The Stages and Trends of Socio-Cultural Transformation of the Don Cossack (the Second Half of 1940 – the Middle 1980s Years)

The period of history of the don Cossacks from 1945 to 1985 is practically not covered in the scientific literature, in connection with which the study of the life of the Cossacks in this period acquires a special theoretical and practical relevance.
In this publication, the position that the leading trend in the position of the Cossacks in the postwar USSR was the gradual loss of their cultural and ethnographic features and the dissolution of the rural and urban population. Until the mid-1950s, the government was dominated by the opinion of the need to preserve the Cossacks as a special ethnographic community on the don and this
contributed to the stability of Cossack culture and life. But then the party-soviet leadership again set a course for decossackization. In addition, objective socio-economic processes in the USSR also inevitably entailed the assimilation of Cossacks in Soviet society.
As a result, the don Cossacks largely dissolved in the Soviet society and this process was not completed only because in the mid-1980s began "perestroika" and the resulting revival of the Cossacks.