The series of Russo-Turkish wars from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries had a significant impact not only on the demographic condition of the Bulgarian community in Rumelia, but also on its economic and social development. The emigration of large masses of population, especially after the war of 1828–1829, led to the depopulation of entire towns and regions in Thrace and Northeastern Bulgaria. A substantial role in this process was played by the targeted agitation of specially dispatched emissaries, as well as by propaganda conducted by the leadership of the Russian army. Only three years after these events, a large part of the Bulgarian population drawn into the migration began to return within the borders of the Ottoman Empire. In turn, the Ottoman authorities undertook serious measures to resettle this population, devising a strategy aimed at repopulating regions such as Dobruja, which possessed significant economic potential but lacked the population necessary to exploit it. This article focuses on a different type of migration – namely that of 1861 – when, in peacetime, the Russian authorities launched a campaign of agitation among the Bulgarians in the Vidin sanjak and succeeded in persuading some of them to move to the southern Russian steppes. The study is based on newly discovered documents kept in the Ottoman Archives in Istanbul, which provide particularly valuable information about the organization of this migration, the propaganda conducted by the Russian diplomatic representatives, the number of the resettled Bulgarians, and the cost paid both by the Bulgarians and the two empires involved – the Ottoman and the Russian.