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

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Turning Weapons into Waffle Irons!

Turning Weapons into Waffle Irons:  Heart-Shaped Waffles and a smooth talking General In 1874 with Mennonite immigration to North America in full swing, the Tsar sent General Eduard von Totleben to the colonies to talk the remaining Mennonites out of leaving ( note 1 ). He came with the now legendary offer of alternative service. Totleben made presentations in Mennonite churches and had many conversations in Mennonite homes. Decades later the women still recalled how fond Totleben was of Mennonite heart-shaped waffles. He complemented the women saying, “How beautiful are the hearts of Mennonites!,” and he joked about how “much Mennonites love waffles ( Waffeln ), but not weapons ( Waffen )” ( note 2 )! His visit resulted in an extensive reversal of opinion and the offer was welcomed officially by the Molotschna and Chortitza Colony ministerials. And upon leaving, the general was gifted with a poem by Bernhard Harder ( note 3 ) and a waffle iron ( note 4 ). Harder was an inf...

Sesquicentennial: Proclamation of Universal Military Service Manifesto, January 1, 1874

One-hundred-and-fifty years ago Tsar Alexander II proclaimed a new universal military service requirement into law, which—despite the promises of his predecesors—included Russia’s Mennonites. This act fundamentally changed the course of the Russian Mennonite story, and resulted in the emigration of some 17,000 Mennonites. The Russian government’s intentions in this regard were first reported in newspapers in November 1870 ( note 1 ) and later confirmed by Senator Evgenii von Hahn, former President of the Guardianship Committee ( note 2 ). Some Russian Mennonite leaders were soon corresponding with American counterparts on the possibility of mass migration ( note 3 ). Despite painful internal differences in the Mennonite community, between 1871 and Fall 1873 they put up a united front with five joint delegations to St. Petersburg and Yalta to petition for a Mennonite exemption. While the delegations were well received and some options could be discussed with ministers of the Crown, ...

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...

Village Reports Commando Dr. Stumpp, 1942: List and Links

Each of the "Commando Dr. Stumpp" village reports written during German occupation of Ukraine 1942 contains a mountain of demographic data, names, dates, occupations, numbers of untimely deaths (revolution, famines, abductions), narratives of life in the 1930s, of repression and liberation, maps, and much more. The reports are critical for telling the story of Mennonites in the Soviet Union before 1942, albeit written with the dynamics of Nazi German rule at play. Reports for some 56 (predominantly) Mennonite villages from the historic Mennonite settlement areas of Chortitza, Sagradovka, Baratow, Schlachtin, Milorodovka, and Borosenko have survived. Unfortunately no village reports from the Molotschna area (known under occupation as “Halbstadt”) have been found. Dr. Karl Stumpp, a prolific chronicler of “Germans abroad,” became well-known to German Mennonites (Prof. Benjamin Unruh/ Dr. Walter Quiring) before the war as the director of the Research Center for Russian Germans...

"A Small Town near Auschwitz” – Chortitza Mennonite Refugee/ Resettlement Camps

Simple proximity to a place of horrors does not equal knowledge or complicity. Many Gnadenfeld-area Mennonite refugees were, for example, temporarily housed 20 km. away from the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp where 15-year-old Anne Frank died ultimately of typhus ( note 1 ). The day after liberation by British troops on April 15, 1945, camp survivors began to flow through neighbouring villages. “What a sight they were! They had been tortured and starved, and were swollen from lack of food. … We could hardly believe that the glorious country of Germany could commit such crimes against people,” Susanna Toews wrote ( note 2 ). My mother was only seven, but she remembers overhearing shocking descriptions given by their host family’s teenaged girls forced by the British to clean some of the camp buses. What about the much larger death camp at Auschwitz? There is a book entitled: A Small Town near Auschwitz: Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust. It is about an administrator living near the ...

1921: Formation of the “Union of Citizens of Dutch Lineage in Ukraine”

Famine was imminent; unprecedented drought; taxes and requisitions exceeded what was harvested; some villages had no horses; extortion and arrests were widespread; many men were disenfranchised and barred from village affairs (see note 1 ). Lenin responded with the 1921 “New Economic Policy” (NEP), which allowed for a degree of market flexibility within the context of socialism to ward off complete economic collapse. A fixed-tax was imposed, grain quotas were eased, farmers were allowed a small amount of land and could sell excess produce at free-market prices after taxes had been paid. Much was in the air. In secret talks, Soviet Trade Commissar Leonid Krasin told the head of the Eastern Section in the German Foreign Office, Gustav Behrendt, that the USSR was “prepared—just like Catherine the Great of old—to call hundreds of thousands of German colonists into the land and transfer them to large, closed complexes for settlement,” especially in Turkestan and the North Caucasus, be...

Mennonites and the Crimean War (1853-56)

Martin Klaassen was traveling through the Molotschna Mennonite Colony when the Crimean War broke out in 1853 ( note 1 ). His diary notes that the following hymn was sung before the sermon: December 1853 . With regards to the war which broke out between Russia and Turkey, the song, No: 723 “O Lord, the clouds of war are threatening now, above our heads we see them roll” was sung before the sermon” ( note 2 ). As the war effort grew, thousands of troops came through Molotschna: January 14, 1854 . Today our colony has received billets: in Halbstadt about 1,000 soldiers. It is said that Joh. Neufelds have offered liquor ( Branntwein ), naturally without charge. The soldiers are supposed to have marched in with jubilant singing and much hilarity. They had been very happy for the wonderful reception they got, and promised to accomplish great things. In March, England and France also declared war on Russia. March 26, 1854 . At noon today there was suddenly a military transport at ...

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 ...

Mobile Immigration Central Office (EWZ) Trains and Naturalization, 1943-44

They walked in one end as Soviet citizens, proceeded through a few wagons, and emerged out the other end as naturalized citizens of the German Reich . Below is a newspaper article marking the completion of the registration and naturalization of some 35,000 Mennonite resettlers—plus other Black Sea Germans. By July 1944 all the treks or transports had arrived from the Black Sea region into Greater Germany [most in Warthegau], and almost all were now registered for a more permanent settlement situation in German-annexed Poland—or so they thought. The translation is important because it offers a clear account of the process of naturalization, application and assessment. While not all Mennonites evacuated from Ukraine 1943-44 were naturalized in one of the visiting mobile Immigration Central Office trains, most were. The article and photos fill a gap in our knowledge of that experience in Nazi Germany and how naturalization was approached and experienced by some 30,000-plus Mennonites....

1920s: Those who left and those who stayed behind

The picture below is my grandmother's family in 1928. Some could leave but most stayed behind. In 1928 a small group of some 511 Soviet Mennonites were unexpectedly approved for emigration ( note 1 ). None of the circa 21,000 Mennonites who emigrated from Russia in the 1920s “simply” left. And for everyone who left, at least three more hoped to leave but couldn’t. It is a complex story. Canada only wanted a certain type—young healthy farmers—and not all were transparent about their skills and intentions The Soviet Union wanted to rid itself of a specifically-defined “excess,” and Mennonite leadership knew how to leverage that Estate owners, and Selbstschutz /White Army militia were the first to be helped to leave, because they were deemed as most threatened community members; What role did money play? Thousands paid cash for their tickets; Who made the final decision on group lists, and for which regions? This was not transparent. Exit visa applications were also regularly reje...