Diderot and the foreign colonies of Catherine II - article ; n°2 ; vol.23, pg 221-241

Roger P.Bartlett

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Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique - Année 1982 - Volume 23 - Numéro 2 - Pages 221-241
R. P. Bartlett, Diderot et les colonies étrangères de Catherine II.
Au cours de sa visite à Saint-Pétersbourg en 1773-1774, Diderot présenta à Catherine II un mémorandum anonyme sur les colonies étrangères, récemment établies sur la Volga. Nous reproduisons ici ce document qui n'a pas été inclus dans P. Vernière, Mémoires pour Catherine II (Paris, 1966), et nous le faisons précéder d'une introduction. Ce mémorandum analyse le triste état des colonies et soumet un projet de développement économique et social pour y remédier. Si l'étude des difficultés rencontrées par les colons emporte la conviction, le projet, en revanche, est excessivement optimiste et son application aurait fini par aboutir à l'oppression des colonies qu'il se proposait d'aider. Les grandes lignes du projet cadraient bien avec les vues du gouvernement après 1774, mais on ne possède pas de preuve qu'elles ont influencé Catherine II. On a lieu de croire que l'auteur du mémorandum était François Pierre Pictet, qui fut à un moment donné secrétaire de langue française de Catherine et était étroitement engagé dans les affaires coloniales à leurs débuts. Diderot a dû être séduit par les propositions qui semblaient combiner pour les colons les droits personnels et les droits de propriété à la croissance économique et à la constitution d'un tiers état.
R. P. Bartlett, Diderot and the foreign colonies of Catherine II.
During his visit to St. Petersburg in 1773-74, Diderot presented to Catherine II an anonymous memorandum on the foreign colonies recently established on the river Volga. The article introduces and prints the text of this paper, which was omitted from P. Vernière's Mémoires pour Catherine II (Paris, 1966). The memorandum analyses the poor state of the colonies and presents a project for their economic and social development. While the analysis of the colonists' difficulties is persuasive, the project is excessively optimistic and would have further oppressed the colonies it was designed to help. Its general approach fitted well with government views after 1774, but there is no evidence that it influenced Catherine II. It is suggested that the author was François Pierre Pictet, at one time Catherine's French-language secretary, and closely involved in the colonies in their early years. Diderot must have been attracted by proposals which seemed to combine personal and property rights for the colonists with economic growth and the development of a third estate.
21 pages
Source : Persée ; Ministère de la jeunesse, de l’éducation nationale et de la recherche, Direction de l’enseignement supérieur, Sous-direction des bibliothèques et de la documentation.

