The “Magnificent Age” - Catherine II TL
- Thread starter alexmilman
- Start date
Where is a guarantee that the horses will do what you want? And putting a bunch of horses on fire also involves technical difficulties and requires money and a thorough planning. You can’t just bring numerous horses with the straw or firewood tied to their tails on a crowded street and then start putting these materials on fire. People, who live in a predominantly wooden city may misinterpret your intentions and take them as a personal offense. Besides, you’ll need a precise timing: you can’t just have a herd of horses staying on a street with a peculiar stuff tied to their tails. 😜
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So when Catherine dies will the story end or will we see a more story more centered around Paul.
His Peter one did continue way past the Tsar's death but it wasnt intended to last that long so it depends on how much good ol' Alex is willing to push it
42. Domestic Affairs. #6. Catherine goes frugal
42. Domestic Affairs. #6. Catherine goes frugal
As was mentioned in the previous chapter, after the glorious Ottoman War and less glorious but still profitable partition of the PLC Catherine found out that the Russian finances are not in a good shape and something has to be done on this account. There were two ways of doing so:
Manifesto was printed in a form that later became the official tradition: the meaningless words were printed by the big letters and the meaningful part in a small font [6].
In its practical part the manifesto was regulating the carriages and numbers of horses permitted to each group within the Table and dress code for their lackeys. The local administrators were put in charge of the enforcement.
Intermission. This may look silly but it was not: the manifesto was once more underscoring the main principle of the Russian Empire: person’s place in it was defined (at least formally) not by ancestry or wealth but by his place on the service ladder. No matter how aristocratic or rich one was but if he was just a junior officer, he could use carriages and sledges with to horses while the people of the higher service ranks had been entitled to 4 or 6 (the top being entitled to 6 horses with two postilions). And if a noble did not have an officer rank or its civic equivalent, he was entitled to a single horse carriage with no adornments on a harness. The same for the livery.
With the well-being of her (noble) subjects being attended to, it would be reasonable for Catherine to start taking care about her household and administration.
At home. To give a general idea of the situation in the imperial household, here are some historical anecdotes:
”Walking through the garden, Empress [Catherine II] replaced that the lackeys carry peaches, pineapples and grapes from the palace on porcelain trays. In order not to meet them, Ekaterina turned to the side, telling others:
- I wish they would at least left to me the trays!”
“And another time, faced, so to speak, with these trays, she said to those who carried them:
- Well, you'll be in trouble if Torsukov [Hoff-Marshal] sees it!
- He's still sleeping, Mother Tsarina! - was their answer.”
On some occasions she even was helping the thieves to escape being caught. Tendency to play a good master extended to her never ordering to punish any of the servants or even to fire the incompetent ones: one of her cooks was very bad and when it was his turn to prepare the imperial dishes there was a “diet time” but he never was fired.
The basic principle of the court employees was to steal everything that could be defined as a petty theft (aka, not jewelry, pieces of furniture, certain pieces of a table service, etc.). There was a joke about a person who asked to find him any place at the palace staff explaining that even position of a care taker of Empress’ canary bird will provide food for him, his wife and his children. One of very few cases when Catherine did something was when she found in the palace documents that every day a poud (16 kilograms) of a hair powder was allocated for her. “Did something” meant that she let it be known that she is unhappy. Nobody was punished but the practice stopped. But role of a good master was too appealing to abandon it and Hoff-Master was doomed to play a bad cop or at least a scarecrow. The palaces, and especially their personnel, remained a big money-sucking black hole.
Which was rather funny because her personal life style was rather modest. The decor of her interior rooms in the Winter Palace was much more modest than the situation of the rooms of many nobles of that time. She usually woke up at seven o'clock in the morning and, without disturbing anyone, put on her own clothes, dressed and ignited the fireplace, in which they put firewood in the evening. After washing herself in a small bathroom and putting on a house dress the empress went to the office, where she was immediately served a cup of the strongest Levantine coffee and a plate of toasts. Slowly sipping coffee, Catherine studied the papers, wrote letters and in moments of rest fed her favorite dogs with toasts [7]. At nine o'clock she moved into the bedroom, which by that time was hastily put in order. There were two tables. Catherine was taking a seatbehind one of them and then the capital’s chief of police and state secretaries with the reports had been admitted one by one. When the state secretaries done with their reports, the rest of the persons to whom the reception was appointed had been invited. At twelve o'clock, the reception stopped, and her senior hairdresser Kozlov would come to the empress to comb her hair. Then Catherine went to the ceremonial dressing room, where everyone who reported on that day and some close friends were gathering for the morning greeting. Here she was putting on an official dress.
Before lunch, which was appointed at two o'clock, the empress studied again. Only the closest persons were invited to lunch on weekdays; it lasted no more than an hour. The empress was distinguished by her abstinence in food and drink: she never had breakfast or dinner, and at lunch she took small portions of three or four dishes; from wine she drank a glass of rhine wine or Hungarian.
At 6pm there were social meetings officially defined as small ( for the inner circle), medium (bigger number but still reasonably “inner”) and big ones (all high-ranking people, and foreign diplomats; opera, dances, supper) . Catherine had to maintain reputation of the imperial court as the most luxurious court in Europe. A mandatory feature of the entertainment was a card game. For the small and medium parties the empress had permanent partners but in the big ones she may invite somebody else as a token of her favor. With the high stakes games being forbidden, she and her partners had been using the “modest” ones, one imperial (gold coin of 10 rubles; for comparison, the annual poll tax was 70-80 kopeks).
In May, Catherine moved to Tsarskoye Selo, where she remained until late autumn. All court ceremonies and receptions were canceled here, reports and invitations were shortened. On a painting above Catherine is painted with one of her favorite Italian greyhounds, which in 1770, the English doctor Dimsdale (who introduced smallpox inoculation in Russia) presented her, Sir Tom Anderson (died in 1784) and Duches (died in 1782). These dogs became the ancestors of a large family. Tom Anderson lived for 16 years and left many descendants. Catherine loved her dogs very much and gave puppies - "young people", as she called them, to the Volkonsky, Naryshkin, Orlov families; two puppies were sent to Versailles. “At the head is the ancestor, Sir Tom Anderson, his wife, Duchess Anderson, their children: the young Duchess of Anderson, Mr. Anderson and Tom Thomson; this one settled in Moscow under the care of Prince Volkonsky, the Moscow Governor General. In addition to them, who have already won a position in the world, there are four or five young people who promise infinitely much: they are brought up in the best houses in Moscow and St. Petersburg, as, for example, Prince Orlov, Mr. Naryshkins, at Prince Tyufyakin.”
Catherine's personal servants consisted of one chamber-frau, four chamber-medchen and five valets, two of which were with her person and two at the Hermitage. The duties of each were precisely defined; for example, one valet was in charge of the wardrobe and received an order from the Empress what exactly and on what day should be prepared for her; another supervised the inner rooms; the third, Catherine's favorite old Popov, was in charge of her office and "pantry", where precious things, brocades, velvets, matter, canvases, etc. were stored. It was his duty every Saturday to submit to her a statement of handouts made from the pantry during the week, not excluding even trifles, such as ribbons and ribbons, and the empress herself noted on the statements: "Write down in the expense". But the total staff of the imperial court amounted to over 3,000, including a personal of the palaces which she rarely visited but expenses on which had been billed on a “full scale”. Obviously, nothing could be saved there and nobody even tried seriously. Expenses of the court kept growing and if in 1730 they amounted to 360,000, now they were over 2,000,000 and kept growing. Income of the “cabinet” (an office serving the imperial family) had been formed by salt tax (a guaranteed million), gold and silver production in the state lands of Altai and Nerchinsk, fixed allocations from the Treasury, fixed allocations from the custom dues, yasak (furs) from the Siberian tribes and some smaller items like salary as a colonel of the Guards regiments.
