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“Taking into Account the Civil War Experience”…

Annually the Cossacks, including the Don Cossacks, mark a sorrowful date of January, 24. On this day 91 years ago the Chairman of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (of Bolsheviks) Y.  Sverdlov signed the instruction about Cossack deletion which gave rise to repressions that ruined more than 1,5 mln Don Cossacks. For a long time this document had been hushed up, but this historic fact failed to be deleted from the people’s memory. This significantly owed to the novel of M.A. Sholokhov “And Quiet Flows the Don”, the third book of which is completely devoted to the rebellion of the residents of the Upper Don villages against Cossack deletion.

The instruction entitled “A Circular Letter of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (of Bolsheviks) about the Attitude Towards Cossacks “contains the instructions for the Party workers sent to the Cossack regions about the ways of executing “a mass terror”, “a ruthless mass terror”, “confiscating bread”, “equalizing “incomers” with Cossacks”, a maximal hardness”, “framing… steps for mass resettlement of the poor on Cossack lands” and so on.

Now when being aware of the instruction content one can easier understand, why the events on the Don were so tragic and why the events of 1919, which influenced the destiny of all the Russian Cossacks are so much spoken about in the novel “And Quiet Flows the Don”.

A. Kochetov