Catherine the Great’s 1763 Manifesto

“We must swarm our vast wastelands with people. I do not think that in order to achieve this it would be useful to compel our non-Christians to accept our faith--polygamy for example, is even more useful for the multiplication of the population. …

"Russia does not have enough inhabitants, …but still possesses a large expanse of land, which is neither inhabited nor cultivated. … The fields that could nourish the whole nation, barely feeds one family..." –Catherine II (Note 1)

“We perceive, among other things, that a considerable number of regions are still uncultivated which could easily and advantageously be made available for productive use of population and settlement. Most of the lands hold hidden in their depth an inexhaustible wealth of all kinds of precious ores and metals, and because they are well provided with forests, rivers and lakes, and located close to the sea for purpose of trade, they are also most convenient for the development and growth of many kinds of manufacturing, plants, and various installations.” – Catherine II, 1763 Manifesto, Preface.

Catherine the Great’s Manifesto of July 22, 1763 initiated a mass migration of foreign settlers to the Russian Empire. But the lands of New Russia were not exactly empty. The region was settled by Ukrainians in several waves, and what became the governorates of Ekaterinoslav and Kherson had some 50,000 inhabitants by the mid-1700s, including some 11,000 Zaporozhian Cossacks. The main threat to settlement were the nomadic Nogai/Tartars, of which some 12,000 were persuaded to take Russian citizenship after 1770. The 1782 census recorded about 200,000 males in New Russia. With the conquest of Crimea in 1774, the migration of many Tatars to the Turkish Ottoman empire after the war, and the dissolution of the semi-autonomous Zaporozhian Sich (see Chortitza Island), Catherine had made New Russia more attractive for colonization (note 2).

Catherine’s 1763 Manifesto inviting colonists to New Russia was not welcome everywhere in Europe (they were in competition for colonists), but it did appear in newspapers in England, Scotland, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Holland, the German Free Cities, and in certain small German states.

See attached pics (note 3) of English and German versions.

The Manifesto outlined specific incentives as well as rights and privileges that were available for any groups interested in settlement in New Russia—except Jews--and it was the basis for most of the privileges Mennonite land scouts Höppner and Bartsch negotiated thirteen years later (the law also changed for Jews; note 4).

Like most rulers of her day, the empress was convinced by the economic theory that assumed that the wealth of a monarch was proportionate to the number of subjects (note 5). The urgent task to create new secure, commercially viable and vibrant urban centres and productive agricultural settlements in the newly won lands around the Black Sea was pursued vigorously; notably Russia's own peasant serfs were deemed unable to “perform a rapid civilizing function” (note 6).

Because of national unrest, economic hardship, pockets of religious discrimination and natural disasters throughout parts of Western Europe, many were willing to consider new beginnings. Russian runaway serfs and deserters were free to return without penalty (note 7), and even a colony of English convicts offered up for deportation was considered by Gregory Potemkin, Catherine’s vice-regent and administrator of New Russia (note 8).

This generous Manifesto became the basis for the development of colonization in Russia up to the reforms of 1871, and offered all immigrants the following (summary):

1. The right to settle in any part of the country and to pursue any occupation.

2. Free board and transportation from the Russian border to the place of settlement, with travel money. Free living quarters for half a year, and "free, productive land in colonies and rural areas" (note 9).

3. Free and unrestricted practice of one’s religion according to the precepts of one's church. To those who intend to establish colonies on uninhabited lands, the freedom to build and control their own churches, but not to establish monasteries. An oath of allegiance can be made “in accordance with one’s religious rite.”

4. The freedom to proselytize Russia’s Muslims, “to win them over and make them subject to the Christian religion in a decent way,” but "under no condition whatsoever to proselytize among other Christian subjects [i.e., Russian Orthodox], under pain of incurring the severest punishment of Our law.”

5. Exemption from the payment of taxes for a varying period of time (depending upon the place of settlement and type of occupation) and freedom from billeting troops.

