Władze carskie wobec ludności polskiej Noworosji i Besarabii po roku 1831

Abstract

The article focuses on two factors that had an impact on the ways Polish communities were settling down in Novorossiya and Bessarabia: first, the legislature regulating the appropriation of the land and properties belonging to “incompliant” Poles; second, the problem of the migration to the regions by Poles. As is demonstrated in the analysis, the first issue was solved by introducing (as still valid) the ukases of 1798 and 1830 in Bessarabia and Novorossiya. In practice that meant the classification of the regions by the Tsarist authorities as potentially endangered by Polish rebels. Setting up the legal framework for the resettlement/migration to the vicinity of the Baltic Sea shores (initiated as early as in 1831) was connected with a few further regulations: a) implementing new regulations into the legislature of Congress Poland, and popularizing migration possibilities; b) establishing financial conditions for the settlement of Poles in the “southern” Russia; c) deciding the rules concerning settlements, i.e. whether the settlements should assume the form of appropriating old abandoned real assets, or rather new lands; d) obtaining by the de-classed gentry that came from the Partitioned Lands the right to settle down in Zaporizhzhia and be granted due concessions.