The best books about Cossacks

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

For a long time in Russia, the independent armed population was called the Cossacks. During the wars, these freedom-loving people, striving for isolation and independence, made up a large part of the Russian troops. The manners and customs of the Cossacks were captured in many literary works. And then you will learn about the best books about the Cossacks.

The Quiet Flows the Don by Mikhail Sholokhov

Mikhail Sholokhov was awarded the Nobel Prize for his novel The Quiet Flows the Flows Flows. The protagonist of the book is the Don Cossack Grigory Melekhov. The reader watches Gregory from childhood to adulthood, participates with him in great historical events (the First World War, the revolution and the Civil War). In this difficult time, when everyone faced a choice: whose side to take - red or white, Grigory Melekhov could not take a clear position, since he did not support the actions of both sides. Sholokhov portrays his hero as an "extra person" who does not fit into his time and cannot find his place in it.

The skill of Mikhail Sholokhov is fully manifested in the truthful description in this book about the Don Cossacks of the most important historical events,who burst into the measured and predictable lives of ordinary people, crushing fates, crippling lives, turning away yesterday's friends from each other. With awe and tenderness, the author writes about the beauty of the Don, the greatness of native nature.

The theme of the forbidden and tragic love of Grigory and Aksinya, which the characters carry through wars, death and suffering, runs through the whole novel.

Taras Bulba by Nikolai Gogol

One of the most famous books about the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks is the story of Nikolai Gogol "Taras Bulba". In the story, the author colorfully and truthfully tells about the life, customs and values of the Ukrainian Cossacks-Cossacks. Gogol does not poeticize Cossack life: their peaceful everyday life is filled with drunkenness and revelry, their military campaigns are distinguished by unjustified cruelty. This historical book about the Cossacks is based on real events.

The first half of the 17th century. Taras Bulba is a Cossack colonel. His sons Ostap and Andriy come to him, who graduated from their studies in Kyiv. The father decides to go with his sons to the Zaporizhzhya Sich, which is desperately opposed by the powerless mother. Despite her pleas and exhortations, Taras Bulba leaves with her sons.

In the Sich, Taras raises the Cossacks on a campaign against the Poles, who terrify the civilian population. Polish conquerors with senseless cruelty kill defenseless women and innocent children, rob and burn villages. But the Cossacks bravely fight with the enemy army.

The sons of Taras actually turned out to be glorious warriors. The old Cossack was proud of them. But the youngest sonAndriy, more sensitive and romantic than the older Ostap, betrayed his comrades, going over to the side of the enemy out of love for a beautiful noble Polish woman. The father could not forgive his son, and did not hesitate to kill him in battle.

Ostap is captured by the Poles, Taras Bulba powerlessly watches his cruel execution in the crowd. Soon the Poles manage to capture and execute Taras. Before his death, the old Cossack predicts the imminent unification of Russian lands, the death of enemies and the triumph of Orthodox Christianity.

With Fire and Sword by Henryk Sienkiewicz

The first historical novel by the famous Polish writer Henryk Sienkiewicz. "With Fire and Sword" is a fictional book about the Cossacks-Cossacks, who, led by Bohdan Khmelnitsky, raised an uprising against the Commonwe alth. And although the main characters of the novel-trilogy are Polish gentry, the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks are described in great detail and colorfully.

Despite the seriousness of the events described, the book has the features of an adventure novel: love twists and turns, chases, fights.

Emelyan Pugachev by Vyacheslav Shishkov

In this book about the Cossacks, the author describes with high historical accuracy the events of the peasant war led by the Don Cossack Yemelyan Pugachev. Taking advantage of the belief of the people that the murdered Emperor Peter III remained alive, Pugachev declared himself the surviving emperor.

Both in life and in the book, Emelyan Pugachev is an ambiguous person. For the authorities, he is a robber, for a simplepeople - an idol. At different times, the attitude towards his personality underwent changes. In Soviet times, for example, Yemelyan was considered a hero who fought for a better life for the people. Only one thing is indisputable: the scale of Pugachev's personality, who managed to lead a large number of people, who defended the idea of liberating the enslaved people.

This book about the Cossacks is read very easily and interestingly, forcing the reader to empathize with the heroes, indignant at the injustice, the constant victims of which were ordinary people. In the novel, a large place is given to the Yaik Cossacks.

"Our Little Paris" by Viktor Likhonosov

This book describes with extraordinary warmth the life of Yekaterinodar (modern Krasnodar) - the capital of the Kuban Cossacks. Recreating the events of the late 19th - early 20th centuries, Likhonosov tells about the fate of both remarkable, but unknown people, and prominent figures who entered the history of the city and country.

"Bayazet" by Valentin Pikul

"Bayazet" is one of the most interesting novels by Valentin Pikul. It will feel about the terrible, but heroic page of the Russian-Turkish war - the Bayazet seat. The novel describes true historical events. Some characters, in particular the main character Andrey Karabanov, are fictional by Valentin Pikul, but many have real prototypes.

Together with officers and soldiers of the Russian army, the fortress was fearlessly defended by linear Cossacks (including Kuban).