Catherine The Great Reform
the Legislative Commission of 1767-8 and the Nakaz. What ideas were put forth? What was the role of Catherine the Great? For whom were these changes discussed and debated?
1)
In December 1766, Catherine II called upon the free "estates" (nobles, townspeople, state peasants, Cossacks) and central government offices to select deputies to attend a commission to participate in the preparation of a new code of laws. The purpose of the commission was therefore consultative; it was not intended to be a parliament in the modern sense. The Legislative Commission opened in Moscow in July 1767, then moved to St. Petersburg in February 1768. Following the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish War in January 1769, it was prorogued and never recalled. The …show more content…
selection of deputies was a haphazard affair. The social composition of the assembly was: nobles, 205; merchants, 167; odnodvortsy(descendants of petty servicemen on the southern frontiers), 42; state peasants, 29; Cossacks, 44; industrialists, 7; chancery clerks, 19; tribesmen, 54. Deputies brought instructions, or nakazy, from the bodies that selected them. Catherine's Nakaz (Great Instruction) was read at the opening sessions and provided a basis for some of the discussion that followed. The commission met in 203 sessions and discussed existing laws on the nobility, on the Baltic nobility, on the merchant estate, and on justice and judicial procedure. No decisions were made by the commission on these matters, and no code of laws was produced. The Legislative Commission was nevertheless significant: It gave Catherine an important source of information and insight into concerns and attitudes of different social groups, through both the nakazy and the discussions which took place, including a discussion on serfdom; it provided an opportunity for the discussion and dissemination of the ideas in Catherine's Nakaz; it led to the establishment of several subcommittees, which continued to meet after the prorogation of the commission, and which produced draft laws that Catherine utilized for subsequent legislation.
2)
In July of 1767 the Legislative Commission met in Moscow and was presented with Catherine II's Instructions. The lengthy Instructions (twenty chapters and 526 articles) were intended to guide the work of the Commission as they came together to discuss the grievances of their electors and the nature of government and the laws in Russia. The Instructions borrowed heavily from writers such as Baron de Montesquieu (The Spirit of the Laws), Cesare Beccaria (An Essay on Crimes and Punishments), William Blackstone (Commentaries on the Laws of England), and Baron Bielfeld (Political Institutions), as well as from Catherine's correspondence with such enlightenment thinkers as Voltaire and Diderot.
The Instructions themselves were neither a law code nor a blueprint for a constitution (as some historians have claimed), but rather a kind of guide as to the type of government and society Catherine hoped to mold in Russia. Catherine may have been inspired by Frederick II of Prussia, who had also promulgated his own visions as to the proper role of the monarch and the organization of the bureaucracy; when Catherine finished writing and editing her Instructions, she sent a German translation to Frederick II. Certainly one goal of the Instructions was to proclaim Russia's place as a modern European state rather than the Asiatic despotism Montesquieu had named it. The Instructions deal with political, social, legal, and economic issues, and in 1768 Catherine issued a supplement that dealt with issues of public health, public order, and urban life.
Catherine's reasons for promulgating the Instructions as well as her success in achieving the stated goals have been the subject of considerable debate. The Legislative Commission disbanded in 1768 as war broke out between Russia and Turkey, and the Commission never succeeded in finalizing a draft of a law code. Several partial codes were issued later, and some refer back directly to Catherine's Instructions. However, a complete body of law code was never produced in Catherine's time. The other perceived failure of the Instructions was the fact that it did not deal with serfdom. Catherine's criticisms of serfdom were deleted from her final draft after consultations with her advisers. Chapter 11 of the Instructions does note that a ruler should avoid reducing people to a state of slavery. However, Catherine had originally included a proposal that serfs should be allowed to accumulate sufficient property to buy their freedom and that servitude should be limited to six years.
Because Catherine did not abolish serfdom, reduce the power of the nobility, draft a constitution, or promulgate a complete law code, Catherine's Instructions have often been considered a failure. Many people have assumed that Catherine was simply vain or a hypocrite or that she hoped to dazzle the west with visions of Russia's political progress. De Madariaga disagrees, noting that the Instructions were never intended to limit Catherine's power. Catherine made it clear that she saw absolutism as the only government suitable for Russia, but that even in an absolute government fundamental laws could and should be obeyed. In states ruled by fundamental laws (a popular concept in the eighteenth century), citizens could not be deprived of their life, liberty, or property without judicial procedure. In her Instructions Catherine made the case for the importance of education, for abolishing torture, and for very limited capital punishment. Perhaps just as importantly, the Instructions disseminated a great deal of important legal thinking from the West and created a language in which political and social discussions could be held.
What was the Pugachev revolt and why was it important?
The last great peasant revolt to challenge autocratic rule in Russia occurred during the reign of Catherine the Great. Between 1773 and 1774, Emelian Pugachev, a Don Cossack freebooter, rallied thousands of disaffected peasants by proclaiming himself Tsar Peter III, who had been deposed in 1762 and died shortly thereafter. Although there had been many uprisings in the region and numerous pretenders, the Pugachev Revolt was by far the greatest threat to Catherine’s rule.
