Festival of Cossack culture opens in Kuban region

KRASNODAR, southern Russia, September 11 (Itar-Tass) - The annual folk festival of Cossack traditions and culture, known as The Legends of Taman, opened on the Sea of Azov coast on Saturday, September 10. Taman is a place where the first group of Cossack settlers disembarked 219 years ago. "The Cossack settlers performed one sacred duty: they protected the southern fringes of the Russian Empire by sword and ploughed the wild steppes, which turned into Russia's breadbasket centuries after," Akexander Tkachev, the governor of the Kuban region, said at the opening ceremony. He added that the Cossacks had great love of homeland and strong faith in their hearts.
The festival is being held in the territory of the Ataman outdoor ethnographic museum. The first day started with a liturgy in the Church of the Protecting Veil of the Holy Mother of God. After that, monuments to two Russian military leaders, Alexander Suvorov and Fyodor Ushakov, were unveiled in the territory of the Fanagorian Fortress.
A regional exhibition of local crafts opened in Ataman. Horseback
riders were training for equestrian events with traditional stunts on
horseback and the cutting of vines.
The Ataman ethnographic complex has been operating for three
years. In autumn 2009, the governor of the Krasnodar territory came up
with an initiative to recreate a corner of Cossack life on the toe of the Taman peninsula where the first Cossack settlers appeared more than two hundred years ago to cultivate the fertile Kuban land. "Ataman" is a replica of a Cossack village of the 19th-early 20thh century. The museum is open to visitors from spring until late autumn. "One day is certainly not enough to tour around the whole exhibition complex, visit every house and the local chapel. Schoolchildren from all parts of the Krasnodar territory come here to attend practical lessons on regional history," Vice-Governor Galina Zolina told Itar-Tass.
This year's festival will last for three days.