Who was the first Russian dark-skinned general, how the afro-village appeared in the Caucasus and other little-known facts from the "black" history of Russia

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Under articles about the history of discrimination against blacks in the United States or the slave trade in Europe, one can often see comments: "If there were blacks in Russia at that time, they would not have been better off." However, blacks came to Russia at that time. So you can compare the attitude towards them in the countries of the active slave trade and in the Russian Empire.

Fashion for living toys

Europe not only actively traded in Africans, encouraging wars on this gigantic continent to obtain new parties of slaves or sending directly hunters for live goods. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it was fashionable to have a little black footman or a living toy - a girl from Africa - at home. In big cities, it was difficult to enter a wealthy house and not see a couple of African-looking faces.

Fashion has reached Russia. It was brought by Tsar Peter, having bought two little brothers, the offspring of a princely family from the area that is now located on the border of Cameroon and Chad. Since it was customary in Russia to call blacks also Ethiopians, later the roots of these noble boys were looked for in the east of the continent, and very enthusiastically - after all, one of them was Abram Hannibal, Pushkin's great-grandfather.

The boy was a Muslim. Tsar Peter baptized him, altering his native name Ibrahim into Abram, and received the surname of the princesses in honor of Hannibal, the legendary commander of African Carthage. Peter himself became godfather to a noble boy, and he invited the Polish queen Christian as godparents.

However, it was for black children in Russia that they were not hunted too zealously, believing that any “interesting” child would come down to the position of a page page or a little girl. So the fashion expanded to take boys and sometimes girls from the peoples of the Empire into the house. Until the revolution, one could see in the noble houses a "Circassian" (a representative of any Caucasian nationality), a "Cossack" or, in the days of empresses, a Kalmyk child.

The position of these children was different, but they were always free, that is, not serfs. Some were given their studies and the future, while others, when they grew up, were sent to their homeland or to the estate in the village as unnecessary (which was more of a tragedy for them - after all, they were accustomed to a certain way of life).

Europe's first black general

At a time when the main career of a free black in white lands lay through the lackey, Russia, one after another, raised two black generals. We are talking about both Abram Hannibal himself and his son, one of the most faithful servants of Catherine the Great, Ivan Hannibal.

Abram Hannibal combined advanced views on society and science and a completely savage family despotism. Perhaps, remembering his short slavery, he treated the serfs very softly. He himself never practiced corporal punishment for them and, concluding an agreement for the lease of the village with the peasants together in lease, he wrote this clause into the agreement, indicating also the impossibility of increasing the corvee. When the tenant violated both clauses at once, Hannibal terminated the contract without delay.

In his youth, Hannibal went to study military engineering in France and, in order to gain experience, entered the army. Returning to Russia, he again entered the army and by the year of Catherine's accession he rose to the rank of general-in-chief - with a break in service because of Menshikov's disfavor, which overtook him after the death of Peter. Hannibal retired for a reason, but with an assignment from the empress: to cultivate potatoes, adapting them to the Russian climate, so that they become one of the main sources of calories for constantly malnourished peasants.

Abram Petrovich coped with the task with a bang. His estate has vast potato fields. After the retired general handed out potatoes during the famine year, the peasants tasted it and recognized it as a good analogue of turnip (a popular root vegetable at that time). Over time, potatoes became one of the most important crops in many areas of the Russian Empire.

Hannibal influenced the history of Russia in other ways. It was he who persuaded the parents of Alexander Suvorov, a short, very frail-looking young man, to send him to the army, as Alexander himself dreamed. One of his son, Osip, became the grandfather of the great Russian poet. Another, Ivan, became famous as an associate of Catherine the Great and Grigory Potemkin.

Chief for the Black Sea Fleet

Nine-year-old Vanya Hannibal was taken to study at the St. Petersburg Naval Artillery School against the will of his father and mother - they believed that the boy was still too small for life away from home. But against the will of Empress Elizabeth, the Hannibals could not do anything. Elizabeth's government tried to overcome the problem of total illiteracy of noble children - there was literally no one to raise future army specialists from. That is why the most educated boys were removed from families from an early age.

After school, Ivan studied at the Marine Gentry Corps - and began direct service in the Navy. His abilities soon came in handy. Catherine replaced Elizabeth (the reign of Peter III was so short that it could not be counted) and began the Russian-Turkish war. One of the formal reasons for the war was to cut off the flow of the slave trade: in the 18th century, the Crimean Khanate bought up slaves from the Slavic lands or from the North Caucasus, or even frankly drove them away. The slaves were then resold to the Ottoman Empire, to the Turks. In fact, of course, the empress was much more worried about the access to the Black Sea, which gave serious economic advantages.

