Foreign Settlements in Russia

Pre-Peter the

German settlement in Lefortovo , near Moscow.

Peter I Board

Under Elizabeth Petrovna , the government is striving to populate the southern desert margins with foreign colonists.

Southern Slavic Colonies in the 18th Century

In 1752, the Austrian Serb Ivan Horvat-Curtitsa was given the privilege on land in Novorossia, on the right bank of the Dnieper , near the then Polish border. Croat-Curtitz settled here 16,000 Serbian immigrants and formed two regiments of them - one hussar , nicknamed Croatian by his name, and the other infantry, called Pandur . All the land was named New Serbia ^[1] . To protect against troubled neighbors - Cossacks - Horvat-Curtitz built the fortress of St. Elizabeth, from which the city Elisavetgrad was later formed. Other Serb immigrants, Shevich and Depreradovic , received lands in the Bakhmut province , which became known as Slavic Serbia ^[2] .

The settlers were settled by companies ; trenches were built for them ^[3] , from which significant places subsequently grew, for example, Novomyrgorod , Krivoy Rog , and so on. The land was endowed with reversal: private - 20 - 30 quarters , ensigns - 50, lieutenants - 80, captains - 100 ^[1] .

In 1784, the lands of Horvat-Kurtitsa, Shevich and Depreradovich became part of the Ekaterinoslav governorship , and the Serbian, Bulgarian and Macedonian regiments merged with the suburban hussars' regiments to the north of them.

During the First Turkish War , in 1769, the Bug Cossack army was formed from Turkish immigrants ( Moldovans , Vlachs , Bulgarians , etc., who had gone over to Russia); it was settled on the border, on the river. Bugu, and received a benefit for 30 years ^[4] .

Catherine II Board

The extensive colonization of foreigners in the Wild Field received on the basis of the manifestos of Catherine II in 1762, 1763 and 1764. Migrants were guaranteed the administration of rites according to their faith, freedom from paying taxes for a certain number of years, land allocation in sufficient quantities, freedom from military service, non-interference of officials in their internal jurisdiction ^[1] .

For foreigners, the area between the Don and the Volga was assigned (from the village of Cherdynsky to Tsaritsyn and further to the nameless river, which flows into the Don, then upwards by the Don to Saratov County and further to the island of Cherdynsky).

The resettlement of immigrants was carried out by districts , the circumference of which was determined to be 60–70 miles , and the area was such that up to 1,000 families could be settled on it; the family’s allotment was determined to be 30 dessiatinas , and each colony was given spare land “for future children”. These statutes, promulgated in Germany through the Russian envoys, caused a strong movement there; all those who had neither shelter nor food ^{[1] were} recorded as colonists: they were attracted not only by the promised benefits , but also by receiving fodder money (8 shillings a day from the time of the note) ^[1] . The first parties of the colonists were unsuccessful both in moral qualities ^[1] and in physical development ^[1] ; they settled in the territory of Saratov and the future Samara province , and from 1764 to 1766 they formed 102 colonies; besides, some colonists settled in the provinces of Petersburg , Voronezh , Chernihiv and Livonia ^[1] .

In 1770, the call and reception of immigrants from abroad was temporarily suspended, and upon renewal, in 1782, it was sent to the Novorossiysk Territory . In 1782, Prince Potyomkin installed a party of Swedes from Dago Island in the Kherson province (see Staroshvedskoye (village) ). Since 1787, the Mennonites from the environs of Danzig and other German colonists moved to Novorossia ^[5] .

Immigrant settlement management systems

In order to manage the business of colonization and the colonies arranged by the manifesto of 1768, the “Office of the Guardianship of Foreigners” was established in St. Petersburg, which had “power and advantages equal to those of state colleges”; she received annually 200,000 rubles to assist in the resettlement.

