Doll-A- Day 2023 #42: Cossack

   Today's doll is a little guy I got at an antique store  a couple of years ago. I think he's a Cossack.

  A Cossack is described by Wikipedia as:

The Cossacks are a predominantly East Slavic Orthodox Christian people originating in the Pontic-Caspian steppe of Ukraine and Southern Russia. Historically, they were a semi-nomadic and semi-militarized people, who, while under the nominal suzerainty of various Eastern European states at the time, were allowed a great degree of self-governance in exchange for military service. Although numerous linguistic and religious groups came together to form the Cossacks, most of them coalesced and became East Slavic-speaking Orthodox Christians. The Cossacks were particularly noted for holding democratic traditions. The rulers of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Russian Empire endowed Cossacks with certain special privileges in return for the military duty to serve in the irregular troops (mostly cavalry). 

The traditional Cossack is pictured this way:

  Note the long coat, fur hat, boots, and long gun on his back. The long coats cover them, but the uncovered boots might indicate to you that the Cossack is wearing knee length trousers. So is our man.

This little guy is about 6 inches tall.

Sorry about his face being covered with his fur hat. No matter what I do, the fur still goes over his face. I had to take the following picture while blowing the hair off his face,

  The fur hat is part of the whole traditional Cossack outfit, although it isn't always the same kind of fur. From the pictures I have seen, a lot of the time it was lamb's wool. (And we all know how awful the harvesting of karakul lamb's wool is from my recent post on Betsy Wetsy, don't we boys and girls? If you Google how it's harvested, I promise you will be horrified.) This guy's hat appears to be rabbit hair. That also creeps me out, but this rabbit has been dead for decades, as this guy looks very old to me. You'll notice his stockingette face has some damage.

  His coat is satin, with embroidered trim and bell type sleeves.

his hand is damaged too.

He's wearing a gymnastyorka, or, the English translation, gymnasterka, which is a military pullover tunic with a standing collar, and button closure. The buttons could be up the middle or at the side of the shirt front.

  And I've already mentioned boots, so lets look at his.

They have cardboard soles.

Sorry about the focus. 

He's carrying what could be a gun or a staff...or a spear?

It has a leather strap so he can carry it on his shoulder. There's nothing but a stick to the thing he's carrying though.

Let's look at the earlier picture again though. It looks like there may have been something attached to the upper portion, plus there may have been more to the end, but it broke off.

  Anyway, I thought he was cute, and I like his clothes. He was a good price, so I bought him. I wish he had less damage, but he deserves to be saved.

  That's today's doll. Tomorrow we'll celebrate Black History Month with a doll I can't afford!