The Cossacks

This book covers 500 years of the history of the Cossacks -- the recklessly brave, wild horsemen, or the romantic hero of the steppe, or the brutal mounted policemen, as they have been remembered throughout history. A lucid and engaging book that conveys the passion, exuberance and tragedy of these extraordinary people, it will be enjoyed by students, scholars and general readers interested in Russian history.

Ukrainian Cossacks used icon painting to investigate their relationship not only with God but also their relationship with the Russian tsar. In this groundbreaking study, Serhii Plokhy examines the political and religious culture of Ukrainian Cossackdom, as reflected in the Cossack-era paintings, icons, and woodcuts.

In 'The Cossacks, ' William Penn Cresson traces the history and culture of these legendary Slavic warriors

The Ukrainian Cossacks, often compared in historical literature to the pirates of the Mediterranean and the frontiersmen of the American West, constituted one of the largest Cossack hosts in the European steppe borderland. They became famous as ferocious warriors, their fighting skills developed in their religious wars against the Tartars, Turks, Poles, and Russians. By and large the Cossacks were Orthodox Christians, and quite early in their history they adopted a religious ideology in their struggle against those of other faiths. Their acceptance of the Muscovite protectorate in 1654 was also influenced by their religious ideas. In this pioneering study, Serhii Plokhy examines the confessionalization of religious life in the early modern period, and shows how Cossack involvment in the religious struggle between Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicisim helped shape not only Ukrainian but also Russian and Polish cultural identities.

A panoramic view of Cossack history from the 15th to the 20th centuries begins with an exploration of the Cossacks' complex origins, describes their role as border guards and their frontier way of life, chronicles struggles with Turks and Tatars, and traces their loss of collective identity.

THE level plains and steppes of South Russia were known to the ancients as the broad channel followed by the ebb and flow of every fresh wave of conquest or migration passing between Europe and Asia. The legions of Rome and Byzance found this territory as impossible to occupy by military force as the high seas...

In the years following the Napoleonic Wars, a mysterious manuscript began to circulate among the dissatisfied noble elite of the Russian Empire. Entitled The History of the Rus', it became one of the most influential historical texts of the modern era. Attributed to an eighteenth-century Orthodox archbishop, it described the heroic struggles of the Ukrainian Cossacks. Alexander Pushkin read the book as a manifestation of Russian national spirit, but Taras Shevchenko interpreted it as a quest for Ukrainian national liberation, and it would inspire thousands of Ukrainians to fight for the freedom of their homeland. Serhii Plokhy tells the fascinating story of the text's discovery and dissemination, unravelling the mystery of its authorship and tracing its subsequent impact on Russian and Ukrainian historical and literary imagination. In so doing he brilliantly illuminates the relationship between history, myth, empire and nationhood from Napoleonic times to the fall of the Soviet Union.