intermediary powers and clear laws, which require that the individual 'be fully convinced that it was his Interest, as well as Duty, to preserve those Laws inviolable.' The French monarchy rightly appraised the subversive implications of such an approach to the justification of authority, confiscating some two thousand copies en route to France in 1771, and preventing any of the twenty-four foreign versions of the work from being printed there.17
Catherine admired not only Bentham but his adversary, Blackstone, whose Commentaries she carefully studied and had translated in three volumes. She was widely admired not only in England but also in Italy, where a vast treatise was dedicated to her in 1778, celebrating the victorious alliance of power and reason in the eighteenth century.18 Nearly one sixth of the articles in Catherine's Nakaz were taken directly from the work of another Italian, Beccaria's On Crimes and Punishment, which armed Catherine with her conviction that crime comes from ignorance and poor laws, and punishment should be precise and pedagogic rather than arbitrary and vindictive.19
But it was always with the French that Catherine felt the greatest kinship. Commenting on the new alliance with France in 1756 just after it was concluded and well before her own accession to the throne, Catherine wrote that 'if the gain is not great in commerce, we shall compensate ourselves with bales of intelligence.'20
The bales had already begun to arrive with the first appearance of a French-language journal on Russian soil in 1755, and with the unprecedented sale of three thousand copies of Voltaire's Philosophy of History in St. Petersburg alone within a few days of its appearance in 1756.21
Vfll^ffi^QiLbecanie-aie official historian of the Russian Empire and a kindoLpatron. saint for the secuErlaristocracy. The many-sided French Enlightenment was thought to be all of a piece, with Voltaire at its center. Friend and foe alike spoke of Vol'ter'ianstvo ('Voltairianism') as the ruling force in Western culture, just as they had spoken of Latinstvo ('Latinism') in the fifteenth century. With Catherine's active encouragement, much of the Russian aristocracy became enamored with Voltairianism, which had the general meaning of rationalism, scepticism, and a vague passion for reform. In the first year of her reign, at the age of 34, she opened a correspondence with Voltaire, who was nearly 70. Almost all of the sixty-odd separate works of Voltaire translated into Russian in the last third of the eighteenth century appeared during Catherine's reign. At least 140 printed
translations of Voltaire's works were published in the course of the aristocratic century; numerous abstracts and handwritten copies were made; and no aristocratic library was thought complete if it did not contain a substantial collection of his works in the original French. The name of Voltaire was enthroned literally as well as figuratively; for the new high-backed, thin-armed easy chair in which Russian aristocrats seated themselves for after-dinner conversation was modeled on that on which Voltaire was often depicted sitting, and is known even today as a Vol'terovskoe kreslo or 'Voltaire chair.'22
If Voltaire was the symbol, the Gallicized German Friedrich Grimm was the major source of information for Catherine's court. He supplemented his famed literary newsletter on the intellectuaT Efe of the salons with a voluminous correspondence with the Empress, who showered him with many favors, including eventual appointment as her minister in Hamburg. Grimm became a kind of public relations man for Catherine, and was probably only partly jesting when he rephrased the Lord's prayer to read 'Our mother, who art in Russia . . .'; changed the Creed into 'I believe in one Catherine . . .'; and set ? '?? Catherinam Laudamus' to the music of Paisiello.23 Voltaire avoided distinctively Christian terminology, addressing Catherine as 'ajmest in your temple,' confessing that 'there is no God but Allah, and Catherine is the prophet of Allah.'24 Only a more systematic materialist like Helvetius was able to refrain from theistic references altogether, dedicating his last great work, On Man, His Intellectual Faculties and His Education, to her as a 'bulwark against 'Asiatic despotism,' worthy by her intelligence of judging old nations as she is worthy of governing her own.'25
On this all-important question of government, Catherine was most indebted to Montesquieu. His mighty Spirit of the Laws was both the final product of a lifetime of urbane reflection and the opening salvo in the 'war of ideas' against the old order in France.26 Within eighteen months of its first appearance in 1748, Montesquieu's work had gone through twenty-two editions, and infected previously untouched segments of society with its ranging curiosity about politics, its descriptive and comparative approach, and its underlying determination to prevent arbitrary and despotic rule.
All these features of Montesquieu's work appealed to the young empress as she sought to fortify herself for combat against the political chaos and religious mystique of Old Russia. Her attitude upon assuming power was that of one of her generals, who satirically remarked that the government of Russia must indeed be directed 'by God himself-otherwise it is impossible to explain how it is even able to exist.'27 Her Nakaz sought to introduce rational order into the political life of the Empire, and Montes-
quieu was her major source of inspiration. She set aside three hours each day for reading the master, referred to his Spirit oj the Laws as her 'prayer book,'28 and derived nearly half of the articles in the Nakaz from his works.29
To be sure, Catherine's entire effort went against Montesquieu's own assumption that Russia was foredoomed by its size and heritage to despotic rule; and she distorted or neglected some of his most celebrated ideas. Montesquieu's aristocratic 'intermediary bodies' between the monarch and his subjects served not, in Catherine's proposal, to separate power between executive, legislative, and judicial functions but rather to consolidate government functions and create new lines of transmission for imperial authority.
Nevertheless, Catherine was closer to the spirit of Montesquieu's politics than many who followed him more literally on specific points. Her effort to make monarchy unlimited yet fully rational; her sense of adjusting political forms to environmental necessities; her increasing recognition of the need for active aristocratic support so that the spirit of honor could be enlisted to support the rule of reason-all of this was clearly in the spirit of the man who did so much to turn men's eyes away from the letter to the spirit of law.
If the Spirit of the Laws provided Catherine with the image of rationally ordered politics, the Encyclopedia of Diderot and D'Alembert, which began to appear three years later in 1751, provided the image of rationally ordered knowledge. Her enthusiasm for this work soon rivaled her passion for Montesquieu. D'Alembert declined Catherine's invitation to serve as tutor to her son; but Diderot considered transferring the editorial side of his work to Riga, and eventually sold his library to Catherine and came to St. Petersburg.30 Three volumes of the Encyclopedia had been translated almost immediately into Russian under the supervision of the director of Moscow University. A private translation was concurrently being made by the future historian Ivan Boltin, and many articles and sections were translated individually.
For the rational ordering of economic life, Catherine turned first (at Diderot's suggestion) to the French physiocrat, Lemercier de la Riviere; then, following his unhappy visit to Russia,31 she sent two professors from Moscow to study under Adam Smith in Glasgow. Her most original approach was the founding in 1765 of a Free Economic Society for the Encouragement in Russia of Agriculture and Household Management: a kind of extra- governmental advisory body. Two years later she offered one thousand gold pieces for the best set of recommendations on how to organize an agricultural economy 'for the common good.' The society received
164 entries in this remarkable Europe-wide contest, with the greatest response and the prize-winning essay coming from France.32
In practice, however, there was no reorganization of agriculture, just as there was no new law code or synthesis of knowledge. The shock caused by the Pugachev uprising put an end to the languishing legislative commission and to the various efforts to make the Encyclopedia the basis for widespread public enlightenment.