Causes of the Pugachev Revolt
Ultimately, as General Bibikov told the aristocracy of Kazan, “This is a revolt of the poor against the rich, of the slaves against their masters.” [1] Yet the causes were many and have been interpreted differently by Russian, Soviet, and Western Historians. [2] Generally, the causes can be broken down as follows: 1. Loss of autonomy by the indigenous groups in the Urals. 2. Forced conscription of local peasants to fight against the Turks. 3. Use of serf labor in the newly created factories and mines. 4. Seizure of lands by the state. 5. Heavy taxation. 6. Expanded state intrusion into local customs, practices, and beliefs. 7. The role of “Old Believers” that rejected official Orthodoxy.
Initial Successes of the Revolt
Pugachev was a messianic figure, capitalizing on the popular notion that Peter III was viewed as still being alive by the peasants. Pretenderism had always been a spark in sporadic peasant revolts. Pugachev was a courageous leader with some military skills, having served in the Seven Years’ War. The capture of several garrisons and the rallying of thousands of supporters attested to his leadership.
Catherine herself contributed to the rebellion’s early victories by not taking Pugachev seriously, equating the revolt with the many prior disturbances that had been swiftly quelled by her troops. The resurrection of Peter III in the guise of a brigand was troubling, however, and reminded Catherine that she had seized power in 1762 through a coup.
Pugachev Defeated by Catherine’s Armies
After a series of successes on his way to Moscow at the head of the peasant army, Pugachev was turned back following the partial destruction of Kazan. Bringing death and destruction to the gentry in the Volga region, Pugachev pursued a course that would take him to home territory. Count Panin, commissioned by Catherine to end the insurrection, rushed fresh troops to the region. The Turkish War had been concluded and now Pugachev was facing veteran forces.
Adding to Pugachev’s problems, a famine swept the region, depriving his motley army of necessary supplies. In August 1774, he fought his last battle against troops commanded by Ivan Mikhelson, an exceptional officer who repulsed a direct charge and counterattacked, totally destroying Pugachev’s army. The battle at Cherny Yar was decisive.
Although he escaped, Pugachev was betrayed by fellow Cossacks and carried to Moscow in a cage where he was tortured and executed. Rather than addressing reforms, serfdom was strengthened and state control became more onerous. Historians researching 19th Century Russian radicalism have linked the efforts of revolutionaries with memories of the Pugachev revolt, believing that the peasantry represented the vanguard of revolution. [3]
Paul Avrich cites early Bolshevik thoughts regarding the use of the peasant class in achieving revolution and highlights the distinct peasant notions of a “tsar” that would emancipate them and act on their behalf. But the Pugachev revolt would be the last great upheaval until the twentieth century when the Revolutions of 1905 and 1917 weakened and ultimately ended autocracy.
ugachev (1742–1775), a Cossack from the Don region (in contemporary Ukraine), led what would be the last—and arguably the most explosive—of the great Cossack rebellions that plagued the Russian state during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Begun, like so many others, as a frontier rebellion, it engulfed large parts of southeastern Russia and staged a brutal and extended assault on the fortress town of Orenburg between October 1773 and February 1774, and at one point it threatened Moscow itself.
Much of Pugachev's success derived from his use of the pretender myth, that is, his claim to be the avenging reemergent true tsar Peter III, who in reality had been murdered six months after ascending the throne in a coup that brought his wife, Catherine the Great, to power in 1762. Neither the first nor the last such pretender (some surfaced as far away as the Balkans), Pugachev insisted that he was the one true Peter III, who in myth had not died but had been rescued by loyal Christians. He assembled an army and even something of a campaign court. His goal was nothing short of entering the capital and claiming the Russian throne.
The revolt itself built on a mutiny of the Yaik Cossacks, begun and suppressed in 1772. Pugachev arrived in the Yaik region in November of that year, claiming to be Peter. Soon arrested, he was taken to the city of Kazan' on the Volga river, from which he escaped on 29 May 1773. By early 1774 he had assembled a loose coalition of Yaik Cossacks, Kalmyks, and Tatars, along with a growing number of discontented serfs. At its peak, his forces numbered twenty thousand, organized loosely into Cossack-style regiments. Although effective in the rough and wooded terrain of the Volga frontier, Pugachev's forces had little chance in the long run against the much larger and better-fortified imperial army. Over time this superiority proved decisive, and on 15 September 1774 he was handed over to the authorities by his own Cossacks. Taken to Moscow in an open cage, he was publicly executed on 10 January 1775.
