Don Republic
The Don Republic (Russian: Донская Республика, later known as the Almighty Don Host, or Russian: Всевеликое Войско Донское, Vsevelikoe Voisko Donskoe), was an independent self-proclaimed anti-Bolshevik republic formed by the Armed Forces of South Russia on the territory of Don Cossacks against another self-proclaimed Don Soviet Republic. The Don Republic existed during the Russian Civil War after the collapse of the Russian Empire from 1918 to 1920.
Don Republic (1918–19) Донская Республика Almighty Don Host (1919–20) Всевеликое Войско Донское | |||||||||||
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1918–1920 | |||||||||||
Flag
Coat of arms
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Anthem: Всколыхнулся, взволновался православный Тихий Дон (It has shaken, has stirred the Orthodox quiet Don) | |||||||||||
Map of the Don Host Oblast (green) | |||||||||||
Capital | Novocherkassk | ||||||||||
Common languages | Russian, Ukrainian | ||||||||||
Religion | Eastern Orthodoxy | ||||||||||
Government | Parliamentary republic | ||||||||||
Ataman | |||||||||||
• 1918–1919 | Pyotr Krasnov | ||||||||||
• 1919–1921 | Afrikan Bogaevsky | ||||||||||
Legislature | Krug | ||||||||||
Historical era | World War I | ||||||||||
• Proclaimed | May 18 1918 | ||||||||||
• Disestablished | 1920 | ||||||||||
Currency | Don Ruble | ||||||||||
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The assembly of the Don Cossacks — the Krug — proclaimed the independence of the Don Republic on May 18, 1918. This occurred after the liquidation of the Bolshevik-controlled Don Soviet Republic in the territory of the Don Host Oblast on May 10, 1918.
The Don Republic claimed the territory of the Don region with the city of Novocherkassk as its capital. Administratively, the Don Republic was divided into ten okrugs, covering an area located in the Rostov and Volgograd Oblasts of RSFSR and in the Lugansk and Donetsk Oblasts of the neighboring Donetsk–Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic.
The Don Republic ceased to exist after the Don Cossacks, who formed an essential part of the White Army, were defeated by the Red Army in the Russian Civil War. Many of the Russian Cossacks on Don were subjected to a genocide via the Decossackization in 1919–1921, during the Soviet famine of 1932–33 and because of the repatriation of Cossacks after the Second World War by the United Kingdom to the Soviet Union, resulting in the eventual disappearance of the Don Cossacks' movement of resistance to the Soviet Union.
See also
- Don Army
- Don Host Oblast
- South Russia (1919–1920)
- Armed Forces of South Russia
- Kuban People's Republic, a government formed by the Kuban Cossacks in 1918
- Ukrainian People's Republic
- Post-Russian Empire states