The Revolutionary Masses
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Catherine’s thirty-four-year-long reign represented the second attempt
in the eighteenth century to modernize the country’s economy and its
social structure. Like her great predecessor Peter I, Catherine had set
out to transform the country without touching the foundations of
serfdom and, like him, she achieved considerable success.
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In her reign
the economic resources of the country increased substantially. As a
result of the wars with Turkey and the partitions of Poland, Russia
acquired 11 new provinces. The population of the empire doubled,
state revenues increased 4 times. By the end of her reign, the
transformation of Russia into a Great Power, begun by her
predecessor, was complete.
In addition,
Catherine attempted something that Peter would have never thought of
doing. She rendered signal service to Russia by her brave attempt to
implant in her inhospitable climate the ideas and the liberal spirit
of the Enlightenment. In her excellent summation of Catherine’s
legacy Isabel de Madariaga observes:
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Her greatness lies not so much in her territorial acquisitions but
in the new relationship between rulers and ruled which she
fostered. Starting with the Legislative Commission the idea of
national debate became conceivable... Instruments of public control
were multiplied and penetrated deeper into society, new concepts of
justice and legality were put before an untutored public....The
élite of Russian society basked in a new-found sense of freedom and
self-respect, and the area of private as distinct from state
activity expanded immeasurably. Learning thrived, and the court
itself acted as the source of literary, artistic and musical
patronage. ...for a brief period, at the end of the eighteenth
century, Russia and Western Europe converged: the spatial abyss and
the lag in time were reduced. After Catherine’s death their ways
diverged again... With the advance of the nineteenth century,
Russia and the West moved further and further apart; the tempo of
Russian development slowed down, while that of European growth
accelerated ... Those who remembered Catherine’s rule looked back on
it then as a time when autocracy had been ‘cleaned from the stains
of tyranny’, when a despotism had been turned into a monarchy.
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Catherine
tried hard, particularly in the early years of her reign, to foster
Enlightenment in her adopted country and to purge Russia of some of
its more barbaric traditions. Well-educated and intelligent, she
came closer than her predecessors to the understanding of the evil
of serfdom and was perhaps the first Russian monarch who was
personally in favor of abolishing the archaic social relations. Yet
the obstacles she encountered were too powerful even for an
autocratic ruler to overcome.
Her humane
and philanthropic ideas did not find much support in Russian
semi-feudal society. The ruling nobility was firmly against any
reform of the country’s social structure. Many of its members were
probably even unable to conceive of a different condition for their
servants than serfdom. The harsh conditions of Russian life and the
need to safeguard her place on the throne set limits to Catherine’s
ability to implement change. After the Pugachev revolt and the
French Revolution the Empress herself gave up any plans for reform.
Her enlightened absolutism, based on false premises and unreal
expectations, failed to accelerate Russia’s advance along the road
of European progress.
