stanitsa

The Russian word is the diminutive of the word {{lang|ru|stan}} ({{lang|ru|стан}}), which means "station" or "police district". It is distantly related to the Sanskrit word {{lang|sa|sthāna}} ({{lang|sa|स्थान}}), which means "station", "locality", or "district".{{Cite web |title=stanitsa |url=https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stanitsa |access-date=2023-12-29 |website=Merriam-Webster |language=en}}

The stanitsa was a unit of economic and political organisation of the Cossack peoples who lived in the Russian Empire. Each stanitsa contained

several villages and khutirs.{{Cite encyclopedia |title=Stanytsia |encyclopedia=Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine |url=https://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages\S\T\StanytsiaIT}}

An assembly of landowners governed each stanitsa community. This assembly distributed land, oversaw institutions like schools, and elected a stanitsa administration and court. The stanitsa administration consisted of an Ataman, a collection of legislators, and a treasurer. The stanitsa court made judgements regarding "petty criminal and civil suits".

All inhabitants, except for non-Cossacks, were considered members of the stanitsa. Non-Cossacks were required to pay a fee to use the local land owned by the stanitsa.

The stanitsa was first an administrative unit in the 18th century. In the late 18th century, when the Cossack peoples largely lost their autonomy within the empire, they still kept self-governance at the level of the stanitsa;{{Cite book |last=Kenez |first=Peter |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eEtx7cPnIGwC&q=stanitsa |title=Civil War in South Russia, 1918: The First Year of the Volunteer Army |date=1971-01-01 |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=978-0-520-01709-2 |pages=37–38 |language=en|quote=In the late eighteenth century the Cossacks lost their former autonomy. [...] However the Cossacks retained self-government on the village (stanitsa) level.}} each stanitsa was still allowed to elect its own assembly.{{Cite encyclopedia |title=Cossack |encyclopedia=Encyclopedia Britannica |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/Cossack |date=2023-12-05 |language=en}}

{{Further|De-Cossackization}}

In the aftermath of the 1917 October Revolution in Russia, a new Soviet regime took power. Beginning in 1919, the Soviet regime pursued a policy of genocide{{cite book|first=Orlando|last=Figes|author-link=Orlando Figes|title=A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891–1924|publisher= Penguin Books|year=1998|isbn= 0-14-024364-X}}{{cite book|first=Donald|last=Rayfield|author-link=Donald Rayfield|title=Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him|publisher=Random House|year=2004|isbn=0-375-50632-2}}{{cite book|first1=Mikhail|last1=Heller|first2=Aleksandr|last2=Nekrich|author-link2=Alexander Nekrich|title=Utopia in Power: The History of the Soviet Union from 1917 to the Present}}{{cite book|first=R. J.|last= Rummel|author-link=R. J. Rummel|url=http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE4.HTM|title=Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917|publisher=Transaction Publishers|date=1990|isbn=1-56000-887-3|access-date=2014-03-01}}[http://www.york.ac.uk/admin/presspr/pressreleases/cossacks.htm Soviet order to exterminate Cossacks is unearthed] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091210025518/http://www.york.ac.uk/admin/presspr/pressreleases/cossacks.htm|date=December 10, 2009}} University of York Communications Office, 21 January 2003 and systematic repression against Cossacks known as De-Cossackization. The policy aimed at the elimination of the Cossacks as a distinct collectivity by exterminating the Cossack elite, coercing all other Cossacks into compliance and eliminating Cossack distinctness.{{Cite book|last=Schleifman|first=Nurit|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FTpdAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT114|title=Russia at a Crossroads: History, Memory and Political Practice|date=2013|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-135-22533-9|pages=114|language=en}} As part of this policy, the Soviet forces sought to erase Cossack administrative structures, especially of the Don Cossacks.{{sfn|Holquist|1997|pages=139–140}} The purpose of this was to "deny Cossacks any Don structure as a point of identification and to 'dilute' the Cossack population by appending portions of neighboring non-Cossack provinces".{{sfn|Holquist|1997|page=140}} This included distinctly Cossack names for administrative units, as the Cossacks were fond of these names "as markers of their distinctiveness from peasants." The Soviets sought to erase these identities.{{sfn|Holquist|1997|page=140–141}} On 20 April 1919, the Red Army's Southern Front issued an order renaming the stanitsas to generic volosts, or counties. Local revolutionary committees assisted in this, passing resolutions in parallel to destroy the stanitsa as a social unit.{{sfn|Holquist|1997|page=141}} The Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine lists the specific end date of the existence of the traditional stanitsa as 1920.

Later in the Soviet Union, the term stanitsa was used after 1929 to refer to rural settlements on former Cossack land that were governed by soviet councils.

File:Federal subjects that contain places with stanitsa status in Russia.svg in which stanitsas are a type of settlement]]

In modern Russia, the administration classifies a stanitsa as a type of rural locality in these federal subjects of Russia:{{Cite encyclopedia |title=Станиця |trans-title=Stanytsia|encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of History of Ukraine |url=http://resource.history.org.ua/cgi-bin/eiu/history.exe?&I21DBN=EIU&P21DBN=EIU&S21STN=1&S21REF=10&S21FMT=eiu_all&C21COM=S&S21CNR=20&S21P01=0&S21P02=0&S21P03=TRN=&S21COLORTERMS=0&S21STR=Stanytsia|access-date=20 December 2023|language=uk}}

{{div col|colwidth=15em}}

• Adygea
• Chechnya
• Dagestan
• Ingushetia
• Kabardino-Balkaria
• Karachay-Cherkessia
• Krasnodar Krai
• North Ossetia–Alania
• Novosibirsk Oblast
• Omsk Oblast
• Orenburg Oblast
• Rostov Oblast
• Stavropol Krai
• Sverdlovsk Oblast
• Volgograd Oblast

{{div col end}}

The most populous stanitsa in modern Russia is Kanevskaya in Krasnodar Krai (44,800 people in 2005). Formerly, the most populous stanitsa was Ordzhonikidzevskaya in Ingushetia (61,598 people in 2010), but in 2016 it was reorganized into the town Sunzha. The town Stanytsia Luhanska in Ukraine, originally founded by Cossacks, still has stanytsia in its name.{{Cite web |title=Story of a city: Stanytsia Luhanska |url=https://www.helsinki.org.ua/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Web_Zvit_St_Luganska_A4_Engl2.pdf}}

{{Reflist}}

• {{Cite journal |last=Holquist |first=Peter |date=1997 |title="Conduct Merciless Mass Terror": Decossackization on the Don, 1919 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20171035 |journal=Cahiers du Monde russe |volume=38 |issue=1/2 |pages=127–162 |doi=10.3406/cmr.1997.2486 |jstor=20171035 |issn=1252-6576|url-access=subscription }}

{{Authority control}}

Category:History of the Cossacks

Category:Rural geography

Category:Geography of Russia

Category:Human habitats

Category:Cossack culture

Category:Stanitsa

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