Part of Pugachev's unique appeal was social, in that he fomented a fluid kind of class warfare, pitting serfs against landlords, three thousand of whom are thought to have died during the revolt. Having freed the landlords from compulsory service in 1762, so he claimed, he had intended to free the serfs as well but had been prevented from doing so by disloyal and greedy noble landowners. This claim seems to have resonated with much of Russia's servile population, thus broadening the revolt's base beyond the Cossacks and borderland Turkic minorities, who had predominated in the earlier rebellions of Stepan Razin and Kondraty Bulavin, to include serfs, state peasants, and some homesteading free peasants.
The rebellion generated a new phase of state-building between 1775 and 1785, the period of socalled legislomania. The empress concluded that Russia required a more permanent and extensive administrative presence in the countryside, one that would not be so prone to periodic depopulation or reliant upon unpaid and informal service. The enabling legislation, the Reform of Provincial Administration (1775) and the Reform of Police Administration (1782), greatly increased the size of the standing provincial government, both civil and military, to one sufficient to keep local disorders contained.
Catherine’s major reforms in the 1780s
Catherine became the sole ruler of Russia 1762, the country seemed backward to Europe. While Europe was advancing in government, economy and sciences, Russia was disorganized, agriculturally underdeveloped, and sparsely populated
Catherine the Great’s reforms would guide Russia the Middle Ages, enabling the country to become a modern world power.
Empress Elizabeth died on December 25, 1761, and Peter was named Tsar, but power was not to remain in his hands for long. After insulting the army by creating an alliance with
Prussia, he proceeded to confiscate church lands and ordered the inter-workings of the church be changed (McGuire 66).
Thus, Peter insulted his two greatest allies: the army and the church, and it cost him dearly. Catherine knew she needed to act quickly.
Her first intention drawing the country out of debt by focusing on agriculture
Catherine encouraged horse, sheep, and cattle breeding. She offered grants for farmers to purchase new machinery and learn western methods. Catherine “acknowledged that not a small number of such regions still lie fallow, that could be advantageously and easily most usefully utilized to be populated and lived in” (Germans From Russia). She offered pleasing terms in
German and French newspapers to foreigners who wanted to settle in Russia (History Web). If they could not afford the journey, they had the option of notifying the Russian ambassador near them, who would finance their voyage. All immigrants were allowed to enter Russia on the terms that they announced their presence, and were willing to be detained, but once settled, were to be exempt from taxes for a certain …show more content…
time.
When Catherine allowed foreigners into Russia, she did not limit them to agriculture. She knew expansion was needed in mining and other industries. She especially focused on silver-mining, and founded the School of Mines in St. Petersburg, complete with an underground. In 1762, she decreed anyone could open a factory except within the two capitals, as they were overcrowded. New industries emerged: linens, pottery, leather, and furniture. Over time, the number of factories grew from 900 to 3000.
Catherine after the Treaty of Kyakhta in 1768
By 1765, 75% of Elizabeth’s debt was paid and Catherine had increased the trade balance from 127 rubles in 1772 to 25,761 in 1796. Once Catherine revitalized the economy, she turned to education. What she found was disheartening. There was little appreciation for the arts, so Catherine began strongly encouraging various forms, and in the 1780’s she had the Hermitage Theater built (State Hermitage Museum).
Many provincial noble-women were uneducated, so Catherine established and funded a ladies’ boarding school attached to the Smolny Convent. Eleven years after establishment, the first Russian dictionary was published. Catherine charged Boards of Social Welfare with setting up schools: provincial towns with a major school with at least six teachers, and district towns with a minor school with two teachers minimum. They accept children from various backgrounds at an early age and educate them. These new schools were co-educational, and all social classes attended. Four new principals were implemented: the blending of moral and professional education, the dissolving of class barriers, female education, and in certain instances required male attendance. By the end of her reign, the number of schools had reached 549 with 61,966 students. Catherine did much for the young learners in her country; she offered grants for studying abroad, eliminated corporal punishment, enabled girls to be educated, and made public education free.
Catherine sought to improve public health in Russia. In the statute of 1775, she laid down the foundations for health care: each province and district was required to have a physician, a surgeon with two assistants, two apprentices, and an apothecary. She also established midwife schools and lying-in hospitals, and founded civilian hospitals including Russia’s first College of Medicine. She volunteered to set an example for her people, and after being mildly ill for three weeks, the doctor declared the vaccination a success. She bought homes in the capitals where Dimsdale vaccinated the many Russians who followed their ruler’s example. By setting up civilian hospitals, establishing schools to educate new doctors, and being a healthy example, Catherine reformed public health for her people.
Catherine implemented many administrative reforms. In 1764, Catherine decreed that all governor-generals take a census, map their region, report on industries, and properly administer transportation, public services, orphanages, and prisons (History Web). Then after the town of
Tver burned down; a commission drew up a plan on Catherine’s orders, creating a model for future towns. In this plan, precautions were taken to prevent fires, as most buildings were wooden.
At the beginning of her reign, there were over 50 agencies in charge of collecting revenue.
