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R. P. Bartlett, Diderot and the foreign colonies of Catherine II.
During his visit to St. Petersburg in 1773-74, Diderot presented to Catherine II an anonymous memorandum on the foreign colonies recently established on the river Volga. The article introduces and prints the text of this paper, which was omitted from P. Vernière's Mémoires pour Catherine II (Paris, 1966). The memorandum analyses the poor state of the colonies and presents a project for their economic and social development. While the analysis of the colonists' difficulties is persuasive, the project is excessively optimistic and would have further oppressed the colonies it was designed to help. Its general approach fitted well with government views after 1774, but there is no evidence that it influenced Catherine II. It is suggested that the author was François Pierre Pictet, at one time Catherine's French-language secretary, and closely involved in the colonies in their early years. Diderot must have been attracted by proposals which seemed to combine personal and property rights for the colonists with economic growth and the development of a third estate.