SOURCE: Alexander, John T. “Crisis Renewed: The Volga Voyage and the Legislative Commission.” In Catherine the Great: Life and Legend, pp. 97-120. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.

[In this excerpt from his biography of Catherine the Great, generally considered the scholarly standard, Alexander provides the historical and political contexts for the production and reception of Catherine's Nakaz. For Alexander, the Nakaz reflects both Catherine's idealism and her naivete about Russian politics.]

By the mid-1760s Catherine felt more securely in power than during the nervous first years of her reign. She obviously loved ruling, reveled in being the center of attention, and showed ever greater confidence in her political abilities and prospects. Some of this confidence was bluster. To Madame Geoffrin, an old Parisian friend of her mother's and patroness of a leading intellectual salon, she confided her sense of inadequacy as compared to Frederick the Great, thinking he would have achieved much more in her place. Others privately doubted her abilities. Thus Lord Buckingham, frustrated at his failure to sign a new trade treaty with Russia, bristled at “the meanness with which she submits to the ill-bred inattention of Orlow, and the little affection she shows to the Grand Duke,” but his indictment ignored her need to share time and attention with her son, her lover, and her constantly multiplying duties.¹

As before, Catherine evinced worrisome concern for Paul's health. In April 1765 another minor illness of the Grand Duke roused his mother's fears such that she warned Nikita Panin not to bring him to Tsarskoe Selo because of the “extremely cold weather, and most of all, in this palace it is so cold in all the rooms that sometimes we do not know where to sit or to eat.” And on 1 May, when Panin proposed to accompany Paul on horseback to a public promenade at suburban Catherinhof, the Empress anxiously objected. “I am amazed that you are taking my son to such a place, where there is a countless multitude of people and, consequently, not without those who have smallpox in the house. I recall that more than once you yourself cautioned me against this, when I wished to take him with me in such cases; now nothing remains for me except only to wish the continuation of his health.” Panin took the hint and the Tsarevich stayed home that evening. In mid-June, however, Paul went with his mother to observe the army camp and maneuvers at Krasnoe Selo (she merrily termed these constant travels “the life of a Kalmyk”); but she left him behind a month later while on a hunting excursion and inspection tour of Peter the Great's Ladoga Canal, which she ordered to be lengthened and repaired. Although Catherine could spend little time with Paul, she watched over his intellectual and social growth, allowed him to amuse himself with the members of her entourage, and frequently asked him to confer awards on worthy officials. His excellent French and lively wit delighted her in person and by letter. She encouraged him to assist Panin in correspondence and applauded his useful, self-motivated preparations for an active, though yet undefined, role in state affairs.²

With Grigorii Orlov the Empress managed a relationship of a different order. He and his brothers provided important political support, frequented her company, and offered advice when asked. In Grigorii she discerned “the mind of an eagle,” admiring his honesty, candor, quick perception, and “the extreme strength of his body and temperament,” while lamenting his lack of education and polish, both of which she strove to inculcate. Once the fears of his marrying the Empress had subsided, he settled into a comfortable life at court that antagonized few and patronized many. As Sir George Macartney, the new young British special envoy and diplomatic dandy, described Orlov in 1767:

His figure is rather colossal, his countenance open, his understanding tho' by no means despicable yet totally unimproved by reading, reflection, or experience. He is good natur'd, indolent, unaffected, and unassuming. His sudden elevation has neither made him giddy nor ungrateful; and his present friends are the same satellites which attended his course whilst he moved in a humbler sphere. He hates business and never intermeddles in foreign affairs. In domestic concerns, when ever he exerts his influence, he is rather driven to it by importunity than led to it by inclination.³

Perhaps this portrait unjustly undervalued Orlov's contribution to Catherine's well-being. At this early stage of her imperial career, still learning the rudiments of practical statecraft, she needed constant psychological support without the threat of political domination. Orlov's passion and modesty may have satisfied the woman and fortified the sovereign. Considering the continual political pressure on the Empress and the huge volume of work that she transacted, she must have valued Orlov's uncomplicated character, easy-going manner, and avowed lack of political ambition. Besides, she entrusted him with several important offices, frequently asked his advice, and, on at least one occasion, let him explain her ideas to the Senate. Later on, probably sensing his restless eagerness for action, Catherine would employ him on extraordinary commissions. Apparently she trusted him and his brothers absolutely. As she later confided to Potemkin, his successor in her affections, Orlov “would have remained for ever had he not been the first to tire.” Throughout the 1760s, however, neither the Empress nor her robust favorite had yet tired. An Englishman who met them around 1766 long remembered their “fine figures” and mutual affection; “they did not forbear their Caresses for his presence.”⁴ She pretended to be unmoved by his “romps” with other women, although Lord Buckingham believed that she minded and that she herself “has at times eyes for others, and particularly for an amiable and accomplished man who is not undeserving of her affection; he has good advisers and is not without some chance of success.” Perhaps he meant Potemkin.⁵

Orlov must have gradually recognized that Catherine's primary passion was politics. With golden plums of patronage she periodically reaffirmed her regard for those who had put her on the throne and rewarded those who kept her there by making her government work. In March 1765, for instance, she distributed 175,000 rubles to eight “big gentlemen”—her sarcastic epithet underlined the quid pro quo nature of the awards—including senators Yakov Shakhovskoi, Nikita and Peter Panin, and Zakhar Chernyshev (30,000 each), Procurator-General Viazemskii and Master of Requests Ivan Kozlov (10,000 each), General Evdokim Shcherbinin (15,000) and Admiral Ivan Talyzin (20,000). Kozlov and Talyzin, who were evidently planning to retire from service, received their awards secretly so as to avoid exciting undue expectations in other prospective retirees. At the same time, with the retirement of Grand Master of Ordnance Villebois, the Empress appointed Grigorii Orlov to that powerful and lucrative post after subordinating it to the Senate's jurisdiction. On the third anniversary of her coup she presented silver dinner services to thirty-three stalwarts, among them (in rough order of their prominence in the conspiracy) Kirill Razumovskii, Nikita Panin, Princess Dashkova, three Orlovs, and—toward the end of the list—Grigorii Potemkin.⁶

Catherine consciously set the tone for her court. She dressed modestly while working, but like Elizabeth she habitually changed outfits several times a day. On public, ceremonial, and festive occasions she wore elegant clothes and copious jewels. Indeed, the opulence of her court and the affable dignity of her demeanor bewitched newcomers to Russia such as the amorous Sir George Macartney, who recorded this rapturous portrait in 1766:

Of all the sovereigns of Europe I believe the Empress of Russia is the richest in diamonds. She has a kind of passion for them; perhaps she has no other weaknesses. … She has shewn infinite taste in the manner of setting them, nothing being more advantageous to their lustre. The star of her order is one of the finest pieces of workmanship in the world. Her dress is never gaudy, always rich and yet still more elegant than rich. She appears to her great advantage in regimentals and is fond of appearing in them. During the whole time of the encampment last summer [at Krasnoe Selo] she wore no other habit. Her air is commanding and full of dignity. Her eye might be called fierce and tyrannical, if not softened by the other features of her face, which tho' not regular are eminently pleasing. I never saw in my life a person whose port, manner, and behavior answered so strongly to the idea I had formed to myself of her. Tho' in the thirty seventh year of her age she may still be called beautiful. Those who knew her younger say they never remembered her so lovely as at present, and I very readily believe it. … It is inconceivable with what address she mingles the ease of behavior with the dignity of her rank, with what facility she familiarizes herself with the meanest of her subjects, without losing a point of her authority and with what astonishing magic she inspires at once both respect and affection. Her conversation is brilliant, perhaps too brilliant for she loves to shine in conversation. She does so to an uncommon degree, and 'tis almost impossible to follow her, her sallies are so quick, so full of fire, spirit, and vivacity.⁷

During these peaceful years Catherine undertook initiatives that attested to her expanding ambitions for domestic reform. In 1765 she sponsored establishment of the Free Economic Society for the Encouragement of Agriculture and Husbandry, a study group of officials, aristocrats (such as Grigorii Orlov), and noble landowners that was supposed to publicize advanced methods of farming and estate management as practiced in foreign countries. Endowed by the Empress with funds for a building and library, the Free Economic Society worked to propagate Physiocratic ideas of fostering progress in agriculture, the mainstay of the Empire's economy. Like Frederick the Great, Catherine and the Free Economic Society strongly endorsed the introduction of potatoes, “ground apples” the Russians called them, which were believed to have both medicinal and nutritional benefits. This society also attracted international attention by sponsoring an essay competition (secretly suggested and financed by Catherine) on the subject of property rights for peasants—a most provocative topic in the Russia of serfdom. No less a figure than Voltaire, with whom Catherine had begun a regular correspondence in 1763, contributed an entry. The two winners, a Frenchman and a Russian, both favored property rights for peasants, as did Catherine herself.⁸

