Catherine the Great & Potemkin: The Imperial Love Affair

114 Y. Gessen, Istoriya Evreyskogo naroda v Rossii, and same author Zakon i zhizn kak sozdavalis ogranichitelnyye zony o zhitelsteve v Rossi pp 16–18 quoted in Madaringa Russia p 505. This survey of the Jews under CII and GAP owes much to D. Z. Feldman, Svetleyshiy Knyaz GA Potemkin i Rossiyskiye Evrei pp 186–92; David E. Fishman, Russia’s First Modern Jews The Jews of Shklov pp 46–59 and pp 91–3; John Klier, Russia Gathers Her Jews, Origins of the Jewish Question in Russia 1772–1825 pp 35–80, particularly on GAP pp 37, 95, 125, and Louis Greenberg, The Jews in Russia, vol 1 pp 23–4.

115 RGADA 16.696.1.179, Register of Peoples in Ekaterinoslav 30 January 1792. 45,000 Jews gained by Russia in the First Partition: Klier p 19.

116 GAP came to know his circle of Jewish merchants and rabbis through his Krichev estate in Belorussia and through the court maintained nearby at Shklov by Semyon Zorich, Catherine’s former lover. Joshua Zeitlin was the Jew closest to GAP but the other leading Jewish courtier was Natan Nota ben Hayim, known in Russian as Natan Shklover (Nathan of Shklov) or Nota Khaimovich Notkin who like Zeitlin was in contact with the philosophes of the Jewish enlightenment such as Moses Mendelssohn in Berlin. Zeitlin and Notkin helped Potemkin build roads, towns and raise armies and fleets – and it is likely that Zeitlin was behind the Prince’s idea to create a Jewish regiment (see Chapter 26.) Notkin, a far less religious Jewish figure than Zeitlin, was the first in the long line of secular Jewish merchant princes who were increasingly Russified and unJewish. Indeed Zeitlin’s wealthy son-in-law Abraham Perets, who continued to be patronised by GAP’s heirs, became such a society figure in St Petersburg in the early nineteenth century that he converted to Orthodoxy. Even so his close friendship with Alexander I’s reforming minister Mikhail Speransky shocked Russian society and damaged the minister – which only goes to show the extraordinary nature of GAP’s friendship with rebbe Zeitlin a few years earlier. Other of GAP’s favoured Jews included Karl Hablitz, the botanist who served on the Persian expedition, and Nikolai Stiglitz who bought 2,000 souls on ex-Zaporogian land from Prince A. A. Viazemsky at GAP’s request. Stiglitz, descended from German Jews, founded a merchant dynasty that lasted into the nineteenth century. (Maybe, the settlement of Jews on Cossack land was a further contributing factor to their anti-semitism.) These Jews played a special role in building GAP’s southern projects. Indeed Notkin specially suggested settling ‘Jews on fertile steppes to breed sheep…and founding factories’ – a precursor of the Jewish collective farms founded in that area by the Bolsheviks in the 1920s and the idea during the Second World War to found a Jewish homeland in the Crimea. An example of GAP protecting the Jews was the false currency scandal in 1783 involving the Jews of Shklov. Finally, it seems from the archives on Baron Richard Sutherland, the British banker, that Potemkin supported Zeitlin over the Baron, quite a mark of favour in that famous Anglophile. Klier p 95; Greenberg pp 23/24; Derzhavin, Zapiski p 133. Feldman pp 186–92. Fishman pp 46–59 and 91–3. This page for the delegation to Catherine. This page for the memories of Zeitlin and GAP together by the former’s great-grandson Shai Hurvitz quoted from Seger hayai (Book of My Life) by Shai Hurvitz, Hashiloah 40 (1922) p 3. ZOOID 12: 295 6 March 1784, Zeitlin appointed by GAP as manager of the monetary unit of the Kaffa mint. On Catherine’s decree on zhids and evrei: PSZ: XXII. 16146. For relationship between GAP, Sutherland and Zeitlin, see GARF 9, RGVIA 52 and RGADA 11, especially RGADA 11.895.3–5, Sutherland to GAP 10 August 1783 and 13 September 1783. RGADA 11.895.7 Sutherland to GAP 2 March 1784. All unpublished. See also Chapter 29 note 43.

117 ZOOID 17: 163–88, P. A. Ivanov. ‘The Management of Jewish immigration into New Russia region’. Also ZOOID 11: p 330, GAP to Count Osterman 25 March 1783. GAP approves of Jewish immigration to Kherson, possibly not from Poland and Belorussia but from the Mediterranean via the Duc de Crillon’s Corsicans and Italians. Engelhardt p 42.

118 Miranda p 219. 30 December 1786.

119 Fishman pp 46–59 and pp 91–3. For Zeitlin’s retirement to Ustye p 58/9 and also Notes 37–41. Note 41: Fishman believes ‘Zeitlin’s role model in constructing his court may have been Potemkin.’ Zeitlin, born in 1742, lived on in luxurious retirement until 1821. The active role of leader of the Jewish community fell to Notkin and Perets.

CHAPTER 19: BRITISH BLACKAMOORS AND CHECHEN WARNING