But expenses also kept growing including, besides the mandatory items, pensions and various gifts of money and jewelry. The last category was important because it was a demonstrable sign of the sovereign’ personal benevolence and their cost varied in a wide range. For example, the most popular gift, a snuffbox, could cost anywhere between 150 and 6,000 rubles, gold watch with the diamonds - 150 - 3,000, female jewelry - 150 - 5,000, diamond rings - 200 - 4,000. And in the case of, God forbid, a war, the expenses grew to include the bejeweled and gold swords and various types of the non-standard military awards. To cut significantly on these expenses would hurt Catherine’s image as “gift-giving mother” and while she was not anymore “sitting” on the Guards’ bayonets, she still cared greatly about being surrounded by the happy faces.
Getting back to the subject, of course she found how to save money: when her son asked for 20,000 to cover his debts, he eventually got 5,000 and a valuable lecture on importance to be frugal. And as a birthday gift he got a cheap watch.
Administration was not much better: Catherine strongly believed in a force of the moral factors ignoring …er… historical realities of the Russian culture by which any official considered himself entitled to a piece of the state pie size and specifics of which depended on his position. As a result, the ongoing administrative reform, which moved most of the functionality and reporting down to the gubernia level, made the “historical practices” easier because the increased part of the collected taxes of all types had been now officially consumed on that level without going to the government.
Catherine’s usual approach was pretty much the same as with the thieving servants, try to appeal to what neither them nor the state officials typically did not have, the conscientiousness. Her predecessor in “Greatness”, Peter I, tried all methods of a persuasion, from delivering beating personally and all the way through knout, and rack to the gallows. Well, presumably the last item on the list was at least a temporary deterrent [8] but in general his pedagogical attempts failed. So, what chance Catherine had without these tools? An assumption that separation of powers within gubernia will solve the fiscal problems proved to be optimistic as well: representatives of each branch of the provincial government just had been “operating” each within his own sector. However, while her system of governing may sound a little bit naive, it was based upon the solid traditional Russian assumption that it does not make sense to replace one thief …oops… administrator with another because the new one will be stealing even more expecting that his tenure will be short.
The military and naval administration probably could introduce some money saving practices but the Military Collegium now did not have a President and its Vice-President, Saltykov, besides being incompetent in the military affairs, had a full time job administering the household of Cesarevich Paul and acting as intermediary between him and his mother so Catherine was looking for a suitable replacement.
In the Navy, Paul started to assert himself with the increasing authority and competence at the expense of his VP, Chernyshov but, besides being very (and sometimes annoyingly) honest himself, he was seemingly trying, with a competent help of the Vice-Admiral Greig, to introduce the style of a discipline and efficiency throughout the whole Russian Navy. Taking into an account that the new Black Sea fleet and the needed infrastructure had to be built almost from the scratch and that so far cooperation of the Admiralty with the regional naval commanders had been going smoothly, Catherine did not mind this burden being taken off her shoulders.
Fortunately, the newly-incorporated territories started adding income to the state coffers, replacement of the poll tax with the income tax for the merchants proved to be a good idea and the increasing exports also were providing growing surplus. Annual extraction of silver in Netchinsk region reached 629 pouds, metallurgical plants on Altai based mostly on Zmeinogorsk mine were producing over 1,000 pouds of silver annually and annual extraction of gold in Ural reached 2,000 pouds [9]. So, in an absence of some drastic expenses on a level of a major war [10] , what was passing for the Russian budget (officially, there still was none) was going to produce a steady and growing surplus even on the existing level of thievery and inefficiency.
Then there were relatively small (comparing to the total) but not negligible future savings by the Foreign Collegium. With the demise of Panin’s “System” the enormous amounts regularly spent on the bribes and subsidies came down to a pure minimum.
In Sweden an attempt to maintain the existing form of a government (absolutist Russian Empire fighting against the absolutist party in Sweden sounds rather strange) cost, within couple years, close to a million and ended up being a waste of money when King Gustav III in 1772 staged a coup and became an absolute monarch thus ending the Age of Liberty, which was quite costly for Russia without producing any visible benefits. The goal of the Russian policy, as per Panin, was to keep Sweden weak thus preventing its attack on Russia. The key element in this scenario were the French subsidies to Sweden because France was the Ottoman ally and, as a result, anti-Russian. But, being a theoretical construction, the “System” was not reacting to the changed geopolitical landscape: even before 1772 France run out of money and the end of the Ottoman war made the whole “stabbing at the back” scenario a mute point, anyway. Panin could keep pontificating but Catherine decided that, at least for a time being, maintaining friendly relations with a fellow absolute monarch is going to be cheaper than keep wasting huge some of money on now powerless opposition. She offered to sell Sweden a big amount of grain at the discount price, which was accepted with a gratitude, and relations had been patched. Anyway, with Denmark, after the land swap and removing the Queen from a political scene, being a firm Russian ally and Russian Empire having at its disposal a naval base in Kiel (and quite a few experienced local sailors willing to serve in the Russian navy) and Prussia as an ally as well, Sweden probably would not risk a military confrontation unless Gustav starts getting some mental problems.
The second money pit of the “System”, the PLC, became almost insignificantly cheap. Catherine kept giving small amounts of money to Stanislaw-August but the big expenses for promoting a now unimportant earlier agenda had been gone. In the newly acquired territories most of the lands which belonged to the active members of the Bar Confederacy had been confiscated and, after distribution of the awards, the rest had been turned into the state lands: being personally free, the state peasants had been paying a higher poll tax.
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[1] Leo the Deacon writes that in 945 the unhappy subjects captured Prince Igor and executed him by tying to the tops of bent trees and tore his body apart.
[2] The source of money is night-table, the source of electricity is a socket and of a gas is fueling station.
[3] Don’t remember which top family it was but when a son returned from a travel still in a possession of some money, the angry father told him: “I see that you did not learn how to behave as a prince” and threw the purse with the remaining money out of the window.
[4] Highly idealized picture. In OTL she was printing paper money and borrowing abroad as if there was no tomorrow saddling her successor with a devaluated paper currency and huge foreign debt.
[5] This decree was accompanied by the raise of the bureaucrats’ salaries in a somewhat idealistic expectation that this would remove a need foe stealing and taking bribes. Contrary to the expectations, this did not work out as expected. Personally, I can’ imagine why. Perhaps the part emphasizing the moral side of the issue contained words which the intended audience was not familiar with, like “honesty”.
[6] Unfortunately, I could not find the contemporary document. Below is the recent replica with the modern orthography but presumably in the same format.
[7] Not a very good food. I mean, for a dog.
[8] It can be argued that if those subjected to this educational method did not have a tendency to die in a process of being hanged, they would continue their practices. With an absence of the necessary data, this theory can’t be convincingly proved or disproved.
[9] I did not quite get how the whole system worked. These plants were on the lands which belonged to the imperial family. Gold, silver and part of copper had been going to the Mint to make coinage. Was all that coinage going to the “cabinet” to cover the court expenses (unlikely) or was there some kind of a more complicated arrangement? So far, I found nothing on that account. Anyway, until Nicholas I created Ministry of the Imperial Court with its own budget, a line between the sovereign’s own money and state money was somewhat murky.
