Catherine the Great and the 18th Century Russian Empire

Catherine the Great, born Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst, ruled Russia from 1762 to 1796 and is widely regarded as one of the most successful and consequential Russian rulers. Her reign, the longest of any female ruler of Russia, marked the high point of the eighteenth-century Russian Empire and established Russia as a European power. The territorial expansion of the empire, the flourishing of Russian culture, and the engagement with the European Enlightenment that defined the late eighteenth century all bear the mark of Catherine’s reign.

Catherine came to power through a palace coup that deposed her husband, Peter III, in July 1762. She consolidated her power through a combination of political skill, personal charisma, and willingness to use force. She presided over an era of cultural and intellectual flowering, welcoming leading figures of the French Enlightenment to Russia and corresponding with the major philosophers of the age. At the same time, her annexations, including the partitions of Poland, the Crimea, and the northern Black Sea coast, greatly expanded the Russian Empire, and she navigated the complex international politics of the late eighteenth century with considerable skill.

Catherine’s legacy is contested, and the contradictions of her reign are part of what makes her such a difficult historical figure. To her admirers, she was an enlightened ruler who modernised Russia, expanded its territory, and brought it into the mainstream of European civilisation. To her critics, she was a despot who repressed dissent, expanded the institution of serfdom, and ruled through arbitrary and often violent means. The two views are not mutually exclusive: Catherine presided over a court of brilliant intellectual life and a system of brutal serfdom, and she left Russia larger and stronger but also with a more entrenched system of noble privilege than it had had at the beginning of her reign. (See de Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great, 1981, for the standard English account; Dixon, Catherine the Great, 2009, for a more recent biography.)

The early years and the path to power

Catherine was born in 1729 in Stettin, Pomerania, then part of Prussia, as Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg. Her father was a minor German prince, and her mother came from the ducal house of Holstein-Gottorp. The family had connections to the ruling families of Europe, and in 1744, Sophie’s mother brought her to Russia, where she was selected as a bride for the heir to the Russian throne, the future Peter III.

Sophie converted to Russian Orthodoxy and took the name Catherine, and in 1745 she married Peter. The marriage was not a happy one. Peter was immature and uninterested in his wife, and Catherine spent her time in Russia reading, studying, and forming important political connections. She was a voracious reader, particularly of Enlightenment literature, and she mastered the Russian language so thoroughly that she would later become one of the great letter-writers and memoirists of her age.

Catherine’s son, the future Paul I, was born in 1754, although there were persistent rumors that his biological father was Catherine’s lover, Sergei Saltykov. The question of Paul’s paternity would later become politically important, since some questioned whether he was the legitimate heir to the throne.

In July 1762, Catherine, with the support of the Imperial Guards and various political allies, staged a coup against her husband, who had been emperor for only six months. Peter III was forced to abdicate and was murdered a few days later, possibly at the instigation of Catherine’s supporters. Catherine was proclaimed empress and was crowned in a magnificent ceremony in Moscow in September 1762.

The early reforms and the Nakaz

Catherine’s early years on the throne were marked by an ambitious program of reform inspired by the ideas of the Enlightenment. In 1767, she convened a legislative commission to draft a new law code, and she presented the commission with a document called the Nakaz (Instruction), in which she laid out her political and philosophical principles. The Nakaz drew heavily on the work of the French philosophers Montesquieu and Cesare Beccaria, and it contained arguments for equality before the law, the abolition of torture, and the principle of moderation in punishment.

The Nakaz was widely read in Europe and provoked controversy for its bold statements about the nature of monarchy and the rights of citizens. Catherine was hailed by some as an enlightened ruler and condemned by others as a dangerous radical. The legislative commission itself, however, failed to produce a new law code, in part because of the complexity of the issues involved and in part because of the resistance of the nobility, who opposed any reform that would limit their privileges.

The failure of the legislative commission and the outbreak of the Pugachev Rebellion of 1773-1775, a massive Cossack and peasant uprising in the Urals and the Volga region, persuaded Catherine that her reform program was too ambitious. She largely abandoned her progressive aspirations and pursued a more conservative course, strengthening the autocratic state and the privileges of the nobility. In 1785, she issued the Charter to the Nobility, which confirmed the rights and privileges of the noble class, and the Charter to the Towns, which established a system of urban self-government.

