6 - Between Rus' and Rossiia: realigning the boundaries of Cossack communities in a time of migration and transition (1681–1695)

Summary

In the last two decades of the seventeenth century Russia and Russians represented the top two political problems confronting the Don Host. While the tsars attempted to reign in Cossack raiding, Russian migrants repeatedly pressured for raids in the Cossack krugs. Ataman Frol Minaev navigated the Host through this dangerous period of migration and division. His effective management of converging crises ultimately depended on cultivating the good will of Vasilii Vasilievich Golitsyn, the de facto ruler of Rossiia.

The 1680s were also an important time of social transition for the Don Host. As more Cossacks welcomed women into their settlements and Cossacks' sons began to compete with migrants for scarce resources, Cossack leaders sought to define the parameters of Cossack identity and diminish the role of newcomers in Cossack society. In a period in which more and more Cossacks could trace their ancestral origins to Russia, Don Cossacks started to draw sharper distinctions between themselves and Rus'. New terms of inclusion and exclusion emerged in tandem with efforts to regulate relations between natives and newcomers in the Don region.

MIGRATION FROM RUS' AS A SOURCE OF DIVISION IN THE DON REGION

In the second half of the seventeenth century a great contradiction shaped Cossack society: the promise of freedom from serfdom and taxes lured thousands of Russian migrants to the Don, but the region's limited resource base could not provide sufficient economic opportunities for all who settled there.