Microsoft Word - Thomas Lowish_PhD Dissertation

Catherine the Great and the Development of a Modern Russian Sovereignty, 1762-1796

Thomas Lucius Lowish

A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the

requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

History

in the

Graduate Division

of the

University of California, Berkeley

Committee in charge:

Professor Victoria Frede-Montemayor, Chair

Professor Jonathan Sheehan

Professor Kinch Hoekstra

Spring 2021

Abstract

Catherine the Great and the Development of a Modern Russian Sovereignty, 1762-1796

Thomas Lucius Lowish

Doctor of Philosophy in History

University of California, Berkeley

Professor Victoria Frede-Montemayor, Chair

Historians of Russian monarchy have avoided the concept of sovereignty, choosing instead to

describe how monarchs sought power, authority, or legitimacy. This dissertation, which centers on

Catherine the Great, the empress of Russia between 1762 and 1796, takes on the concept of

sovereignty as the exercise of supreme and untrammeled power, considered legitimate, and shows

why sovereignty was itself the major desideratum. Sovereignty expressed parity with Western

rulers, but it would allow Russian monarchs to bring order to their vast domain and to meaningfully

govern the lives of their multitudinous subjects. This dissertation argues that Catherine the Great

was a crucial figure in this process. Perceiving the confusion and disorder in how her predecessors

exercised power, she recognized that sovereignty required both strong and consistent procedures

as well as substantial collaboration with the broadest possible number of stakeholders. This was a

modern conception of sovereignty, designed to regulate the swelling mechanisms of the Russian

state. Catherine established her system through careful management of both her own activities and

the institutions and servitors that she saw as integral to the system. She used a variety of

management strategies that included imposing laws, issuing instructions, and routinizing

interactions with administrators. While Catherine’s system, which was noble oriented, had limited

purchase in the vast Russian countryside, it established clear expectations about the legitimate

exercise of power. After her death, the system would not tolerate lightly any violation of its

principles. Catherine’s successors, Alexander I and Nicholas I, largely adhered to these

arrangements, allowing the Russian monarchy to remain a robust and viable form of government

in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Peter III: The Overthrow of a Russian Despot

2. The Empress’ ‘Nakaz’: An Instruction in Sovereignty

3. Sovereignty and the Art of Command-Giving

4. The Empress’ Body: The Routines and Geography of Power

5. Emel’ian Pugachev and the Limits of the Empress’ Sovereignty

Conclusion

111

Bibliography

115

Acknowledgments

This dissertation would not have been completed without the help and encouragement of a great

many people. Mabel Lee, Erin Leigh Imana, and Todd Kuebler were pillars of support in the

history department, guiding me through the graduate program and finding department funding for

archival work in Russia. This research would have been challenging without Igor Alexandrov, who

gave me a place to live and restored my spirits after many a dismal day in the archives with his

wisdom and good humor. In Berkeley, Liladhar Pendse helped me find electronic manuscripts of

Russian books and dissertations, and Zachary Kelly and Jeffrey Pennington of Berkeley ISEEES

provided me with a place to read and write on campus. I also owe a debt to many people who took

time out of their day to read and comment on my work directly. These include Edward Walker,

Daniel Lee, Thomas Dandelet, Yuri Slezkine, Shannon Stimson, and the participants of the Desert

Russian History Workshop. I also thank the members of the Berkeley Russian History Kruzhok

for their years of friendship, comradery, and pizza, but also their decisive comments on an early

draft of chapter 3.

Amongst the many individuals that have helped me, I want to single out three who have

most greatly influenced my graduate studies and this dissertation. Jonathan Sheehan, whose class

in the first semester of graduate school drew me to the history of the Enlightenment, carefully read

and commented on all the chapters of this dissertation when they were at an early stage. He

constantly posed hard questions and made numerous suggestions about the work’s organization

and what its central emphasis might be. I also thank Kinch Hoeskstra, who taught me the

importance of careful textual analysis and of how to think better about the tricky concept of

sovereignty. I thank him for taking me on as one of his students and for always making time for

me, despite being in another department. My greatest debt is to Victoria Frede-Montemayor. From

the first day of my graduate studies, she spared no effort in making me a better historian, always

holding me to the highest standards, while encouraging me at every turn. She was a constant

guiding light in the writing of this dissertation, providing detailed comments and criticisms, and

helping me see not only the overall story, but also why what I was doing was important. I am

incredibly fortunate to have had such a person as a mentor for such a substantial period of my life.

To her I have deep and ever-lasting gratitude.

Lastly, I mention my friends. Natasha, who helped me find my feet in Moscow all that time

ago, and who taught me the Russian language through our long conversations. I miss those days.

And Danny, Jon, and Agnieszka in Berkeley. We came. We read. We forgot. But became wiser.

There are none finer to have spent these wonderful years with.

All that is good in the pages that follow, I attribute to help of these people. All its

shortcomings, weaknesses, misjudgments, and errors are entirely my own.

Berkeley, CA

April 2021

Я предоставляю много власти людям, употребляемым от меня на службу.

I bestow much power on those who are employed in my service.

- Catherine the Great, from Zapiski Gribovskogo

Introduction

In 1762 the thirty-three-year-old empress consort of Russia, Catherine Alekseevna, overthrew her

husband, the emperor, Peter III, after a reign of merely six months. At first, many supposed that

she would act as regent for their son, Paul; yet, she quickly consolidated power for herself, ruling

for thirty-four years until 1796, making her one of the longest-reigning rulers in Russian history.

Catherine II, or “Catherine the Great” as she has come to be better known by posterity, aspired to

be an enlightened ruler. Historians have rightly credited her with undertaking a number of reforms

that modernized central and provincial government, encouraged the growth of towns and

enterprise, and furthered education. The major, albeit unsuccessful, codification effort of the

country’s laws has also garnered substantial attention.

From the outset, however, Catherine’s

principal project—the only one she spoke of at length in her ascension literature—was to bring

order to the exercise of political power in Russia.

Catherine justified her overthrow of Peter III by invoking his incorrect understanding of

and inability to wield sovereign power. In some basic sense, all monarchs aspire to sovereignty -

the exercise of supreme and untrammeled power, and the recognition of their claims as

legitimate.

Although Catherine and Peter shared this rudimentary conception, she believed that

Peter had an incorrect understanding of what legitimate, untrammeled power meant, making him

the opposite of a sovereign monarch: a despot. Seizing the throne for herself, she promised to

rectify Peter’s errors, which, in her mind, undermined Russia’s military and political prestige. She

was not alone in this judgment: those high-ranking Russian statesmen who organized the coup that

The books on Catherine’s reign are numerous. In the Anglophone literature the definitive general study continues to

be Isabel de Madariaga’s Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981),

followed by John T. Alexander, Catherine the Great: Life and Legend (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989) and

Simon Dixon, Catherine the Great (New York: HarperCollins, 2009). In the post-Soviet Russian historiography, see

Aleksandr Kamenskii, “Pod sen’iu Ekateriny…”: vtoraia polovina 18v (St. Petersburg: Lenizdat, 1992) and Ol’ga I.

Eliseeva, Ekaterina velikaia (Moscow, 2013).

This definition of sovereignty builds on standard basic definitions of the concept. For example: “The term

sovereignty originally and for a long time expressed the idea that there is a final and absolute authority in the political

community,” F. H. Hinsley, Sovereignty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 1. And more recently:

“Sovereignty, though its meanings have varied across history, also has a core meaning, supreme authority within a

territory,” Daniel Philpott, “Sovereignty,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2020 Edition), Edward N.

Zalta (ed.), URL=https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2020/entries/sovereignty/. I add the term ‘untrammeled’ to

the more common adjective ‘supreme.’ ‘Supreme’ conveys the idea that there was no power superior to that of the

monarch, but that idea was no point of contention or concern in eighteenth-century Russia. ‘Untrammeled,’ in contrast,

conveys the notion of power that meets neither restriction nor resistance, and this better captures debates around

legitimacy that were important to Catherine. Sovereignty is often defined in terms of ‘authority’ in order to underline

legitimacy as a core component. However, I maintain that ‘power,’ understood simply as the capacity to act (above

all, to carry out political acts), works better. ‘Power’ helps highlight the fact that not every monarchical decision or

action was deemed legitimate. Peter III, for example, exercised power, but in a way that even senior advisors perceived

as illegitimate. Eventually, the perception that his actions were illegitimate resulted in a loss of the (untrammeled)

powers he claimed. The best discussion on the way in which de jure and de facto components of sovereignty are

connected remains Section X: “On the Nature of Sovereignty” in James Bryce, Studies in the History of Jurisprudence,

vol 2 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1901), 503-23. Finally, it is important here to acknowledge that what I

refer to as the standard definition of sovereignty has been continuously contested. On the history of different

conceptions, see Michael R. Fowler & Julie M. Bunck, Law, Power, and the Sovereign State: The Evolution and

Application of the Concept of Sovereignty (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995);

Robert Jackson, Sovereignty: The Evolution of an Idea (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007); Raia Prokhovnik,

Sovereignty: History and Theory (Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic, 2008). This dissertation does not claim to offer a

Begriffsgeschichte of sovereignty, but analyzes the conception of sovereignty developed and put into practice by

Catherine II in Russia in the second half of the eighteenth century.

brought her to power surely agreed with her overall assessment, without necessarily sharing the

conception of sovereignty she was to develop and manifest.

Rule in line with Catherine’s understanding of sovereignty was a complex operation. It

involved observance of laws and norms, particularly those that regulated the operation of the

state’s institutions. But that was not all. As I argue, Catherine’s more original insight was that the

monarch must involve others in the exercise of power in various capacities, and that such an

arrangement need not bind the ruler’s will or threaten her status. In fact, if this arrangement was

properly devised and properly managed, it would guarantee the smooth and predictable flow of

power while at the same time minimizing the friction or contention that undermined its legitimacy.

This was a modern conception of monarchical sovereignty, and it was new to Russia. It

fundamentally structured Catherine’s activities as monarch, bringing immediate order, and

clarifying standards about correct rule beyond her reign.

* * *

The concept of sovereignty is largely absent in both the discussion of Catherine’s reign and the

larger corpus of scholarship on the Russian monarchy. Indeed, Richard Wortman has gone so far

as to claim, “The Russian state never evolved a conception of self-sufficient monarchical authority,

reinforced with theological and juridical defenses of sovereignty.”

