Volga the Nogais forced the Great Horde out in the sixteenth century, and were in
turn expelled in the early seventeenth century by the Kalmyks. In the early
eighteenth century the Dzhungars pushed the Kazakhs from Central Asia to the
steppes south of western Siberia and the Urals, encroaching on the Bashkirs. All
this volatility exacerbated the raiding economy and complicated Russia’s push into
the steppe.
Well into the eighteenth century, as Russia advanced into the steppe, it moved
into what scholars call a“middle ground,”a concept made famous by Richard
White in his study of encounters between Europeans and natives in North America
and applied by scholars of Russian empire including Thomas Barrett, Yuriy
Malikov, Willard Sunderland, and Michael Khodarkovsky. A“middle ground”is
a contact zone not governed by strong states but created by the interactions of
people of different cultures brought together by trade. As beaver pelts changed
hands between Frenchmen and Iroquois and sables between East Slavs and native
Siberians, a zone of interchange evolved. Each side accommodated to the other; to
one degree or another language, diet, dress, weaponry, even religious beliefs crossed
cultures. Typically a“middle ground”zone is impermanent—eventually a strong
polity consolidates control and imposes its dominant culture. In the process,
however, it often leans on intermediaries for alliances, border defense, and cultural
access. Mindful of White’sdefinition—“the place in between: in between cultures,
peoples, and in between empires and the non-state world of the villages”—some,
such as Michael Khodarkovsky, argue that Russia developed a hybrid“middle
ground,”since the state, rather than private trade, was a driving factor in pushing
into the borderlands. But the characteristic interchanges described by White
occurred nonetheless; dozens of versions of a“middle ground”formed as Russians
encroached upon its borderlands. Central to this encounter were Cossacks, the
quintessential“in between”group in the Eurasian steppe.
Cossacks emerged at the edge of forest and steppe at the historic turning point
that we have highlighted, when agrarian, bureaucratic settled empires were pushing
south and east. Cossacks were renegades whofled to the borders, lured by profits in
trade or escaping taxation and enserfment. They appeared from the latefifteenth
century across the arc of Eurasia, from the Danube in Moldova outside Habsburg
realms, to the Dnieper south of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, to the Don, Kuban,
and Terek Rivers of the Pontic and Caspian steppe, to the Yaik (later Ural) and
Irtysh Rivers in western Siberia. In addition, bands of men living a Cossack lifestyle
trail-blazed into Siberia in search of furs and riches. Similarities in lifestyle were a
common denominator in the tremendous diversity of Cossacks; there was no single
“cossackdom.”They ranged from free-booting adventurers in Siberia to garrison
troops to founders of a Ukrainian sovereign state in the Hetmanate, with many
gradations of political consciousness and autonomies in between.
In all these places, Cossacks were male confraternities of land-bound or river-
cruising bandits: the word“Cossack”is derived from Arabic, used by Turkic
speakers to mean freebooter. These men were highwaymen, armed and dangerous,
making their livings by banditry and extortion, by slaving and trading. As military
units, they emulated their rivals: on the steppe they were lightly armored, mobile,
58 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801