The great majority of inhabitants are Great Russians and Little Russians; but there are also large numbers of Jews (133,000, exclusive of Karaites), as well as of Italians, Greeks, Germans and French (to which nationalities the chief merchants belong), as also of Rumanians, Servians, Bulgarians, Tatars, Armenians, Lazes, Georgians.
A similar translation of Ecclesiastes, followed by treatises on the Karaites, on the Essenes and on the Kabbala, kept the author prominently before biblical students while he was preparing the first sections of his magnum opus, the critical study of the Massorah.