ataman

A truly comprehensive history of the Don Cossack condition would also devote greater attention to the Host's relationship to the cossacks enrolled in the tsar's service as patrol cossacks, distant-service cossacks, and service land atamans (storozhevye kazaki, palkovye kazaki, pomestnye atamany) performing defense duty on Muscovy's southern frontier.

Most of the negotiation worked because Peter I had no grand design to destroy the autonomy of the Don Host--he only wanted to establish stable boundaries for the Host and tame it by encasing it in Russian-controlled territory (168)--and because Host atamans like Frol Minaev were astute politicians who knew how to reaffirm their loyalty to Russia while controlling restless Cossack factions in the Host core.

Not all Tatars living among the Don Cossacks converted to Orthodoxy; Kuts finds several references to a mullah Chepai-abyz, who served the ataman as a diplomatic intermediary with the Nogais.