The Opening of the South

For ages, the primordial drive of the East Slavs to the rich black-earth region in the south and to the Black Sea had been a constant factor in the history of Ukraine. By the end of the 18th century, these goals had finally been attained.

Even before the destruction of the Sich and the absorption of the Crimean Khanate, the colonization of the Black Sea hinterlands had already been under way. Because of the increasing exploitation of the peasantry in the Hetmanate and the Polish-ruled Right Bank, thousands of runaways raised the population of the Zaporozhian lands from a mere 11,000 males in 1740 to over 100,000 males in 1775. Moreover, the imperial government encouraged colonization by foreigners. In 1752, in spite of the protests of the Zaporozhians, several thousand Orthodox Serbs who were fleeing persecution in the Catholic Habsburg empire were assigned to a western portion of the Cossack lands. The new colony was called New Serbia. A year later, another Serbian colony – Slavo Serbia – was established east of the Sich. During the reign of Catherine II, German settlers also received generous land grants in the area. Meanwhile, the Russian administrative and military presence in the south grew steadily. Zaporozhian resistance to these encroachments only hastened the destruction of the Sich in 1775. With the Zaporozhians gone and the Crimean Khanate dismantled, the great boom in the settlement of the south began in the 1780s.

In order to attract nobles to the new lands, the imperial government offered them attractive inducements. The nobles (mostly Russian officers and civil servants) received grants of 4000 acres each on condition that they settle twenty-five peasant households on them.

Even more rapid than the colonization of the steppe was the growth of cities along the Black Sea coast. Cities named Oleksandrivsk, Kherson, Mykolaiv, and Odessa sprang up on the sites of ancient Greek polises or old Turkish fortresses. They were inhabited by a cosmopolitan population consisting of Russians, Greeks, Armenians, and Jews. Grain was the mainstay of the flourishing trade that developed on the Black Sea. For centuries, Ukraine had produced an abundance of wheat, but it had lacked convenient access to world markets. When the new Black Sea ports finally provided it, both grain producers and merchants were quick to take advantage of the new opportunities this afforded. Between 1778 and 1787, harvests in Novorossiia increased by 500%. Foreign trade in the Black Sea ports, primarily Odessa, leaped by 2200% between 1764 and 1793. Landowners, who once produced primarily for home consumption, now produced for commerce. At long last, Ukraine ceased to be Europe’s steppe frontier and now became the granary for the entire continent.