Frontier Governors General 1772-1825 II. The Southern Frontier

Frontier Governors General 1772-1825 II. The Southern FrontierAuthor(s): John P. LeDonneSource: Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, Neue Folge, Bd. 48, H. 2 (2000), pp. 161-183Published by: Franz Steiner VerlagStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41050524 .

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ABHANDLUNGEN

John P. LeDonne, Cambridge, MA

Frontier Governors General 1772-1825 II. The Southern Frontier1

For Roman Szporluk

The Southern Frontier, consisting of a Russo-Turkish and a Russo-Persian frontier, stretched from Bulgaria to Azerbaijan, forming a semi-circle around the northern shores of the Black Sea and, beyond the Black Sea-Caspian watershed, incorporating Dagestan and the khanates of eastern Transcaucasia. It was a highly "turbulent frontier"2 in which the Crimean Tatars, vassals of the Ottoman Porte, played a destabilizing role, chiefly by raiding the Ukrainian steppe all the way to the Central Upland, where the Russian core area began. The struggle for the control of this frontier was part of an age-old rivalry between the world of the forest and the world of the steppe, between the sedentary peasant and the nomadic horse- man. By the time of Alexander I's death in 1825, the Russians had annexed a succession of zones within that frontier, and the imperial boundary reached the Prut in the west and the Araks in the east. These zones had become an inner frontier of the empire, requiring a type of administration different in several respects from that of the Russian provinces, including the presence of governors general. These men are the subject of this second article.

In the 1760s, the human geography of this structure of zones included a Ukrainian peas- antry and their Polish landowners in the so-called Right-Bank Ukraine, part of the Polish empire, west of the Dniepr; the Cossacks of the Hetmanate or Little Russia on the left bank, stretching from the swamps of Chernigov (Chernihiv) to the Orel River; those of the Ukraine of Settlements (Slobodskaia Ukraina) skirting the Central Upland from Sumy to Valuiki; the Don Cossacks on their lands between the Kalmius and the Don; to the south, another belt of Cossack settlement, that of the Zaporozhians, and further south, across the Dniepr, the Cri- mean Tatars and their allies, the Nogais, roaming from the Dniestr to the Kuban.

The Hetmanate had experienced a tortuous history within the empire since Hetmán Ivan Mazepa, following the example of countless "men of power" from the frontiers who had switched their allegiance from one core area to another according to the vicissitudes of war and politics, defected to the Swedes on the eve of the battle of Poltava in 1709. He was succeeded by Ivan Skoropadskii (1709-22), whose authority was severely circumscribed by the presence of a Russian minister in Glukhov (Hlukhiv), the hetmán' s residence, and the creation of a Little Russian College consisting of seven senior officers. It would take another five years before Petersburg agreed to accept another hetmán. Danilo Apóstol was hetmán from 1727 until his death in 1734; the college was abolished but the minister was retained, and he became, between 1734 and 1750, when no hetmán was in office, the de facto "gov-

1 For Part I see Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 47 (1999) pp. 56-88. 2 A discussion of the terms core areas, frontiers, men of power, is in J. LeDonne The Russian Empire and the World, 1700-1917: The Geopolitics of Expansion and Containment. New York 1997, pp. 1-20. See also J. Galbraith The "Turbulent Frontier" as a Factor in British Expansion, in: Comparative Studies in Society and History 2 (1959-60) pp. 150-68.

Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 48 (2000) H. 2 © Franz Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden GmbH, Sitz Stuttgart/Germany



162 John P. LeDonne

ernor" (pravitelr) of the territory. In 1750, the Empress Elizabeth appointed Kirill Razumov- skii, brother of her morganatic husband, and this new hetmán would be the last one. When he was forced to resign in 1764, Catherine II appointed a governor general, Petr Rumiantsev, to administer the territory with the assistance of a new Little Russian College consisting of two Russians and four Ukrainians. The appointment raised questions about the necessity of retaining the post of governor general of Kiev, which had embodied the Russian presence on the very edge of the Russo-Polish and Russo-Turkish frontier since the days of the later famous Dmitrii Golitsyn, Peter Fs proconsul in the region (1708-21). Nevertheless, a new governor general was appointed in 1766; General Fedor Voeikov, a former minister to Poland (1759-62), who was also given the command of troops in so-called New Russia, a fringe of Hungarian and Serbian settlements beyond the Polish border between the Dniepr and the Siniukha. Rumiantsev' s appointment also raised questions about the future of the Ukraine of Settlements placed in 1764 under a Russian governor, and of New Serbia, another fringe of Serbian settlements between the Dniepr and the Luganchik, a tributary of the Northern Donets, on the edge of the Don Cossack lands. But the reorganization of the entire inner frontier would have to wait until the decisive victory over the Ottomans in 1774, which drastically altered the geopolitical and strategic situation on the Russo-Turkish frontier in Russia's favor.3

After Kiev, the most important political and military headquarters was Astrakhan. The Black

Sea-Caspian watershed ran along the Ergeni hills, across the Stavropol upland, the broad massif between the headwaters of the Kuban and those of the Terek's tributaries, and along the Suram-Adzhar-Imeretian ranges of Transcaucasia. West of the watershed were the Crimean Tatars and Nogais of the plain, various mountain peoples, and the western Georgians and Armenians, all within the ambit of the Ottoman Porte. East of it lived mountain peoples of

shifting allegiances, the eastern Georgians and eastern Armenians, and the Muslim khanantes of Caucasian Azerbaijan. Astrakhan had been part of Kazan province when Russia was first divided into provinces in 1708, but became the capital of a separate province in 1719, and it stretched from Saratov to the Terek. There, Artemii Volynskii, its first governor and

Golitsyn' s counterpart in the east, had encouraged the invasion of Persia in 1722, and Astrakhan had become a naval headquarters ferrying troops and provisions to the Terek, Derbent, and Baku, all the way to Persian shores, eliminating Persia's naval presence in the

Caspian. Its governor in the 1760s was Lt.-Gen. Nikita Beketov, a former adjutant to Kirill Razumovskii, followed in 1774 by Major General Petr Krechemikov, brother of Mikhail, whom we encountered in the Western Frontier. However, the military center of gravity was

shifting to the so-called Caucasian Line, a string of fortified settlements along the Terek River to Mozdok (founded in 1763) and beyond, until it would reach the Kuban River and eventually follow it to its mouth on the Sea of Azov. Cossacks settled on the Line reported to a separate military commander, usually a lieutenant general, responsible to the College of War.4

The Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji (July 1774), which brought the first Russo-Turkish War of Catherine II's reign to an end, paved the way for the administrative-territorial reorganization of the Southern Frontier. By the mid- 1780s, Little Russia was still a governor general-

3 A brief survey of Ukrainian history in the eighteenth century is in O. Subtelny Ukraine: A His- tory. Toronto 1988, pp. 152-154, 160-173, 188-191; P. R. Magocsi A History of Ukraine. Toronto 1996, pp. 263-302; A. Kappeler Kleine Geschichte der Ukraine. München 1984, pp. 72-105; and H. AuERBACH Die Besiedlung der Südukraine in den Jahren 1774-1787. Wiesbaden 1965, pp. 12-20. 4 For Volynskii's activities in Astrakhan and Persia see D. Korsakov Artemii Petrovich Volynskii: Biograficheskii ocherk, in: Drevniaia i Novaia Rossiia (1 876) no. 1 , pp. 51-60, here pp. 5 1-6 1 ; (1 877) no. 1, pp. 289-302, here pp. 292-294, and P. Bushev Posorstvo Artemiia Volynskogo v Iran v 1715- 1718 gg. Moskva 1978.



Governors General of the Western Frontier 1 772-1 825 1 63

ship under Rumiantsev's authority; the Serbo-Hungarian fringes and the former Zaporozhian Cossack lands, together with the Crimea, had been combined to form a New Russian gover- nor generalship under Grigorii Potemkin, with the Ukraine of Settlements belonging to one, then to the other; and a new governor generalship of the Caucasus was being created out of the old Astrakhan province, but its capital was no longer Astrakhan but Ekaterinograd on the Line. For convenience's sake, this southern inner frontier of the empire has been divided here into three zones.5

I.

Following Voeikov's retirement in 1775, the post of governor general of Kiev and New Russia was abolished, and Rumiantsev (1725-96) moved his headquarters to the ancient city which now became the official capital of Little Russia. By then, the governor general had become a field marshal and had acquired a formidable reputation as the leading military figure of Catherine's reign. His career had begun in the Seven Years War during which he had won distinction at the battles of Großjägerndorf (1757) and Kunersdorf (1759) and carried out the successful siege of Kolberg (1761). The post of governor general of Little Russia carried with it the command of the Ukrainian Division consisting in the 1760s of 16 regiments of regular troops and 30 smaller regiments of so-called settled militia. All these troops were stationed not only in the former Hetmanate but also in the Ukraine of the Settle- ments and as far away as the Ural River. Rumiantsev's command was the largest of the eight "divisional" or regional commands, and it was responsible for the patrolling and defense of an enormous territory. The governor general was also appointed inspector general of the entire cavalry of the Russian army in November 1775, and he would keep a close watch on developments in the Crimea until 1782.6

Meanwhile, the administrative-territorial reform mandated by the Organic Statute of November 1775 had reached the Left-Bank Ukraine. It took effect in the Ukraine of Settle- ments in September 1780, and the new province, together with Kursk, was placed under Rumiantsev's authority for a short transition period. Little Russia proper was divided into the three provinces of Chernigov, Kiev, and Novgoröd-Severskii (Novhorod-Siverskyi), where the reform was carried out between December 1781 andJanuary 1782. Kursk was then joined with Orel under a separate governor general, and the Ukraine of the Settlements (Kharkov, Kharkiv) was combined with Voronezh. Rumiantsev would remain the governor general of the three provinces of the former Hetmanate until his death in December 1796. He also remained the commanding general of the Tenth (Ukrainian) Division consisting at the time of 22 regiments, including 13 of regular troops, stationed in Orel, Kursk, Chernigov, Kiev, and Kharkov provinces.

The first governor-general appointed in Voronezh was Lt.-Gen. Vasilii Chertkov (1726- 93), the son of a navy captain, who had been commandant of Fort St. Elizabeth (Elizavetgrad, Ielysavethrad) built in 1754 on the edge of the Zaporozhian lands to defend the Serbian settlements of "New Russia" against raids by Crimean Tartars. He had been the governor of Azov province created in 1775 to incorporate the vast territory stretching between the Dniepr

5 The territorial reform in Ukraine and the Northern Caucasus is traced in J. LeDonne The Territorial Reform of the Russian Empire 1775-1796. II: The Borderlands, 1777-1796, in: Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique 24 (1983) pp. 41 1-457. 6 The best source on Rumiantsev, unfortunately never completed, remains G. Maksimovich Deiatel'- nost' Rumiantseva-Zadunaiskogo po upravleniiu Malorussiei. Tom 1. Nezhin 1913. See also the article in Russkii Biograficheskii Slovar' (cited as RBS). Tom 1-25. S.-Petersburg 1896-1918, here torn 17, pp. 521-573 with a long biography, and Iu. Klokman Feld'dmarshal Rumiantsev v period russo- teretskoi voiny 1768-1774 gg. Moskva 1951. A collection of documents on his military activities in P. Fortunatov (ed.) P. A. Rumiantsev. Dokumenty. Tom 1-2. Moskva 1953.