Likely, such reticence has been

occasioned by the view that sovereignty is an ambiguous concept and that bringing it into the mix

will only sow confusion.

Yet, the standard concepts that have been used in the analysis of the

Russian monarchy—power, authority, and legitimacy—, useful as they are, are no more precise

than sovereignty. Likewise, the term ‘autocracy’ (samoderzhavie), which is commonly used to

describe the Russian monarchy, is static, suggesting that questions about the monarch’s powers

had been settled. Most important, historians’ reticence to engage the problem of sovereignty has

been counter-productive, since “a conception of self-sufficient monarchical authority” was

precisely what eighteenth-century Russian monarchs—Catherine foremost among them—sought

to develop. For her, the key question was precisely what constituted self-sufficient monarchical

authority, and where its legal, institutional, and practical limits lay.

Catherine continually used the word ‘autocracy,’ but she well understood the limits of these

powers and how easily they were challenged. Indeed, many of Russia’s political crises of the

eighteenth century are best understood as crises of sovereignty in which individuals were perceived

to be exercising the throne’s powers without recognized legitimacy. Peter III was only the latest

in a line of contentious powerholders. Uncertain rules governing succession were partly to blame.

In 1722, Peter the Great (r. 1682-1725) had issued a law asserting that the reigning monarch had

Richard Wortman, Visual Texts, Ceremonial Texts, Texts of Exploration: Collected Articles on the Representation

of Russian Monarchy (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2014), 27.

Hent Kelmo and Quentin Skinner write: “the status of sovereignty as a highly ambiguous concept is well established.

Pointing out, or deploring, the ambiguity of the idea has itself become a recurring motif in the literature on sovereignty.

The concept of sovereignty is often seen as a downright obstacle to fruitful conceptual analysis, carried over from its

proper setting in history to ‘plague and befog contemporary thought’.” Hent Kelmo & Quentin Skinner “Introduction,”

in Sovereignty in Fragments: The Past, Present, and Future of a Contested Concept (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2010), 1. Although the usefulness of Sovereignty as a powerful analytical concept to help understood

the modern world is increasingly questioned (see, especially, Fowler & Bunck, Law, Power, and the Sovereign State,

1-33), the same need not be true in the past, as Kelmo and Skinner themselves assert. Sovereignty was a crucial concept

in the early modern period; therefore, appealing to its complexities should not be a reason to avoid it as an operative

historical concept.

the right to choose his or her successor. Yet, this law did not create a smooth pattern of succession

in eighteenth-century Russia, which came to be known as the “century of palace coups.”

A more

major issue, however, was the lack of clarity surrounding legitimate channels of power as well as

the division of power between the monarch and the state’s political institutions, such as the Senate

and the imperial Colleges. Even once monarchs were securely ensconced on the throne, scrutiny

fell on their practices. For example, empresses Anna (r. 1730-1740) and Elizabeth (r. 1741-1762),

were charged with neglecting their responsibilities, while allowing individual favorites or bodies

such as the short-lived Cabinet of Ministers to exercise power without proper oversight or

accountability. Such criticisms suggest a growing concern with the regular exercise of power by

monarchs, and not merely the initial circumstances of their enthronement, legitimately or not.

The influence that Western political culture and ideas exercised on Russian elites in the

early modern period makes the absence of the concept of sovereignty—and the rich

conceptualization of political power that is associated with it—all the more questionable.

Western Europe from the sixteenth century onwards, sovereignty had emerged as a major topic in

the writings of political thinkers, who in many cases sought to provide theoretical clarity and

justifications for a process of state-building that was already occurring in practice.

Jean Bodin

(1530-1596) and Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) were two of the main contributors to this

discussion. They and others argued that what characterized states and rulers was not solely power,

but sovereignty—a complex attribute that combined capacity with a system of legal and moral

right. Sovereignty was to be identified by its prerogatives—all understood as species of command.

These prerogatives might be arranged and exercised by various means, so long as the means met

general expectations and were consistent with the terms within which they were framed. To

become a sovereign therefore meant not only to begin to exercise a range of considerable

prerogatives, but to understand and treat these prerogatives as part of a complex system of right

that presupposed corresponding duties and defined rules for activity.

By the end of the seventeenth century, Western ideas of sovereignty had started to make

inroads in Russia, largely through the writings of the German natural-law theorists such as Samuel

Pufendorf (1632-1694), Christian Thomasius (1655-1728), and Christian Wolff (1679-1754), who

built on and contested the work of those earlier thinkers.

For example, their writings informed the

composition of a key political treatise written toward the end of Peter the Great’s reign, The Right

of the Monarch’s Will in Designating the Heir to His Realm (Pravda voli monarshei vo opredelenii

Evgenii Anisimov, Five Empresses: Court Life in Eighteenth Century Russia, trans. by Kathleen Carroll (Westport,

CT: Prager, 2004), 8.

This is a large and important topic in Russian history. For an introductory overview in Anglophone literature, see

Melvin Wren, The Western Impact on Tsarist Russia (Huntington, NY: Robert E. Krieger Publishing Company, 1976).

A specific study asserting the influence of German cameralism on Russia is Marc Raeff, The Well-Ordered Police

State: Social and Institutional Change Through Law in the Germanies and Russia, 1600-1800 (New Haven: Yale

University Press, 1983).

The development of the modern state was a gradual process and has also generated a large corpus of scholarship. On

medieval developments, see Joseph Strayer, On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State (Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 1973).

Bodin believed that the state’s powers must be understood and justified through the ordering concept of Sovereignty.

He claimed that he was the first person to expound Sovereignty’s nature. At best, this claim is only partly true. On the

preconditions of and precursors to Bodin’s thought, see above all Kenneth Pennington, The Prince and the Law, 1200-

1600: Sovereignty and Rights in Western Legal Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); and

Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1978).

Simon Dixon, The Modernisation of Russia, 1676-1825 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) 189-220.

naslednika derzhavy svoei) (1722). This tract, written for Peter by the reformist churchman, Feofan

Prokopovich, sought to justify the aforementioned 1722 law of succession, and it was especially

important because it incorporated for the first time rationalist arguments clarifying the monarch’s

sovereignty.

The French Enlightenment, which gained in cultural importance in Russia during

Elizabeth’s reign, introduced new conceptions of sovereignty, articulated in relation to recent

political developments in France. To draw one broad brushstroke, Enlightenment thinkers

imagined that sovereignty could be a device to reform society, though they were also concerned

that such a great concentration of power opened the door to its abuse. For such power to be made

legitimate, it must itself be made to accord with reason. Sovereignty was therefore a formidable

theoretical and practical challenge. By mid-century, theories of sovereignty began seriously to

challenge, in particular, the possibility of legitimate monarchical rule. They raised this challenge

through the figure of the despot, who featured prominently in several major political texts of the

period, notably Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws (1748). The despot was a single ruler who

sought to exercise untrammeled power, but governed in a manner that failed to generate legitimacy,

requiring the despot to rely on force or violence. Despotism often resulted from a ruler’s unbridled

desire to pursue personal interests. But it also stemmed from an absolutist ethic, according to which

despots believed that they could exercise power without recognizing restraints. Such restraints

included not only the dictates of natural law, but also the fundamental laws of the state as well as

custom and tradition. Moreover, the despot believed that he must on all occasions exercise power

directly, and that the involvement of others in any collaborative capacity was a threat to his status.

Montesquieu, for example, noted that the despot insisted on arbitrating judicial cases, even though

this threatened the integrity of civil law. Often, the despot enrolled the services of a first minister

or vizier.

This was not a collaborative arrangement. In a country governed by force, the vizier’s

principal task was to avoid punishment, which reduced him to sycophancy and craven dishonesty,

rather than serving as a counselor who might help steer the ruler’s decisions towards reason.

Alternately, the vizier functioned as a cypher, shifting the locus of power rather than mitigating

the inherent dangers of the absolutist ethic. Although despotism’s imposition of fear imposed a

Prokopovich is commonly given as the author, although his authorship has been debated. See James Cracraft, “Did

Feofan Prokopovich Really Write Pravda Voli Monarshei?” in Slavic Review, 40: 2 (Summer, 1981), 173-93. Lorenz

Erren argues that Peter’s law was not seen as a break from the past but “an attempt to preserve the Russian tradition

against contemporary Western birthright ideology and its notorious demand for ‘indefeasible primogeniture’” -

“Feofan Prokopovich’s Pravda voli monarshei as Fundamental Law of the Russian Empire,” Kritika: Explorations in

Russian and Eurasian History, 17: 2 (Spring 2016), 338.

A high official in the Ottoman Empire. The notion that despotism was characteristic of ‘oriental’ polities has been

a recurring theme since Antiquity. On the genealogy of the oriental theme in the early modern discussion of despotism,

see above all Lucette Valensi, The Birth of the Despot: Venice and the Sublime Porte, trans. by Arthur Denner (Ithaca,

NY: Cornell University Press, 1993). However, Montesquieu also believed that European monarchies were

succumbing to despotic ideas of indigenous origin. See the very important work on this by Vickie B. Sullivan,

Montesquieu and the Despotic Ideas of Europe (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2017). On where Russia

figured in the geographical imagination of the Enlightenment, see Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map

of Civilization in the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994). Useful discussions of

despotism in relation to Russia are: Harsha Ram, “Russia and the Oriental Despot,” India International Centre

Quarterly, 21: 2/3, The Russian Enigma (Summer-Monsoon, 1994), 31-46; and Max Okenfuss, “Catherine,

Montesquieu, and Empire,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas. 56: 3 (2008), 322-29. For a general discussion of

how the term ‘despotism’—along with the related term ‘tyranny’—has evolved over time, see Mario Turchetti,

“‘Despotism’ and ‘Tyranny’: Unmasking a Tenacious Confusion”, European Journal of Political Theory, 7: 2 (2008),

159-82.

modicum of peace, it failed to provide genuine security or liberty, for its actions were unpredictable

and arbitrary.

So severely did the figure of the despot challenge conceptions of monarchical rule that

some Enlightenment writers came to reject the possibility of monarchical sovereignty altogether.