Far more ambitious was Catherine's desire to codify Russia's chaotic laws on the basis of recent European social philosophy as applied to Russian conditions. Two primary motivations drew her to the legislative enterprise: her Montesquieuian concept of the good sovereign's duty to foster enlightenment and gradual social change by molding “the climate of opinion,” and her urge to succeed in a sphere in which her predecessors, notably Peter the Great, had failed. She undertook this project as early as February 1764 when she penned her secret instructions to Viazemskii. By early 1765 she boasted to Madame Geoffrin of spending three hours each morning on the laws—“this is an immense work.” She laughed at Grigorii Orlov and her physicians for advising against too much sedentary labor. By September she started showing drafts of her proposed guidelines for codification to selected officials. Grigorii Orlov and Count Münnich praised her efforts to the skies, but Nikita Panin apprehended a threat to the entire social order: “These are axioms to break down walls.” Vasilii Baskakov, a veteran judicial official, and Alexander Sumarokov, a conservative playwright and poet, offered detailed critiques in May 1766, as did Alexander Bibikov somewhat later. The Empress hearkened to their criticism, crossed out some passages, and rewrote others before settling on a final text of 22 chapters comprising 655 articles. Entitled the Great Instruction (Bol'shoi nakaz), her compilation “pillaged” Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws in particular, borrowing some 294 articles from that source. In addition, she drew many articles from the Italian legal theorist Cesare Beccaria, the German cameralist writers Jacob Bielfeld and Johann Justi, and Diderot's famous Encyclopedia. Far from concealing her sources, Catherine didactically celebrated them in her search for “universally accepted principles,” as she informed Voltaire, to guide the reform of her Empire's laws. Neither did she neglect Russian tradition, referring to the revised code as “the new Ulozhenie” and placing a copy of Tsar Aleksei's Ulozhenie of 1649 on public display in a gilded silver shrine.⁹

In this eclectic collection of enlightened maxims and sentiments the Empress addressed the educated public at home and abroad. Often reissued in Russian, her Great Instruction was eventually translated into all the main European languages including English, Italian, Greek, Swedish, Dutch, Polish, and Rumanian. In 1770 the Russian Academy of Sciences issued a sumptuous quadrilingual edition in Russian, French, German, and Latin (but it was overpriced at two rubles and sold poorly). It signified her first bid for the title of philosopher-sovereign, her boldest venture yet in search of international celebrity and immortality. Voltaire labelled it “the finest monument of the age” and mocked the French censors for banning the work, a compliment that would guarantee its popularity. Frederick the Great played on the themes of sexual politics: “a masculine, nervous Performance, and worthy of a great man.” Comparing Catherine to Semiramis, Elizabeth of England, and Maria Theresa, he concluded that “we have never heard of any Female being a Lawgiver. This Glory was reserved for the Empress of Russia.” In a purely political sense the document was a masterpiece; it appeared to promise much without obligation. It became the centerpiece in a rapidly emerging Catherinian cult of rulership that gradually displaced the Petrine model.¹⁰

The Great Instruction adumbrated the political credo that Catherine had first formulated for Viazemskii. The Russian Empire, she proclaimed, had become a European state since the time of Peter the Great. So much for barbarian “manners” and Oriental tyranny. Russia was a monarchy according to Montesquieu's definition, with fundamental laws and religious restraints on arbitrary rule. The sheer size of the Empire, in conjunction with the diversity of its inhabitants and their varied historical evolution, dictated absolute monarchy—“autocratic rulership,” not to be confused with despotism—as the form of government best suited to Russia's current circumstances and its subjects' manners. Centralized administration was more efficient in governing such a huge political unit, Catherine affirmed in agreement with Montesquieu; any other form of government risked disunity and weakness. To dampen fears of aristocratic oligarchy—possibly a caution to the Panin party—she forthrightly declared that “it is better to be subject to the Laws under one Master, than to be subservient to many.” Her government considered itself the servant of the people, whose “natural liberty” it strove to protect and enhance by wise laws, rational policies, and religious solicitude. Its immediate aims were security, peace, and prosperity for all subjects, who were to be treated equally before the law. Torture in judicial proceedings was denounced, and capital punishment, which Elizabeth had abolished, was shunned in all but exceptional circumstances such as sedition or civil war. Concerning serfdom, that pillar and blight of Russian society, nothing was said directly except to censure the enslavement of free persons and to caution against the sudden emancipation of many bondmen. In economic policies Catherine praised agriculture and trade, especially exports, while she berated blind money-grubbing as well as artificial constraints such as monopolies. All in all, her Great Instruction offered ambiguous, benevolent sounding advice on a vast array of subjects, all the while conveying the message that she would be an enlightened, sensible, moderate, and solicitous sovereign dedicated to the greater glory and betterment of Russia as a new European nation.¹¹

At some point in the process of compiling the Great Instruction Catherine linked it to the convocation of a codificatory commission. Such commissions were nothing new in Russia; one convened by Elizabeth had lasted into the first years of Catherine's reign seeking to sort out the heap of legislation accumulated since the issuance of the code of 1649. But she disregarded precedent in three bold innovations. First, the new code was to be formulated in consulation with representatives selected from all free “estates” (i.e., legal categories or classes), ethnic groups, territorial subdivisions, and main central government offices meeting together in public. Second, the Great Instruction would furnish general guidelines to assist the deputies in devising new laws and codifying old ones. Third, all deputies were to bring with them lists (nakazy) of proposals, grievances, and needs that their electors considered deserving of legislative attention. On 14 December 1766 the Empress issued her call for the selection of deputies, compilation of nakazy, and their assembly in Moscow within six months. One deputy was to be chosen for each government office designated by the Senate, each district with resident nobility, each town, each province with petty freeholders (odnodvortsy or single homesteaders), state peasants, and non-nomadic nations of non-Christian religion, and from the various cossack hosts as decided by their supreme commanders. The deputies received a distinctive badge, lifelong immunity from torture, corporal or capital punishment, and were granted salaries of 400 rubles per year for noblemen, 122 for townsmen, 37 for peasants and others. The Empress hoped that these privileges would overcome the traditional Russian tendency to disparage service in elective office as an onerous burden. “By this institution,” her manifesto concluded, “We give to Our people an example of our sincerity, of our great belief in them, and of our true Maternal love.” Even so, she took some care to organize the selection of deputies so as to avoid unseemly altercations, secretly ordering the Petersburg postmaster to copy the letters of some Livland noblemen suspected of harboring separatist sentiments.¹²

RETURN TO MOSCOW

Catherine soon let it be known that she intended to open the Legislative Commission in Moscow in person. Practical political calculations underlay her convocation of the commission and her choice of venue for its opening. By summoning the newfangled assembly to Moscow, the traditional capital and administrative center of Great Russia, she could advertise her program of enlightened reforms before a large audience, mobilizing public opinion on her own behalf while flaunting her political self-confidence. She would challenge Muscovite lethargy and rumor-mongering with a display of vigorous action in pursuit of the public good, dispensing a golden shower of patronage wherever she went. Furthermore, to dramatize her pilgrimage from “European” Petersburg to “Oriental” Moscow and to publicize her venturesome spirit, she resolved on a preliminary grand voyage down the Volga, visiting towns and provinces that no Russian sovereign had seen since Petrine times. In theory, such a tour would inspire provincial officialdom and society with her personal presence, and she would learn more about her vast realm by firsthand observation. The new knowledge thus gained of persons, problems, and conditions would enable her to rule more effectively. Besides, the journey would tap a bonanza of publicity at home and abroad. As she wrote Voltaire from Moscow on 26 March 1767, “perhaps at the moment when you least expect it, you will receive a letter from some corner of Asia.”¹³

Preceded by Grand Duke Paul and Nikita Panin (and delayed several days by a bad cold), Catherine left for Moscow on 7 February 1767. Months before departure she had ordered the Golovin Palace repaired and a new palace built at suburban Kolomenskoe to replace the gigantic wooden relic of the seventeenth century. In charge of Petersburg she left General Ivan Glebov, the senior senator of those departments remaining, with special instructions to combat thieves and brigands in the city and its environs, using Guards or field troops in addition to the police. The Empress felt slightly apprehensive about the climate of opinion in Moscow, for she suggested that Governor-General Saltykov delay selection of the city's deputy to the Legislative Commission until after her arrival, in view of possible “difficulties and doubts.” As usual, she kept an ear cocked for “unseemly talk” in the rumor-hungry metropolis. In 1766 she had secretly ordered Saltykov to call in Prince Alexander Khovanskii, warning him to rein in his “abominable tongue”; otherwise “he will lead himself to a land where a crow will not even find his bones.” The Empress had not forgotten this incident a year later when, at the selection meeting of the Moscow district nobility, somebody put straw in the ballot box instead of a ball. “This impertinence” revived her suspicions of Prince Khovanskii, and it inflamed her scornful perception of the Moscow nobility as spoiled, malicious idlers.¹⁴

