Warriors and Peasants depicts the lives of the Don Cossacks in late Imperial Russia. The dual identity of the Cossacks, that of the steppe and of the settled Slavic areas, is emphasized as the key to their unique culture. The book explores how that identity manifested and preserved itself by focusing on the Cossack tradition, their economy, their families and their communities. Far from being moribund and close to collapse, the book concludes that the Cossack tradition remained among the most vibrant in the Empire.

This is an exceptional book covering 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. Starting with a description of the world of the steppe before moving on to a more detailed analysis of the circumstances in which the Cossacks emerged and flourished in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the author considers the relationship of the Cossacks to the surrounding states in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries through the prism of three great...

Warriors and Peasants depicts the lives of the Don Cossacks in late Imperial Russia. The dual identity of the Cossacks, that of the steppe and of the settled Slavic areas, is emphasized as the key to their unique culture. The book explores how that identity manifested and preserved itself by focusing on the Cossack tradition, their economy, their families and their communities. Far from being moribund and close to collapse, the book concludes that the Cossack tradition remained among the most vibrant in the Empire.