Pages of the history of the Cossacks in the documents of the Soviet special services. 1920s

The article is devoted to little-known pages of documents of the Soviet special services reflecting the history of the Cossacks in the 1920s. State policy reports, reviews of the political and economic situation in the USSR, prepared by the OGPU Information Department, despite their departmental specifics and the predominance of negative assessments, at the same time, differ in the scale of coverage of events taking place in the country and complement historiography and source studies on the problems of the socio-economic situation of Cossacks, relations with Soviet government structures, interethnic contradictions, protest performances. Research Methods. Russian historical science has a rich arsenal of research on the history of the Russian Cossacks in both the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. Many scientific articles have been prepared and published, in which the authors deal with various aspects of the life of the Cossacks and their relations with other ethnic communities. The Cossacks left a significant trace in the history of Russia and as discoverers of new lands, who multiplied the economic potential of the Russian statehood, participated in the development of new territories of the state, by which it was growing. Nevertheless, many issues due to the closed nature of documents on the history of the Cossacks, kept under the “secret” cover, remained for a long time outside the scope of research. Based on the methods of historical research (chronological, retrospective, historical-comparative, microhistory, etc.) and source studies, the authors set the goal to present to the reader documents about the life of the Cossacks in the first half of the 1920s, when they had to experience various transformations, integrate into the Soviet society under new conditions, build new relations both within the Cossacks themselves and with the peoples living in their neighborhood.