In fact, Catherine's second visit to Moscow as empress exacerbated her animus against the old capital. From Moscow she confided to Frau Bielcke, an old Hamburg friend of her mother's, that “I prefer Petersburg, which is improving from day to day and in which I make everything work; whereas this city always seems to me to have the false look of Ispahan, which it loses, however, if I become angry.” (Calling Moscow “Ispahan” was a sarcastic reference to Montesquieu's Persian Letters.) Only a few days earlier she had ordered Governor-General Saltykov to have a team of local architects carefully inspect the Kremlin's three main cathedrals for the purpose of determining what repairs were needed for stability and safety. Her accommodations in Moscow left a bad impression, too, as she complained to Nikita Panin on returning to Petersburg's suburban palaces: “You cannot believe how nice Tsarskoe Selo is, having passed twenty-nine shabby post-stations and palaces, from which I do not exclude the palace of the first-crowned capital, where we endured anxieties of various kinds for a whole year.” Plans for rebuilding central Moscow were already maturing in her mind.¹⁵

Issues of police administration, industrial policy, and location of enterprises troubled Catherine even before she revisited the Empire's industrial capital. On 15 March 1766 she had dispatched Policemaster-General Nikolai Chicherin to Moscow “for the better observation of police deficiencies in that spacious city,” in preparation for proposing reforms. Rising grain prices and fears of dearth in Moscow prompted the Empress to have Chicherin and Saltykov institute the emergency measures adopted in Petersburg: namely, suspension of unauthorized shipments out of the city, and a house-by-house inventory of local supplies. Two weeks later, she reacted furiously to news of a violent clash in the Moscow suburb of Pokrovskoe, a village belonging to the crown, where the peasant inhabitants had forcibly expelled a police search for an allegedly illegal textile manufactory not authorized by the Collegium of Manufactures.

This incident, as the investigation disclosed, dramatized the ambiguities and anomalous effects of the government's own economic policies. The enterprise in question proved to be a peasant-operated workshop that had been functioning with the approval of the Moscow Municipal Administration; in addition, further inquiries uncovered scores of similar enterprises in Pokrovskoe and adjacent suburbs. An obvious question arose: why should some government agencies suppress one form of industry—small textile workshops run by peasants and small merchants—on behalf of the large manufactories operated by privileged entrepreneurs and employing bondaged workers? To Catherine, who strongly believed in the superiority of freely hired labor over bondage, this matter manifested economic irrationality in conjunction with social injustice and an affront to public order. Apparently her orders to punish the residents of Pokrovskoe were laid aside while she pondered these issues. In Petersburg, which she saw more and more as the model for reforming Moscow, she had inquired in September 1766 about the impact of leatherworking and linen weaving in the Moscow region on the new tariff prohibitions against the export of undressed skins and linen thread. Indeed, on revisiting Moscow in 1767 the Empress initiated a reversal of state economic policy toward industry.¹⁶

The reversal of industrial policy built on the liberalizing trend of economic policy fitfully followed since Catherine's accession, now given sharper definition by consideration of local conditions, such as the Pokrovskoe violence of 1766, and the ripening influence of cameralist theory on the Empress—Bielfeld's formulations in particular. Catherine was conversant with Bielfeld's political-administrative theories, published in French in 1760, from the start of her reign. She consulted them extensively in preparing her Great Instruction, especially in Chapter 21 on police which was only published in February 1768, the same year that the first volume of an official Russian translation of Bielfeld's treatise appeared. Concerning industry in capital cities he offered cogent advice that Catherine found directly applicable to Moscow and its problems.¹⁷

Large manufactories that produce cheap wares and employ many workers should be banned from capitals, Bielfeld insisted; better they should be located in provincial towns or villages. Only small enterprises that produce high-value goods, hire few workers, and cater to changing fashion should be allowed in the capital. “The reasons for this maxim are so clear, so palpable, that I believe I may be excused from reciting them,” Bielfeld concluded, but he explicated the evil his maxim was designed to avoid. “The excessive aggrandizement of a capital, which is made at the expense of provincial towns, can never be a sign of a state's prosperity, which then presents the image of a monster in which the head is of an excessive enormity, and the body is small and withered, and all the limbs are weak.” These images seemed literal descriptions of Moscow and its position in central Russia as Catherine perceived them. Besides, in the more than twenty years that she had witnessed the old capital's fitful growth, it appeared to be decaying as fast as it grew. When the Empress left the city in late April 1767 to embark on her Volga voyage, so many onlookers and carriages escorted her departure that she sourly remarked to Nikita Panin: “Moscow is populous to the point of tedium.” A principal culprit in such overpopulation could be seen in the city's large textile manufactories.¹⁸

Before leaving on her Volga tour, therefore, Catherine undertook a secret step toward resolving the clash between large, privileged manufactories and small, prohibited workshops. On 17 April 1767 she personally directed the Collegium of Manufactures to cease its harassment of unregistered enterprises, “handicrafts and handiwork whereby urban residents can earn their subsistence without sin,” and to return anything confiscated from unregistered enterprises to their owners.¹⁹ This abrupt reversal of policy was instituted surreptitiously, without any public announcement, because the Empress wished to forestall any immediate outcry from privileged entrepreneurs, on the one side, and to avoid any appearance of sanctioning violence in defense of economic interests, on the other. Yet she took this step partly in response to the Pokrovskoe incident of 1766 and also in reaction to an anonymous evaluation of Russian industry, largely drawn from Diderot's Encyclopedia and evidently prepared by somebody (perhaps Dmitrii Volkov) familiar with the operations of the Collegium of Manufactures and conversant with the tenets of cameralist political economy.

This adviser condemned Russia's large manufactories and bondaged labor, á la Bielfeld's prescriptions, as dens of iniquity and depravity, inhibitors of normal population growth, impediments to the development of crafts and agriculture, and incubators of social distress and disturbance. All these abuses were sharply contrasted to the advantages of smaller enterprises based on freely hired workers and located in the provinces. So impressed was Catherine with these views, she transmitted them to the Collegium of Manufactures for consultation in drafting its own instruction to the forthcoming Legislative Commission, and she brushed aside any effort at defending the large manufactories.²⁰ Since Moscow and its environs housed a large portion of the Empire's industry, the new policy immediately took on national significance and held weighty implications for the evolution of its largest city. Without fanfare, Catherine was proceeding seriously to stimulate social and economic change in Russia on the basis of recent European social theory, notably cameralist precepts, and with a view toward boosting productivity and efficiency in a framework of stability and progress.

Beyond instituting new policies for the amelioration of conditions in Moscow, the Empress took the occasion to cheer up her venerable friend Governor-General Saltykov, bereaved by the recent death of his wife and bent by the burdens of administering the unruly metropolis. She assured him of her sympathy and trust, excused herself for pestering him with “my scribbling,” and invited him to converse with her at any time of his choice. At some point she decided on a more direct approach, revealing some of her political philosophy in the bargain.

Count Peter Semenovich,

I have heard from Count Grigorii Orlov that you harbor much dissatisfaction from your commission and sometimes approve, against your will, that to which your sentiments are not inclined, yet you are doubtful of explaining yourself to me, which I never expected: inasmuch as it is not unknown to you, that not favor and chance put matters into motion with me, but since the sole subject with me is the general felicity, consequently each possesses unhindered access to me to express his thoughts, the more so for such a person as you, according to rank and your merits, I do not find the least hindrance. And so, if you have something to say to me, I beg you to come on Thursday at 11 o'clock, without apprehending any person, inasmuch as I am master; yet my thought is explained above, wherein you can be quite certain.

Catherine

[P.S.] On Monday at Chistoi. I congratulate those who fast on horseradish and on radish and on white cabbage.²¹

Here Catherine showed her tact toward a friend and senior official as well as her very personal style of rule. Her little lecture to Saltykov also offered a concise formulation of the practical conflict between personal government and bureaucratic administration, in her denial of the role of “favor and chance” as mainsprings of governmental action and her recognition of service rank and personal merit instead. Yet her mention of Grigorii Orlov as an un-official conduit of inside information about the process of government belied her professed reliance on the established channels of communication. Catherine constantly harped on the importance of following the rules and regulations of government, but she could not long deny herself the traditional privilege of Russian sovereigns to waive the rules in any particular instance. Some might term such action prudent flexibility and wise administration. Others might call it arbitrary government and inefficient inconsistency. More often than not, it worked—in the short run at least.

