The issue of Cossack weapons has been a topic of many a heated discussion on Russian Forums ( Fora?)
There is a great book by Denis Toichkin, an Ukrainian weapon historian, describing virtually all weapons belonging to Zaporozhian Cossacks that were either preserved in the muzeums or dug out at the sites of major Cossack-Polish battles. He concludes that there was no such thing as the indigenous Cossack saber: all are Turkish, Polish, Tatar or Persian, ie acquired one way or another from enemies and neighbors. The few made in the Ukraine are just faithful but crude copies of the above.
Not a surprise: Cossacks shunned all and any manufacturing jobs and had no material base of weapons manufacture. Any Cossack acquiring a productive profession instead of fighting was ( literally!) beaten and ostracized. They were a purely fighting host: akin to Caribbean pirates. Toichkin's analysis of the occupations of local inhabitants and the existence of smithies, import of steel etc. confirms it 100%.
Looking for a shashka among the Zaporozhian Cossacks is just as fruitful as searching for nimchas in Japan. In contrast, Kuban, Terek and Black Sea Cossack Hosts used shashkas left and right. Not a miracle: they lived among the true Caucasians :-)
BTW, re. Forum/Fora:
A Roman goes into a bar and asks for martinus.
"You mean martini?",- the barman corrects him. " No. Had I wanted a double martinus, I would have asked for martini".
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