Catherine the Great

Catherine the Great the empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796 (1729-1796), born Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst, who came to the throne by a palace coup and ruled as an enlightened autocrat. She expanded the empire to the south and west, reformed provincial administration, and presided over a golden age of Russian culture.

Origins and Marriage to the Heir

Sophie Augusta Fredericka was born in 1729 in the Prussian city of Stettin, the daughter of a minor German princely house of Anhalt-Zerbst. She received a modest education enlivened by travel, and in 1744 she was invited to Russia by the empress Elizabeth as a prospective bride for her heir, the grand duke Peter.

She embraced her new country with determination, learning Russian, adopting the Orthodox faith and taking the name Ekaterina, or Catherine. In 1745 she married Peter, but the marriage was unhappy and the couple were estranged. Catherine cultivated connections at court, read widely in history and philosophy, and waited for her opportunity.

When Elizabeth died in 1762, Peter succeeded as Peter III, but his pro-Prussian policies, his eccentric conduct and his hostility to the Orthodox church soon alienated the court and the guard. Within months a conspiracy among the officers, with Catherine at its centre, deposed him, and Catherine was proclaimed empress in her own right.

Domestic Reform and the Enlightenment

Catherine was deeply influenced by the political ideas of the Enlightenment, corresponding with Voltaire and correspondingly seeing herself as a philosopher on the throne. She convened a Legislative Commission in 1767 to draft a new code of laws and composed an instruction for it, the Nakaz, which quoted Montesquieu and Beccaria on law, liberty and the abolition of torture.

The commission produced little practical legislation, and Catherine's later measures became more cautious in the face of noble and bureaucratic resistance. Yet she did reform provincial government after the revolt of 1773 to 1775, dividing Russia into a system of provinces and districts with new administrative, judicial and financial institutions staffed by officials and elected nobles.

She also patronised education, founding schools and the Smolny Institute for girls, encouraged vaccination against smallpox by submitting herself to the procedure, and supported the spread of theatre, publishing and the arts. Her own vast correspondence and memoirs reveal a ruler determined to appear as the civilising sovereign of a backward realm.

Foreign Policy and Territorial Expansion

Catherine's diplomacy, conducted with patient skill by her chancellor and by capable commanders such as Suvorov, extended the empire on every side. Two wars with the Ottoman Empire, ended in 1774 and 1792, brought Russia the northern shore of the Black Sea, the Crimea and the protectorate of the Christian subjects of the sultan, together with the right of navigation on the Black Sea and through the straits.

She took part in the partitions of Poland, in 1772, 1793 and 1795, obtaining large territories in the east of the country and erasing Poland from the map as an independent state. Her alliance with Austria and Prussia, and her ambition to restore the Greek empire under a Russian prince, defined her policy toward the Ottoman lands.

She secured Georgia's protection in 1783 and pressed Russian influence into the Caucasus, freeing it from Ottoman and Persian control. Her reign added about half a million square kilometres to the empire and made Russia the greatest land power of Europe, though the Polish partitions provoked long-lasting resentment and the cost in war and revenue was severe.

Pugachev's Revolt and the Peasant Question

In 1773 a Don Cossack named Yemelyan Pugachev, claiming to be the murdered emperor Peter III, raised a vast rebellion among the Cossacks, peasants and non-Russian peoples of the Ural and Volga regions. At its height the revolt threatened Moscow, brought death and destruction to wide areas, and was only crushed in 1775 after heavy fighting.

The rising forced Catherine to reconsider the condition of the serfs. Some reformers argued for the alleviation of serfdom, and the empress at first inclined toward reform, but the magnates and officers upon whom she depended were adamantly opposed. In the event, the administrative reform increased rather than reduced the authority of the landowners over the peasantry.

Serfdom was extended into newly acquired territories and restrictions on the movement of peasants were tightened, so that by the end of the reign a great part of the rural population was bound to the soil. The contradiction between the ideals of the Enlightenment and the practices of Russian autocracy became a defining feature of Catherine's reign and of the history that followed.

Court, Culture and Legacy

Catherine's court at St Petersburg became one of the most brilliant in Europe. She collected paintings, sculptures and books on a vast scale, founded the Hermitage collection, and commissioned buildings in a classical style that transformed the appearance of the capital. She wrote plays, journal articles and memoirs, corresponded with philosophers and invited the French sculptor Falconet to create the equestrian monument to Peter the Great.

She was generous in her patronage of learning, science and exploration, founding academies and supporting expeditions that charted the Pacific and the Arctic. Her relations with the intellectual figures of the Enlightenment gave her the title by which she is best known, though the radicalism of the French Revolution eventually turned her against its ideas.

Catherine died in 1796, having ruled for thirty-four years. She left Russia larger, stronger and wealthier than she found it, but also with the contradictions of serfdom and autocracy unresolved. She is remembered as Catherine the Great, and as one of the most remarkable sovereigns of the eighteenth century.

See also

• Russian Enlightenment
• Partitions of Poland
• Pugachev's Rebellion
• Hermitage Museum