Catherine the Great
- Catherine was called an 'enlightened despot,' by intellects such as Voltaire - Catherine believed in Enlightenment political thought - Established fifty provinces which were divided into ten districts - A governor, and a network of officials, divided by executive, legislative and judicial functions were supposed to run each province - Catherine realized the need for the establishment of laws - Arguments have occurred over whether Catherine used the Enlightenment as a way of placing "her rule on firm philosophic foundations and providing a national guide for the moral leadership of Europe" - Catherine strove to emulate Western European rule by planting western thought and practices onto the upper class - Catherine went to great lengths to make Voltaire's acquaintance Rousseau and Catherine the Great - Rousseau was the self- proclaimed 'enemy of monarchs' - Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher, writer and composer - His political philosophy influenced the overall development of modern political, sociological and educational thought - Rousseau was seriously studied and debated by Catherine Catherine and Her Reforms On Russia - Catherine ‘westernized’ Russia - Her reforms went even further after a failed peasant revolt in 1773 - First she established the Free Economic Society reforms to encourage the modernization of agriculture and industry - Second she encouraged foreign investment in economically underdeveloped areas - Third, Catherine relaxed the censorship law and encouraged education for the nobles and middle class - !767 Catherine established the Legislative Commission to revise the legal code, while according to the "Instruction." Or, in other words, to achieve her country's political and social needs - Catherine consolidated power from the serfs and feudal lords by continuing political reforms started by Peter the Great - Thus further increased central control over the provinces - Land expansion increased during the Polish civil war in the late 1760s and again in 1768 when a Russian victory over the Ottoman empire resulted in territory stretching to the banks of the Black Sea - Catherine imported many great works in literature, art, and print from the Western European nations - St Petersburg blossomed with sculptures, palaces and educational systems - Education and law codes further developed under her reign - By the end of her 34 year reign, Catherine had placed Russia into the world scene as a major world empire - Her goal was to rationalize and reform the administration of the Russian Empire - Catherine undertook a wide range of internal political reforms and waged 2 successful wars against the Ottoman Empire - Her achievements played a major role in the development of Russia as a modern state, not only in a political sense but also in a cultural sense - Catherine founded academies, journals, and libraries |
Catherine and the Enlightenment
- Enlightenment was a period of critical thinking by educated men about how to make conditions better by political reform and society - Catherine during her early rule started to read the work of great philosophers of the French enlightenment - The main strands of the enlightenment thought were: teaching techniques of social criticism, teaching faith i progress and human perfectibility, and the critique of the wealth and privilege of the Church - She developed a philosophy of rule - ' Benevolent despotism,' as Voltaire called it, was what Catherine put into play when she became Empress - Catherine encouraged book production and the translation of foreign works into Russian -despotism is a form of government in which a single entity rules with absolute and complete power Catherine and Voltaire - Voltaire praised Catherine's authoritarian style and mocked the extravagance of her French counterparts - Catherine viewed herself a patron of the arts and liberty and a 'philosopher on the the throne' - however has been criticized for the little she did for the millions of peasants in her empire - Voltaire supported her military endeavors, including her war against the Turks - Voltaire called her the 'Star of the North' and the 'Semiramis of Russia' in a reference to a legendary Queen of Babylon - Wrote to each other through letters - First letter to Voltaire was in 1763 - Voltaire believed that even before Peter the Great, Russia had been a barbaric country - their correspondence increased to about forty letters each in 1770 and 1771 during the war with Turkey - Voltaire and Catherine discussed Catherine's foreign policy, including the partition of Poland and the first war with the Ottoman Empire in 1768- 74 - In the letters, Voltaire exercised his famous wit to refer to the Ottoman ruler, Mustafa III as 'fat and ignorant Reign (1762- 1796) - Extended the borders of the Russian Empire southward and westward at the expense of the ottoman Empire and the Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth - She wrote comedies, fiction and memoirs while cultivating with Voltaire - Established a Free economic Society in Saint Petersburg in 1765 - Leading economists of her day became foreign members of this society - In 1766, Catherine endeavoured to embrace in legislation the principles of Enlightenment which she had learnt from studying the French philosophers - Called together at Moscow a Grand Commission, much like a consultative parliament - Catherine began issuing codes to address some of the modernisation trends suggested in her Nakaz - In 1775, Catherine decreed a statue for the Administration of the Provinces of the Russian Empire - The Statue sought to efficiently govern Russia by increasing population and dividing the country into provinces and districts - In 1785, Catherine conferred on the nobility the Charter to the Nobility, which increased further the power of the landed oligarchs - Landowning noble class owned the serfs, who were bound to the land that they were tilled - In 1785, Catherine also issued the Charter of the towns, which distributed all people into 6 groups as a way to limit the power of nobles and create a middle estate - In 1781, Catherine issued the Code of Commercial Navigation and Salt Trade Code - Catherine also introduced the: Police Ordinance of 1782, and the Statue of National Education of 1786 - In 1777, Catherine described to Voltaire her legal innovations within a backward Russia as progressing “little by little” - Catherine believed a ‘new kind of person’ could be created by inoculating Russian Children with European education - Believed education could change the hearts and minds of Russian people and turn them away from backwardness - Catherine established the Moscow Foundling Home (Orphanage) as to educating destitute children and developing them into enlightened subjects - However, this was unsuccessful due to the high mortality rates - Catherine then established the Smolny Institute for Noble girls to educate females - Here they were taught to impeccable French, musicianship, dancing and complete awe of the Monarch - Catherine remodelled the cadet Corps in 1766 to initiate many educational reforms - Catherine established a commission of National Schools, which was charged with organising a national school network, training the teachers and providing the textbooks |