CRUISING DOWN THE VOLGA

With a suite of nearly 2,000 persons including the diplomatic corps, the Empress left Moscow on 28 April 1767, arriving that evening at Tver, where they boarded a flotilla of eleven specially equipped galleys and started downstream on 2 May. Accommodated on the Empress's galley, Tver, were Grigorii and Vladimir Orlov, Zakhar and Ivan Chernyshev, Alexander Bibikov, Dmitrii Volkov, Sergei Meshcherskii, Alexander Naryshkin, and her state secretaries—Ivan Elagin, Sergei Koz'min, and Grigorii Kozitskii. Nikita Panin stayed behind with Paul in Moscow, as did Aleksei Orlov, gravely ill with an “impostume” (ulcer?) of the stomach. His condition perturbed the Empress, who anxiously read the reports of his progress relayed by Nikita Panin. Late in 1767 Catherine awarded Orlov an engraved gold cube and promoted him to lieuteant-colonel of the Preobrazhenskii Guards. Concurrently, ever conscious of balancing favors and court factions, she conferred the title of count on Nikita and Peter Panin.²²

Catherine boasted to Frau Bielcke of pursuing the Volga voyage “despite the cowards” who opposed it. After five days on the water she proudly wrote the French novelist Marmontel whose novel Belisarius she had just read (and which the voyagers translated into Russian): “I do not know where to mark my letter from, as I am on a vessel in the middle of the Volga with weather bad enough that many ladies would call it a terrible storm.” All the same, the Empress kept in constant communication by courier with her ministers in Moscow. On 8 May she informed Nikita Panin of her progress toward Yaroslavl, despite cold weather and contrary winds, anticipating that the Volga would widen and the winds abate once they passed its confluence with the Mologa. “We are all healthy and in the hospital there are only 5 persons sick, though in my suite there are close to two thousand persons of every calling.” Because of her slower than expected progress she asked Panin not to send his couriers ahead; “for yesterday and the day before we were without news from Moscow, having expected it at any hour, which added no little tedium to that which occurred from the loss of a day standing at anchor.” At Rybinsk the next day, however, she admitted miscalculating the time needed for the journey: “truth to tell, into my calculation did not enter the various maritime adventures that have contradicted our intentions.” From Yaroslavl on 10 May she asked Panin to send her more state papers—“I live idly in the extreme.” She could not shuck the habit of administration even for a few days.²³

Yaroslavl was her first significant stop. At this historic town and bustling commercial center Catherine spent several days touring the local sights, visiting the large textile mills, greeting the officials and the nobility assembled from several districts in the archbishop's refectory—a building commissioned by Patriarch Filaret, father of the first Romanov tsar, in imitation of the Kremlin's Faceted Palace. Yaroslavl “pleases everybody extremely,” Catherine informed Prince Mikhail Vorontsov: “its situation could not be better, and the Volga is incomparably better than the Neva.” Not everything impressed the Empress. After the journey she ordered the voevoda of Yaroslavl to be replaced, criticizing his weakness and ineptitude. And she dispatched a Guards officer to investigate disorders among the Yaroslavl merchantry within whose ranks he was to restore “peace, tranquility, and order.”²⁴

At Kostroma on 14-15 May the voyagers became tearfully ecstatic over the magnificent reception staged for them by the local nobility. Catherine inspected the picturesque Ipatiev Monastery outside town from where Tsar Mikhail Romanov had left to receive the crown in 1613. Before leaving Kostroma she bade farewell to the diplomatic corps, whose representatives returned to Moscow by land. She delighted in the Volga settlements and crowds that greeted her warmly all along the way; “yet I know the proverb: one hand washes the other,” she confided to Paul, “and myself have the same manners with them.”²⁵

Less happy was her stay at Nizhnii Novgorod on 20-22 May. “This town is beautiful in its situation, but abominable in construction”; thus she ordered reconstruction or construction of the governor's house, the guberniia chancery, the archive, salt and spirits warehouses. To spur the local economy and merchantry, she sponsored the organization of a Nizhnii Novgorod trading company open to anyone with at least 25 rubles to invest, promising interest-free loans of 20,000 rubles for five years in return for the company's pledge to ship grain to Petersburg and build its warehouses in brick eventually. In this instance Catherine attempted to combine notions of economic stimulation with her hopes for town planning and reconstruction, both in the service of stronger commercial ties between the capitals, provincial towns, and the agrarian countryside.²⁶

On a different plane she frowned over complaints of persecution by the Church hierarchy and the Orthodox clergy against the numerous Old Believers, Muslims, and pagans of the Nizhnii Novgorod bishopric. Writing secretly to Archbishop Dimitrii Sechenov, prominent member of the Holy Synod, Catherine described how a group of clergy in the village of Gorodets had petitioned her in person, blaming their poverty on the loss of parishioners to the Old Belief—an allegation that a check of the census records seemed to confirm. She was equally upset by a delegation of Old Believers from that same village who informed Elagin that the local clergy treated them like Muslims, refusing to christen the newborn. Although the Empress had little sympathy for the schismatics, she abhorred religious persecution on principle; hence her outrage at the local “spirit of persecution” and her recommendation that the Synod appoint worthy candidates when vacancies occurred in that bishopric. Such episodes betokened her growing appreciation of the many complex problems and tensions that beset rural Russia.²⁷

As the flotilla sailed southeastward in late May, Catherine's spirits brightened at the faster progress and the prospect that the trip would soon be over. Indeed, she had decided to disembark at Simbirsk for the return to Moscow by road, instead of venturing farther south as originally planned. “There can be nothing more pleasant than voyaging as an entire house without fatigue,” she crowed to Nikita Panin and, fifty kilometers away from Kazan, she rejoiced that the voyage had taken only 7 days 9[frac12] hours traveling time as compared to 15 days 15[frac12] hours on visits or at anchor. (She was one of those travellers who must account for every moment away from the office.)²⁸

Her entry into Kazan on Saturday afternoon, 25 May, proved the grandest of all. The welcoming crowds were so numerous that they would have formed a human carpet if permitted, but when a throng of muzhiks met her on the road with candles to light her way, they were driven off by the nervous guards. “Excluding this excess, everything is proceeding extremely respectfully everywhere,” Catherine enthusiastically remarked; “here the triumphal gates are such that I have not seen better.” Kazan impressed her most favorably. “This town is indisputably the first in Russia after Moscow, while Tver is the best after Petersburg; in everything one sees that Kazan is the capital of a large realm.”²⁹

Kazan's size and regional significance caused Catherine to spend a whole week there visiting all the local sights and dignitaries, receiving endless deputations of well-wishers with gifts from local officialdom, clergymen, noblemen, seminarians, merchants, and their wives from Kazan, the local Tatar and other non-Russian communities, and from many lesser provincial towns. All this hospitality culminated on 31 May with a grand entertainment at the governor's suburban house. As she described the scene for Paul, “there was a ball in the yard for the Mordvins, Chuvash, Cheremis, Votiaks and Tatars, who all danced according to their custom; then the Kazan nobility assembled in the rooms of the house in masquerade dress and danced; after this followed supper and a firework, and it was very merry and there were many people, well dressed, and they dance as if they had studied with Granzhe, only you were absent.” Ever the gracious guest, Catherine stayed past midnight.³⁰

The Empress felt herself in a different world and, struck by the ethnic and cultural diversity she had recently observed, began ruminating about its implications for her style of rule. As she wrote Voltaire from Kazan on 29 May:

These laws about which so much has been said are in the first analysis not yet enacted, and who can answer for their usefulness? It is posterity, and not we, who will have to decide that question. Consider, if you will, that they must be applied to Asia as well as Europe, and what difference of climate, peoples, customs, and even ideas! Here I am in Asia: I wished to see it all with my own eyes. There are in this city twenty different peoples, which in no way resemble one another. We have nevertheless to design a garment to fit them all. They can agree on general principles well enough, but what about the details? And what details! I have come to realize that we have to create a world, unify and conserve it, etc. I shall not finish and here there are too many of all the patterns.

Two days later she expressed the same ideas even more forcefully: “There are so many objects worthy of a glance, one could collect enough ideas here for ten years. This is an Empire to itself and only here can one see what an immense enterprise it is as concerns our laws, and how little these conform at present to the situation of the Empire in general.”³¹ To rule the Russian Empire rationally, with full cognizance of the diversity of local peoples and circumstances, customs and traditions, involved much more than she had ever dreamed about in Petersburg and Moscow.

Complicating this awesome task, moreover, was disarray among the Russian administrators of these “Asiatic” frontiers. Catherine was appalled to discover rampant feuding between the governor of Kazan and most of the nobility, egged on by guberniia procurator Esipov. Beginning with the governor's wife, whom she exhorted to be “more polite and affable to the people,” the Empress admonished all and sundry to cease their bickering and cajoled Esipov into initiating a general reconciliation. Even so, she reported the situation to Procurator-General Viazemskii, Esipov's direct superior, obviously fearful that the settlement would not last.³²

While in Kazan the Empress met Peter Panin's “immortal grandfather,” Nefed Nikitich Kudriavtsev, a retired general and veteran of Peter the Great's Persian campaign. She conversed with the old man, then in his late eighties, almost blind, and unable to care for himself. He presented her with a fine team of black horses for her return to Moscow, and she sent him a gold snuffbox in thanks for his hospitality. This meeting illustrated Catherine's respect for her friends' relatives and her cultivation of the living representatives of the Petrine legacy. Seven years later she was shocked and saddened by the news of Kudriavtsev's violent death at the hands of Pugachev's rebels.³³

