Catherine the Great

Sophia Augusta Frederica of Anhalt-Zerbst was born on the 2nd of May 1729 in the Ducal Castle in Stettin, Prussian Pomerania, into a family that possessed little money and even less political power. Her father, Christian August, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, was a Prussian general who had failed to become the duke of Courland and Semigallia, leaving his daughter to be groomed for a marriage that would elevate her house. At the age of ten, she met her future husband, Peter III, and immediately found him detestable, staying at one end of the castle while he occupied the other. Her mother, Joanna Elisabeth of Holstein-Gottorp, was a figure of strong will and ambition who orchestrated the marriage to strengthen the friendship between Prussia and Russia, though her efforts initially brought her into conflict with Empress Elizabeth. When Sophie arrived in Russia in 1744 at the age of 15, she was ill with pleuritis that almost killed her, requiring four phlebotomies in a single day to save her life. She survived and made a calculated decision to do whatever was necessary to wear the crown, zealously applying herself to learning the Russian language and converting to Eastern Orthodoxy on the 28th of June 1744, taking the baptismal name Catherine. Her marriage to Peter in 1745 remained unconsummated for years due to his mental immaturity, and she spent much of her time alone in her private boudoir, reading books in French and developing a philosophy of power politics that would later define her reign.

The Coup That Shook Europe

The death of Empress Elizabeth on the 5th of January 1762 marked the beginning of a six-month reign for Peter III that would end in blood and betrayal. Peter's eccentricities and policies, including his great admiration for the Prussian King Frederick II, alienated the same groups that Catherine had cultivated as allies. Russia and Prussia had fought each other during the Seven Years' War, and Peter's decision to cease Russian operations against Prussia and his plan to wage war against Denmark, Russia's traditional ally, eroded his support among the nobility. On the night of the 8th of July 1762, Catherine was given the news that one of her co-conspirators had been arrested, forcing the coup to take place at once. She left the palace and departed for the Izmailovsky Regiment, where she delivered a speech asking the soldiers to protect her from her husband. Catherine then left with the Izmailovsky Regiment to go to the Semenovsky Barracks, where the clergy was waiting to ordain her as the sole occupant of the Russian throne. She had her husband arrested and forced him to sign a document of abdication, leaving none to dispute her accession to the throne. On the 17th of July 1762, eight days after the coup that amazed the outside world, Peter III died at Ropsha, possibly at the hands of Alexei Orlov, the younger brother of Grigory Orlov. The official cause, after an autopsy, was a severe attack of haemorrhoidal colic and an apoplexy stroke, but the circumstances remained shrouded in mystery. Catherine succeeded her husband as empress regnant, following the legal precedent of Empress Catherine I, who had succeeded her husband Peter I in 1725, and she began her reign as Catherine II.

Common questions

When was Catherine the Great born and where did she originate from?

Sophia Augusta Frederica of Anhalt-Zerbst was born on the 2nd of May 1729 in the Ducal Castle in Stettin, Prussian Pomerania. She was the daughter of Christian August, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, and Joanna Elisabeth of Holstein-Gottorp.

How did Catherine the Great become Empress of Russia in 1762?

Catherine the Great seized power through a coup on the 8th of July 1762 after her husband Peter III alienated the nobility. She arrested Peter III, forced him to sign an abdication document, and was ordained as the sole occupant of the Russian throne by the Semenovsky Barracks clergy on the 17th of July 1762.

What territories did Catherine the Great add to the Russian Empire during her reign?

Catherine the Great extended the borders of the Russian Empire by some 500,000 square kilometers by absorbing New Russia, Crimea, the North Caucasus, right-bank Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and Courland. These expansions occurred mainly at the expense of the Ottoman Empire and the Polish, Lithuanian Commonwealth through treaties such as the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca in 1774 and the annexation of Crimea in 1783.

How did Catherine the Great influence education and the arts in Russia?

Catherine the Great founded the Hermitage Museum in 1770 to house her collection of paintings, sculpture, and books, and established the Smolny Institute in 1764 as the first state-financed higher education institution for women in Europe. She also created the Russian Statute of National Education on the 5th of August 1786, which established a two-tier network of high schools and primary schools open to all free classes.

