Chapter 4
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18631863

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Author : Leo Tolstoy

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That whole part of the Terek line (about fifty miles) along which lie the
villages of the Grebensk Cossacks is uniform in character both as to
country and inhabitants. The Terek, which separates the Cossacks from the
mountaineers, still flows turbid and rapid though already broad and smooth,
always depositing grayish sand on its low reedy right bank and washing away
the steep, though not high, left bank, with its roots of century-old oaks,
its rotting plane trees, and young brushwood. On the right bank lie the
villages of pro-Russian, though still somewhat restless, Tartars. Along the
left bank, back half a mile from the river and standing five or six miles
apart from one another, are Cossack villages. In olden times most of these
villages were situated on the banks of the river; but the Terek, shifting
northward from the mountains year by year, washed away those banks, and now
there remain only the ruins of the old villages and of the gardens of pear
and plum trees and poplars, all overgrown with blackberry bushes and wild
vines. No one lives there now, and one only sees the tracks of the deer,
the wolves, the hares, and the pheasants, who have learned to love these
places. From village to village runs a road cut through the forest as a
cannon-shot might fly. Along the roads are cordons of Cossacks and
watch-towers with sentinels in them. Only a narrow strip about seven
hundred yards wide of fertile wooded soil belongs to the Cossacks. To the
north of it begin the sand-drifts of the Nogay or Mozdok steppes, which
fetch far to the north and run, Heaven knows where, into the Trukhmen,
Astrakhan, and Kirghiz-Kaisatsk steppes. To the south, beyond the Terek,
are the Great Chechnya river, the Kochkalov range, the Black Mountains, yet
another range, and at last the snowy mountains, which can just be seen but
have never yet been scaled. In this fertile wooded strip, rich in
vegetation, has dwelt as far back as memory runs the fine warlike and
prosperous Russian tribe belonging to the sect of Old Believers, and called
the Grebensk Cossacks.

Long long ago their Old Believer ancestors fled from Russia and settled
beyond the Terek among the Chechens on the Greben, the first range of
wooded mountains of Chechnya. Living among the Chechens the Cossacks
intermarried with them and adopted the manners and customs of the hill
tribes, though they still retained the Russian language in all its purity,
as well as their Old Faith. A tradition, still fresh among them, declares
that Czar Ivan the Terrible came to the Terek, sent for their Elders, and
gave them the land on this side of the river, exhorting them to remain
friendly to Russia and promising not to enforce his rule upon them nor
oblige them to change their faith. Even now the Cossack families claim
relationship with the Chechens, and the love of freedom, of leisure, of
plunder and of war, still form their chief characteristics. Only the
harmful side of Russian influence shows itself—by interference at
elections, by confiscation of church bells, and by the troops who are
quartered in the country or march through it. A Cossack is inclined to hate
less the dzhigit hillsman who maybe has killed his brother, than the
soldier quartered on him to defend his village, but who has defiled his hut
with tobacco-smoke. He respects his enemy the hillsman and despises the
soldier, who is in his eyes an alien and an oppressor. In reality, from a
Cossack's point of view a Russian peasant is a foreign, savage, despicable
creature, of whom he sees a sample in the hawkers who come to the country
and in the Ukrainian immigrants whom the Cossack contemptuously calls
'woolbeaters'. For him, to be smartly dressed means to be dressed like a
Circassian. The best weapons are obtained from the hillsmen and the best
horses are bought, or stolen, from them. A dashing young Cossack likes to
show off his knowledge of Tartar, and when carousing talks Tartar even to
his fellow Cossack. In spite of all these things this small Christian clan
stranded in a tiny corner of the earth, surrounded by half-savage
Mohammedan tribes and by soldiers, considers itself highly advanced,
acknowledges none but Cossacks as human beings, and despises everybody
else. The Cossack spends most of his time in the cordon, in action, or in
hunting and fishing. He hardly ever works at home. When he stays in the
village it is an exception to the general rule and then he is
holiday-making. All Cossacks make their own wine, and drunkenness is not so
much a general tendency as a rite, the non-fulfillment of which would be
considered apostasy. The Cossack looks upon a woman as an instrument for
his welfare; only the unmarried girls are allowed to amuse themselves. A
married woman has to work for her husband from youth to very old age: his
demands on her are the Oriental ones of submission and labor. In
consequence of this outlook women are strongly developed both physically
and mentally, and though they are—as everywhere in the East—nominally
in subjection, they possess far greater influence and importance in
family-life than Western women. Their exclusion from public life and
inurement to heavy male labor give the women all the more power and
importance in the household. A Cossack, who before strangers considers it
improper to speak affectionately or needlessly to his wife, when alone with
her is involuntarily conscious of her superiority. His house and all his
property, in fact the entire homestead, has been acquired and is kept
together solely by her labor and care. Though firmly convinced that labor
is degrading to a Cossack and is only proper for a Nogay laborer or a
woman, he is vaguely aware of the fact that all he makes use of and calls
his own is the result of that toil, and that it is in the power of the
woman (his mother or his wife) whom he considers his slave, to deprive him
of all he possesses. Besides, the continuous performance of man's heavy
work and the responsibilities entrusted to her have endowed the Grebensk
women with a peculiarly independent masculine character and have remarkably
developed their physical powers, common sense, resolution, and stability.
The women are in most cases stronger, more intelligent, more developed, and
handsomer than the men. A striking feature of a Grebensk woman's beauty is
the combination of the purest Circassian type of face with the broad and
powerful build of Northern women. Cossack women wear the Circassian
dress—a Tartar smock, beshmet, and soft slippers—but they tie their
kerchiefs round their heads in the Russian fashion. Smartness, cleanliness
and elegance in dress and in the arrangement of their huts, are with them a
custom and a necessity. In their relations with men the women, and
especially the unmarried girls, enjoy perfect freedom.

