J I''-~ & I I I '.J 4 "4, \. .... ~ o ,,, o, • .._ -... , ; &l• 0 0 r .·'. .Jo._ .......military unit. For example, the Black Hussar regiment (~o named from
colour of its uniform), stationed along the Poli~h border, was allo11ed appn
mately a quarter of a million dessyatines.'1 comprising 16 of the 70 distr
(okruga) into which Yelizavetgrad sub-province (provintsiya) was divided.
these districts more than two-thirds (52 out of 70) were re~erved for milit
use. The figure was simiiar ( i08 uui ur i40 Jbiii1..h) i11 the :;ub-prG;:i11cc nan
after the empress, Yekaterinoslav.^14 Each district was supposed to meas
between 15,000 and 20,000 dessyatines, that is, approximately 40,000
50,000 acres.
Unfortunately nothing is known of the agrirnltural activities in which ti
soldier-farmers engaged. They seem to have been more closely supervised ti
the old land-militiamen had been, but this control was exercised at a r
mental rather than a regional (still less national) level and was probably
too oppressive. On the other hand the scope allowed to individual initiative
couraged abuses (most notably, the private employment of soldiers) and
least in the eyes of some officers, undermined discipline. Would these
advantages be outweighed by the assurance that the men would be adequa
fed from the stocks which each unit could build up? Before such questi
could be answered a new war broke out with Turkey ( 1787-91) and the milit
authorities' attention was· diverted into more familiar channels. The sold
farmers of New Russia were deeply involved in this struggle, which upset t
regiments' fragile economies and cost them much loss of life, as the two ea1
conflicts had done.
The war did, however, bring the Russian empire a further extension of
ritory in the south-west, the potentially rich and all but empty lands bet''
the rivers Bug and Dniester. Initially known as the 'Ochakov region [oblu•
(and then attached to the Yekaterinoslav sub-province of Ne\ Rmsia), it'
came to share in the rapid growth of the whole area, thanks to the de\e
ment of the port of Odessa. Another Cossack host was established in
region, named after the river Bug, and a considerable area of land was assig
to military settlement. Each man in the ranks was entitled to a plot of 25, t
subaltern officer 50, and each staff officer 120 dessyatines.1' The 'Odessa l
sion' was soon disbanded on the orders of Paul I; it was recon~titutc'
1803.^16 At the turn of the century over two-thirds of the population aro
Tiraspol' on the Dniester consisted of military settlers;^1 " nevertheless one
not say that this region became heavily militarized, as was the case in the
immediately to the north-east. Nor, for other reasons, did the Crimean pc
sula. It was the territory lying between the rivers Bug and Dnieper that bel"
the heartland of military settlement in south Russia (see Map 2).
11 Auerbach, Be11edt'/1111K. p. 33.
14 Ibid., pp. 32-3; Bar1k11. H11111a11 Capt/a/, p. t 1.1.
1< PSZ X\ii. 16605 (1-t Jan. t783), ~ J; Bar1k11, H11111a11 Capital. pp. tJ''-ti.
lh PSZ \\vii. 22872 (28 Apr. 1811.l); l.uba..:h1."'''· "ll11~''"'L '"""·11,·,11,i". p 601
1; Dru1hinina. Y11~h11a_1·u Ukru11w, p. 86.