Don,-Russian-Don history
The Don Horse, the oldest continuously bred Russian riding horse, traces its origins back over 200 years to the steppes of Southern Russia. The powerful Don River gave its name to the grassy, treeless plains that bordered and fed it, to the Cossacks who inhabited the area and to the remarkable breed of horse that developed from this symbiotic relationship between a people whose lives came to depend on horses and the horses who thrived in the harsh conditions of the arid steppes. In this semi-nomadic region, passing herds of horses left their genetic mark on already diverse local equine populations of the Nogai type. Preexisting breeds that most influenced the development of the Don breed included Karabakh, Persian and Turkmenic breeds, later Arabian horses (often introduced to the Don Cossacks’ herds as war booty), and, lastly, the thoroughbred, then identified as "English pure bred."
The Cossacks trace their heritage back to the sixteenth century, when runaway serfs (slaves) settled parts of southern Russia. These peoples, who achieved their freedom at some risk, eventually became called Cossacks, after the Mongolian word "Kazak," meaning a lightly armored warrior on horseback. They lived semi-nomadically, loosely overseeing their horses that ran free in huge herds. The Don Cossacks did not become farmers and were not rooted to the land; their life determined the kind of horse they most valued and they played a major role in defining the traits of their horses.
The Don Cossacks earned their reputation as fearless combatants and superb riders riding superb horses. They inhabited a large buffer zone on Russia’s southern border that frequently brought them into conflict with their Turkic and Tartaric neighbors. By the mid-eighteenth century these fierce Russian warriors began to serve officially in the Russian army. 60,000 horse-mounted Cossacks from the Don region served in the Napoleonic Wars. When he assessed his disastrous invasion of Russia, Napoleon allegedly made special note of the superior skills of the Cossack regiments.
The first private stud farms devoted to the breeding of Don Horses appeared at the end of the eighteennth century. The Don Horse became well known as a distinct breed in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. By mid-century over half the horses in the Don steppes were direct descendants of the original Don horses; that number dropped by half by the end of the century. Crossbreeding of Don mares to Streletsky, Orlov-Rostopchin and especially English-bred stallions refined the Don conformation at the expense of some of its warmblood characteristics. The Don Horse became the favored all-purpose breed of military horse, used for work under saddle and in harness, not only by the Cossacks but also the entire Russian army. Throughout the nineteenth century Cossack regiments, almost exclusively mounted on Don Horses, enjoyed special prestige in military circles. They were among the tsar’s most loyal defenders during the 1917 Russian revolution.
If the warrior spirit of the Cossacks is now largely a memory, the Don Horse has survived mostly intact into the twenty-first century. World War I demonstrated that the days of mounted soldiers had passed. The decimating losses to the Don during the war and the subsequent civil war delivered a crushing blow to the breed; only a few hundreds of horses survived. A systematic government-sponsored breeding program centered in the Rostov area revived the breed in the thirties and forties and the Don continued to serve in the Russian military until the cavalry was disbanded in 1954.
1948 marked the official separation of the Don from the related Budenny (a.k.a. Budyonnny) breed, an Anglo-Don cross.