1 64 John P. LeDonne

and the Don bordering on the Crimean khanate, annexed to the Russian empire in 1783. He was governor general of Kharkov and Voronezh for five years from 1782 to 1787, when he was appointed governor general of Voronezh and Saratov, his last post until his death in 1793. Kharkov was joined with Ekaterinoslav province under Grigorii Potemkin and would remain without a governor general after the latter's death in 1791. Chertkov was a distinctly secondary figure, at least in the company of the two great commanders in the Southern Frontier, Rumiantsev and Potemkin. He was never promoted to full general and never was given a regional military command.7

The second Turkish war of Catherine IPs reign (1787-91) brought the rivalry between the two men to a climax when Potemkin assumed the command of the entire Russian army facing the Turks and forced out Rumiantsev who was given the mission to fight Frederick II, should the Prussian king decide to intervene against the Austrians, Russia's allies. Rumiantsev refused to obey, and spent the war years sulking in Moldavia, the scene of his greatest triumphs in 1770. His replacement in Kiev was General Mikhail Krechetnikov (1729-93), whom Rumian- tsev had recommended for courage at the battle of Kagul (July 1770). He had been one of the governors of eastern Bielorussia under Governor General Chernyshev (1772-75) and later governor general of Kaluga, Tula and Riazan (1776-90). He moved to Kiev in 1790 with a promotion to full general and the reputation of an outstanding administrator. Potemkin' s death in October 1791 and the emergence of Platon Zubov with whom Rumiantsev was on good terms facilitated a rapprochement with the empress. In December 1792, Krechetnikov was given the command of an invasion force ordered to occupy most of the Right-Bank Ukraine, Russia's share in the second partition of Poland, and Rumiantsev returned to Kiev. Following Krechetnikov's death in May 1793 and the annexation of additional territory in the wake of the third partition in October 1795, Rumiantsev was given the command of all Russian troops stationed in Podolia (Podillia), Volhynia, the three Little Russian provinces, and Kursk. However, the Right-Bank Ukraine was placed under a separate governor general (Tutolmin) and the Ukraine of Settlements remained under a simple governor.8

The reign of Paul witnessed there, as in the Western Frontier, an attempt to reconstitute the historical territories by abolishing the administrative divisions created after 1775 as well as the post of governor general. However, the importance of Kiev, which had been the capital of Little Russia after 1775 but was located on the right bank of the Dniepr, the creation of a new province of Kiev and a separate one for the whole of Little Russia in December 1796 made it awkward to keep in the same city one governor for the left bank and a different one for the right bank. In practice, a military governor was appointed in Kiev who was in fact a governor general for two provinces, Kiev and Little Russia, the administrative superior of a civil governor for Kiev province in Kiev and another for Little Russia whose seat was moved to Chernigov.

Four military governors followed one another in quick succession. Ivan Saltykov (1730- 1805) remained barely a year (January-November 1797); he also commanded the Ukrainian Division and was made inspector of the entire cavalry of the empire. A former governor general of Kostroma and Vladimir (1784-87) and commander of the Kuban Division (1788- 90), he had replaced Valerian Musin-Pushkin in April 1790 as commander in chief of the Russian army in Finland during the war with Sweden. He later served as a corps commander

7 On Chertkov see RBS, torn 22, pp. 35 1-352. 8 RBS, torn 9, pp. 430-32. Data on troop locations between 1781 and 1819 come from various issues of the Adres Kalendar between 1777 and 1796; Polnoe Sobranie Zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii (cited as PSZ). Tom 1^5. S.-Petersburg 1830. Tom 43, chast' 1: Kniga shtatov po voennoi chasti (1830). 1796. N. 17606 and chast' 2, 1801, N. 19951; and Composition de l'armée russe, 1819. Ministère des Affaires étrangères, Archives diplomatiques. Vol. 27: Russie 1819-1827. Forces et colonies militaires, fol. 1-37.



Governors General of the Western Frontier 1 772- 1 825 165

under Rumiantsev, who forced him to retire for incompetence during the Polish war of 1795. But the Saltykovs were in high favor under Paul who promoted him (and Musin-Pushkin) to field marshal. He left to become military governor of Moscow where he would remain until 1804. His successor, Andreas von Rosenberg (1739-1813) served in Kiev less than four months after an undistinguished career, and he seems to have had no more than a regimental command. Ivan Gudovich (1741-1820), who replaced him in March 1798 had a more distin- guished record: he will be considered in Part III. He too stayed but a short time in Kiev. The last governor general, Alexander Bekleshev (1745-1808) had served in the Greek archipelago during the first Turkish war, then in Finland (Vyborg province) before spending seven years as governor of Livland (1783-90). He then spent the last six years of Catherine's reign as governor general of Kursk and Orel. His previous post had been that of military governor of Kamenets-Podolsk (Kamianets-PodiFskyi) with jurisdiction over Volhynia and Podolia and commanding general of the Ekaterinoslav Division, whose troops were stationed in Podolia as well as in the south. He left Kiev in July 1799 to become procurator general for seven months, later senator in the Sixth Department in Moscow. He had no immediate successor.9

The accession of Alexander I was followed, as it was in the Western Frontier, by the restoration of the smaller provinces. Little Russia was divided into two, centered in Poltava and Chernigov, and a military governor was appointed for both with headquarters in Poltava. The first was General Sergei Viazmitinov (17447-1819), appointed in September 1801. He had risen under Rumiantsev during the first Turkish war and had served on his staff. He had been governor of Mogilev (1790-93) and governor general of Ufa and Simbirsk (1795-96), military governor of Orenburg (1796-97), and chief of the Commissary, but had been forced to retire in 1799. He had no regional military command.10 Nor did his successor, Alexei Ku- rakin (1759-1829), who had not even pursued a military career. His major post in the last years of Catherine's reign had been the management of the audit section of the Expedition of State Revenues, but Paul appointed him procurator general (1796-98). However, he was soon "demoted" to senator in the First Department in August 1798, and his appointment to Poltava in February 1802 was a further demotion, one all the more obvious that Viaznitinov was recalled to Petersburg where he was appointed war minister in September. The demotion was made the more galling by the fact that the post of Little Russian governor general had been downgraded, not unlike what happened in Bielorussia after Chernyshev's tenure and for the same reasons. With the expansion of the imperial boundary of the empire the Left- Bank Ukraine was becoming the proximate zone in the inner frontier of the empire and was gradually being integrated into the Russian core area. Kiev remained the great military headquarters, and troops stationed in Chernigov, Poltava, Voronezh, and Kursk provinces remained subordinated, as they had been in the days of Rumiantsev, to the commanding general of the Kiev inspection. Poltava was but a secondary regional headquarters for pur- poses of civil administration.11

Kurakin benefited from the rapprochement with Napoleon after Tilsit - he and his brother Alexander were pro-French, and Alexander who had been ambassador to Vienna (1806- 1808) was nominated ambassador to Paris in the summer of 1808 - and was appointed minister of internal affairs in November 1807. His place in Poltava was taken by Iakov Loba- nov-Rostovskii (1760-1831), whose better known brother Dmitrii was made military gover- nor of Petersburg in January 1808 - an appointment considered a victory for the pro-French

9 There is a brief biography of Saltykov in RBS, tom 18, pp. 76-79, and of Bekleshev in RBS, torn 2, pp. 671-673. 10

Gosudarstvennye sanovniki upravliavshie voennoi chast'iu v Rossii s 1701, in: Voennyi Sbornik (1866) no. 9, pp. 3-24, here pp. 8-9. 11 RBS, torn 9, pp. 559-567.




party in the ruling elite - and would later become governor general of Livland and Kurland in 1810. Like Kurakin, he had pursued a civilian career, chiefly in Moscow. For him the appointment was a promotion. He was very active in Poltava in support of the war effort, and his reward was an appointment in April 1816 to the chairmanship of the Commission on Petitions (Kommissiia Proshenii), where he remained until 1820 before becoming chairman of the State Council's Department of Laws.12

The last governor general of Little Russia during Alexander Fs reign was Nikolai Repnin- Volkonskii (1778-1845), grandson of the famous Repnin who had been such a prominent figure in the history of the Western Frontier during Catherine's reign, and one of the great lords of the ruling elite. Wounded and taken prisoner at Austerlitz, he later returned to Rus- sia, served in the units assigned to the defense of Petersburg in 1812, and in October 1813, after the battle of Leipzig, was made governor general of Saxony and commanding general of the troops stationed in the kingdom (1813-14). There, he entertained lavishly, spending one million rubles of his own money on a salary of 12 000 rubles. After attending the Con- gress of Vienna, he was appointed to Poltava in September 1816. But it was significant of the waning importance of Little Russia in the imperial administrative-territorial hierarchy that

Repnin- Volkonskii was only a lieutenant general and was not promoted to füll general until 1828. And he had no military command either. Following the new territorial distribution of the Russian army after 1815, Poltava became a mere divisional headquarters for the First

Army's III Corps headquartered in Kremenchug, while troops stationed in Chernigov province depended on the IV Corps in Kiev. He would become, after Rumiantsev, the governor with the longest tenure in the region: he was recalled in December 1834 to become a member of the State Council's Department of Civil and Ecclesiastical Affairs where he would contrib- ute his rich knowledge of Ukrainian affairs.13

We thus have a first sample often governors general (not counting Gudovich whose career was spent mainly in the Caucasus), 3 of them appointed by Catherine II, 3 by Paul I, and 4

by Alexander I. Three of them also served as governors general in the Western Frontier. We can place Bekleshev in the Saltykov network, Rosenberg in the Germanic network associated with the Saltykovs, and Krechetnikov in the Naryshkin-Trubetskoi network. Chertkov and Viazmitinov will be considered in Part II.

Among the remaining five - indeed among the entire sample - Rumiantsev was by far the most important and the most prominent, but his family had only recently entered the ranks of the ruling elite. His father, Alexander, had encountered opposition when Peter I sought to

arrange his marriage with Maria Matveeva, daughter of the Russian ambassador to Holland

(1700-12), England (1707-1708), and Austria (1712-15), but being one of the great trouble- shooters of Peter's reign - like Repnin under Catherine II - he was indispensable, and it is of interest here that he would become governor of Astrakhan and Kazan and of Little Russia

(1739-40). The son, our governor general, married well, however. His wife, Ekaterina Goli-

tsyna, was one of the seventeen children of Marshal Mikhailo, who had commanded Russian

troops and Ukrainian territorial regiments in Little Russia (1723-30), had founded and endowed the Kharkov Collegium in 1726, and had been president of the College of War

(1728-30). Ekaterina's mother was Tatiana, daughter of Boris Kurakin, the ambassador to

England (1709-17), Holland (171 1-25) and France (1724-27), married to Aksinia Lopukhi- na, Peter I's sister-in-law.14

12 RBS, torn 10, p. 527. 13 RBS, torn 16, pp. 118-127. 14 On Rumiantsev's father see RBS, torn 17, pp. 460-77. Rumiantsev's genealogy is m A. Lobanov- Rostovskii Russkaiarodoslovnaiakniga. Sec. ed. Tom 1-2. S.-Peterburg 1895, here torn 2, pp. 186- 191 ; that of the Golytsins is in P. Dolgorukov Rossiiskaia rodoslovnaia kniga. Tom 1-4. S.-Peterburg




