“Obratnichestvo” (Back-Resettling) in Compensatory Migrations in the South of Russia (30s of the 20th Century)

The Cossacks as a specifi c social stratum of Tsarist Russia was the support of monarchy, participated in the repression of peasant and working rebellions. Thus, the Bolsheviks, who came to power in 1917, conducted in respect of
that social community policies aimed to its extermination. These measures were in science defi ned as decossackization.
Out of the whole range of issues, articulated in the research process of policy of decossackization, the most diffi cult for adequate responses are: what for? why? what are the consequences? The case is that the repressively carried
out policy of decossacktization not only destroyed the social layer of the Cossacks, but led to its physical extermination, destructively aff ected the economical institutions.
Among a whole complex of various activities aimed at the destruction of the Cossacks, there was the forced migration – i.e. the eviction, resettlement, deportation and compensatory migration. Both in 1918, and in the 1920s the
resettlement actions of the Cossacks were accompanied not only by the bloodshed and deterioration in the demographic situation, but by the devastation, cattle raid and other economical losses.
For the Cossacks the forced migration had the most negative consequences:
- destruction of public agricultural production;
- devastation and the impoverishment of the Cossacks;
- deformation of the mentality of the owner and the master.
The spread collectivization at the end of the 1920s led to the relocation and the decline of the population in the North Caucasus. The irrecoverable demographic changes in the area were linked with the dekulakization and decossackization of the middle and prosperous strata of the Cossacks villages and the eviction of the most hardworking part of Cossacks into Siberia.