Azov Cossack Host

formed in 1828 from among descendants of the Zaporozhe Cossacks who resettled in Turkey after the destruction of the Zaporozhe Sech’ (1775) and reverted to Russian citizenship—under the leadership of their Koshevoi hetman O. M. Gladkii—at the start of the Russo-Turkish War of 1828–29. After the Cossacks’ active participation in the war, they were formed into the Independent Zaporozhe Host, which was renamed the Azov Cossack Host in 1831. The latter was settled on the northwestern coast of the Sea of Azov in Ekaterinoslav Province (between the sea and the Berda and Obitochnaia rivers). With their families, the Cossacks numbered about 6,000 people at the end of the 1830’s. It was the duty of the host to observe, by means of an armed flotilla of 29 small boats and ten cavalry squadrons, the eastern shore of the Black Sea. The host was under the jurisdiction of the governor general of Novoros-siia; its internal government was directed by an appointed hetman and host administration (in the village of Petrovskaia and later in Mariupol’). In the 1850’s the government began to resettle people from Azov to the Northern Caucasus, which resulted in disturbances. The Azov Cossack Host was eliminated in 1865 on the basis of an edict of Oct. 11, 1864. The Cossacks and their families were entered in the peasant soslovie (estate).