His father's activities and his wife's social connections brought Rumiantsev into a milieu familiar with the affairs of Little Russia and of the entire Russo-Turkish frontier. Ekaterina's step-sister (her mother was a Buturlina) married Marshal Alexander Buturlin, who was "governor" of Little Russia (1741-42) and commander-in-chief of the Russian army in 1760. One of her brothers married Smaragda-Ekaterina Kantemir, sister of the well known poet and satirist Antioch Kantemir, born in Constantinople in 1708, who became ambassador to England (1732-38) and France (1738-44): both were children of Dmitrii Kantemir, the hos- podar of Moldavia who had settled in Russia after the disastrous Prut campaign of 171 1 and whose second wife was a Princess Trubetskaia. Ekaterina Golitsyna's uncle was related to Anna Panin, married to Ivan Nepliuev, resident in Constantinople (1721-35), "governor" of Little Russia in 1741, and governor of Orenburg (1744-59); one of their sons, Andrei Nep- liuev, was resident in Constantinople from 1746 to 1750, another married a Naryshkina. Last but not least, one of Anna's brothers, Nikita, was Catherine IPs "foreign minister" from 1763 to the late 1770s. Moreover, the governor general's sister Daria married a son of Procurator General Nikita Trubetskoi, and one of her sisters-in-law was the wife of Catherine IPs procurator General, Alexander Viazemskii.15

The link with the Kurakins needs to be pursued since one of the governors general was a member of the family. Kurakin belonged to the second generation of governors general: he was 34 years younger than Rumiantsev. Boris Kurakin was his great-grandfather, his grandfather had been ambassador to France (1722-25, 1727-29) and had been known for his gallo- philia at the germanophile court of Anna Ivanovna. His father was a first cousin of Rumian- tsev, and his mother Elena, the daughter of Marshal Stepan Apraksin, commander in chief of the Russian army in 1756, at the outset of the Seven Years War. Kurakin himself was a nephew of Nikolai Repnin, the governor general of Estland, Livland, Vilno and Slonim and a first cousin of Grigorii Volkonskii, Kurakin' s contemporary in Orenburg, where he was military governor from 1803 to 1817. Kurakin was related to the Romanov house in other ways. His wife, Natalia Golo vina, came from a well known branch of the family that had given Fedor, Peter F s "foreign minister" (1699-1706) and "grand admiral" (commander in chief) of the navy, and his son Nikolai, ambassador to Sweden (1725-31), admiral and president of the College of the Navy (1733-45). Her mother Ekaterina was a Golytsina, daughter of Alexei Golytsin and Daria Gagarina, the aunt of two Trubetskoi princes. One of Ekaterina's brothers married a young cousin of the Lopukhin sisters, and one of her sisters-in-law, Ekaterina Apraksina, was a grandniece of Tsaritsa Marfa, Tsar Fedor Alexeevich's second wife. Moreover, one of Ekaterina Apraksina's brothers married a Gendrikova, the granddaughter of Simon, brother-in-law of Catherine I, and two others married Razumovskii ladies. The Naryshkins, Trubetskois, and Kurakin families introduce us to the Little Russia network.16

Alexei Razumovskii (Rozumovsky) was the son of a Zaporozhian Cossack who was sent to the Imperial Court on account of his good voice which was sure to please the future Empress Elizabeth. He eventually became her morganatic husband, but kept a low profile despite his promotion to field marshal, in his case a purely honorific title. His brother Kirill,

1854-57, here tom 1, pp. 285-314. On Marshal Mikhailo see Bantysh-Kamenskii Slovar' dostopamiatnykh liudei russkoi zemli. Tom 1-5. Moskva 1836, here torn 2, pp. 82-91, and D. Korsakov Votsa- renie imperatritsy Anny Ioannovny. Kazan' 1880, pp. 39-41. On Boris Kurakin see RBS, torn 2, pp. 572-579. Some of Alexei Kurakin's letters from Little Russia were published in V. Smol'ianinov Vosemnadtsatyi vek. Tom 1-2. Moskva 1904-1905, here torn 1, pp. 290-307, 329-423.

On Antioch Kantemir see Korsakov Votsarenie imperatritsy Anny Ioannovny pp. 258-260. On the Nepliuevs see RBS, torn 1 1, pp. 227-234. On Panin see ibidem, torn 13, pp. 189-205.

The Golovins' genealogy is in Dolgorukov Rossiiskaia rodoslovnaia kniga, torn 3, pp. 105-1 15, of the Apraksins ibidem, torn 2, pp. 1 13-121 .



168 John P. LeDonne

also an honorary field marshal, moved out of the circle of Hetmanate families and married Ekaterina Naryshkina, granddaughter of Lev Naryshkin, brother of Tsaritsa Natalia, Peter F s mother. This marriage made Kirill a first cousin of Anna Rumiantseva, the marshal's own first cousin, so that Rumiantsev, who replaced the hetmán in 1764 when the post was abolished, was in fact his cousin. Ekaterina 's uncle by marriage was Alexei Cherkasskii, great- grandson of Uruskan Murza of Kabarda who, like so many other "men of power" from the frontier zones, had thrown in his lot with the Russians in the seventeenth century and was himself a collateral descendent of Tsaritsa Maria, Ivan IV's second wife. Alexei had been governor of Siberia (1719-24), member of Anna Ivanovna's Cabinet of Ministers (173 1-40), and chancellor of the empire (1740-42), nominally the chief of the foreign policy establishment. His first wife Agrafina was a daughter of Lev Naryshkin, his second a sister of Nikita Trubetskoi. Kirill Razumovskii's daughter and first cousin married the two Apraskins previously mentioned, and his second son Alexei married a granddaughter of Marshal Boris Shere- metev, one of Peter I's closest collaborators who married the widow of Lev Naryshkin. The Razumovskiis had thus become full-fledged members of the charmed Naryshkin-Trubetskoi network, and it is quite obvious that Repnin-Volkonskii also belonged to it: his wife was Kirill Razumovskii's granddaughter.17

One more governor general belonged to this network. Lobanov-Rostovskii descended from Prince Ivan who had been one of the foremost diplomats of seventeenth-century Russia and had led embassies to Persia and Poland. Ivan's interest in the Russo-Persian frontier may have explained why his son Iakov (who had 28 children by two wives) married as his first wife Maria Cherkasskaia, a sister of Alexei, so ideally related to the Naryshkins and Trubets- kois. Iakov's children linked Matvei Kantemir, a brother of Antioch, with the Repnins, the Trubetskois, and the Sheremetevs, and, to make the link even more inclusive, his grandson Ivan married Ekaterina Kurakina, the aunt of Governor General Kurakin who was thus Ia- kov's first cousin. The Lobanov-Rostovskiis' interest in the Southern Frontier was strength- ened by the marriage of one of Iakov's sons to the niece of Alexander Bezborodko, whose father had worked with Rumiantsev's father in the Hetmanate, and who himself had been sent to the capital with Rumiantsev's recommendation to become Catherine II' s "foreign minister" after Panin's eclipse and eventually chancellor of the empire (1797-99).18

The fifth and last governor general, Ivan Saltykov, was a case apart. The Saltykov family was a complex association, consisting of at least four branches. One branch gave Tsaritsa Praskovia, the wife of Tsar Ivan V and mother of Empress Anna Ivanovna; it became extinct with the death of Praskovia's brother in October 1730. Another branch became closely associated with the Dolgorukovs whose own title to preeminence within the ruling elite was the marriage of Princess Maria to Mikhail, the first Romanov tsar in 1624. And although the

Saltykovs and Dolgorukovs split over the issue of Anna Ivanovna's powers in 1730, both continued to intermarry until the nineteenth century. But two other branches chose to inter-

marry with the Naryshkins-Trubetskois. The governor general belonged to one of these. The first important figure in it was Simon, a distant relative of Anna Ivanovna, who gave her

17 The Razumovskiis' genealogy is in Lobanov-Rostovskii Russkaia rodoslovnaia kniga, torn 2, pp. 152-155 and V. Mozdalevskii Malorossiiskii Rodoslovnik. Tom 1-4. Kiev 1908-1914, here torn 4, pp. 229-235. See also A. Vasil'chikov Semeistvo Razumovskikh. Tom 1-4. S.-Peterburg 1880-1887. On Alexei's marriage with the Empress Elizabeth see ibidem torn 1, pp. 19-20. See also M. Razumovsky Die Razumovskys. Eine Familie am Zarenhof. Köln, Wien 1998. For the Cherkasskiis consult Dolgorukov Rossiiskaia rodoslovnaia kniga, torn 2, pp. 36-45. 18 Ibidem, torn 1, pp. 212-227. On Bezborodko see E. Karnovich Gosudarstvennyi chelovek Ekate- rinskikh vremen, in: Istoricheskii Vestnik (1883) no. 2, pp. 326-352, 532-565, here pp. 333-340, and N. Grigorovich Kantsler kniaz' A. A. Bezborodko v sviazi s sobytiami ego vremeni. Tom 1-2. S.- Peterburg 1879.



Governors General of the Western Frontier 1 772- 1825 169

strong support in 1730, after eliminating Alexander Menshikov, one of the largest landowners in the Hetmanate, and serving there briefly as a watchdog over Hetmán Apóstol. He spent the 1730s as governor general of Moscow. His wife Fekla was a relative of Artemii Volyn- skii, a former governor of Kazan and the main architect of the forward policy toward Persia, who was executed in 1740 for allegedly plotting against the "Germans" in Anna's government. Volynskii's wife was a daughter of Lev Naryshkin. Saltykov's mother was a sister of Procurator General Trubetskoi, and she was instrumental in getting her husband, Petr Salty- kov, appointed commander in chief of the army in 1759; his victories over the Prussians earned him a field marshal baton, and he spent the 1760s as governor general of Moscow. Ivan made less clear choices: his wife was the niece of Zakhar Chernyshev, the president of the College of War, who can be placed in the Saltykov network, and a granddaughter of An- drei Ushakov, the chief of the secret police under Anna Ivanovna and Elizabeth, but his sister married into a branch of the Golitsyn family that linked him with the other network: her husband was a great-grandson of Boris Golitsyn, tutor to the young Peter I, who had managed for thirty years the lands of the former Kazan and Astrakhan khanates, and of Tikhon Streshnev, one of the major figures of Peter's reign, who was related to Tsaritsa Evdokia, the second wife Tsar Mikhail. Tikhon's daughter had married Boris Kurakin's brother. The governor general can be placed in the Saltykov network with the understanding that this branch of the family provided a connecting link between the other Saltykovs and the Naryshkins-Trubetskois.

19

II.

The Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji brought about a radical change in the geopolitics of the Southern Frontier: it gave Russia a frontage on the Black Sea between the Southern Bug and the Dniepr as well as the eastern end of the Sea of Azov, where the fortress of Azov, the object of a century-old rivalry between Russia and the Ottomans, was finally incorporated into the Russian empire.20 It shifted the geopolitical center of gravity in the frontier from Little Russia to the lower Dniepr and downgraded Rumiantsev's bailiwick in favor of the steppe zone between the Bug and the Don. The zone was divided into two provinces, Azov and New Russia, each under a governor made responsible to a governor general, Grigorii Po- temkin, who was also governor general of Saratov and Astrakhan. In March 1783, New Russia and Azov provinces were combined to form a new province called Ekaterinoslav, much of Azov province becoming a separate Land of the Don Cossacks. Saratov and Astra- khan were combined in the spring of 1784 to form a separate governor generalship. In the meantime, the Crimean khanate had been annexed in April 1783 and renamed province of Tauride (Tavricheskaia oblast'). The two new provinces were placed under Potemkin, and their administration was reorganized between March 1783 and April 1787 in accordance with the Statute of November 1775. Kharkov province was added in 1787, and Potemkin, like Rumiantsev, became governor general of three provinces.

