Article by Peter Holquist on Decossackization.
Typical apologetic explanations of the policy have said that it was the conditions of the Civil War that set the methods of the future Soviet Union towards the social Volksgemeinschaft, Holquist argues that it was innate.
Typical apologetic explanations of the policy have said that it was the conditions of the Civil War that set the methods of the future Soviet Union towards the social Volksgemeinschaft, Holquist argues that it was innate.
The peasant attitudes to the Cossacks became increasingly hostile, but it was the “materialist” and “class reductionist” intelligentsia-nomenclatura of the senior party that conceptualized the liquidation of the Cossacks as a zoological prerogative and not a class/cultural one.
The policy was crucial in solidifying the Don Cossack hostility. The more socialist minded upper stanitsas had let the Red Army through after Krasnov failed to take Tsaritsyn, they were rewarded with summary execution thanks to the circular order. This caused the Upper Don revolt
Senior commanders, including Vacetis, had conceptualized the Don as “the Russian Vendee” meaning it was destined by the logic of history to be a opposed as a region and so shown no mercy. This in turn made their conception into a real fact.
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