Editing Cossacks (section)

=== Anticommunist Cossacks in exile and World War II, 1920–1945 ===

====Russian Cossack emigration====

The Cossack emigration consisted largely of relatively young men who had served, and retreated with, the White armies. Although hostile to communism, the Cossack émigrés remained broadly divided over whether their people should pursue a separatist course to acquire independence or retain their close ties with a future post-Soviet Russia. Many quickly became disillusioned with life abroad. Throughout the 1920s, thousands of exiled Cossacks voluntarily returned to Russia through repatriation efforts sponsored by France, the [[League of Nations]], and even the Soviet Union.<ref>{{cite book |author=Robinson, Paul |title=The White Army in Exile |location=Oxford |publisher=Clarendon Press |year=2002 |pages=41–42, 75}}</ref>

The Cossacks who remained abroad settled primarily in [[Bulgaria]], [[Czechoslovakia]], [[Kingdom of Yugoslavia|Yugoslavia]], France, [[Xinjiang]], and [[Manchuria]]. Some managed to create farming communities in Yugoslavia and Manchuria, but most eventually took up employment as laborers in construction, agriculture, or industry. A few showcased their lost culture to foreigners by performing stunts in circuses or serenading audiences in choirs.

Cossacks who were determined to carry on the fight against communism frequently found employment with foreign powers hostile to Soviet Russia. In Manchuria, thousands of Cossacks and White émigrés enlisted in the army of that region's warlord, [[Zhang Zuolin]]. After Japan's [[Kwantung Army]] occupied Manchuria in 1932, the ataman of the [[Baikal Cossacks|Transbaikal Cossacks]], [[Grigory Mikhaylovich Semyonov|Grigory Semyonov]], led collaboration efforts between Cossack émigrés and the Japanese military.<ref>{{cite book |author=Stephan, John |title=The Russian Fascists |location=New York |publisher=Harper & Row |year=1978 |pages=35–48}}</ref>
 
In the initial phase of [[Operation Barbarossa|Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union]], Cossack émigrés were initially barred from political activity or travelling into the occupied Eastern territories. [[Adolf Hitler|Hitler]] had no intention of entertaining the political aspirations of the Cossacks, or any minority group, in the USSR. As a result, collaboration between Cossacks and the [[Wehrmacht]] began in ad hoc manner through localized agreements between German field commanders and Cossack defectors from the Red Army. Hitler did not officially sanction the recruitment of Cossacks and lift the restrictions imposed on émigrés until the second year of the Nazi-Soviet conflict. During their brief occupation of the North Caucasus region, the Germans actively recruited Cossacks into detachments and local self-defense [[militia]]s. The Germans even experimented with a self-governing district of Cossack communities in the Kuban region. When the Wehrmacht withdrew from the [[North Caucasus]] region in early 1943, tens of thousands of Cossacks retreated with them, either out of conviction or to avoid Soviet reprisals.<ref name=Mueggenberg_2019/>{{rp|229–239, 243–244}}

In 1943, the Germans formed the [[1st Cossack Cavalry Division]], under the command of [[Helmuth von Pannwitz|General Helmuth von Pannwitz]]. While its ranks mostly comprised deserters from the Red Army, many of its officers and [[Non-commissioned officer|NCOs]] were Cossack émigrés who had received training at one of the cadet schools established by the White Army in Yugoslavia. The division was deployed to occupied Croatia to fight [[Josip Broz Tito|Tito's]] [[Partisans (Yugoslavia)|Partisans]]. There, its performance was generally effective, although at times brutal. In late 1944, the 1st&nbsp;Cossack Cavalry Division was admitted into the [[Waffen-SS]], and enlarged into the [[XV SS Cossack Cavalry Corps]].<ref name=Newland_1991/>{{rp|110–126, 150–169}}