En route from Kazan to Simbirsk the Empress visited the famous ruins of Bolgary, ancient city of the Volga Bulgars and a Muslim holy place rebuilt by Tamerlane. Two lofty minarets impressed her, but she censured the Russian church buildings erected there under Elizabeth; they struck her as evidence of the persecution of Islam and a violation of Peter the Great's order to preserve the site. The local standard of living left a favorable impression. “Here the people all along the Volga are rich and extremely well fed,” she informed Nikita Panin, “and although prices are high everywhere, yet everybody eats grain and nobody complains or suffers want.” After spending the night of 3/4 June at a village of Ivan Orlov's on the eastern or meadow side of the Volga, she waxed lyrical in praise of the region's riches. “The grain of every kind is so good here, as we have never seen before; in the woods there are wild cherries and roses everywhere, and the wood is nothing other than oak and linden; the earth is such dark stuff as is not seen elsewhere in garden beds. In a word, these people are spoiled by God; since birth, I have not eaten such tasty fish as here, and everything is in such abundance that you cannot imagine, and I do not know anything they might need; everything is here, and everything is cheap.”³⁴

Such pastoral pleasures contrasted all the more glaringly in the heat of late spring with the shabby houses of Simbirsk (now named Ul'ianovsk, the birthplace of Lenin a century later), where the flotilla unloaded the voyagers, their baggage, carriages, and horses for the return to Moscow by road. Lodged in the mansion of merchant and Urals metallurgical tycoon Ivan Tverdyshev, Catherine bemoaned the fact that most of the other houses in town had been confiscated by the state for arrears in the salt and spirits duties, “and so my town is in my hands,” she remarked bitingly. To Nikita Panin she wondered aloud about the value of such confiscatory policies, pondering whether state interests would be better served by returning “these splinters” to their owners and looking for means to repay their debts of “only” 107,000 rubles—a paltry amount for the state, but a prodigious sum for penurious provincial merchants. It remains unclear what, if anything, the Empress did about this situation.³⁵

Departing Simbirsk on 8 June, her entourage raced through the districts of Alatyr, Arzamas, Murom, and Vladimir before reaching Kolomenskoe a week later, “tired to death and worn out.” The heat of summer compelled them to travel at night and rest during the day. As Catherine whirled through these agricultural areas she noticed the discrepancies in soil quality, extent of cultivation, and degree of settlement between the fertile yet sparsely worked and settled regions of the southeast and the less fertile, albeit intensively tilled, heavily populated lands to the northwest. Concerned about supplying grain to Petersburg and Moscow, she puzzled over the profusion of grain in the rural districts along the middle Volga, the high prices in towns, and the fear of dearth in both capitals.³⁶

These observations convinced Catherine that Russian agriculture was sufficiently productive to feed the country and supply grain for export. Moreover, she doubted that the steady rise of grain prices could be blamed on harvest failure, “which has not been noticed by me in the 2300 versts that I have covered this spring.” Hence she approved further grain exports from Arkhangel'sk so long as twenty percent of the rye and wheat delivered there was purchased for the state granary as insurance against dearth. Yet she also took steps to ensure grain shipments from Reval to Petersburg, and on 22 June 1767 ordered the Senate to make secret inquiries of all governors and voevodas concerning the causes of the inflation of grain prices.³⁷

Agricultural economics perplexed Catherine, who obviously suspected that with proper management Russia could become a much richer country than it looked in the 1760s. As Physiocratic and cameralist theory postulated, promotion of internal trade in agricultural products and their export could increase agrarian productivity and rural prosperity while providing cheap food to the towns and cities, thereby restraining price inflation from population influx, and earning much needed foreign specie. Awaiting an explanation for the rise in grain prices, Catherine felt encouraged about the prospects for economic advance via agricultural expansion. Of more than six hundred petitions submitted to her during the Volga tour, she noted with satisfaction that few complained about the government and that, except for some serfs protesting their lords' exactions (petitions she had refused to accept), most contained pleas for more land. This indicated the great need for a general survey of landholding. Even so, private information persuaded her there was no actual shortage of land, “for almost everywhere there is three times as much as they can work.” Such a survey would encourage greater settlement in the fertile southeastern provinces, augmenting grain output and restraining the current price rise. Despite hail damage in July 1767 and drought later on, Russian grain exports to Europe jumped five- to sevenfold by 1770. Whether along the Volga or in the Ukraine, Catherine's eyes looked southward for the Empire's agricultural future. Her Volga voyage dramatized the new orientation. And in her capacity as manager of palace estates, the administration of which might set a good example for other landowners, she recommended that the peasants of two palace estates in the Kostroma district be persuaded to build their wooden houses on brick foundations, using abundant clay deposits along the banks of the Volga. The Empress's maternal solicitude, her urge to instruct and improve, extended even to the housing conditions of her humblest subjects.³⁸

THE COMMISSION CONVENES

As soon as Catherine returned to Moscow in mid-June 1767 she plunged into preparations for the opening of the Legislative Commission. The deputies were already arriving, and the Empress wished to impress them and the public at large with the grandeur of the undertaking. She personally attended to a multitude of details. At ten a.m. on Sunday, 30 July 1767, the Empress left the Golovin Palace for the Kremlin in a magnificent coach drawn by eight horses, preceded by her courtiers in sixteen carriages and followed by Grigorii Orlov with a detachment of horse-guards. After them came Grand Duke Paul in his own ceremonial coach. At the Cathedral of the Assumption, where Catherine stepped down from her coach, she was joined by the deputies, who marched across the square in specified order two by two behind Procurator-General Viazemskii. After the church service, during which the non-Christian deputies remained outside, the Empress proceeded to the Great Kremlin Palace while the deputies signed the oath of office. Catherine then received them in the reception hall.³⁹

Wearing the imperial mantle and a small crown, she stood on the top stair before the raised throne. On her right stood a table draped in red velvet displaying copies of her Great Instruction, the rules of procedure for the commission, and her instructions to the procurator-general. On her left stood Paul with the governmental elite, the officers of the court, and the foreign ambassadors. Farther to her right stood the most prominent ladies. Metropolitan Dimitrii of Novgorod, deputy from the Holy Synod, opened the ceremony with a flowery oration likening Catherine to Justinian and other great Christian codifiers of the law. In response, Vice Chancellor Golitsyn read Catherine's greeting, which reiterated her confidence in the deputies' zeal and her hopes for their assistance in “this great cause” for “the common good, the felicity of mankind, and the introduction of good manners and humanity, tranquility, security, and felicity to your dear fatherland.” The deputies enjoyed a unique occasion, the Empress announced, “to glorify yourselves and your century, to acquire for yourselves the respect and gratitude of future centuries; from you all the peoples under the sun await an example; your glory is in your own hands and the path to it is open for you; upon your agreement in all matters useful to the fatherland will depend its completion as well.” So ended the opening ceremonies.⁴⁰

The next morning the commission began its first working session in the Kremlin's Faceted Palace. As temporary convenor, Procurator-General Viazemskii asked the 428 deputies to nominate three candidates for marshal. Ivan and Grigorii Orlov led in the balloting, but the favorite asked to be excused because of other duties, so the meeting nominated Ivan Orlov, Zakhar Chernyshev, and Alexander Bibikov. Catherine endorsed Bibikov, whose selection (apparently prearranged) was announced to the second session on 3 August. He immediately received the marshal's baton from Viazemskii, and the deputies sat back to listen to Catherine's Great Instruction, the reading of which was only completed at the fifth session on 9 August to general acclamation. Indeed, Marshal Bibikov and the deputies obtained an audience with the Empress after the Sunday service on 12 August, at which time they urged her to accept their thanks for her inspirational work by assuming the title of “The Great, Most Wise, and Mother of the Fatherland.” Catherine regally declined the honor, explaining that only posterity could impartially judge her achievements as great, that God alone could be most wise, and that she considered it her duty to love the subjects entrusted by God to her care, whereas it was her desire to be loved by them. The marshal and deputies bowed in response and lined up to kiss her hand before filing out quietly. Six weeks later they all signed two copies of their request, kept one with the commission and sent the other to the Senate, which on 10 December 1767 thanked the deputies for their zeal, accepted the document for safekeeping, and promised to publish it in the newspapers in Russian, French, and German.⁴¹

This occasion displayed Catherine's political artistry in full flower: florid plaudits spontaneously delivered by fervent subjects in a splendid public setting. Her tactful refusal merely added modesty to her virtues. Who could doubt the stability and broad support of such an able, enlightened sovereign? And there was no mention of Paul in the titles offered her. If one British observer sourly pronounced the Legislative Commission a “farce,” two others proclaimed it “a most noble undertaking” and “a voluntary transfer of dominion … by an absolute Prince in favour of the People.”⁴²

The Empress watched some of the commission's plenary sessions from a closed gallery and followed its tortuous, confused progress. It was organized into three supervisory commissions, occasional plenary sessions, a codification committee, and nineteen subcommittees to draft legislation in specific spheres. Besides, the number of deputies ebbed and flowed over time. They could transmit their authority to others without reference to those who selected them, and governors visiting the capital could participate in the sessions if they desired. By the standards of the time, representation was fairly broad. Of some 564 deputies, 38 came from government offices, 162 from assemblies of nobles, 206 from town corporations, 58 from state peasant meetings, 56 from non-Christian peoples, and 54 from cossack communities. Serfs, although constituting more than half the total population, could not send deputies because they did not belong to a free estate and were not, therefore, considered subjects in the eyes of the law. Their owners were presumed to represent their interests. Anyway, given the widespread illiteracy among the lower social strata, they could scarcely be expected to articulate their interests in any constructive fashion. By contrast, the nobility dominated the proceedings not simply because of their numbers—besides the deputies chosen by noble assemblies, deputies who were noblemen were chosen by both capitals, several other towns, and all the government offices—but also because of their superior education, higher rate of literacy, governmental experience, and social self-confidence.⁴³