The direct management of the colonies was entrusted to the commissars , and in 1766 a “office of the office of guardianship of foreigners” was established in Saratov , to which commissars were subordinated. In 1782 , after the formation of the provinces , the office and office of the office were abolished, and the management of the colonists, along with the state- run peasants , was entrusted to " directors of economics "; the direct management of each colony remained in the hands of the commissioner ^[1] .

Due to the extreme decline of the colonies ^[1] and the universal complaints of the settlers on abuses and all sorts of constraints, in 1797 a special “expedition of the state economy and guardianship of foreign and rural economics” was established at the senate for the higher management of the colonies that were removed from the general institutions ^{[1 ]} . In 1802, this expedition was attached to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and when the colonies were transferred to the jurisdiction of the Ministry of State Property, it was completely abolished. Under the supervision of the expedition consisted of local management of the northern colonies (that is, St. Petersburg ), the Volga region and the southern edge . The superintendent was appointed to manage the colonies; this position existed until 1841 , when the duties of a caretaker were assigned to the district head. For the administration of the Volga colonies, a foreign guardianship office was re-established in Saratov, which, among other things, was in charge of all judicial-police and civil matters between colonists. In 1833, the guardianship office was renamed the Saratov office of foreign settlers. To manage the colonies in the south of Russia, in the provinces of Tauride , Kherson and Yekaterinoslav , the Novorossiysk (later Yekaterinoslav) office of foreign guardianship was established in Ekaterinoslav , on the same basis as the Saratov office; later Odessa and Bessarabian offices were established.

In 1819, a trusteeship committee was set up in Yekaterinoslav on foreign settlers from the southern region of Russia. From 1820 to 1833 the committee was located in Chisinau , then transferred to Odessa ; Also in 1833, the offices of the foreign settlers were abolished. Separate colonies in the provinces of Chernigov, Poltava, Voronezh, and others were under the direct jurisdiction of local governors.

In 1804 , after the transfer of the headquarters of the colonies to the Office of the Ministry of the Interior ( 1802 ), it was decided to allow only good farmers, gardeners and herdsmen, as well as craftsmen, useful in rural life, to be resettled to Russia on land. each of them has at least 300 guilders in cash capital or goods; the number of immigrants was limited to 200 families per year, which was paid only for ships or carts; for the colonies, the Novorossiysk Territory was assigned, as close as possible to the port cities of Odessa and Theodosia , a loan of 300 rubles was granted for economic procurement, and fodder loans were issued before the first harvest; the exemption in taxes and duties was granted only for 10 years ^[1] .

On August 5, 1819, the Committee of Ministers adopted the “Provision on the intersection of further relocation to Russia of foreign immigrants” ^[6] . Further resettlement took place with special permissions ^[1] : for example, in 1851 100 families of Mennonites from Prussia in the Samara province were allowed to settle, and in 1860 - Slavs from Turkey. With the establishment of the Ministry of State Property, all colonies were taken over; individual colonies, over which no special departments were established and which were under the jurisdiction of the heads of provinces, were transferred to the jurisdiction of the state property chambers. The transfer of colonies to their headquarters, which were under the jurisdiction of the Saratov office of foreign settlers and the board of trustees for foreign settlers of the southern region of Russia, was found to be inconvenient, since foreign settlers, forming a privileged class ^[1] , were always controlled in a different spirit and for other reasons, rather than peasants, and differed significantly from the latter in faith, language, degree of education, and economic life; therefore, both the office and the committee were retained. Although the law of 1764 defined not only the general conditions for the settlement of foreigners, but also the allotment that was to be withdrawn by them, nevertheless, special conditions were concluded with each significant party of colonists arriving in Russia; The amount of land from the settlers and the conditions of settlement were, therefore, very diverse. Stand out among all the colonies of the settlement of Mennonites and Sarepta .

