Skip to main content

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.





Print Friendly and PDF
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Swiss and Palatinate Connections

Sometime after 1850 Andreas Plennert and his family immigrated to South Russia from the Culm Region of West Prussia. Though there was at least one Mennonite “Plehnert” who had already immigrated to Russia in 1793, it is not a very common Prussian-Russian Mennonite name. As such, however, it is easier to trace than many and offers a minority narrative and identity within the longer and broader Russian Mennonite story. The account below is adapted largely from information in Horst Penner, Die ost- und westpreußischen Mennoniten , vol. 1, though I have expanded upon his work to offer a slightly different narrative. In 1724 there was a group of Mennonites forced out of the Memel region in East Prussia for political and religious reasons and were given assistance to resettle back to West Prussia in areas populated by Mennonites. Among the 23 households that went to the Stuhm region there is one Plenert listed, namely Christian Plenert. We know that Mennonites entered the Memel region ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Fraktur (or Gothic) font and Kurrent- (or Sütterlin) handwriting: Nazi ban, 1941

In the middle of the war on January 1, 1942, the Winnipeg-based Mennonitische Rundschau published a new issue without the familiar Fraktur script masthead ( note 1 ). One might speculate on the reasons, but a year earlier Hitler banned the use of the font in the Reich . The Rundschau did not exactly follow all orders from Berlin—the rest of the paper was in Fraktur (sometimes referred to as "Gothic"); when the war ended in 1945, the Rundschau reintroduced the Fraktur font for its masthead. It wasn’t until the 1960s that an issue might have a page or title here or there with the “normal” or Latin font, even though post-war Germany was no longer using Fraktur . By 1973 only the Rundschau masthead is left in Fraktur , and that is only removed in December 1992. Attached is a copy of Nazi Party Secretary Martin Bormann's official letter dated January 3, 1941, which prohibited the use of Fraktur fonts "by order of the Führer. " Why? It was a Jewish invention, apparent...
1 comment
Read more

Mennonites in Danzig's Suburbs: Maps and Illustrations

Mennonites first settled in the Danzig suburb of Schottland (lit: "Scotland"; “Stare-Szkoty”; also “Alt-Schottland”) in the mid-1500s. “Danzig” is the oldest and most important Mennonite congregation in Prussia. Menno Simons visited Schottland and Dirk Phillips was its first elder and lived here for a time. Two centuries later the number of families from the suburbs of Danzig that immigrated to Russia was not large: Stolzenberg 5, Schidlitz 3, Alt-Schottland 2, Ohra 1, Langfuhr 1, Emaus 1, Nobel 1, and Krampetz 2 ( map 1 ). However most Russian Mennonites had at least some connection to the Danzig church—whether Frisian or Flemish—if not in the 1700s, then in 1600s. Map 2  is from 1615; a larger number of Mennonites had been in Schottland at this point for more than four decades. Its buildings are not rural but look very Dutch urban/suburban in style. These were weavers, merchants and craftsmen, and since the 17th century they lived side-by-side with a larger number of Jews a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Mennonite-Designed Mosque on the Molotschna

The “Peter J. Braun Archive" is a mammoth 78 reel microfilm collection of Russian Mennonite materials from 1803 to 1920 -- and largely still untapped by researchers ( note 1 ). In the files of Philipp Wiebe, son-in-law and heir to Johann Cornies, is a blueprint for a mosque ( pic ) as well as another file entitled “Akkerman Mosque Construction Accounts, 1850-1859” ( note 2 ). The Molotschna Mennonites were settlers on traditional Nogai lands; their Nogai neighbours were a nomadic, Muslim Tartar group. In 1825, Cornies wrote a significant anthropological report on the Nogai at the request of the Guardianship Committee, based largely on his engagements with these neighbours on Molotschna’s southern border ( note 3 ). Building upon these experiences and relationships, in 1835 Cornies founded the Nogai agricultural colony “Akkerman” outside the southern border of the Molotschna Colony. Akkerman was a projection of Cornies’ ideal Mennonite village outlined in exacting detail, with un...
Post a Comment
Read more