These were free to spend said revenues, making creating a budget impossible; thus Catherine reformed finance collections with the Statute of 1775
In this statute she also repealed roughly 32 taxes. The Statute was also meant to reorganize the provinces. In ten years, the 25 original provinces were divided into 41, Districts were divided to have between 20,000 and 30,000 residents, raising the district count from 169 to 493 (
Within the Statute of 1775 were also laws regarding criminals. Torture was strictly forbidden, and Catherine wished prisoners to be considered as “innocent until proven guilty”
Catherine also set up Courts of Conscience, modeled after England’s, where more unusual cases were viewed. Thus the Statute of 1775 was significant because Catherine reorganized her country’s budget, provinces, and court system. It allowed Catherine to reform Russia and help it begin to meet western standards.
Furthermore 1780, Catherine issued the Armed Neutrality
Act,
Once the Act was in place, Russian ships were protected from the British, who had a tendency to confiscate goods from neutral ships, and they increased the number of foreign ships sailing under their flag. The merchant navy went from around 20 ships to more than 400. The Neutral League neutral powers consisted of Russia, Sweden, Denmark-Norway, and Austria, Prussia, and Portugal. In this act not only did she help Russia, but also the other countries that were neutral at that time.
Though Catherine was normally tolerant towards differing religions, in 1783~1794, she issued decrees limiting the rights of the Russian Jewish population. The Jews were confined to 386,000 limited size of land, those acquired by Poland and Turkey to restrict their commercial activity. In 1794, Russia was facing financial difficulties, and Catherine ordered the Jews to pay taxes twice as high as Christians from the same areas. These restrictions lasted for around 130 years, until pogroms resulted in mass emigration.
Catherine left behind an astounding legacy. She was very dedicated to her adopted country up until her death. By the end of her reign she had directed her country towards the path to becoming a powerful nation. The divisions she placed on provinces lasted until the October Revolution in 1917.
Catherine understood that the reaction to abolishing serfdom would not be positive. Her general structure for administration lasted until the reforms of Alexander II in 1864, who in 1861, abolished serfdom. She is not a great reformer because of her success, but because of the extent of her reforms in the limitations and backwardness of her country. What is so impressive about Catherine is that she was foreign born, was Russia’s sole ruler for 34 years, but died of natural causes. She is believed to have died a true Russian because of her devotedness to her adopted country.
http://www.alaskahistoryday.com/uploads/4/9/1/1/4911518/catherine_the_great_-_reforming_russia.pdf
Catherine II
Effects of the French Revolution
Catherine, like all the crowned heads of Europe, felt seriously threatened by the French Revolution. The divine right of royalty and the aristocracy was being questioned, and Catherine, although a “friend of the Enlightenment,” had no intention of relinquishing her own privileges: “I am an aristocrat, it is my profession.” In 1790 the writer A.N. Radishchev, who attempted to publish a work openly critical of the abuses of serfdom, was tried, condemned to death, then pardoned and exiled. Ironically, the sentiments Radishchev expressed were very similar to Catherine's Instruction of 1767. Next, Poland, encouraged by the example of France, began agitating for a liberal constitution. In 1792, under the pretext of forestalling the threat of revolution, Catherine sent in troops and the next year annexed most of the western Ukraine, while Prussia helped itself to large territories of western Poland. After the national uprising led by Tadeusz Kosciuszko in 1794, Catherine wiped Poland off the map of Europe by dividing it between Russia, Prussia, and Austria in 1795.
Catherine's last years were darkened by the execution of Louis XVI, the advance of the revolutionary armies, and the spread of radical ideas. The empress realized, moreover, that she had no suitable successor. She considered her son Paul an incompetent and unbalanced man; her grandson Alexander was too young yet to rule.
the influence of France was equally strong in the area of social and political ideas. Catherine II's interest in the writings of the philosophers of the Enlightenment - Baron Montesquieu, Jean Le Rond d'Alembert, Voltaire, and Denis Diderot - contributed to the spread of their ideas in Russia during the eighteenth century. The empress conducted regular correspondence with Voltaire, and received Diderot at her court. Convinced that it was her duty to civilize Russia, she encouraged the growth of a critical outlook and, as an extension of this, of thought regarding Russian society and a repudiation of serfdom, which had consequences following her own reign.
The support of Catherine II for the spirit of the Enlightenment was nonetheless shaken by the French Revolution of 1789. It ceased entirely with the execution of King Louis XVI (January 1793). The empress was unable to accept such a radical challenge to the very foundations of autocratic rule. From the close of her reign onward, restrictions on foreign travel increased, and contacts were severely curtailed. Despite this change, however, liberal ideas that had spread during the eighteenth century continued to circulate throughout Russia during the nineteenth, and the French Revolution continued to have a persistent influence on the political ideas of Russians.
