Potemkin helped the Jews and repeatedly intervened to defend them. During Catherine's visit to the south in 1787, he even sponsored the delegation, led by Zeitlin, that petitioned her to stop Jews being called 'zhidy' - 'Yids.' Catherine received them and decreed that henceforth they should be called 'evref - 'Hebrews'. When Zeitlin clashed with the Prince's banker, Sutherland, Potemkin even backed his beloved Jews against his beloved British.116 A variety of Jewish rabbis soon joined Zeitlin in Potemkin's bizarre court of mullahs and priests. It was this peculiar tolerance that led his anti-Semitic noble critics to sneer that the Prince favoured any foreigners with 'a big snout' - but Potemkin was never bound by the prejudices of others.117
No wonder the Prince became a Jewish hero. Wherever he went, particularly in Belorussia, crowds of excited Jews prepared such elaborate welcomes that they sometimes irritated him. They would offer him 'big trays of silver, bread, salt and lemons', which Miranda, who observed these rituals in Kherson, drily described as 'doubtless some kind of hospitality ceremony'.118
On Potemkin's death, Zeitlin retired to his sumptuous palace at Ustye in Belorussia, where this unusual financier patronized Jewish learning in his Hebraic library and synagogue, conducted scientific experiments in his laboratory, and held his own court, with the eccentricity and magnificence of a Jewish Potemkin. The position of Russian Jews again deteriorated. They were never again to have such an eminent protector.119
Next, the Prince had the idea of importing British convicts to settle the Crimea.
BRITISH BLACKAMOORS AND CHECHEN WARRIORS
But I not rising until noontime Drink coffee and enjoy a smoke; I make vacations of my workdays And spin my thoughts in chimeras
Gavrili Derzhavin, 'Ode to Princess Felitsa'
Serenissimus heard that the American War was preventing Britain from transporting its convicts to the Colonies and he saw an opportunity. His friend the Prince de Ligne was probably the source of this information, because Joseph II had considered settling them in Galicia and then decided against it. One day, Simon Vorontsov, now ambassador in London, was visited by an Irish adventurer named Dillon, who claimed that Ligne had assigned him to procure 'delinquents ... and blackamoors' to settle in the Crimea. Vorontsov, who disliked Potemkin, was appalled at the possible 'shame of Russia: all of Europe will get to know what kind of monsters were settled'. Their dissipation would make them ill and they would have to maintain themselves with their 'old profession - robbery and swindles'.[45]
In October 1785, Vorontsov was amazed to receive an imperial order, via Bezborodko, to negotiate the sending of these British criminals to Riga for transport to the Crimea. The British Government was to pay for their journey. Vorontsov saw a chance to undermine Potemkin, so he wrote to the Empress warning of the effect on her European reputation. 'Despite the prodigious influence and power of Prince Potemkin', boasted Vorontsov, the Empress decided he was right - it might damage her image in Europe. 'It is true', trumpeted Vorontsov years later, 'that Prince Potemkin never forgave me.'1
This story was propagated by Vorontsov - and has been repeated ever since - to show Potemkin's clownish incompetence and lack of judgement. However, it was not a foolish or disgusting idea. Most of these 'delinquents' were not hardened criminals - this was a time when unfortunates were deported from England in chains on grisly prison-ships for stealing a handkerchief or poaching a rabbit. The ultimate penal colony, Australia, which was to become the destination of these very convicts, has flourished. The Empress, Ligne and Bezborodko, none of them fools, supported Potemkin's idea. Besides, it was a familiar concept because many Russian criminals were sent to Siberia as 'settlers'.
Some of the settlers were already semi-criminals anyway. In 1784, a shipload of what Samuel Bentham called 'ragamuffin Italians', mainly Corsicans, arrived from Leghorn. They had mutinied on the way, killing their captain, but were captured and brought to Kherson, where they were put to work building the town. Out of this debacle comes a story that speaks for itself. There was an Englishman among these cut-throats - there is always an Englishman in Potemkin's schemes. Since he was said to be a coal-miner, he was ordered to search for coal. Bentham found him 'almost naked and living on five kopeks per day', so he mentioned his miserable compatriot to the Prince, who 'promised him a good salary, and when I said he was almost naked, he ordered me to give him 300 roubles to buy clothes. This, I think, proves no small degree of generosity - as well as a favourable disposition towards us English.'2
There is a revealing American postscript. In 1784, Americans loyal to the British Crown, who had to leave the United States, petitioned Potemkin to be welcomed as settlers. Potemkin worried that 'they may be the descendants of those people who migrated from England during the civil wars in the last century and who may be supposed to entertain opinions by no means compatible with the spirit of [Russia]'.3 So British criminals were sought, respectable American loyalists rejected. But Potemkin, who regarded Cromwell, Danton and Pugachev as much the same, was being consistent: political rebellion was much more dangerous than mere crime.
Serenissimus specified to his governors precisely how these settlers were to be welcomed at the end of their long journeys. 'The new subjects who don't know our language or customs demand defence and protection ...', he told his Crimean Governor Kahovsky. The Prince certainly decided the settlers' destinies on a whim: 'I offered to settle them on the left bank of the Dnieper. But now I think it would be easier to move them into the empty Greek lands in Taurida itself where there are already buildings.'4 He was constantly thinking of ways to improve their lot: 'Be so kind as to distribute bullocks, cows and horses, left behind by departing Taurida Tartars, among the new settlers,' he ordered Kahovsky, 'trying, not merely to be equable, but to help the poor.'5 To the Governor of Ekaterinoslav, Sinelnikov, he commanded each family to receive the same plus eight desyatins of land per head. 'A further 40 families are now coming down the Dnieper; do not fail to receive them yourself .. Л6 Again, this personal greeting by a busy governor sounds more like touchy-feely modern welfare than military settlement on Russian steppes.
Potemkin is often accused of abandoning these people to their fates. He could not see everything and his officials frequently lied to him. This was the reason he was perennially on the road - to ensure nothing was concealed from him. Nonetheless there must have been thousands of little miseries for some of these people. The departure of some of the settlers from the Crimea 'proves their unhappiness', Potemkin wrote to Kahovsky. 'Understand the reasons for it and carry out your duties with firmness, satisfying the offended.'7 His military order to 'understand' demonstrates the contradiction of trying to foster psychological sensitivity by military command.
However, many others settled happily. The archives prove that, whenever Potemkin found a lapse, he reacted immediately, like the note to Kahovsky in which he suggested five ways to overcome the villagers' 'great privations' because the state had failed to provide enough cattle: 'Only three pairs of oxen, one plough and one cart have been given to four or even more families ... '.8 It is remarkable to find the co-ruler of an empire actually ordering his generals to correct such a mistake and give a certain number of oxen to a specific peasant family in one village. That is what happened again and again.