When we think of the African diaspora, black Russians – the “araps” of the East – remain largely nonexistent to us in the West. They don’t exist. In this, the third segment in our Black History Month “Black Russians” series, we look at the history of early Africans (unilaterally then regarded as Moors, even though they were all black Africans, not Arabs) in the Russian Empire – the black Russians of the past, including other early African Americans who had settled in Russia.
Early Black Russians
In the black propaganda circuit, an invented piece of history circulates, claiming that Africans (black Russians) once ruled Russia and were supposedly the original Cossacks. To support this, they point to examples of black faces in royal regalia in pictures online. However, unlike Herodotus, who did his best (unsuccessfully) to inquire of the origins of King Minos’ slaves on the Island of Crete, these propagandists ignore the principal issue with this story – the realities of history. Russia’s physical isolation from the West and the rigid frontiers of African kingdoms and chiefdoms in antiquity make this a hard pill to swallow. Additionally, no credible artifacts (traces of a people’s existence) exist to show any African presence in Russia.
Edward Gibbon (“The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”) told us that Russians became known to the West around the 9th-century. “The name of Russians was first divulged in the ninth century by an embassy of Theophilus, emperor of the East to the emperor of the West, Lewis, the son of Charlemagne. The Greeks were accompanied by the great duke, chagan or Czar of the Russians. In their journey to Constantinopole, they had traversed many hostile nations [AD 839]. A closer examination detected their origin: they were the brethren of the Swedes and Normans.”
So Russia was never at the heart of post-Roman Europe as we know it today. Additionally, from the time of Portugal’s Prince Henry (15th-century) and through to the late 19th-century colonization of Africa, movement across borders of the nation-states was a near impossibility – the reason the west coast of Africa had borne the brunt of early slavery.
For centuries, Russia, one of the world’s largest countries, was isolated from the west. It had no part in the Atlantic slave trade, no part in Europe’s scramble for Africa, which heralded the colonization of the continent. As such, Russia was among the last countries to develop relationships with Africa and familiarity with Africans.
However, the sparse presence of Black Russians (African exotics in Russia) dates back to the late 17th-century. One of the first notable black Russian was Abram Petrovich Gannibal. Ottoman forces had kidnapped him from Logone (Cameroon). Two versions of his story are told. One says that the Ottomans sold Gannibal to Russian diplomat Fedor Golovin in 1704, and Golovin then gave the slave boy to Czar Peter the Great as a gift. The other says that Czar Peter had bought Gannibal in Europe in 1698 and brought him back to Russia.
In any case, the Czar freed and adopted Gannibal, who grew into nobility and served the Russian Empire as a civilian and military man. He became a general in the military and nobleman in the Russian Empire. Among his offspring would later be a man of letters. Abram Petrovich Gannibal is a maternal great-grandfather of the most all-time most famous black Russian – famed Russian poet Alexander Pushkin.
The early black Russians were brought to the empire as exotic domestics but not slaves in the traditional sense as we know it. Russia was a country of serfdom, with the labor needs of the ruling class and the state met and carried out by serfs. The Imperial Court was known for its exotic Moorish courtiers, who wore some of the most elegant costumes of all the Czars’ court uniforms. Their exotic foreignness and rareness made them objects of curiosity to ordinary Russians writ large.
In The Morning of the Streltsy Execution, Vasily Surikov’s snuck in a black face in his painting. Behind the young Czar Peter is a carriage upholstered in red velvet with a female face visible on the inside. One of the royal women had come to see the execution with Peter. We then see two black Russians (pages/servants) in turbans with blue feathers on the carriage’s running boards.
African servants first appeared in Europe at the time of the Crusades (late 11th-century) in the retinues of European kings. According to Russia Beyond, the early black Russians were likewise employed as servants, as well as curiosity objects and entertainers.
Black Russians at the Imperial Court
Black Russians attended the royal household on their travels, their main duty to open doors for the monarch at official ceremonies. Moors of the Imperial Court had the most sumptuous uniforms at court. Historians say that under Alexander III at the end of the 19th century, the Moorish ceremonial court uniforms were the most expensive among court servants – more costly than that of a chamber furrier in charge of all the servants and even the Czar’s chamber Cossack bodyguard. The families of the Imperial Court Moors also had very comfortable lives. Some even had servants.
In the Winter Palace, the black Russians appointed to the court were usually on duty in the Arabian Hall. Their daily routine was mostly ceremonial – opening doors or escorting palace guests to the Czar’s apartments. They also placed presents under the Christmas tree in the Winter Palace, symbolizing the kings from the east and the Magis, who brought gifts at Christmas.
Moorish black Russians resided in the apartments of Sister Martha, mother of first Romanov Czar Mikhail Fyodorovich (Michael of Russia). In the female half of the palace, black Russians performed the same function as dwarfs, holy fools, and wandering pilgrims. In this sense, they would seem comparable to the minstrel performers of antebellum America, except that these black Russians entertained the royal family’s bored women, forced to spend almost their entire life locked up in their private quarters.
The Czars also kept the black Russians for entertainment. Moscow historian Ivan Zabelin says that Czar Mikhail Fyodorovich had Moor Murat and later Moor Davyd Saltanov residing at his court, on whom he lavished sumptuous clothes. Among Czar Michael’s servants were Moors who had arrived in Russia as elephant handlers (It was then custom for Oriental rulers to give elephants as gifts to Russians). In 1625 and 1626, a Moorish elephant performer Tchan Ivraimov entertained the Czar with his elephant tricks. So the presence of black Russians in the early 17th-century.
