Catherine the Great

arranged by a German-born princess. Aphorisms such as “Liberty is the right to do all that is not forbidden by law” were ideas so alien to the majority of Russians as to be almost incomprehensible.

In the meeting hall, the delegates sat on benches according to the district from which they had come. The nobility sat in front; behind them were the townspeople, the Cossacks, and the peasant delegates. For the important role of marshal (or president) of the commission, the empress chose General Alexander Bibikov, a soldier; he was charged with organizing and guiding the commission’s work. Before the delegates began the work they had been summoned to do, they insisted on debating what title they should present to the empress in gratitude for her calling them together. “The Great” and “All Wise Mother of the Fatherland” were the most popular. Discussion lasted several sessions, provoking Catherine to say impatiently to Bibikov, “I brought them together to study laws, and they are busying discussing my virtues.” Eventually, she refused all titles, explaining that she had not earned any of them; that only posterity could impartially judge her achievements, and that God alone could be called “All Wise.” Nevertheless, she was far from displeased when the title “Catherine the Great” received the greatest number of votes; she had been on the throne for only five years, whereas Peter the Great had not received this title from the Senate until his fourth decade as tsar. And there was no doubt that the offer of this title by an elected assembly of the free estates strengthened the legitimacy of her position. It eliminated further discussion of her ever reverting to the role of regent, as well as any talk of the accession of Paul when he came of age.

The commission took up rules of procedure and assignment to subcommissions. The full assembly was to act as a general debating arena, and the main work of analysis, coordination, and drafting of new laws was to be distributed among nineteen subcommissions. The assembly turned to the reports the delegates had brought with them. Catherine believed that discussion of these grievances and proposals, setting forth the needs of each area and class, would be one of the Legislative Commission’s most important functions; she expected it to give her a valuable picture of social conditions in Russia. Each delegate was certain that his own list of complaints should be the primary concern of the assembly. Hundreds of these lists and petitions had arrived; the six state peasant delegates from the Archangel region brought with them a mass of seventy-three petitions. Some were simple lists, often unrelated or contradictory; others were relatively sensible proposals for reform. In all, over a thousand peasant petitions were submitted to the Legislative Commission. Naturally, the peasants were less able than the nobles and the townspeople to clearly spell out their grievances, and they tended to limit themselves to descriptions of local problems: fences knocked down, crops trampled by wandering cattle, the scarcity of timber, the cost of salt, the law’s delay, the insolence of government officials. Because they were vulnerable to pressure from the local nobility or local government officials, it was difficult for them to be explicit in their complaints. Attempting to hear them all, the sessions went on spawning subcommittees, where much was begun and little finished. Eventually, Catherine realized that the mission assigned to the delegates to find laws suitable for all the citizens of the empire was beyond their reach. Nevertheless, an extraordinary thing was happening: for the first time in Russia, representatives of the people had been brought and were sitting together to speak frankly and publicly without fear of serious retribution about what troubled them and the people they represented.

Catherine was often present, secluded on a platform behind a drawn curtain. She learned something about conditions in her empire, but the commission’s stumbling pace irritated her—so much so that at one point she rose from behind her curtain and walked out. Not only did the full assembly sessions disappoint her; some of the subcommittees made her angry. On one occasion, told that the subcommittee on towns had adjourned while waiting for additional copies of the Nakaz to be bound, she exploded, “Have they really already lost those copies which they have already been given?” In December, after five months of talk, she decided that she had heard enough and halted the commission session in Moscow. Hopeful that a change of place might revitalize the delegates, she ordered them to reconvene in St. Petersburg two months later. In mid- January, she set off in her sledge over the frozen road. A long string of other sledges, filled with delegates, followed.

When the Legislative Commission met again in St. Petersburg on February 18, 1768, it began by discussing the status of the nobility and the townspeople, the merchants, and the free peasants. Nobles asked that their prerogatives be extended in the form of greater power in provincial and local governments; they also wanted the right to enter commerce and industry in the towns. In addition, the noblemen argued among themselves over definitions of the status and rights of the different layers of nobility. The old hereditary nobility demanded establishment of a strict demarcation between nobility of birth and men recently raised to noble rank for service or merit—men like the Orlovs.

Another bitter debate set noble landowners against town merchants. The nobility claimed the exclusive right to own serf labor and complete freedom in dealing with the serf problem, economically and administratively. The merchants, having heard from the Nakaz that all citizens were equal before the law, demanded the same privileges as the nobility, including the right to own serfs. The landowners fought to prevent this, just as the merchants were fighting the attempt by landowners to engage in industry and trade. In the end, both initiatives failed.

In the course of these debates between nobles and merchants on the right to own serfs, the larger, more explosive subject of serfdom arose. The assembly was divided between two fundamentally opposing viewpoints. Those who supported serfdom declared that the institution must be permanent; that it was the only solution to an economic problem that went deeper than the owner’s social status and privilege; namely, that serfdom was essential to the supply and control of labor in a huge, primarily agricultural country. Serfdom’s opponents spoke of the evils and human misery caused by a form of bondage approaching slavery. With economy and tradition on one side, and philosophy and compassion on the other, there appeared no bridge to span the gulf.

Catherine was no better able to find a solution than anyone else. In her original version, the Nakaz had gone as far as to advocate the gradual abolition of serfdom in Russia by allowing serfs, with the permission of their owners, to purchase their own freedom. The Russian nobility overwhelmingly opposed ideas like this, which had been stricken from the document before it went to print. The question of whether serfs should be allowed to own personal property apart from land came before the assembly. It led to heated discussions on the relationship between landowners and serfs, and the administrative and punitive powers landowners should have over their serfs. To the charge that the peasants were lazy and drunk, a liberal delegate replied, “The peasant has his feelings. He knows that all he owns belongs to his landowner. How can he be virtuous when he is deprived of all means of being so? He drinks, not from laziness, but from downheartedness. The hardest worker becomes careless if he is constantly oppressed and owns nothing.”

Other enlightened landlords spoke in favor of legal limitations on landlords’ power over serfs; Bibikov, the marshal, urged that noblemen who tortured their serfs be declared insane, which would allow the law to seize their estates. But when specific improvements in the condition of serfs and the eventual abolition of serfdom were proposed, the speakers were shouted down. Liberals among the noble delegates were vilified and even threatened with death by extremist members of the conservative majority.

Catherine had hoped for support from Count Alexander Stroganov. He had been educated in Geneva and Paris, and it was he who had supported her at the moment when Peter III had shouted “Dura!” in a crowded banquet hall. But when Stroganov rose to speak in the Legislative Commission, he defended the institution of serfdom with passion. Prince Michael Scherbatov, who considered the hereditary nobility an institution ordained by God, argued that because Russia was a cold, northern country, peasants would not work without being forced to do so. The state could not force them, he said, because Russia was too large. Only the nobility could do it, but they had to do it in the traditional way, with no interference by the state.

The poet and playwright Alexander Sumarokov objected to the special privileges, such as immunity for life from corporal punishment, granted in advance to peasant delegates to the Legislative Commission. Sumarokov also objected to the principle of majority voting. “The majority of votes does not confirm the truth, but only indicates the wishes of the majority,” he said. “Truth is confirmed by profound reason and impartiality.” Sumarokov further