![]() The Sich with its lands became an autonomous region under the Russian-Polish protectorate. The Don Cossack Host, which had been established by the 16th century, allied with the Tsardom of Russia. Together they began a systematic conquest and colonisation of lands in order to secure the borders on the Volga, the whole of Siberia (see Yermak Timofeyevich) and the Yaik (Ural) and the Terek rivers. īy the 18th century Cossack hosts in the Russian Empire occupied effective buffer zones on its borders.Ĭossack communities had developed along the latter two rivers well before the arrival of the Don Cossacks. The expansionist ambitions of the Empire relied on ensuring the loyalty of Cossacks, which caused tension given their traditional exercise of freedom, democracy, self-rule, and independence. Cossacks such as Stenka Razin, Kondraty Bulavin, Ivan Mazepa and Yemelyan Pugachev led major anti-imperial wars and revolutions in the Empire in order to abolish slavery and odious bureaucracy and to maintain independence. The empire responded with ruthless executions and tortures, the destruction of the western part of the Don Cossack Host during the Bulavin Rebellion in 1707–08, the destruction of Baturyn after Mazepa's rebellion in 1708, and the formal dissolution of the Lower Dnieper Zaporozhian Host in 1775, after Pugachev's Rebellion. Īy the end of the 18th century Cossack nations had been transformed into a special military estate (Sosloviye), 'a military class'. ![]()
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