When travel resumed under Alexander I (ruled 1801 - 1825), Russians once again began to travel abroad for pleasure or study. This stimulated liberal ideas that pervaded progressive and radical political thought in Russia during the nineteenth century. The welcome that France extended to political exiles strengthened its image as a land of liberty and of revolution.
1)
In December 1766, Catherine II called upon the free "estates" (nobles, townspeople, state peasants, Cossacks) and central government offices to select deputies to attend a commission to participate in the preparation of a new code of laws. The purpose of the commission was therefore consultative; it was not intended to be a parliament in the modern sense. The Legislative Commission opened in Moscow in July 1767, then moved to St. Petersburg in February 1768. Following the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish War in January 1769, it was prorogued and never recalled. The …show more content…
selection of deputies was a haphazard affair. The social composition of the assembly was: nobles, 205; merchants, 167; odnodvortsy(descendants of petty servicemen on the southern frontiers), 42; state peasants, 29; Cossacks, 44; industrialists, 7; chancery clerks, 19; tribesmen, 54. Deputies brought instructions, or nakazy, from the bodies that selected them. Catherine's Nakaz (Great Instruction) was read at the opening sessions and provided a basis for some of the discussion that followed. The commission met in 203 sessions and discussed existing laws on the nobility, on the Baltic nobility, on the merchant estate, and on justice and judicial procedure. No decisions were made by the commission on these matters, and no code of laws was produced. The Legislative Commission was nevertheless significant: It gave Catherine an important source of information and insight into concerns and attitudes of different social groups, through both the nakazy and the discussions which took place, including a discussion on serfdom; it provided an opportunity for the discussion and dissemination of the ideas in Catherine's Nakaz; it led to the establishment of several subcommittees, which continued to meet after the prorogation of the commission, and which produced draft laws that Catherine utilized for subsequent legislation.
2)
In July of 1767 the Legislative Commission met in Moscow and was presented with Catherine II's Instructions. The lengthy Instructions (twenty chapters and 526 articles) were intended to guide the work of the Commission as they came together to discuss the grievances of their electors and the nature of government and the laws in Russia. The Instructions borrowed heavily from writers such as Baron de Montesquieu (The Spirit of the Laws), Cesare Beccaria (An Essay on Crimes and Punishments), William Blackstone (Commentaries on the Laws of England), and Baron Bielfeld (Political Institutions), as well as from Catherine's correspondence with such enlightenment thinkers as Voltaire and Diderot.
The Instructions themselves were neither a law code nor a blueprint for a constitution (as some historians have claimed), but rather a kind of guide as to the type of government and society Catherine hoped to mold in Russia. Catherine may have been inspired by Frederick II of Prussia, who had also promulgated his own visions as to the proper role of the monarch and the organization of the bureaucracy; when Catherine finished writing and editing her Instructions, she sent a German translation to Frederick II. Certainly one goal of the Instructions was to proclaim Russia's place as a modern European state rather than the Asiatic despotism Montesquieu had named it. The Instructions deal with political, social, legal, and economic issues, and in 1768 Catherine issued a supplement that dealt with issues of public health, public order, and urban life.
Catherine's reasons for promulgating the Instructions as well as her success in achieving the stated goals have been the subject of considerable debate. The Legislative Commission disbanded in 1768 as war broke out between Russia and Turkey, and the Commission never succeeded in finalizing a draft of a law code. Several partial codes were issued later, and some refer back directly to Catherine's Instructions. However, a complete body of law code was never produced in Catherine's time. The other perceived failure of the Instructions was the fact that it did not deal with serfdom. Catherine's criticisms of serfdom were deleted from her final draft after consultations with her advisers. Chapter 11 of the Instructions does note that a ruler should avoid reducing people to a state of slavery. However, Catherine had originally included a proposal that serfs should be allowed to accumulate sufficient property to buy their freedom and that servitude should be limited to six years.
Because Catherine did not abolish serfdom, reduce the power of the nobility, draft a constitution, or promulgate a complete law code, Catherine's Instructions have often been considered a failure. Many people have assumed that Catherine was simply vain or a hypocrite or that she hoped to dazzle the west with visions of Russia's political progress. De Madariaga disagrees, noting that the Instructions were never intended to limit Catherine's power. Catherine made it clear that she saw absolutism as the only government suitable for Russia, but that even in an absolute government fundamental laws could and should be obeyed. In states ruled by fundamental laws (a popular concept in the eighteenth century), citizens could not be deprived of their life, liberty, or property without judicial procedure. In her Instructions Catherine made the case for the importance of education, for abolishing torture, and for very limited capital punishment. Perhaps just as importantly, the Instructions disseminated a great deal of important legal thinking from the West and created a language in which political and social discussions could be held.
What was the Pugachev revolt and why was it important?
The last great peasant revolt to challenge autocratic rule in Russia occurred during the reign of Catherine the Great. Between 1773 and 1774, Emelian Pugachev, a Don Cossack freebooter, rallied thousands of disaffected peasants by proclaiming himself Tsar Peter III, who had been deposed in 1762 and died shortly thereafter. Although there had been many uprisings in the region and numerous pretenders, the Pugachev Revolt was by far the greatest threat to Catherine’s rule.