[10] In OTL activities of Grigory Potemkin probably amounted to a very big war. “Probably” because he did not bother himself with a paper work. When auditing the 55 million rubles allocated to him for the army, he found very difficult to “justify” (with a very lenient attitude of the auditors) spending 41 million, and the report on the rest dragged on to infinity and were forgiven. And the expenses for ”civilizing” Novorossia, as I understand, never were audited. Grigory Orlov never was asked how exactly he spent 20 millions assigned to the Mediterranean expedition and he seemingly “appropriated” a big part of the trophies. Well, at least he was a bona fide war hero, which Potemkin was not.
“There is no dignity quite so impressive, and no independence quite so important, as living within your means.”
Calvin Coolidge
“Industry is fortune’s right hand, and frugality its left.”
John Ray
“Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.”
Woody Allen
“The safest way to double your money is to fold it over and put it in your pocket.”
Kin Hubbard
“Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.”
Oscar Wilde
"The only way to get people in Russia to comply with the laws is to legalize theft."
M. N. Zadornov
“But in theft, they find a lot of subtlety that would not shame even London scammers.”
I.A. Goncharov, ‘Frigate Pallada’
“Almost every day they caught him in theft, but since the thefts were small, and moreover the Russian man does not like to sue at all, it rarely came to police and ended with beating.”
”If I fall asleep and wake up in a hundred years and I am asked what is happening in Russia now, I will answer: they drink and steal...”
”When and which bureaucrat was not convinced that Russia is a pie that can be freely approached and eaten?”
”The Russian government must keep its people in a state of constant amazement.”
”In order to steal with success, you only need to have agety and greed. Greed is especially necessary, because you can get on trial for a small theft.”
”.... Words that were completely insignificant were printed in large letters, and everything essential was depicted in the smallest print.”
”Enlightenment must be implemented with moderation, avoiding bloodshed as much as possible.”
A.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin
“Children, write down the conditions of the task. Ignat had five apples. According to the documents. In fact, three, and seven under the contract. Question: how many apples will the one who checks Ignat's business activities have?”
Modern Russian joke
Calvin Coolidge
“Industry is fortune’s right hand, and frugality its left.”
John Ray
“Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.”
Woody Allen
“The safest way to double your money is to fold it over and put it in your pocket.”
Kin Hubbard
“Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.”
Oscar Wilde
"The only way to get people in Russia to comply with the laws is to legalize theft."
M. N. Zadornov
“But in theft, they find a lot of subtlety that would not shame even London scammers.”
I.A. Goncharov, ‘Frigate Pallada’
“Almost every day they caught him in theft, but since the thefts were small, and moreover the Russian man does not like to sue at all, it rarely came to police and ended with beating.”
”If I fall asleep and wake up in a hundred years and I am asked what is happening in Russia now, I will answer: they drink and steal...”
”When and which bureaucrat was not convinced that Russia is a pie that can be freely approached and eaten?”
”The Russian government must keep its people in a state of constant amazement.”
”In order to steal with success, you only need to have agety and greed. Greed is especially necessary, because you can get on trial for a small theft.”
”.... Words that were completely insignificant were printed in large letters, and everything essential was depicted in the smallest print.”
”Enlightenment must be implemented with moderation, avoiding bloodshed as much as possible.”
A.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin
“Children, write down the conditions of the task. Ignat had five apples. According to the documents. In fact, three, and seven under the contract. Question: how many apples will the one who checks Ignat's business activities have?”
Modern Russian joke
As was mentioned in the previous chapter, after the glorious Ottoman War and less glorious but still profitable partition of the PLC Catherine found out that the Russian finances are not in a good shape and something has to be done on this account. There were two ways of doing so:
- Get more money. Traditional implementation of this solution was just to raise more revenues by raising the taxes. The method was as old as the first Russian principalities and, with the few unfortunate exceptions, like one of Prince Igor of Kiev [1], it worked quite well. However, within the existing reality the government could not fully collect even existing direct taxes and, as far as indirect ones were involved, while even greater drinking would raise amount of the collected excise taxes in a short run, there were certain disadvantages in having all subjects of the Russian Empire permanently drunk (who would be carrying food and other necessities to the noble houses and imperial residences?). Another way to get more money was to make more of them but resources of silver copper were not unlimited and both had other important use (silver for making tableware and copper for the artillery) so Catherine chose a modern way and started printing the paper money. But a number of people who had at least some idea on the subject beyond a “night-table” paradigm [2] started warning her that the more money you are printing, the less they worth. The most irritating thing was that even her own son had been blabbing something to this effect. Did this mean that he is more intelligent than herself? Anyway, she decided to proceed with a moderation. The third was was to borrow and actually she was borrowing the small amounts from the Swiss bankers but “you are borrowing other people money and returning yours” and after all she came not from the Versailles but from an impoverished minor German princely family with no proper background in “behaving as the princes” [3]. So these sums were too small to make a difference. [4]
- Spend less. The idea definitely had merits but the question was “how?”. Well, a less responsible and more egotistical person would start with her own household (which, in this case included all state apparatus) but Catherine was officially declared “Mother of the country” so she started with taking care of her subjects who, by all accounts, were not frugal at all. This was nothing new, she was always considering care about well-being of her subjects as the top priority. She already issued decree ordering the state officials to be honest [5] and another degree forbidding high stakes card games so now it was a time to regulate the frugality. It did not her too much time to write a manifesto against excessive luxury. Of course, principle of defining what is and what is not “excessive” in each specific case had to be formulated but what in other European countries could be a problem, in the Russian Empire was a piece of cake: everybody's status within it was clearly defined by the Table of the Ranks.
Manifesto was printed in a form that later became the official tradition: the meaningless words were printed by the big letters and the meaningful part in a small font [6].
In its practical part the manifesto was regulating the carriages and numbers of horses permitted to each group within the Table and dress code for their lackeys. The local administrators were put in charge of the enforcement.
Intermission. This may look silly but it was not: the manifesto was once more underscoring the main principle of the Russian Empire: person’s place in it was defined (at least formally) not by ancestry or wealth but by his place on the service ladder. No matter how aristocratic or rich one was but if he was just a junior officer, he could use carriages and sledges with to horses while the people of the higher service ranks had been entitled to 4 or 6 (the top being entitled to 6 horses with two postilions). And if a noble did not have an officer rank or its civic equivalent, he was entitled to a single horse carriage with no adornments on a harness. The same for the livery.
With the well-being of her (noble) subjects being attended to, it would be reasonable for Catherine to start taking care about her household and administration.
At home. To give a general idea of the situation in the imperial household, here are some historical anecdotes:
”Walking through the garden, Empress [Catherine II] replaced that the lackeys carry peaches, pineapples and grapes from the palace on porcelain trays. In order not to meet them, Ekaterina turned to the side, telling others:
- I wish they would at least left to me the trays!”
“And another time, faced, so to speak, with these trays, she said to those who carried them:
- Well, you'll be in trouble if Torsukov [Hoff-Marshal] sees it!
- He's still sleeping, Mother Tsarina! - was their answer.”
On some occasions she even was helping the thieves to escape being caught. Tendency to play a good master extended to her never ordering to punish any of the servants or even to fire the incompetent ones: one of her cooks was very bad and when it was his turn to prepare the imperial dishes there was a “diet time” but he never was fired.