Potemkin (1739-91) was the brightest star in the constellation of power that sustained Catherine's rule. During the first Turkish war of her reign he had served under Rumiantsev who recommended him for valor to the empress in 1770 and gained him a promotion to major general. The promotion led to Potemkin's recall from the army in December 1773, and

19 The Saltykovs' genealogy is in Dolgorukov Rossiiskaia rodoslovnaia kniga, torn 2, pp. 68-85. On Simon see RBS, torn 1 8, pp. 1 1 7-1 1 8, on Petr Semenovich ibidem pp. 1 05-1 1 7. On Boris Golitsyn see Korsakov Votsarenie imperatritsy Anny Ioannovny pp. 24-25 and Bantysh-Kamenskii Slovar' dostopamiatnykh liudei, torn 2, pp. 50-52.

The negotiations that led to the treaty are discussed in E. Druzhinina Kuchuk-Kainardzhiiskii mir 1774 goda. Moskva 1955, pp. 149-277.



170 John P. LeDonne

his return to Petersburg inaugurated the most brilliant career a member of the ruling elite could ever hope for. By the fall of 1774, he had become vice-president of the College of War, where Zakhar Chernyshev chose to retire rather than share power with the newcomer who, meanwhile, had become the empress's lover. In February 1784, when he was promoted to field marshal, he became president of the college, a post he would retain until his death in October 1791.

The parallel with Chernyshev was striking. These two members of the ruling elite were the only ones who ever combined a governor generalship with the top position in the military establishment, the chief source of military patronage. At the beginning of 1776, Potemkin was appointed inspector of the entire light cavalry of the empire (leaving Rumiantsev with the command of the heavy cavalry), including the irregular troops and the Cossacks, strung along the frontier outposts from the Dniepr to the Irtysh. In 1781, he commanded the IX Division consisting of 15 regiments of infantry and 25 of cavalry stationed in the three provinces of Azov, New Russia, and Astrakhan. Both men took an active part in the administration of their territory, but unlike Chernyshev, who had administered Bielorussia directly from Petersburg and, after his retirement, from his estate near Moscow, Potemkin spent much of his time in the field, an arrangement which, in the end, would dangerously weaken his position in the capital. Moreover, Potemkin also assumed responsiblity for the building of a Black Sea navy, based at first in Kherson on the Dniepr, later in Nikolaev on the Southern Bug, within striking distance of the imposing Ottoman fortress of Ochakov. The naval command {admiraltei 'stvo) in Nikolaev was under Potemkin's general management and remained

independent of the College of the Navy in Petersburg, some 1600 kilometers away.21 Potemkin did not live to see the end of the second Russo-Turkish war of Catherine's reign

(1787-91), but he lived long enough to witness the emergence of a rival, Platon Zubov, who became Catherine's lover in the early months of 1789. Five years later, Zubov was appointed governor general of Ekaterinoslav, the Crimea, and of the new territory annexed in 1792, the so-called Ochakov steppe, reorganized in January 1795 into the province of Voznesensk, a town created artificially in the middle of the steppe, already overshadowed by Kherson and Nikolaev, later by Odessa.

Zubov (1762-1822) reminds us of Passek, the mediocrity who succeeded Chernyshev in Bielorussia. The son of a corrupt junior officer and vice-governor who had ingratiated himself with Procurator General Viazemskii and Nikolai Saltykov - the latter substituted for Po- temkin as "chief of the College of War while Potemkin was at the front - he had served in the Finnish campaign of 1788 and caught the attention of Saltykov, who succeeded in con- vincing the empress to let go the current favorite (Alexander Dmitriev-Mamonov), a protégé of Potemkin, and replace him with Zubov. Uneducated, with little intelligence and powerful opponents, he nevertheless managed to earn the aging empress's complete confidence, and

by 1793, he had become her closest advisor in Polish, Ottoman, and Persian affairs. In October, he was made commanding general of the artillery - another favorite, Grigorii Orlov, had once held that post - but one with little in common with his responsibilities as governor general, to which was added the overall command of the Black Sea navy in July 1796.22 Zu-

21 There is a vast bibliography on Potemkin: one may begin with RBS, torn 14, pp. 649-670 and A. Samoilov Zhizn' i deiianiia general-ferdmarshala kniazia G. A. Potemkina Tavrichcheskogo, in: Rus- skii Archiv (1867) pp. 575-606, 993-1027, 1203-1262, 1537-1578, and G. Soloveytchik Potemkin. New York 1947. Catherine IPs personal correspondence with Potemkin was recently published in: Eka- terina II i G. A. Potemkin. Lichnaia perepiska 1769-1791. Moskva 1997. See also Nachalo uchrezh- deniia Rossiiskogo flota na Chernom More, in: Zapiski Odesskogo Obshchestva istorii i drevnostei 4 (1858) pp. 261-310. 22 RBS, torn 7, pp. 526-546 and P. Kniaz' Platon Aleksandrovich Zubov 1767-1822, in: Russkaia Starina (1876) no. 2, pp. 591-606, no. 3, pp. 39-52, 437^62, 691-726.




bov, not being a military man, remained without a military command, however. After the regrouping of the Russian army following the third partition of Poland in 1795, the 29 regiments of infantry and cavalry stationed in Podolia, Voznesensk, Ekaterinoslav, Kharkov provinces and the Crimea were placed under the command of Alexander Suvorov, over whom Zubov, who remained in Petersburg, vainly attempted to obtain a degree of authority, to the amusement of the veteran commander. In other words, the post of governor general of "New Russia" which had been so powerful for fifteen years, was being transformed into a civilian one, while regional military commanders were made to report to Nikolai Saltykov, now the de facto president of the College of War.

The post of governor general of New Russia ceased to exist during Paul's reign: as early as December 1796, Voznesensk province and the Crimea were merged with Ekaterinoslav province to form a single New Russian province, its capital in Ekaterinoslav, with a military governor also responsible for the civil administration. But the province was so large and its human geography so varied that a single governor could not cope with the resulting administrative burden. This was recognized in October 1802, with Alexander I's government re- verted to the administrative-territorial divisions of Catherine's reign. New Russia was divided once again into three provinces - Ekaterinoslav, Nikolaev (Kherson, beginning in 1803), and the Crimea. A civilian governor was appointed in the three capitals, and a military governor was added in Ekaterinoslav with the overall supervision of the civil administration in the three provinces. Two of the first three military governors were introduced in the previous article on the Western Frontier: Johann von Michelsohnen (Mikhelson) and Andreas von Ro- senberg, both with a regional military command. The third, Lt.-Gen. Sergei Bekleshev (1750- 1823), brother of the previously mentioned Alexander, had pursued a career that epitomized the close relationship between the military and the civilian elite, so close indeed that it is impossible to distinguish them as separate "strategic elites" until after the war of 1812. He had been an adjutant to Iakov Bruce when the latter commanded the Finland Division in the 1770s and had served under Musin-Pushkin and Ivan Saltykov during the Russo-Swedish war of 1788-90. Paul made him commandant of Kronshtadt, but Bekleshev soon transferred to the civil service in the College of Foreign Affairs and the Postal Administration when both were headed by Alexander Bezborodko, then returned to the army with a promotion to lieutenant general to become a member of the College of War then headed by Nikolai Salty- kov. Alexander I appointed him military governor of Arkhangelsk in 1801 and in January 1803 military governor in Nikolaev and inspector of the Crimean Inspection. He died soon afterwards, however, in October.23

A new period in the history of the region began with Rosenberg's retirement on grounds of poor health in March 1805. Russia's commitment to the Third Coalition against Napoleon shifted large numbers of troops to the Austrian front and the rising tension on the Ottoman front required the appointment of a separate commanding general for the troops kept in reserve in the event of a new war with the Turks. The increasing mobility of the Russian army in the immense strategic theater stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Danube no longer made it possible to combine the command of an army in the field with a governor generalship, as had been the case with Rumiantsev and Potemkin when separate armies had been assigned a well defined territorial mission. Governors general of New Russia were now required to be chiefly administrators capable of building on Potemkin's work and developing an infrastructure of towns, ports, and roads to facilitate troop movements and the shipment of supplies.

23 In Bekleshev see RBS, torn 2, pp. 673-674.




Such an outstanding administrator was already serving in the region. He was Armand Emmanuel, duc de Richelieu (1766-1822) - a descendant of the famous cardinal - who, like many other French aristocrats displaced by the Revolution and like Paulucci, whom we encountered in the Western Frontier, had entered Russian service via Vienna. He first served in Potemkin' s army, moved on to Petersburg, fought on the Rhine and in Holland, returned to Russia in 1795, when Rumiantsev offered him command of one of the elite cuirassier regiments stationed in Volhynia. Alexander I appointed him governor (gradonachalnik) of Odessa in February 1803, a town that would immortalize his name in the annals of the region. In March 1805 he was appointed governor general of New Russia (Ekaterinoslav, Kherson, and the Crimea), but kept his residence in Odessa. He returned to France in September 1814 and became foreign minister in June 1815.24 His successor was a friend of long standing. Louis Alexandre, comte de Langeron (1763-1831) traveled and fought with Richelieu until the end of Catherine's reign and then, the two generals went their separate ways. Langeron became a Russian subject, fought at Austerlitz and on the Danube, entered Paris with the allied forces in March 1814, and returned to Russia to take command of the IV Corps of the First Army in Kiev. He succeeded Richelieu in November 1815 but by then, without a re-

gional military command. Some of his reform projects met with disapproval in Petersburg and he was allowed to retire in May 1823. Meanwhile, Bessarabia had been annexed to the

empire by the Treaty of Bucharest in May 1812 and was administered at first by a military governor in Kishinev. However, general dissatisfaction in the territory led to the creation in

May 1816 of the post of "plenipotentiary viceroy" (polnomochnyi namestnik) filled until 1822 by the military governor of Podolia and Volhynia. In 1822, the post was merged with that of governor general of New Russia.25

The last governor general of New Russia appointed by Alexander I was another great lord, but a Russian, and his career was bound up with the history of the Southern Frontier to an extent unrivaled since the days of Potemkin. Mikhail Vorontsov (1782-1856) was as early as 1803 already in the suite of the governor general of eastern Georgia, Pavel Tsitsianov. He

fought in Moldavia- Wallachia during the Russo-Ottoman war of 1806-12 and in the great war of 1812-1814. In 1815 he was given the command of a separate corps that would remain in France until 1818 while Richelieu was negotiating with the allies the terms of the indem-

nity to be paid by post-war France. In 1820 he commanded the III Corps of the First Army in Kremenchug on the Dniepr and then moved to Odessa immediately after Langeron' s retirement. He too no longer had a regional military command. No other governor general would remain in his post for so long. Twenty-one years later, in December 1844, Vorontsov was transferred to Tiflis (Tbilisi) to take command of the Separate Caucasian Corps and assume the post of viceroy of the Caucasus, while remaining de jure governor general of New Russia until his retirement on October 1854.26 At no time since Grigorii Potemkin had the Southern Frontier been so unified under a single proconsul, and it had become a very different territory since the appearance of Catherine's favorite nearly seventy-five years earlier.