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• Publié par: CAHIERS_DU_MONDE_RUSSE_ET_SOVIETIQUE
• Publié le: 01 janvier 1982
• Nombre de lectures: 31
• Langue: Français
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Roger P. Bartlett
Diderot and the foreign colonies of Catherine II
In: Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique. Vol. 23 N°2. Avril-Juin 1982. pp. 221-241.
Citer ce document / Cite this document :
Bartlett Roger P. Diderot and the foreign colonies of Catherine II. In: Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique. Vol. 23 N°2. Avril-
Juin 1982. pp. 221-241.
doi : 10.3406/cmr.1982.1946
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/cmr_0008-0160_1982_num_23_2_1946Résumé
R. P. Bartlett, Diderot et les colonies étrangères de Catherine II.
Au cours de sa visite à Saint-Pétersbourg en 1773-1774, Diderot présenta à Catherine II un
mémorandum anonyme sur les colonies étrangères, récemment établies sur la Volga. Nous
reproduisons ici ce document qui n'a pas été inclus dans P. Vernière, Mémoires pour Catherine II
(Paris, 1966), et nous le faisons précéder d'une introduction. Ce mémorandum analyse le triste état des
colonies et soumet un projet de développement économique et social pour y remédier. Si l'étude des
difficultés rencontrées par les colons emporte la conviction, le projet, en revanche, est excessivement
optimiste et son application aurait fini par aboutir à l'oppression des colonies qu'il se proposait d'aider.
Les grandes lignes du projet cadraient bien avec les vues du gouvernement après 1774, mais on ne
possède pas de preuve qu'elles ont influencé Catherine II. On a lieu de croire que l'auteur du
mémorandum était François Pierre Pictet, qui fut à un moment donné secrétaire de langue française de
Catherine et était étroitement engagé dans les affaires coloniales à leurs débuts. Diderot a dû être
séduit par les propositions qui semblaient combiner pour les colons les droits personnels et les droits de
propriété à la croissance économique et à la constitution d'un tiers état.
Abstract
R. P. Bartlett, Diderot and the foreign colonies of Catherine II.
During his visit to St. Petersburg in 1773-74, Diderot presented to Catherine II an anonymous
memorandum on the foreign colonies recently established on the river Volga. The article introduces and
prints the text of this paper, which was omitted from P. Vernière's Mémoires pour Catherine II (Paris,
1966). The memorandum analyses the poor state of the colonies and presents a project for their
economic and social development. While the analysis of the colonists' difficulties is persuasive, the
project is excessively optimistic and would have further oppressed the colonies it was designed to help.
Its general approach fitted well with government views after 1774, but there is no evidence that it
influenced Catherine II. It is suggested that the author was François Pierre Pictet, at one time
Catherine's French-language secretary, and closely involved in the colonies in their early years. Diderot
must have been attracted by proposals which seemed to combine personal and property rights for the
colonists with economic growth and the development of a third estate.DOCUMENTS
ROGER P. BARTLETT
DIDEROT AND THE FOREIGN COLONIES
OF CATHERINE II
acquired During an his anonymous visit to memorandum, St. Petersburg in French, in 1773-177Л, on the Diderot foreign
colonies recently established by the Russian government on
the river Volga. Without going into the merits and demerits
of the writer's project or revealing his identity, Diderot in
cluded the memorandum among those which he presented to
Catherine. In his excellent edition of Diderot's memoranda for
the Empress, Professor P. Vernière printed only Diderot's own
brief preamble and few minor comments and stylistic amend
ments to the paper. (1) He was kind enough, however, to make
the original text available to me, and it is printed here in
full. The document and its author are of interest both for
what they reveal of Diderot's views and contacts during his
Russian visit, and as a comment on the Volga colonies at the
end of their first decade. (2)
The foreign colonies on the Volga had been formed by
immigrants, principally Germans, who responded to the Imperial
proclamations of 1762 and 1763 offering considerable privileges
to foreigners settling in the Russian Empire. Over 25,000 set
tlers came to the Volga between 176Л and 1775, and formed
a large group of villages which retained their separate ethnic
identity until World War II. The early years of these colonies
show the difficulties and hardships characteristic of such
colonization everywhere - whether in Frederick II1 s Prussia,
Joseph II' s Austria, or in the New World possessions of France
and Britain. The Russian authorities spent vast sums - between
five and six million roubles - on the settlement project; but
it was only in the nineteenth century that the colonies realized
their potential and became really prosperous.
Besides the universal problems of establishing new set
tlements from scratch, there were a number of specific Russian
and local difficulties. The administration provided for the
newcomers was tardy in its operation, arbitrary, and often
corrupt. The area chosen, the lower course of the Volga, was
still more or less frontier territory, with few amenities or
ready resources. The sites themselves were undeveloped, some
times ill-chosen. Local population, such as it was, could be
hostile: Russian peasantry lost the use of land taken for the ROGER P. BARTLETT 222
settlements, and the nomadic Kalmyk (stock-breeders, pur
chasers of colonist produce, and expert horse-thieves) felt so
oppressed by the growing Russian presence, of which the
colonists formed part, that in 1771 they deserted their tradi
tional grazing grounds and fled to China. The brigands who
infested the area saw in the new settlers an easy prey. There
were economic problems, too, some of which are correctly
summed up in the memorandum. The area was extremely fertile,
but climatic conditions were difficult, and different from
Germany: in particular the dry summers easily caused drought
and crop failure. The authorities had been undiscriminating
in their recruitment and settled more or less forcibly on the
Volga many immigrants unsuited to agriculture. Another par
ticular point of difficulty was the division of the colonies
between "Crown" villages and those under the private control
of "directors", recruiting agents who had received a land
grant to be settled by their own recruits. These people
imposed oppressive conditions on their colonists, and the
latter naturally resented their subjection to private individuals
when they saw their neighbours in the "Crown" villages sub
ject only to the Imperial government. The ensuing friction
lasted until 1778, when the "directors" were finally removed
from office (with compensation). To crown this catalogue of
ills, in 1774 the colonies found themselves in the path of the
rebel Emel'ian Pugachev and his army, who caused disruption
and devastation throughout the Volga region before their
defeat in 1775.
Among the "directors" of the private Volga colonies, most
of them French or Swiss, was the Genevan François Pictet;
and while Diderot kept secret the identity of the author of
the memorandum, circumstantial evidence suggests strongly
that it was Pictet. Member of a prominent Geneva family,
Pictet had met and become a correspondent of Voltaire, who
referred to him as "le géant" because of his size. In 1761,
through Voltaire's introduction, Pictet was appointed secretary
to the Russian Ambassador in London, Count A. R. Vorontsov. (3)
In Russia in 1762, he sympathized with Catherine against
her husband Peter III, among whose supporters were his
former mentors, the Vorontsovs: and when overthrew
her husband, Pictet promptly sent an account of the coup
to Voltaire, the first circumstantial report of the event to
be published in the West. According to J. von Stáhlin, he
became a tutor in the household of the new Empress's favouri
te, G. G. 0rlov,(4) and it was probably on Orlov's recom
mendation that Catherine appointed Pictet to be her French-
language secretary, thus placing him ' for a time close to
the very centre of government affairs. It was Pictet who wrote
the letter by which Catherine invited d'Alembert, unsuccessf
ully, to come to Russia; it was through him that she began
her correspondence with Voltaire. And when the new immigration
programme was announced in 1762, the connection with Or lov
soon enabled Pictet to embark upon what was for him a gran
diose government-backed speculation. Or lov, in charge of
the new government Chancellery of Guardianship of Foreigners, THE FOREIGN COLONIES OF CATHERINE II 223
stood surety for Pictet as a recruiting agent. Pictet joined
with the Parisian Le Roy, and they made a contract with
Orlov's Chancellery to recruit immigrants for their own
private colonies. (5) It was presumably on this business that
Pictet returned to