The basic principle of the court employees was to steal everything that could be defined as a petty theft (aka, not jewelry, pieces of furniture, certain pieces of a table service, etc.). There was a joke about a person who asked to find him any place at the palace staff explaining that even position of a care taker of Empress’ canary bird will provide food for him, his wife and his children. One of very few cases when Catherine did something was when she found in the palace documents that every day a poud (16 kilograms) of a hair powder was allocated for her. “Did something” meant that she let it be known that she is unhappy. Nobody was punished but the practice stopped. But role of a good master was too appealing to abandon it and Hoff-Master was doomed to play a bad cop or at least a scarecrow. The palaces, and especially their personnel, remained a big money-sucking black hole.
Which was rather funny because her personal life style was rather modest. The decor of her interior rooms in the Winter Palace was much more modest than the situation of the rooms of many nobles of that time. She usually woke up at seven o'clock in the morning and, without disturbing anyone, put on her own clothes, dressed and ignited the fireplace, in which they put firewood in the evening. After washing herself in a small bathroom and putting on a house dress the empress went to the office, where she was immediately served a cup of the strongest Levantine coffee and a plate of toasts. Slowly sipping coffee, Catherine studied the papers, wrote letters and in moments of rest fed her favorite dogs with toasts [7]. At nine o'clock she moved into the bedroom, which by that time was hastily put in order. There were two tables. Catherine was taking a seatbehind one of them and then the capital’s chief of police and state secretaries with the reports had been admitted one by one. When the state secretaries done with their reports, the rest of the persons to whom the reception was appointed had been invited. At twelve o'clock, the reception stopped, and her senior hairdresser Kozlov would come to the empress to comb her hair. Then Catherine went to the ceremonial dressing room, where everyone who reported on that day and some close friends were gathering for the morning greeting. Here she was putting on an official dress.
Before lunch, which was appointed at two o'clock, the empress studied again. Only the closest persons were invited to lunch on weekdays; it lasted no more than an hour. The empress was distinguished by her abstinence in food and drink: she never had breakfast or dinner, and at lunch she took small portions of three or four dishes; from wine she drank a glass of rhine wine or Hungarian.
At 6pm there were social meetings officially defined as small ( for the inner circle), medium (bigger number but still reasonably “inner”) and big ones (all high-ranking people, and foreign diplomats; opera, dances, supper) . Catherine had to maintain reputation of the imperial court as the most luxurious court in Europe. A mandatory feature of the entertainment was a card game. For the small and medium parties the empress had permanent partners but in the big ones she may invite somebody else as a token of her favor. With the high stakes games being forbidden, she and her partners had been using the “modest” ones, one imperial (gold coin of 10 rubles; for comparison, the annual poll tax was 70-80 kopeks).
In May, Catherine moved to Tsarskoye Selo, where she remained until late autumn. All court ceremonies and receptions were canceled here, reports and invitations were shortened. On a painting above Catherine is painted with one of her favorite Italian greyhounds, which in 1770, the English doctor Dimsdale (who introduced smallpox inoculation in Russia) presented her, Sir Tom Anderson (died in 1784) and Duches (died in 1782). These dogs became the ancestors of a large family. Tom Anderson lived for 16 years and left many descendants. Catherine loved her dogs very much and gave puppies - "young people", as she called them, to the Volkonsky, Naryshkin, Orlov families; two puppies were sent to Versailles. “At the head is the ancestor, Sir Tom Anderson, his wife, Duchess Anderson, their children: the young Duchess of Anderson, Mr. Anderson and Tom Thomson; this one settled in Moscow under the care of Prince Volkonsky, the Moscow Governor General. In addition to them, who have already won a position in the world, there are four or five young people who promise infinitely much: they are brought up in the best houses in Moscow and St. Petersburg, as, for example, Prince Orlov, Mr. Naryshkins, at Prince Tyufyakin.”
Catherine's personal servants consisted of one chamber-frau, four chamber-medchen and five valets, two of which were with her person and two at the Hermitage. The duties of each were precisely defined; for example, one valet was in charge of the wardrobe and received an order from the Empress what exactly and on what day should be prepared for her; another supervised the inner rooms; the third, Catherine's favorite old Popov, was in charge of her office and "pantry", where precious things, brocades, velvets, matter, canvases, etc. were stored. It was his duty every Saturday to submit to her a statement of handouts made from the pantry during the week, not excluding even trifles, such as ribbons and ribbons, and the empress herself noted on the statements: "Write down in the expense". But the total staff of the imperial court amounted to over 3,000, including a personal of the palaces which she rarely visited but expenses on which had been billed on a “full scale”. Obviously, nothing could be saved there and nobody even tried seriously. Expenses of the court kept growing and if in 1730 they amounted to 360,000, now they were over 2,000,000 and kept growing. Income of the “cabinet” (an office serving the imperial family) had been formed by salt tax (a guaranteed million), gold and silver production in the state lands of Altai and Nerchinsk, fixed allocations from the Treasury, fixed allocations from the custom dues, yasak (furs) from the Siberian tribes and some smaller items like salary as a colonel of the Guards regiments.
But expenses also kept growing including, besides the mandatory items, pensions and various gifts of money and jewelry. The last category was important because it was a demonstrable sign of the sovereign’ personal benevolence and their cost varied in a wide range. For example, the most popular gift, a snuffbox, could cost anywhere between 150 and 6,000 rubles, gold watch with the diamonds - 150 - 3,000, female jewelry - 150 - 5,000, diamond rings - 200 - 4,000. And in the case of, God forbid, a war, the expenses grew to include the bejeweled and gold swords and various types of the non-standard military awards. To cut significantly on these expenses would hurt Catherine’s image as “gift-giving mother” and while she was not anymore “sitting” on the Guards’ bayonets, she still cared greatly about being surrounded by the happy faces.
Getting back to the subject, of course she found how to save money: when her son asked for 20,000 to cover his debts, he eventually got 5,000 and a valuable lecture on importance to be frugal. And as a birthday gift he got a cheap watch.
Administration was not much better: Catherine strongly believed in a force of the moral factors ignoring …er… historical realities of the Russian culture by which any official considered himself entitled to a piece of the state pie size and specifics of which depended on his position. As a result, the ongoing administrative reform, which moved most of the functionality and reporting down to the gubernia level, made the “historical practices” easier because the increased part of the collected taxes of all types had been now officially consumed on that level without going to the government.
Catherine’s usual approach was pretty much the same as with the thieving servants, try to appeal to what neither them nor the state officials typically did not have, the conscientiousness. Her predecessor in “Greatness”, Peter I, tried all methods of a persuasion, from delivering beating personally and all the way through knout, and rack to the gallows. Well, presumably the last item on the list was at least a temporary deterrent [8] but in general his pedagogical attempts failed. So, what chance Catherine had without these tools? An assumption that separation of powers within gubernia will solve the fiscal problems proved to be optimistic as well: representatives of each branch of the provincial government just had been “operating” each within his own sector. However, while her system of governing may sound a little bit naive, it was based upon the solid traditional Russian assumption that it does not make sense to replace one thief …oops… administrator with another because the new one will be stealing even more expecting that his tenure will be short.
The military and naval administration probably could introduce some money saving practices but the Military Collegium now did not have a President and its Vice-President, Saltykov, besides being incompetent in the military affairs, had a full time job administering the household of Cesarevich Paul and acting as intermediary between him and his mother so Catherine was looking for a suitable replacement.