Causes of the Pugachev Revolt
Ultimately, as General Bibikov told the aristocracy of Kazan, “This is a revolt of the poor against the rich, of the slaves against their masters.” [1] Yet the causes were many and have been interpreted differently by Russian, Soviet, and Western Historians. [2] Generally, the causes can be broken down as follows: 1. Loss of autonomy by the indigenous groups in the Urals. 2. Forced conscription of local peasants to fight against the Turks. 3. Use of serf labor in the newly created factories and mines. 4. Seizure of lands by the state. 5. Heavy taxation. 6. Expanded state intrusion into local customs, practices, and beliefs. 7. The role of “Old Believers” that rejected official Orthodoxy.
Initial Successes of the Revolt
Pugachev was a messianic figure, capitalizing on the popular notion that Peter III was viewed as still being alive by the peasants. Pretenderism had always been a spark in sporadic peasant revolts. Pugachev was a courageous leader with some military skills, having served in the Seven Years’ War. The capture of several garrisons and the rallying of thousands of supporters attested to his leadership.
Catherine herself contributed to the rebellion’s early victories by not taking Pugachev seriously, equating the revolt with the many prior disturbances that had been swiftly quelled by her troops. The resurrection of Peter III in the guise of a brigand was troubling, however, and reminded Catherine that she had seized power in 1762 through a coup.
Pugachev Defeated by Catherine’s Armies
After a series of successes on his way to Moscow at the head of the peasant army, Pugachev was turned back following the partial destruction of Kazan. Bringing death and destruction to the gentry in the Volga region, Pugachev pursued a course that would take him to home territory. Count Panin, commissioned by Catherine to end the insurrection, rushed fresh troops to the region. The Turkish War had been concluded and now Pugachev was facing veteran forces.
Adding to Pugachev’s problems, a famine swept the region, depriving his motley army of necessary supplies. In August 1774, he fought his last battle against troops commanded by Ivan Mikhelson, an exceptional officer who repulsed a direct charge and counterattacked, totally destroying Pugachev’s army. The battle at Cherny Yar was decisive.
Although he escaped, Pugachev was betrayed by fellow Cossacks and carried to Moscow in a cage where he was tortured and executed. Rather than addressing reforms, serfdom was strengthened and state control became more onerous. Historians researching 19th Century Russian radicalism have linked the efforts of revolutionaries with memories of the Pugachev revolt, believing that the peasantry represented the vanguard of revolution. [3]
Paul Avrich cites early Bolshevik thoughts regarding the use of the peasant class in achieving revolution and highlights the distinct peasant notions of a “tsar” that would emancipate them and act on their behalf. But the Pugachev revolt would be the last great upheaval until the twentieth century when the Revolutions of 1905 and 1917 weakened and ultimately ended autocracy.
ugachev (1742–1775), a Cossack from the Don region (in contemporary Ukraine), led what would be the last—and arguably the most explosive—of the great Cossack rebellions that plagued the Russian state during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Begun, like so many others, as a frontier rebellion, it engulfed large parts of southeastern Russia and staged a brutal and extended assault on the fortress town of Orenburg between October 1773 and February 1774, and at one point it threatened Moscow itself.
Much of Pugachev's success derived from his use of the pretender myth, that is, his claim to be the avenging reemergent true tsar Peter III, who in reality had been murdered six months after ascending the throne in a coup that brought his wife, Catherine the Great, to power in 1762. Neither the first nor the last such pretender (some surfaced as far away as the Balkans), Pugachev insisted that he was the one true Peter III, who in myth had not died but had been rescued by loyal Christians. He assembled an army and even something of a campaign court. His goal was nothing short of entering the capital and claiming the Russian throne.
The revolt itself built on a mutiny of the Yaik Cossacks, begun and suppressed in 1772. Pugachev arrived in the Yaik region in November of that year, claiming to be Peter. Soon arrested, he was taken to the city of Kazan' on the Volga river, from which he escaped on 29 May 1773. By early 1774 he had assembled a loose coalition of Yaik Cossacks, Kalmyks, and Tatars, along with a growing number of discontented serfs. At its peak, his forces numbered twenty thousand, organized loosely into Cossack-style regiments. Although effective in the rough and wooded terrain of the Volga frontier, Pugachev's forces had little chance in the long run against the much larger and better-fortified imperial army. Over time this superiority proved decisive, and on 15 September 1774 he was handed over to the authorities by his own Cossacks. Taken to Moscow in an open cage, he was publicly executed on 10 January 1775.
