Slumber sweet, my fairest baby,
Slumber calmly, sleep-
Peaceful moonbeams light thy chamber
In thy cradle creep;
I will tell to thee a story,
Pure as dewdrop glow,
Close those two beloved eyelids-
Lullaby, By-low!
In June 1945, in the outskirts of Lienz, a sleepy town in the Austrian Alps, British soldiers found an abandoned new-born in the shrubs. Certain of her mother being dead, drowned in the near-by river Drau, they handed the baby girl to a local family where she would grow up a “wolf’s child.” A cossack brat. The off-spring of the wild Cossacks.
WWII had ended less than a month ago, on May 8th. The British had arrived in Eastern Tyrol as a victorious army, the Cossacks only days before them. 25.000 Cossack men, women, and children had crossed the stormy and snow-covered Plöckenpass from Italy. It was a hazardous crossing, for they had travelled in their traditional Russian one-horse carts, which were suitable for the vast fields of the Eastern steppes, but not for the steep Alpine roads. The Cossacks had brought along all their possessions, their instruments and incomprehensible songs and wild dances, their jewelry and copper kettles, and a sheer uncountable number of horses, cattle and camels. The Eastern Tyroleans, in their inaccessible valleys had so far been spared from the horrors of war. Now, outnumbered by the strangers, they were in awe and fear.
But the Cossacks hadn’t come as invaders but to meet up here with the British. Before setting out on this hazardous mountain crossing, in Tolmezzo, Italy, they had struck a deal, that the British army would take them as prisoners of war. The British, in God’s name, should take them, and not the Sowjets, who were advancing from the East, and who would execute them for treason, or the Italian partisans in the South, who had sworn revenge for what had happened in the war. Alas, it was the British who would fail the Cossacks in what would later be remembered as the tragedy at the Drau.
Grievous times will sure befall thee,
Danger, slaughterous fire-
Thou shalt on a charger gallop
Cubring at desire;
And a saddle girth all silken
Sadly will I sew,
Slumber now my wide-eyed darling,
Lullaby, By-low!
The Cossack graveyard of Peggetz sits nestled in a tranquil residential neighbourhood in the outskirts of present day Lienz. Those who visit usually stumble here by chance and find themselves alone with the orthodox tombstones and Cyrillic inscriptions. The lush panorama of the serene Alps, the arias of the blackbirds and the soft gurgling of the river Drau belie the drama of the past. The inscriptions, translated into German “Unbekannte Kosaken” are all the same: “Unknown Cossacks”, and bear the same date, June 1st, 1945. Those buried here aren’t soldiers, a white print out at the gate informs, but at least three hundred women, children, and civilians, who had committed suicide when it became clear that the British were not keeping their promise, but handing them over to the Sowjets, where certain death in Stalin’s gulags awaited them.
Stemming from the wild fields, the vast uninhabited steppes of what is now Russia and Ukraine, the Cossacks were originally – some 1000 years ago – a loose community of freemen: anyone could join them, peasants fleeing the oppressive feudal systems of Poland or Russia, Jews or Christians alike. In the run of the centuries, their originally liberal culture was moulded by their role as eternal outcasts: By fending off frequent Tartar attacks, they gained their adroitness on the horse back and their military organisation. By standing up against Polish catholic oppression, they became fervent orthodox Christians. Organized in Hetmanats, democratic entities, the Cossacks soon started expanding their territories engaging in countless battles with the Ottomans, venturing far into the East, into Siberia and beyond.
Their military strength and ruthlessness soon became notorious. The great powers from the Russian tsars to the Austrian Habsburgers, and even the Vatican relied on Cossack merceneray armies. It is safe to say, that the Cossacks fought in every European war – they defeated the Ottomans when they besieged the Habsburger capital of Vienna in 1683, Napolean when he tried to invade Russia, the Prussians spoke in horror of the Cossack winters of the 19th century.
When I see thee, my own being,
As a Cossack true,
Must I only convoy gice thee-
“Mother dear, adieu!”
Nightly in the empty chamber
Blinding tears will flow,
Sleep my angel, sweetes dear one,
Lullaby, By-low!