In the Navy, Paul started to assert himself with the increasing authority and competence at the expense of his VP, Chernyshov but, besides being very (and sometimes annoyingly) honest himself, he was seemingly trying, with a competent help of the Vice-Admiral Greig, to introduce the style of a discipline and efficiency throughout the whole Russian Navy. Taking into an account that the new Black Sea fleet and the needed infrastructure had to be built almost from the scratch and that so far cooperation of the Admiralty with the regional naval commanders had been going smoothly, Catherine did not mind this burden being taken off her shoulders.
Fortunately, the newly-incorporated territories started adding income to the state coffers, replacement of the poll tax with the income tax for the merchants proved to be a good idea and the increasing exports also were providing growing surplus. Annual extraction of silver in Netchinsk region reached 629 pouds, metallurgical plants on Altai based mostly on Zmeinogorsk mine were producing over 1,000 pouds of silver annually and annual extraction of gold in Ural reached 2,000 pouds [9]. So, in an absence of some drastic expenses on a level of a major war [10] , what was passing for the Russian budget (officially, there still was none) was going to produce a steady and growing surplus even on the existing level of thievery and inefficiency.
Then there were relatively small (comparing to the total) but not negligible future savings by the Foreign Collegium. With the demise of Panin’s “System” the enormous amounts regularly spent on the bribes and subsidies came down to a pure minimum.
In Sweden an attempt to maintain the existing form of a government (absolutist Russian Empire fighting against the absolutist party in Sweden sounds rather strange) cost, within couple years, close to a million and ended up being a waste of money when King Gustav III in 1772 staged a coup and became an absolute monarch thus ending the Age of Liberty, which was quite costly for Russia without producing any visible benefits. The goal of the Russian policy, as per Panin, was to keep Sweden weak thus preventing its attack on Russia. The key element in this scenario were the French subsidies to Sweden because France was the Ottoman ally and, as a result, anti-Russian. But, being a theoretical construction, the “System” was not reacting to the changed geopolitical landscape: even before 1772 France run out of money and the end of the Ottoman war made the whole “stabbing at the back” scenario a mute point, anyway. Panin could keep pontificating but Catherine decided that, at least for a time being, maintaining friendly relations with a fellow absolute monarch is going to be cheaper than keep wasting huge some of money on now powerless opposition. She offered to sell Sweden a big amount of grain at the discount price, which was accepted with a gratitude, and relations had been patched. Anyway, with Denmark, after the land swap and removing the Queen from a political scene, being a firm Russian ally and Russian Empire having at its disposal a naval base in Kiel (and quite a few experienced local sailors willing to serve in the Russian navy) and Prussia as an ally as well, Sweden probably would not risk a military confrontation unless Gustav starts getting some mental problems.
The second money pit of the “System”, the PLC, became almost insignificantly cheap. Catherine kept giving small amounts of money to Stanislaw-August but the big expenses for promoting a now unimportant earlier agenda had been gone. In the newly acquired territories most of the lands which belonged to the active members of the Bar Confederacy had been confiscated and, after distribution of the awards, the rest had been turned into the state lands: being personally free, the state peasants had been paying a higher poll tax.
_____________
[1] Leo the Deacon writes that in 945 the unhappy subjects captured Prince Igor and executed him by tying to the tops of bent trees and tore his body apart.
[2] The source of money is night-table, the source of electricity is a socket and of a gas is fueling station.
[3] Don’t remember which top family it was but when a son returned from a travel still in a possession of some money, the angry father told him: “I see that you did not learn how to behave as a prince” and threw the purse with the remaining money out of the window.
[4] Highly idealized picture. In OTL she was printing paper money and borrowing abroad as if there was no tomorrow saddling her successor with a devaluated paper currency and huge foreign debt.
[5] This decree was accompanied by the raise of the bureaucrats’ salaries in a somewhat idealistic expectation that this would remove a need foe stealing and taking bribes. Contrary to the expectations, this did not work out as expected. Personally, I can’ imagine why. Perhaps the part emphasizing the moral side of the issue contained words which the intended audience was not familiar with, like “honesty”.
[6] Unfortunately, I could not find the contemporary document. Below is the recent replica with the modern orthography but presumably in the same format.
[7] Not a very good food. I mean, for a dog.
[8] It can be argued that if those subjected to this educational method did not have a tendency to die in a process of being hanged, they would continue their practices. With an absence of the necessary data, this theory can’t be convincingly proved or disproved.
[9] I did not quite get how the whole system worked. These plants were on the lands which belonged to the imperial family. Gold, silver and part of copper had been going to the Mint to make coinage. Was all that coinage going to the “cabinet” to cover the court expenses (unlikely) or was there some kind of a more complicated arrangement? So far, I found nothing on that account. Anyway, until Nicholas I created Ministry of the Imperial Court with its own budget, a line between the sovereign’s own money and state money was somewhat murky.
[10] In OTL activities of Grigory Potemkin probably amounted to a very big war. “Probably” because he did not bother himself with a paper work. When auditing the 55 million rubles allocated to him for the army, he found very difficult to “justify” (with a very lenient attitude of the auditors) spending 41 million, and the report on the rest dragged on to infinity and were forgiven. And the expenses for ”civilizing” Novorossia, as I understand, never were audited. Grigory Orlov never was asked how exactly he spent 20 millions assigned to the Mediterranean expedition and he seemingly “appropriated” a big part of the trophies. Well, at least he was a bona fide war hero, which Potemkin was not.
43. Raise of Novorossia #1
New
43. Raise of Novorossia #1
Russian Empire, from 1775.
With all fighting and most of the diplomacy being done with, the obvious task of the top priority was how to digest what was swallowed, especially where the former Ottoman territories were involved. Obviously, these territories needed influx of the Russian (or at least loyal) population, developed agriculture, infrastructure and many other things. There was also a need to provide for their defenses, which meant creation of the coastal defenses and building up a powerful fleet.
Catherine’s initial plan was to assign the whole “package” to a single person in expectation that this will provide the best way to coordinate the efforts, perhaps may save some money and will relieve her of a need to get involved in a process and and inter-departments squabbles. Of course, a potential candidate had to be a man with a vision, capable of designing the great plans and personally loyal to her. An idea that “designing a plan” and “implementing the plan” were not always the same thing was not quite there, yet: if a person knows what he wants to do, surely he should know how to do it. And she found someone who looked as a perfect fit of her list of the qualifications. Just as years ago Grigory Orlov supposed to be: in some cases, especially when not only her head was involved, stepping once on a pitchfork was not quite enough.
Jack of all trades.
Grigory Potemkin was, at the time of a coup, a non-commissioned officer of the Horse Guards who was noticed by Catherine. His further career was rather fast: first he was promoted to the 2nd lieutenant, then, almost immediately to the 1st, than was made a chamberlain. When the Ottoman War started he volunteered to go to it and, his court rank being converted into a military one, joined Rumyantsev’s army as major-general. Rumyantsev did not like the “court people” but his new subordinate was eager to serve, brave and quite good in performing the assigned tasks. All of which Rumyantsev honestly communicated in his letter to Catherine when Potemkin was sent to report about the course of a war, which he did in the terms flattering to the Fieldmarshal and army in general. Catherine was pleased with the report and even more so by a messenger.