24 RSB, torn 6, pp. 253-266 and P. Maikop Gertsog Rishel'e v Rossii, in: Russkaia Starina (1897) no. 3, pp. 33-49. There is much information on his official activities in Perepiska gertskogo Rishel'e s imperatorom Aleksandrom, ego ministrami i chastnymi litsami, in: Sbornik Imperatorskogo Russkogo Istoricheskogo Obshchestva (SIRIO) 54 (1886) pp. 23(M28.

25 RBS, torn 10, pp. 60-65. Some details on his careers are in: K biografii grafa Lanzherona, in: Rus- skii Arkhiv (1895) no. 3 pp. 401-^04. 26 M. Shcherbinin Biografiia fel'dmarshala M. S. Vorontsova. Petersburg 1858. His service record was published in Arkhiv kniaza Vorontsova, torn 35 (1 889) pp. v-xvi. His activities in New Russia are examined in: A. Rhinelander Prince Michael Vorontsov: Viceroy to the Tsar. Montreal 1990, pp. 57- 120.




This second sample consists of 8 governors general, 2 of them appointed by Catherine, 3

by Paul, and another by Alexander I, and we add Chertkov and Viazmitinov mentioned in Part I. Michelsohnen and Rosenberg were placed in our first article in the Germanic network closely associated with the Saltykovs. Bekleshev who, like his brother, did not marry, must be placed in the Saltykov network if only because his career was spent under the command of individuals belonging to that network. We are left with 7 individuals.

If Rumiantsev was the most famous figure in Little Russia, Potemkin towered over New Russia, and his family connections introduce us to what may be called a vast Black Sea network encompassing families from the valley of the Dniepr and from the valleys of rivers descending from the Podolian upland, the Southern Bug and the Dniestr. Such a network included families from the eastern and southeastern marches of the old Polish empire: the Smolensk szlachta, still deeply polonized in the eighteenth century; the emerging starshyna in the Hetmanate; Polish magnate families in the Right-Bank Ukraine between the Dniepr and the Dniestr.27 The key link in the Dniepr network was the Engelhardt family. It was of Swiss origin. A branch had emigrated to Livland in the fifteenth century and another would emigrate to Russia 300 years later and give a governor of Vyborg during Catherine IPs reign. The Engelhardts of Smolensk were an offshoot of the Livland family.28

One can trace the emergence of this Black Sea network to the decision of Herman Apóstol to marry off his three sons, not to daughters of Hetmanate families as might have been expected, but into families of the Smolensk szlachta, one of which was the Engelhardt family. His daughter Praskovia, however, married the nephew of Apostol's predecessor, Het- man Skoropadskii, and their son Iakov married a niece of Herman Razumovskii. The three post-Mazepa hetmans were thus closely related among themselves and with the Smolensk szlachta, and since Kirill Razumovskii married into the Naryshkin family, we have a first link with the Naryshkin-Trubetskoi network.29

The network expanded during the next generation when Vasilii Engelhardt, later to become lieutenant general and senator in Russian service, married Elena (Marfa), one of Grigo- rii Potemkin's sisters, while another sister married Nikolai Samoilov: their son Alexander would succeed Viazemskii as procurator general and marry a grandniece of Procurator General Trubetskoi.30 This was the second link with the Naryshkin-Trubetskoi network. Va- silii's children made valuable connections. His daughter Ekaterina married Pavel Skavron- skii, grandnephew of Catherine I, mother of Empress Elizabeth, the natural grand patron of the Naryshkin-Trubetskoi network.31 Another daughter married Franciszek Ksavery Branicki,

27 M. Boslovskii Smolenskoe shliakhetstvo v XVIII veke, in: Zhurnal ministerstva narodnogo prosveshcheniia (1899) (March-April) pp. 25-61, here pp. 25-31; Subtelny Ukraine pp. 188-191. A very illuminating sociological study of the emergence of the starshyna is in A. Lazarevskii Ocherk Malo- rossiiskikh familii. Materialy dlia istorii obshchestva v XVII i XVIII vekakh, in: Russkii Arkhiv (1 875) no. 1, pp. 91-97, 31 1-325, 439^52; no. 2, pp. 248-264, 402-409; no. 3, pp. 297-308, and (1876) no. 3, pp. 437-455. 28

Entsiklopedicheskii slovar'. Izd. F. A. Brokgauz, I. A. Efron. Tom 40. S.-Peterburg 1904, p. 796. The Engelhardts' genealogy is in Lobanov-Rostovskii Russkaia rodoslovnaia kniga, torn 2, pp. 406-442. A most useful source for the politics of the period is Lev Engelhardt Zapiski. Moskva 1997. Lev was Viazmitinov's brother-in-law.

On Apóstol see RBS, torn 2, pp. 238-239; genealogy in: Mozdalevskii Malorossiiskii Rodoslov- nik, torn 1, pp. 6-11. On Skoropadskii see RBS, torn 18, pp. 61 1-614; genealogy in: Mozdalevskii Malorossiiskii Rodoslovnik, torn 4, pp. 660-677. 30 The Potemkins' genealogy is in V. Rummel, V. Golubtsov Rodoslovnyi sbornik russkikh dvor- ianskikh familii. Tom 1-2. S.-Peterburg 1886-1887, here torn 2, pp. 258-278. 31 On Ekaterina Engelhardt see V. Mikhnevich Semeistvo Skavronskikh, in: Istoricheskii Vestnik (1885) no. 1, pp. 223-257; no. 2, pp. 76-1 10, here pp. 98-100. On the Samoilov family see V. Shrenk Semeistvo Samoilykh, in: Russkaia Starina (1903) no. 3, pp. 559-576.




one of the first Polish magnates on the Right Bank to join the confederation of Targowica in 1792, who became a full general in the Russian army after the second partition of Poland. One of this Branicki's daughters married a Potocki, whose half-sister Olga married a Narysh- kin, the nephew of Franciszek Lubomirski, the son of a Kiev voevoda; his third wife was a Naryshkina, his first a Potocka, his second a Rzewuska from a family of Podolian voevodas.32 The Engelhardts cemented the link between the Smolensk szlachta, the Hetmanate starshyna, the Polish magnates on the Right Bank, and the Naryshkin-Trubetskoi network. Potemkin himself was of Polish descent and belonged to the Smolensk szlachta. Viazmitinov also belongs here. His family was likewise of Polish origin. Sergei's wife Alexandra was a granddaughter of Fedor Engelhardt, Vasilii's first cousin, and his wife Pelageia Rydvanskaia, closely related, like the Apostais, to the Khrapovitskiis, one of the leading families of the Smolensk szlachta, which gave Platon, governor in Smolensk (1782-87) and the better known Alexander, one of Catherine's secretaries and the author of the famous diary. Alexandra's own father had been governor in Mogilev from 1782 to 1790.33 Chertkov ap- pears unrelated by marriage to any one of the networks, but the general's long service under Potemkin from his appointment as governor of Azov in 1776 to that of governor general of Saratov and Voronezh in 1787 establishes him as a Potemkin protégé: he too must be included here.

Before moving on to the governors general appointed by Alexander I, one must pause to examine the case of Platon Zubov. He was of Tatar ancestry and his father had been a protégé of Procurator General Viazemskii and of Nikolai Saltykov, who had placed him in Catherine's bed. Zubov was thus a Saltykov protégé, but we also know he showed little

gratitude to his patron and proceeded to build bridges to the Naryshkin-Trubetskoi network.

Perhaps he felt that as governor general of New Russia with interests in the Polish, Ottoman, and Persian frontier it was only natural to seek allies in a network that had gained such preeminence in the region for two generations. His older brother Nikolai married Natalia, daughter of the famous Suvorov, whose career was inseparable from the Russian advance into the Russo-Turkish frontier, and sister-in-law of a Naryshkina, a niece of Franciszek Lubomirski. His younger brother Valerian, who commanded the Russian expedition against Persia in 1796, married a Potocka, née Lubomirska. A third brother married a daughter of Procurator General Viazemskii and by this marriage became related to the Trubetskois and Alexander Samoilov. The Zubovs thus chose to identify with the Naryshkin-Trubetskoi network.34

Of the remaining three governors general Richelieu was unique. He did not marry in Russia and his long stay there was only temporary, until the fall of Napoleon enabled him to return to France. But his service with Potemkin and Rumiantsev, his great interest in Black Sea trade, and the creation of Odessa as the major outlet for grain from the valley of the

Dniepr and the latifundia of the Polish magnates made him a major figure in the Black Sea network, standing alone but fully attuned to its commercial interests. Langeron on the other hand, remained in Russia and did marry a Russian, a princess Trubetskaia.35

The last member of this sample, Vorontsov, belonged to the third generation of governors general of the Southern Frontier: born in 1782, he was 57 years younger than Rumiantsev. He embodied, perhaps more clearly than any other, the internal consistency of the Black Sea

32 On Franciszek Ksavery Branicki see Polski Stownik Biograficzny. 2. Krakow 1936, pp. 398-401 . 33 1 did not find Viazmitinov' s genealogy, but he can be traced through that of the Engelhardts. 34 Genealogy in Dolgorukov Rossiiskaia rodoslovnaia kniga, torn 3, pp. 132-137. On Zubov's relationship with Nikolai Saltykov see RBS, torn 7, pp. 526-546, here pp. 527-528, 533. 35 On Richelieu's activities in Odessa see also P. Herlihy Odessa. A History 1794-1914. Distributed by Harvard University Press, Cambridge, USA 1986, pp. 21-48. 1 was unable to trace this Princess Trubetskaia in Dolgorukov's genealogies.




network. His grandfather, Roman, was a brother-in-law of Maria Volynskaia, daughter of Ar- temii and his wife Alexandra Naryshkina. Roman's brother Mikhail, deputy chancellor of the empire (1744-52), then chancellor (1758-65), married a niece of Catherine I. The governor general's father, Simon, was a first cousin of Ekaterina Engelhardt, one of Potemkin's nieces, and his sister Maria married a Buturlin, grandson of Boris Kurakin and Aksinia Lopukhina, who was also a first cousin by marriage of Marshal Rumiantsev. Simon's wife, Ekaterina, was the daughter of Admiral Alexei Seniavin (from another family of Polish origin), commander of what was still the modest Don flotilla during the Russo-Turkish war of 1768-74, whose first cousin fathered the better known Admiral Dmitrii Seniavin, commander in chief of Russia's land and naval forces in the eastern Mediterranean during the Russo-Turkish war of 1806-12. She was also the sister-in-law of Alexander Naryshkin and through him, of Fran- ciszek Lubomirski. The Seniavins were also related to the Potemkins, Engelhardts, and Tru- betskois. Finally, Mikhail himself, the governor general, married Elizabeth Branicka, daughter of Franciszek Ksavery and Alexandra Engelhardt, another niece of Potemkin. Vorontsov was thus related to the entire Black Sea network, to the Naryshkins-Trubetskois, and to the high command of the Black Sea navy.36

III.