Part of Pugachev's unique appeal was social, in that he fomented a fluid kind of class warfare, pitting serfs against landlords, three thousand of whom are thought to have died during the revolt. Having freed the landlords from compulsory service in 1762, so he claimed, he had intended to free the serfs as well but had been prevented from doing so by disloyal and greedy noble landowners. This claim seems to have resonated with much of Russia's servile population, thus broadening the revolt's base beyond the Cossacks and borderland Turkic minorities, who had predominated in the earlier rebellions of Stepan Razin and Kondraty Bulavin, to include serfs, state peasants, and some homesteading free peasants.
The rebellion generated a new phase of state-building between 1775 and 1785, the period of socalled legislomania. The empress concluded that Russia required a more permanent and extensive administrative presence in the countryside, one that would not be so prone to periodic depopulation or reliant upon unpaid and informal service. The enabling legislation, the Reform of Provincial Administration (1775) and the Reform of Police Administration (1782), greatly increased the size of the standing provincial government, both civil and military, to one sufficient to keep local disorders contained.
Catherine’s major reforms in the 1780s
Catherine became the sole ruler of Russia 1762, the country seemed backward to Europe. While Europe was advancing in government, economy and sciences, Russia was disorganized, agriculturally underdeveloped, and sparsely populated
Catherine the Great’s reforms would guide Russia the Middle Ages, enabling the country to become a modern world power.
Empress Elizabeth died on December 25, 1761, and Peter was named Tsar, but power was not to remain in his hands for long. After insulting the army by creating an alliance with
Prussia, he proceeded to confiscate church lands and ordered the inter-workings of the church be changed (McGuire 66).
Thus, Peter insulted his two greatest allies: the army and the church, and it cost him dearly. Catherine knew she needed to act quickly.
Her first intention drawing the country out of debt by focusing on agriculture
Catherine encouraged horse, sheep, and cattle breeding. She offered grants for farmers to purchase new machinery and learn western methods. Catherine “acknowledged that not a small number of such regions still lie fallow, that could be advantageously and easily most usefully utilized to be populated and lived in” (Germans From Russia). She offered pleasing terms in
German and French newspapers to foreigners who wanted to settle in Russia (History Web). If they could not afford the journey, they had the option of notifying the Russian ambassador near them, who would finance their voyage. All immigrants were allowed to enter Russia on the terms that they announced their presence, and were willing to be detained, but once settled, were to be exempt from taxes for a certain …show more content…
time.
When Catherine allowed foreigners into Russia, she did not limit them to agriculture. She knew expansion was needed in mining and other industries. She especially focused on silver-mining, and founded the School of Mines in St. Petersburg, complete with an underground. In 1762, she decreed anyone could open a factory except within the two capitals, as they were overcrowded. New industries emerged: linens, pottery, leather, and furniture. Over time, the number of factories grew from 900 to 3000.
Catherine after the Treaty of Kyakhta in 1768
By 1765, 75% of Elizabeth’s debt was paid and Catherine had increased the trade balance from 127 rubles in 1772 to 25,761 in 1796. Once Catherine revitalized the economy, she turned to education. What she found was disheartening. There was little appreciation for the arts, so Catherine began strongly encouraging various forms, and in the 1780’s she had the Hermitage Theater built (State Hermitage Museum).
Many provincial noble-women were uneducated, so Catherine established and funded a ladies’ boarding school attached to the Smolny Convent. Eleven years after establishment, the first Russian dictionary was published. Catherine charged Boards of Social Welfare with setting up schools: provincial towns with a major school with at least six teachers, and district towns with a minor school with two teachers minimum. They accept children from various backgrounds at an early age and educate them. These new schools were co-educational, and all social classes attended. Four new principals were implemented: the blending of moral and professional education, the dissolving of class barriers, female education, and in certain instances required male attendance. By the end of her reign, the number of schools had reached 549 with 61,966 students. Catherine did much for the young learners in her country; she offered grants for studying abroad, eliminated corporal punishment, enabled girls to be educated, and made public education free.
Catherine sought to improve public health in Russia. In the statute of 1775, she laid down the foundations for health care: each province and district was required to have a physician, a surgeon with two assistants, two apprentices, and an apothecary. She also established midwife schools and lying-in hospitals, and founded civilian hospitals including Russia’s first College of Medicine. She volunteered to set an example for her people, and after being mildly ill for three weeks, the doctor declared the vaccination a success. She bought homes in the capitals where Dimsdale vaccinated the many Russians who followed their ruler’s example. By setting up civilian hospitals, establishing schools to educate new doctors, and being a healthy example, Catherine reformed public health for her people.
Catherine implemented many administrative reforms. In 1764, Catherine decreed that all governor-generals take a census, map their region, report on industries, and properly administer transportation, public services, orphanages, and prisons (History Web). Then after the town of
Tver burned down; a commission drew up a plan on Catherine’s orders, creating a model for future towns. In this plan, precautions were taken to prevent fires, as most buildings were wooden.
At the beginning of her reign, there were over 50 agencies in charge of collecting revenue.