During a war, officers' careers are built rapidly. Hannibal took part in a military expedition to the Mediterranean, in many battles. By the age of forty-one, he received the rank of general-seichmester of naval artillery and the Order of St. Anne. At forty-two he entered the Admiralty Collegium, the main control body of the fleet.

However, he entered the history of the Russian Empire and Ukraine, first of all, as the creator (literally) of the city of Kherson. Thanks to his enthusiasm, calculation and ability to plan, Ivan Abramovich erected a city in just three years, a new city with a palace, an admiralty, a foundry, an arsenal, shipyards, barracks and private houses. The fortress around which it was erected was equipped with a garrison and 220 guns, various ships were built at the shipyard, warships and merchant ships were located in the harbor, and foreign trade houses were established in the city. For this, Hannibal not only brought half a thousand workers from the Russian provinces, but also invited many Greek and Italian specialists living on the Black Sea coast. Ivan Abramovich retired, by the way, in the same rank as his father - general-in-chief.

For some time the Hannibals were the only Russian nobles of African origin, but over time they assimilated more and more. All other blacks in Russia were from simple classes. But not serfs: there was a special royal decree that any black slave, once in Russia, received freedom. According to one version, a whole village of blacks appeared on the outskirts of the Empire, in Abkhazia - slaves fled there from the Ottoman Empire. For the fugitives from the United States, the royal family offered official places in the palace, in the position of "Arab (sic!) Of the Imperial Court". However, people from southern countries were also accepted there. In any case, black "new" Russians freely had families with local representatives of their class, and as a result, their offspring quickly assimilated. African genes can suddenly pop up among many residents of St. Petersburg who do not know their history well enough.

Black Land Councils

In the twenties and thirties in the USSR one could find blacks of two origins. Firstly, these were the families of the Arabs of the Imperial Court, who were forced to change their occupation after the revolution. Secondly, they were visiting specialists from the United States. At a time when a severe economic crisis was developing in the United States, many Americans were thinking about looking for work abroad. For black Americans, the USSR turned out to be an attractive option due to the absence of systemic and, most importantly, official discrimination on racial grounds.

That is, a black engineer or actor had a chance to face hostility at the everyday level, despite the fact that in schools and in the cinema, a Soviet person was taught internationalism - but no one could forbid him to sit in a cafe at a nearby table with local residents or white foreigners. there were no separate washstands or a separate queue at the cinema.

This is how the artist and designer Lloyd Patterson appeared in the country, whose sons became a cameraman (one of the first in the country) and a submarine officer. So the engineer Robert Robinson, the only black deputy of the Moscow Council of Working People's Deputies, came to the USSR. True, in the late thirties, the screws began to tighten so tightly that many regretted their stay in the Soviet Union. Among other things, every former American went about under suspicion of espionage, and many were arrested on this charge.

The attitude towards blacks among the people changed a lot after the post-war Youth Festival. In black children, they began to see evidence of the licentious behavior of mothers, which, according to the convictions of many, creates a bad image for all women in the country. It was not only the "children of the festival" who got it. When black students from African countries began to study in the USSR, regardless of whether they entered into marriage with the mothers of their Soviet children or conceived outside of marriage, the same suspicions fell on the children. Only a reliable marriage between mother and father helped out, if he was … from Cuba. The Cubans were warmly treated in the USSR.

In the nineties, after the abolition of at least the declared internationalism, in Russia racism became a frequent phenomenon - it was no longer hidden or shy and even frankly nurtured in the public space. Taking into account the general globalization and, therefore, the increase in the frequency of international unions, this meant that there were more black children in the country at the very moment when it became harder and, in some cases, more dangerous for them to live. So, in 2010, an elderly actor and teacher Tito Romalio was killed.

In modern Russia, however, black citizens are quite active. The audience's favorite was the theater actor Grigory Siyatvinda, also known for his voice acting Maui in the cartoon "Moana". Many people like the former TV presenter Anton Zaitsev, a descendant of the noble Sudanese Newmba family. In the Tver region, the first black deputy of the Russian Federation, businessman Zhan Sagbo, a resident of the village of Zavidovo, is engaged in political activities. Journalist Samson Sholademi was nominated for the mayor of Moscow. So far, Russia has not renounced the precepts of Peter.

The history of blacks in the service of the imperial family is worth a separate story: How the Arabs ended up at the royal court, and what positions they were entrusted with