#Who are the cossacks free#

The Don Cossack host (located around the Don river basin, the territory of contemporary Ukraine) was the largest and the oldest one of them.

#Who are the cossacks free#

Up until the end of the 19th century, they kept their relatively free status. There were over 20 different Cossack hosts (Cossack armies) located in various parts of the Russian Empire. In the 17th century, a separate Cossack prikaz was organized to control the Cossacks, but they still largely lived a free way of life вЂ“ attacking RussiaвЂ™s neighbors (the Ottoman Empire in particular), disturbing them with their raids even when the government tried to uphold peace between the countries. The Cossacks served and stood guard against the enemies of the Moscow State in border cities, partly supported by the Moscow government and commanded by official non-Cossack military men sent from the central region. Under Ivan the Terrible, the Cossacks living in the South (along the Don, the Dnieper rivers, and elsewhere) were partly governed by his prikazes (state institutions that preceded ministries). Cossack military formations took part in the battles of the Moscow princes against the nomadic Tatars. When did the Cossacks start to serve the Russian government?ДЄs soon as the first centralized government appeared in the Moscow State (around the 15th century), the first Grand Princes of Moscow tried to put the Cossacks at their service. As serfdom, taxes, and the centralized government started to appear in Russia, the lands of the Cossacks started to accept runaway serfs, people who had trouble with the law, and whoever else chose to escape there. These communities were filled up with people who chose freedom and danger in favor of the relatively safe and dependent living in Central Russia. They lived in fortified settlements that were set up to protect the duchies from the nomadic tribes that wandered around in the area called the Wild Fields вЂ“ between the lands of Vladimir-Suzdal RusвЂ™ and the Caspian and the Black seas. The first Cossacks were people who were living on the outskirts of the Russian duchies, mainly in the South of the Russian lands вЂ“ approximately from the 14th-15th centuries. Obviously, in Russia it appeared to denote people who werenвЂ™t tied down to their masters or landlords. The very word Cossack (вЂРєР°Р·Р°РєвЂ™) is Turkic and means a free man, a vagabond, a fortune seeker.

One of the oldest surviving Siberian Cossack fortresses Yalutorovsk ostrog (fortress), Tyumen region, Russia.