He was tall, handsome (just as Catherine liked them) and, unlike the …er… “experiments” starting with Orlov, quite an intelligent and imaginative speaker. After being made adjutant-general [1] he was sent to the Crimea to report upon the status of affairs after not too brilliant performance of Prince Dolgoruky during the Ottoman landing and Tatar uprising. He returned not just with a report but with a whole plan for the proper integration of the peninsula into the Russian Empire. Impressed Catherine promoted him to lieutenant-general and appointed governor-general of a newly created “Novorossia” with a task to “civilize” and develop the territory and eventually conduct its administrative division into 2 or 3 gubernias. Extensive financial backing was promised and her “Grishenka”, after being appointed Vice-President of the Military Collegium (he promised to reform the Army in his spare time), departed in conquest of a glory and further promotions.
He started with the most troublesome part, the peninsula. Recent mass uprising demonstrated that population is not, in general, happy with the Russian rule and one of his first order had a purpose to calm it down by a mild behavior “The will of her imperial majesty is that all the troops staying in the Crimean peninsula should treat the residents in a friendly way, without hurting, in which the administrators and regimental commanders have to set an example.”
Judging by his letters to Catherine, Potemkin was quite captivated by a natural beauty of the peninsula and fertility of its lands. However, despite the heavenly appearance of the area, there was a lot of work ahead - it was necessary to develop villages and small settlements, as well as to build new cities on vast uninhabited lands, create maps, build roads and the ports.
But as the first steps it was necessary to set the administrative structure, which would suit both sides involved and Potemkin accomplished this with a noticeable success. The land rights of the local owners had been reassured, the local mosques and their clergy got confirmation of their right to function, only the lands abandoned by the emigrated owners had been made subject to the distribution among the newcomers. The measures had been taken that the trade of the coastal port cities would not be harmed and exports of the goods produced in the peninsula (minus the slaves) into the Ottoman Empire will go on: with a shortage, so far, of the land roads, a direct trade with the Russian territories was rather cumbersome, unless it was coming via the Azov Sea, but at least some of it started keeping the locals busy and with the money.
As the capital of future Tavria gubernia Potemkin choose Ak-Mosque renamed into Simferopol. A relatively small town was semi-deserted due to the war and plague but it was located practically in the center of the peninsula which made it well-suited for the purpose. Construction of the road to the North started immediately and so did construction of the new administrative and private buildings which, soon enough were supposed to make the site at least “half-European”.
The next important task was to set up new port and a wharf on the Black Sea, which was Catherine’s direct order. The decree on its construction was caused by the desire to have a new harbor and shipyard closer to the Black Sea, as the previous ones, such as Taganrog, presented significant inconveniences due to shallow water. In 1775, the empress ordered to finally choose a place for the harbor and shipyard on the Dnieper and call it Kherson. Potemkin chose the Alexander-Schants tract. The work was entrusted to the descendant of the famous black man and godson of Peter the Hreat, general V. Hannibal, 12 companies of masters were assigned at his disposal. A fairly large area was taken away for the future city, and 220 guns were sent to the constructed fortress.
The management of this case was entrusted to Potemkin, who wanted to make the city as blooming and famous as ancient Tauric Chersonesos. He expected to arrange an admiralty in it, a warehouse, as Peter I did in St. Petersburg, with Ochakov serving as its “Kronstadt. The construction did not cause difficulties: the quarry was located almost in the city itself, timber, iron and all the necessary materials were brought along the Dnieper. Potemkin distributed the lands lying around the city for the construction of country houses, gardens, etc. This was a reported situation. The real one was a tiny bit different. The climate was not healthy due to the nearby swamps. The area was practically completely void of the trees so the dried reeds and bushes had been used for a fuel. Transporting materials down the Dnieper was quite problematic due to the rapids and even after few of the boulders were blown away, the travel downriver was so risky that a whole brand new social class of the hereditary “rapids pilots” had been established, with its own social privileges. The city sight was too far upriver, which was too shallow at its level to allow access for the major ships and putting limitations on the size of the ships which could be built and sent down the river. All these trifles had been ignored and Catherine was getting reports about a completed admiralty and other official buildings and the merchant ships already arriving. The construction had been moving fast because there was no shortage of money and, besides the budgeted sums, more than 500,000 rubles were granted upon Potemkin’s request.
The first alarm sounded when the representatives of the Admiralty severely criticized the first ships built on the local wharf: they were badly constructed, and the low quality timber had been used. The first ship built there was rejected by the Admiralty and construction of the second one took three years. Going a little bit ahead of time, four years later Hannibal was fired and Potemkin who came to see the situation complained to Catherine “I'm tired like a dog, and I can't make sense to the Admiralty. Everything is ruined, there is no decent record. Other works are also defective, the high cost of contracts and the malfunction of contractors spent a lot of money and time... None of those who were supposed to watch were in their business... everyone was removed, and everything was in the hands of the secretary of Hannibal... whom he took with him, leaving no timber or money here.” Not that his own paperwork was in a better shape. [2]
But Catherine was so excited that the complaints had been ignored except for a granted permission to look for a better site for a wharf somewhere nearby. Soon enough the sailors found a much better spot on the Ingul River (Bug’s tributary) where the settlement called “Nikolaev”, was established and construction of a new wharf started. However, for the few following years the Admiralty and all relevant services remained in Kherson and a slow construction of the questionable quality ships there continued even if on a dwindling scale.
Location of a nearly ideal port had been found when two Russian frigates sailed into the Akhtiar Bay to stay there for the winter. The bay was researched and described and detailed plan of the area with bays, outlines of the banks and depth measurements was prepared and delivered to the commander of the newly-founded port of Kherson. The report was saying “…I have the honor to present a map made by Akhtiar harbor <...>, in which up to 50 warships and other vessels can be placed without any problem.”
In few months the first buildings had been constructed and the base of the future Black Sea Fleet founded. All construction had been done by the sailors who began to build wharfs, residential buildings for officers and barracks for sailors. The buildings resembled "Little Russian huts" made of wicker, smeared with clay and whitewashed, with a reed roof.
At this point certain administrative problems started to appear. As per new administrative reform, the military were ending up with a dual chain of command because they were subordinated to both the Military or Naval Collegium and to the local administration. Which brought the obvious questions of who has a final say regarding the plans for construction of a new naval base and who is responsible for supplying the things needed for its construction and functioning? Even greater looming questions were who will be in charge of the naval construction and where will it going to happen? And, of course, who is going to pay for the expenses?
With Potemkin's urge to be in charge of everything, including the issues in which he was grossly incompetent, the issue was which side is going to get an upper hand. As a VP of the Military Collegium and governor-general Potemkin had a clear advantage “on the land” but OTOH, he was grossly over-ranked on the issues related to the navy by Admiral-General. Of course, taking into an account that Catherine’s relations with her son were on a tepid side at the best times, “Grishenka” had serious reasons to expect that the Empress will make a decision in his favor. However, by that time Paul already established himself as a acting head of the Admiralty and had a strong support of the leading naval figures like Greig, Senyavin and Chichagov and even of his own VP, Ivan Chernishov. All of them had been insisting that the naval works on the Black Sea are not being done properly notwithstanding the already huge expenses and that in the case of a new war with the Ottomans Russia risks to have the inferior Black Sea fleet and this time may not be as lucky as it was in the last war.