Rousseau, for example, asserted that sovereignty could only exist where power was vested in a

demos that made decisions collectively and collaboratively, representing a general will.

Catherine, who began reading Montesquieu even before she came to power and revisited the Spirit

of the Laws early in her reign, attempted to justify how an autocratic ruler might avoid despotism

in her major political text, the Nakaz (1767), or “Grand Instruction.” Her arguments were

dismissed by Diderot for one, who visited Catherine in St. Petersburg in the 1770s and refuted the

Nakaz by asserting that the nation possessed sovereignty at all times: monarchs could only exist

as delegates of the nation, strictly bound by laws that the latter had imposed on them.

However,

neither republicanism nor constitutional monarchy were acceptable in Russia. There, strong

monarchy was considered even by its critics to be the major source of the country’s strength and

the only legitimate political form.

Like the theorists of the European Enlightenment, Catherine was concerned with the

problem of despotism, and their reservations were reflected in her sovereignty project. She

contended that Russian monarchs must seek to understand their powers in terms of complex

prerogatives and that exercising these prerogatives must be framed by norms and expectations. It

was the duty of the monarch to understand existing expectations, but also to clarify and establish

procedures wherever they were still lacking. Organizing power, both by creating expectations and

procedures, and by adhering to them, was by no means a limitation, but a constitutive quality of

rulership. Yet, the empress envisioned adherence requiring different forms of restraint. For

instance, power should not be exercised in a way that undermined the integrity of the Orthodox

Church or offended Russian customs. More importantly, she believed that monarchs were best

See, above all, the following chapters of the Spirit of the Laws: 2.5; 3.9; 4.3; 5.13; 5.14. Charles-Louis de Secondat

de Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, ed. A. Cohler, B. C. Miller, and H. S. Stone (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1989), 20, 28-9, 34, 59-63.

The figure of the despot problematized the project of monarchical sovereignty. However, the French Enlightenment

remained committed to monarchy on the whole. Dan Edelstein notes that the “fundamental question of sovereignty—

Who has the right to rule?—was rarely raised as directly as it was in England.” See his essay “Political Thought,” in

The Cambridge Companion to the French Enlightenment, ed. Daniel Brewer (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2014), 80.

A major study of radical thought in the Enlightenment, including the development of democratic theories of

sovereignty, has most recently been undertaken by Jonathan Israel. See especially his Radical Enlightenment:

Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650-1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) and A Revolution of

the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University

Press, 2010).

Diderot, Political Writings, ed. John H. Mason and Robert Wokler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992),

81. For a wider discussion of the development of Diderot’s political thought at the time, see Anthony Strugnell,

Diderot’s Politics: A Study of the Evolution of Diderot’s Political Thought After the Encyclopédie (The Hague:

Martinus Nijhoff, 1973). The notion, advanced by Diderot above, of a separation between the monarch and the

sovereign suggests a distinction between sovereignty and government. Richard Tuck has recently argued that this

distinction can be found in Jean Bodin’s work on sovereignty in the sixteenth century and later became relevant to

democratic theories of sovereignty during the Enlightenment. See Richard Tuck, The Sleeping Sovereign: The

Invention of Modern Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).

In the last decades, scholars have been almost unanimous on this point. See, for example, Dixon, The Modernisation

of Russia, 205-6; Cynthia H. Whittaker, Russian Monarchy: Eighteenth-Century Rulers and Writers in Political

Dialogue (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003); Elena Marasinova, Vlast’ i lichnost’: ocherki russkoi

istorii XVIII veka (Moscow: Nauka, 2008).

served where they established modes of operation that involved others in the exercise of power.

Specifically, she thought that political institutions must be brought into play. This was an important

norm that went back to Peter the Great. By creating a constellation of civil servitors, together with

formal institutions such as the Senate and the Colleges, Peter had laid the foundations for a new

and effective form of modern sovereignty.

In her view, however, the full wisdom of Peter’s

creation had not been realized. The ideal of sovereignty she attributed to him would only be

instantiated once she had discovered the full gamut of forms through which the monarch and

servitors could and should be connected. Developing these forms was all the more pressing

because the number of state officials tripled during the second half of the eighteenth century.

establishing modern sovereignty in Russia, Catherine was not only Peter’s successor, but also his

competitor.

In part, Catherine’s view of the means by which servitors aided the person of the monarch

was conventional: by transmitting and executing the monarch’s commands, and also by carrying

out administrative functions according to the laws to which they were subject. Through delegation

and also an internal division of responsibilities, servitors allowed the monarch’s prerogatives to be

exercised with regularity and with maximum scope and intensity, commensurate to her supreme

status. However, she understood Peter’s creation as more than a system of bureaucratic rationality,

also emphasizing more lateral interactions. The monarch would rely on servitors to direct her

power to urgent matters. They would supply information, experience, deliberation and review,

which would help overcome the limits of the person of the monarch and help them better judge

where reason and the common good might lie in any particular instance. The crucial point here is

An apparatus of civil servants that highlights the official and public nature of power has been seen as central to

modern conceptions of sovereignty. See, for instance, the chapter “Sovereignty” in Martin Loughlin, The Idea of

Public Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 72-98. Modern conceptions of sovereignty have also tended to

invoke the notion of the State, understood specifically as an entity separate from both the ruler and the ruled, and

which is understood as the locus of sovereign power. On this development, see the works of Quentin Skinner: The

Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 284-302, 349-60;

and “The State,” in Political Innovation and Conceptual Change, ed. T. Ball, J. Farr, and R. L. Hanson (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1989). For medieval precedents, see the classic work Ernst Kantorowicz, The King’s

Two Bodies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016). However, it is debatable to what extent this concept of the

state as a unit distinct from the ruler is useful to understand eighteenth-century conceptions of Russian sovereignty.

Peter the Great often referred to himself and his servitors as servants of the state (gosudarstvo). See, for example,

Marc Raeff, The Origins of the Russian Intelligentsia (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1966), and Michael

Cherniavsky, Tsar and People (New York: Random House, 1961). Although the concept denoted an ethical ideal

centered on the common good, it was not understood as a discrete entity. Catherine continued to employ the language

of the state (gosudarstvo) in the first sense, but in Article 19 of her Nakaz she unequivocally asserted that the monarch

was the sovereign, hence the “source of all civil and political power” (see discussion of this text in Chapter 2).

Nonetheless, Catherine believed that monarchs must channel their power through official agents and institutions,

suggesting the growing dependence of sovereignty on an apparatus that had some existence apart from the monarch.

The total number of officials began to greatly increase from the middle of the eighteenth century. In 1755, there

were approximately 10,500 officials, including those below the fourteenth rank in all central and provincial agencies.

A decade later, under Catherine II, this number had risen to 16,504. By 1800 it had reached around 38,000. See the

discussion in Walter M. Pintner, “The Evolution of Civil Officialdom,” in Russian Officialdom: The Bureaucratization

of Russian Society from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century, ed. Walter M. Pintner and Don K. Rowney (Chapel

Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1980), 192. Catherine’s provincial reform in 1775 led to a large increase

in the number of officials employed in local administration, rising from 12,712 in 1774 to an estimated 22,000 in

1781, and 27,000 in 1796. Isabel de Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine, 290. Under Catherine’s reign, the total

size of the nobility also rose, from an estimated 53,360 in 1764 to 68,320 in 1795. See John P. LeDonne, Absolutism

and Ruling Class: The Formation of the Russian Political Order, 1700-1825 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991),

22.

that she saw these forms of interaction, which amounted to a diffusion of power, as being

constitutive, not limiting, of the monarch’s sovereignty. Catherine’s approach stood in contrast to

Russians’ previous assumptions about the diffusion of power: accepted as a de facto necessity,

diffusion was nonetheless seen to contradict the pretensions of autocratic theory, which relied on

power’s concentration.

We see Catherine proclaim the principle of lateral interactions in

important official statements about the monarch’s power, such as in her Ascension Manifesto and

her Nakaz. Furthermore, in her communications to her servitors, she urged them to see themselves

as critical to the project of sovereignty, a project she wanted them to understand as grounded in

reason.

The empress’ view of the monarch’s powers as complex prerogatives further highlights the

relevance of the concept of sovereignty. Other scholars, noticing the innovative nature of

Catherine’s approach to power, have highlighted the importance of legality. Oleg Omel’chenko,

for example, has argued that Catherine and her collaborators were guided by ideas of legitimate

power understood in terms of a ‘lawfulness’ that was dictated by strict juridical schemes. In his

words, “lawful power, state power authorized by law were unwavering tenets in the list of demands

of the whole political mentality of the age, irrespective of any specific directions in political and

juridical thought;…laws were to be the cornerstone of state institutions and politics.”

Omel’chenko’s insights are important, and this dissertation builds on them. Yet, there are limits to

his thesis. Catherine never submitted to any legal devices that would formally limit her will,

suggesting she did not fully adhere to this ideology. Law might not always be the correct device

for ordering power or satisfying the host of expectations that were associated with it. She feared,

for example, that law might bind the monarch too tightly, and hence, in some instances, undermine

the monarch’s sovereignty. What is more, the focus on law and legal government threatens to

obscure the more original contribution of the Enlightenment to the practice of government,

specifically the one advanced by this dissertation, namely that sovereignty must involve others in

power. The empress associated this idea with the Petrine institutional legacy, but it was also a

strategic principle that reflected contemporary Enlightenment concerns about the possibility of

single rule protecting the liberty of subjects.

The development of sovereignty in the early modern period as a complex system with many

interdependent components was elucidated by Norbert Elias in his well-known study, The

Civilizing Process. The centralization of government, beginning in the sixteenth century, made the

monarch dependent on functionaries to wield an increasingly complex apparatus of rule, a process

further necessitated by the increasing complexities in early modern society. Government activity

involved both specialization—division of responsibilities—and delegation through extended

chains of command. This development did not negate the ruler’s sovereignty, but greater constraint

was required to adhere, as he puts it, to the “necessities of the network,” a demand reflected in the

strict etiquette and protocols of the court.

As it was in Western Europe, so it was in Catherine’s

Russia, that developing state structures made particular demands on the person of the monarch.

