28 ZOOID 11: 342, GAP to Colonel Gaks 22 October 1783. ZOOID 11: 354, GAP to Colonel N. I. Korsakov 1 February 1784. ZOOID 11: 343, GAP to M. V. Muromtsev.
29 RGVIA 271.1.35 pp 4–5.
30 RGVIA 52.2.11.102 pp 22–3, GAP to Ivan Starov 26 May 1790.
31 ZOOID 11: 341, GAP to Gaks 6 October 1783. CII watched Kherson carefully: for her approval and supply of new funding see SIRIO 27 (1880): 292, CII to GAP 22 January 1784.
32 ZOOID 11: 335, GAP to Gaks 14, 22 October 1783 and GAP to Muromtsev 9 November 1783.
33 Antoine p 228. It is a mark of GAP’s scale of ambition in trading that he hoped to establish commerce with Ethiopia through the Red Sea. O. Markova, O neutralnay sisteme i franko-russkikh otnosheniyakh. Vtoraya Polovina xviii v. p 47. Also: Druzhinina ch xxx.
34 RGADA 11.946.152, Dr G. Behr to GAP, 1787, unpublished.
35 RGADA 5.85.1.124–5, CII to GAP 30 September 1782.
36 Harris p 477, H to Lord Grantham 25 October/5 November 1782.
37 RGADA 5.85.1.88, L 154, CII to GAP.
38 RGADA 1.1/1.43.84–5, L 165, GAP to CII. RGADA 1.1/1.43 pp 76–7, GAP to CII. RGADA 1.1/1.43.78, L 168, GAP to CII. All from Kherson, May 1783.
39 Vassilchikov vol 1 pp 370–1, Count Kirill Razumovsky 22 June 1782.
40 Anspach, Journey p 157, 12 March 1786.
41 P. I. Sumarokov, Travelling through all the Crimea and Bessarabia pp 21–4. Maria Guthrie, A Tour performed in the years 1795–6 through the Taurida or Crimea letter IX p 32.
42 RGADA 1355.1.2064.
43 Author’s visit to Kherson 1998. Kherson Art Museum and Father Anatoly, priest of St Catherine’s Church.
44 RGADA 1.1/1.43.80–3, L 172, GAP to CII June 1783, Kherson.
45 RGADA 1.1/1.43.80–3, L 172, GAP to CII June 1783, Kherson.
46 AVPRI 2.2/8a.21.32.
47 RGADA 1.1/1.43.69–71, GAP to CII July 1783, Karasubazaar.
48 Guthrie letter 27 p 91.
49 ZOOID 12: 308, GAP to Korsakov.
50 RGVIA 52.1.1.160.3 p 57, Korsakov to GAP, report on plan of building works in Tavrichesky Regioin 14 February 1786. Also 160.2.160–2, Korsakov to GAP.
51 Miranda pp 229–30, 1 January 1787.
52 Guthrie letter 27 p 91.
53 RGADA 1.1/1.43.80–3, L 172, GAP to CII June 1783, Kherson.
54 RGADA 1.1/1.43.66, L 181, GAP to CII.
55 ZOOID 12: 265, GAP to A. B. de Balmain 1783.
56 ZOOID 12: 281, 272, GAP to I. A. Igelstrom 16 August 1783.
57 Miranda p 227, 28 December 1786.
58 ZOOID 23 (1901): 41–3.
59 SIRIO 27: 300. Fisher, Russian Annexation pp 142–3. ‘Ocherk voennoy sluzhby krymskikh tatar s 1783 po 1889 god’, ITUAK 30 (1899) pp 1–2. Fisher, Crimean Tartars p 87. Druzhinina pp 64–7, 69, 161–2.
60 Miranda p 225, 25 December 1786.
61 GIM OPI 197.2.43, GAP: On Taurida Province.
62 Author’s visit to Simferopol 1998.
63 RGADA 1.1/1.43.69, L 178, GAP to CII July 1783, Karasubazaar. Colonel Nikolai Korsakov was killed at the siege of Ochakov by his own sword when he fell down a slope. He is buried, like GAP himself, at St Catherine’s in Kherson. His grave is still there though it was probably dug up by the Bolsheviks.
64 RGADA 16.799.1.39–40, L 209.
65 RGADA 16.798.114, CII ukase to GAP about Ekaterinoslav 22 January 1784. RGADA 16.798.180, CII to GAP approving plan of Ekaterinoslav 13 October 1786. Druzhinina p 176.
66 Miranda p 234, 8 January 1787.
67 RGADA 16.689.2.95 and 98, N. Chertkov to GAP 24 December 1781.
68 Druzhinina p 89.
69 George Soloveytchik, Potemkin p 191.
70 RGADA 16.799.1.39–40, L 209. Ségur, Mémoires vol 3 p 173, says GAP talked about St Peter’s when CII visited the site in 1787, but it was not in the actual plans or in letters to CII. It was clearly propagated by hostile foreigners.
71 RGADA 16.799.2.149, L 219.
72 RGADA 16.799.1.1, L 199, GAP to CII. RGVIA 52.1.72.179, L 202, GAP to CII.
73 B&F vol 2 p 86, Count Cobenzl to JII 1 November 1786.
74 RGADA 11.946.270, Charles Castelli to GAP 21 March 1787, Milan, unpublished.
75 ZOOID 9: 276, I. M. Sinelnikov to V. S. Popov 19 April 1784. ZOOID 4: 376, GAP to Sinelnikov 15 January 1786. ZOOID 4: 377, GAP to V. V. Kahovsky. ZOOID 4: 375, GAP to Sinelnikov 14 March 1787. ZOOID 2: 742–3, GAP to Sinelnikov 28 September 1784.
