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The Cossacks employed to shore up Russia’s position in the Caucasus - and, more particularly, to secure a line along the river Terek — were irregulars. The word ‘Cossack’ (kazak) had originally denoted a freelance Tatar warrior, but by now the Cossacks were chiefly rootless Russian, Lithuanian and Polish subjects who had moved south to the new frontier lands, where they made a living as traders, robbers, mercenaries and colonists. Ivan’s government engaged them in increasing numbers because they were tough, cheap and biddable. For a patch of virgin land and an annual allotment of gunpowder and grain, or a few coins, they would do any patron’s bidding.

The Lithuanian magnate Dmitry Vishnevetsky established an entire colony of them on an island beyond the Dnieper rapids, just short of Crimean Tatar and Ottoman Turkish territory. In 1557 he offered his allegiance to Tsar Ivan, and so the Zaporozhian Cossacks became the Tsar’s subjects too. Four years later Vishnevetsky returned to his former Polish allegiance, but Moscow regarded the Zaporozhian Host as a Russian asset and protectorate. So did some of its members. The Cossack community of the Don also became subject to Moscow, and proved rather more stable in its allegiance than the Zaporozhians. Even so, it was regarded as overzealous in mounting raids against the Turks, for Moscow was held responsible for them. This could be dangerous as well as embarrassing, and so Moscow found it convenient to disown the Cossacks at times. Nevertheless their links, based on mutual interests, remained close. East and south of the Volga, too, the Tsar was again the biggest patron and beneficiary of Cossack activity.

Three categories of Cossack were soon discernible. One comprised members of autonomous communities, like the Don and Zaporozhian Hosts, which were defined by their own rules and customs, and acknowledged an obligation to the Tsar in return for subsidies. Another was the ‘town’ Cossacks, who, having kissed the cross in sign of loyalty to the Tsar, were allotted a salary and assigned for policing, defence and other duties to a particular town or dependent village. Cossacks of the third type were engaged as groups collectively. Usually pioneers or frontier settlers, they were given annual allotments of gunpowder, food and other necessities, and rights to farm a stretch of virgin land in return for defending the locality and turning out on campaign when required. Such were the men who were to guard the line of the river Terek, the frontier to the Caucasus, and the river Don to the west, on the far side of the Crimea.

The imperial implications of the conquest of Kazan and Astrakhan were not fully appreciated at the time, even though the strategic importance of the northern Caucasus was clearly understood. Indeed, it very soon brought Russia into confrontation with the great power south of the Caucasus, the Ottoman Empire. Hearing of Ivan’s intervention on the Terek, Sultan Selim II mounted an expedition to Azov, hoping to cut a canal through to the Volga and take Astrakhan, but this soon proved to be overambitious. Nevertheless, the Crimea to the west was an Ottoman client and allied to hostile Lithuania. These two powers blocked Ivan’s advance in both directions.

Although Russia valued Astrakhan as an emporium for silks from China and gems from India, the desert steppe of central Asia to the east was inhospitable and unwanted. Some groups of Bashkirs, who roamed the country to the east of the Urals and the north of the steppe, volunteered their submission soon after the conquest of Kazan, and the Russian government was to establish the fortress of Ufa in northern Bashkiria in 1586, though almost two centuries were to pass before colonization developed in that direction. ¹⁴ Meanwhile the significance of Siberia, with all its riches, was hardly appreciated at all. Indeed the beginning of that great venture can be traced to the state’s granting exploitation rights to a private individual — a most unusual act by a regime whose characteristic administrative style was brutally direct.