By Russell Working
VLADIMIRO-ALEXANDROVSKOYE -- As during tsarist times, Russia's fearsome Cossacks are waiting for their riding orders.
The Primorsky krai Duma has summoned the legendary horsemen to help patrol Russia's border with China, restoring a glimmer of their faded glory.
Three middle-aged officers, a blond youth in a belted military tunic and four girls in mini-skirted khaki uniforms gathered July 23 in the Ussurisk Cossack Army's 165th Unit headquarters to explain how they protect this historically Cossack village, 200 kilometers southeast of Vladivostok.
Young Cossacks patrol the streets to enforce a mayoral decree ordering people to keep their yards clean. Cossack men accompany policemen searching the woods for poachers or loggers who cut an endangered species of spruce.
And they say Cossacks can put the same experience to use on the Chinese border 150 kilometers away, where the Primorye Duma voted last week to build a string of 60 Cossack hamlets to defend Russia against China's efforts to fortify its border towns.
"China uses all kinds of methods to come into our country," said Vladimir Fedin, first deputy head of the Partizansky District administration and ataman, or chief, of the 165th unit. "If those are legal, we don't mind. But if they're illegal, we want to stop it."
The 70.2 million ruble ($11.1 million) program would provide a 70 percent housing subsidy and 40,000 rubles for farming equipment for Cossack families that move to the sparsely settled lands near
China, said Deputy Yury Rybalkin, head of the Duma committee for economic policy and property.
Under the plan, the region's 73,000 Cossacks would patrol the border along with state Border Service units. The krai administration hopes the federal government will kick in 70 percent of the program's cost, Rybalkin said.
Primorye's Cossack leadership gathered in Vladivostok on July 24 to rub elbows, discuss the Duma's program, and, one Cossack confessed, "use bad Russian words." Chinese workers gaped as swarms of Cossacks spilled out of their headquarters on Ulitsa Gogolya.
The program is just one example of a resurgence in Cossacks, the descendants of Tatars and escaped serfs who became the tsar's most ferocious horsemen beginning in the 18th century.
St. Petersburg is planning to hire Cossacks to as a police force, while students in Novocherkassk study the martial and military traditions of Cossacks. The rugged horsemen have served in the army since President Boris Yeltsin signed a law on Cossacks last year.
In the Far East, Cossacks regularly catch Chinese who cross the border to gather ginseng or sell goods, turning the aliens over to the authorities.
"In the Khasan area before we started to patrol there, there were 137 Chinese crossing per month," said Valery Tarasenko, a Cossack from the town of Arseniev. "Now there are three."
"They clearly know our law," added Vladimir Sorokaletov, a craggy Cossack with a handlebar mustache and a whip tucked in his boot. "Under our law, it says if a person trying to cross the border doesn't obey, we can shoot him."
Mikhail Kutuzov, 40, who teaches Cossack studies at the Institute for Government Service in Vladivostok, said the Cossacks' history as explorers and border guards has American parallels.
"Americans know very well about the Texas Rangers," said Kutuzov, a Cossack. "It's the same idea: to settle and protect the borders with specially prepared people."
Indeed, much of the Far East was first explored by Cossacks, including the 17th century pioneers Yerofei Khabarov and Semyon Dezhnyov. But like the Indian-fighting Texas Rangers, the Cossacks have left a darker legacy.
Some Cossacks became notorious for taking part in pogroms against Jews early this century.
Primorye's Cossacks today emphasize a more ecumenical outlook. "There are Moslem Cossacks, Buddhist Cossacks in Buryatia," Fedin said.
In this century, Bolsheviks crushed Cossack resistance, banned their organizations, and relocated many people.
Border service senior officer Sergei Uraksin praised the Cossacks who join the border guards, saying they balance weak and unskilled soldiers who rotate out every two years. Nevertheless, he worries about the Primorye program.
"Earlier the Cossacks were attached to the land, because it was their land that they protected," Uraksin said. "But now, they are not connected in any way. The problem is, the bulk of them are asphalt Cossacks. They live in the cities."
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