Stanitsa

Stanitsa (Russian: стани́ца; ; Ukrainian: станиця, stanytsia) is a village inside a Cossack host (voisko) (казачье войско, kazachye voysko, sometimes translated as "Cossack Army"). Stanitsas were the primary unit of Cossack hosts.

Historically, the stanitsa was a unit of economic and political organisation of the Cossack peoples primarily in the southern regions of the Russian Empire.

Much of the land was held in common by the stanitsa, subject to annual allocation to Cossack families by the Ataman, the appointed leader of the community. This was an autocratic process, and subject to patronage, nepotism and other forms of corruption, but a degree of consent was required, within the militarised Cossack society, that limited the worst abuses. Stanitsas were hierarchical societies analogous to military and regimental structures, relying on the inbuilt conservatism and long-standing traditions of the subject people, and the element of common landholding should not be confused with either democracy or equality. This form of society can be contrasted with the much more permanent forms of peasant economy operating within the Russian empire of the time, in which each peasant family worked the same area of land on a long term basis and was responsible for its productivity and yield. While the word stanitsa in a modern usage survives, the stanitsa system in its historic context was effectively destroyed in the aftermath of the Russian revolution, when the Civil War and subsequent collectivisation of the land by the state in the Stalinist period, removed the elements of local practical, economic, and political control which had previously existed.

In modern Russia stanitsas are classified as a type of rural localities and are mostly predominant in the southern regions of Rostov Oblast, Krasnodar and Stavropol Krais and most of the Republics of the Northern Caucasus.