Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Fox, Michael S. (1993). “Political Culture, Purges, and Proletarianization at the Institute of Red Professors, 1921-1929.” Russian Review 52(1):20-42.
In July of 1767 the Legislative Commission met in Moscow and was presented with Catherine II’s Instructions. The lengthy Instructions (twenty chapters and 526 articles) were intended to guide the work of the Commission as they came together to discuss the grievances of their electors and the nature of government and the laws in Russia. The Instructions borrowed heavily from writers such as Baron de Montesquieu (The Spirit of the Laws), Ce-sare Beccaria (An Essay on Crimes and Punishments), William Blackstone (Commentaries on the Laws of England), and Baron Bielfeld (Political Institutions), as well as from Catherine’s correspondence with such enlightenment thinkers as Voltaire and Diderot.
The Instructions themselves were neither a law code nor a blueprint for a constitution (as some historians have claimed), but rather a kind of guide as to the type of government and society Catherine hoped to mold in Russia. Catherine may have been inspired by Frederick II of Prussia, who had also promulgated his own visions as to the proper role of the monarch and the organization of the bureaucracy; when Catherine finished writing and editing her Instructions, she sent a German translation to Frederick II. Certainly one goal of the Instructions was to proclaim Russia’s place as a modern European state rather than the Asiatic despotism Montesquieu had named it. The Instructions deal with political, social, legal, and economic issues, and in 1768 Catherine issued a supplement that dealt with issues of public health, public order, and urban life.
Catherine’s reasons for promulgating the Instructions as well as her success in achieving the stated goals have been the subject of considerable debate. The Legislative Commission disbanded in 1768 as war broke out between Russia and Turkey, and the Commission never succeeded in finalizing a draft of a law code. Several partial codes were issued later, and some refer back directly to Catherine’s Instructions. However, a complete body of law code was never produced in Catherine’s time. The other perceived failure of the Instructions was the fact that it did not deal with serfdom. Catherine’s criticisms of serfdom were deleted from her final draft after consultations with her advisers. Chapter 11 of the Instructions does note that a ruler should avoid reducing people to a state of slavery. However, Catherine had originally included a proposal that serfs should be allowed to accumulate sufficient property to buy their freedom and that servitude should be limited to six years.
Because Catherine did not abolish serfdom, reduce the power of the nobility, draft a constitution, or promulgate a complete law code, Catherine’s Instructions have often been considered a failure. Many people have assumed that Catherine was simply vain or a hypocrite or that she hoped to dazzle the west with visions of Russia’s political progress. De Madariaga disagrees, noting that the Instructions were never intended to limit Catherine’s power. Catherine made it clear that she saw absolutism as the only government suitable for Russia, but that even in an absolute government fundamental laws could and should be obeyed. In states ruled by fundamental laws (a popular concept in the eighteenth century), citizens could not be deprived of their life, liberty, or property without judicial procedure. In her Instructions Catherine made the case for the importance of education, for abolishing torture, and for very limited capital punishment. Perhaps just as importantly, the Instructions disseminated a great deal of important legal thinking from the West and created a language in which political and social discussions could be held.
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See also: CATHERINE II; ENLIGHTENMENT, IMPACT OF
Alexander, John. (1989). Catherine the Great: Life and Legend. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Catherine II, Empress of Russia. (1931). Documents of Catherine the Great: The Correspondence with Voltaire and the Instruction of 1767, in the English text of 1768, ed. W. F. Reddaway. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. De Madariaga, Isabel. (1990). Catherine the Great: A Short History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Dukes, Paul. (1977). Catherine the Great’s Instructions to the Legislative Commission. Newtonville, MA: Oriental Research Partners. Raeff, M. (1966). Plans for Political Reform in Imperial Russia, 1730-1905. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
The intelligentsia were a social stratum consisting of people professionally engaged in intellectual work and in the development and spread of culture.
The term intelligentsia was introduced into the Russian language by the minor writer Boborykin in the 1860s and it soon became widely used. According to Martin Malia, the word intelligentsia has had two primary overlapping uses: either all people who think independently, whom the Russian literary critic Dmitry Pisarev called “critically thinking realists,” or the more narrow meaning, “the intellectuals of the opposition, whether revolutionary or not.” However, the second definition, which is often found in historical literature, is too narrow and unjustifiably excludes important thinkers, philosophers, writers, public figures, and political rulers. For example, the famous Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdiaev called Tsar Alexander I “a Russian intelligent on the throne.” Thus one may consider as intelligentsia well-educated and critical-thinking people of all political spectrums of society, not just radicals and liberals.
THE INTELLIGENTSIA IN THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE
Historians have different opinions about the time of the appearance of the Russian intelligentsia as a historical phenomenon. Some of them consider people who were opposed to the Russian political regime since the end of the eighteenth century as intelligentsia. According to this chronology the first representatives of Russian intelligentsia were writers Alexander Radischev and Nikolai Novikov, who protested against serfdom and the existing regime, as well as the first Russian revolutionaries, the Decembrists. They were either separated individuals or small groups of people without significant influence on Russian society. Their ideas foreshadowed important future intellectual trends. Because of this, most historians considered them as a proto-intelligentsia.
In the 1830s-1850s philosophical debates largely divided Russian intellectuals into Westernizers and Slavophiles, in line with their opinion about how Russian society should develop. Westernizers advocated a West European way for the development of Russia, while Slavophiles insisted on Russian historical uniqueness. Both these groups of Russian proto-intelligentsia had their distinguished representatives. The most famous Slavophiles were the writers Ivan and Konstantine Aksakov and the thinkers Ivan Kiryevsky and Alexsei Khomiyakov. The most distinguished Westernizers of this time were Peter Chaadayev and writer and radical publicist Alexander Herzen. Since there was strict censorship in Russia, Herzen established the Russian publishing house “Free Russian Press” in London in 1852, where he published the journal Kolokol (The Bell).
The most radical faction of Russian intellectuals began to adopt Western socialist ideas at this time. Among the famous radical intelligentsia were publicist Vissarion Belinsky, anarchist Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin, and the radical Mikhail Pe-trashevsky’s circle, which discussed the necessity of the abolition of serfdom in Russia and reform of the Russian monarchy in a democratic, federal republic.
The circle of Russian intellectuals remained very small before the 1860s. Higher education was available only to the noble elite of society; consequently most of the Russian proto-intelligentsia was from the gentry.
The majority of western historians agree that the Russian intelligentsia appeared as an actual social stratum in the 1860s. There were several reasons for its appearance, among them the period of Great Reforms in Russia under Tsar Alexander II with the liquidation of serfdom, liberalization of society, and awakening of public opinion. Also, the
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development of capitalism in Russia and the beginning of industrialization demanded more educated people. At this time the technical intelligentsia appeared in Russia, while education became more widespread among the population.
In the 1860s there appeared a current among Russian intelligentsia called “nihilism” (from the Latin nihil meaning reject). Some historians believe that nihilism was a reaction of part of Russian society to the failure of the government in the Crimean War. The term nihilism was popularized by the Russian author Ivan Turgenev in his
