Self-Identification and Identification of the late 18th – early 19th centuries Don Cossacks by Outsider Authors

The article is dedicated to the problem of the late 18th -early 19th centuries Don Cossacks identity.Author shows that in the 19th century the Don Cossackdom was going through a major transformation (in particular, local garb was supplanted by the one closer to a Great Russian, and educated locals have familiarized themselves with Russian historiography).At the same time, professional ethnographers began to study the Don Cossacks only in the 1880s, meaning they were studying already transformed Cossackdom.In this context contemporaries' evidences about the Don Cossacks of the late 18th -early 19th centuries are of utmost importance.They are few (the article examines the wide-known works of A.I. Rigel'man about the Don Cossacks and the less-known of M.I.Antonovsky and A.L. de Romano), but A.I. Rigel'man, having served many years among the Cossacks, recorded the self-identification of some part of Cossacks, which allows us to compare the self-identification of Don Cossacks with their identification by outsider authors.Such a comparison enables us to reveal a curious plot previously unestablished in scientific historiography.There was fundamental contradiction between the recorded cases of self-identification of Cossacks of the period and the identification by outsider authors.At the same time, A.I. Rigel'man knew who the Cossacks considered themselves to be, and also knew a number of their historical myths, yet attributed them to the category of "fables" and opposed them his own conclusions, drawn primarily from historical works.As a result, the information we have about the self-identification of the late 18th -early 19th centuries Cossacks works towards separation of Cossacks from other East Slavs (for example, it might consider Caucasus as the possible ancestral home of Cossacks, rather than the territories of Russia/Great Russia and Ukraine/Little Russia; Cossacks' service to Russia is described as a conscious choice; "Don" is interpreted as a special locus gifted to the Cossacks by Ivan the Terrible, etc.).On the opposite, the authors of the late 18th century, who represented Russian specifics, in their works about the Cossacks (A.I.Rigel'man, M.I.Antonovsky) univocally included them with other Slavs (Ukraine/Little Russia is deemed the Cossacks' ancestral home; The Cossacks are positioned as initially serving Russia or at least from the earliest stage of their history; the narrative about "Don" being the Cossacks' special land is omitted, etc.).This tendency was brought to logical conclusion by M.I.Antonovksy, who interpreted the Don Cossacks as just "rossians" with some particular local specifics.