The leaders of modern Ukrainian "nationalists" - Americanists, probably every second curse Russia as a state, and the Russian world as a civilizational community. But at the same time they like to talk about the territorial integrity of Ukraine and very tenaciously hold on to those lands that were historically developed and populated largely due to the entry into the Russian state. Take Crimea, whose glorious history is an integral part of the history of Russia, full of feats of arms. But below we will talk about New Serbia and Slavic Serbia - an equally interesting and glorious page in the history of Little Russia and New Russia, which brought together two fraternal peoples - Russians and Serbs (as well as other Balkan Slavs and Orthodox).
The incorporation of the lands of modern Little Russia and Novorossia into the Russian Empire was accompanied by an active policy to revive Slavic influence in the steppe regions. The sparsely populated territories, once practically depopulated from the Crimean Tatar raids, the Russian emperors decided to settle with settlers who were friendly and culturally and mentally close to the Russian people. One of the most reliable allies of Russia at all times were the Serbs - small in number, but very noticeable in the Balkans, and in world history, the Orthodox Slavic people.
Today, Serbian volunteers are going to fight in Donetsk and Lugansk on the side of the people's militia, knowing full well that in this battle they are opposing not only and not so much the Kiev regime, but the very “forces of world evil”, which are also to blame for the tragedy that happened. on the Yugoslav soil. But fighting on the side of the militias, the Serbs also inherit the traditions of their direct ancestors. Indeed, since the 18th century, the Russian government has been actively resettling thousands of Serbian colonists to the fertile lands of Novorossia and Little Russia - precisely for the purpose of participation of Serbian settlers in the defense of the southern borders of Russia from the attacks of the Crimean Tatars and Turks.
Balkan Slavs and Novorossia
Novorossiya and Little Russia were considered by the Russian emperors as strategically important lands, geographically closest to the Balkans - a region where the Slavs were under the yoke of the Austrian and Ottoman empires alien to them. The natural allies of the Russian Empire in the struggle for the liberation of the Balkans were the Orthodox and Slavic peoples of South-Eastern Europe - Serbs, Montenegrins, Bulgarians, Macedonians, Vlachs (Romanians), Greeks. Over the course of several centuries, thousands of representatives of these peoples have moved to Russia. Many of them - both the settlers themselves and their descendants - made a significant contribution to the strengthening of Russian statehood, showed themselves in the state and military service.
The emergence of Serbs and other Orthodox Slavs on the territory of the Russian state was due to the anti-Orthodox policy of the Austrian Empire, which sought to implant Catholicism, or, at worst, Uniatism, among the Slavic peoples living on its territory. Some of the subjects of the Austrian state in the end still compromised, changed their faith and after that invariably "Westernized", switching to the Latin alphabet, borrowing Catholic names, everyday culture. The Croats are a typical example. An even more vivid example is the Galicians - the inhabitants of Galician Rus, who became the base of "Ukrainism" as a political construct.
However, many Balkan Slavs, not wanting either to convert to Catholicism, or to endure oppression from the Austrian authorities (even worse was the situation in that part of the Balkans that fell under Ottoman rule), moved to Russia. In the 18th century, the Russian state intensively developed the Little Russian and Novorossiysk lands. Here, in the endless steppes, where previously the nomads hostile to Russia felt at ease, the centers of the Russian world gradually appeared. But one of the most important points in the development of Novorossiya was the need to cover the shortage of human resources.
The specifics of the Novorossiysk life of those times was such that a peasant settler at the same time had to be a warrior, ready to defend his settlement and Russian territory as a whole on occasion. Accordingly, there was a need not just for peasants as such, capable of farming, but for peasant warriors. For this role, colonists from among the peoples closely related in confessional, linguistic and cultural relations could perfectly fit. One of the most acceptable candidates for potential colonists were Serbs - Orthodox and always well-disposed to Russia Slavs of the Balkan Peninsula. Most of the Serbian lands were conquered by the Ottoman Empire, refugees from which settled in the border regions of the Austrian Empire, hoping to find sympathy from the Christian monarchs of Vienna.
