https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cossacks what, exactly, is a Cossack? an ethnicity? a military rank? no: by the 19th century in the Russian Empire, they were a government-assigned rank, like "serf" or "noble." endogamous, but of mixed ancestry.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/4bgxrcawndgaq5ddfu5c8/Curve-2026-Palmer-SystemShock.docx?rlkey=8vfxprzaci1ebl71b2plfwao7&st=bh6ar5ht&e=4&dl=0 Ada Palmer's talk at The Curve about "saving the world" (the world never ends all the way, and is never saved once and for all, and when we "save" it, it looks like grunt work and afterwards people assume the world never needed saving in the first place.) I do basically believe this to be true, for pretty much the same reason (awareness of historical context.) History tells us that Shit Happens, at tragic and cataclysmic scale, but also that Life Goes On even during the Shit Happening. Individual people matter, and their choices matter, but nobody quite has the role that a hero in fiction does, and even people who matter tremendously are easily forgotten.