What is the Church to Say? Letter 4 (of 4) to American Mennonite Friends

Irony is used in this post to provoke and invite critical thought; the historical research on the Mennonite experience is accurate and carefully considered. ~ANF Preparing for your next AGM: Mennonite Congregations and Deportations Many U.S. Mennonite pastors voted for Donald Trump, whose signature promise was an immediate start to “the largest deportation operation in American history.” Confirmed this week, President Trump will declare a national emergency and deploy military assets to carry this out. The timing is ideal; in January many Mennonite congregations have their Annual General Meeting (AGM) with opportunity to review and update the bylaws of their constitution. Need help? We have related examples from our tradition, which I offer as a template, together with a few red flags. First, your congregational by-laws.  It is unlikely you have undocumented immigrants in your congregation, but you should flag this. Model: Gustav Reimer, a deacon and notary public from the ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Jews and Mennonites Together in Danzig's Suburbs

There has been very little reflection on the relationship of Jews and Mennonites in the suburb of Schottland (or Alt-Schottland or Stare Szkoty) where Mennonites first settled in the mid-1500s. Here Mennonites and Jews lived in the small community together for two centuries, quite literally on the margins outside the gates of the city of Danzig. Many historic maps that include Alt Schottland have become available in recent years ( note 1; pic ). H.G. Mannhardt’s book on the Danzig Mennonite church community plus some archival membership lists are our best sources for the Mennonite experience, while illustrations from the day bring many of those episodes of prosperity, repressions, war, plague, emigration, flooding etc. in an urban environment to life ( note 2 ). Peter J. Klassen’s writings on Mennonites in Poland and Prussia also present newer research on Mennonite life in and around Danzig in helpful ways ( note 3 ). There is one small sentence in Klassen’s larger volume that sugg...
Post a Comment
Read more

Why Danzig and Poland?

In the late 16th century, Poland became a haven for a variety of non-conformists which included Jews, Anti-Trinitarians from Italy and Bohemia, Quakers and Calvinists from Great Britain, south German Schwenkfelders, Eastern Orthodox, Armenian, and Greek Catholic Christians, some Muslim Tatars, as well as other peaceful sectarians like the Dutch and Flemish Anabaptists. Unlike the Low Countries and most of western Europe, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was a “state without stakes,” and as such fittingly described as “God’s playground” ( note 1 ). In the view of 17th-century Dutch dramatist Joost van den Vondel, it was “the ‘Promised Land,’ where the refugee could forget all his sorrow and enjoy the richness of the land” ( note 2 ). Over the next two centuries an important strand of Mennonite life and spirituality evolved into a mature tradition in this relatively hospitable context ( note 3 ). Anabaptists from the Low Countries began to arrive in Danzig and region as early as 15...
Post a Comment
Read more

"Motherhood of the People": Halbstadt Midwife Helene Berg and the SS

Recently Benjamin Goossen posted an important piece on the “well-known” Halbstadt midwife Helene Berg. Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler had taken a special interest in “old Mrs. Berg” and had publicly recognized her for helping birth some 8,000 Volksdeutsche (ethnic German) babies ( note 1 ). Goossen and I have shared archival materials in the past years. Below I would like to continue the exploration of Taunte Bojsche (or "Aunt Berg") and the surprisingly broad interest in her by Nazi officials as icon. I begin with a family story as a window onto the times. Some 35,000 Mennonites were evacuated out of German-occupied Ukraine in Fall 1943. After a grueling trek west the survivors landed in German-annexed Wartheland (previously Poland) where they were naturalized as German citizens. My grandmother Helene Bräul had eight children, and Helene Berg may very well have been her midwife for one or more of them. Like many Mennonite mothers in Wartheland, my grandmother was ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Shift from Dutch to German, 1700s

Already in 1671, Mennonite Flemish Elder Georg Hansen in Danzig published his German-language catechism ( Glaubens-Bericht für die Jugend ) as preparation for youth seeking baptism. Though educational competencies varied, Hansen’s Glaubens-Bericht assumed that youth preparing for baptism had a stronger ability to read complex German than Dutch ( note 1 ). Popular Mennonite preacher Jacob Denner (1659–1746), originally from the Hamburg-Altona Mennonite Church, lived in Danzig for four years in the early 1700s. A first volume of his Dutch sermons was published in 1706 in Danzig and Amsterdam, and then in 1730 and 1751 he published two German collections. Untrained preachers would often read Denner’s sermons: “Those who preached German—which all Prussian preachers around 1750 did, with the exception of the Danzig preachers—had no sermons books from their co-religionists other than this one by Jacob Denner” ( note 2 ). In Danzig and the Vistula Delta region there were some differences...
Post a Comment
Read more