Cossack-the word means “free man” and feisty independence has always been an ethnic trait of Cossacks. An eastern Slavic (Russia/Ukraine) people, Cossacks served as fighters for various rulers, but then tended to fight their sponsors if they got too controlling. As you can imagine, this has led to a long, stormy and interesting history.
One interesting thing about the democratic Cossacks was that Cossack women were not exactly submissive, shrinking-violet types. Although many peoples from surrounding areas kept women silent and firmly in her place, i.e. the kitchen and the bedroom, Cossack women were much more “Ef you AND the horse you rode in on.”
This was probably due to the fact that the men were usually off fighting somewhere. Think about it, if he’s gone for six months of the year and you have done all the work AND fought off any stray invaders, you are unlikely to behave in a very submissive manner when he finally trots back into the camp-and this attitude seems to have been fine with Cossack men.
My people come from that part of the world. The men in our family who came to America were tough; they worked and played hard-and they had a profound distrust of all authority figures.
And the women, now that I think about it, were not meek and mild; they were kind, as I recall, and fair, but really not all that tame.
There are many ways to BE in this life and “Cossack” (defiantly free) is one of them.
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