Even Peter the Great began the practice of allocating land to immigrants from Serbia in the Poltava and Kharkiv regions. The growth of migration to the territory of the Russian Empire of the Balkan Slavs and representatives of other Orthodox peoples began after the Peter's decree of 1723, which called on the Orthodox and Slavs to move to the Russian Empire. However, at that time, the centralized policy of resettlement of Balkan settlers had not yet been implemented, and Peter's idea did not lead to a mass migration of Orthodox and Slavs to Russia. Moreover, at that time there were still no internal reasons in the Austrian Empire itself, which could force a significant number of Balkan Slavs who were fleeing the Ottoman yoke on the lands controlled by the Habsburg dynasty to leave their native villages and go to Russia. However, the situation has changed markedly under Peter's daughter Elizabeth.
Granichary
Almost simultaneously with the adoption by Peter the Great of the decision to stimulate the resettlement of Orthodox and Slavic peoples from the Balkans to Russia, a favorable atmosphere for the spread of "resettlement" sentiments developed in the Austrian Empire. The reason for this was the dissatisfaction of the Border Serbs with the innovations of the Austrian authorities. For a long time, the Austrian authorities used the Serbs as warriors - settlers on the Austrian-Turkish border. The creation of the Military Border was proclaimed in 1578, in connection with the growing need to defend the southern borders of the Austrian Empire from the encroachments of the Ottoman Turks. At the end of the 17th century, 37,000 Serbian families moved from Kosovo and Metohija, where the Ottoman Turks created impossible living conditions for the Christian population, to the territory of the Austrian Empire. The Habsburgs, delighted with the arrival of new potential defenders of their borders, settled the Serbs along the southern border of the Austrian Empire and endowed them with certain privileges.
The territory where the Serbs were settled was called the Military Border, and the Serbs themselves, who served on an irregular basis, were called the Border. The Military Border was a strip from the Adriatic Sea to Transylvania, protecting the possessions of the Austrian Empire from the Ottoman Turks. Initially, this territory was largely inhabited by Croats, but the military actions of the Turks forced the Croatian civilian population to retreat to the north, after which a stream of immigrants from the Ottoman Empire - Serbs and Vlachs - poured into the areas of the Military Border. It should be noted that at that time not only and even not so much Romanians and Moldavians were called Vlachs, but in general all immigrants from the territory of the Ottoman Empire who professed Orthodoxy.
Granichary
The Austrian authorities allowed refugees to settle on their territory in exchange for military service. In Slavonia, Serbian Krajina, Dalmatia and Vojvodina, the Border Serbs were resettled, exempted from taxes and having, as the only duty to the Austrian state, the border service and protection of the borders from possible attacks and provocations from the Turks. In peacetime, the border guards were mainly engaged in agriculture, along the way carrying the border and customs service, and in the war they were obliged to participate in hostilities. By the middle of the 18th century, the population of the Military Border exceeded one million people, of which more than 140 thousand were in military service. It was the latter that determined the somewhat independent position of the border in comparison with other Slavs of the Austrian Empire, since in the event of the termination of military service by the population of the Military Border, the empire would face a very serious problem of replenishing the deficit of human resources. At the same time, despite the seeming privileges and relative freedom in internal life, the Borichar Serbs were dissatisfied with their position.
First of all, the policy of the Austrian authorities to impose the Catholic religion was a serious test for the national and religious feelings of the Serbs. As a result, by 1790, that is, 40 years after the events described, the number of Catholics among the population of the Military Border was more than 45%, which was explained not only by the transition of a certain part of the Serbs to "Croatia" after the adoption of Catholicism, but also by the massive resettlement of Germans to the region from Austria and Hungarians.
Secondly, the Austrian Empire decided to gradually resettle the Borichar Serbs from the sections of the Military Border on the Tisza and Maros rivers to other areas, or to become subjects of the Kingdom of Hungary (which was part of the Austrian Empire). In the latter case, the Border Serbs would be considered to have terminated their border service and, accordingly, lost the many privileges they enjoyed as military settlers.
