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The 440th Anniversary of the Don Cossacks

On January, 3, it was the 440^th anniversary of the Don Cossacks. The starting point for establishing the Great Don Army (Voysko Donskoye) was a credential message sent by Tsar Ivan the Terrible on January, 3, 1570.

The Credential was sent to the Don via boyar Novosiltsev, who was leaving for “Tsargrad” passing through the Don and Azov. According to it the Cossacks and their chieftains Mamin and Yakovlev were to obey Novosiltsev in all affairs of state, “… by this you would serve for us, and we would bestow a grant on you for your service”. For the service on guarding the tsar’s ambassador the Cossack Army was for the first time promised a salary.

This credential was the first official document stating recognition of the Don Cossacks by the Moscow tsar, and it started the history of the Cossack service for the Russian state.

In 1870 the 300^th anniversary of the Don Army was grandly celebrated on the Don. M.A. Sholokhov, who knew the glorious history of the Don Cossacks very well, in the June of  1970 in connection with the coming next jubilee sent his letters to Moscow: one – to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU L.I. Brezhnev, the other – to the Chairman of the RSFSR Council of Ministers G.I. Voronov. In his letters the writer proposed to mark the glorious date. “Undoubtedly, the Don and, generally, the White emigrants will celebrate the 400^th anniversary of the Don Army, - Sholokhov writes to Voronov. – And shall we, genuine successors of the Don land, keep silent and pretend to be “Ivans keeping no kinship” and feeling no reverence for the history of our Motherland? The Don gave Russia Yermak, Pugachov, Razin, Bulavin and many other renowned sons. We must celebrate this jubilee unassumingly, though with dignity…”

In the historical and literary exposition “M.A. Sholokhov. Time and Destiny” of the State M.A. Sholokhov Museum-Reserve there is a section “The Cossacks on the Borderline of the XIX-XX Centuries” telling about the everyday life, customs, traditions of the Don Cossacks, about the history of the Upper Don, with which the life and work of the great writer are inseparably connected.

Valeriy Emeliyanov