In Muscovite Russia, power had been diffused between Moscow and the provincial elite as well as within the city

of Moscow, between the tsar and the boyars. See, Valerie A. Kivelson, Autocracy in the Provinces: The Muscovite

Gentry and Political Culture in the Seventeenth Century (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996); and Nancy

Kollman: “Ritual and Social Drama at the Muscovite Court,” Slavic Review 45:3 (1986), 486-502; idem., Kinship and

Politics: The Making of the Muscovite Political System, 1345-1547 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987).

Oleg A. Omel’chenko, Zakonnaia monarkhiia Ekateriny II: prosveshchennyi absoliutizm v Rossii (Moscow, 1993),

19. See also Cynthia H. Whittaker, “The Legal Sovereign,” in Russian Monarchy, 91-118.

Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process, revised edition (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000). Especially, p.388. Elias explicitly

uses the term ‘sovereignty’, for instance, in his discussion on p. 272.

Not only did it demand self-restraint, but constant effort to establish and maintain the proper

arrangement and functioning of the throne’s servitors, ensuring that their activities enhanced the

monarch’s sovereignty.

Entailing a range of strategic decisions and practices, this supervisory function is best

understood in terms of management. Management required the imposition of laws on servitors,

but it also took many other important forms. It could involve establishing a schedule of regular

meetings with key servitors, or the use of written communications and instructions to clarify what

was expected of them (including in some cases what laws to obey). It also meant properly

delegating and overseeing tasks, and ensuring that specific individuals were involved in crucial

matters. Critically, the monarch needed to secure the trust of her collaborators, thereby countering

the threat of dishonesty, which was thought to characterize despotic government and made

dialectical interactions fruitless wherever they occurred.

Finally, management might entail

urging administrators to work together and come to a consensus, or herself navigating opposing

views in taking decisions. In this connection, the person of the monarch was to make her presence

felt and to be seen to make resolutions, either on regular matters or in extremis, rather than being

seen to allow that function to be usurped by her subordinates. Catherine saw management as the

precondition of sovereignty, and it was also its quotidian reality – a fact often overlooked when

we decide to understand sovereignty in terms of strict juridical schemes. This dimension is equally

lost when we focus exclusively on the content of the monarch’s most important reforms or their

grandest ceremonies and spectacles.

The notion that sovereignty involved management

distinguished Catherine, above all, from Peter III, who, she thought, saw sovereignty purely in

terms doing whatever he wished.

The specific activity of management also brings to mind Michel Foucault’s work on the

development of a new rationality of government in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which

he calls ‘Governmentality.’

Foucault distinguishes this new rationality from earlier political

schemes, which he characterizes with reference to paradigmatic treatises, such as Machiavelli’s

The Prince (1532), concerned with government primarily as the “ability to retain one’s

principality.” The new art of government, by contrast, drew on the field of economy or household

management and envisioned a much more intricate and intense engagement of the ruler with

objects of power. In Foucault’s words:

The art of government…is essentially concerned with answering the question of

how to introduce economy – that is to say, the correct manner of managing

individuals, goods and wealth within the family (which a good father is expected

to do in relation to his wife, children and servants) and of making the family

The empress’ efforts to generate the trust and loyalty of her servitors through her epistolary art has been recently

explored in a major contribution by Kelsey Rubin-Detlev, The Epistolary Art of Catherine the Great, Oxford

University Studies in the Enlightenment (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2019). This dissertation does not take up any

further study of this activity, but only shows how it is connected to the specific issue of sovereignty – a question that

is given less attention in that work.

In this respect this dissertation differs from Richard Wortman’s work Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in

the Russian Court, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995-2000). His major study argues that the

autocracy managed to maintain its status through elaborate myths and ceremonies that inspired and awed its subjects,

creating authority and legitimacy through the ritual elevation of the monarch.

Michel Foucault, “Governmentality,” in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, ed. Graham Burchell,

Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991), 87-104.

fortunes prosper – how to introduce this meticulous attention of the father towards

his family into the management of the state.

This meticulous concern demanded special strategies and techniques, of which law was only one:

“With government it is a question not of imposing law on men, but of disposing things: that is to

say, of employing tactics rather than laws, and even of using laws themselves as tactics – to arrange

things in such a way that, through a certain number of means, such and such ends may be

achieved.”

To govern well, the ruler must possess a new sort of wisdom, “as the knowledge of

things, of the objectives that can and should be attained, and the disposition of things required to

reach them; it is this knowledge that is to constitute the wisdom of the sovereign.”

Here, Foucault

understands government as the new rationality characterizing the ruler’s activity vis-à-vis objects.

His formulations represent government as a relationship that occurs exclusively between that

power agent and the “things” he disposes of. Yet, this logic of government might reasonably also

apply to the realm of the powerholders themselves, that is to say the interactions between the

person of the ruler and the state servitors, who were integral to the exercise of monarchical power.

Applying Foucault’s logic to this sphere, we might say that the ruler must know how an ensemble

of servitors is to be correctly arranged and disposed of, such that power might flow in a way that

brings about certain goals.

It is crucial to distinguish between this view of sovereignty from existing work, which has

stressed the increasingly independent nature of Russia’s educated, and largely noble elite, or

‘public opinion.’ Cynthia Whittaker, for example, has argued that in the eighteenth century, the

educated elite began to enter into ‘political dialogue’ with the monarchs over legitimacy. Educated

opinion, though accepting the fundamental legitimacy and desirability of monarchy, represented

an “alternative authority” on the basis of its “rational and critical judgment.” Such dialogue,

therefore, was a de facto “limitation” on Russian monarchs.

Whittaker’s insights capture

important elements of Catherine’s reign, especially when we consider the growth of periodicals.

The present dissertation in part recapitulates them by stressing her interactions with servitors as an

important component of her rule. The word ‘dialogue’ should be treated cautiously, however, as it

suggests a parity and a level of publicness that were not part of the empress’ understanding of

sovereignty. Certainly, the empress saw gathering information from a wider public as a strategy of

sovereignty. Yet, this was only a precondition of exercising legitimate power. More crucially, most

of the empress’ dialogical interactions were closed and exclusive affairs, conducted face-to-face

in her own apartments in the royal palaces. Alternatively, they took place within special

commissions that were summoned and organized according to her wishes. These exchanges took

place within an inner sanctum of power, in which the empress engaged in closely coordinated

interactions that were designed to facilitate the smooth and authoritative operation of sovereignty’s

prerogatives.

Ibid., 92.

Ibid., 95.

Ibid., 96.

Whittaker, Russian Monarchy, 8.

See Chapter 4, “The Emergence of Private Printing” in Gary Marker, Publishing, Printing, and the Origins of the

Intellectual Life in Russia, 1700-1800 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985); K. A. Papmehl, Freedom of

Expression in Eighteenth Century Russia (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1971); and Gareth W. Jones, Nikolay

Novikov: Enlightener of Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). For a more general discussion, see

James van Horn Melton, The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

2001)

Further, this dissertation touches upon patronage networks, which are said to have

dominated Russian politics in the eighteenth century at the expense of legal-based forms of

organization. David Ransel, for instance, argues that “one of the lessons Catherine learned from

Elizabeth’s reign was the degree to which the sovereign’s power depended upon the action of court

parties and their subordinate hierarchies.”

While this observation is certainly correct, this

dissertation will highlight ways in which Catherine differed from her predecessors, emphasizing

the highly deliberative manner in which the empress arranged much of her day-to-day activity. In

doing so, she managed key powerholders such that they would contribute to, and would also come

to see themselves part of, her project of sovereignty. Since power could be diffused, we might go

so far as to say that Catherine legitimized the presence of key powerholders (other than the

monarch) in the operations of the Russian monarchy. But she did so by defining particular terms

upon which those powerholders could operate, regulating the formal channels through which they

were allowed to voice criticisms and concerns, and sometimes even to decide on matters. This

mechanism was designed to attenuate partisan positions and required elites to set these aside once

the time for deliberation had passed. In short, the dissertation argues that the line between

patronage and rational order need not be overdrawn, while also showing how the transition from

one to another was attempted in Russia in the second half of the eighteenth century.

Finally, this dissertation will explore the limits of Catherine’s ability to instantiate and

perform her conception of sovereignty. Patronage and favoritism did in fact pose significant

challenges. While Catherine was successful in bringing order to power, she did not always live up

to the model of restraint she held up to her subordinates. Famously, her closeness to Grigory

Potemkin in the mid-1770s and the power she granted him created enormous tensions among

senior figures at court and undermined the image she cultivated of dispassionate management.

Subsequently, her badly managed relationship with a string of favorites tarnished her reputation

and threatened to destroy the careful balance she had created between factions at court.

No less critical is the question, to what extent her system of sovereignty extended beyond

Russia’s capital cities of St. Petersburg and Moscow into Russia’s vast countryside, and whether

commoners in these far-flung regions understood or participated in that system. Despite the rapid

growth of officialdom in the eighteenth century, Imperial Russia remained famously

‘undergoverned,’ even in the nineteenth century.

To the south and east, government institutions

remained poorly developed, with a small administrative staff. But another and perhaps more

serious problem concerned the overall appeal of what was being offered to the population.

Stressing the diffusion of power, the empress’ vision of sovereignty was servitor oriented. In its

pursuit of regular and predictable power, moreover, it prioritized balance and consensus, which

precluded radical changes in policy. The increasingly burdensome institution of serfdom was not

even subject to open debate, much less to reform or abolition. To the country’s multitudinous

common people—at least half found themselves in some form of bonded labor, be it to noble

landowners, the church, or the monarch directly—the rewards of Catherine’s system of

sovereignty were undiscernible. The limits of the empress’ imaginary hold on her population are

evidenced by the large number of pretenders masquerading as her deceased husband, Peter III, one

even precipitating a massive insurrection in 1773-4. Such events suggest that her system cut

David L. Ransel, The Politics of Catherinian Russia. The Panin Party (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975),

100.

See, for instance, the discussion of Catherine’s favorites in John T. Alexander, Catherine the Great, 202-26.

See Frederick S. Starr, Decentralization and Self-Government in Russia, 1830-1870 (Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 1972), 3-50.

against commoners’ expectations of legitimate power, namely a monarch who would assert an

unmitigated concern for the common people and even deploy force to provide them succor.