When it was coming too a really serious business Catherine could get over her sentiments and act an as empress. The Navy was put in charge of the naval issues including the related constructions. In the areas of supplies and other administrative arrangements both powers had been ordered to cooperate as befits the true sons of the Fatherland. For a short while “Grishenka” was considering throwing a tantrum but then, being a very intelligent person, reconsidered. “Opposition” looked too powerful and its leader demonstrated an unexpected grace making it possible to “share credit” by being in charge of supplying the necessary materials for the constructed base at Akhtiar, which was ambitiously renamed to Sevastopol, with an open invitation to be responsible for establishing the whole town around it. Paul, as the Tsesarevich, did not even think about someone outside the imperial family to be competing with him on anything so Potemkin’s quest for glory did not bother him (for as long as he did not interfere with his own actions) and his mother’s new favorite was clearly trying to be useful to the empire even if Paul did not approve of his style. Indeed, as soon as the issue was settled, Potemkin started active work on organizing the supply process, which was not an easy task. Not only the timber, iron and other materials had been brought from outside the peninsula by land but their transportation across the peninsula had to be arranged in a way, which would not cause the excessive burden to the natives, thus triggering an unrest. The local administrators had to distribute the duty judiciously and provide decent payment for the services granted. The process required a very diligent oversight because none of the people involved on any level could be considered trustworthy.
_________
[1] For certain category of the males this rank mean that his company was found quite agreeable.
[2] In OTL he could provide some documentation on approximately 40+ millions out of more than 50 he spent.
“When you feel that the goal is unattainable, do not change the goal - change your action plan.”
Confucius
“The more brilliant your plan is, the fewer people will agree with it."
Sun Tzu
“Don't make modest plans - they can't excite the soul."
Niccolò Machiavelli
"The best strategic plan is useless if it can't be implemented tactically."
Erwin Rommel
"No business plan can stand the reality test. Reality is always different from the picture presented in the plan."
Jeff Bezos
“I make plans in the morning and do stupid things in the afternoon.”
Voltaire
"The plan was simple: break the door lock, eat all the sausages in the buffet, take all change from the cash register and flee."
Fazil Abdulovich Iskander
“It's good that everything is going according to plan. It's bad that the plan is shit.”
”He was clearly a quite capable person. What exactly he was capable of was a big question.”
Unknown author
”…She starts: "Oh, he loves me!" Who is this, "he" - I almost never ask: because the answer is one, stereotypical: "My fiancé, he's handsome, smart, educated!"”
A.N. Ostrovsky, ‘A handsome man’
Confucius
“The more brilliant your plan is, the fewer people will agree with it."
Sun Tzu
“Don't make modest plans - they can't excite the soul."
Niccolò Machiavelli
"The best strategic plan is useless if it can't be implemented tactically."
Erwin Rommel
"No business plan can stand the reality test. Reality is always different from the picture presented in the plan."
Jeff Bezos
“I make plans in the morning and do stupid things in the afternoon.”
Voltaire
"The plan was simple: break the door lock, eat all the sausages in the buffet, take all change from the cash register and flee."
Fazil Abdulovich Iskander
“It's good that everything is going according to plan. It's bad that the plan is shit.”
”He was clearly a quite capable person. What exactly he was capable of was a big question.”
Unknown author
”…She starts: "Oh, he loves me!" Who is this, "he" - I almost never ask: because the answer is one, stereotypical: "My fiancé, he's handsome, smart, educated!"”
A.N. Ostrovsky, ‘A handsome man’
Russian Empire, from 1775.
With all fighting and most of the diplomacy being done with, the obvious task of the top priority was how to digest what was swallowed, especially where the former Ottoman territories were involved. Obviously, these territories needed influx of the Russian (or at least loyal) population, developed agriculture, infrastructure and many other things. There was also a need to provide for their defenses, which meant creation of the coastal defenses and building up a powerful fleet.
Catherine’s initial plan was to assign the whole “package” to a single person in expectation that this will provide the best way to coordinate the efforts, perhaps may save some money and will relieve her of a need to get involved in a process and and inter-departments squabbles. Of course, a potential candidate had to be a man with a vision, capable of designing the great plans and personally loyal to her. An idea that “designing a plan” and “implementing the plan” were not always the same thing was not quite there, yet: if a person knows what he wants to do, surely he should know how to do it. And she found someone who looked as a perfect fit of her list of the qualifications. Just as years ago Grigory Orlov supposed to be: in some cases, especially when not only her head was involved, stepping once on a pitchfork was not quite enough.
Jack of all trades.
Grigory Potemkin was, at the time of a coup, a non-commissioned officer of the Horse Guards who was noticed by Catherine. His further career was rather fast: first he was promoted to the 2nd lieutenant, then, almost immediately to the 1st, than was made a chamberlain. When the Ottoman War started he volunteered to go to it and, his court rank being converted into a military one, joined Rumyantsev’s army as major-general. Rumyantsev did not like the “court people” but his new subordinate was eager to serve, brave and quite good in performing the assigned tasks. All of which Rumyantsev honestly communicated in his letter to Catherine when Potemkin was sent to report about the course of a war, which he did in the terms flattering to the Fieldmarshal and army in general. Catherine was pleased with the report and even more so by a messenger.
He was tall, handsome (just as Catherine liked them) and, unlike the …er… “experiments” starting with Orlov, quite an intelligent and imaginative speaker. After being made adjutant-general [1] he was sent to the Crimea to report upon the status of affairs after not too brilliant performance of Prince Dolgoruky during the Ottoman landing and Tatar uprising. He returned not just with a report but with a whole plan for the proper integration of the peninsula into the Russian Empire. Impressed Catherine promoted him to lieutenant-general and appointed governor-general of a newly created “Novorossia” with a task to “civilize” and develop the territory and eventually conduct its administrative division into 2 or 3 gubernias. Extensive financial backing was promised and her “Grishenka”, after being appointed Vice-President of the Military Collegium (he promised to reform the Army in his spare time), departed in conquest of a glory and further promotions.
He started with the most troublesome part, the peninsula. Recent mass uprising demonstrated that population is not, in general, happy with the Russian rule and one of his first order had a purpose to calm it down by a mild behavior “The will of her imperial majesty is that all the troops staying in the Crimean peninsula should treat the residents in a friendly way, without hurting, in which the administrators and regimental commanders have to set an example.”
Judging by his letters to Catherine, Potemkin was quite captivated by a natural beauty of the peninsula and fertility of its lands. However, despite the heavenly appearance of the area, there was a lot of work ahead - it was necessary to develop villages and small settlements, as well as to build new cities on vast uninhabited lands, create maps, build roads and the ports.
But as the first steps it was necessary to set the administrative structure, which would suit both sides involved and Potemkin accomplished this with a noticeable success. The land rights of the local owners had been reassured, the local mosques and their clergy got confirmation of their right to function, only the lands abandoned by the emigrated owners had been made subject to the distribution among the newcomers. The measures had been taken that the trade of the coastal port cities would not be harmed and exports of the goods produced in the peninsula (minus the slaves) into the Ottoman Empire will go on: with a shortage, so far, of the land roads, a direct trade with the Russian territories was rather cumbersome, unless it was coming via the Azov Sea, but at least some of it started keeping the locals busy and with the money.
As the capital of future Tavria gubernia Potemkin choose Ak-Mosque renamed into Simferopol. A relatively small town was semi-deserted due to the war and plague but it was located practically in the center of the peninsula which made it well-suited for the purpose. Construction of the road to the North started immediately and so did construction of the new administrative and private buildings which, soon enough were supposed to make the site at least “half-European”.
