Страницы истории казачества в до- кументах советских спецслужб (1920-е годы)

Abstract

The article is devoted to little-known pages of documents of the Soviet special
services reflecting the history of the Cossacks in the 1920s. State policy reports, reviews of the political and economic situation in the USSR, prepared by the OGPU Information Department, despite their departmental specifics and the predominance of negative assessments, at the same time, differ in the scale of coverage of events taking place in the country and complement historiography and source studies on the problems of the socioeconomic situation of Cossacks, relations with Soviet government structures, interethnic
contradictions, protest performances.
Research Methods. Russian historical science has a rich arsenal of research on the history of the Russian Cossacks in both the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. Many scientific articles have been prepared and published, in which the authors deal with various aspects of the life of the Cossacks and their relations with other ethnic communities.The Cossacks left a significant trace in the history of Russia and as discoverers of new lands, who multiplied the economic potential of the Russian statehood, participated in the development of new territories of the state, by which it was growing. Nevertheless, many issues due to the closed nature of documents on the history of the Cossacks, keptunder the “secret” cover, remained for a long time outside the scope of research. Based on the methods of historical research (chronological, retrospective, historical-comparative, microhistory, etc.) and source studies, the authors set the goal to present to the reader documents about the life of the Cossacks in the first half of the 1920s, when they had to experience various transformations, integrate into the Soviet society under new
conditions, build new relations both within the Cossacks themselves and with the peoples living in their neighborhood.
Results. As a result of the conducted scientific research of the designated problem, conclusions and evaluation of the source base, documents that were not available for a long time are presented. In the presented publication many of these directions are either outlined or accompanied by specific examples of the realities in which the Cossacks found themselves, in which the process of solving the emerging contradictions, confrontations, searching for a way out of the most difficult life collisions, the need to solve the issues of settling in new conditions took place. The authors analyze a block of documents, kept
for a long time under the “secret” or “top secret”. Particular attention is paid to the process of confrontation, which caused tangible damage to the stabilization, change of the situation in the state, the Cossacks' overcoming of new difficulties related to the Cossacks' ownership of land plots, etc., as well as the harsh repressions created by the dictatorship of the party system.