Organization

Sovereignty has very often been studied by concentrating on theoretical treatises, produced by—

and largely for—philosophers and literati. By shifting attention to the writings and practices of a

monarch, this dissertation offers a glimpse into how ideas about sovereignty were applied in the

political sphere. In this regard, my dissertation stands previous accounts, which explain how

treatises were drawn from political realities, on their head, by explaining how theoretical concerns

transferred into the quotidian concerns of governance. This dissertation is divided into two large

parts reflecting these two crucial dimensions of sovereignty. The first (Chapters 1 & 2) treat

Catherine’s ideas about sovereignty, as laid out in important official proclamations and other

writings. The second part (Chapters 3, 4 & 5) is concerned with her practical activities as monarch.

All chapters are arranged thematically, rather than chronologically, though Chapter 1 begins with

the empress’ ascension. Admittedly, the empress’ understanding of sovereignty developed over

the course of her reign, as she faced a variety of obstacles, including political factions as well as

her own political inexperience. She also made mistakes. Overall, however, the chapters identify a

consistency between her proclamations and her practices, while also showing that her theories did

not always offer clear guidance and that core goals and principles remained subject to adjustment

in their practical implementation. In the final analysis, the political project of being a sovereign

empress remained constant: it meant bringing order to the operations of power, an aspiration to

which Catherine wedded herself at the moment of her ascension.

Having seized the throne by overthrowing her husband, Catherine needed to justify her

actions and the exercise of power. Chapter 1 argues that she sought to shift emphasis away from

norms of succession, according to which Peter III’s reign was legitimate, to the exercise of power

as a central test of rightful rule. In her Ascension Manifesto, she depicted Peter as a despotic ruler

by arguing that he ruled in a solipsistic and erratic manner, unable to recognize or simply failing

to submit himself to moral, customary, and procedural norms that allowed power to function

legitimately. Specifically, she criticized him for his defiance of Russian customs and attacks on

the Orthodox Church. No less significant was his decision to avoid the political institutions of the

Russian state, such as the Senate, opting instead to issue commands in whatever manner he wished.

Catherine’s Ascension Manifesto laid out a complex view of the monarch’s power which involved

strategic decisions about norms and expectations, and how these were to be met (or established).

Implementing this project was the major basis for her ethics of rule and conception of sovereignty.

The empress further elaborated and officially proclaimed her most important principles in

her Great Instruction—the Nakaz—, composed between 1765 and 1767. As Chapter 2

demonstrates, questions regarding the proper order of power dominate large swathes of this

important text, particularly its opening and closing chapters. Again, Catherine presented the

monarch’s sovereignty as a complex system of prerogatives that involved formal channels of

power and division of responsibilities. The diffusion of power was to be a source of the monarch’s

strength, not a limitation. Written in preparation for her Legislative Commission, however, the

Nakaz was not designed as a lofty philosophical treatise, but as a practical document that reflected

the managerial role of the monarch within this new system of sovereignty. Passages explaining

how the monarch’s power was to be organized were intended for the highest tiers of the state’s

servitor class, to whom the text was distributed. The empress also hoped her Instruction would

play a critical role in managing the deputies of the Legislative Commission – a body intended to

manifest ordered power, above all the key principle of sovereignty that the empress endorsed,

namely that the monarch involve others in the exercise of power.

Early modern theories of sovereignty declared the right to command, above all to make

law, the highest prerogative and mark of the sovereign ruler. Catherine considered command the

most difficult prerogative to exercise. Chapter 3 studies in depth her ideas and practices of

command-giving. The empress was guided by Enlightenment imperatives, according to which

political decisions must be founded on the study of empirical realities and, by searching for

consensus, as far as possible, meet the consent or at the very least the minimum expectations of

the governed. This would mitigate the need to apply force, a strategy of power that was

problematized by contemporary Enlightenment thinkers and closely associated with despotic rule.

These demands necessitated complex strategies of command-giving. Catherine employed a variety

of strategies, soliciting advice and counsel, and establishing commissions, of which the Legislative

Commission was the most significant. She coordinated much of this work by herself and with the

help of a secretarial team that was continuously and variously engaged with collecting information;

editing and writing commands; and sending completed commands through the correct channels to

ensure their proper execution. Not all of the empress’ strategies were successful. The Legislative

Commission, for example, never completed its task of codifying Russia’s laws, though she never

abandoned its underlying principles.

Chapter 4 shows how Catherine further developed her system of sovereignty in practice by

establishing strict daily routines. These established regularity and order, which facilitated the

functioning of the state apparatus and of the court. Furthermore, close control of the palace’s

spaces and of windows of interaction reinforced the notion of a clear division of responsibilities,

while at the same emphasizing the distance between the monarch and her servitors, which

modulated according to hierarchies. Just as her secretaries aided her in her law-making, so did

court functionaries help to maintain the configuration of the court. As the chapter demonstrates,

the empress maintained these practices throughout her thirty-four-year reign. It also points out

mistakes that threatened her enterprise. Catherine managed her favorites poorly, allowing them to

come and go as they pleased. They disrupted cabinet meetings, intruded on the meetings of the

Imperial Council, and sought to control communications between her and her servitors. Certainly,

the empress made sure never to relinquish control of political decision-making to them; but their

arbitrary appearances and intersecting movements increasingly tarnished the demonstration of

ordered power that her otherwise fastidious quotidian practices were meant to achieve.

While Catherine brought a modicum of order to the Russian monarchy, her system of

sovereignty did not extend far into the vast and undergoverned countryside. There, a string of

pretenders masquerading as her deceased husband, Peter III, precipitated unrest amongst

miscellaneous groups – Cossacks, serfs, factory workers as well as religious and ethnic minorities.

In 1773, the most successful of these, a fugitive Don Cossack by the name of Emel’ian Pugachev,

managed to instigate a massive uprising that involved hundreds of thousands of people and

engulfed three provinces for more than a year. Fashioning himself as the true tsar, Pugachev

reflected common expectations about sovereignty. Chapter 5 shows that while Pugachev copied

aspects of the Russian state as a part of his pretense, his followers’ expectations were little centered

on intricate governmental mechanisms involving interactions between the monarch and servitor;

instead, the main expectation was that the tsar bring succor to the common people, above all in the

form of a restoration of perceived rights and privileges that were seen to have been taken from

them. The chapter further shows that while Pugachev was unable to threaten the state militarily,

he disturbed the empress’ system of sovereignty by forcing ad hoc political arrangements that

contravened the empress’ own system of governance. Catherine found herself unable to assert her

will in one further way: she had to agree to the use of force to pacify the rebels. As she feared, use

of violence would damage her reputation abroad as much as the complete loss of governmental

control of hundreds of thousands of kilometers of territory.

The fact that Catherine’s system of sovereignty—her exercise of supreme and

untrammeled power, and the recognition of her claims as legitimate—was so brazenly

upended on the outer peripheries of her empire is a crucial reminder of why she worked tirelessly

to assert it in the first place. Arguably, sovereignty is inherently incomplete, as no system of rule

ever goes unchallenged. Without doubt, however, Catherine weathered these storms much more

effectively than her counterparts in Western Europe, notably Louis XVI. Her successors would see

value in the system she had established. While her son and successor, Paul, overturned her system,

he was, like his father, quickly dispatched in a palace coup. Her grandsons, Alexander I and

Nicholas I, were far more careful to maintain autocracy by governing in a regular and predictable

manner, through core bureaucratic and consultative institutions.

Chapter 1. Peter III: The Overthrow of a Russian Despot

1: Introduction

Catherine the Great came to power on July 9, 1762, as the result of a coup that overthrew her

husband, Peter III, who had ascended the Russian throne a mere six months earlier. She was aided

by a handful of important collaborators drawn from the upper echelons of the court, the

administration, and the army, all of whom shared the desire to remove Peter from the throne.

Crucially, they were able to engineer the support of the imperial guards – the Preobrazhensky,

Izmailovsky, and Semenovsky regiments. These were instruments of power that could ensure the

de facto control of key institutions of St. Petersburg, the geographical locus of sovereignty in the

imperial period, and to capture Peter’s person and force him to abdicate. Supporters of the coup

hoped that Peter’s removal would usher in a new era of enlightened rule. Yet, despite the coup’s

success, the removal of Peter held risks for its perpetrators, posing the problem central of this

chapter, namely how to justify such an enterprise. Although she was crowned in September of that

year, the problem of legitimacy was particularly pressing for Catherine – a German born princess

without any direct hereditary claim to the Russian throne. She was criticized, especially by foreign

observers, as a usurper. Some of her collaborators in the coup were equally worried about

legitimacy, and although united against Peter, were uneasy about her becoming empress, wishing

instead that she become regent for her eight-year-old son by Peter, Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich.

Catherine—who wanted to retain the throne for herself—had not only to justify the overthrow of

the monarch, but also to present herself as a credible ruler to the court, the wider elite, and the

common people.

Catherine confronted these challenges in two ascension manifestos in which she advanced

a number of arguments in her favor. The first of these manifestos was a short proclamation

produced and disseminated by the conspirators on the day of the coup. A second was issued by

both ecclesiastical and civic presses a week later.

Composed in a less rushed manner, this second

document constituted a significantly longer and more detailed statement of her arguments.

According to this manifesto, Peter III’s claim to rule had been entirely legitimate at the time he

ascended the throne. However, his style of rule had undermined his legitimacy and, as a result, the

ability to command that derived from it. The lesson of Peter’s reign was not only that power

derived from legitimacy, but that the criteria that might have made Peter legitimate at the beginning

of his reign were not of themselves sufficient to maintain his status as ruler. In Catherine’s

estimation, the monarch needed to exercise power in a manner that respected Russian customs and

Christian morality. Also, critically, the monarch ought to maintain the institutions and procedures

of the Russian state, which had been established at the beginning of the century. Despite evidence

that Peter had sought to follow an enlightened policy in his legislative projects, possibly even

bringing tangible benefits to various social estates, Catherine believed that Peter had not satisfied

the above expectations about how power was to be exercised. That he offended Russian customs

and culture, above all the Orthodox Church, was only half of his wrongdoing. He also made

decisions in a haphazard and disorderly manner, involving the wrong individuals and poorly

delegating tasks to them. The outcome was power that operated in an unpredictable and arbitrary

fashion. In Catherine’s opinion, Peter ruled in the manner of a despot. His manner of rule, she

Cynthia H. Whittaker, Russian Monarchy: Eighteenth-Century Rulers and Writers in Political Dialogue (De Kalb:

Northern Illinois University Press, 2003), 99.

argued, reflected deep flaws in his character, above all an incapacity for restraint. But more

fundamentally, Peter lacked a proper understanding of his sovereignty, understood as the exercise

of full and untrammeled power, considered to be legitimate.

