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Special pages :
The Don Cossack Host
Decree of the Council of People’s Commissars, September 3, 1918
The protracted civil war between the workers and the working peasantry, on the one hand, and, on the other, the landlords and the bourgeoisie, joined with the British, French, Czechoslovak and other mercenaries, has demanded from the Soviet power a great tension of the people’s forces. Inflexibly determined to nip in the bud the malicious schemes of the imperialist brigands, both foreign and Russian, the Soviet Government has been obliged to direct great armed forces against them and to give all its attention to crushing quickly and ruthlessly, with the iron fist of the revolution, the last remnants of these plundering bands.
For this reason the Southern borderlands of the Russian Republic – the Don, Kuban, Terek and Caucasian regions have lacked timely support from the central Soviet power. A multitude of generals, landlords and officials, all the black carrion-crows of Tsardom, have congregated in the Cossack lands, gathered round them the landlord and kulak elements of Cossackdom, by force and cunning seized the Don territory, confused the minds of the Cossacks, and made the free Cossacks strangle their Cossack freedom with their own hands.
The renowned working Cossacks proved unable to defend their sovereign rights. The villages and stanitsas are depopulated, the corn remains unharvested, the working Cossack community is impoverished and dying.
To end the deception and machinations of the rebel Krasnov and his supporters and to put into effect the decrees of the Central Government concerning the new organization, free and based on labor, of the Don territory, the Council of People’s Commissars has decided: To convene a Field Assembly of the Soviet Cossack Host of the Don – a government of the Host, endowed with full power on the Don and composed of representatives of the working population of the Don who are, arms in hand, defending the legal authority of the Soviets against the rebel bands.
The Field Assembly of the Soviet Don Cossack Host will consist of representatives of the Soviet Don regiments and also of those villages and stanitsas which have been liberated from the rule of the officers and landlords.
Until the legally-elected Soviet power has been re-established throughout the territory of the Don Cossack Host, the Field Assembly of the Soviet Don Cossack Host is assigned all the rights and prerogatives of the Soviets of the Don Cossack Host, as laid down in the decree of the People’s Commissars of June 1, 1918.
The most urgent task of the Field Assembly is to re-establish the Soviet socialist order in the Don territory and free the territory of the Don Cossack Host from all counter- revolutionary forces.
In order to achieve this aim, the Field Assembly is accorded the right:
a. to conscript into the Soviet forces all the working population of the Don territory;
b. to take charge of the organization of the armed forces of the Soviet Don territory;
c. to co-ordinate the operations of these forces along the whole Don front.
The task of establishing of procedure for elections and norms of representation, and also the actual convocation of the Field Assembly, is entrusted to a special commission to be formed in accordance with instructions from the Presidium of the All Russia Central Executive Committee.