By the end of the 17th-century, black Russian pages were becoming the norm among the nobility. Russian historian Ivan Zabelin wrote young Peter’s first black Russian pages Tomos, Sek, and while he was living in Moscow. A black Russian woman lived at the court of Czar Michael’s consort, Tsaritsa Eudoxia. Czar Alexei Mikhailovich kept a Moor named Savely. After Savely developed his Russian language skills, he mastered reading, writing, and singing sacred Russian verses in a year, during a time when the Russian language was more difficult than today.
During Alexander II’s reign, the black Russians had another permanent duty – preparing a hookah pipe for the emperor. In addition to enjoying smoking, Alexander had digestive problems, and smoking helped him with this illness. The Czar also valued the Moors at court for their skill in mixing his tobacco.
But in general, 17th-century court Moors were sporadically educated, and their education was for entertaining. It was the enlightened Czar, Peter the Great, who, along with opening up Russia to foreigners and foreign influences, gave the Moors real opportunities to somewhat normalize their lives as blacks Russians.
The First Among Black Russians
Abram Petrovich Gannibal was the first black Russian to achieve prominence. Before 1714, he was mentioned among court jesters, but soon after, Czar Tsar Peter started to entrust him with various tasks and eventually sent him to study engineering in France. In later years, Gannibal taught Russians mathematics and engineering, and under Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, he was charged with leading all engineering in Russia. In addition to becoming a military general and a black Russian of great stature, Abram Petrovich Gannibal had a large family. He is said to be the first person in Russia to grow potatoes on his estate.
By the mid-18th century, there were already quite a few black Russians with high positions at the court. Catherine I had six Moors who escorted her in and out of her carriage. Anna Ioannovna had four black Russian courtiers at court. Elizabeth Petrovna had while black courtiers, black stokers, and black musicians at court. Moors attended her on her hunting pastime.
Under Catherine the Great, the number of black Russians at court reached two dozen. Her court established a special position, Moor of the Imperial Court. At first, holders of this position were referred to as “Araps.” In the 19th-century, the term became “Arabs,” although it is unlikely that any ethnic Arabs were among them. For the job, they selected the tallest men with the blackest skins. On assuming office, they had to adopt Christianity (either Orthodox or Catholic was allowed).
“Senior” and “junior” referred only to grades within the same rank. In the 19th century, black Russian children – “little Araps” – were no longer kept at the court. People who came to serve as Moors of the Imperial Court were all adults.
Early Black Americans in Russia
When John Quincy Adams arrived in St. Petersburg in October 1809 as the American Minister to Russia, one of the first black Americans appeared at the Imperial Court – manservant named Nelson who had accompanied Adams and family. A year later, Adams permitted Nelson to be employed in Czar Nicholas I’s service, along with Alexander Gabriel, an AWOL ship’s cook whom the czar impulsively plucked out of a crowd in the Baltic port city of Kronstadt.
Nero Prince, one of the founders of the Prince Hall Freemasons in Boston, was a servant who had sailed to Imperial Russia in 1810 with his American employer, only to subsequently became an expatriate in Russia, serving the Czar as a footman for 12 years. In 1824, Prince married his wife Nancy, and both set sail for Russia. In her memoir, Narrative of the Life and Travels of Mrs. Prince, Nancy Prince would later write of her experience in Russia.
The Emperor Alexander, stood on his throne, in his royal apparel. The throne is . . . covered with scarlet velvet, tasseled with gold; as I entered the Emperor stepped forward with great politeness and condescension, and welcomed me, and asked several questions; he then accompanied us to the Empress Elizabeth; she stood in her dignity, and received me in the same manner the Emperor had. They presented me with a watch, etc.”
Nancy Prince
She witnessed many celebrations and ceremonies at the Imperial Court and saw the 1824 flood in St. Petersburg and the 1825 Decembrist revolt. She surprised Russians with her refusal to dance at parties, believing it was a sin for a Christian. She returned to America in 1833. Her husband followed her in 1836, having served at the Russian Imperial Court for almost 20 years.
Shakespearean actor Ira Aldridge was the first internationally celebrated African American performer. He left race-obsessed America for good in 1824. After captivated audiences in England, France, and across Europe for decades, Aldridge arrived in St. Petersburg in 1857. Fluent enough to speak in Russian on stage, his 1858 and 1862 tours took him to several important cities and provincial towns, occasioned his friendship with the poet-artist Taras Shevchenko, and was capped with his performance of “King Lear” and “Othello” in St. Petersburg and the awarding of Imperial honors.
In early February 1869, black Civil War veteran and pioneering journalist Captain Thomas Morris Chester from Pennsylvania, on a fundraising tour of Europe, was invited to ride with Czar Alexander II and his staff on a ceremonial review of the Imperial Guard. He later dined with members of the royal family. Unaccustomed to such high public esteem accorded a black American, the black-owned New Orleans Tribune recounted the event in elaborate detail.
End of an Era
Black Russian dominance at the Imperial Court came to an end at the beginning of the 20th-century. At that time, only a handful remained. However, their male descendants, who often took Russian wives, had integrated throughout St. Petersburg.
External Sources: Russia Beyond
