Pre-Soviet Warriors in a Post-Soviet World. Cossack Identity at War in Ukraine and Russia

Once suppressed by the Soviet Union, Cossack culture has undergone a dramatic rebirth and today enjoys widespread government support, and it has ingrained itself into the new dynamics of masculinity, militarism and nationalism in post-Soviet Russia and post-independence Ukraine. Both countries claim this identity, constructed over the centuries and forever tied to a popular notion of virile masculinity and a formidable martial culture, as exclusively their own. Cossackdom is promoted as an autochthonous identity intrinsically loyal to the state and emblematic of performative cultural and social militarism which dominates official narratives of identity and statehood. Since the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, a profound change is taking place within Cossack organisations in both nations. This has increased in both intensity and scope since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation on the 24th of February 2022. The pathways to authentication as a Cossack are being steadily reduced to militarised requirements, and Cossackdom, once built in opposition to empires, is being shaped by the willingness to fight for nations. Where once the globally recognised skills of Cossacks, such as their riding abilities, were enough to mark one as a Cossack, today only the destructive testing of war itself will suffice. The reinvention of Cossack culture invites us to investigate the relationship between nationalist-endorsed cultural identities and their contemporary, local adaptations in a violent world and ever changing chronocracies.