In Catherine's view, one of the Legislative Commission's most important functions was to extract and digest the proposals and grievances expressed in the nakazy that the deputies delivered to Moscow. Since, according to the selection procedure, each deputy was to bring one nakaz, hundreds were compiled. Some groups of electors submitted more than one because of disagreements, and the six state peasant deputies from Arkhangel'sk guberniia brought with them a mass of 730 petitions. In size and form the nakazy varied from bare lists of jumbled, sometimes unrelated or contradictory concerns to fairly polished programs of reform, such as the virtual treatise of 403 articles submitted by the Chief Police Administration, which applied to Russian conditions many of the cameralist prescriptions of Bielfeld and Justi. This mass of material was transmitted to the Commission for the Analysis of Nakazy, to be digested and then routed to the appropriate subcommittees. It was not intended that any nakazy be presented in toto to plenary sessions. Nevertheless, in the first weeks several from the state peasantry were read to occupy the deputies, who had nothing to discuss because the codification commission had not finished its compilation of previous legislation and none of the subcommittees had yet drafted any proposals for new laws.⁴⁴

The commission's dawdling pace irritated Catherine, impatient as she was by nature and inexperienced in public legislative politics, the novelty of which palled on her within a few months. Though unhappy with her accommodations at the new Kolomenskoe Palace, she boasted to Frau Bielcke of her busy work schedule amid Muscovite lassitude.

I arise at six o'clock and until half past eight I read or write all alone in my study. Toward nine my secretaries arrive and I am with them until eleven. Then I dress [in day clothes] and meanwhile chat with whomever is in my room. My toilet does not always last an hour, then I enter my reception room, I dine between one and two; after dinner I sew and have a book read to me until four, then those arrive who could not speak about business with me in the morning and I am with them until six when I either go out for a walk, or to play, or to chat, or to a play. I sup between nine and ten, after supper I go to bed.⁴⁵

In hopes of facilitating the commission's work, she approved the employment of foreign legal experts: the French jurist Mercier de la Rivière and a German named Willebrad who had written a book about police. Apparently the latter declined her invitation, and when she met the Frenchman on her return to Petersburg in January 1768 his arrogant loquacity earned a stinging indictment: “he is similar to a doctor.” His stay in Russia proved to be brief and barren. Long afterwards Catherine denounced “Solon-La-Rivière” and chortled about him for supposedly rearranging his apartment into different departments and bureaux on the assumption that he had been summoned to administer the entire Empire! To improve the records kept of the commission's proceedings, she sent Bibikov copies of the British parliament's journals on 27 October, but later remarked in exasperation: “I ordered them to make laws for the Russian Empire, and they make apologies for my qualities.” On another occasion, however, she warned Bibikov against alienating the assembly by hasty consideration of some issue.⁴⁶

Not only the plenary sessions disappointed the impatient Empress; some of the subcommittees incited her ire by their bumbling. She exploded, for example, on learning that the subcommittee on towns had adjourned while her Great Instruction was being bound. “Have they really lost those copies which they already received as deputies in Moscow?” she raged to Prince Viazemskii. “From this act is evident laziness, and in actual fact a violation of the Procedures: for it was ordered to spend the first days in formalities, whereas now they are using for that those days in which they could have already begun to work. About this it is necessary that the Directing Commission respectfully inform them.”⁴⁷ Catherine's irritation in this instance sprang from two considerations: her belief in following prescribed procedures and her eagerness for tangible results.

The Empress carefully followed the commission's proceedings, which she strove to keep free of passion and undue controversy. Her intervention was kept out of sight, for the most part, and exercised through Procurator-General Viazemskii. Concerning one unspecified issue she gave him the following instructions: “If possible, keep them from moving to a vote today, especially if it will be evident to you amid the reading that the matter is going awry.” Furthermore, the subject of noble rights involved such disruptive implications that the Empress advised Viazemskii to read aloud only those points of the Heraldmaster's nakaz that commanded common assent; “for the rest, as for example the one about how an officer enters the list of nobility, will cause great anxieties and will prolong the matter.” Yet the British ambassador was impressed by the freedom and vigor of the debates, and marveled at the absence of lawyers in the assembly. He relayed to his government an assessment of the Legislative Commission that reflected Catherine's own Montesquieuian views: “This institution appears to me in the light of a scaffolding to be removed of course when the Empress has completed the noble edifice She has planned, a code of laws upon her own principles, but in the manner the most consistent with the true interest and the inclination of all her subjects.”⁴⁸

The matter of serfdom involved such explosive complexities that the Empress risked much in allowing it to be broached at all. Vehement reactions by noble spokesmen made her even more apprehensive, fearful that noble intransigence might excite peasant militance. She was appalled in more than one respect by Count Stroganov's public condemnation of the murder of a lord and his wife by their serfs, and by the Senate's proposal to punish an entire village for failure to defend its lord against murderers. Such incidents testified to acute noble-serf tensions that threatened a downward spiral of noble-instigated government repression that might undermine all possibility of peaceful, gradual, and legal change. To Viazemskii she confided her thinking about government action in such a sensitive issue:

1. The Senate cannot issue laws.
2. The old ones it can confirm.
3. The Senate ought to uphold, in a word, the laws. Consequently
4. To explain the laws it cannot, and still less give them a meaning that is nowhere to be found in the words of the law.
5. I endeavor in all ways to distinguish crimes and punishments, yet
6. The Senate confounds murder with non-defense of a lord and wishes that the murderers be equated with the non-defenders; but there is a great difference between murder, knowledge of murder, and obstruction or non-obstruction to murder.
7. One can prophesy that, if in response to and in punishment for the life of one lord whole hamlets will be destroyed, a riot of all bondaged hamlets will ensue and that
8. The position of the lords' serfs is so critical, that except for transquility and humane institutions it can nowise be avoided.
9. A general emancipation from the unbearable and cruel yoke will not ensue, for not having defense either in the laws nor in any place else, every trifle may consequently bring them to desperation; all the more so such a vengeful law as the Senate has thought to issue without rhyme or reason. And so
10. I ask you to be extremely cautious in similar cases, so as not to speed up the already threatening calamity, if in the new legislation measures not be taken for the curtailment of these dangerous consequences.
11. For if we do not agree to the diminution of cruelty and the amelioration of the intolerable position for the human species, then
12. Even against our will they themselves will seize it sooner or later. Your Excellency may make such use of these lines as you yourself judge best for the good of the Empire. For it is not necessary that I alone not only feel this, but that others also consider their own prejudices.

It is not known what happened in the particular case mentioned, but the episode certainly revealed Catherine's clear recognition of the dangers inherent in serfdom.⁴⁹

Tired of Moscow's laggardly atmosphere and perhaps hopeful that a change of venue would revitalize the commission's progress, Catherine decided to halt the sessions on 14 December and reopen them in Petersburg on 18 February 1768. This step changed the composition of the commission, for thirty-five deputies employed in Moscow or the provinces ceased to attend. Despite “terrible cold,” the Empress raced back from Moscow by sledge over the frozen highway—“the noses and ears of my suite remained whole”—arriving at Tsarskoe Selo on 22 January after only four days on the road and a mere fifty-three hours in actual travel, as she boasted to Frau Bielcke. She was glad to be home. “Petersburg seems paradise in comparison to Ispahan, and especially the palace,” she told Nikita Panin and after her first Kur-Tag (literally “court-day,” a public evening party at court) since returning, she rejoiced at the unexpectedly large turnout.⁵⁰

Hardly had Catherine returned to friendly Petersburg than disquieting news arrived from restive Moscow. An anonymous letter postmarked in Moscow was delivered to Grigorii Orlov warning of a plot headed by one Ivan Eropkin to seize the favorite, force him to divulge the whereabouts of Ivan VI's brother and sister, and then kill him. The plotters were allegedly recruiting others by charging that Orlov had strangled eight persons. Governor-General Saltykov had informed the Empress by special courier on 29 January that the denunciation was the work of retired Lieutenant-Colonel Nikolai Kolyshkin, formerly in service at the imperial court. Catherine recognized the name: “an extremely unpropertied person, a drunkard, cardplayer and spendthrift never satisfied with anything: his acquaintance is usually with people like himself.” All the same, she ordered Saltykov to haul in Eropkin for questioning and, if no witnesses could be found, to confine him for forty-eight hours without food or drink to see whether he would stick by his story. Although the Empress doubted Kolyshkin's veracity because of earlier denunciations, she wanted the affair checked out thoroughly, albeit surreptitiously, so as to avoid rumors and loose talk. Eropkin was a retired Guards lieutenant, she noted, notorious for drunkenness, free-spending, and complicity in “all sorts of pranks and outrage.” Furthermore, she was incensed by the fact that Kolyshkin had withheld his denunciation until her departure from Moscow, thereby violating the law that required the submission of such information within three days of its discovery.