What was the status of serfs under the rule of Catherine the Great?

Under Catherine the Great, serfs remained bound to the land they tilled and had very limited rights despite some legal changes allowing them to file complaints against nobles. The 17th of March 1775 manifesto prohibited a serf who had once been freed from becoming a serf again, yet nobles gained the ability to sentence serfs to hard labour in Siberia and imposed stricter rules beginning around 1767.

When did Catherine the Great die and what were the circumstances of her death?

Catherine the Great died on the 17th of November 1796 after a reign that lasted 34 years. Her death occurred while Russian troops were stationed at the confluence of the Aras and Kura Rivers during a military campaign against Persia, and her son Paul I ordered the troops to retreat immediately after her passing.

The Northern Accord and Southern Conquests

During her reign, Catherine extended the borders of the Russian Empire by some 500,000 square kilometers, absorbing New Russia, Crimea, the North Caucasus, right-bank Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and Courland at the expense, mainly, of two powers, the Ottoman Empire and the Polish, Lithuanian Commonwealth. Her foreign minister, Nikita Panin, exercised considerable influence from the beginning of Catherine's reign, dedicating much effort and millions of rubles to setting up a Northern Accord between Russia, Prussia, Poland, and Sweden to counter the power of the Bourbon, Habsburg League. The war left the Russian Empire in a strengthened position to expand its territory and maintain hegemony over the Polish, Lithuanian Commonwealth, eventually leading to the First Partition of Poland. In 1769, a last major Crimean, Nogai slave raid, which ravaged the Russian held territories in Ukraine, saw the capture of up to 20,000 slaves for the Crimean slave trade. Russia's victory brought the Yedisan between the rivers Bug and Dnieper, and Crimea into the Russian sphere of influence. The Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca, signed on the 21st of July 1774, gave the Russians territories at Azov, Kerch, Yenikale, Kinburn and the small strip of Black Sea coast between the rivers Dnieper and Bug. The treaty also removed restrictions on Russian naval and commercial traffic in the Azov Sea, granted Russia the position of protector of Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire and made Crimea a protectorate of Russia. In 1783, Catherine annexed Crimea, and the palace of the Crimean Khanate passed into the hands of the Russians. In 1787, Catherine conducted a triumphal procession in the Crimea, which helped provoke the next Russo-Turkish War. The Ottomans restarted hostilities with Russia in the Russo-Turkish War of 1787, 1792, ending with the Treaty of Jassy in 1792. Russia formally gained possession of the Sanjak of Özi, and it became a part of Yekaterinoslav Viceroyalty. The Russian Empire retained full control of Crimea, as well as land between the Southern Bug and the Dniester.

The Partitions of Poland

In 1764, Catherine placed Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski, her former lover, on the Polish throne, and although the idea of partitioning Poland came from Frederick II of Prussia, Catherine took a leading role in its execution in the 1790s. In 1768, she formally became the protector of the political rights of dissidents and peasants of the Polish, Lithuanian Commonwealth, which provoked an anti-Russian uprising in Poland, the Confederation of Bar, supported by France. After the rebels, their French and European volunteers, and their allied Ottoman Empire had been defeated, she established in the Commonwealth a system of government fully controlled by the Russian Empire through a Permanent Council, under the supervision of her ambassadors and envoys. In the War in Defense of the Constitution, pro-Russian conservative Polish magnates, the Confederation of Targowica, fought against Polish forces supporting the constitution, believing that Russians would help them restore the Golden Liberty. Abandoned by their Prussian allies, Polish pro-constitution forces, faced with Targowica units and the regular Russian army, were defeated. Prussia signed a treaty with Russia, agreeing that Polish reforms would be revoked, and both countries would receive chunks of Commonwealth territory. In 1793, deputies to the Grodno Sejm, the last Sejm of the Commonwealth, in the presence of the Russian forces, agreed to Russian territorial demands. In the Second Partition, Russia and Prussia helped themselves to enough land so that only one-third of the 1772 population remained in Poland. Prussia named its newly gained province South Prussia, with Poznań and later Warsaw as the capital of the new province. The partitioning powers, seeing the increasing unrest in the remaining Commonwealth, decided to solve the problem by erasing any independent Polish state from the map. On the 24th of October 1795, their representatives signed a treaty, dividing the remaining territories of the Commonwealth between their three countries. One of Russia's chief foreign policy authors, Alexander Bezborodko, advised Catherine II on the Second and Third Partitions of Poland. The Russian part included 1.2 million people with Vilnius. After defeating Polish loyalist forces in the Polish, Russian War of 1792 and in the Kościuszko Uprising of 1794, Russia completed the partitioning of Poland, dividing all of the remaining Commonwealth territory with Prussia and Austria.

