The Yenisei Cossacks in The First World War

This article examines the Yenisei Cossacks' participation in the First World War. The Yenisei Cossacks, rather small in number at the beginning of the 20th century, were considered by leaders of the country only as a constabulary force for the territory of the Yenisei government at the outbreak of the First World War. However, the great patriotic upsurge among the Yenisei Cossacks caused many Cossack volunteers to go to the fronts of the First World War on their own without permission of the top brass. The article presents the evolution of government attitude towards the Yenisei Cossacks, from rear police forces to real combatant forces, influenced by voluntary mass movement. In the first period of the War the attitude towards an unauthorized going to the front was negative. But long since 1915 when the Russian Army began to incur considerable losses, the Yenisei Cossacks met with fewer difficulties upon entering on service in warring units. About 120 Yenisei Cossack volunteers were sent to the West front in an organized way at the beginning of the year 1916. The Yenisei Cossacks for the most part joined the services in the Ussuriisk Cossack Division and participated as its members in defense of the coast of the Gulf of Riga and then in the fighting in the Carpathians. Besides, the Yenisei Cossacks were participants of guerrilla bands which were created by command of the Russian Army in the enemy's rear. Therefore, despite their multiplicity the Yenisei Cossacks demonstrated patriotic awareness in the First World War. That was reflected in the relatively large number of the Yenisei Cossacks who took part in military actions. The Yenisei Cossacks went to the front as volunteers although they and their families had no right to benefits, which servicemen officially drafted into the army were supposed to get. The participation of the Yenisei Cossacks-war veterans in the events of the Revolution of 1917 is also considered in the article. The Yenisei Cossacks at the front and in the rear found themselves on the side of the forces which stood for a continuation of the Russian participation in the First World War, and confronted actively the radical revolutionaries' attempts of the conquest of power. The Yenisei Cossack squadron was a personal guard of P.N. Krasnov and took part in the overthrow of the Bolshevik power in Petrograd in November 1917. In Siberia at the end of 1917 the Yenisei Cossacks made an attempt to depose the Bolshevik power in Krasnoyarsk. High patriotic self-consciousness of the Yenisei Cossacks which forced them to go to the fronts of the First World War as volunteers in the years of the Civil War brings them in ranks of the Russian Army under the command of Admiral A.V. Kolchak.

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