Putin’s Cossacks. Just folklore – or business and politics? OSW Point of View Number 68 December 2017

Darczewska, Jolanta (2017) Putin’s Cossacks. Just folklore – or business and politics? OSW Point of View Number 68 December 2017. UNSPECIFIED.

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Abstract

The rhetoric of social engineering is repeatedly used in the Russian narration on the Cossack nation. This social engineering has been served by historically-rooted slogans such as ‘the Cossack state’ and ‘registered Cossacks’. Terms such as ‘the Cossack state service’ and ‘the Cossack component’ are also functionally marked concepts. These appear in different contexts (the patriotic education of children and young people, the so-called civil society of Russia and its allegedly traditional conservative values, the creation of pro-defence attitudes, military reserves, a social factor combating the new threats posed by culture, information, illegal migration, etc.). Such concepts are the product of the Kremlin’s political technology – by shaping the military organisation of society and its confrontational attitude, it is not so much describing a reality as creating one.

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