Only 20% of the region’s population may nowadays assert that they are descendants of the Cossacks who settled here by Catherine II’s ukase.
Archpriest Ivan Garmash, оur expert, is reasoning whether it is possible to make up for the qualitative and quantitative losses the Kuban Cossackdom has suffered throughout its history.
Q.: Are today’s relations between the Orthodox Church and the Cossacks the same as they were before the Bolshevik revolution?
A.: No, they have changed, for we cannot compare today’s Cossacks with those who lived then. The first settlers were known to start their lives in the new land from constructing a temple.
Then we underwent the period of annihilation of the Cossacks and the faith. There are just 20% of native Cossacks left in the Kuban region – the rest were either executed or exiled to Siberia, and Kuban was populated by re-settlers from other regions who did not know our songs and dances, who were used to a different way of life and did not know the Cossack culture.
Our today’s Cossacks had been living in atheist conditions for a long time. Somebody was a communist party member. I wouldn’t say that they may be mistreating the religion, but they lack that zeal and sincerity in faith that existed in the past.
We need time – probably several generations, so that the Cossacks could come back to their old traditional lifestyle. And I hope that their children and grandchildren will become genuine Cossacks.
Q.: But is it possible to return back to the old lifestyle – for the present time is totally different?
A.: Indeed, the time is different. But it is the people that have become different in the first place. In the past, the Cossacks ploughed the land and defended the frontiers – but they also read a lot, were self-educated people. Today our Cossacks, as probably all other people, are absorbed in mobile phones, social networks, entertaining TV programs and thus they as a rule stay very far from spiritual creativeness and advancement.
Usually we can meet the Cossacks on holidays, when we see them wear traditional fur hats. But to be a Cossack is not a job – it’s not like you came home from work and stopped being a Cossack. You have to live a Cossack’s life, and to remember it at work as well as at home.
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