6. Ten-year, interest free loans for building dwellings and for purchasing livestock and equipment for agriculture and industry.

7. The right of local self-government for those who establish agricultural communities, "in such a way that the persons placed in authority by Us will not interfere with the internal affairs and institutions" [e.g., schools]. “In other respects the colonists will be liable to Our civil laws. However, in the event that the people would wish to have a special guardian or even an officer with a detachment of disciplined soldiers for the sake of security and defense, this wish would also be granted."

8. The right to import free of duty family belongings as well as goods for sale up to a certain amount.

9. Exempt from military draft or the civil service in perpetuity. “Only after the lapse of the years of tax-exemption can they be required to provide labor service for the country.”

10. Freedom to establish market days and annual market fairs tax free;

11. Freedom to emigrate, though obligated to remit a portion of the assets acquired in Russia;

12. The privileges shall be enjoyed not only by immigrants, but also their children and descendants.

13. Provision to negotiate for other privileges or conditions besides those already stated. “We shall not hesitate to resolve the matter in such a way that the petitioner's confidence in Our love of justice will not be disappointed.”

Following the latter option, Mennonites sent their own delegates to Russia 1786-87 to inspect lands and negotiate more specific terms with the government (note 10).

Russia successfully attracted a range of ethnic settlers, including other Germans, Moldavians, Bulgarians, Albanians, Armenians, Greeks, Serbs, Corsicans, and Swedes.

The first reports on Russia came to Prussian Mennonites from a small group of Hutterites who fled Austria for New Russia in 1770; in 1783 one of their ministers visited and reported positively on their situation on an estate owned by a Russian General, Baron Pyotr Rumyantsev (note 11). During the Seven Years War (ending 1763), Rumyantsev had apparently been so impressed with the Mennonite agricultural achievements in the Vistula Delta—to where the Russian army withdrew annually for winter billeting—that he recommended them to the Empress for a special settlement contract on the steppes of New Russia (note 12).

Russia’s immigration schemes however were costly and mostly unsuccessful. Roger Bartlett—considered an authority in these matters by people like James Urry and David G. Rempel—does however note that the Mennonites were the exception.

“The great hopes laid upon foreign settlement ... were, however, only partially realized. The cost of Catherine’s and Potemkin’s operations, both in financial and administrative terms, was enormous, and cannot be said to have justified itself fully either in the numbers or the quality of the settlers. ... And the undoubted skill and industry of the best foreign settlers passed only to a limited extent to their neighbours. Neither the social and economic conditions of rural Russia, nor the usually exclusive way of life of the Western and other foreign colonists, was conducive to a wide-ranging dissemination of new techniques. But at a more realistic, local level, some positive results were nonetheless achieved. New subjects were drawn into the Empire, and some settlements, notably Sarepta on the Volga and the Mennonite colonies of New Russia, became famous as centres of culture and of technical and agricultural skills. They had a clear educative effect upon their immediate environment. If not on the grand scale, some at least of the hopes of Catherine and her followers were fulfilled.” (Note 13)

            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: Empress Catherine II, cited in Grigorii G. Pisarevskii, Izbrannye proizvedenija po istorii inostrannoj kolonizacii v Rossii [Selected works on the history of foreign colonization in Russia], edited by I.V. Cherkazyanova (Moscow: ICSU, 2011), https://bibliothek.rusdeutsch.ru/catalog/860.

Note 2: Dmytro Myeshkov, Die Schwarzmeerdeutschen und ihre Welten: 1781–1871 (Essen: Klartext, 2008), 270f.