2: Catherine’s Inheritance: Her Predecessors’ Practices of Rule and Peter III’s Overthrow

In the eighteenth century, the Russian autocracy witnessed a series of political crises during which

rulers were overthrown. The frequency of these crises has been in part attributed to an absence of

‘fundamental laws’ of succession.

Although dynasty remained an important criterion of

legitimate claim, the Russian state did not strictly adhere to the practice of primogeniture as was

widely practiced in Western Europe. Peter the Great had ruled out this practice, with the intention

of avoiding any incompetent successor, through his Law of Succession of 1722, which permitted

incumbent rulers to ‘designate’ their heirs.

Peter’s law existed until 1797, when it was revoked

by Paul I (r. 1796-1801), who restored primogeniture.

The Law of Succession was used by rulers

and it appeared in their justification literature, but most often alongside other claims, suggesting

that it did not become a sufficient criterion of succession. Some defied it outright, proving that

legitimacy could in fact be constructed without it.

Elizabeth was one of the rulers to come to power in this manner. In December 1741, leading

the Preobrazhensky regiment, she overthrew the infant-emperor, Ivan VI, who had been designated

heir by empress Anna. Elizabeth’s defiance of the 1722 law and the overt use of force arguably

made her imperial Russia’s first real usurper. She sought to claim legitimacy by trumpeting her

direct lineage to her father, Peter the Great, who was considered responsible for Russia’s

emergence as a great European power, and by associating herself with his legacy. She also

appealed to popular approval, framing herself as the choice of the guards and “all civil and military

leaders.”

Finally, in disregard of the fact that the coup was abetted by French diplomats who

supplied her with money to bribe the guards, she was able to generate a ‘national motif,’ presenting

her ascension as bringing an end to foreign interference in Russian affairs.

The invocation of

foreign interference easily brought to mind the large number of Germans who had occupied,

illegitimately it seemed, positions of power and influence under Anna. They included Ivan’s

mother, Anna Leopoldovna, who had briefly acted as his regent from 1740-1741. These arguments,

Elizabeth thought, trumped the necessity of adhering to the 1722 law. Elizabeth set a precedent for

Catherine’s usurpation in 1762 and many of its strategies were deliberately modelled on it.

Empress Elizabeth was also directly responsible for setting up the ill-fated marriage that

made Catherine’s ascension possible. Almost thirty-two at the time she came to power, unmarried,

and without an heir, Elizabeth needed to secure both her succession and the future stability of the

throne. Peter (né Charles Peter Ulrich of Holstein-Gottorp) was a prime candidate to succeed the

Richard Wortman, “The Representation of Dynasty and “Fundamental Laws” in the Evolution of Russian

Monarchy,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 13: 2 (Spring 2012), 265.

For the actual text, see Polnoe sobranie zakonov rossiiskoi imperii s 1649 goda: sobranie pervoe s 1649 po 12

dekabriia 1825 goda (hereafter PSZ), vol. 6 (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia II-ogo otdeleniia sobstvennoi ego

imperatorskogo velichestva kantseliarii, 1830), no. 3,893, 1722. An English translation, accompanied by an

introduction to the text, is available in Peter the Great: His Law on the Imperial Succession. The Official Commentary,

ed. and trans. by Antony Lentin (Oxford: Headstart History, 1996).

According to Paul’s new succession law, the throne would pass to the oldest male heir. The law did not rule out

female monarchs, but made them improbable.

PSZ, no. 8,473.

Aleksandr Kamenskii, Ot Petra I do Pavla I (Moscow, Rossiisskii gosudarstvennyi gumanitarnyi universitet, 1999),

274-8.

empress. As the son of her older sister, he shared Elizabeth’s dynastic lineage. Moreover, Peter

held claim to the Swedish throne—which he renounced—granting the added benefit of allowing

Russia to interfere with the dynastic politics of a country with which it was at war. Elizabeth

succeeded in her designs: in 1741 she brought Peter to Russia and proclaimed him heir presumptive

in time for her coronation ceremony. She did so with appeal to the 1722 law, suggesting that she

thought that in the absence of the arguments that she used for herself, it could nonetheless bestow

a modicum of legitimacy.

Elizabeth chose as Peter’s spouse the fourteen-year-old princess, Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst,

a small German principality in the political orbit of Prussia. This match had been pursued by

Sophie’s mother, Johanna, and was supported by Frederick the Great, who calculated that it would

grant him inside access to the deliberations and policies of the Russian court. On its side, the

Russian government saw the match bringing influence in northern Germany. Elizabeth had once

been betrothed to Johanna’s brother and was partial to the house of Anhalt-Zerbst; she approved

the match despite calls for a more pro-Austrian arrangement. Sophie was invited to Russia and

betrothed to Peter. As was required by the customs of the Russian monarchy, the young couple

were made to convert to Orthodoxy and rechristened with Russian names, Peter Fyodorovich and

Catherine Alekseevna. They were married in August 1745 in St. Petersburg.

Catherine’s relationship with Peter broke down over time as a result of irreconcilable

differences in character and interests. Historians have tended to blame Peter for this failure. For

instance, Isabel de Madariaga, an important scholar of Catherine’s reign, describes the grand duke

as “an immature, even childish youth, happier playing at or with soldiers than with anything

else.”

In contrast, she sees Catherine as precocious, attentive, and dutiful. Her divergent

intellectual interests were reflected in her reading of serious texts. Voltaire, Pierre Bayle, Tacitus,

and Montesquieu were just a few of the major authors that she read during her life as grand

duchess.

This assessment closely aligns with the unflattering image that Catherine presented in

memoirs which she began in 1755 and reworked in the 1790s at the end of her reign.

In these

writings she made frequent mention of Peter’s childish games and pranks, as well as his bad

manners, which not only humiliated her to the point of tears but also, in her estimation, did serious

harm to his reputation. Whether or not these memoirs are to be believed as factual accounts of

Peter’s behavior is debatable.

Still, they reflect Catherine’s own assessment of the signal faults

in her husband that led to the failure of her marriage.

A further strain on their relationship resulted from a failure to consummate their marriage.

It is possible that this, too, stemmed from Peter’s character. Historians have sometimes surmised

that he was impotent, given the absence of children, acknowledged or otherwise, despite a number

Isabel de Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), 5.

For separate, though dated, discussions of Catherine’s intellectual development, see Vasilii Bil’basov. “The

Intellectual Formation of Catherine II,” in Catherine the Great, ed. M. Raeff (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972), 21-

40; and Peter Petschauer, The Education and Development of an Enlightened Absolutist: The Youth of Catherine the

Great, 1729-1762, (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1969).

It has been argued that historians have been overly influenced by Catherine’s negative assessments of Peter’s

character, as well as by the writings of other opponents. In the Anglophone literature, see the works of Carol Leonard,

above all “The Reputation of Peter III,” The Russian Review, 47: 3 (July 1988), 263-92, and Reform and Regicide:

The Reign of Peter III of Russia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993) In Russian, see the works of Aleksandr

Myl’nikov, including Petr III: povestvovanie v dokumentakh i versiiakh (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 2009).

Perhaps they should not be too hastily disregarded, since they were neither intended for publication, nor did they

deal with Peter’s reign or overthrow – a matter that Catherine needed to justify. The most recent Russian-language

study of their relationship supports this interpretation. O. A. Ivanov, Ekaterina II i Petr III: istoriia tragicheskogo

konflikta (Moscow: Tsentrpoligraf, 2007), 24-5.

of mistresses.

Even so, Catherine gave birth to a son, Paul, in October 1754, and he was

proclaimed legitimate heir to the Russian throne. The birth of a son did nothing to bring the couple

together, and when Peter III came to power at the end of 1761, he chose not to designate him his

heir.

Grand Duke Peter Fedorovich and his wife Grand Duchess Catherine Alexeevna.

Portrait by Georg Cristoph Grooth, circa 1745.

Catherine’s ideas about sovereignty were likely strongly influenced by her experience in

Elizabeth’s court. As was noted, Elizabeth framed her seizure of power as the restoration of Peter

the Great’s legacy. Following the turbulent years of Anna’s reign, she reinstated the Petrine

Kabinet (the personal secretariat of the sovereign), and restored the powers of the Senate. Elizabeth

also proclaimed her government’s orientation to promote the common good.

Elizabeth has been

credited with laying the foundations of progressive economic and social policy, reflecting an

expansion of Enlightenment ideas and culture.

Notably pious herself, she also showed deference

to Russian Orthodoxy, dutifully attending religious ceremonies, possibly to the point of excess,

and to the detriment to her other responsibilities (see Chapter 4). Focus on her positive legislation

has not distracted historians from the fact that she did not exercise power well in all respects.

Elizabeth, for example, led a notably irregular lifestyle, often sleeping during the day and

disappearing from view for indeterminate periods of time, which disturbed the regular operation

of power. She often left government papers and bills unattended with no indication of when she

Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine, 10.

Richard Wortman argues that Elizabeth had emphasized the ‘happiness’ of subjects as the primary goal of her rule:

Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy, vol 1. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995),

84-109.

See, for example, James F. Brennan, Enlightened Despotism in Russia: The Reign of Elizabeth, 1741-1762 (New

York: Peter Lang, 1987).

would address them, inevitably sowing uncertainty. In her memoirs, Catherine said of her that she

would often leave these “in front of an icon…for some time [before] deciding to sign them or not

“according to the inclination of the moment.”

Elizabeth also failed to manage the expectations

of her servitors in other ways. A significant example was her decision to place a moratorium on

the use of the death penalty when she came to power, one of the most widely hailed policies of her

reign, though it likely originated in her religiosity, rather than adherence to humanistic

Enlightenment ideals. In order to implement this policy, Elizabeth issued an ukaz (edict) in May

1744; however, very few individuals were made aware of it. Moreover, the ukaz failed to clarify

new procedures, but merely instructed local offices that convictions be sent to the Senate and await

further instruction. This caused procedural problems and swamped the Senate with cases.

