Imperial Boundaries: Cossack Communities and Empire-Building in the Age of Peter the Great, and: Donskoe kazachestvo v period ot vziatiia Azova do vystupleniia S. Razina, 1637-1667 (The Don Cossacks from the Taking of Azov to the Razin Uprising, 1637-67), and: Russkaia tserkov´ i kazachestvo v epokhu Petra I (The Russian Church and the Cossacks in the Age of Peter I) (review)

The subject of the Don Cossack Host and its relations with Muscovy and the Crimean Tatars, Nogais, and Kalmyks has always interested readers of Russian history. Some of what has been published on the subject has been distorted by nationalist and Orientalist biases and by resentments born of the Civil War and White Emigration. But serious scholarly study of Don Cossack history has also been reinvigorated in recent years by the publication in 1998 of N. A. Mininkov's Donskoe kazachestvo v epokhu pozdnego srednevekov´ia (do 1671 g.), which showed that very thorough archival research could reveal a mass of new and more accurate information on the subject.¹

Oleg Kuts's 2009 monograph Donskoe kazachestvo will likely be recognized as one of the more valuable studies on the Don Cossack Host in the 17th century. It is grounded in extensive research in the archives of the Ambassadors' Chancellery (Posol´skii prikaz) and Military Chancellery (Razriadnyi prikaz), and Kuts uses archival materials to relate many illustrative incidents and to recover the "voices" of Don Cossacks; this is a book made more concrete and vivid by having many people and incidents in it. Kuts is familiar with the published literature on the subject, so his opening chapter on historiography and sources is comprehensive and an indispensable introduction to the subject and its main controversies. He writes clearly and engagingly, and his three maps are detailed but easy to follow.

The history of the Don Cossacks is an enormous and complex subject.² To treat it in any but the broadest and most cursory manner requires focusing on particular problems or on a particular period. Kuts notes that past studies on the Don Cossacks, especially those published in the Soviet period, tended to focus on the "military and political history of the Don, often examining Cossackdom through the prism of revolt and antigovernment uprising, in which it was a kind of 'vanguard' of the popular masses" (3). But this approach tended to limit study to a few episodes in Cossack history and to ignore the long periods of peaceful relations between Cossackdom and Muscovy. Kuts therefore chooses to focus on the state of the Don Host over the 1637-67 period—from the Don Cossacks' capture of Azov to the outbreak of the great rebellion led by Stepan Razin. This period saw the establishment of close relations between the Don Host and Moscow, with the state acknowledging particular privileges for the Don Host and taking great interest in Don affairs. For the Don Cossacks themselves this was a period of heightened commercial and military power and offered the opportunity to articulate their political and cultural identity vis-à-vis Muscovy. Focusing on this period allows Kuts to examine Cossack society "not only in its moments of extremity but in its ordinary life" (3-4).

The great upheavals framing this period—the Azov crisis and the Razin rebellion—are not covered in any detail in this volume. They have already received much attention from other scholars (Kuts himself has published before on the Azov occupation), and including these subjects would have greatly expanded the...