FROM THE COUNCIL OF PEOPLE’s COMMISSARS TO THE TOILING COSSACKS
_“Brothers-Cossacks._
“You are being deceived. You are being incited against the People.
You are told that the Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’
Deputies are your enemies, that they want to take away your Cossack
land, your Cossack ‘liberty’. Don’t believe it, Cossacks…. Your own
Generals and landowners are deceiving you, in order to keep you in
darkness and slavery. We, the Council of People’s Commissars,
address ourselves to you, Cossacks, with these words. Read them
attentively and judge yourselves which is the truth and which is
cruel deceit. The life and service of a Cossack were always bondage
and penal servitude. At the first call of the authorities a Cossack
always had to saddle his horse and ride out on campaign. All his
military equipment a Cossack had to provide with his own hardly
earned means. A Cossack is on service, his farm is going to rack and
ruin. Is such a condition fair? No, it must be altered for ever. THE
COSSACKS MUST BE FREED FROM BONDAGE. The new People’s Soviet power is
willing to come to the assistance of the toiling Cossacks. It is only
necessary that the Cossacks themselves should resolve to abolish the
old order, that they should refuse submission to their slave-driver
officers, land-owners, rich men, that they should throw off the
cursed yoke from their necks.
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