The Enlightenment and the Arts

Catherine was a patron of the arts, literature, and education, and the Hermitage Museum, which occupies the whole Winter Palace, began as Catherine's personal collection. The empress was a great lover of art and books, and ordered the construction of the Hermitage in 1770 to house her expanding collection of paintings, sculpture, and books. By 1790, the Hermitage was home to 38,000 books, 10,000 gems and 10,000 drawings. Two wings were devoted to her collections of curiosities. She ordered the planting of the first English landscape garden at Tsarskoye Selo in May 1770, and in a letter to Voltaire in 1772, she wrote: Right now I adore English gardens, curves, gentle slopes, ponds in the form of lakes, archipelagos on dry land, and I have a profound scorn for straight lines, symmetric avenues. She shared in the general European craze for all things Chinese, and made a point of collecting Chinese art and buying porcelain in the popular Chinoiserie style. Between 1762 and 1766, she had built the Chinese Palace at Oranienbaum which reflected the chinoiserie style of architecture and gardening. The Chinese Palace was designed by the Italian architect Antonio Rinaldi who specialised in the chinoiserie style. In 1779, she hired the Scottish architect Charles Cameron to build the Chinese Village at Tsarskoye Selo. Catherine had at first attempted to hire a Chinese architect to build the Chinese Village, and on finding that was impossible, settled on Cameron, who likewise specialised in the chinoiserie style. She made a special effort to bring leading intellectuals and scientists to Russia, and she wrote her own comedies, works of fiction, and memoirs. She worked with Voltaire, Diderot, and d'Alembert, all French encyclopedists who later cemented her reputation in their writings. Catherine enlisted Voltaire to her cause, and corresponded with him for 15 years, from her accession to his death in 1778. He lauded her accomplishments, calling her The Star of the North and the Semiramis of Russia. Although she never met him face to face, she mourned him bitterly when he died. She acquired his collection of books from his heirs, and placed them in the National Library of Russia.