These were free to spend said revenues, making creating a budget impossible; thus Catherine reformed finance collections with the Statute of 1775
In this statute she also repealed roughly 32 taxes. The Statute was also meant to reorganize the provinces. In ten years, the 25 original provinces were divided into 41, Districts were divided to have between 20,000 and 30,000 residents, raising the district count from 169 to 493 (
Within the Statute of 1775 were also laws regarding criminals. Torture was strictly forbidden, and Catherine wished prisoners to be considered as “innocent until proven guilty”
Catherine also set up Courts of Conscience, modeled after England’s, where more unusual cases were viewed. Thus the Statute of 1775 was significant because Catherine reorganized her country’s budget, provinces, and court system. It allowed Catherine to reform Russia and help it begin to meet western standards.
Furthermore 1780, Catherine issued the Armed Neutrality
Act,
Once the Act was in place, Russian ships were protected from the British, who had a tendency to confiscate goods from neutral ships, and they increased the number of foreign ships sailing under their flag. The merchant navy went from around 20 ships to more than 400. The Neutral League neutral powers consisted of Russia, Sweden, Denmark-Norway, and Austria, Prussia, and Portugal. In this act not only did she help Russia, but also the other countries that were neutral at that time.
Though Catherine was normally tolerant towards differing religions, in 1783~1794, she issued decrees limiting the rights of the Russian Jewish population. The Jews were confined to 386,000 limited size of land, those acquired by Poland and Turkey to restrict their commercial activity. In 1794, Russia was facing financial difficulties, and Catherine ordered the Jews to pay taxes twice as high as Christians from the same areas. These restrictions lasted for around 130 years, until pogroms resulted in mass emigration.
Catherine left behind an astounding legacy. She was very dedicated to her adopted country up until her death. By the end of her reign she had directed her country towards the path to becoming a powerful nation. The divisions she placed on provinces lasted until the October Revolution in 1917.
Catherine understood that the reaction to abolishing serfdom would not be positive. Her general structure for administration lasted until the reforms of Alexander II in 1864, who in 1861, abolished serfdom. She is not a great reformer because of her success, but because of the extent of her reforms in the limitations and backwardness of her country. What is so impressive about Catherine is that she was foreign born, was Russia’s sole ruler for 34 years, but died of natural causes. She is believed to have died a true Russian because of her devotedness to her adopted country.
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Catherine II
Effects of the French Revolution
Catherine, like all the crowned heads of Europe, felt seriously threatened by the French Revolution. The divine right of royalty and the aristocracy was being questioned, and Catherine, although a “friend of the Enlightenment,” had no intention of relinquishing her own privileges: “I am an aristocrat, it is my profession.” In 1790 the writer A.N. Radishchev, who attempted to publish a work openly critical of the abuses of serfdom, was tried, condemned to death, then pardoned and exiled. Ironically, the sentiments Radishchev expressed were very similar to Catherine's Instruction of 1767. Next, Poland, encouraged by the example of France, began agitating for a liberal constitution. In 1792, under the pretext of forestalling the threat of revolution, Catherine sent in troops and the next year annexed most of the western Ukraine, while Prussia helped itself to large territories of western Poland. After the national uprising led by Tadeusz Kosciuszko in 1794, Catherine wiped Poland off the map of Europe by dividing it between Russia, Prussia, and Austria in 1795.
Catherine's last years were darkened by the execution of Louis XVI, the advance of the revolutionary armies, and the spread of radical ideas. The empress realized, moreover, that she had no suitable successor. She considered her son Paul an incompetent and unbalanced man; her grandson Alexander was too young yet to rule.
the influence of France was equally strong in the area of social and political ideas. Catherine II's interest in the writings of the philosophers of the Enlightenment - Baron Montesquieu, Jean Le Rond d'Alembert, Voltaire, and Denis Diderot - contributed to the spread of their ideas in Russia during the eighteenth century. The empress conducted regular correspondence with Voltaire, and received Diderot at her court. Convinced that it was her duty to civilize Russia, she encouraged the growth of a critical outlook and, as an extension of this, of thought regarding Russian society and a repudiation of serfdom, which had consequences following her own reign.
The support of Catherine II for the spirit of the Enlightenment was nonetheless shaken by the French Revolution of 1789. It ceased entirely with the execution of King Louis XVI (January 1793). The empress was unable to accept such a radical challenge to the very foundations of autocratic rule. From the close of her reign onward, restrictions on foreign travel increased, and contacts were severely curtailed. Despite this change, however, liberal ideas that had spread during the eighteenth century continued to circulate throughout Russia during the nineteenth, and the French Revolution continued to have a persistent influence on the political ideas of Russians.
When travel resumed under Alexander I (ruled 1801 - 1825), Russians once again began to travel abroad for pleasure or study. This stimulated liberal ideas that pervaded progressive and radical political thought in Russia during the nineteenth century. The welcome that France extended to political exiles strengthened its image as a land of liberty and of revolution.