The Cossack’s present day representation as national emblems of patriarchal, autocratic and nationalistic societies of Ukraine and Russia stands in a stark contrast and perversion of the Cossacks’ tolerant, democratic origins, and their role as oppressed minority in these very same countries. In fact, the Cossacks were outcasts, tolerated at most but never integrated in Poland and Russia. But the Nazi-chapter and British betrayal of the Cossacks may play an important part in this interpretation of Cossack identity. There is, however, another side of the story. Shalom Aleichem, the Jewish writer of the Tsarian Russia, called the Cossacks the protectors of the Jews. “When we hear the word Cossacks, we grow a new skin. We feel safe, and fear noone,” he wrote in his short story “Wedding without music”, in which the Cossacks prevent a Jewish Pogrom.
It was especially the Russian tsars who used the Cossacks for their political goals. In exchange for tax exemption and personal freedom, the Cossacks served the tsar as soldiers and police force, often exerting cruelty against political opponents and dissidents. There were however, both in Poland, Russia, and the protectorates poor Cossack peasants, who instead of fighting for foreign powers remained free and – oppressed. Accordingly, in the October revolution of 1918, the Cossacks were the first to fight the Bolsheviks – searching to keep their privilege – and the first to join the Red army.
In the USSR, the Cossacks were an oppressed minority because of their involvement in the October revolution. As aresult, when Nazi Germany pushed Eastwards, they offered Hitler support. Reluctant at first, Hitler installed Cossack battalions from 1942 on, as did the Sowjets. Doubtful that the Cossacks would fight and kill other Russians, the Germans deployed the 1st Don Cossack Battalion in the West Balkans to fight the Tito Partisans.
Thy return I’ll wait lamenting
As the days go by,
Ardent for thee praying, fearing
In the cards to spy.
I shall fancy thou wilt suffer
As a stranger grow
Sleep while yet thou nought regrettest,
Lullaby, by-low!
The fighting in the Balkans was abhorrent. The Don Cossack Regiment committed war crimes like mass rapes and executions, decimating the number of Tito partisans by the ten-thousands. Yet, with the Allied forces gaining upper hand in the war, the Cossacks had to withdraw. In another historic absurdity, the Germans now promised them a state of their own, in the Northern Italian region Friaul, right across the border from the Austrian Eastern Tyrol.
Dispossessing local Italian farmers, they established Kosakia in the steep Italian dolomites. Cossack families moved in from the East. Believing to move in for good, the Cossacks set up infrastructure, like hospitals, schools and orthodox churches, making the little town Tolmezzo their new capital. If they weren’t before, the dispossessions turned the local Italians into partisans who fought the Cossacks.
I will send a holy image
Gainst the foe with thee,
To it kneeling, dearest being,
Pray with piety!
Think of me in bloody battle,
Dearest child of woe,
Slumber soft within thy cradle,
Lullaby, by-low!
When defeat became inevitable in April 1945, the Cossacks packed their carts and fled to Eastern Tyrol, which was under British control. There, they set up camp in Lienz and waited to be taken to Great Britain as promised. Lacking a common language and mores, they had little contact with the local population. Some traded food, others medical help. But all in all, the Tyroleans remained sceptical of their uninvited guests.
In the meantime however, the British, fearing for their own prisoners on Sowjet territory, decided during the conference of Jalta, to hand the Cossacks over so as not to anger Stalin. When the news of their impending deportation East not West hit the camp, mass panic broke out.
In an act of passive resistance, the Cossacks held mass when the British arrived. The soldiers found them immersed in praying and singing. Some children from Lienz witnessed what happened next:
“We saw, how the British soldiers rounded up the Cossacks. And at the near-by rail road tracks, we saw the wagons waiting, and then only we heard the screaming and shouting and praying and when we looked closer, we saw that they had locked their arms, forming a tight circle around their pope who held up high a cross. And then we saw, how they pulled them up on the wagons. They were covered in blood.”
The British shot and beat those who resisted. Some Cossacks shot back, but most committed suicide, by shooting their children and themselves, by throwing themselves and their children into the waves of the Drau. Some escaped into the woods, where they were later found hanging from the trees. A few hundred lucky ones escaped to the snow covered high mountains.
At the end of the Day, June 1st, there were no Cossacks left in Lienz.
A handful of wolf-children grew up in the villages of Eastern Tyrol, strangers from the wild fields they had never seen, lacking the words to tell the story, unable to hear their mothers’ lullabies.
CRADLE SONG OF A COSSACK MOTHER by Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov, translated by Martha Bianchi Dickinson.
