19b: Catherine the GreatCatherine II, Empress of Russia, was born in 1729 as the German princess Sophie von Anhalt-Zerbst. History knows her as Catherine the Great. The Empress Elizabeth had chosen Peter the Great's German grandson, Prince Peter of Holstein-Gottorp, to succeed her as Peter III. Princess Sophie was intended to be his humble and supportive wife. On arriving in Russia Sophie was baptized into the Orthodox Church, renamed Catherine, and married off to the Tsarevich Peter. A German at heart, the Tsarevich Peter cared more about his toy soldiers than he cared about his wife. Since the marriage was so unhappy, there was talk of Catherine being sent back to Germany, or worse, to a convent. But Catherine did two very smart things: she won over Empress Elizabeth personally; more importantly, she worked untiringly to make herself into a Russian. She mastered the language, immersed herself in the Orthodox Church, and read voraciously about Russia's history and customs. When Elizabeth died in 1761, the Tsarevich Peter came to the throne as Emperor Peter III. He reigned for exactly six months - just long enough to make peace with Prussia and dress the Russian army in Prussian uniforms. That was bad enough, but his plan to convert Russia from Orthodoxy to Lutheranism was more than any real Russian could stand. In July 1762 Peter III was arrested and forced to abdicate in favor of his wife, who took the throne Empress Catherine II. Catherine certainly knew about the plot to remove her husband, but it's doubtful she had anything to do with his death later that month. The official reason given for the unfortunate ex-emperor's demise - a fatal attack of hemorrhoids. A true intellectual, Catherine saw herself as an "enlightened absolutist," wielding total power over her empire but for the benefit of all her people. In many ways, she truly was enlightened. She had read the same social thinkers who inspired the Founders of the United States. She made great strides in Westernizing the education system for men and women alike. She also wrote plays, histories, and a detailed set of memoirs. Catherine's most important work was the Nakaz, or "Instruction" to the Legislative Convention she summoned in 1767 to find solutions for the Russian people's grievances. The Nakaz consisted of 526 sections intended to guide the delegates's discussions, and was published in four languages: Russian, French, German, and Latin. Catherine's instructions were based on the equality of all people - a concept which soon afterward appeared in the Preamble to the United States Constitution. The Nakaz, and the convention it was meant to guide, and the intended reforms, all came to naught. The absolutist in Catherine won out: she herself was the Empress and therefore had no equals. She alone could guide Russia. For all that, her writings had international significance. Philosophers around Europe read the Nakaz eagerly; on the other hand, her fellow autocrat King Louis XV of France banned it.
Catherine's foreign policy was not particularly enlightened, but it was very successful. She expanded the Russian empire by any means she could. She placed her former lover Stanislaus Poniatowski on the Polish throne in 1763 and then turned her attention to the south. Russia had long considered the Black Sea would make a logical southern boundary; unfortunately, the Crimea and surrounding lands were still under Ottoman control. The Ottomans moreover controlled Istanbul (or Constantinople), which would give Russia an outlet on the Mediterranean. Catherine therefore started a war with the Turks in 1768, and by 1774 Russia was the Middle East's most powerful nation. The other European powers were unpleasantly shocked by Russia's success. The 1774 treaty of Kuchuk Kainarji removed the Crimea from Ottoman power and gave Russia the rest of the surrounding territory; Russia annexed the Crimea in 1783 regardless. With the fertile Ukrainian steppe lands under her control, Catherine was free to look west again. On the western border, Russia participated in the three (1772, 1793, and 1795) partitions of Poland. Basically, the weakened Polish nation stood as a useful buffer between Prussia, Austria, and Russia. But Russia feared the Poles might go over to the Austrians or Prussians, while the Austrians and Prussians were afraid... well, you get the picture. Yet each state's Polish minority would cause constant headaches, and the Russians suffered worst of all. Russian Poland was an exceedingly mixed blessing.
Catherine was very active on the domestic front. She restructured the Russian state, dividing her Empire into a new system of provinces and regions. She awarded new rights to the nobility, which had primary responsibility for governing these provinces and regions. In fact, Catherine not only required Russia's peasants to fight in her wars, but required them to pay for the was through increasingly heavy taxation. One consequence was the Pugachev Rebellion of 1773-1774. Claiming to be Catherine's late husband Peter III, the Cossack Yemelyan Pugachev took advantage of Catherine's war the Ottoman Empire to march on Moscow with a force of disillusioned peasants, Old Believers, and Cossacks and march on Moscow. He made it as far as Kazan, but after that Catherine was able to defeat his forces; he was brought back to St. Petersburg to be drawn and quartered. To populate her growing empire, Catherine encouraged just about every people but the Jews (who were already there) to move in. In 1768, even before her string of diplomatic and military conquests had begun, there were more than 100 German colonies on the Volga alone. Thus Russia's population nearly doubled, from 19 million at Catherine's accession, to 36 million at her death. She had added roughly 200,000 square miles to her empire.
In her later years, Catherine became rather more conservative. Perhaps this was only natural given her decades of experience with her surly peasants, her ever-complaining nobility, and European power politics. She had tried hard to fix what ailed her adopted country, and her successors would be no more successful Nor was she pleased to see the American and the French Revolutions partially inspired by her Enlightenment mentors. Some would say that Catherine's true colors showed late in life when she persecuted intellectuals for even daring to suggest that her Russia was not the best of all possible worlds. Perhaps Catherine's embittered old age is to blame for her largely undeserved reputation as a promiscuous royal airhead. She certainly took her fair share of lovers, promoting some of them to high positions, but then, most of her lovers had been talented men who assisted her in governing the Empire. At any rate, Catherine was no more promiscuous than her immediate predecessor Elizabeth, or her personal hero Peter the Great. Although she was no paragon of virtue, and her impulses often contradictory, Catherine II was fully worthy of joining Ivan III and Peter I as the only Russian rulers entitled "The Great."
19a: Pax Russica
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19c: Alexander and Napoleon
19d: The Gendarme of Europe
19e: Conclusions |