Finally,

Elizabeth allowed government to be increasingly run by favorites and their factions, including the

Shuvalov brothers. Arguably, favorites (and factions) were a common aspect of monarchical

politics of the time, not only in Russia.

Nonetheless, favorites undermined one of the purported

advantages of monarchy, namely that one individual could make decisions unencumbered by the

concerns and passions of any single group. This notion had played a role in Anna’s overthrow of

the body that brought her to power in 1730, the Supreme Privy Council, important noblemen who

had monopolized power during Peter II’s reign, but who lacked wide support among the wider

nobility.

Catherine spent sixteen years in Elizabeth’s court and had to navigate its politics. It is

unclear to what extent she belonged to any particular faction, although we know she was wary of

the Shuvalov brothers and suspected that they had designs against her. Her correspondence

suggests that in the latter part of Elizabeth’s reign, Catherine had her own ambitions to rule. For

instance, in a letter to the British ambassador, Charles Hanbury-Williams, who certainly

emboldened her, she stated that she was “resolved to perish or reign.”

Elizabeth’s foreign

minister, Alexey Bestuzhev-Ryumin, with whom she had become allied, had even considered a

plan to make Catherine empress or co-ruler with Peter.

It is not clear whether Catherine was

actively engaged in these machinations, but when Bestuzhev was arrested in February 1758,

Elizabeth suspected her, and she was forced to humiliate herself before the empress in order to

avoid her wrath. Following Bestuzhev’s fall, Catherine came under the important influence of

Nikita Panin. Catherine likely became acquainted with Panin as early as 1756, at which time he

was ambassador to Sweden. He soon returned permanently to St. Petersburg and in 1759 was

named Paul’s tutor. Panin was well read in Enlightenment literature. He agreed with

Montesquieu’s analysis that Russia was a despotism and believed that it needed to be reformed

into a rational, legal order. Catherine shared many of his convictions.

Catherine II, The Memoirs of Catherine the Great, trans. by M. Budberg, (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1955), 373.

The most important discussion is Elena Marasinova in “Zakon” i “grazhdanin” v Rossii vtoroi poloviny XVIII veka:

ocherki istorii obshchestvennogo soznaniia (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2017), 71-8.

On politics of faction during the reigns of Elizabeth and Catherine, see David L. Ransel, The Politics of Catherinian

Russia: The Panin Party (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975). Ransel has argued that Russian politics of the

time should be better understood in terms of a system of powerful competing patronage networks, not constitutional

schemes

Kamenskii, Ot Petra I, 209-13.

Catherine II, Correspondence of Catherine the Great, when Grand-Duchess, with Sir Charles Hanbury-Williams

and Letters from Count Poniatowksi, ed. the Earl of Ilchester and Mrs. Langford Brooke (London: Thornton

Butterworth Ltd, 1928), 101.

Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine, 14.

Ransel, The Politics of Catherinian Russia, 49-51.

Empress Elizabeth died on December 25, 1761. On the same day, Peter published a

manifesto in which he declared his succession to the throne.

In this manifesto Peter proclaimed

it evident that the throne belonged to him according to existing “rights” (pravam), “privileges”

(preimushchestvam), and “regulations” (uzakoneniiam). He emphasized above all his designation

as heir by Elizabeth in 1742 and called to attention the corresponding oath of allegiance that he

had made on that occasion. Thus, Peter appealed in part to the 1722 law of succession in grounding

his legitimacy. The manifesto also reiterated that Elizabeth had been a rightful ruler, claiming that

her seizure of power in 1741 had “rightfully restored the Russian throne,” which had been “stolen”

from her. Referring obliquely to the perceived control of the Russian state by Germans at the time,

Peter drew attention to his (and Elizabeth’s) rightful genealogical claim as direct descendants of

Peter the Great. His decision not to name his son, Paul, as heir, might suggest that Peter himself

was intending to use the 1722 right of designation. Finally, Peter bolstered his succession by

promising “in everything, to follow in the footsteps” of his wise grandfather, Peter the Great. This,

too, was a principle that Elizabeth used in her succession, further confirming that it had become a

crucial criterion of legitimacy in the period. Catherine would later use many of Peter’s claims

against him.

The prospect of Peter’s accession was a cause of uncertainty and apprehension amongst

some members of the court. The grand duke’s openly pro-Prussian stance threatened an

unfavorable conclusion to the country’s ongoing participation in the Seven Years War. And it was

unclear what his reign would mean for the existing power blocs in court. Given the breakdown of

their relationship, Catherine had most to fear. There is some evidence of attempts to overturn the

succession.

For obvious reasons, Catherine was inclined to emphasize them in her memoirs. In

addition to the Bestuzhev affair, Catherine related a conversation between Panin and the Shuvalov

brothers, who, worried about their fate under the future government, were considering exiling Peter

in favor of Paul. According to Catherine, they had gained the tentative support of Elizabeth, who

had become increasingly worried about her nephew’s general unsuitability for rule. Elizabeth

supposedly favored making Catherine regent, but this was not to the liking of the Shuvalov brothers

who wanted to remove the couple entirely.

However, Panin rejected both possibilities and the

project went no further. This episode suggests that members of the elite had come to believe it was

their right to interfere with the imperial succession. Nevertheless, in Peter’s case, such

maneuvering was not widespread or systematic. Despite some murmurings, there is no evidence

of any serious conspiracy, and, in fact, both Catherine and Panin seem to have accepted Peter’s

legitimacy. On this note, Alexandr Kamenskii correctly points out that Peter’s succession was the

first for a number of decades to occur without upheaval, giving the regime a “stability and

confidence in its own strength.”

Of course, we know that this initial strength would evaporate quickly. Peter ruled from

December 25, 1761, to June 28, 1762 – barely six months. That his support evaporated so quickly

has been a great challenge for historians, who have offered a variety of explanations. A major

strategy in the historiography has been to look at Peter’s policies and to argue that, on aggregate,

PSZ, no. 11,390.

John T. Alexander, Catherine the Great: Life and Legend (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 46-60.

Catherine II, Sochineniia imperatritsy Ekateriny II, ed. A.N. Pypin, vol. 12 (St. Petersburg, 1901), 499-500.

Kamenskii, Ot Petra I, 305.

they undermined his standing, above all amongst the elites.

The two sides of this argument look

as follows:

Peter’s legislation, it is argued, brought tangible benefits to many groups. One of his first

acts was the reduction of the salt tax, reducing the tax burden on the commonality, and he lifted

restrictions on Old-Believers.

In February 1763 he abolished the state’s investigatory body, the

Secret Chancery. This institution operated on the basis of denunciations—the so-called ‘word and

deed of the sovereign’ (slovo i delo gosudarevo)—and frequently practiced torture on the accused

and witnesses; it was greatly feared and hated.

Arguably, Peter’s most important piece of

legislation, also benefiting the elite, was a direct holdover from the legislative initiatives taken in

Elizabeth’s later reign: the decree of February 18 liberated the Russian nobility from compulsory

state service – a system that had defined the Russian state for almost a century. Specifically, the

decree overturned part of Peter the Great’s policy on the life-time longevity of service.

This

decree was an important step in the consolidation of the nobility into a corporate estate with legally

defined rights and freedoms. Carol Leonard, in a major reevaluation of the period, has argued that

Peter’s reign was “an astonishing achievement of the pre-Catherinian Enlightenment”; led by a

“rationalist vision,” his government sought to mobilize the economy through liberal policies,

expand the powers of the state, making it more efficient, and eliminate some of its harshest and

backwards practices.

Peter’s ameliorative policies, particularly those that sought to win the approval of the

nobility, may have helped bolster his legitimacy. However, these policies, as other historians have

argued, need to be juxtaposed against laws that undermined his standing. For instance, he was

overtly disrespectful of the Orthodox Church, and on March 21 he moved ahead with the forced

secularization of church land. On June 1 Peter issued a decree forbidding the Senate from

promulgating without the monarch’s approval not only of any ukazy that introduced new legal

norms, but also, in contradiction to long-standing convention, ones that confirmed existing

legislation.

Furthermore, the Senate lost control over petitions and promotions in the lower

bureaucracy.

Peter’s foreign policy was even more contentious. Although his decision to

withdraw Russia from the Seven Years War was not unwelcome, given its great financial cost, he

ceded to Prussia all of Russia’s significant territorial gains. Finally, he planned to use the Russian

military, which he had further disgruntled by reforming them along Prussian lines, to carry out a

personal dynastic campaign to capture the Duchy of Holstein from Denmark.

This strategy of focusing on policies is reasonable, but it does not help make sense of

Catherine’s criticism of Peter, which focused less on particular policies but on the manner in which

he saw and exercised power. According to her view, policies that were ‘beneficial’ could still

appear to be carried out in a disorderly manner. They could also be seen as rash and ill-considered,

or to arise from his own interests, rather than developed with an eye to the common good. There

is some basis for believing that Peter did indeed govern in this manner. Take for instance the matter

Peter was an active legislator. Based on the Polnoe sobranie zakanov, Cynthia Whittaker calculates that Peter’s

government issued one hundred and ninety-two decrees. She notes that this is forty-four more than what Catherine

promulgated in the first six months of her reign. See her Russian Monarchy: Eighteenth-Century Rulers and Writers

in Political Dialogue (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003), 94.

PSZ, no. 11,456.

PSZ, no. 11,445.

PSZ, no. 11,444.

Leonard, Reform and Regicide, 1-2.

Kamenskii, Ot Petra I, 307.

Ransel, The Politics of Catherinian Russia, 60.

of secularization of Church land.

As previously noted, this policy had originally been conceived

under Elizabeth in 1757, but, with its practical effects not fully decided, it had not yet been

promulgated.

The apparent indecisiveness of Elizabeth and her advisors suggested

acknowledgment of a complex relationship between monarchy and church, and that major changes

needed to be carefully negotiated. However, Peter quickly moved ahead with the policy regardless,

apparently despite warnings by the Senate that arbitrary taxation of the church had in the past

precipitated monastic revolts.

Peter’s decision led to chaotic seizures of church property by the

army, and the church appealed against the policy. His decision to emancipate the Russian nobility

from service and his precipitous reversals in foreign policy have been described in similar terms:

as producing confusion among the nobility and peasants alike.