The Education of a Nation

Catherine held western European philosophies and culture close to her heart, and she wanted to surround herself with like-minded people within Russia. She believed a new kind of person could be created by inculcating Russian children with European education. Her goal was to modernise education across Russia, and she appointed Ivan Betskoy as her advisor on educational matters. Through him, she collected information from Russia and other countries about educational institutions. She also established a commission composed of T.N. Teplov, T. von Klingstedt, F.G. Dilthey and the historian G. Muller. She consulted British pedagogical pioneers, particularly the Rev. Daniel Dumaresq and Dr John Brown. In 1764, she sent for Dumaresq to come to Russia and then appointed him to the educational commission. The commission studied the reform projects previously installed by I.I. Shuvalov under Elizabeth and under Peter III. They submitted recommendations for the establishment of a general system of education for all Russian orthodox subjects from the age of 5 to 18, excluding serfs. However, no action was taken on any recommendations put forth by the commission due to the calling of the Legislative Commission. Not long after the Moscow Foundling Home, at the instigation of her factotum, Ivan Betskoy, she wrote a manual for the education of young children, drawing from the ideas of John Locke, and founded the famous Smolny Institute in 1764, first of its kind in Russia. At first, the institute only admitted young girls of the noble elite, but eventually it began to admit girls of the petit-bourgeoisie as well. The girls who attended the Smolny Institute, Smolyanki, were often accused of being ignorant of anything that went on in the world outside the walls of the Smolny buildings, within which they acquired a proficiency in French, music, and dancing, along with a complete awe of the monarch. Central to the institute's philosophy of pedagogy was strict enforcement of discipline. Running and games were forbidden, and the building was kept particularly cold because too much warmth was believed to be harmful to the developing body, as was excessive play. By 1782, Catherine arranged another advisory commission to review the information she had gathered on the educational systems of many different countries. One system that particularly stood out was produced by a mathematician, Franz Aepinus. He was strongly in favour of the adoption of the Austrian three-tier model of trivial, real, and normal schools at the village, town, and provincial capital levels. In addition to the advisory commission, Catherine established a Commission of National Schools under Pyotr Zavadovsky. This commission was charged with organising a national school network, as well as providing teacher training and textbooks. On the 5th of August 1786, the Russian Statute of National Education was created. The statute established a two-tier network of high schools and primary schools in guberniya capitals that were free of charge, open to all of the free classes, not serfs, and co-educational. It also stipulated in detail the subjects to be taught at every age and the method of teaching. Despite these efforts, later historians of the 19th century were generally critical. Some claimed Catherine failed to supply enough money to support her educational program. Two years after the implementation of Catherine's program, a member of the National Commission inspected the institutions established. Throughout Russia, the inspectors encountered a patchy response. While the nobility provided appreciable amounts of money for these institutions, they preferred to send their own children to private, prestigious institutions. Also, the townspeople tended to turn against the junior schools and their teaching methods. Yet by the end of Catherine's reign, an estimated 62,000 pupils were being educated in some 549 state institutions. While a significant improvement, it was only a minuscule number, compared to the size of the Russian population.

The Serfdom and the Rebellion

At the time of Catherine's reign, the landowning noble class owned the serfs, who were bound to the land they tilled. Children of serfs were born into serfdom and worked the same land their parents had. Even before the rule of Catherine, serfs had very limited rights, but they were not exactly slaves. While the state did not technically allow them to own possessions, some serfs were able to accumulate enough wealth to pay for their freedom. The understanding of law in Imperial Russia by all sections of society was often weak, confused, or nonexistent, particularly in the provinces where most serfs lived. This is why some serfs were able to do things such as to accumulate wealth. To become serfs, people conceded their freedoms to a landowner in exchange for their protection and support in times of hardship. In addition, they received land to till, but were taxed a certain percentage of their crops to give to their landowners. These were the privileges a serf was entitled to and that nobles were bound to carry out. All of this was true before Catherine's reign, and this is the system she inherited. Catherine did initiate some changes to serfdom. If a noble did not live up to his side of the deal, the serfs could file complaints against him by following the proper channels of law. Catherine gave them this new right, but in exchange they could no longer appeal directly to her. She did this because she did not want to be bothered by the peasantry, but did not want to give them reason to revolt. In this act, she gave the serfs a legitimate bureaucratic status they had lacked before. Some serfs were able to use their new status to their advantage. For example, serfs could apply to be freed if they were under illegal ownership, and non-nobles were not allowed to own serfs. Some serfs did apply for freedom and were successful. In addition, some governors listened to the complaints of serfs and punished nobles, but this was by no means universal. Other than these, the rights of a serf were very limited. A landowner could punish his serfs at his discretion, and under Catherine the Great gained the ability to sentence his serfs to hard labour in Siberia, a punishment normally reserved for convicted criminals. The only thing a noble could not do to his serfs was to kill them. The life of a serf belonged to the state. Historically, when the serfs faced problems they could not solve on their own, such as abusive masters, they often appealed to the autocrat, and continued doing so during Catherine's reign, but she signed legislation prohibiting it. Although she did not want to communicate directly with the serfs, she did create some measures to improve their conditions as a class and reduce the size of the institution of serfdom. For example, she took action to limit the number of new serfs; she eliminated many ways for people to become serfs, culminating in the manifesto of the 17th of March 1775, which prohibited a serf who had once been freed from becoming a serf again. While the majority of serfs were farmers bound to the land, a noble could have his serfs sent away to learn a trade or be educated at a school as well as employ them at businesses that paid wages. This happened more often during Catherine's reign because of the new schools she established. Only in this way, apart from conscription to the army, could a serf leave the farm for which he was responsible, but this was used for selling serfs to people who could not own them legally because of absence of nobility abroad. The peasants were discontented because of many other factors as well, including crop failure and epidemics, especially a major epidemic in 1771. The nobles were imposing a stricter rule than ever, reducing the land of each serf and restricting their freedoms further beginning around 1767. Their discontent led to widespread outbreaks of violence and rioting during Pugachev's Rebellion of 1774. The serfs most likely followed someone who was pretending to be Peter III because of their feelings of disconnection to Catherine and her policies empowering the nobles, but this was not the first time they followed a pretender under Catherine's reign. Pugachev had made stories about himself acting as a real emperor should, doing noble things like helping the common people, listening to their problems, praying for them, and generally acting saintly, and this helped rally the peasants and serfs, with their already moral values, to his cause. Under the peasants' dislike of Catherine, she overall ruled for 10 years before their anger boiled over into a rebellion as extensive as Pugachev's. The rebellion ultimately failed as Catherine was pushed away from the idea of serf liberation following the violent uprising. Despite Catherine's enlightened ideals, the serfs were generally unhappy and discontented under her rule.