The next important task was to set up new port and a wharf on the Black Sea, which was Catherine’s direct order. The decree on its construction was caused by the desire to have a new harbor and shipyard closer to the Black Sea, as the previous ones, such as Taganrog, presented significant inconveniences due to shallow water. In 1775, the empress ordered to finally choose a place for the harbor and shipyard on the Dnieper and call it Kherson. Potemkin chose the Alexander-Schants tract. The work was entrusted to the descendant of the famous black man and godson of Peter the Hreat, general V. Hannibal, 12 companies of masters were assigned at his disposal. A fairly large area was taken away for the future city, and 220 guns were sent to the constructed fortress.
The management of this case was entrusted to Potemkin, who wanted to make the city as blooming and famous as ancient Tauric Chersonesos. He expected to arrange an admiralty in it, a warehouse, as Peter I did in St. Petersburg, with Ochakov serving as its “Kronstadt. The construction did not cause difficulties: the quarry was located almost in the city itself, timber, iron and all the necessary materials were brought along the Dnieper. Potemkin distributed the lands lying around the city for the construction of country houses, gardens, etc. This was a reported situation. The real one was a tiny bit different. The climate was not healthy due to the nearby swamps. The area was practically completely void of the trees so the dried reeds and bushes had been used for a fuel. Transporting materials down the Dnieper was quite problematic due to the rapids and even after few of the boulders were blown away, the travel downriver was so risky that a whole brand new social class of the hereditary “rapids pilots” had been established, with its own social privileges. The city sight was too far upriver, which was too shallow at its level to allow access for the major ships and putting limitations on the size of the ships which could be built and sent down the river. All these trifles had been ignored and Catherine was getting reports about a completed admiralty and other official buildings and the merchant ships already arriving. The construction had been moving fast because there was no shortage of money and, besides the budgeted sums, more than 500,000 rubles were granted upon Potemkin’s request.
The first alarm sounded when the representatives of the Admiralty severely criticized the first ships built on the local wharf: they were badly constructed, and the low quality timber had been used. The first ship built there was rejected by the Admiralty and construction of the second one took three years. Going a little bit ahead of time, four years later Hannibal was fired and Potemkin who came to see the situation complained to Catherine “I'm tired like a dog, and I can't make sense to the Admiralty. Everything is ruined, there is no decent record. Other works are also defective, the high cost of contracts and the malfunction of contractors spent a lot of money and time... None of those who were supposed to watch were in their business... everyone was removed, and everything was in the hands of the secretary of Hannibal... whom he took with him, leaving no timber or money here.” Not that his own paperwork was in a better shape. [2]
But Catherine was so excited that the complaints had been ignored except for a granted permission to look for a better site for a wharf somewhere nearby. Soon enough the sailors found a much better spot on the Ingul River (Bug’s tributary) where the settlement called “Nikolaev”, was established and construction of a new wharf started. However, for the few following years the Admiralty and all relevant services remained in Kherson and a slow construction of the questionable quality ships there continued even if on a dwindling scale.
Location of a nearly ideal port had been found when two Russian frigates sailed into the Akhtiar Bay to stay there for the winter. The bay was researched and described and detailed plan of the area with bays, outlines of the banks and depth measurements was prepared and delivered to the commander of the newly-founded port of Kherson. The report was saying “…I have the honor to present a map made by Akhtiar harbor <...>, in which up to 50 warships and other vessels can be placed without any problem.”
In few months the first buildings had been constructed and the base of the future Black Sea Fleet founded. All construction had been done by the sailors who began to build wharfs, residential buildings for officers and barracks for sailors. The buildings resembled "Little Russian huts" made of wicker, smeared with clay and whitewashed, with a reed roof.
At this point certain administrative problems started to appear. As per new administrative reform, the military were ending up with a dual chain of command because they were subordinated to both the Military or Naval Collegium and to the local administration. Which brought the obvious questions of who has a final say regarding the plans for construction of a new naval base and who is responsible for supplying the things needed for its construction and functioning? Even greater looming questions were who will be in charge of the naval construction and where will it going to happen? And, of course, who is going to pay for the expenses?
With Potemkin's urge to be in charge of everything, including the issues in which he was grossly incompetent, the issue was which side is going to get an upper hand. As a VP of the Military Collegium and governor-general Potemkin had a clear advantage “on the land” but OTOH, he was grossly over-ranked on the issues related to the navy by Admiral-General. Of course, taking into an account that Catherine’s relations with her son were on a tepid side at the best times, “Grishenka” had serious reasons to expect that the Empress will make a decision in his favor. However, by that time Paul already established himself as a acting head of the Admiralty and had a strong support of the leading naval figures like Greig, Senyavin and Chichagov and even of his own VP, Ivan Chernishov. All of them had been insisting that the naval works on the Black Sea are not being done properly notwithstanding the already huge expenses and that in the case of a new war with the Ottomans Russia risks to have the inferior Black Sea fleet and this time may not be as lucky as it was in the last war.
When it was coming too a really serious business Catherine could get over her sentiments and act an as empress. The Navy was put in charge of the naval issues including the related constructions. In the areas of supplies and other administrative arrangements both powers had been ordered to cooperate as befits the true sons of the Fatherland. For a short while “Grishenka” was considering throwing a tantrum but then, being a very intelligent person, reconsidered. “Opposition” looked too powerful and its leader demonstrated an unexpected grace making it possible to “share credit” by being in charge of supplying the necessary materials for the constructed base at Akhtiar, which was ambitiously renamed to Sevastopol, with an open invitation to be responsible for establishing the whole town around it. Paul, as the Tsesarevich, did not even think about someone outside the imperial family to be competing with him on anything so Potemkin’s quest for glory did not bother him (for as long as he did not interfere with his own actions) and his mother’s new favorite was clearly trying to be useful to the empire even if Paul did not approve of his style. Indeed, as soon as the issue was settled, Potemkin started active work on organizing the supply process, which was not an easy task. Not only the timber, iron and other materials had been brought from outside the peninsula by land but their transportation across the peninsula had to be arranged in a way, which would not cause the excessive burden to the natives, thus triggering an unrest. The local administrators had to distribute the duty judiciously and provide decent payment for the services granted. The process required a very diligent oversight because none of the people involved on any level could be considered trustworthy.
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[1] For certain category of the males this rank mean that his company was found quite agreeable.
[2] In OTL he could provide some documentation on approximately 40+ millions out of more than 50 he spent.
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Only quotes? How about the pictures? (I would not presume to ask about the text). 🤬🤬🤬🤬😂😂😂😂
I loved the chapter. I think the quotes are especially perfect of an introduction this time. Hence my comment.
Your practice of quotes inspired me to add something similar in my TL and it's quite good, how you've utilized them to set the tone. So like I usually think something along the line of "great quotes". Not strictly at the exclusion of other things, of course.
Thanks. Comments like this are really helpful in choosing the style.
With the chapter title and first Chinese quotes You had me thinking this was a chapter about Russian Siberia and its Qing ties. still good to see Paul coming into his own thur the navy and outmaneuver and ultimately co-op one of his mother court favorites.
Speaking of Siberia and the navy I can’t wait to see what Russia and all her wet salty seamen will be getting into up to in the Sea of Japan.
I had to find a way to minimize the OTL expenses and ineptitudes without inviting the ASBs. Paul, with reasonable modifications, seems to be a plausible substitute for these creatures. 😉
That will take a while. Besides other considerations, priority of the Far East was quite low, even including the fur issues, and Chinese goods were coming through Kjahta. Anyway, while Sea of Japan is on the table, one thing that I’m not planning is them doing stupid things in the Yellow Sea.