Welcome to Russian history retold.

Episode 314, The Cossacks, Part 1.

Last time, we covered Sergei Vite's life and times.

Today, we begin a series of episodes on the Cossacks.

My primary source will be the Cossacks by Philip Longworth.

In his introduction, he writes the following about them.

Quote, the legend is romantic and spectacular.

Mention the word Cossack and any number of vivid images is called to mind.

A fur-capped horseman, saber-flashing, galloping across the empty step.

Bachnilian dancers and gaudy eastern costumes swirling and leaping to the strum of Balayakas.

Dark writers with leaded whips slashing into a crowd of demonstrators on the streets of a Russian city.

The origins of the Cossacks are part mythical and part contested.

Some historians believe they have a Slavic origin.

Some believe they are a scion of a Turkic background, and some think it's just a mixture

of the two.

This is the most likely scenario, although we have no definitive answers to the question of origin.

One train of thought believes that the Cossacks are actually the Cumans who survived the Mongol invasion,

and that those people who were themselves

the remnants of the Scythians. A few have claimed that the Cossacks came from the Khazars

when they broke up in the mid-900s. Another theory goes back even further, with Cossacks

coming from the Scythians, but not the Cumans in the 500s.

My research has suggested there's no one Scion but many.

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