Territorial expansion

Catherine’s reign was marked by dramatic territorial expansion. The most important expansion was at the expense of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which was partitioned in three stages, in 1772, 1793, and 1795, with Russia, Prussia, and Austria each acquiring large portions of Polish territory. The First Partition of Poland in 1772, in which Russia acquired a large portion of what is today Belarus and Ukraine, was negotiated in the context of Russian concerns about Polish instability and the position of Orthodox Christians in Polish territory. The Second and Third Partitions, in 1793 and 1795, eliminated the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth altogether, and Catherine acquired the remainder of the Polish lands, including the Ukrainian lands to the right of the Dnieper, the Lithuanian lands, and the Courland region.

Catherine also waged two successful wars against the Ottoman Empire. The first Russo-Turkish War of 1768-1774 ended with the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca, which gave Russia access to the Black Sea, the right of protection over Orthodox Christians in Ottoman territory, and the right of navigation through the Turkish Straits. The second Russo-Turkish War of 1787-1792 ended with the Treaty of Jassy, which confirmed the Russian annexation of the Crimean Khanate, completed in 1783, and extended the Russian frontier to the Dniester River. The acquisition of Crimea and the northern Black Sea coast opened the way for Russian settlement of the newly acquired lands and laid the foundations for Russia’s emergence as a Black Sea power.

Catherine also pursued expansion in other directions. Russian voyages and settlement in Alaska began during her reign, laying the foundations for the Russian-American Company, which was chartered in 1799 under her son Paul I, and Russian influence in the Caucasus was extended, with the Treaty of Georgievsk of 1783 establishing a Russian protectorate over the eastern Georgian kingdom. By the end of Catherine’s reign, the Russian Empire was larger than it had ever been, and Russia had been established as a European and Asian power.

Cultural and intellectual life

Catherine’s reign was a period of cultural and intellectual flourishing. She welcomed leading figures of the French Enlightenment to Russia, including Denis Diderot, who visited St. Petersburg for some five months in 1773-1774, after the completion of the Encyclopédie, and she corresponded with Voltaire and other philosophers. She patronized the arts on a lavish scale, supporting the work of poets, playwrights, painters, and architects, and she established new institutions of learning and culture.

The most important cultural figure of Catherine’s reign was the writer Alexander Radishchev, whose Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow, published in 1790, was a sharp critique of serfdom and the autocratic system. Radishchev was arrested, tried, and sentenced to death, although the sentence was commuted to exile in Siberia. The case became a symbol of the limits of Catherine’s enlightened aspirations.

Catherine also re-chartered and expanded the Imperial Academy of Arts, which had been founded in 1757 under the Empress Elizabeth, granting it a new charter in 1764, and she founded the Russian Academy in 1783, the latter devoted to the study of the Russian language. She also expanded the network of schools and universities, including the founding of new schools in the recently acquired territories.

The last years and the legacy of Catherine’s reign

Catherine’s last years were marked by personal and political difficulties. Her son Paul, whose paternity was widely questioned, was kept away from political power, and Catherine considered the possibility of bypassing him in favor of her eldest grandson, the future emperor Alexander I. Her foreign policy, which had been so successful earlier in her reign, also encountered difficulties, particularly in the face of the French Revolution, which she viewed with horror and which she sought to counter through anti-revolutionary intervention.

Catherine died in November 1796, and was succeeded by her son Paul I, who had long awaited the throne. Paul’s reign was short and ended with his assassination in a palace coup in March 1801, after which his son Alexander I took the throne. The dynasty of Catherine would continue to rule Russia for more than a century after her death, although Catherine’s own line would eventually end with the execution of Nicholas II and his family in 1918.

The legacy of Catherine’s reign is enormous. The territorial expansion of the Russian Empire, the establishment of Russia as a European power, the flowering of Russian culture, the development of a system of education, and the engagement with European Enlightenment ideas all bear the mark of her reign. At the same time, the intensification of serfdom, the suppression of dissent, and the limits of her reformist aspirations cast a long shadow on Russian history. The contradictions of Catherine’s reign reflect the contradictions of the Russian Empire as a whole, and the legacy of her reign would continue to shape Russia for centuries.