Amur Cossack Host (redirected from Amur Cossacks)

Amur Cossack Host 

formed in the 1850’s in the Amur and Primor’e Regions from the Transbaikal cossacks who had migrated to the Amur. The migration began in 1854, and the first large cossack village (Khabarovskaia) was built in 1858. The statute concerning the Amur Cossack Host was ratified in 1860. The host was under the authority of the military governor of the Amur and Primor’e Regions (from 1879 of the Amur Region only) and later under the authority of the governor general of the Amur Region and of the commander in chief of the Amur military district, who was the deputy military hetman of the Amur and Ussuri Cossack Hosts. The host’s center was the town of Blagoveshchensk. The host had the duty of protecting the boundaries along the Amur and the Ussuri rivers (until a separate Ussuri Cossack Host was detached in 1889) and of supplying the men for the Amur-Ussuri flotilla, formed in 1897. The land area of the Amur Cossack Host comprised 5.8 million desiatiny (6.4 million hectares), of which 0.74 million desiatiny (0.81 million hectares) were in use. In 1916 the cossack population consisted of 49,200 people (120 settlements). In peacetime it mustered one mounted regiment of four sotni (cossack squadrons) and one guard platoon; in wartime it supplied two mounted regiments (12 sotni), one guard platoon, one reserve and five special sotni, and one artillery battery (a total of 3,600 men). The Amur Cossack Host took part in the suppression of the Boxer rebellion (in Russian, the Ikhetuan’ uprising) in China, in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05, and in World War I (1914–18). In April 1918 the fifth congress of the workers and cossacks of the Amur Region resolved to abolish the cossack class (soslovie). During the Civil War a considerable number of the Amur cossacks fought on the side of the Soviet authority.