On interrogation, Kolyshkin supplemented his story with claims of thirty retired men planning to rejoin the state service in pursuit of the plot; he also implicated a Vologda landowner named Berdiaev, whom Catherine characterized as “filled with chicanery and impudence mixed with stupidity.” She wanted Saltykov to find out from Eropkin who the eight persons were that the Orlovs had supposedly killed, how, and when; who the thirty men were in their “party”; and, if Berdiaev were implicated, to interrogate him as well. When Eropkin was questioned, however, he denied the accusation. Kolyshkin could produce neither witnesses nor other proof, contradicted his own earlier testimony and what he had told others, and infuriated the Empress by claiming to be her secret agent in Moscow. “I have never from birth used him or anybody else for the like perdition,” she protested to Saltykov: “for I hate every sort of slander and braggadocio that come from them.” Even so, she suspected that Eropkin had indulged in drunken boasts and asked that Saltykov employ his relative, collegiate councilor Khrushchov, to coax a confession from the accused, whose friends should be watched too. If any evidence emerged against Berdiaev, she authorized Saltykov to pressure him for revelations by intimating that Eropkin and others had confessed to Kolyshkin's accusations, implicating him as well. Kolyshkin should also be pressed to find out with whom exactly he had discussed the affair; “for it is known that many were informed from him, including Master of Requests Kozlov.” Urging Saltykov to avoid provoking rumors, the Empress asked him to report frequently and reassured him of her direct good wishes (meaning money or some other special favor?).

The upshot, after a month of interrogations and confrontations, was nothing solid—only lingering suspicions. Since the case did not involve actual bloodshed or authenticated action, and since Catherine's celebrated Great Instruction had roundly condemned the use of torture in judicial investigations, Kolyshkin was sentenced to be confined to his estates forever, without the right to appear wherever the Empress was or to submit denunciations. Eropkin, though he never admitted anything, was still considered doubtful and was therefore forbidden to be in the same place as the Empress, and his relative Khrushchov was charged to observe his behavior secretly. These prohibitions were repeated for both men by Procurator-General Viazemskii seven years later when the court returned to Petersburg after nearly a year's sojourn in Moscow. In retrospect a tempest in a teapot, this incident rekindled old fears in Catherine, who reacted nervously to all talk of plots involving soldiers and who saw all threats to the Orlovs as threats to herself. Such fears darkened her already somber view of Moscow.⁵¹

Another incident late in 1767 also made Catherine anxious. Samoilo Choglokov, youngest of three sons of her former Russian governess, was interrogated by the Secret Branch and found guilty of “insolent slanderous words” as well as “malevolent intention” against her person. Ostensibly enraged at being passed over for promotion, the fourteen-year-old Guardsman had allegedly sworn to shoot or stab the Empress. Catherine forgave the insult, but after an ignominious beating with rods—a punishment usually reserved for the young or low-born—Choglokov was banished in December 1767 to a Siberian garrison with the right of earning promotion for meritorious service. He languished in Siberian service more than twenty years, once earning promotion only to be demoted for new “disorderly deeds,” before his death in 1793.⁵²

Transfer of the Legislative Commission to Petersburg resulted in no great improvement in that body's progress. Indeed, the longer the deputies met, the more they disputed. Catherine watched in helpless frustration and growing vexation as they wrangled over the rights of the nobility, criticized the slightest amelioration of the rigors of serfdom, even rejected her repudiation of torture as a means of judicial investigation and called for the reintroduction of capital punishment. If the nobility, the best educated and most civilized estate in the Empire, could not agree on the basis of its status and privileges, how could the principles of her Great Instruction inspire beneficial change in other estates for the Empire's greater glory?

The nobility's nervous intransigence on the subject of serfdom, the blind refusal to see serfs as human beings, grated on Catherine morally and intellectually. Politically, however, such views showed her the limits she must honor to preserve the support necessary for survival in power. It was a chastening experience for her to perceive the inevitable and dangerous clash of lofty, enlightened ideals with the resistant realities of Russian society. She recorded the shock of this recognition in private comments penned more than twenty years after the adjournment of the Legislative Commission's plenary sessions in December 1768. Ruminating on the nobility's disdainful attitude toward their serfs, she sorrowfully recalled:

You hardly dare say that they are just the same people as we; and even when I myself say this I risk having stones hurled at me; what indeed did I not have to endure from such an unreasonable and cruel public when in the Legislative Commission they started discussing some questions related to this subject, and when ignorant noblemen, whose number was immeasurably greater than I could ever have supposed (for I esteemed too highly those who surrounded me daily), started to apprehend that these questions might lead to some improvement in the current position of the husbandmen, did we not see that even Count Alexander Sergeevich Stroganov, a person very gentle and essentially very humane, the kindness of whose heart borders on weakness, how even this man with indignation and passion defended the cause of slavery, which ought to have betrayed the entire structure of his soul. It is not for me, however, to determine whether this role was suggested to him, or whether it stemmed from baseness, but I introduce this example as one of those which seemed to me the most astonishing. All one can say is that, if he sinned, then at least it was done with full consciousness, and yet how many there were who were guided by prejudice or poorly understood advantage! I think there were not even twenty persons who would have thought about this subject humanely and as human beings.⁵³

The Legislative Commission and Catherine's Volga voyage opened her eyes as never before to the immensity, the stupendous variety and diversity, of the Empire that she had planned to reform so rapidly and so fully. Her attempt at codification and reform of the laws proved to be far more complicated than she had imagined while composing the Great Instruction in the privacy of her study. Her enlightened sentiments, which had evoked joyful tears in the grateful deputies on first reading, seemed forgotten when they collided with fundamental issues of the multinational, hierarchical society of her giant realm. The problems turned out to be larger than the Empress had anticipated. Although she enjoyed greater support than ever, she knew her writ was little known and less understood outside Petersburg. From the Legislative Commission she reaped abundant publicity at home and abroad, presenting herself as an enlightened, practical philosopher-sovereign seated firmly on a brilliant throne. Yet its leisurely progress tried her patience, just as its sporadically acrimonious debates tested her nerves. Her interest in the plenary sessions may already have been waning when the Ottoman Empire declared war in October 1768, necessitating the departure of many deputies for military service and compelling most officials, and the Empress herself, to devote primary attention to military mobilization. Plenary sessions of the Legislative Commission were postponed as a result, but the Empress hoped they would reconvene after the war, widely expected to yield victory in short order. In the meantime, the nineteen subcommittees continued their practical substantive work, preparing draft legislation for the Empress's future consideration.

Although the commission never reconvened in plenary session, and although codification of the laws was not accomplished until forty years after Catherine's death, the Great Instruction left a living testimony of her youthful ideals—and an early example of the policy of glasnost (openness) celebrated in later centuries. Furthermore, the hundreds of nakazy brought to the Legislative Commission gave voice to a breadth of public opinion unprecedented in Russian history. If the Legislative Commission disappointed Catherine, who must bear some responsibility for its inadequate preparation and confused proceedings, it also enriched her political experience and knowledge. Toward the end of her reign, in 1794, she praised the commission as a venture that “brought me light and knowledge from the whole empire, with which we had to deal and which we had to care for.”⁵⁴ In the short run, however, it seemed to merge personal triumph confusingly with political fiasco. From this resurgent domestic crisis Catherine temporarily turned her attention to a larger, more immediately menacing international crisis.

Notes

1. SIRIO, 1:274; DCB, 1:101.

2. SIRIO, 1:272-273; vol. 10:1, 5-6, 27, 36-37, 42, 250, 280-281; vol. 42: 353; Poroshin, Zapiski, 541-542.

3. Zapiski, 711-712; George Macartney, “The Court of Russia, 1767,” Macartney papers, Osborne Collection, Yale University, 16.

4. SIRIO, 10:45-46; Memoirs, 324; Parkinson, Tour, 211.

5. DCB, 1:205, vol. 2:232.

6. Pis'ma Olsuf'evu, 435-436; SIRIO, 12:202-203; Bil'basov, 2:519-521.

7. Macartney to Lady Holland, February 1766, British Museum Add. Ms. 15,875.

8. Paul Dukes, Catherine the Great and the Russian Nobility (Cambridge, 1967), 86, 92-93, 95, 99; Roger Bartlett, “I.E. and the Free Economic Society's Essay Competition,” SGECRN, 8 (1980), 58-67; V. S. Lekhnovich, “K istorii kul'tury kartofelia v Rossii,” Materialy po istorii zemlevladeniia SSR, vol. 2 (M. and L., 1956), 259-325; MV, no. 8, 26 January 1767; supplement to no. 73, 11 September 1767.