The third zone in the Southern Frontier was the "Caucasus," a highly complex structure of mountains, uplands, and valleys straddling the watershed between the basin of the Black Sea and that of the Caspian. Until the annexation of the Crimean khanate in 1783, the Rus- sians had approached the Caucasus from the Astrakhan headquarters, and their task after 1783 would be to combine the lands of the old khanate west of the watershed with the settlements east of it to form a single region, where a substantial administrative and military infrastructure was urgently required to support operations against the mountain peoples and to project sufficient power across the passes: the year 1783 witnessed the signature of a treaty with Tsar Erekle (Iraklii) II of eastern Georgia establishing a resident minister in Tiflis, and the fortress of Vladikavkaz was built the following year to guard the access to the Darial Pass across the main Caucasian chain.37 In 1780, Astrakhan province had been divided into two provinces, Astrakhan and Saratov, both under the overall authority of Grigorii Potemkin, the governor general of New Russia and Azov. In 1784, they were placed under a new governor general, Pavel Potemkin, a distant relative of the favorite, and in May 1785, a new Caucasian (Kavkazskaia) province was created, merging Astrakhan province with the Cossack settlements on the Terek and the Stavropol upland, its capital in Ekaterinograd just west of Moz- dok. Potemkin became governor general of Saratov and the new province. The administrative unification of the approaches to the Caucasus remained incomplete, however. The lands of the old khanate were settled beginning in 1792 with former Zaporozhian Cossacks constitut- ing a new Black Sea Host, responsible until 1820 to the governor general of New Russia, to the governor general in Tiflis thereafter.

Pavel Potemkin (1743-96) was only nineteen when Catherine II seized the throne, and like so many others, he began his career in the Guard, when he served under Rumiantsev during the first Turkish war. The empress recalled him from the army in March 1774 to chair a

36 The Vorontsovs' genealogy is in Dolgorukov Rossiiskaia rodoslovnaia kniga, torn 2, pp. 104- 109, that of the Seniavins in Lobanov-Rostovskii Russkaia rodoslovnaia kniga, torn 2, pp. 210-215. On the two admirals see RBS, tom 18, pp. 329-333. 37 The treaty of Georgievsk is in PSZ. Tom 21, 1783, N. 15835 (pp. 1013-1017). For the political background of the period see D. Lang The Last Years of the Georgian Monarchy 1658-1832. New York 1957, pp. 181, 205-208; and N. Kortua Russko-gruzinskie vzaimootnosheniia vo vtoroi polovine XVIII veka. Tbilisi 1989, pp. 142-143, 160-192.




commission set up to investigate Pugachev and his immediate followers. The end of both the war and the rebellion joined the careers of the two Potemkins. Grigorii and the empress had far-reaching plans to settle the steppe with Russian peasants and to create a Christian state on the other side of the Caucasian chain, where Georgians and Armenians were looking north for protection, the former to insure the survival of the Bagratid house, the latter to expand their commercial activities. Pavel was given the command of the troops on the Caucasian Line in October 1782, administered the oath to the Nogai Tatars in the Kuban steppe following the annexation of the Crimean khanate, and negotiated the 1783 treaty in Georgievsk on the Line before proceeding to Tiflis to meet the Georgian tsar. The opening of a new provin- cial capital in Ekaterinograd and the need to put down the Mansur uprising rendered the traditional separation between the civilian administration in Astrakhan and the military command on the Line obsolete, and Potemkin combined the post of governor general with that of commander of the Line: Russia's military presence at the time consisted of five

regiments of regular infantry and cavalry with smaller regiments of Don and Terek Cossacks and other irregulars.38

Potemkin did not remain long in the Caucasus. As another war with the Ottomans became imminent in the fall of 1787, he was recalled to the army to serve under his relative Grigorii, who would become in 1789 the commander in chief of the entire Russian army operating against the Turks. Saratov province was joined with Voronezh under Chertkov, and although Potemkin retained his governor generalship and military command, the day to day administration of the province of Caucasus passed to the civil governor and to a separate general on the Line. In the spring of 1790, as the Ottomans set out on an expedition along the Kuban in the direction of the great watershed, the civil administration was moved back to Astrakhan, and the enemy advance forced a shake-up in the high command: General Ivan Gudovich was

appointed in the fall commander of the Line and of the so-called Kuban Corps, with which he successfully stormed Anapa in June 1791. The following year, when Grigorii Potemkin was already dead, Gudovich succeeded Pavel as governor general of the province of Cauca- sus, while remaining governor general of Riazan and Tambov provinces.

Gudovich (1741-1820) was briefly mentioned above in Part I. He was one of the great lords in the Ukrainian starshyna which was entering the imperial elite at the time, in the wake of the administrative-territorial reform and the consolidation of serfdom on the left bank of the Dniepr. He and his brother had studied at Königsberg, Halle, and Leipzig, and Ivan had

begun his career as adjutant to Petr Shuvalov, the chief of the artillery. His career had suf- fered at the beginning of Catherine's reign but recovered when he was promoted to major general at the age of 29, after the battle of Kagul in July 1770. He would leave the Caucasus in the spring of 1798, when he was appointed military governor of Kiev and Little Russia, but would return in 1806 at the outset of another Russo-Turkish war to command Russian

troops in Transcaucasia. There, he won a major victory on the Arpa River in August 1807, a feat that earned him the coveted field marshal baton. Partial blindness forced him to retire, however, and he ended his career in the posts of governor general of Moscow, senator, and member of the State Council.39

In the meantime, great changes had taken place in the administration of the "Caucasus." The emergence of a new dynasty in Persia and the shah's expedition against Tiflis in Septem-

38 RBS, torn 14, pp. 673-682; P. Katygin Graf Pavel Sergeevich Potemkin, in: Istoricheskii Vestnik (1883) no. 3, pp. 345-371; O Kavkazskikh praviteliakh, in: Russkii Arkhiv (1873) no. 1, pp. 741-776, here pp. 761-769.

39 D. Bantysh-Kamenskii Slovar' dostopamiatnykh liudei, torn 1, pp. 165-179; V. Potto Kavkaz- skaia voina. Tom 1-4. Moskva 1887-1889; reprinted in 5 volumes, Stavropol 1994, here torn 1, pp. 383-400.




ber 1795 brought about a Russian counteroffensive in the spring of 1796 led by Valerian Zu- bov, Platen's brother. Although canceled by Paul, the Russian move precipitated a reassess- ment of strategic priorities in the Caucasus. There was a direct link between the shah's expedition and the annexation of eastern Georgia, decided in December 1800 and officially proclaimed in September 180 1.40 Gudovich's successor did not arrive until the spring of 1799 and was probably the worst possible choice, although he may have been seen as a purely transitional figure while the fate of Georgia was being decided in Petersburg. Carl Heinrich von Knowing (1746-1820) had pursued a purely military career and one so undistinguished that he was not promoted to major general until the age of 50, but his promotion to lieutenant general came with the appointment as military governor of Astrakhan, commander of the Line and of the Caucasian Inspection, consisting at the time of nine regiments of infantry and cavalry and of irregular troops strung along the Kuban and Terek from Taman to Kizliar. Two battalions of infantry had been sent to Tiflis in the summer of 1798, and by the summer of 1 80 1 five regiments of regular troops had been redeployed in Georgia. Knorring was given the rather pompous title of commander in chief in eastern Georgia, but he so mismanaged the transition that he was dismissed in December 1802.41

His successor was a Georgian. Pavel Tsitsianov (Tsitsishvili, 1754-1806) was the grandson of a Georgian prince who had accompanied Tsar Wakhtang VI to Russia in 1725, had become a Russian subject and served in various administrative positions, including that of secretary of the College of War. Pavel had drawn attention to himself by both his courage and administrative talents during the Polish campaign of 1794 and had been Valerian Zu- bov's second in command in 1796. Alexander I recalled him from retirement, partly at the suggestion of the Georgian envoys in Petersburg who wanted to replace Knorring with a member of the Georgian aristocracy. In November 1802, Astrakhan province had once again been divided into two, Astrakhan and a new province of Caucasus, the latter' s capital in Georgievsk. Tsitsianov became the first governor general ("chief administrator") of the Caucasus, commander of the Line and of the Caucasian Inspection, with headquarters in Tiflis.42

Russia's establishment in eastern Georgia, considered by Persia to be within its sphere of influence since the Turco-Persian treaty of 1639, was interpreted by the new Qajar dynasty as a threat to its vital interests. By the summer of 1804, the two countries were at war, and the governor general became a full-fledged field commander in the Russo-Persian frontier, where he proceeded to incorporate into the empire the khanates of Azerbaijan. He met his death before Baku in February 1 806. Meanwhile, the Line had once again been placed under separate command on the eve of the war: two military theaters were emerging, Transcaucasia and the mountains, where the resistance of the tribes was causing increasing concern. The Tiflis headquarters, however, retained overall responsibility for military operations in the entire Caucasus. Gudovich returned to continue the war and to fight the Ottomans in western

40 Kortua Russko-gruzinskie vzaimootnosheniia pp. 315-31 8, 32 1-400; N. Kniapina [et al.] (eds.) Kavkaz i Srednaia Azia vo vneshnei politike Rossii. Vtoraia polovina 18v.-80ie gody 19 v. Moskva 1984, pp. 80-95, 100-107; Lang The Last Years of the Georgian Monarchy pp. 214^252; Arkhiv Go- sudarstvennogo Soveta. Tom 2 (1796-1801). S.-Peterburg 1888, col. 881-882 and Tom 3 (1801- 1810), chast' 1. S.-Peterburg 1878, col. 1 189-1210. On the Persian campaign see N. Dubrovin Istoriia voiny i vladychestva russkikh na Kavkaze. Tom 1-6. S.-Peterburg 1 871-1 888, here torn 3, pp. 1-204. 41 RBS, torn 9, pp. 4-5 and W. Lenz (ed.) Deutschbaltisches biographisches Lexikon 1710-1960. Köln, Wien 1970, pp. 393-394. See also Akty sobrannye Kavkazkoiu Arkheograficheskoiu Kommis- sieu (cited as AKAK). Tom 1-12. Tiflis 1866-1904, here torn 1, pp. 93-507. 42 RBS, tom 21, pp. 499-508; AKAK, torn 2; and Dubrovin Istoriia voiny, torn 4. See also L. Rhinel ander Russia's Imperial Policy: The Administration of the Caucasus in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century, in: Canadian Slavonic Papers 17 (1975) pp. 218-235, here pp. 221-227.



