At The Edge Of Empire Quotes

“As late as the nineteenth century, travelers and even Russian peasants had a difficult time distinguishing between Terek Cossacks and native mountain people, because of their similarity in dress and appearance. Such villages also would have been easy to miss; some of the Cossack villages recorded in the mid-seventeenth century had only twenty to thirty-five residents.”
― Thomas M. Barrett, At The Edge Of Empire: The Terek Cossacks And The North Caucasus Frontier, 1700-1860

“The experience of the Terek Cossacks is also important because it stands so apart from the Cossack myth. Like cowboys in the United States, gauchos in Argentina, and many other frontier social groups who became national icons, by the end of the nineteenth century Cossacks represented the soul of Russian national identity. They were, according to the myth, deeply Russian in spirit if not ethnicity (strong, spontaneous, Russophone, Orthodox), Christian warriors of the tsar, intrepid scouts and explorers, the vanguard of Russification, conquering wilderness, alien enemies, and alien cultures alike. The history of the Terek Cossacks shows how shallow that myth was–many were neither Russian nor Orthodox, they were more losers than victors in their struggle with the “wilderness,” they fought mostly for themselves and their sense of honor rather than for an empire or a tsar, and were far from being agents of Russian civilization.”
― Thomas M. Barrett, At The Edge Of Empire: The Terek Cossacks And The North Caucasus Frontier, 1700-1860