Orthodox ritual and by ordering the secularizing of church estates and the serfs bound to those estates. Most important to his final overthrow, he offended the elite Guards, dressing them in uniforms that were completely Prussian in appearance and constantly taunting the men.

In June, 1762, Catherine, with the support of the powerful Orlov family and the Guards, acted. In a bloodless coup, she seized the crown in St. Petersburg and published a manifesto claiming the throne. Dressed in a Guard’s uniform and astride her stallion Brilliant, she led her troops against her deposed husband in his stronghold at Peterhoff. He offered his abdication, and, with its acceptance, Catherine became Empress of Russia.

Life’s Work

Catherine began her reign by declaring that she had acted only because it was the will of the people. Aware that she had come to the throne by the might of the powerful Orlov family and with the backing of the Guards, she realized the need not to antagonize the nobility or the Church. As a result, her manifesto justifying her seizure of the throne explained her actions as needed to establish the correct form of government, an autocracy acting in accord with Russian Orthodoxy, national custom, and the sentiment of the Russian people. While her words were a welcome relief from the brief reign of Peter III, her actions were not unilaterally accepted—after all she was a German by birth and had no blood claim to the throne, even if she was ultimately claiming it for her son. To complicate matters, Peter III died, in all probability murdered at the behest of the Orlovs, and in 1764 Ivan VI, himself deposed by Elizabeth, was killed in his prison cell during an abortive rescue attempt. Catherine was forced to deal with a throne which many thought she had murdered the legitimate claimants to gain.

At the time she took the throne, she still retained much of her early beauty. She had a clear, very white complexion, which was set off by her brown hair and dark eyebrows. Her eyes were hazel, and in a certain light they appeared bright blue. She had a long neck and a proud carriage, and in her youth she was noted for her shapely figure. As she aged, she grew increasingly heavy: When she collapsed immediately before her death, it took several men to carry her to her bed.

Despite her rather tenuous hold on the throne, the new empress rapidly took charge. She ended the hated war against Denmark and quickly went to work trying to reform Russia into what Peter the Great had envisioned for it. An advocate of economic growth and expansion and an opponent of trade restrictions, she abolished most state monopolies and authorized grain exports. Under her reign, Russia had some of the most liberal tariff policies in Europe. Determined to improve agriculture, in 1765 she established the Free Economic Society for the Encouragement of Agriculture and Husbandry.

Faced with the chaos of the Russian legal system, Catherine was determined to create an effective centralized government. She set to work codifying the laws of Russia, and in 1766 she published a work in which she drew freely from writers such as Montesquieu, Cesare Bonesana Beccaria, and Denis Diderot. It confirmed the need for an autocratic ruler as the best form of government to fill the needs of Russia; yet it developed the idea that the government was responsible to the needs of the people. All subjects, except the serfs, were entitled to equal treatment under the law, and all had the right to petition the sovereign. The standard use of torture in conjunction with legal proceedings and the common use of capital punishment were shunned, the only exception being in the case of national security.

Not content with this venture alone, she set to work on a series of legal codes to cover nearly all aspects of the Russian social order. In 1782, she published a work which gave minute instructions for the administration of the urban population. This was followed in the same year by two charters which delineated the rights and obligations of the various levels of society. Despite these laws, she did not deal with the one level of society that by the end of the century made up 90 percent of the population—the peasantry. Russian serfs were bound to the nobles, who had complete control over them. The wealth of a noble was based on how many serfs, or souls, he owned, not on how much land he controlled. Catherine maintained her position by the support of the nobility. To create any law that interfered with the nobles’ rights over their serfs would alienate the nobility and without any question would lead to her being deposed in favor of her son. For this reason, while she remained acutely aware of the serfs’ plight, she did nothing to change their status as property and refused them the basic right to petition the monarch, a right held by all other levels of society.

Two major problems that plagued her reign were wars and the frequent threat of impostors making claims on her throne. In 1768, the Ottoman Empire declared war on Russia over the question of Russian troops in Poland, and the war continued until the Ottomans surrendered in 1774. Russian territory was greatly increased in the settlement, but in 1787 the Ottoman Empire again declared war on Russia, a conflict which lasted until 1791. In 1782-1783, the Crimea was under siege but was subdued and incorporated into Russia in 1784. In 1788, while Russia was at war with the Turks, war with Sweden erupted and lasted until 1790. In 1793, Catherine annexed part of Poland, and in 1794 a full-scale rebellion erupted in that country but was finally crushed by Russian troops, leaving the area firmly in Russian control.

From the beginning of her reign, rumors abounded that Peter III was not dead, and at intervals impostors came forward to claim the Crown. Some of these amassed considerable followings, especially in the case of the Pugachov Revolt of 1773-1774, but all were quickly eliminated. Most of the impostors spent the rest of their lives in banishment in Siberia. Catherine was always aware of the fragility of her hold on the throne, and in later years she reacted in fear to the news of the French Revolution, taking stern measures to ensure that no such ideas developed in Russia. In 1793, she broke all relations with France, including the importation of any French goods, and, despite her earlier support of publishers, in 1796 she imposed rigid book censorship and limited the number of presses to those completely under government control. Any hint of republican thinking was quickly investigated, and anyone even remotely suspect was quickly banished.

At the height of this fear of French republicanism, and having outlived nearly all of her friends and advisers, she suffered a stroke in November, 1796, and died at the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. Her relationship with her son had always been strained, and there were rumors that she intended to remove him as her heir in favor of his son Alexander. If she left a testament to this effect it was never found, although forgeries of such a document continued to appear. The new emperor, Paul I, had his murdered father’s body exhumed, and, after crowning the remains with his own hands, he had the bodies of both of his parents buried together at the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg.

Summary

Under Catherine the Great, Russia was changed from a chaotic, badly managed nation to one of the major forces in Europe. Laws were codified and a powerful centralized government was formed. As a result of numerous wars, the lands of the nation were greatly increased. There was also a great increase in national wealth.

Despite her failure to deal with the question of the serfs, Catherine can be viewed as one of the first enlightened monarchs, attempting to create a moral society and eliminating corruption in government. She introduced smallpox inoculation to Russia in 1768, and in 1786 she published a statute setting up general education in the twenty-six provincial capitals. In a highly illiterate nation, this was a radical step forward. She encouraged advancement in agriculture and made every effort to improve the life of the Russian people.

Bibliography

Alexander, John T. Catherine the Great: Life and Legend. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. This work gives a largely unbiased portrait of a complex and powerful woman. Alexander considers all aspects of Catherine’s life and manages to deal honestly with the reality of her legendary love life. Excellent bibliography.

Bergamini, John D. The Tragic Dynasty: A History of the Romanovs. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1969. A generally detailed look at the life of Catherine although greater emphasis is given to her sexual appetites and her relationship with her two famous lovers than to the political aspects of her reign.

Cowles, Virginia. The Romanovs. New York: Harper & Row, 1971. Cowles deals with Catherine’s love of opulence and the scandals of her life, emphasizing her love of grandeur and her numerous lovers.

Grey, Ian. The Romanovs: The Rise and Fall of a Dynasty. New York: Doubleday, 1970. Catherine is depicted as a ruthless sovereign who plotted her way to the throne even before the death of Empress Elizabeth.

MacKenzie, David, and Michael W. Curran. A History of Russia and the Soviet Union. Chicago: Dorsey Press, 1978. A text covering the history of Russia. Contains several detailed chapters on Catherine which show her life in a historical perspective. Excellent bibliography of historical texts on the period.