Novomlinsk village was considered the very heart of Grebensk Cossackdom. In
it more than elsewhere the customs of the old Grebensk population have been
preserved, and its women have from time immemorial been renowned all over
the Caucasus for their beauty. A Cossack's livelihood is derived from
vineyards, fruit-gardens, water melon and pumpkin plantations, from
fishing, hunting, maize and millet growing, and from war plunder.
Novomlinsk village lies about two and a half miles away from the Terek,
from which it is separated by a dense forest. On one side of the road which
runs through the village is the river; on the other, green vineyards and
orchards, beyond which are seen the driftsands of the Nogay Steppe. The
village is surrounded by earth-banks and prickly bramble hedges, and is
entered by tall gates hung between posts and covered with little
reed-thatched roofs. Beside them on a wooden gun-carriage stands an
unwieldy cannon captured by the Cossacks at some time or other, and which
has not been fired for a hundred years. A uniformed Cossack sentinel with
dagger and gun sometimes stands, and sometimes does not stand, on guard
beside the gates, and sometimes presents arms to a passing officer and
sometimes does not. Below the roof of the gateway is written in black
letters on a white board: 'Houses 266: male inhabitants 897: female 1,012.'
The Cossacks' houses are all raised on pillars two and a half feet from the
ground. They are carefully thatched with reeds and have large carved
gables. If not new they are at least all straight and clean, with high
porches of different shapes; and they are not built close together but have
ample space around them, and are all picturesquely placed along broad
streets and lanes. In front of the large bright windows of many of the
houses, beyond the kitchen gardens, dark green poplars and acacias with
their delicate pale verdure and scented white blossoms overtop the houses,
and beside them grow flaunting yellow sunflowers, creepers, and grape
vines. In the broad open square are three shops where drapery, sunflower
and pumpkin seeds, locust beans and gingerbreads are sold; and surrounded
by a tall fence, loftier and larger than the other houses, stands the
Regimental Commander's dwelling with its casement windows, behind a row of
tall poplars. Few people are to be seen in the streets of the village on
weekdays, especially in summer. The young men are on duty in the cordons or
on military expeditions; the old ones are fishing or helping the women in
the orchards and gardens. Only the very old, the sick, and the children,
remain at home.

(Source: The Cossacks: A Tale of 1852, by Leo Tolstoy, translated by Louise
and Aylmer Maude, published 1863.)


     From : Gutenberg.org

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     Chapter 4 -- Publication : November 30, 1862

     Chapter 4 -- Added : May 13, 2021

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