9. SIRIO, 1:268; vol. 10:75-87; Memoirs, 306-307; Ransel, Politics, 182-183; A. Lentin, ed., Voltaire and Catherine the Great: Selected Correspondence (Cambridge, 1974), 49.

10. J. T. Alexander, “Nakaz of Empress Catherine II,” MERSH, 24:45-49; A. Florovskii, “Shvedskii perevod ‘Nakaza’ Ekateriny II,” Zapiski russkogo istoricheskogo obshchestva v Prage, 1927, bk. 1:149-152; Isabel de Madariaga, “Autocracy and Sovereignty,” CASS, 16 (1982), 381-382; Karen Rasmussen, “Catherine II and Peter I: The Idea of a Just Monarch (The Evolution of an Attitude in Catherinian Russia,” unpub. diss. (Berkeley, 1973), 112-171; Voltaire and Catherine, 56, 69, 106, 111; Gary Marker, Publishing, Printing, and the Origins of Intellectual Life in Russia, 1700-1800 (Princeton, 1985), 166-167; SJC, 29-31 March 1768.

11. W. F. Reddaway, ed., Documents of Catherine the Great: The Correspondence with Voltaire and the Instruction of 1767 in the English Text of 1768 (Cambridge, 1931; reprinted N.Y., 1971), 215-217, 219, 243-245, 249-250, 256-257, 264, 303-304.

12. Robert V. Allen, “The Great Legislative Commission of Catherine II,” unpub. diss. (Yale, 1950), 47-49; SIRIO, 13:6.

13. Voltaire and Catherine, 47.

14. SIRIO, 10:170-171; “Pis'ma Imperatritsy Ekateriny Velikoi k fel'dmarshalu grafu Petru Semenovichu Saltykovu, 1762-1771,” RA, bk. 3 (1886), 51-52, 55, 60-61.

15. SIRIO, 10:180, 277; “Pis'ma Saltykovu,” 56.

16. “Pis'ma Saltykovu,” 42-45, 51.

17. Nastavleniia politicheskiia Barona Bil'fel'da, trans. F. Shakhovskoi, 2 vols. (Moscow, 1768-1775); SIRIO, 13:3-4.

18. Jacob Friedrich Bielfeld, Institutions politiques, 2 vols. (La Haye, 1760), 1:259; SIRIO, 10:186.

19. PSZ, 18:no. 12,872 (17 April 1767); Victor Kamendrowsky, “State and Economy in Catherinian Russia: The Dismantling of the Mercantile System of Peter the Great,” unpub. diss. (North Carolina, 1982), 199-214; “Dmitrii Vasil'evich Volkov: Materialy k ego biografii,” RA, 18 (1874), 496.

20. A. V. Florovskii, “K istorii ekonomicheskikh idei v Rossii v XVIII veke,” Nauchnye trudy risskogo narodnogo universiteta v Prage, 1928, no. 1:81-93.

21. “Pis'ma Saltykovu,” 55-58.

22. SIRIO, 10:185-186, 270; vol. 12:302, 338-339; Pis'ma Olsuf'evu, 448-449.

23. SIRIO, 10:179, 187-189.

24. SIRIO, 10:190, 219-220; Tsvetaev, ed., “Sobstvennoruchnye ukazy,” 198.

25. SIRIO, 10:191; vol. 42:354.

26. SIRIO, 10:193-199, 201.

27. Ibid., 199-200.

28. Ibid., 201-202.

29. Ibid., 203; Pis'ma Olsuf'evu, 446-447.

30. SIRIO, 42:354; Kfzh (1767), 193.

31. SIRIO, 10:204, 206.

32. Tsvetaev, ed., “Sobstvennoruchnye ukazy,” 197.

33. SIRIO, 10:205-207, 210, 464.

34. Ibid., 207.

35. Ibid., 210.

36. Ibid., 211-212.

37. Ibid., 212-218.

38. Ibid., 216-218; Kahan, Plough, Hammer, and Knout, 13, 59, 168-172.

39. Kfzh (1767), 273-276.

40. SIRIO, 10:235.

41. PSZ, 18:no. 12,978 (27 September 1767); SIRIO, 10:237; vol. 12:309; MV, supplement to no. 91, 13 November 1767.

42. SIRIO, 12:291, 307, 316.

43. Allen, “Great Legislative Commission,” 67-72.

44. Ibid., 73-75.

45. SIRIO, 10:238-239.

46. Ibid., 240, 242, 253, 271, 279; vol. 27:15.

47. Tsvetaev, ed., “Sobstvennoruchnye ukazy,” 201.

48. Ibid., 201; SIRIO, 12:359-360; vol. 42:297.

49. OV, 3:390-391; V. I. Semevskii, Krest'iane v tsarstvovanie Imperatritsy Ekateriny II, 2nd ed. rev. (Spb., 1903), 1:417-418.

50. “Pis'ma Saltykovu,” 62; SIRIO, 10:276-279.

51. “Pis'ma Saltykovu,” 63-68.

52. SIRIO, 42:297; Parkinson, Tour, 124, 258; Anon., “Brat'ia Choglokovy,” Pamiatniki novoi russkoi istorii (Spb., 1873), 3:323-333.

53. Zapiski, 174-175.

54. Memoirs, 307.

I. Writings of Catherine II

Memoirs of Catherine the Great, tr. Katharine Anthony. N.Y., 1927.

Memoirs of the Empress Catherine II, Written by Herself with a Preface by Alexander Herzen. N.Y., 1859.

Pis'ma Ekateriny II k Adamu Vasili'evichu Olsuf'evu, 1762-1783. M., 1863.

Pis'ma imperatritsy Ekateriny II k Datskoi koroleve Iuliane Marii, ed. I. Ia. Shchelkunov. Copenhagen, 1914.

“Pis'ma imperatritsy Ekateriny Velikoi k fel'dmarshalu grafu Petru Semenovichu Saltykovu, 1762-1771,” RA [Russkii arkhiv], 1886, bk. 3:5-105.

“Sobstvennoruchnye ukazy i pis'ma imperatritsy Ekateriny Velikoi,” ed. D. V. Tsvetaev, Zhurnal Ministerstva iustitsii, 1915, no. 10:182-218.

Voltaire and Catherine the Great: Selected Correspondence, ed. and tr. A. Lentin. Cambridge, 1974.

II. Other Primary Sources

Bielfeld, Jacob Friedrich von. Institutions politiques. 2 vols. The Hague, 1760.

Buckinghamshire, Earl of. The Despatches and Correspondence of John, Second Earl of Buckinghamshire, Ambassador to the Court of Catherine II of Russia, 1762-1765 [DCB], ed. A. D. Collyer, 2 vols. London, 1900-1902.

Macartney, George. An Account of Russia in 1767. London, 1768.

Ministerstva imperatorskago dvora. Kamer-fur'erskii tseremonial'nyi zhurnal [Kfzh], 1762-1796. Spb., 1853-1896.

Osmnadtsatyi vek, ed. P. I. Bartenev, 4 vols. M., 1868-69.

Parkinson, John, A Tour of Russia, Siberia, and the Crimea, 1792-1794, ed. William Collier. London, 1971.

Polnoe sobranie zakonov rossiiskoi imperii. 1st series, 46 vols. Spb., 1830.

Poroshin, S. A. Semena Poroshina zapiski, sluzhashchiia k istorii Ego Imperatorskago Vysochestva blagovernago gosudaria tsesarevicha i velikago kniazia Pavla Petrovicha naslednika prestolu Rossiiskago. Spb., 1844.

Sbornik imperatorskogo russkogo istoricheskogo obshchestva [SIRIO], 148 vols. Spb., 1867-1916.

III. Unpublished Dissertations

Allen, Robert V. “The Great Legislative Commission of Catherine II of 1767,” Yale, 1950.

Kamendrowsky, Victor. “State and Economy in Catherinian Russia: The Dismantling of the Mercantile System of Peter the Great,” North Carolina, 1982.

Rasmussen, Karen M. “Catherine II and Peter I: The Idea of a Just Monarch: The Evolution of an Attitude in Catharinian Russia,” California/Berkeley, 1973.

IV. Secondary Works

Alexander, John T. “Nakaz of Catherine the Great,” MERSH, 1981, vol. 24:45-49.

Bartlett, Roger P. “I. E. and the Free Economic Society's Essay Competition,” SGECRN, 1980, no. 8:58-67.

Bil'basov, V. A. Istoricheskiia monografiia, 5 vols. Spb., 1901.

Dukes, Paul. Catherine the Great and the Russian Nobility: A Study Based on the Materials of the Legislative Commission of 1767. Cambridge, 1967.

Kahan, Arcadius. The Plough, the Hammer, and the Knout: An Economic History of Eighteenth Century Russia. Chicago, 1985.

Madariaga, Isabel de. “Autocracy and Sovereignty,” CASS, 1982, vol. 16:369-387.

Marker, Gary. Publishing, Printing, and the Origins of Intellectual Life in Russia, 1700-1800. Princeton, 1985.

Ransel, David L. The Politics of Catherinian Russia: The Panin Party. New Haven, 1975.