Finally, the border guards did not like the toughening of the conditions of service. In fact, since 1745, the remnants of the autonomy of the Military Border have been eliminated. All of the frontiers became liable for military service from the onset of the age of 16. At the same time, German was established as the administrative and command language of communication on the Military Border, which abhorred the Serbs and created significant obstacles for most of the border, who for obvious reasons did not speak German or practically did not speak. The introduction of the German language against the background of agitation for the conversion to Catholicism was seen as an attempt to “Germanize” the Balkan Slavs, turn them into “Austrians in spirit,” but not in social status. Moreover, the lobby of the Croatian aristocracy at the Habsburg court sought to influence the Austrian emperors and achieve consolidation of the power of the Croatian nobility over the Serbs, turning the latter into Croatian serfs. From the very beginning of the existence of the Military Border, the Croatian nobility advocated its abolition and the return of the lands inhabited by Serbian settlers under the rule of the Croatian ban. For the time being, the Austrian throne resisted this trend, since it saw the need for a combat-ready irregular army on its southern borders. However, gradually Vienna became convinced of the need to transfer the border to a regular basis and their complete subordination to the interests of the Austrian crown, including Catholicization and the "Germanization" of the Serbian population settled on the Military Border.
It was in this situation that the idea arose about the resettlement of the Granichar Serbs to Russia, which the Balkan Orthodox and Slavs naturally considered their only intercessor. Further implementation of the idea of resettlement of Serbs - Granichars and other Balkan Slavs and Orthodox Christians to Russia is largely associated with the personalities of Ivan Horvat von Kurtich, Ivan Shevich and Raiko de Preradovich - senior officers of the Austrian service and Serbs by nationality, who led the resettlement of Orthodox and Slavs from The Balkan Peninsula on the territory of the Russian state.
New Serbia
In 1751, the Russian ambassador to Vienna, Count M. P. Bestuzhev-Ryumin received Ivan Horvat von Kurtić, who presented a request for the resettlement of the Granicar Serbs to the Russian Empire. It was difficult to imagine the best gift for the Russian authorities, who were looking for an opportunity to settle the Novorossiysk lands with politically loyal and at the same time militarily brave settlers. After all, the border guards were exactly the people in whom there was a shortage on the southern borders of the Russian Empire - they had rich experience in organizing military settlements and combining agricultural activities with military and border service. On top of that, the enemy from whom the border guards had to protect the borders of the Russian Empire was not much different from the enemy they faced on the other side of the Military Border.
Ivan Horvat
Naturally, Elizaveta Petrovna satisfied the request of Colonel Ivan Horvat. On July 13, 1751, the Empress announced that not only Horvath and his closest associates from among the Granichars, but also any Serbs wishing to transfer to Russian citizenship and move to the Russian Empire, would be accepted as co-religionists. The Russian authorities decided to give the land between the Dnieper and Sinyukha, on the territory of the present Kirovograd region, for the settlement of the border. This is how the history of New Serbia began - an amazing Serbian colony on the territory of the Russian state, which is a clear example of the fraternal friendship of the Russian and Serbian peoples.
Initially, 218 Serbs arrived in the Russian Empire with Ivan Horvat, but the colonel, obsessed with the plan to drag as many Borichars as possible to a new place of residence (perhaps, the Croatian's ambition also took place here, since he perfectly understood that his status also depends on the number of Serbs subordinate to him as a general in the Russian service), went to St. Petersburg, where he declared his readiness to submit 10,000 Serbian, as well as Bulgarian, Macedonian and Wallachian settlers to Novorossiya. Elizaveta Petrovna signed a decree on the creation of two hussars and two pandur regiments.
In an effort to increase the population of New Serbia, Horvat obtained permission from the empress to resettle not only former Austrian subjects to the territory of the colony, but also Orthodox immigrants from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth - Bulgarians and Vlachs, among whom there were indeed at least a thousand who were ready to move to Novorossia as military settlers. As a result, Ivan Horvat managed to create a hussar regiment, staffed by immigrants, for which he received the next military rank - lieutenant general.
