Village on Cossack military bases
A
stanitsa
(
Russian
:
станица
,
pronounced
[st??n?its?]
) or
stanytsia
(
Ukrainian
:
станиця
) was a historical administrative unit of a
Cossack host
, a type of
Cossack
polity that existed in the
Russian Empire
.
Etymology
[
edit
]
The Russian word is the
diminutive
of the word
stan
(
стан
), which means "station" or "police district". It is distantly related to the
Sanskrit
word
sth?na
(
?????
), which means "station", "locality", or "district".
[1]
Structure
[
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]
The stanitsa was a unit of economic and political organisation of the
Cossack
peoples who lived in the
Russian Empire
. Each stanitsa contained
several villages and
khutirs
.
[2]
An assembly of landowners governed each stanitsa community. This assembly distributed land, oversaw institutions like schools, and elected a stanitsa administration and court. The stanitsa administration consisted of an
Ataman
, a collection of legislators, and a
treasurer
.
[2]
The stanitsa court made judgements regarding "petty criminal and civil suits".
[2]
All inhabitants, except for non-Cossacks, were considered members of the stanitsa. Non-Cossacks were required to pay a fee to use the local land owned by the stanitsa.
[2]
History
[
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]
In the Russian Empire
[
edit
]
The stanitsa was first an administrative unit in the 18th century.
[2]
In the late 18th century, when the Cossack peoples largely lost their autonomy within the empire, they still kept self-governance at the level of the stanitsa;
[3]
each stanitsa was still allowed to elect its own assembly.
[4]
Destruction
[
edit
]
In the aftermath of the 1917
October Revolution
in Russia, a new
Soviet
regime took power. Beginning in 1919, the Soviet regime pursued a policy of
genocide
[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]
and systematic repression against Cossacks known as
De-Cossackization
. The policy aimed at the elimination of the Cossacks as a distinct collectivity by exterminating the Cossack elite, coercing all other Cossacks into compliance and eliminating Cossack distinctness.
[10]
As part of this policy, the Soviet forces sought to erase Cossack administrative structures, especially of the Don Cossacks.
The purpose of this was to "deny Cossacks any Don structure as a point of identification and to 'dilute' the Cossack population by appending portions of neighboring non-Cossack provinces".
This included distinctly Cossack names for administrative units, as the Cossacks were fond of these names "as markers of their distinctiveness from peasants." The Soviets sought to erase these identities.
On 20 April 1919, the
Red Army
's
Southern Front
issued an order renaming the stanitsas to generic
volosts
, or counties. Local
revolutionary committees
assisted in this, passing resolutions in parallel to destroy the stanitsa as a social unit.
The
Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine
lists the specific end date of the existence of the traditional stanitsa as 1920.
[2]
Later in the Soviet Union, the term
stanitsa
was used after 1929 to refer to rural settlements on former Cossack land that were governed by
soviet councils
.
[2]
Modern usage
[
edit
]
In modern
Russia
, the administration classifies a stanitsa as a type of
rural locality
in these
federal subjects of Russia
:
[15]
The most populous stanitsa in modern Russia is
Kanevskaya
in Krasnodar Krai (44,800 people in 2005). Formerly, the most populous stanitsa was Ordzhonikidzevskaya in Ingushetia (61,598 people in 2010), but in 2016 it was reorganized into the town
Sunzha
.
[15]
The town
Stanytsia Luhanska
in
Ukraine
, originally founded by Cossacks, still has
stanytsia
in its name.
[16]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
"stanitsa"
.
Merriam-Webster
. Retrieved
2023-12-29
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
"Stanytsia"
.
Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine
.
- ^
Kenez, Peter (1971-01-01).
Civil War in South Russia, 1918: The First Year of the Volunteer Army
. University of California Press. pp. 37?38.
ISBN
978-0-520-01709-2
.
In the late eighteenth century the Cossacks lost their former autonomy. [...] However the Cossacks retained self-government on the village (
stanitsa
) level.
- ^
"Cossack"
.
Encyclopedia Britannica
. 2023-12-05.
- ^
Figes, Orlando
(1998).
A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891?1924
. Penguin Books.
ISBN
0-14-024364-X
.
- ^
Rayfield, Donald
(2004).
Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him
. Random House.
ISBN
0-375-50632-2
.
- ^
Heller, Mikhail;
Nekrich, Aleksandr
.
Utopia in Power: The History of the Soviet Union from 1917 to the Present
.
- ^
Rummel, R. J.
(1990).
Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917
.
Transaction Publishers
.
ISBN
1-56000-887-3
. Retrieved
2014-03-01
.
- ^
Soviet order to exterminate Cossacks is unearthed
Archived
December 10, 2009, at the
Wayback Machine
University of York
Communications Office, 21 January 2003
- ^
Schleifman, Nurit (2013).
Russia at a Crossroads: History, Memory and Political Practice
.
Routledge
. p. 114.
ISBN
978-1-135-22533-9
.
- ^
a
b
"Станиця"
[Stanytsia].
Encyclopedia of History of Ukraine
(in Ukrainian)
. Retrieved
20 December
2023
.
- ^
"Story of a city: Stanytsia Luhanska"
(PDF)
.
Bibliography
[
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]