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{{Short description|Village on Cossack military bases}}
{{Cossacks}}
A '''stanitsa''' or '''stanitza''' ({{IPAc-en|s|t|ə|ˈ|n|iː|t|s|ə}} {{respell|stə|NEET|sə}}; {{langx|ru|станица}} {{IPA|ru|stɐˈnʲitsə||ru-станица.ogg}}), also spelled '''stanycia''' ({{langx|uk|станиця}} {{IPA|uk|stɐˈnɪtsʲɐ|}}) or '''stanica''' ({{langx|be|станіца}} {{IPA|be|staˈnʲitsa|}}), was a historical administrative unit of a [[Cossack host]], a type of [[Cossack]] polity that existed in the [[Russian Empire]].

==Etymology==
The Russian word is the [[diminutive]] of the word {{lang|ru|stan}} ({{lang|ru|[[wikt:стан|стан]]}}), which means "station" or "police district". It is distantly related to the [[Sanskrit]] word {{lang|sa|sthāna}} ({{lang|sa|स्थान}}), which means "station", "locality", or "district".<ref>{{Cite web |title=stanitsa |url=https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stanitsa |access-date=2023-12-29 |website=Merriam-Webster |language=en}}</ref>

==Structure==
The stanitsa was a unit of economic and political organisation of the [[Cossack]] peoples who lived in the [[Russian Empire]]. Each stanitsa contained 
several villages and [[khutir]]s.<ref name=eou>{{Cite encyclopedia |title=Stanytsia |encyclopedia=[[Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine]] |url=https://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages\S\T\StanytsiaIT}}</ref>

An assembly of landowners governed each stanitsa community. This assembly distributed land, oversaw institutions like schools, and elected a stanitsa administration and court. The stanitsa administration consisted of an [[Ataman]], a collection of legislators, and a [[treasurer]].<ref name=eou/> The stanitsa court made judgements regarding "petty criminal and civil suits".<ref name=eou/>

All inhabitants, except for non-Cossacks, were considered members of the stanitsa. Non-Cossacks were required to pay a fee to use the local land owned by the stanitsa.<ref name=eou/>

==History==

===In the Russian Empire===

The stanitsa was first an administrative unit in the 18th century.<ref name=eou/> In the late 18th century, when the Cossack peoples largely lost their autonomy within the empire, they still kept self-governance at the level of the stanitsa;<ref>{{Cite book |last=Kenez |first=Peter |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eEtx7cPnIGwC&q=stanitsa |title=Civil War in South Russia, 1918: The First Year of the Volunteer Army |date=1971-01-01 |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=978-0-520-01709-2 |pages=37–38 |language=en|quote=In the late eighteenth century the Cossacks lost their former autonomy. [...] However the Cossacks retained self-government on the village (''stanitsa'') level.}}</ref> each stanitsa was still allowed to elect its own assembly.<ref>{{Cite encyclopedia |title=Cossack |encyclopedia=[[Encyclopedia Britannica]] |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/Cossack |date=2023-12-05 |language=en}}</ref>

