which the country was governed at the time, to make a total of fifty units by the end of her reign. Each of these gubernii - 'governments' or 'provinces' - was subdivided into some ten uezdy, or districts. Every province contained about 300,000 inhabitants and every district about 30,000, while historical and regional
considerations were completely disregarded in the drawing of the boundaries.
An appointed governor at the head of the administration of each province was assisted by a complicated network of institutions and officials. Catherine the Great tried - not too successfully - to separate the legislative, executive, and judicial functions, without, of course, impairing her autocracy or ultimate control from St. Petersburg. Local gentry participated in local administration, and were urged to display initiative and energy in supporting the new system. The judicial branch too was organized, quite explicitly, on a class basis, with different courts and procedures for different estates. Catherine the Great's reform of local government was apparently influenced by the example of England, more particularly by Blackstone's views on the matter, and also by the example of the Baltic provinces. The arrangement that she introduced lasted until the fundamental reform of 1864.
Catherine the Great's scheme of local government fitted well into her program of cooperating with and strengthening the landlords. Other measures contributing to the same purpose included the granting of corporate representation and other privileges to the gentry. The incorporation of the gentry began in earnest with the formation of district gentry societies in 1766-67, developed further through the legislation of 1775 concerning local government, and reached its full development in the Charter to the Nobility of 1785. The Charter represented the highwater mark of the position and privileges of the Russian gentry. It recognized the gentry of each district and province as a legal body headed by an elected district or provincial Marshal of the Nobility. The incorporated gentry of a province could petition the monarch directly in connection with issues which aroused its concern, a right denied the rest of the population. Moreover, the Charter confirmed the earlier privileges and exemptions of the landlords and added certain new ones to give them a most advantageous and distinguished status. Members of the gentry remained free from obligations of personal service and taxation, and they became exempt from corporal punishment. They could lose their gentry standing, estates, or life only by court decision. The property rights of the landlords reached a new high; members of the gentry were recognized as full owners of their estates, without any restriction on the sale or exploitation of land, forests, or mineral resources; in case of forfeiture for crime, an estate remained within the family. Indeed some scholars speak - exaggeratedly to be sure - of Catherine the Great's introducing the modern concept of private property into Russia. Also in 1785, the empress granted a largely ineffective charter to towns which provided for a quite limited city government controlled by rich merchants.
As earlier, a rise in the position of the gentry meant an extension and
strengthening of serfdom, a development which characterized Catherine the Great's entire reign. Serfdom spread to new areas, and in particular to Ukraine. Although Catherine's government in essence confirmed an already-existing system in Ukraine, it does bear the responsibility for helping to legalize serfdom in Ukraine and for, so to speak, standardizing that evil throughout the empire. A series of laws, fiscal in nature, issued in 1763-83, forbade Ukrainian peasants to leave an estate without the landlord's permission and in general directed them 'to remain in their place and calling.' Catherine the Great personally extended serfdom on a large scale by her frequent and huge grants of state lands and peasants to her favorites, beginning with the leaders of the coup of 1762. The total number of peasants who thus became serfs has been variously estimated, but it was in the order of several hundred thousand working males - the usual way of counting peasants in imperial Russia - and well over a million persons. The census of 1794-96 indicated this growth of serfdom, with the serfs constituting 53.1% of all peasants and 49% of the entire population of the country. As to the power of the masters over their serfs, little could be added, but the government nevertheless tried its best: it became easier for the landlords to sentence their peasants to hard labor in Siberia, and they were empowered to fetch the peasants back at will; the serfs were forbidden, under a threat of harsh punishment, to petition the empress or the government for redress against the landlords. Catherine the Great also instituted firmer control over the cossacks, abolishing the famed Sech on the Dnieper in 1775 and limiting the autonomy of the Don and the Ural 'hosts.' Some of the Dnieper cossacks were transferred to the Kuban river to establish a cossack force in the plain north of the Caucasian mountains.
Other government measures relating to land and people included a huge survey of boundaries and titles - an important step in legalizing and confirming landholdings - the above-mentioned final secularization of vast Church estates with some two million peasants who became subject to the so-called College of Economy, and a program of colonization. Colonists were sought abroad, often on very generous conditions and at great cost, to populate territories newly won from Turkey and other areas, because serfdom and government regulations drastically restricted the mobility of the Russian people. Elizabeth had already established Serbian communities in Russia. Catherine the Great sponsored many more colonies of foreigners, especially of Germans along the Volga and in southern Russia.
Catherine II's efforts to promote the development of industry, trade, and also education and culture in Russia will be treated in appropriate chapters. Briefly, in economic life the empress turned in certain respects from rigid mercantilism to the newly popular ideas of free enterprise and trade. In culture she cut a broad swath. A friend of the
who corresponded with Voltaire and arranged for Diderot to visit Russia - unprofitably, as it turned out - a writer and critic in her own right, and a determined intellectual, Catherine the Great had plans and projects for everything, from general education to satirical reviews. Indeed, she considered it her main mission to civilize Russia. For this reason, too, she established a Medical Collegium in 1763, founded hospitals, led the way in the struggle against infectious diseases, and decreed that Russia be equipped to produce its own medicines and surgical instruments. And, again in the interests of civilization, the empress pioneered in introducing some feeble measures to help the underprivileged, for example, widows and orphans.
In spite of her preoccupation with internal affairs, Catherine the Great paid unflagging attention to foreign policy. Success and glory could be attained by diplomacy as well as by enlightened reform at home, in war perhaps even more than in peace. Assisted by such statesmen as Nikita Panin and Potemkin and such generals as Rumiantsev and Suvorov, the empress scored triumph after triumph on the international stage, resulting in a major extension of the boundaries of the empire, the addition of millions of subjects, and Russia's rise to a new importance and eminence in Europe. However, Catherine the Great's foreign policy was by no means a novel departure. New ideas did appear: for example, Panin's early doctrine of a northern accord or alliance of all leading northern European states to counterbalance Austria, France, and Spain; and Potemkin's celebrated 'Greek project,' which we shall discuss in its proper place. But, in fact, these ideas proved ephemeral, and Russia continued on her old course. As Russian historians like to put it, Peter the Great had solved one of the three fundamental problems of Russian foreign relations: the Swedish. Catherine the Great settled the other two: the Turkish and the Polish. In addition to these key issues, the famous empress dealt with many other questions, ranging from another Swedish war to the League of Armed Neutrality and the need to face the shocking reality of the French Revolution.
In foreign affairs, important events of the reign clustered in two brief segments of time. The years 1768-74 witnessed the First Turkish War, together with the first partition of Poland in 1772. Between 1787 and 1795 Russia participated in the Second Turkish War, 1787-92, a war against Sweden, 1788-90, and the second and third partitions of Poland, 1793 and 1795. It was also during that time, of course, that Catherine the Great became increasingly hostile to the French Revolution. Fortunately for the empress, Great Britain was immersed in a conflict with its North
American colonies during the latter part of the First Turkish War, while during the second crucial sequence of years all powers had to shift their attention to revolutionary France.
In their struggle against Turkey the Russians aimed to reach the Black Sea and thus attain what could be considered their natural southern boundary as well as recover fertile lands lost to Asiatic invaders since the days of the Kievan state. The Crimean Tartars, successors to the Golden Horde in that area, had recognized the suzerainty of the Sultan of Turkey. In pushing south Catherine the Great followed the time-honored example of Muscovite tsars and such imperial predecessors as Peter the Great and Anne. The First Turkish War, 1768-74, was fought both on land and, more unusual for Russia, on sea. A Russian army commanded by Rumiantsev advanced into Bessarabia