178 John P. LeDonne

Georgia. General Alexander Tormasov (1752-1819), who had briefly served as military governor of Riga (March-December 1807) was appointed to succeed him in February 1809. He consolidated Russian gains in western Georgia: Poti fell in November, Akhalkalaki, which guarded the approaches to Tiflis, in September 1810. Imeretia, Mingrelia, and Guria were officially annexed in April 1811. Tormasov did not have the chance to prosecute the war to a successful end: he was recalled in July to take command of a Third Army assigned to protect the Right-Bank Ukraine and Kiev against a possible French invasion. His successor, Lt.-Gen. Filippo Paulucci (1779-1849) stayed but seven months; in February 1812, he was appointed chief of staff to Barclay de Tolly, the commander in chief of the First Army; found unfit for the post, he was transferred to Riga to become governor general of Livland and Kurland in October.43

The war with the Persians and Ottomans came to an end under Paulucci's successor, Lt.- Gen. Nikolai Rtishchev (1754-1835), a cautious but persevering officer, very different from the impetuous and choleric Paulucci. He had risen slowly in the service, had been commandant of Astrakhan in 1798, and transferred to Tiflis from the Danubian Army. There was little

military activity in western Georgia at the time, and the Turkish war ended in May 1812. On the Persian front, Rtishchev's hand was forced by Major General Petr Kotliarevskii, the son of a country priest, who won a major victory at Aslanduz in October 1812. The Treaty of Gu- listan ended the war a year later, and Rtishchev was belatedly promoted to full general. More decisive events had been unfolding in the Western Frontier since June 1812, and Rtishchev was almost forgotten in Petersburg, ignored by ministers, and left to his own devices to cope with insurrection in the mountains.44

A new period marked by increasing military activity in the mountains began with the arrival of Alexei Ermolov (1777-1861), the youngest governor general after Paulucci. His father had been the chief of Procurator General Samoilov's chancery, and Alexei, like Tsi-

tsianov, had served in Zubov's campaign. He pursued a career in the artillery, but ran afoul of the powerful Arakcheev, who delayed his promotion. Neverthless, he became a lieutenant

general at the age of 35, after the battle of Smolensk in August 1812, and commanded the

artillery of the Russian army on its way to Paris. Following the reorganization of the army in December 1815, troops in the Caucasus were combined to form a Separate Georgian Corps, renamed Separate Caucasian Corps in October 1820. When Ermolov arrived in Tiflis in April 1816 to be governor general of Astrakhan province, the "Caucasus," and Georgia and commander of the corps, the strength of the Russian army in the region had risen to 56 000 men with 132 guns. Its two major components were the Nineteenth Infantry Division

headquartered in Georgievsk and the Twentieth headquartered in Tiflis. Ermolov was also

empowered to conduct diplomatic relations with Persia.45

43 On Tormasov see RBS (Tobizen-Totleben, unnumbered and undated) pp. 159-170; Potto Kavkaz- skaia voina, torn 1, pp. 413-^39. On Paulucci see RBS, torn 13, pp. 402-403 and Potto Kavkazskaia voina, torn 1, pp. 446-468. The activities of these two governors general and of Gudovich (for 1806- 1 809) are described in Dubrovin Istoriia voiny, torn 5, and AKAK, torn 3, torn 4, and torn 6, pp. 1-200.

44 RBS, torn 17, pp. 349-353; Dubrovin Istoriia voiny, torn 6, pp. 24-167 and AKAK, torn 5, pp. 201-954. 45 M. Bogdanovich Istoriia tsarstvovaniia Imperator Aleksandra I i Rossii v ego vremia. Tom 1-5. S.-Peterburg 1869-1881, here torn 5, p. 219. The size of the army in the Caucasus is on pp. 287-288 and in Annex, p. 40. See also Potto Kavkazskaia voina, torn 1 , pp. 469-48 1 ; Ermolov' s memoirs were first published in Chteniia v Imperatorskom Obshchestve istorii i drevnostei Rossiskikh pri Moskovskom Universitete (1866) kniga 2, pp. 1-120, kn. 3, pp. 121-192, 1-74, and (1867) kn. 3, pp. 1-256, and in book form as Zapiski A. P. Ermolova. Tom 1-2. Moskva 1865-1868. A recent edition is Zapiski A. P. Ermolova 1798-1826. Moskva 1991. General works include F. Umanets Prokonsul Kavkaza. S.-Pe- terburg 1912; and A. Ermolov A. P. Ermolov 1777-1861. Biograficheskii ocherk. S.-Peterburg 1912. See also Neizvestnaia biografila A. P. Ermolova, in: Rossiiskii Arkhiv 7 (1996) pp. 191-201. For a




This third and last sample consists of 8 governors general, 2 appointed by Catherine II, 1

by Paul, the other 5 by Alexander I. Among the eight, Tormasov and Paulucci (who spent altogether only three years in the region) were discussed in our first article: the former was placed in the Saltykov network, the latter in the Germanic network allied with the Saltykovs. Of the remaining six, Potemkin and Gudovich belong without the shadow of a doubt to the Black Sea network.

Potemkin was well connected with the Little Russian network. His wife was the niece of Iakov Skoropadskii, grandnephew of the hetmán, grandson of Hetmán Apostai, and nephew of Hetmán Kirill Razumovskii. He was also related to the Engelhardts: his brother Mikhail, the chief of the Commissary (1783-91) married a daughter of Vasilii Engelhardt, and this marriage linked the brothers with the Branickis and other Polish magnates; Governor General Vorontsov would be his nephew. Mikhail's daughter would marry Alexander Ribeaupierre, the titular ambassador to Constantinople from 1824 to 1827, additional evidence that several members of the ambassadorial establishment at the Porte belonged to this network. The two brothers were not only well connected with this Black Sea network, they were also at home in the larger Naryshkin-Trubetskoi network. Pavel's marriage established a link with the Na- ryshkins, and his son married Elizabeth, a great-granddaughter of Procurator General Tru- betskoi and grandniece of Procurator General Viazemskii. In addition, Mikhail's sister-in- law, Ekaterina Engelhardt, was married to Pavel Skavronskii, a grandnephew of Catherine I. There is little to say about Gudovich, the grandson of a sotnik of Starodub district killed at Narva in 1700 and the son of a treasurer of Little Russia; his wife was Kirill Razumovskii' s daughter, and the governor general of Little Russia. Repnin-Volkonskii was his nephew. Thus, two of the most prominent governors general of the Caucasus were solidly anchored in the Black Sea network.46

Among the next generation of governors general, not only of the Caucasus but of the entire Southern Frontier, Ermolov was the most famous and the most controversial. More than thirty years younger than Potemkin and Gudovich, two of Catherine IPs "eagles," he might be expected to have issued from other relationships, to have been the protégé of other networks. He was indeed part of a small sub-network of 1812 generals, notably Nikolai Raevskii, one of the heroes of Borodino, and Denis Davydov, the "partisan general." The Da- vy dov family, like Ermolov 's, was of Tartar ancestry and formed the link in this sub-network. Ermolov's maternal grandfather was another Denis Davydov; his maternal grand- mother was a Kolycheva, a relative of Stepan Kolychev, who had been governor of Voronezh in the 1700s and had been commissioned to demarcate the Russo-Turkish boundary after the Prut treaty of 171 1. His wife was a Naryshkina.

Ermolov's paternal grandfather, another Alexei, former commandant in Kiev and Cherni- gov, had married twice, and his second wife was born Maria Zagriazhskaia: she became a sister-in-law of Natalia, a daughter of Kirill Razumovskii and of Gudovich. The governor general had other links with the valley of the Dniepr. His aunt by marriage was the daughter of Evdokim Shcherbinin, the first unofficial governor of the Ukraine of Settlements and the first governor general of Voronezh and Kharkov before the introduction of the reform in the latter province. But it was Ermolov's uncles who gave him a place in the Naryshkin-Trubets- koi network. One, Lev, married the sister of Procurator General Samoilov (the widowed mother of General Raevskii), nephew of Grigorii Potemkin and married to a Trubetskaia. Er-

comprehensive bibliography see Bibliografícheskii ukazatel' sochinenii, zhurnalnykh statei i zametok ob A. P. Ermolove, in: Russkii Bibliofil' (191 1) no. 4, Annex, pp. 1-35. A survey of his activities in the Caucasus is in Dubrovin Istoriia voiny, torn 6, pp. 167-744 and AKAK, torn 6, Part 1.

46 On Potemkin see note 30; on Gudovich see Mozdalevskii Malorossiiskii Rodoslovnik, torn 1, pp. 352-365.



180 John P. LeDonne

molov, who began his career as a protégé of Samoilov, was thus the heir of Grigorii Potem- kin among the great proconsuls of the Southern Frontier. Lev's son, Petr, Ermolov's first cousin, married a Likhareva from another Tatar family whose descendants had settled among the Smolensk szlachta, thus completing the link with the Black Sea network. Petr's first wife, however, had been Natalia, the daughter of Vladimir Orlov, the favorite's brother, and their son would assume in 1856 the name of Orlov-Davydov. The other uncle, Vladimir, married the granddaughter of Alexander Lopukhin, a relationship that made Ermolov a cousin of two other governors general of Little Russian during Alexander I' s reign, Kurakin and Lobanov- Rostovskii.47 One can say without much exaggeration that the governors general of the Southern Frontier during the entire period under consideration formed a kind of family club, younger cousin and nephew succeeding older cousin and uncle for two generations.

The link with the Lopukhin leads up to another governor general. Vladimir's sister-in-law, Evdokia Lopukhina, married Alexei Orlov, who had commanded the naval expedition to the Greek archipelago during the Russo-Turkish war of 1768-74. His younger brother Ivan, the least known of the Orlov brothers, married Elizabeth, the sister of Rtischev, whose mother was another Likhareva and one of whose ancestors had married a Lopukhin. The governor general did not marry well, however: his wife, Henriette Frederika Milet, was a Calvinist woman, perhaps of Dutch ancestry; this may explain why Rtishchev seems to have been a marginal figure in the ruling elite. Nevertheless, one cannot overlook the fact that when Er- molov took over from him in 1816, he succeeded an uncle by marriage 20 years his senior.48

The Davydov family provides a tantalizing link with the fifth governor general. Knorring married a Davydova, but it is not clear whether she belonged to the same family. However, if there is some doubt whether the general belonged to the Davydov sub-network, it is certain that he became a member of the Naryshkin-Trubetskoi network, a somewhat unusual connection for a Baltic German. His nephew Carl, the son of brother Gotthard Johann (Bogdan), chief of staff of the Russian army during the Russo-Swedish war of 1788-90 and short-lived commander in chief during the conquest of Finland in 1808-1809, married Alexandra Na- ryshkina, the grandniece of Anna Trubetskaia, sister-in-law of Procurator General Viazemskii and Marshal Rumiantsev. It was as if anyone of importance in the administration of the Cau- casus had to have a connection with the Naryshkin-Trubetskoi network. Moreover, Alexan- dra's sister Maria married a prince Dadian of Mingrelia, making a Baltic German governor general the brother-in-law of a Georgian prince.49 This connection brings us to the Georgian network and its most illustrious representative in the imperial administration of the Caucasus, General Tsitsianov.

Eastern Georgia, its capital in Tiflis, did not belong to the basin of the Black Sea but to that of the Caspian, and its contacts with Russia had developed via Kizliar and Astrakhan. It was also a much fragmented country, divided well into the eighteenth century between the tsardoms of Kartlia and Kakhetia, vassals of the Persian shah since 1639, while Imeretia, its capital in Kutais, together with five other principalities, including Mingrelia, formed western Georgia, a vassal of the Ottoman sultan. The Kartlian tsar, Wakhtang VI, had emigrated to

47 On General Davidov see RBS, torn 6, pp. 15-23; on Raevskii see ibidem torn 15, pp. 397-402 and A. Borisevich General ot kavalerii Nikolai Nikolaevich Raevskii. S.-Peterburg 1912. On Shcherbinin see RBS, torn 24, p. 145. Ermolov's genealogy and other family papers are in A. Ermolov Rod Ermo- lovykh. Moskva 1912, also published in Chteniia v Imperatorskom Obshchestve istorii i drevnostei Rossiskikh pri Moskovskom Universitete (1912) kn. 4, pp. 1-275, here pp. 30-51. 48 Rtishchev's wife is mentioned in his biography: RBS, torn 17, pp. 349-353, here p. 350. 1 have not found his genealogy. 49

Knorring's genealogy and his relationships with the Naryshkins can be reconstructed from Lenz (ed.) Deutschbaltisches biographisches Lexikon pp. 393-394 and the genealogy of the Naryshkins in Lobanov-Rostovskii Russkaia rodoslovnaia kniga, torn 2, pp. 5-18.



