Catherine the Great as Absolute Monarch: Myths and Realities

Catherine II of Russia may be Russia’s most maligned monarch, not least because diplomats and leaders of other European states found her such a worthy opponent. Unable to ignore her, they frequently resorted to calumny. Undue attention was paid to her amours and her genuine successes were frequently belittled.

Textbook coverage on Catherine is often limited to her overtures to philosophes on the positive side and her coolly calculated partitions of Poland on the negative. She is presented as all style, as with her Nakaz, and no substance, for not having freed the serfs.

In reality Catherine was a ruler of wide-ranging intellectual interests, with a much broader reform program than she is often given credit for. She worked hard to acquaint herself with her realm, traveling more than any ruler before her besides Peter I. Her reforms of the 1770s (provincial reform law, urban planning) and 1780s (comprehensive police statute, educational reform, charters to targeted status groups) were models of old regime legislation. Her project to reorient Russia towards the south, had the French Revolution not intervened, might well have refashioned Russia’s role in the world.

Catherine’s response to that revolution was measured. She gave refuge to its opponents but never directly committed forces to fight it. Even as it raged, she continued to prepare her grandson to rule making use of many of its ideas. One of his tutors, after all, was a brother of a member of the Committee of Public Safety.

My presentation will offer evidence to redress the false impression that has been perpetrated about Catherine’s rule by drawing from some of these lesser known aspects.