===Destruction===
{{Further|De-Cossackization}}

In the aftermath of the 1917 [[October Revolution]] in Russia, a new [[Soviet]] regime took power. Beginning in 1919, the Soviet regime pursued a policy of [[genocide]]<ref name="Figes">{{cite book|first=Orlando|last=Figes|author-link=Orlando Figes|title=A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891–1924|publisher= Penguin Books|year=1998|isbn= 0-14-024364-X}}</ref><ref name="Rayfield">{{cite book|first=Donald|last=Rayfield|author-link=Donald Rayfield|title=Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him|publisher=Random House|year=2004|isbn=0-375-50632-2}}</ref><ref name="Nekrich">{{cite book|first1=Mikhail|last1=Heller|first2=Aleksandr|last2=Nekrich|author-link2=Alexander Nekrich|title=Utopia in Power: The History of the Soviet Union from 1917 to the Present}}</ref><ref name="Rummel">{{cite book|first=R. J.|last= Rummel|author-link=R. J. Rummel|url=http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE4.HTM|title=Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917|publisher=[[Transaction Publishers]]|date=1990|isbn=1-56000-887-3|access-date=2014-03-01}}</ref><ref name="Extermination order">[http://www.york.ac.uk/admin/presspr/pressreleases/cossacks.htm Soviet order to exterminate Cossacks is unearthed] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091210025518/http://www.york.ac.uk/admin/presspr/pressreleases/cossacks.htm|date=December 10, 2009}} [[University of York]] Communications Office, 21 January 2003</ref> and systematic repression against Cossacks known as [[De-Cossackization]]. The policy aimed at the elimination of the Cossacks as a distinct collectivity by exterminating the Cossack elite, coercing all other Cossacks into compliance and eliminating Cossack distinctness.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|last=Schleifman|first=Nurit|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FTpdAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT114|title=Russia at a Crossroads: History, Memory and Political Practice|date=2013|publisher=[[Routledge]]|isbn=978-1-135-22533-9|pages=114|language=en}}</ref> As part of this policy, the Soviet forces sought to erase Cossack administrative structures, especially of the Don Cossacks.{{sfn|Holquist|1997|pages=139–140}} The purpose of this was to "deny Cossacks any Don structure as a point of identification and to 'dilute' the Cossack population by appending portions of neighboring non-Cossack provinces".{{sfn|Holquist|1997|page=140}} This included distinctly Cossack names for administrative units, as the Cossacks were fond of these names "as markers of their distinctiveness from peasants." The Soviets sought to erase these identities.{{sfn|Holquist|1997|page=140–141}} On 20 April 1919, the [[Red Army]]'s [[Southern Front (RSFSR)|Southern Front]] issued an order renaming the stanitsas to generic [[volost]]s, or counties. Local [[revolutionary committee (Soviet)|revolutionary committee]]s assisted in this, passing resolutions in parallel to destroy the stanitsa as a social unit.{{sfn|Holquist|1997|page=141}} The ''[[Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine]]'' lists the specific end date of the existence of the traditional stanitsa as 1920.<ref name=eou/>

Later in the Soviet Union, the term ''stanitsa'' was used after 1929 to refer to rural settlements on former Cossack land that were governed by [[soviet (council)|soviet council]]s.<ref name=eou/>

===Modern usage===

[[File:Federal subjects that contain places with stanitsa status in Russia.svg|thumb|[[Federal subjects of Russia]] in which stanitsas are a type of settlement]]

In modern [[Russia]], the administration classifies a stanitsa as a type of [[Classification of inhabited localities in Russia#Rural localities|rural locality]] in these [[federal subjects of Russia]]:<ref name=hist>{{Cite encyclopedia |title=Станиця |trans-title=Stanytsia|encyclopedia=[[Encyclopedia of History of Ukraine]] |url=http://resource.history.org.ua/cgi-bin/eiu/history.exe?&I21DBN=EIU&P21DBN=EIU&S21STN=1&S21REF=10&S21FMT=eiu_all&C21COM=S&S21CNR=20&S21P01=0&S21P02=0&S21P03=TRN=&S21COLORTERMS=0&S21STR=Stanytsia|access-date=20 December 2023|language=uk}}</ref>
{{div col|colwidth=15em}}
* [[Adygea]]
* [[Chechnya]]
* [[Dagestan]]
* [[Ingushetia]]
* [[Kabardino-Balkaria]]
* [[Karachay-Cherkessia]]
* [[Krasnodar Krai]]
* [[North Ossetia–Alania]]
* [[Novosibirsk Oblast]]
* [[Omsk Oblast]]
* [[Orenburg Oblast]]
* [[Rostov Oblast]]
* [[Stavropol Krai]]
* [[Sverdlovsk Oblast]]
* [[Volgograd Oblast]] 
{{div col end}}

The most populous stanitsa in modern Russia is [[Kanevskaya]] in Krasnodar Krai (44,800 people in 2005). Formerly, the most populous stanitsa was Ordzhonikidzevskaya in [[Ingushetia]] (61,598 people in 2010), but in 2016 it was reorganized into the town [[Sunzha]].<ref name=hist/> The town [[Stanytsia Luhanska]] in [[Ukraine]], originally founded by Cossacks, still has ''stanytsia'' in its name.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Story of a city: Stanytsia Luhanska |url=https://www.helsinki.org.ua/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Web_Zvit_St_Luganska_A4_Engl2.pdf}}</ref>

==References==
{{wikt}}
{{Reflist}}

==Bibliography==
* {{Cite journal |last=Holquist |first=Peter |date=1997 |title="Conduct Merciless Mass Terror": Decossackization on the Don, 1919 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20171035 |journal=Cahiers du Monde russe |volume=38 |issue=1/2 |pages=127–162 |doi=10.3406/cmr.1997.2486 |jstor=20171035 |issn=1252-6576|url-access=subscription }}

{{Authority control}}

[[Category:History of the Cossacks]]
[[Category:Rural geography]]
[[Category:Geography of Russia]]
[[Category:Human habitats]]
[[Category:Cossack culture]]
[[Category:Stanitsa]]


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