Cossack pensioner in full uniform. The Cossacks, a group of predominantly East Slavic-speaking Orthodox Christian people, who became known as members of democratic, self-governing, semimilitary communities, originating in the Pontic steppe (north of the Black Sea). They inhabited sparsely populated areas and islands in the lower Dnieper,[2][date missing] Don, Terek, and Ural River basins and played an important role in the historical and cultural development both of Ukraine and of Russia.

After World War II, the Soviet Union disbanded the Cossack units in the Soviet Army. During the Perestroika era in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, descendants of Cossacks moved to revive their national traditions. In 1988, the Soviet Union passed a law allowing the re-establishment of former Cossack hosts and the formation of new ones. During the 1990s, many regional authorities agreed to hand over to these Cossack hosts some local administrative and policing duties.