newspapers, and radio broadcasting were opened in the Kuban. Ukrainians kept official documentation, printed books. The current Krasnodar University, for example, is the former North Caucasian Ukrainian pedagogical institute named after Skripnik.
But they were afraid to make territorial changes. First, Moscow understood that the Kuban in the 1920s, like “mainland” Ukraine, was the center of the anti-Bolshevik movement. There were thousands of rebels and agitators against the Soviet regime. It is clear that the accession of the Kuban to only strengthen this movement. Secondly, it would be an achievement of the national communists in Ukraine, which he could not allow. And, thirdly, the annexation of the Kuban, or even the creation of Ukrainian autonomy in the North Caucasus, closed Russia's access to the Black Sea.
- And then, as in Ukraine, there was collectivization, the Holodomor ...
- In the Kuban, especially in its "Black Sea" part, from 25 to 30 percent of the population died out, and in some cities - up to 60-70 percent. Some of the villages, such as Umanskaya and Poltava, were evicted in full force to Siberia for "Petliurist" sentiments. In parallel went total Russification. All Ukrainian books were requisitioned, Ukrainian educational establishments closed, Ukrainian teachers were repressed. The Kuban Ukrainian Pedagogical Institute, for example, was once surrounded by soldiers and all teachers and students were arrested and sent to camps.
When passportization was carried out in 1932-1933, all Ukrainians in the Kuban were simply recorded as Russians. Then no one even asked about nationality. If according to the 1926 census there were more than three million Ukrainians in the North Caucasus, then during the 1947 census they counted about 100 thousand. And then only those who moved from Ukraine. Ukrainians were no longer recognized as an autochthonous population. They even changed their last names during the census. I have relatives who had the last name Gus (literally - kerosene - "A"). When they were given a passport, they ask: what is it? What is on fire is answered. Well, there will be Polenovs.
Now in the Kuban there is an acute problem of self-identification, national identity. So I grew up in the village and from the age of 18-19 I already consciously said: I am a Kuban Cossack. Not Russian, not Ukrainian, but Kuban. Only later, when I began to study history, did I realize that this is a common ethnic group with Ukrainian. They speak “balachka” there - in the local dialect, it is the Ukrainian language. At the same time, the official language is Russian. People know that their ancestors are from Ukraine. They cannot say that they are “Russians”, because they still do not like “Muscovites” there. This regional identity. We are, as it were, Russians, but at the same time we differ significantly, we have a different history, culture, language, and traditions. Kuban people do not want to identify themselves with a man in a kosovorotka and with a balalaika.