Catherine the Great

I

Introduction

Catherine the Great (1729-1796), empress of Russia (1762-1796), who expanded her vast country’s borders south to the Black Sea and west into Europe while continuing the Westernization begun by Peter the Great.

II

Early Life

Originally named Sophie Fredericke Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst, Catherine was born in Stettin, Prussia (now Szczecin, Poland). The daughter of a minor German prince, she moved to Russia in 1744 and married Grand Duke Peter of Holstein, a grandson of Peter the Great and heir to the Russian throne, in 1745. The marriage was an unhappy one, but the precocious, intelligent, and extremely ambitious grand duchess managed to learn much in her adopted country, surviving court intrigues (as well as, apparently, successfully engaging in some). Required to convert from the Lutheran faith to Russian Orthodoxy before marrying Peter, Catherine displayed devotion to her new religion and nation. Peter became Emperor Peter III of Russia upon the death of Empress Elizabeth in 1762, but lasted only a few months. Unstable and in effect impossible in personal relations, he immediately antagonized the court, the Orthodox Church, and the leading elements in the army. He also indicated plans to rid himself of Catherine. In July 1762 Catherine and the imperial guard, led by her lover Count Grigory Orlov, overthrew Peter in a palace coup, and Catherine was declared empress as Catherine II. Orlov’s brother Alexey killed Peter days later, perhaps inadvertently during a drunken argument. Catherine proceeded to rule Russia for 34 eventful years.

III

Empress of Russia

Catherine II made her considerable mark on history by her extremely successful and expansive foreign policy as well as by her energetic and fruitful continuation of the process of Westernization followed by Peter the Great. Two major victorious wars against the Ottoman Empire (1768-1774, 1787-1792, see Russo-Turkish Wars) extended Russia to the shores of the Black Sea. Agreements with Prussia and Austria led to three partitions of Poland, in 1772, 1793, and 1795, after which that major country disappeared from the map and Russia’s territory extended well into central Europe. Catherine supported the Westernization of Russia not only as an autocrat, but also as a writer, a journalist, and as its loudest propagandist. Russia, the empress insisted, attained new heights of civilization during her reign. Court poets glorified Peter the Great who created new Russians and Catherine the Great who gave them their souls, and the French writer Voltaire wrote of Peter the Great and Catherine the Greater.

A

The Influence of the Enlightenment

In contrast with Peter the Great, a coarse man without formal education who tried desperately to catch up with everything, Catherine developed into an accomplished intellectual of the Age of Enlightenment, indeed in her own opinion its best model. L’Esprit de Lois (1748; The Spirit of Laws 1750), by French political theorist Montesquieu, became her avowed prayer book. She used the book, which preached that a wise ruler who favoured reason over passion could best ensure the welfare of his or her subjects, to bolster her autocratic system of government.

In an attempt at political reform, Catherine convened the Legislative Commission in 1767 to codify the laws of the realm, and in the process rationalize and modernize Russian law and life. The commission consisted of 564 deputies, 28 appointed from state institutions and 536 elected. Of the elected deputies, 161 came from the landed gentry, 208 from the townspeople, 79 from the peasants, and 88 from the Cossacks and national minorities. The serfs and clergy were excluded. As the basis for its work, the commission received Catherine's Nakaz, or Instruction, a strikingly liberal document that presented the empress’s vision of the ideal government, from the form of its laws to its education and social structure. The Nakaz was still careful to preserve such a pillar of the Russian system as autocracy—justified, however, in the utilitarian terms of the Age of Reason rather than as a divine dispensation. The commission met for a year and a half, holding 203 sessions and utilizing subcommittees, but it produced none of the desired results. Instead, the members of the commission split along class lines. Gentry delegates argued with merchant representatives over the rights to own serfs and to engage in trade and industry, and the gentry deputies clashed with those of the peasants on the crucial issue of serfdom. The outbreak of war against the Ottoman Empire in 1768 provided a good occasion for disbanding the Legislative Commission.

Catherine the Great's main interest, however, was in education and culture. Indeed, she considered it her mission to civilize Russia. The empress's educational undertakings included the establishment of exclusive boarding schools, most notably the Smolny Institute for girls, and later, in 1783, the Russian Academy of Letters, a teachers’ college. Catherine also established the beginnings of a more general educational system for Russia, although on a very small scale considering the needs of the country. Publishing in Russia grew by leaps and bounds, aided by the edict of 1783 licensing private publishing houses. Journalism, in which the empress participated personally, flourished. Catherine also established a Medical Collegium in 1763, founded hospitals, led the way in the struggle against infectious diseases, and decreed that Russia be equipped to produce its own medicines and surgical equipment.