Bulgarian colonies

Resettlements to Russia by immigrants from Turkey, mainly Bulgarians, which began at the end of the 18th century, especially intensified in the first quarter of the 19th century, after the accession of Bessarabia to Russia, thanks to the energy of the chief guardian of the colonies, General Inzov ; when it was formed 73 colonies, with a population of 24 thousand souls. When, according to the Paris treatise of 1856, 40 Bulgarian colonies with a population of 47 thousand souls departed to Moldova, the Moldovan government reacted to them extremely unfriendly and began to strongly oppress them. Therefore, in 1860 it was allowed to take Slavs of various denominations to Russia and settle them in the Tauride and Kherson provinces, moreover, the migrants were given benefits; but in 1863 followed the cessation of the resettlement of the Slavs to Russia by the masses.

At the end of the Crimean War, a significant part of volunteers from the Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, Montenegrins and others who served in the Russian troops expressed a desire ^[1] to establish themselves in Russia; such volunteers in 1856 and 1864. It was allowed to rank among the colonies of their tribesmen in the Novorossiysk Territory ^[1] .

Jewish colonies

Jews , most of whom found themselves in the Russian Empire after the second partition of Poland , were often viewed as foreigners in the Russian Empire. They were not allowed to live in the countryside or leave the Pale of Settlement . The result of these restrictions, as well as restrictions on the choice of occupation, was extreme overcrowding and poverty in places within the limits of the line.

The decree of December 9, 1804 allowed Jews in Russia to go over into the peasant class to create agricultural settlements (colonies) on specially designated non-inhabited lands in Novorossia. Like other colonists, the Jews received temporary tax benefits, exemption from recruitment duties , as well as subsidies for the purchase or purchase of land. Several hundred Jewish families from Belorussia responded to the call of the government and founded the first agricultural colonies in 1808. But the unaccustomed Jews to farming, on the one hand, and the difficulty of settling the undeveloped steppe region, on the other, soon led to the decline of these colonies.

The decree of Emperor Nicholas I "The Statute of the Jews" dated April 13, 1835 allowed Jews to receive state land for unlimited use, to acquire and rent land in six provinces, and also provided temporary recruitment and taxpaying relief for colonists. In the same year, an unsuccessful attempt was made to create Jewish colonies in Siberia ^[7] . The overwhelming majority of the Jewish agricultural colonies of the following years were organized in the Bessarabian region, Yekaterinoslav and Kherson provinces .

In a short period of time, a new stratum of Jewish farmers appeared in Russia, who by the middle of the 19th century accounted for 3% of the entire Jewish population of the country, and in the Bessarabian region about 16%. The policy of encouraging Jewish agriculture in Russia was curtailed by Emperor Alexander II by a new decree of May 30, 1866, which again banned Jews from acquiring land plots. Even more aggravated the position of the agricultural colonies "Temporary rules" of 1882 , according to which, after the expiration of the initial lease period, the land of the colonies could not be bought or rented by the colonists themselves.

Reforms of the 1860s

Provided to the colonists at the turn of the XVIII — XIX centuries. rights and advantages at first contributed to the rapid development and prosperity of the colonies; but by the middle of the 19th century, when the life of the colonies became much more complicated, the laws on colonists, which were included in the XII volume of the Code , did not meet the requirements of the time ^[1] , as they isolated the colonists and prevented them from merging with the general population of the empire ^[1] . In 1860, all judicial-investigative cases were withdrawn from the colonial administrations. The enactment of the provision on zemstvo institutions removed from the jurisdiction of the colonial administrations all the matters that are subject to zemstvos. In 1866, the colonies, which were under the jurisdiction of the chambers of state property in the provinces of Voronezh, Novgorod, Samara, St. Petersburg and Chernihiv, were transferred to the jurisdiction of the general provincial county and local institutions for peasant affairs. Finally, in 1871, rules were issued on the structure of colonists (called villagers-owners) established on state lands in the provinces of St. Petersburg, Novgorod, Samara, Saratov, Chernihiv, Voronezh, Poltava, Yekaterinoslav, Kherson, Tavricheskaya and Bessarabskaya regions . These rules encompass the application of the general principles of the peasant regulations of 1861, while retaining many benefits; they are included in a special annex to IX of the Laws. The colony of Sarepta was transferred to the general institutions only in 1877.

