Cossacks as an historical phenomena and the problem of their ethnical and social identity. Review of the educational theses over the last few years

Abstract

In this research the author analyses
all the treatments of the Cossackss phenomena
appeared in the postgraduate and doctoral
theses in the Russian educational science
over lasr few years. The Cossackss renaissance
viewed in the contemporal Russian history attracts
the large scientific and public interest.
The problem taking the central stage in the
contemporal historiography is the Cossackss
ethnical and social identity. The author shows
that this matter is the determinant for treatments
of the Cossackss phenomena not only
among historians but among teachers too. As
in the historical science educational researchers
can be divided into two basic parties. The
scientists in the first one suppose the Cossacks
the separated ethnic group while the others
characterize them as sociocultural phenomena
inside of Russian culture.