Note 3:1763 Manifesto, English flyer pic: https://bkdr.de/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Enladungsmanifest_Katharina_2_1763_auf_englisch-a_MIT-WASSERZEICHEN.png; full English text: https://www.norkarussia.info/catherines-manifesto-1763.html; German flyer pic: https://russlanddeutsche-hessen.de/resources/thumb/71a212d6d3632c586046751f54ecd376a3ef1be0_Manifest_Katharina.jpg; full German text: http://www.russlanddeutschegeschichte.de/geschichte/teil1/abwerbung/manifest22.htm; also in D. H. Epp, Die Chortitzer Mennoniten. Versuch einer Darstellung des Entwicklungsganges derselben (Odessa, 1889), ch. 1.1, https://chort.square7.ch/Dok/Epp.pdf. For the texts of two much shorter manifestos from 1762, cf. Otto Teigeler, Die Herrnhuter in Russland (Göttingen: Vandenhoek, 2006), 293n-294n, https://books.google.ca/books?id=FLiZ5jyM16gC&lpg=PA293&ots=Dh9QamYi2A&dq=katharina%204.%20Dezember%201762&pg=PA293#v=onepage&q&f=false.

Note 5: See Pisarevskii, Izbrannye proizvedenija; Roger Bartlett, “Foreign Settlement in Russia under Catherine II,” New Zealand Slavonic Journal, no. 1 (1974): 1-22; idem, “Her Imperial Majesty’s Director and Curator of the Mennonite Colonies in Russia: Three Letters of Georg Trappe,” Journal of Mennonite Studies 12 (1994) 45–64; 49, https://jms.uwinnipeg.ca/index.php/jms/article/view/411/411.

Note 5: Cf. Myeshkov, Die Schwarzmeerdeutschen, 271f.

Note 6: David G. Rempel, “The Mennonite Migration to New Russia (1787–1870): I. The Colonization Policy of Catherine II. and Alexander I,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 9, no. 2 (April 1935) 71–91; 71. See Rempel's classic study: “The Mennonite Colonies in New Russia. A study of their settlement and economic development from 1789–1914,” PhD dissertation, Stanford University, 1933. https://archive.org/details/themennonitecoloniesinnewrussiaastudyoftheirsettlementandeconomicdevelopmentfrom1789to1914ocr.

Note 7: Decree, October 1762, written in Catherine’s own hand, cited in Bilbassoff, Geschichte Katharina II, II, 277; 280f; cf. Rempel, “Mennonite Migration to New Russia (I),” 73, 75. On Jews, cf. Myeshkov, Die Schwarzmeerdeutschen und ihre Welten, 271f.

Note 8: Cf. Bartlett, “Foreign Settlement in Russia under Catherine II,” 15.

Note 9: In 1764 further policies about land (how much), ownership (vested in colony commune, not the individual), and inheritance were drawn up. See the important summary in Rempel, “The Mennonite Colonies in New Russia," 102ff.

Note 10: For the unique 1787 Mennonite privileges negotiated by land scouts Höppner and Bartsch, see Lawrence Klippenstein, "The Bartsch-Hoeppner Privilegium," Preservings (2020), 39-41f., https://www.plettfoundation.org/files/preservings/Preservings41.pdf. For an English translation of the final "Charter of Privileges Granted to the Mennonites on 1 September, 1800," see Rempel, “The Mennonite Colonies in New Russia," Appendix II.

Note 11: Heinrich Donner and Johann Donner, Orlofferfelde Chronik, transcribed by Werner Janzen, 2010), 29, https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/cong_303/ok63/orlofferfeldechronik.html.

Note 12: John Keep, “The Russian Army in the Seven Years War,” in The Military and Society in Russia: 1450–1917, edited by Eric Lohr and Marshall Poe, 197–220 (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 205; 218. Heinrich Heese et al., “Das Chortitzer Mennonitengebiet 1848. Kurzgefasste geschichtliche Übersicht der Gründung und des Bestehens der Kolonien des Chortitzer Mennonitenbezirkes,” https://chortitza.org/Ber1848.html#Eg.  

Note 13: Bartlett, “Foreign Settlement in Russia under Catherine II,” 16. See Bartlett's larger volume: Human Capital. The Settlement of Foreigners in Russia 1762–1804 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). See James Urry, Mennonites, Politics, and Peoplehood: Europe—Russia—Canada, 1525 to 1980 (Winnipeg, MB: University of Manitoba Press, 2006), 85-89.