Governors General of the Western Frontier 1 772-1 825 181

Russia in 1725 following the Russo-Ottoman treaty of June 1724, by which suzerainty over eastern Georgia was transferred to the Porte, taking Tsitsianov's grandfather (Paata Tsitsi- shvili) with him in his suite. Wakhtang's contemporary in Kakhetia was Tsar Erekle I, whose son Teimuraz II married, first, Tamar, a daughter of Wakhtang, and second, a princess Tsi- tsianova, née Takaltoian. This line of Kakhetian tsars later became known in Russia as the princes of Georgia (Gruzinskie). Teimuraz's sister Elena married lese, tsarevich of Kartlia and Wakhtang's brother, the founder of a line called by the Russians the Bagration princes. Two generations later, Iese's grandson would marry a Khovanskaia related to the Naryshkins and Trubetskois, and his great-grandson Petr would command the Second Army at Borodino, where he was killed. His wife Ekaterina was the daughter of Pavel Skavronskii and a grandniece of Grigorii Potemkin. He himself would have been a first cousin of Governor General Vorontsov. The former ruling house of Georgia had joined both the Black Sea and the Na- ryshkin-Trubetskoi networks.50

Teimuraz's son Erekle II reunited both Kartlia and Kakhetia during his long reign (1762- 98). His sister Ketevan married a nephew of Nadir Shah, who had reconquered eastern Georgia from the Ottomans in the 1730s, yet it was Erekle who signed with Pavel Potemkin the treaty of Georgievsk in July 1783, making eastern Georgia a vassal of the Russian em- peror. His first wife was an Abashidze from Imeretia, who gave him a son, Georgi XII (also XIII), the last tsar of eastern Georgia who died in December 1800, reconciled to the incorporation of his tsardom into the empire. Georgi's second wife, Mariam Tsitsianova, was a cousin of the governor general, and there is some irony in the fact that it was she who stabbed to death the Russian commander in Tiflis, Major General Ivan Lazarev, in April 1803, thereby precipitating the removal of the ruling house to Russia and the institution of direct rule.51 Georgi's sister Elena was the mother of Solomon II, the last tsar of Imeretia before its incorporation into the empire in 181 1.

While the Tsitsianovs had married into the ruling house of Georgia, they were also close relatives of the princes Davydovs of Kakhetia. Two of these princes had emigrated to Russia in 1666, and the daughter of one married tsarevich Alexander of Imeretia (Imeretinskii), who also lived in Russia and became Peter F s chief of the artillery before being taken prisoner by the Swedes at the first battle of Narva in November 1700. One of his daughters married into the large Viazemskii family, another was Tsitsianov's mother. The governor general seems to have remained single.52

50 The classic history of Georgia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries remains Lang The Last Years of the Georgian Monarchy. See also A. Khakhanov Iz istorii snoshenii Gruzi s Rossiei v XVIII v. Tsar Vakhtang i imperator Petr Velikii, in: Zhurnal ministerstva narodnogo prosveshcheniia (1899) (May-June) pp. 102-1 12. Genealogies are in Dolgorukov Rossiiskaia rodoslovnaia kniga, torn 2, pp. 4-5 (Bagrations), torn 3, pp. 17-22 (Gruzinskie). See also Dvorianskie rody Rossiiskoi imperii 1721-1917, tom 3. Kniazia. Ed. by S. Dumin and P. Grebel'skii. Moskva 1996, pp. 42-53, 66, 69-72. 79.

51 The episode is described in detail in Colonel Rottiers Itinéraire de Tiflis a Constantinople. Bruxelles 1829, pp. 73-81. 1 am grateful to Claire Mouradian of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes and Jean Tsitsichvili, a descendant of the governor general, for this and other references in note 52. Another version claims Lazarev was killed not by the dowager tsaritsa but by Prince Nikolai Khimshiashvili who protected her: Dvorianskie rody p. 70. 52 The Tsitsianovs' genealogy can be traced in part by using that of the princes Davydovs in Dolgoru- kov Rossiiskaia rodoslovnaia kniga, torn 3, pp. 471-475. Dolgorukov mentions the family only briefly in torn 2, pp. 45-46. See also C. Toumanoff Manuel de généalogie et de chronologie ou l'histoire de la Caucasie chrétienne. Rome 1976, pp. 152-159, 429-434 and J. Ferrand Familles princières de Géorgie. Paris 1983, pp. 221-222. Unfortunately these genealogies often ignore the women. I could not determine whether Ekaterina Orlo va belonged to the family of Catherine II' s favorite.



182 John P. LeDonne

The governors general discussed in this second article numbered 25, including 15 Rus- sians, 3 Baltic Germans, 1 Ukrainian, 1 Georgian, and 3 foreigners. The two Potemkins deserve separate mention. If they were "Russian," they also had strong ties with the still strongly polonized Smolensk szlachta. They and Gudovich were "men of power" in the Russo-Polish frontier who had thrown their lot with the Russians, and contributed their share to the expansion of the empire. If we exclude the three foreigners (Richelieu, Langeron, and Paulucci), we can say that this sample of governors general consisted of 15 individuals from the Russian core area, five who came from the Western Frontier, and two from the Southern Frontier (Gudovich and Tsitsianov). For the Gudoviches and the Potemkins, joining the Russian ruling elite had a purpose: to expand Russia's dominion over the Southern Frontier. Their perceptions meshed very well with the old Polish dreams of an empire stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea, and their economic interests were identical with those of the Polish magnates seeking for the products of their large estates in Podolia and Volhynia outlets in the Black Sea basin and beyond it, in Persia and Central Asia via the Trebizond- Tabriz-Tehran caravan route.53 In distant Georgia, Tsitsianov became the heir of a now defunct east Georgian monarchy determined to round out imperial possessions in Transcau- casia until they would coincide with the old Georgian tsardom in its days of greatness under Queen Tamar (1 184-1212), who had married the son of Andrei Bogoliubskii, the destroyer of Kiev in 1 169 and himself the son of Iuri Dolgorukov, the founder of Moscow.54 The secret of Russian imperial expansion is to be found in this unwritten alliance between the Russian elite and the men of power from the frontier zones, based on a convergence of interests and an identity of perceptions, the Russians for their part determined to bring both the Western and the Southern Frontiers into the empire. We should not, however, push the distinction between Russians and non-Russians too far here: were not, after all, the Zubovs and Ermo- lovs, nay the Naryshkins themselves, descended from families of the Golden Horde?55 Coin- cidences may have no historical meaning, yet it is worth noting that the Naryshkins and the Trubetskois, the core of the entire network, originated, one in the Golden Horde, in the Southern Frontier, the other in Lithuania, in the Russo-Polish frontier. If these historical memories, the collective memories of great families, have no meaning, then why did Ermo- lov find it necessary during his difficult negotiations with the shah in 1817 to make the point that he was of Tatar origin and a descendant of Chinggis Khan, the test of political legitimacy in the old nomadic world of the steppe?56

What is remarkable is that several of the Russian governors general came from families where at least one member had previously occupied responsible positions in the Southern Fron- tier. One thinks of Rumiantsev and his father and father-in-law; of Lobanov-Rostovskii and his relatives; and of the governors general related to Ukrainian families and Polish magnates, where the knowledge of the steppe, of its enticements and its dangers, had been transmitted from parents to children for generations. Almost all these governors general stood to one

53 D. Beauvois Un Polonais au service de la Russie: Jean Potocki et l'expansion en Transcaucasie 1804-1805, in: Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique 19 (1978) pp. 175-189 and ibidem Le "système asiatique" de Jean Potocki ou le rêve oriental dans les empires d'Alexandre I et de Napoleon 1806- 1808, in: Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique 20 (1979) pp. 467-485. 1 am grateful to Daniel Beau- vois for this reference.

54 See Tsitsianov's remarkable letter to Fet Ali Shah of Persia, March 29/April 1 0, 1 805, in AKAK, torn 2, p. 826. 55 N. Baskakov Russkie familii tiurkskogo proiskhozhdeniia. Moskva 1979, pp. 23-26, 101-103, 114-115.

56 Zhurnal posol'stva v Persiiu generala A. P. Ermolova, in: Chteniia v Imperatorskom Obshchestve istorii i drevnostei Rossiskikh pri Moskovskom Universitete (1863) kn. 2, pp. 121-184, here pp. 176- 177.




another in some degree of cousinage so that this knowledge was transmitted and enriched horizontally as well as between members of different generations. And it is no less remarkable that the family networks included not only generals but also naval commanders and ambassa- dors, some to the Ottoman Porte, others to countries of Western Europe, where this knowledge was of value in resisting the ambitions of the Coastland powers, France and Britain.

But certainly the most remarkable of all is that 16 of ¿he 25 governors general belonged to the Naryshküi-Trubetskoi network, while three belonged to the Germanic network and five (including Saltykov and Zubov) to the Saltykov network. This Saltykov belonged to a branch of the family that had long been related to the Trubetskois. That branch was the bonding agent between the two large networks, so necessary to keep the ruling elite from fragmenting along clan lines,57 thereby creating a Polish-style anarchy and destabilizing the entire system. Rivalries did exist, even bitter ones, but they were between individuals, and they had to be subsumed under the larger requirements of clan, network, and ruling elite loyalty.

The findings of this article also help us refine the concept of a Naryshkin-Trubetskoi network. The two large, umbrella-like networks - the Saltykovs and the Naryshkins-Trubets- kois - owed their development to the two empresses, Anna Ivanovna and Elizabeth, themselves the descendants of the two wives of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. Peter I was the son of a Naryshkina, his first wife was a Lopukhina, his second, a Skavronskaia. The three families were thus closely related, and Peter's daughter Elizabeth became ex officio the grand patron of the Naryshkin-Trubetskoi network, formed during the previous generation by the marriage of Field Marshal Ivan Trubetskoi, commanding general of the Ukrainian Corps and Governor General of Kiev (1722-27) with Irina, a first cousin of Lev Naryshkin, Peter F s uncle. It was sustained by the numerous progeny of Ivan's brother Iurii, including Procurator General Nikita Trubetskoi, whose in-laws would dominate the Senate establishment until the war of 1812.58 One can thus postulate the existence of an over-arching network formed by these two families, under whose umbrella sub-networks developed during the eighteenth century, those of the Skavronskiis, the Kurakins (with the Repnins), the Vorontsovs and, following Elizabeth's marriage with a Razumovskii, the Ukrainian and Polish sub-networks. This last connection was the foundation of the alliance between the Naryshkin-Trubetskoi network and the valley of the Dniepr or, in a larger sense, the Black Sea network, an alliance that explains why so many of the governors general of the Southern Frontier belonged to it. The importance of each sub-network's contribution to the strength of the network depended on the number of children, and the Kurakins, Repnins, Rumiantsevs, and Skavronskiis were notoriously deficient in producing one generation after another enough sons to keep the family in existence, while the Razumovskiis, like the Trubetskois, were notoriously prolific. To show the internal differentiation of the Naryshkin-Trubetskoi network is not to deny its existence, and the purpose of this article was not only to confirm that it did exist within the Russian ruling elite, but also to show that it formed, in alliance with the Black Sea network, a most important component in the constitution of the imperial ruling elite which sustained the Romanovs' ability to rule across a vast empire.

57 1 owe this interpretation to Edward Keenan. J. Ledonne Ruling Families in the Russian Political Order 1689-1825, in: Cahiers du monde russe

et soviétique 28 (1987) pp. 233-322, here pp. 292-293.



Documents

Frontier Governors General 1772-1825 II. The Southern Frontier