Cossack host

A Cossack host (Template:Lang-uk, kozache viysko; Russian: каза́чье во́йско, kazachye voysko), sometimes translated as Cossack army, was an administrative subdivision of Cossacks in the Russian Empire. The word host is an archaic word for army.

Imperial Russia

The Cossack host consisted of a certain territory with Cossack settlements that had to provide military regiments for service in the Imperial Russian Army and for border patrol. Usually the hosts were named after the regions of their dislocation. The stanitsa, or village, formed the primary unit of this organization.

In the Russian Empire, the Cossacks constituted eleven separate hosts, settled along the frontiers: the Don, Kuban, Terek, Astrakhan, Ural, Orenburg, Siberian, Semiryeche, Transbaikal, Amur, and Ussuri.

There was also a small number of the Cossacks in Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk, who would form the Yenisey Cossack Host and Irkutsk Cossack Regiment of the Ministry of the Interior in 1917.

Cossack hosts on Russian soil were disbanded in 1920, at the end of the Russian Civil War. Those Cossacks who settled abroad continued to preserve the traditions of their hosts (i.e. the Triunited Don-Kuban-Terek Cossack Union).

List of hosts

• Amur Cossack Host (1854–)
• Astrakhan Cossack Host
• Azov Cossack Host (1832–1862)
• Black Sea Cossack Host (1787–)
• Buh Cossack Host (1769–)
• Caucasus Line Cossack Host (1832–1860)
• Don Cossack Host
• Kuban Cossack Host (1860–1920)
• Orenburg Cossack Host (1755–)
• Semiryechye Cossack Host (1867–)
• Terek Cossack Host (1577–)
• Transbaikal Cossack Host (1851–)
• Ural Cossack Host
• Ussuri Cossack Host (1889–)
• Danube Cossack Host (1828–1868), an Imperial Russian Cossack Host formed from descendants of the Zaporozhian Cossacks
• Zaporozhian Host (–1775)

Other hosts

Other Cossack hosts included the:

• Zaporozhian Host — the Zaporozhian Cossacks who lived in Zaporizhia, in Central Ukraine during the 16th — 18th centuries.

See also

• Sloboda Ukraine