Since it was assumed that New Serbia would become a kind of analogue of the Military Border, the organizational structure of the colony reproduced the traditions of the border. Even the settlements on the territory of the newly created colony were allowed by the Russian authorities to be called by the usual names of towns and villages in Serbia. Regiments, companies and trenches were created. The latter were the base unit of the colony's organizational structure, both administratively and militarily. These were settlements with a church fortified with earthen ramparts. In total, there were forty trenches in New Serbia. For the construction of dwellings, building materials were provided at the expense of the Russian treasury. Initially, 10 rubles were allocated from the state treasury for the arrangement of each settler, not counting the colossal land plots transferred to the colony.
New Serbia became an absolutely autonomous territory, administratively subordinate only to the Senate and the Military Collegium. Ivan Horvat, promoted to major general for organizing the resettlement of Serbs, became the de facto leader of the region. He also began to form a hussar (cavalry) and pandurian (infantry) regiments from among the Serbian settlers. Thus, New Serbia turned into a strategically extremely significant outpost of the Russian Empire, whose role in the defense of the southern borders against the aggression of the Crimean Khanate, incited by the Ottoman Empire, and subsequently in the conquest of Crimea, can hardly be overestimated. It was the Serbs who created the fortress city of Elisavetgrad, which managed to be the center of Novorossia.
Novomirgorod was chosen as the location of the headquarters of Ivan Horvat, who commanded the hussar regiment. Here, by the way, a stone cathedral church was erected, which became the center of the Novyirgorod protopopia. The headquarters of the Pandur regiment was located in Krylov. It should be noted that in the end, the Croat did not manage to equip the regiments exclusively with Serbs-border guards, in connection with which representatives of all Orthodox peoples of the Balkan Peninsula and Eastern Europe were admitted to the military settlement service in New Serbia. The bulk of the Vlachs, who moved from Moldova and Wallachia, were, in addition to the Serbs, also Bulgarians, Macedonians, Montenegrins.
Slavic Serbia
Following the creation of a colony of Serbs and other Slavic and Orthodox settlers in the modern Kirovograd region, in 1753 another Serbian-Wallachian colony appeared in Novorossia - Slavic Serbia. On March 29, 1753, the Senate approved the creation of the Slavic Serbia colony. Its territory is located on the right bank of the Seversky Donets, in the Luhansk region. At the origins of the creation of Slavic Serbia were Colonel Ivan Shevich and Lieutenant Colonel Raiko Preradovich - both Serbs by nationality, who were in the Austrian military service until 1751. Each of these Serbian officers led their own hussar regiment. The unit of Ivan Shevich was located on the border with the modern Rostov region, in contact with the lands of the Don Cossacks. Raiko Preradovich placed his hussars in the Bakhmut area. Both Shevich and Preradovich, like Ivan Horvat, received major-general ranks, which became a reward for their contribution to the defense of the Russian Empire by bringing in immigrants.
The internal organizational structure of Slavic Serbia duplicated the Novoserb one and originated from the organizational structure of Serbian settlements on the Military Border. On the banks of the Donets and Lugan, hussar companies were quartered, equipping fortified settlements - trenches. The hussars, simultaneously with the service, cultivated the land and their fortifications, thus, they were also rural settlements. On the site of the settlement of the 8th company, the city of Donets was formed, later called Slavyanoserbsk. At the beginning of its existence, the city had a population of 244 people, including 112 women. The company that founded Slavyanoserbsk was commanded by captain Lazar Sabov, who led the work on the settlement of the settlement - the construction of residential buildings and a church in it.
Like Ivan Horvat in New Serbia, Raiko Preradovich and Ivan Shevich did not manage to equip their hussar regiments exclusively with Serbs - border guards, so the Vlachs, Bulgarians, Greeks moved to the territory of Slavic Serbia. It was the Vlachs, along with the Serbs, who formed the basis of the population of the new colony and the military contingent of the hussar regiments. Like New Serbia, Slavic Serbia was virtually autonomous in internal affairs, subordinate only to the Senate and the Military Collegium.
