 The Cossacks by Shane O'Rourke. When I read this book a few years ago I didn't realize how important it was to me and I'll probably do a fuller review of this book in the future but right now I just wanted to read one small part of it. It was so important because it clarified so much about what is arguably the most important symbol in the heritage of this part of the world which is the symbol of the Cossacks. Was it an ethnic group? Was it a profession? Was it a legal classification? Was it Russian? Was it Ukrainian? Was it Cossack? Was it from the Caucasus? The short answer is that it was all of those things at different points in history and I'll detail that when I do a fuller book review but right now given the protests in Russia given the fact that there were even a little protest springing up in Russia I heard 400 people were arrested. I was reminded of one small passage from this book. The symbolic importance of Cossack culture cannot be overestimated for the oppressed masses of Poland, Lithuania and Muscovy. To see or even hear about a boyer or great yore treated with contempt by a Cossack demonstrated to those masses that an alternative and viable social order did indeed exist. This was to prove far more threatening to Poland, Lithuania and Muscovy and the Russian Empire than the Cossack swords and muskets on their own could ever be. For those who believed and became Cossack the effect was so liberating so all-consuming that they in effect became different people even for the millions who remained behind in bondage the power of the Cossack idea to stir the belief that an earthly liberation was possible was as potent as those appeals that promised a heavenly liberation. Cossack ideals of freedom and equality were the stuff of popular dreams for humiliated and oppressed peasants the Cossacks represented a living and viable alternative to the existing social order. Cossack insurgency always had the potential to explode out of its regional local character into a matter of kingdom-wide significance drawing into its ranks hundreds of thousands of desperate people by design and spontaneously. Rumor alone of Cossack rebellion was often enough for the inserved masses to shake off their sullen obedience to a hated system proclaim themselves Cossack and wreak a bloody vengeance on their oppressors. The memory of the abrupt transition from a glowering docility to a mob fury terrorized the imperial nobility down to the end of the old regime and this was no atavistic nightmare dimly held in the collective consciousness of the nobility but a living menace. The best most comprehensive English language book on Cossacks the Cossacks by Shane O'Rourke.