Settlements in the provinces at the end of the XIX century

For all the time, from 1764 to 1866, 549 colonies were founded by foreign settlers in Russia: 165 in the Taurida province , 131 in the Samara province, 70 in Bessarabskaya, 70 in Saratov, 58 in Kherson, 17 in Petersburg, 12 Chernihiv - 6, Novgorod - 3, Livonia - 2, Voronezh and Poltava - by 1. Further formation of colonies, and from 1872 - settlements of settler-owners, took place not on government-owned, but on lands bought by colonists.

According to the tenth revision in the 12 provinces mentioned above, there were male colonists 201827 who had comfortable land in excess of 2 million dessiatines; besides, landless colonists turned out to be over 20,000.

According to the Zemstvo statistics, compiled by N. Blagoveshchensk (“The Consolidated Statistical Collection of Economic Information on Zemstvo Home Censuses”, Moscow, 1893), it turned out in 1 district of St. Petersburg province, 4 districts of Saratov, 2 districts of Samara, 2 districts of Kherson, 5 the counties of Tavricheskaya and 2 counties of the Ekaterinoslav Province, and only 16 districts among the former colonists: householders - 68587, male souls 235744, female - 226506, and only 462,250; literate - 49.1%; allotment of land convenient - 1784555 acres, purchased land - 269448 acres, cattle - 389272 heads, small - 1007052.

According to the data given in N. Velitsyn's article “Foreign colonization in Russia” ( Russian Bulletin , 1889 and 1890), in 17 provinces of European Russia, 3792,104 dessiatinas, or 4.32%, belonged to former colonists of the total amount of land in these provinces, and in Bessarabian province, the percentage = 14.7%, in Tavricheskaya - 14.44%, in Yekaterinoslav - 11.79%.

Settlements in the Transcaucasian Territory

Special management was retained for the colonies of the Transcaucasian region, in the provinces of Tiflis and Elizavetpolsky . The first settlers - the Germans - came to Georgia in 1817 , mainly from Württemberg ; They went in the amount of 1,400 families, but on the way, many died of fever, and 486 families came to the scene, which formed 8 colonies; two other colonies were founded in 1842 and 1857 . In 1841 , the colonies were transferred under the jurisdiction of the Georgian-Imereti office of state property, in 1849 - under the authority of an expedition (from 1859 - department) of state property under the governor of the governor . The internal management of the colonies was entrusted to rural orders, consisting of Schultz and two basezers.

From 1883 , the colonies came under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of State Property and were subordinated to the local government departments of state property. At the turn of the 19th — 20th centuries, there were 848 smokes (yards) in 9 colonies, with a population of 4,931 souls of both sexes; their land is 27,607 dessiatines; of these 9 colonies, 4 are agricultural, 4 are viticultural, 1 is cattle-breeding.

• Bulgarians Bessarabia
• Russian Germans
• Volga Germans
• Mennonity
• Hernguter
• Jewish Colonization Society

• Settlements of foreigners in Russia // Encyclopedic dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron : in 86 tons (82 tons and 4 extra). - SPb. , 1890-1907.
  • The rules on agriculture in the colonies of the Caucasus region are set out in the annex to art. 118 Const. Agriculture (Code Zak., T. XII. Part 2, ed. 1893).
  • A. Klaus, "Our colonies" (St. Petersburg, 1869)
  • Nil Popov, "Serb military settlements in Austria and Russia" ("West Europe, 1870, No. 6)
  • M. Schrenk, “Gesch. d. deutschen Colonien in Transcaucasien "(Tifl., 1869)
  • “Historical review of the 50-year activity of the Ministry of State. property ”(part 2, SPb., 1888).

• Manifestos of Catherine II on the invitation of immigrants to Russia
• An article about German colonists in Ukraine
• An article about German colonists in Petersburg Province
• German colonists in Artyushkino (Voronezh province)