76 RGADA 16.799.1.35–6, GAP to CII October 1786 ud.
77 RGADA 16.799.1.35, L 210, GAP to CII. RGADA 5.85.1.498, L 203, GAP to CII ud.
78 RGADA 16.696.1.179, 30 January 1792.
79 RGADA 11.950.5.234. RGVIA 52.2.103.50–1. RGADA 52.2.11.102.22–3 (Starov’s plans). RGADA 16.696.1.163–4 and 180–18.
80 Bartlett p 133. A. Fadyev, Vospominaniya 1790–1867 vol 1 p 42.
81 Dimitri Shvidkovsky, The Empress and the Architect: British Architecture and Gardens at the Court of Catherine the Great pp 250–1.
82 Author’s visit to Dniepropetrovsk 1998.
83 John Dornberg, Brezhnev p 69.
84 ZOOID 13: 184–7, GAP to M. L. Faleev 1791. ZOOID 13: 182–3, Faleev to GAP probably 1791.
85 P. M. Vyborny, Nikolaev p 6.
86 Sumarokov, Travelling p 7. Guthrie letters 1–2 pp 6–8.
87 SBVIM vol 7 p 371. José de Ribas: RP 2.1 p 34. AAE 20: 24, Langeron.
88 IRLI 265.2.2115.1–2, L 169, GAP to CII, Kherson. RGADA 5.85.1.502, L 173, CII to GAP, Tsarskoe Selo. AVPRI 2.2/8a.21.42, L 185, GAP to CII, Nezhin. Evgeny Anisimov quoted in Lindsey Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great p 88.
89 Author’s visit to Kherson 1998.
90 Miranda p 204, 22 November 1786. SIRIO 27 (1880): 369, CII to GAP on money for the navy 26 June 1786.
91 Anspach, Journey p 159, 12 March 1786.
92 JII–CII (Arneth) p 353, JII to Count Lacy 19/30 May 1787.
93 PRO FO Secretary of State: State Papers, Foreign, cyphers SP106/67, William Fawkener to Lord Grenville 18 June 1791 and Estimate of Russian Black Sea Fleet by British Ambassador Charles Whitworth 11 January 1787, unpublished. M. S. Anderson, Europe in the Eighteenth Century, pp 144–5. SIRIO 27 (1880): 354–5, CII ukase to GAP placing Black Sea Fleet under his own independent command 13 August 1785.
94 PSZ 10: 520/1, 24 April 1777.
95 Michael Jenkins, Arakcheev, Grand Vizier of the Russian Empire, pp 171–203.
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 abo
ut 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.
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
1 AKV 16: 202–4, S. R. Vorontsov 11/22 August 1786, London. AKV 11: 177–9, S. R. Vorontsov to Count N. P. Panin 6/18 May 1801, Southampton. AKV 13: 101–2, A. A. Bezborodko to S. R. Vorontsov 28 October 1785, St Petersburg.
2 BM 33540 ff 64–5, SB to JB 1784, Kremenchuk.
3 Bartlett pp 127–8, D. Gra
y to Sir Robert Ainslie 24 June 1784.
4 ZOOID 12: 324, GAP to V. V. Kahovsky.
5 M. S. Vorontsov’s Family Archive, Orders of H. E. Prince GAPT regarding Tauris Region ud, July? 1785: pp 324–5 no 194, GAP to Kahovsky.
6 ZOOID 15 (1889): 607–8, GAP to Sinelnikov 1 July 1784.
7 ITUAK 8 (1889) p 10, GAP to Kahovsky 16 August 1787.
8 RGVIA 52.1.2.461.40, GAP to Kahovsky 25 May 1787.
9 ZOOID 11: part 2 pp 673–4, GAP to M. L. Faleev.
10 RGADA 16.788.1.149, GAP’s printed address to nobility and inhabitants of Tavrichesky Region, containing appeal to cultivate agriculture and description of benefits from this.
11 RGVIA 52.1.2.496.44–5, GAP to Kahovsky 20 January 1787. M. S. Vorontsov’s Family Archive, p 220 no 180, Orders of H. E. Prince GAPT regarding Foundation of Tavrichesky Region 1781–6, GAP to Kahovsky.
12 RGVIA 52.1.461.1.13, GAP to Professors V. Livanov and M. Prokopovich 5 January 1787. RGVIA 52.1.461.1.14 GAP to K. Hablitz same date. SIRIO 27 (1880): 357, CII to GAP on Professors Livanov and Prokopovich recently back from England 1 September 1785.
13 PRO FO Secretary of State: State Papers, Foreign, cyphers SP106/67, William Fawkener to Lord Grenville 18 June 1791, unpublished.
14 AKV 13: 59–60, Bezborodko to S. R. Vorontsov 20 August 1784. Sirin Bey, one of the local Crimean officials, got 27,000 desyatins, more than Bezborodko’s 18,000. Popov received 57,876 desyatins (28,000 on the peninsula itself), while Bezborodko was so thrilled with his ‘very nice country estate near Karasubazaar’ that he boasted, in Petersburg, it would be royal in scale. (Potemkin set up ‘an English farm’ on it.) Druzhinina pp 119–20.
15 RGVIA 52.1.2.461.1.64.
16 Venetia Murray, High Society in the Regency Period pp 145–7.
17 RGADA 11.939.2, Lady Craven to GAP 5 April 1786, Sebastopol, unpublished. Cross, By the Banks of the Neva p 358.
18 Filosofskaya i politicheskaya perepiska Imperatritsky Ekateriny II s Doctorom Zimmermanom p 47, CII to Dr Zimmerman 10/21 January 1786. GAP’s request for silk experts in Crimea. AAE 10: 206, Observations sur l’état actuel de la Crimée, Comte de Ségur to Comte de Vergennes, unpublished.
Catherine the Great & Potemkin Page 84