In late 1943, the [[Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories]] and Wehrmacht headquarters issued a joint proclamation promising the Cossacks independence once their homelands were "liberated" from the Red Army.<ref name=Newland_1991>{{cite book |last1=Newland |first1=Samuel J. |title=Cossacks in the German Army, 1941–1945 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=J8ideJ9KDh0C |year=1991 |location=Portland |publisher=Routledge; Frank Cass |isbn=978-0-7146-3351-0 |access-date=2015-10-25 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160521171654/https://books.google.com/books?id=J8ideJ9KDh0C |archive-date=2016-05-21 |url-status=live }}</ref>{{rp|140}} The Germans followed this up by establishing the Cossack Central Administration, under the leadership of the former Don Cossack ataman, [[Pyotr Krasnov]]. Although it had many attributes of a government-in-exile, the Cossack Central Administration lacked any control over foreign policy or the deployment of Cossack troops in the Wehrmacht. In early 1945, Krasnov and his staff joined a group of 20,000–25,000&nbsp;Cossack refugees and irregulars known as "Cossachi Stan". This group, then led by Timofey Domanov, had fled the North Caucasus alongside the Germans in 1943 and was moved between [[Kamianets-Podilskyi]] in Ukraine, [[Navahrudak]] in Belarus, and [[Tolmezzo]], Italy.<ref name=Mueggenberg_2019/>{{rp|252–254}}
 
In early May 1945, in the closing days of WWII, both Domanov's "Cossachi Stan" and Pannwitz's XV SS Cossack Cavalry Corps retreated into Austria, where they surrendered to the British. Many Cossack accounts collected in the two volume work ''The Great Betrayal'' by [[Vyacheslav Naumenko]] allege that British officers had given them, or their leaders, a guarantee that they would not be forcibly repatriated to the Soviet Union,<ref>{{cite book |author=Naumenko, Vyacheslav |title=Great Betrayal |translator=Dritschilo, William |year=2015 |location=New York |publisher=CreateSpace Independent Publisher; Slavic Publishing House |orig-date=1962}}</ref> but there is no hard evidence that such a promise was made. At the end of the month, and in early June 1945, the majority of Cossacks from both groups were transferred to Red Army and [[SMERSH]] custody at the Soviet demarcation line in Judenburg, Austria. This episode is known as the [[Betrayal of the Cossacks]], and resulted in sentences of hard labour or execution for the majority of the repatriated Cossacks.<ref name=Mueggenberg_2019/>{{rp|263–289}}

====Ukrainian Hetman movement====

After his abdication on 14 December 1918, Ukrainian hetman Pavlo Skoropadskyi emigrated to Germany. From there he led the so-called Hetman movement ({{langx|uk|Гетьманський рух}}), which consisted of a number of Ukrainian [[conservatism|conservative]] [[monarchism|monarchist]] organizations from different groups of [[Ukrainian diaspora]].<ref>{{cite web |title= Skoropadsky, Pavlo |url=https://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CS%5CK%5CSkoropadskyPavlo.htm}}</ref> Most prominent of these organizations were the Ukrainian Union of Agrarians-Statists ({{langx|uk|Український союз хліборобів-державників}}) founded in [[Vienna]] by [[Vyacheslav Lypynsky]]i and [[Serhiy Shemet]], and the United Hetman Organization ({{langx|uk|Союз гетьманців державників}}) active in [[Canada]] and the [[United States]]. In his "Letters to Brothers Agrarians", published in 1926, Lypynskyi elaborated the idea of an independent, [[oligarchy|classocratic]], pan-Ukrainian "toilers' monarchy" without political parties, ruled by hetman and his dynasty with the help of an agrarian aristocracy and the co-operation of the productive classes.<ref>{{cite web |title=Ukrainian Union of Agrarians-Statists |url=https://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CU%5CK%5CUkrainianUnionofAgrarians6Statists.htm}}</ref> In Canada and the United States the Hetman movement emerged from the pre-[[WW1]] [[Plast|Sich scouting societies]] and was implicitly supported by the [[Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church]]. The movement supported the re-establishment of the Hetman state of Pavlo Skoropadskyi and devoted a lot of energy to military training of Ukrainian emigrés for the future liberation of their homelandgoing as far as to acquire a number of airplanes. In 1940 the Canadian branch of the organization became one of the founders of the [[Ukrainian Canadian Congress]]. The North American Hetman movement reached the height of its influence around 1937-1938, when it was visited by [[Danylo Skoropadsky]]i, the hetman's son and successor. However, the organizations lost their influence during [[WW2]] and in the following years due to internal splits and government investigations into their activity.<ref>{{cite web|title=United Hetman Organization |url=https://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CU%5CN%5CUnitedHetmanOrganization.htm}}</ref>