ISSUE OF THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE COSSACKS IN THE HISTORICAL RESEARCH BY ÉMIGRÉ RUSSIAN AUTHORS

Abstract

The history of the Cossacks was widely researched and discussed among the Russian expatriates in the 1920s–1930s. The émigré literature on the origin and development of the Cossacks is also of interest for today’s public, as the contemporary Russian Cossacks continue disputing about the essence of this movement and its genesis; they still debate whether the Cossacks used to be a sub-ethnos, a nation, or a military-service class in the past. Due to this, the article is aimed at identifying the degree of coverage in the émigré historical literature of the issue of the Cossacks’ origin and development in pre-Soviet period, as well as at revealing the impact of the Russian expatriate historians’ concepts and ideas on the present-day Cossack studies and on the ideology of the reviving Cossack movement. The leading approaches to the research are the principles of objectivity, scientific relevance, and historicism. The authors applied systemicstructural, synchronous and other methods, considering the works of Cossack historians to be a part of the system of the Russian expatriate historical science. The article reveals the main approaches of émigré Cossacks to studying the origin of their class, and the influence of the Cossack historians’ and publicists’ works on expatriate historical science and on the alignment of the public-political forces among a wide range of émigré Cossacks. The article is of interest for present-day Cossack studies and for forming the ideological-political orientation of Cossack movement in Russia.