Note that the population of Slavic Serbia was less numerous than the population of New Serbia. Ivan Shevich managed to bring with him 210 settlers from the Balkan Peninsula, Raiko Preradovich arrived with twenty-seven colonists. By 1763, the hussar regiment of Ivan Shevich numbered 516 people, and the regiment of Raiko Preradovich - 426 people. At the same time, the number of regiments of several hundred people was achieved in part due to the recruitment of Little Russians into the units.
Some idea of the national composition of the hussar regiments stationed in Slavic Serbia is given by the data on the regiment of Raiko Preradovich, dated 1757. At that time, there were 199 servicemen in the regiment, including 92 officers and 105 ordinary hussars. Among them were 72 Serbs, 51 Shafts and Moldavians, 25 Hungarians, 11 Greeks, 9 Bulgarians, 4 Macedonians, 3 Caesarians, 1 Slavonian, 1 Moravian, 1 Little Russian, 1 Russian and even three Turks and one Jew who converted to the Orthodox faith. In the regiment of Ivan Shevich, out of 272 military personnel in 1758, the following nationalities were represented: Serbs - 151 people, Vlachs and Moldavians - 49 people, Macedonians - 20 people, Hungarians - 17 people, Bulgarians - 11 people, Russians - 8 people, "Slavs" - 5 people. Also in the regiment were Bosnian, Tatar, Jew, German and even an Englishman and a Swede who converted to Orthodoxy (Podov V. I. Donbass. Century XVIII. Socio-economic development of Donbass in the XVIII century., Lugansk, 1998.).
At the same time, an analysis of archival data, which has preserved to our time a detailed description of both Slavic Serb hussar regiments, their internal structure and even the names of commanders, indicates that almost exclusively Serbs were in command positions. Moreover, both in the Preradovich regiment and in the Shevich regiment, the positions of company commanders were often held by their relatives. It is significant that there were many officers in the hussar regiments, whose number was only slightly inferior to the number of ordinary hussars.
The multinationality of the Serbian hussar regiments and the colony of Slavic Serbia itself increased the importance of the Orthodox religion as the basis for the formation of the common identity of the colonists. Indeed, what could have united a Serb and a Wallach, a Bulgarian and a Little Russian, a baptized Jew and a baptized Turk, except for the Orthodox religion and service for the glory of the Russian state? Since Orthodoxy was of fundamental and unifying importance for the settlers, the commanders of the hussar regiments and companies paid much attention to strengthening the religiosity of the population of the colony. In particular, in each settlement - trench, they tried to build a church and, having organized a parish, register priests there, preferably of Serbian nationality.
However, the population of Slavic Serbia did not replenish quickly enough. After the first few years of active arrival of emigrants from the Balkan Peninsula, the influx of Serbs practically stopped. Obviously, not all subjects of the Austrian Empire, even with the privileges offered, agreed to abandon their native lands and go to a foreign land, into the unknown, with a great risk of dying in battle with the Crimean Tatars or Turks, only far from their native land. Meanwhile, the Russian government has promised officer ranks to everyone who brings with them a more or less significant contingent of immigrants. So, who brought 300 people automatically received the rank of major, brought 150 - captain, 80 - lieutenant. However, all the same, the Serbian regiments stationed in Slavic Serbia remained understaffed, and the shortage of personnel exceeded a thousand vacancies for privates and officers.
Nevertheless, despite the small number, the Slavic Serb hussars of Shevich and Preradovich showed themselves quite actively during the Prussian War. Each hussar regiment of Slavic Serbia fielded two squadrons of 300-400 hussars. But the small number of hussar regiments of Shevich and Preradovich forced the Russian military leadership in 1764 to merge both regiments into one. This is how the famous Bakhmut hussar regiment appeared, so named after the place of its recruitment - the city of Bakhmut, which was the administrative center of Slavic Serbia. The grandson of Ivan Shevich, Ivan Shevich Jr., following in the footsteps of his grandfather and father, also a general of the Russian army, commanded the Life Guards hussar regiment in the Patriotic War of 1812, then a cavalry brigade with the rank of lieutenant general and died heroically near Leipzig during the European campaign Russian army.
