The city of Bakhmut, which Ukrainian troops are persistently defending against the Russian offensive these days, is considered by many observers to be the heart of the war in Donbass, and the fiercest fighting is taking place around it. This is where it is decided whether Putin will be able to achieve at least his "abbreviated" goal - if not the complete "denazification" and "demilitarization" of the entire Ukraine, then at least reaching the administrative borders of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
But it is interesting that Bahmut has a special place in the history of the migration of Serbs because it was here that one of them led them and it was there in the 18th century that they defended another border.
Migration
Many works have been dedicated to the topic of the migration of Serbs to the area of modern Donbass, among which the researches of the Russian historian Yelena Bjelova from the Russian State Humanitarian University in Moscow have a special place, because they are devoid of subsequent "beautification" caused by contemporary political reasons.
Although there were cases of "group" emigration of Serbian border guards in the service of Austria-Hungary in the middle of the first half of the 18th century due to attempts to convert to Catholicism, a larger migration followed somewhat later.
In the middle of the 18th century, the central Russian government set itself the task of mastering the so-called The Northern Black Sea, i.e. a vast, mostly steppe region north of the Black and Azov seas, through which the Crimean and Nogai Tatars made frequent incursions into the southern regions of the Russian state. Related goals consisted in subjugating the hitherto free and thus insufficiently reliable Zaporizhzhya Cossacks, preventing the outflow of a not very numerous population via Poland to Moldavia, and providing support and protection from the Tatars to the Christians in that area.
By historical coincidence, around the same time, after the end of the so-called The War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748), in which Serb border guards made up a third of the Austrian armed forces, resulted in the abolition of the Potiška-Maritime and Posavina-Danube military borders, and the Serbs who lived there were offered a choice - to move to other border areas or to become Hungarian subjects, which meant the loss of privileged border status, which the Serbs did not want to accept.
In such a situation, the idea was born in St. Petersburg that South Slavs, primarily Serbs, would be hired to guard the border regions. The ambassador in Vienna, Bestuzhev-Ryumin, received the task from Petersburg to agree with Empress Maria Theresa on the conditions for the resettlement of Serbs in Russia. After she was told that it would be more beneficial to Austria than to the Turks, the empress agreed, and in 1750, well-known Serbs in the Russian service, T. Vojić, D. Perić and P. Tekelija, arrived in Austria to recruit compatriots.
Evil genius
Around the same time, Bestužev-Ryumin was approached by Ivan Horvat, a Serbian colonel in the Austrian service, who undertook to transfer to Russia one hussar regiment of one thousand sabers and a police infantry regiment of two thousand men, and for this he demanded the lifelong rank of major general. , officer ranks for his sons and land for his men. Empress Jelisaveta I Petrovna accepted these conditions and on July 13, 1751, issued a special decree about it, which established the military region of New Serbia, divided into regiments and companies. In the same year, the first immigrants arrived in Kyiv - a group under the leadership of the already mentioned Ivan Horvat, which numbered 218 people (combat troops, family members and servants), and a detachment of Colonel Ivan Šević and Lieutenant Colonel Rajko Preradović of 55 people. Immigrants were assigned the best lands on the left side of the Dnieper, to the south-east of the city of Bahmut, which was assigned the role of the capital of New Serbia.
Although initially Horvat, who later became known as the "evil genius" of New Serbia, undertook to form a regiment of a thousand men, equip it at his own expense and support it on the way, in reality it turned out differently. As soon as he arrived in Kiev, he started asking the local authorities for money, and soon there were conflicts between the immigrants and the local population, mainly Cossacks. Kyiv Governor Leontiev allocated 2000 rubles to Horvat, and sent a letter to the capital in which he asked the Serbs to "get out of the city as soon as possible" in order to avoid riots. Horvat was invited to St. Petersburg, where he promised at an audience with Empress Elisabeth that he would bring another 10.000 hussars from Austria and build a network of cities and fortifications in New Serbia, for which he received another 3000 rubles as a gift from the Empress.
