News

News

We Used to Camp in the Steppe

“A Cossack and a destrier day and night together”. This axiom is confirmed many times on the pages of the great novel “And Quiet Flows the Don”. One of the brightest is the episode about Khristonya who came to his neighbours, the Melekhovs, and complained about the Reds, who occupied the hamlet:

“Voronok was taken away… I rode on him to the German war… He was like man, even cleverer… I’m afraid even to look at the stables! The paddock has become dead…”

With the purpose of showing these relations between the warrior and his faithful four-legged friend the literary and ethnographic holiday “Steed is the Dearest for Cossack” is held annually.

The main theme of this festival held at the Museum Stables on May, 10, was defined as Cossack military service in the May camps. It was a regular military training for those who having gone through active military service had got combatant benefits.

The holiday began with the so-called warming up, when any visitor could choose any kind of Cossack martial art and under the instructor’s supervision take part in lance and whip wielding, training in correct leaping into the saddle, showing skills in javelin or knife throwing, air rifle shooting and archery, sword cutting of moving and stationary targets. All the kinds of arts were tried, but the most popular was target shooting.

A fragment of the Setrakov Cossack camps was reconstructed on the specially enclosed plot for the visitors to come and examine the camp tents, field huts, a campfire cooking place, covered waggons and elements of horse harness.

Children and their parents joined arts and crafts master-classes to make horses of clay, fabric and grass, take part in painting souvenirs, wood carving, basket weaving, sand art, grattage and others. Besides, they enjoyed having a horse or pony ride.

Also, the holiday makers could take a tour about the Stables and learn about their routine work, buy souvenirs in the makeshift shop.

Then, the artistic and ethnographic performance “Lances for Battle!  Swords Out!” began. The performance was led by two lively Cossacks and their austere commander.

At the festive opening ceremony, A.M.Sholokhov, Director of the Museum-Reserve, greeted and congratulated the public for the 70^th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War. The holiday was joined by guests and participants from many parts of the country: Moscow, Voronezh, Daghestan, the Astrakhan Region and others.

The spectacle began with a horse jumping competition. The winners were awarded prizes.

The spectators were shown an old ritual, where the father for the first time puts his child on horseback. This way long ago a little Cossack was initiated into warriors. This is also shown in the novel “And Quiet Flows the Don”.

Following this, Cossack teenagers demonstrated their skills in cavalry training on pony.  The scene was merry and funny.

The holiday spectacle was accompanied by songs of the Cossack group “Pravoslavny Don” (The Orthodox Don).

Another attraction was to demonstrate a military attack by Cossack cavalry charge. The feature of the event was that some of the guests could be placed right in the path of the cavalry charge hiding themselves behind the previously put up wattle fence barrage. Such “an immersion into the atmosphere of reality” will be long remembered by the lovers of thrills.

The festival culmination was a bright show of fancy riding: Standing and riding on two horses simultaneously, one and two swords flanking on the run, standing on the saddle upside down demonstrating various stunts. A little Cossack girl mostly amazed the public: she bravely rode standing on the shoulders of the two horsemen.

The performance being over, the riders were given a standing ovation by the public, while one of the horsemen rode along the racetrack platform on the go throwing armfuls of lilacs to the audience.

The holiday was a bright spectacle and a new opportunity of remembering the experience and martial traditions of our forefathers, whose lives and fates are reflected on the pages of the memorable Sholokhov’s works.

Alexey Kochetov