The Final Years and Legacy

Catherine's final years were marked by a series of military campaigns and diplomatic maneuvers that expanded the Russian Empire to its greatest extent. In 1796, she waged a new war against Persia after they, under the new king Agha Mohammad Khan, again invaded Georgia and established rule in 1795, expelling the newly established Russian garrisons in the Caucasus. The ultimate goal for the Russian government, however, was to topple the anti-Russian shah, and to replace him with his pro-Russian half-brother Morteza Qoli Khan, who had defected to Russia. It was widely expected that a 13,000-strong Russian corps would be led by the seasoned general Ivan Gudovich, but the Empress followed the advice of her lover, Prince Zubov, and entrusted the command to his youthful brother, Count Valerian Zubov. The Russian troops set out from Kizlyar in April 1796 and stormed the key fortress of Derbent on the 21st of May. The event was glorified by the court poet Derzhavin in his famous ode, and by mid-June, Zubov's troops easily overran most of the territory of modern-day Azerbaijan, including three principal cities, Baku, Shemakha, and Ganja. By November, they were stationed at the confluence of the Aras and Kura Rivers, poised to attack mainland Iran. In this month, Catherine died, and her son and successor Paul I, who detested that the Zubovs had other plans for the army, ordered the troops to retreat to Russia. This reversal aroused the frustration and enmity of the powerful Zubovs and other officers who took part in the campaign; many of them would be among the conspirators who arranged Paul's murder five years later. Catherine died on the 17th of November 1796, after a reign that lasted 34 years. Her foreign policy lacked a long-term strategy and from the very start was characterised by a series of mistakes. She lost the large territories of the Russian protectorate of the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania and left its territories to Prussia and Austria. The Commonwealth had become the Russian protectorate since the reign of Peter I, but he did not intervene into the problem of political freedoms of dissidents advocating for their religious freedoms only. Catherine did turn Russia into a global great power, not only a European one, but with quite a different reputation from what she initially had planned as an honest policy. The global trade of Russian natural resources and Russian grain provoked famines, starvation and fear of famines in Russia. Her dynasty lost power because of this and of a war with Austria and Germany, impossible without her foreign policy. Catherine's legacy remains one of the most complex in history, a ruler who modernised Russia and expanded its borders while simultaneously tightening the bonds of serfdom and suppressing dissent. She is often included in the ranks of the enlightened despots, presiding over the age of the Russian Enlightenment and establishing the Smolny Institute of Noble Maidens, the first state-financed higher education institution for women in Europe. Her reign helped Russia thrive under a golden age during the Enlightenment, leading to the founding of many new cities, universities, and theatres, along with large-scale immigration from the rest of Europe and the recognition of Russia as one of the great powers of Europe.