The raids of the Crimean Tatars on the territory of New Serbia in the 1760s. led to the fact that the then reigning Empress Catherine II realized the need to modernize the entire system of administrative and military management of the Novorossiysk Territory in general, New Serbia and Slavic Serbia in particular, and on April 13, 1764 signed a decree on the creation of the Novorossiysk province.
Presumably, this decision was dictated not only by military-political and administrative considerations, but also by the exposure of abuses carried out in the subordinate region by Ivan Horvat, who actually turned into its sole ruler. Catherine II was not as supportive of the Serb general as Elizaveta Petrovna. After rumors reached the empress about the financial and official abuses of Ivan Horvat, she decided to immediately remove him from his post. After an investigation, Croat's property was arrested, and he himself was exiled to Vologda, where he died as a beggar exiled. However, the fate of the punished father did not prevent the sons of Ivan Horvath from proving their loyalty to the Russian Empire by military service and rising to the rank of general. And even Ivan Horvat himself, despite the abuses committed by him, played a positive role in history, promoting the rapprochement of the Russian and Serbian peoples, making a significant contribution to the organization of the defense of the Russian state.
After the creation of the Novorossiysk province, of course, the lands of the Serbian colonists were included in its structure. The internal organizational structure of the Serbian lands was significantly reformed. In particular, Serbian officers received ranks of nobility and estates in Novorossiya, continuing their service already in the regular cavalry regiments of the Russian army. The privates of the Granichars were recorded as state peasants. At the same time, some of the Serbs, along with the Zaporozhye Cossacks, moved to the Kuban.
Since the Serbs were related to the Russians both in confessional and linguistic terms, and their resettlement to the territory of Novorossiya was carried out on a voluntary basis, the process of assimilation of Serbian settlers began quite quickly. The multinational environment of the hussar colonies led to the integration and mixing of the arriving Serbian, Wallachian, Bulgarian, Greek colonists with each other and with the surrounding Russian and Little Russian population, while on the basis of the common Orthodox identity of the settlers, a Russian identity was gradually formed.
Probably, New Serbia and Slavic Serbia, as purely ethnic colonies of Balkan settlers, were doomed to the prospect of assimilation and integration into the Russian world, since their very formation was conceived with the aim of uniting Orthodox and Slavic peoples under Russian patronage to protect the borders of the Russian Empire. The decline in the number of immigrants, caused by the reluctance to leave their homeland in the Balkans, on the one hand, and the policy of the Austrian authorities to "lure" the Balkan Slavs to Catholicism with the subsequent "Germanization" - on the other hand, determined the need to replenish the population of New Serbia and Slavic Serbia at the expense of immigrants - Great and Little Russians.
Gradually, the last two groups of the Russian population made up an absolute majority not only in Novorossia in general, but also in New Serbia and Slavic Serbia in particular. It is significant that the Serbs themselves did not oppose assimilation, since, unlike the proposed Austrian version, in the Russian Empire they integrated into an environment that was identical in confessional terms and spoke a closely related language. Between Serbs, Russians and Little Russians, representatives of other Orthodox Balkan peoples who arrived in the Novorossiysk lands, there have never been the contradictions that took place on the Balkan Peninsula between the Orthodox, Catholic and Muslim populations - the same Croats, Serbs, Bosnian Muslims.
Today, the Serbs in Novorossiya are reminded primarily of the specific “Balkan” surnames of some local residents. If you delve into Russian history, especially in the biographies of some prominent state and military leaders of the Russian Empire, you can find quite a few people with Serbian roots. In any case, Russian history preserves and will preserve the memory of the contribution of the Serbs and other Orthodox and Slavic peoples of Southeast Europe to the defense and development of the country's southern borders. In the context of the events in Ukraine, the history of ancient years takes on a special meaning: here are the plans for the "Catholicization" and "Germanization" of the South Slavic and East Slavic peoples, and the eternal discord brought about by external forces into the Slavic world, and the spiritual closeness of the Russian, Serbian and other Orthodox Slavic peoples, shoulder to shoulder withstanding the attempts of destruction and assimilation for many centuries.
