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Soviet Union [USSR] Imperial Expansion and Maturation: Catherine II
Catherine II's reign was notable for imperial expansion and
internal consolidation. The empire acquired huge new territories in
the south and west. A war that broke out with the Ottoman Empire in
1768 was settled by the Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji in 1774. Russia
acquired an outlet to the Black Sea, and the Crimean Tatars were
made independent of the Ottomans. In 1783 Catherine annexed Crimea,
helping to spark the next war with the Ottoman Empire in 1787. By
the Treaty of Jassy in 1792, Russia acquired territory south to the
Dnestr River. The terms of the treaty fell far short of the goals
of Catherine's reputed "Greek project"--the expulsion of the
Ottomans from Europe and the renewal of a Byzantine empire under
Russian control. The Ottoman Empire, nevertheless, was no longer a
serious threat to Russia and was forced to tolerate an increasing
Russian influence over the Balkans.
Russia's westward expansion was the result of the partitioning
of Poland. As Poland became increasingly weak in the eighteenth
century, each of its neighbors--Russia, Prussia, and Austria--tried
to place its own candidate on the Polish throne. In 1772 the three
agreed on the first partition, by which Russia received parts of
Belorussia and Livonia. After the partition, Poland initiated an
extensive reform program, which in 1793 led to the second
partition. This time Russia obtained most of Belorussia and Ukraine
west of the Dnepr River. The partition led to an anti-Russian and
anti-Prussian uprising in Poland, which ended with the third
partition in 1795. The result was that Poland was wiped off the
map.
Although the partitioning of Poland greatly added to Russia's
territory and prestige, it also created new difficulties. Russia,
having lost Poland as a buffer, had to share borders with both
Prussia and Austria. In addition, the empire became more ethnically
heterogeneous as it absorbed large numbers of Poles, Ukrainians,
Belorussians, and Jews. The fate of the Ukrainians and
Belorussians, who were primarily serfs, changed little at first
under Russian rule. Roman Catholic Poles, however, resented their
loss of independence and proved to be difficult to integrate. Jews,
who had been barred from Russia in 1742, were viewed as an alien
population, and a decree of January 3, 1792, formally initiated the
Pale of Settlement
(see Soviet Union USSR - Other Major Nationalities
, ch. 4). The
decree permitted Jews to live only in the western part of the
empire, thereby setting the stage for anti-Jewish discrimination in
later periods. At the same time, the autonomy of Ukraine east of
the Dnepr, the Baltic republics, and various cossack areas was
abolished. With her emphasis on a uniformly administered empire,
Catherine presaged the policy of Russification practiced by later
tsars and by their successors.
Historians have debated Catherine's sincerity as an enlightened
monarch, although few have doubted that she believed in government
activism aimed at developing the empire's resources and making its
administration more rational and effective. Initially, Catherine
attempted to rationalize government procedures through law. In 1767
she created the Legislative Commission, drawn from nobles,
townsmen, and others, to codify Russia's laws. Although no new law
code was formulated, Catherine's Instruction to the Commission
introduced some Russians to Western political and legal thinking.
During the 1768-74 war with the Ottoman Empire, Russia
experienced a major social upheaval, the Pugachev Uprising. In
1773, a Don Cossack, Emelian Pugachev, announced that he was Peter
III. He was joined in the rebellion by other cossacks, various
Turkic tribes who felt the impingement of the Russian centralizing
state, and industrial workers in the Ural Mountains, as well as by
peasants hoping to escape serfdom. Russia's preoccupation with the
war enabled Pugachev to take control of a part of the Volga area,
but the regular army crushed the rebellion in 1774.
The Pugachev Uprising bolstered Catherine's determination to
reorganize Russia's provincial administration. In 1775 she divided
Russia, strictly according to population statistics, into provinces
and districts and gave each province an expanded administrative,
police, and judicial apparatus. Nobles, who were no longer required
to serve the central government, were given significant roles in
administering provincial governments.
Catherine also attempted to organize society into well-defined
social groups, or estates. In 1785 she issued charters to nobles
and townsmen. The Charter to the Nobility confirmed the liberation
of the nobles from compulsory service and gave them rights that not
even the autocracy could infringe upon. The Charter to the Towns
proved to be complicated and ultimately less successful than the
one issued to the nobles. Failure to issue a similar charter to
state peasants, or to ameliorate the conditions of serfdom, made
Catherine's social reforms incomplete.
The intellectual Westernization of the elite continued during
Catherine's reign. An increase in the number of books and
periodicals also brought forth intellectual debates and social
criticism. In 1790 Aleksandr Radishchev published his Journey
from St. Petersburg to Moscow, a fierce attack on serfdom and
the autocracy. Catherine, already frightened by the French
Revolution, had Radishchev arrested and banished to Siberia.
Radishchev was later recognized as "the father of Russian
radicalism."
In many respects, Catherine brought the policies of Peter the
Great to fruition and set the foundation for the nineteenth-century
empire. Russia became a power capable of competing with its
European neighbors on military, political, and diplomatic grounds.
Russia's elite became culturally more like the elites of central
and west European countries. The organization of society and the
government system, from Peter the Great's central institutions to
Catherine's provincial administration, remained basically unchanged
until the emancipation of the serfs in 1861 and, in some respects,
until the fall of the monarchy in 1917. Catherine's push to the
south, with the founding of the city of Odessa on the Black Sea,
provided the basis for Russia's nineteenth-century grain trade.
Despite such accomplishments, the empire built by Peter I and
Catherine II was beset with fundamental problems. A small
Europeanized elite, alienated from the mass of ordinary Russians,
raised questions about the very essence of Russia's history,
culture, and identity. Russia's military preeminence was achieved
by reliance on coercion and a primitive command economy based on
serfdom. Although economic development was almost sufficient for
Russia's eighteenth-century needs, it was no match for those of the
Western countries that were being transformed by the Industrial
Revolution. Catherine's attempt at organizing society into
corporate estates was already being challenged by the French
Revolution, which emphasized individual citizenship. Russia's
territorial expansion and the incorporation of an increasing number
of non-Russians into the empire set the stage for the future
nationalities problem. Finally, the first questioning of serfdom
and autocracy on moral grounds foreshadowed the conflict between
the state and the intelligentsia that was to become dominant in the
nineteenth century.
Data as of May 1989
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