While reading about the Olympics I've come across several references to Cossacks (for instance a picture here), which surprised me, as the image of Cossacks in my mind is very much linked to Imperial Russia. When I looked into this subreddit, I found I was not the only one with this mental roadblock. Both this and this post give good and interesting information about the rise of Cossacks and how they lived, but again they cut off around 1920 and speak only in the past tense.
My question is, what has happened to the Cossacks since 1920? How have they been living, and where? What have they been doing? And finally, how do they fit into modern Russia?
I realize the last question bumps into the 20 year rule, and if you'd like to limit your answers to pre-1994 experiences and events, that's fine. There's just this unexplained 100 year gap. It reminds me of mainstream American narratives and images of American Indians, whose narratives often lead up to 1890 where they stop and are frozen. Do we have this gap here just because we're (I'm assuming mostly) not Russian? Or is this a hole in the general narrative of Russian history as well?
Edited for formatting and clarity.
A couple year ago I asked a Russian history professes a very similar question. I'll give you the overview he gave me.
The Cossacks were people on the frontier between Russia and Turco-Mongolian peoples in the early modern period. Runaway serfs and others attempting to escape Russian society mingled with the nomads of the steppe, mostly Turkic, and adopted aspects of their lifestyle. Eventually enough Slavs on the frontiers took up this lifestyle that they developed into their own military society, with their own settlements, culture, and eventually ethnic identity.
Through the early modern period the Cossacks became pretty important strategically, as independent military forces. They were outsiders and steppe raiders, but they were Slavs and they were Christians. These factors made the Cossacks potential threats and potential allies to nearby Slavic states. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Russian Tsardom both looked to them as allies against each other and against the Islamic nomads to the south and east. The interaction between Cossacks, Russians, and Poland-Lithuania was also very important for the formation of Ukrainian ethnic identity, but I don't know enough about that to say much more.
Russia eventually won out in competition with Poland-Lithuania and achieved hegemony over modern day Ukraine, where many Cossacks lived. However the Ukrainian Cossacks were still famously independent, so they were notoriously rebellious. The Russian empire had use for them, though. Eastern Cossacks who had not been part of the struggle between Russia and Poland were more loyal to Russia, and the state granted them concessions to keep them viable as a military resource. Russia also supported Cossack colonization of the frontier as the empire expanded, to keep them near the hotspots.
After the Bolshevik Revolution, and during the Russian Civil War, the Cossacks mostly either supported the old order or moderate socialists, often favoring some form of independence/autonomy. Cossacks also attempted to set up an independent Ukraine once the Germans withdrew. This generally made them part of the "White" (anti-Bolshevik) forces. The Cossacks suffered a great deal in this time period, in part from revolutionary terror targeting enemies of the Bolsheviks, but also from a decade and a half of "Decossackization" to forcibly integrate them into Russian society, and later from the "Holodomor" mass famine caused (or at least exacerbated) by Stalin's policies. Still, they stuck around.
During WWII, the Cossacks found themselves in an important military role once again. There were even Cossack cavalry units consisting of horse-mounted soldiers with submachine guns! While most fought for the Soviet Union, many also defected to Nazi Germany in response to the harsh treatment they'd faced at the hands of the USSR. After WWII, their military significance declined because the mechanized doctrine of the USSR didn't have a place for their traditions. The Cossacks essentially became just another of the many, many ethnic minorities in the USSR, along with the Tatars, Ossetians, Chechens, and others. They seem to have been largely absorbed into the cultures of other ethnic groups during the later 20th century, since they made up one of the smaller and less distinct minorities (lacking a unique language), but after the fall of the Soviet Union there's been a revival of their culture.
I'm sorry this isn't the best writeup for this sub, since my source is personal conversation with a professor. I hope it does help, though. If anyone sees any inaccuracies, please point them out so I can edit my comment.
Edit: if anyone cares, the professor in question was Biran Davies. Both his students and his peer reviewers agree on two things - he is exceptionally knowledgeable, and as dry as the Sahara.
Cossacks are linked in my mind with pogroms and anti-Semitism, but none of the answers deal with this. Am I misinformed?
I'd like to add another follow-up question: is there such a thing as a Cossack language/dialect or even an accent? Are there Cossack names? I am also wondering how easy it was for a Cossack to pass off as a Russian if he ever wanted to do so.
Follow up question: is there any connection between the Cossacks and the Kazakhs? (Even etymologically speaking)
You asked how the Cossacks fit into modern Russia which reminded me of NPR segment I heard the other day. Here's a quick excerpt:
YOUNG: And some have said that this is, you know, part of the message that he's sending, that it's going to - Russia is going to revert to a conservative, nationalist country and that Cossacks are - as Ellen Barry wrote in The New York Times - kind of the mascot of that thinking. Is that right, do you think?
O'ROURKE: Yes. I think that the Cossacks are a symbol of Russian national identity. During Soviet times, they were seen as - the state was very suspicious about the Cossacks. It didn't allow any sort of public recognition of them or celebration of their identity. But since the end of the Soviet Union, the new Russian state has made a big effort to reclaim them, and to publicize them as part of Russian national identity. And so in a sense, that's what's going on here as well, that they're part of the identity of the new Russia that the Russian state wants to show off to the world.
http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2014/02/11/cossacks-sochi-olympics