THE COSSACKS

The Zaporozhian Cossacks in 1676, send an insulting reply to the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire

Inhabiting the turbulant land that we now know as ‘Ukraine’, but previously as ‘the Wild East’, the Cossacks fought battles from Lithuania in the West to Moscow in the East. Their homeland was either in Poland or in the vast steppe of Central Asia, or perhaps both. In the 1930s and 1960s they were romanticised by Hollywood, but they have since resumed their traditional role – breaking up demonstrations and stamping out progressive movements.