History lesson: Cossacks were the actual inhabitants of South Russia / Eastern Ukraine that lived there for a long time (dating at least to 1200's), later on joined by runaway people from Russia that headed to Eastern Ukraine and Southern Russia away from Czar's rule. Back in the day (somewhere in the 1600's) slavery was the way to go in Imperial Russia. Villagers were sold for money and were to do what the master told them. So a lot of people ran away from the control of the Russian empire, into the vast steppes of South Russia where nomadic muslim tribes were still wreaking havoc. This way they lived on nobody's territory and answered to no one.

Those guys were really fierce fighters, because life in the steppes wasn't easy. Since they always rode on horses they were a very swift, mobile force. Even though they originally hated the Russian empire and for a while were independent, later on they still had to accept Russian rule, but got to be their own type of troops / army unit, and fought alongside the regular Russian Imperial army for example against Napoleon. Later on during the 1905 and 1917 revolutions most of them went against the revolutionaries, save very few that were dubbed Krasnye (red) cossacks. A lot of those were still sent to Syberia by the communists later on, as they didn't trust them. Nowadays you can still find cossacks in Southern Russia, the region that borders Chechnya and Dagestan. I don't think they're a part of the regular army nowadays, but they do ride the bordering regions (yes, on horses ) as volunteer safekeepers. Now that you know all about cossacks, on to the game


GH info page - has the first screens from the game and u can find a link to the game's homepage there (related link). The publisher is CDV, developer is GSC Gameworld (same dudes that made Cossacks 1 obviously, and a different dev team of theirs works on Stalker :thumbup: ). Release date: Q1 2004.

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