Catherine the Great & Potemkin: The Imperial Love Affair

96 RGADA 16.588.1.12. RGADA 16.799.1.141–2 and 95. SBVIM vol 7 p 85. GAP to Maj-Gen and Gov of Azov Chertkov 14 June 1776 and pp 94 to General Meder 27 August 1776. GAP took special care with Armenians – see L. Mellikset-Bekov, From the Materials for the History of the Armenians in the South of Russia p 14, GAP (via Popov) to Kahovsky on settlement of Armenians. Bruess pp 195–7. Druzhinina pp 176, 150–4, 164–5.

97 CAD/51. Pole Carew Papers, unpublished. On 25 June 1781, Potemkin arranged for thousands of noble and state serfs to be transferred to the new lands, if they wished. ‘These lands,’ wrote Pole Carew about New Russia, ‘are reserved for the transporting of 20,000 peasants of the Crown from the parts of the Empire where they are too numerous.’

98 ZOOID 8: 212, GAP to CII 10 August 1785. ZOOID 8 contains many of GAP’s reports to CII and orders on settlers, e.g. ZOOID 8: 209, 9 July 1776 on settlement of Albanians in Kerch and Yenikale. Raskolniki: GAP cultivated the Old Believers, let them worship as they wished. ZOOID 9 (1875): 284. GAP to Metropolitan Gabriel of St Petersburg. 26 August 1785. See settlement of Raskolniki report of Ekaterinoslav Governor Sinelnikov to GAP, ZOOID 9: p 270. 2 April 1785.

99 PSZ 22: 280, 14 January 1785. GAP’s governors sent officials to recruit women, for example ZOOID 10, August 1784. Kahovsky writing to Popov about a report to GAP, says he has sent an official to Little Russia ‘where he found wives for all the bachelors.’ It is hard to gauge the success of GAP’s female recruiting campaign but in January 1785, we know that 4,425 recruits’ women were sent south to join their husbands in their hard frontier lives.

100 ZOOID 8: 212, GAP to CII 10 August 1785. ‘Let me transfer clerks whom the Synod returns for a settlement in this territory,’ he requested CII in 1785. ‘The clerks will be like military settlers and it will be doubly advantageous as they will be both ploughmen and militia.’ Four thousand unemployed priests settled. Also: Bartlett, p 125.

101 PSZ 20: 14870 and 15006. GAP to M. V. Muromtsev 31 August 1775, SBVIM vol 7 p 54. In a potentially revolutionary move, Potemkin ruled that landowners could not reclaim serfs if they settled in his provinces – more evidence, if any were needed, of his semi-imperial right to do whatever he thought right, even if it broke the rules of noble-dominated Russian society. This did not make him popular with the aristocracy.

102 RGADA 11.869.114, Prince A. A. Viazemsky to GAP 5 August 1786. See also RGADA 448.4402.374. Initially, 26,000 serfs were moved to Azov and Ekaterinoslav Provinces. Further peasants – probably 24,000 in all – were allowed to put their names down for transfer. Another 26,000 landowners’ peasants went. 30,307 state peasants also settled in the north Caucasus, according to a letter from Viazemsky to GAP in 1786.

103 V. Zuev, ‘Travel Notes 1782–3’, Istoricheskiy i geographicheskiy mesyazeslov p 144.

104 SIRIO 27: 275. PSZ 22: 438–40. 16239, 13 August 1785. SBVIM vol 7 pp 119–24. GAP ruled that a nobleman could receive an allotment of land, provided he settled not less than fifteen families for every 1500 desyatins during the first ten years. Catherine gave him unique powers to decide what taxes, if any, they should pay. For example: Druzhinina p 63. RGADA 248.4402.374–5. This shows how GAP and CII worked together in the settlement of the south. On 16 October 1785, GAP suggested that landowners and peasants settling in the south should not have to pay landtax or polltax. The Senate agreed (same reference p382/3) on 25 November 1785 but CII (p 384) left the details to be decided by GAP.

105 RGADA 11.946.273 and 275. Mikhail Kantakusin (Prince Cantacuzino) to GAP, 6 February 1787 and 25 January 1787, St Petersburg unpublished. Some of these recruiters were merchants, others were Phanariot princes like Cantacuzino or noblemen like the Duc de Crillon.

106 A. Skalkovsky, Chronological Review of New Russia (1730–1823) part I pp 146–7.

107 RGADA 11.946.32. Panaio and Alexiano to GAP 11 December 1784, Sebastopol, unpublished. Count Demetrio Mocenigo sent at least five groups of Greeks and Corsicans, over 1,010 people between August 1782 and July 1783. Druzhinina, Severnoye prichernomoye p 159. See Bruess p 115.

108 ZOOID 11: 330–1 GAP to Count Ivan Osterman 25 March 1783.

109 RGADA 11.895.25. GAP to Baron Sutherland ud, 1787, unpublished.

110 ZOOID 9 (1875): 265, Sinelnikov to Popov. RGADA 16.962.14. V. M. Kabuzan Narodonaseleniye rossii v XVIII – pervoy polovine XIX veka p 154.

111 ZOOID 11: 331, GAP to Gaks, 26 May 1783.

112 RGADA 11.946.278. Mikhail Kantakusin (Cantacuzino) to GAP 30 May 1785, Mogilev, unpublished. Bartlett p 126.

113 Edward Crankshaw p 313.