In the following years, Horvath fulfilled part of his promise - he formed an entire hussar regiment, receiving the rank of lieutenant general for this in 1755. But the situation in the territory that was assigned to him was very bad. Russian officials noted that Horvat embezzled most of the money allocated for the settlement of new immigrants, that his "subjects" suffered all possible hardships, while he put his entire family on the payroll, including his two minor sons. That is why already in 1752, 3000 Serbian families who were subsequently brought by Šević and Preradović, and who were ordered to settle in New Serbia, refused to do so. Šević and Preradović, who already wanted to separate from Horvath, went to Moscow, where Empress Jelisaveta was then, with a request to grant them a separate area. The request was granted, and thus another autonomous military-agricultural region, SlavoSerbia, was created, with its center in SlavoSerbia and a common capital in Bahmut. Šević also received the rank of Russian general, and his Serbian hussar regiment, together with units from Horvat's New Serbia, participated in the Seven Years' War, received the honorary title of "Bakhmutski", and entered Russian cultural history also because it was employed by the great Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov.
Although starting in 1752 the number of newcomers increased and they were allocated the best land, the relocation of Serbs to the autonomous military territories in Ukraine never became massive. For example, the census from December 1763 found that out of 2674 inhabitants of New Serbia, only 1043 were Serbs. However, thanks to their efforts, more than 40 military settlements (trenches) were built, as well as the fortress city of Jelisavetgrad. It is also recorded that they protected the southern border very well from the attacks of the Crimean and Nogai Tatars, and were especially skilled in scouting and suppressing attempts to attack in the beginning, which was of great importance, because the border is 200 versts (more than 200 km) long. guarded by less than 2500 Serbian border guards. Outside of the service, they were engaged in vegetable growing, growing cereals and, above all, livestock. On the other hand, they created considerable problems for St. Petersburg by constantly provoking conflicts with the Poles - they crossed the border and attacked Polish villages, stealing money and livestock and taking women and children with them.
However, the internal situation in New Serbia worsened, especially due to the exploitation of the settler-soldiers by the Croats. In 1760, a crowd of starving people came in front of Horvath's residence to ask for food, he declared the gathering a rebellion and ordered the people to be dispersed with a musket, after which the body of one of the dead was crucified on a wheel. Reports of his abuses piled up in St. Petersburg, but there were no consequences as long as Horvat's patron, Empress Yelisaveta Petrovna, was alive. Although Horvath went to the capital immediately after her death in 1762 to consolidate his position with the new emperor Peter III, it was too late - the new ruler ordered an investigation. First, the investigator Colonel Spichinskii arrived in Yelisavetgrad, then, as the number of exposed abuses and crimes by Horvat increased, he was replaced by Lieutenant General Meshcherskii, and after the accession of Empress Catherine the Great - even two generals, Meljgunov and Glebov.
Reign of Catherine the Great
Summarizing the whole story, one of the first biographers of Catherine and her contemporary, Metropolitan Gavrijil (Petrov), wrote: "But, the brilliant reign of Catherine the Great the Second was born. Before this era and from the beginning of the settlement of Srpski, only 10 years had passed (1752–1762), but the state treasury allocated no less than 700.000 rubles in silver, which is 2.450.000 rubles in current money. The wise Empress immediately saw that such expenditures were not at all commensurate with the benefit expected from the foreign Serbian people, especially since the leader of the same, Ivan Horvat, revealed less loyalty than duty required and no small abuse of power".
As a result of all that, in 1764, the autonomous areas of New Serbia and Slavic Serbia were abolished, and their territories were included in the newly established Novorossiysk Governorate with General Meljgunov at the head. Serbian officers were given estates, while ordinary soldiers were registered as state peasants, who quickly began to mix with the local Ukrainian population. General Horvat, on the other hand, was accused of embezzling huge amounts of money and was brought before a military court, which sentenced him to death. However, in 1764, Catherine the Great replaced that sentence with exile to Vologda, and in 1775 she completely pardoned him, ordering him to return his military rank and allow him to live freely on his estate, where he died in peace in 1780.
As for the resettled Serbs in Ukraine, they, unlike the Bulgarians and Germans whom Katarina tried to settle in as large a number as possible, settled on the path of realizing her so-called of the "Greek project", almost completely assimilated already at the beginning of the 19th century. Although there are still a lot of people in Ukraine with surnames of Serbian origin, the number of citizens who declare themselves as Serbs is very small. In the second half of the 20th century, most of them were counted in 1970 (1350), while in 2001, only 623 remained. Nevertheless, the settlements founded by the Serbs turned into villages and small towns that still exist in Ukraine. One of them is the already mentioned Slavyanoserbsk in the current Luhansk region, where there is also a monument to the friendship between the Serbs and the local population, although many historians believe that there was never any special friendship because the Serbs were quite often in conflict with the Cossacks.
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