Only the harmful side of Russian influence shows itself--by interference at elections, by confiscation of church bells, and by the troops who are quartered in the country or march through it.
A Cossack is inclined to hate less the dzhigit hillsman who maybe has killed his brother, than the soldier quartered on him to defend his village, but who has defiled his hut with tobacco-smoke.

He respects his enemy the hillsman and despises the soldier, who is in his eyes an alien and an oppressor.

In reality, from a Cossack's point of view a Russian peasant is a foreign, savage, despicable creature, of whom he sees a sample in the hawkers who come to the country and in the Ukrainian immigrants whom the Cossack contemptuously calls 'woolbeaters'.

For him, to be smartly dressed means to be dressed like a Circassian.

The best weapons are obtained from the hillsmen and the best horses are bought, or stolen, from them.