The notion that under Peter power began to flow in an arbitrary manner seems plausible.

A dispatch from the Danish envoy, Gregers von Haxthausen, as early as January 1762, before

Peter’s designs on Holstein became widely known, casts a highly negative light on his style of

rule:

From the time of his ascension to the throne, all the Colleges have been idle.

Similarly, neither the Senate, nor the Konferentsia, nor the cabinet carry out their

functions, but do nothing. Whenever [the emperor] has an idea that he wishes to

implement he calls his state secretary, Volkov, and instructs him to put down his

instructions on paper; he then signs them and orders them to be sent off for the

purpose intended without telling anyone anything. Behold, my highness, the

manner in which all matters are now being conducted in Russia. You can judge for

yourself how difficult it is to work out what is going on when even the emperor’s

ministers and advisers participate in state business and know about it as much as I

or any other foreigner.

Von Haxthausen’s description indicates that Peter formulated and issued commands with minimal

coordination or warning. He claims that the emperor badly managed the state’s political

institutions and its key figures, and that he failed completely to involve them in the exercise of

power. It is possible that over time Peter exacerbated this style of rule by allowing foreigners

unprecedented access to his person and to policy-making reserved for Russian servitors. For

instance, when Frederick the Great sent his envoy, Count von Goltz, to St. Petersburg in March,

Peter insisted on personally conducting Russia’s negotiations with him, sideling Russian statemen,

and ignoring their warnings about the consequences of changes in foreign policy. It is reported that

Peter even allowed Goltz to draft the peace treaty with Prussia, which ceded to the Prussian king

all of Russia’s recent conquests against him.

Catherine’s claim that Peter governed in an erratic manner, with minimal consultation of

senior Russian administrators, is largely substantiated by primary and secondary sources. It is not

PSZ, no. 11,481.

Since the mid-seventeenth century, the Russian state had secured its predominance over the Church, but rulers

continued to derive legitimacy as protectors of Orthodoxy. Acknowledgment of this complex relation and an

understanding that secularization policy needed to be carefully negotiated with the church help explain the hesitation

of Elizabeth’s government.

Simon Dixon, The Modernisation of Russia, 1696-1825 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 68-9.

“Doneseniia datskago poslannika Gaksthauzena o tsarstvovanii Petra III i perevorote 1762 goda,” Russkaia starina,

vol. 161 (Petrograd, 1915), 534.

Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine, 24.

the goal of this chapter to prove her right, but merely to provide some reference for the arguments,

to which we now turn, that Catherine made against him.

3: Despotic Tropes

Peter was overthrown on July 9, 1762, in a palace coup on Catherine’s behalf. The genesis of the

plot to overthrow Peter remains obscure. In a letter to her former lover, Stanisław Poniatowski, in

the aftermath of the coup, Catherine stated that her ascension had been planned for at least six

months.

However, it is unlikely that a serious conspiracy emerged until late May or early June,

when it was firmly understood that Peter intended to push ahead with his campaign against

Denmark.

It is understandable that Catherine was the person around whom the conspiracy was

to be built. As mother to Paul, she would guarantee his succession. She was also seen as mature

and intelligent, and she was widely liked at court. All of these factors made her seem a reliable if

only temporary replacement. In theory, the former emperor, Ivan VI, who had been displaced by

Elizabeth’s coup in 1741, had a rival claim to the throne. Yet, he had languished in an isolated cell

in Schlüsselberg Fortress since the age of one—a cruel and a highly damaging experience—and

was not considered to be a credible candidate by the elites.

Amongst Catherine’s closest collaborators was Nikita Panin. He objected to Peter’s style

of rule, seeing it as a threat to the construction of a more rational, orderly state. As tutor to Paul,

he also had much to lose personally if, as rumors suggested, Peter was to divorce his wife and

disown his son. Yet, Panin did not believe Catherine to have a claim to the throne outright and he

favored instead her regency. It is likely that he was able to enlist a number of high-ranking

statesmen in support of this project.

Through a romantic relationship with an artillery officer,

Grigorii Orlov, Catherine was also able to secure support amongst the imperial guards. Orlov,

together with his four brothers—all military officers—were important organizers and executors of

her coup. In contrast to Panin, the Orlovs favored Catherine becoming empress. Their fierce

support for her in this matter perhaps permitted her to disregard Panin’s plans. Given that her

ascension manifestos proclaimed her as empress, it seems that this contest had been settled by the

time of her coup.

In her procession into St. Petersburg, Catherine made a demonstration of the public’s

approval for her, though some have questioned whether there was great enthusiasm for the coup.

Peter’s decision to leave the imperial capital for his residence at Oranianbaum followed by the

palace at Peterhof, both outside of the city, was a key factor, and Catherine and her collaborators

took full advantage. Thereafter, Peter’s feebleness played a major role. In contrast to Catherine,

who led her troops on horseback dressed in military attire, Peter surrendered and abdicated after

failing to marshal the resources he had in defense of his station. Catherine immediately had him

arrested and held under armed guard and refused his pleas to be allowed to return to Holstein with

his mistress. Just under a month later, her new government issued a statement reporting that he

had died from a violent episode of hemorrhoidal colic.

In all likelihood, he was assassinated by

one of the Orlov brothers with the aid of a few guardsmen.

Whether this happened with her

consent or at her express instruction remains and will likely remain unknown.

Catherine II, “Letter to Poniatowski, August 2, 1762,” in Imperial Russia: A Source Book, 1700-1917, ed. Basil

Dmytryshyn (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967), 74.

Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine, 27.

Ibid., 28.

Leonard, Reform and Regicide, 138-49.

Catherine II, “Manifest, 1762,” in Osmnadtsatyi vek, ed. Petr Bartenev, vol. 4 (Moscow, 1869), 224.

Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine, 32.

However much Peter’s legitimacy may have eroded prior to the coup, it was problematic

for Catherine precisely because she was to replace him not as regent, but as outright successor.

The problem of legitimacy was reflected in her need to use the imperial guard regiments—an

instrument of force—in order to carry through the coup. Her questionable legitimacy was reflected

by the immediate reaction of foreign observers who tended to represent her as a usurper.

Early

critics included luminaries of the Enlightenment like Voltaire.

Unlike Peter, Catherine was not

able to boast ‘designation’ by a previous sovereign (according to the 1722 law) nor make any claim

of heredity. Working in her favor was precedent, the history of palace revolutions in the century,

which had shown that neither of these criteria were sufficient conditions and that claims of a

different sort could also be made. Catherine drew on these precedents while also seeking to

produce her own arguments, aiming to delegitimize her husband and justify herself. These she laid

out in her two ascension manifestos, produced on the day of the coup and a week later,

respectively.

The second, a longer and more substantial exposition of her ideas will be the focus

of the remaining discussion, and it is referred to henceforth as ‘the Ascension Manifesto.’ We turn

now to its contents.

Catherine’s Ascension Manifesto stands aside from other such proclamations of the period

in its extensive analysis of a ruler’s failings. Although Catherine did not specifically use the term

sovereignty, her detailed, analytic exposition of the monarch’s station and power justifies

invocation of this term and highlights its necessity. The same might not be said of Peter, who, she

argued, both failed to identify and willfully chose to disregard how, in the Russian context, his

great powers were to be legitimately exercised and maintained. Since Peter lacked a deep

understanding of sovereignty, he took no strategic steps in exercising these powers. Peter

understood his station in absolutist terms, namely being able to do what he wished, and in whatever

manner he saw fit. Lacking any meaningful normative conceptions, he failed to show restraint or

to set practical limits on his own powers. In a variety of corresponding ways, he lost his legitimacy,

and hence, any claim to sovereignty.

According to Catherine, Peter thought that the power he had rightfully inherited according

to established rules of the Russian monarchy was an intrinsically unlimited prerogative that had

Ruth Dawson, “Perilous Royal Biography: Representations of Catherine II immediately after her Seizure of the

Throne,” Biography, 27: 3 (Summer 2004), Catherine’s involvement in Peter’s death was the subject of debate in

foreign accounts of the coup. See M. A. Kriuchkova, Triumf Mel’pomeny: ubiistvo Petra III v Ropshe kak politicheskii

spektakl’ (Moscow: Russkii mir, 2013), 28-69.

Antony Lentin, “Introduction,” in [Catherine II], Catherine the Great and Voltaire: Selected Correspondence, ed.

and trans. by Antony Lentin (Newtonville, MA: Oriental Research Partners, 1977). Catherine began a correspondence

with Voltaire after her ascension to the throne and was able to convince him that she was committed to enlightened

rule.

There has been a question about the authorship of these manifestos. David Ransel states that although they were

scrutinized and approved by the empress personally, both manifestos were in fact penned by Grigorii Teplov, with

Nikita Panin helping to draft the second. He goes on to argue that the second manifesto primarily reflected the program

advocated by Panin. See Ransel, The Politics of Catherinian Russia, 71. However, in a more recent work, John

Alexander has argued that the second manifesto was dictated by Catherine before being “reworded [for her] into the

slightly archaic Russian used in official pronouncements,” Alexander, Catherine the Great, 13. Catherine’s authorship

is supported by Ruth Dawson, “Perilous Royal Biography: Representations of Catherine II immediately after her

Seizure of the Throne,” Biography, 27: 3 (Summer 2004), 525. Given Catherine’s concern with her public image, it

seems unlikely that she would have allowed the content of these critical proclamations to be determined by others.

That neither of the manifestos presented her as a regent is evidence that she played an important role in their

formulation, and, conversely, that Panin and Teplov had limited scope to determine their content. I assert that both

manifestos were collaborative documents, but that they contained only views that Catherine was willing to accept.

Hence, the chapter refers to them as her manifestos.

no corresponding moral limits. Peter, she claimed, had been given a “monarchical power,” which

she understood as a power that was “established by God for the benefit and prosperity of his

subjects.” Peter, however, had thought differently about his own position. Instead of seeing himself

as an heir designated for the moral task of governing, she claimed, he treated his position as a gift

of happenstance that had “fallen to him for his own personal amusement.”

Catherine underlined

the difference between these two understandings of power with an important semantic distinction.

The first—power bolstered by established rules and traditions and wedded to the well-being of the

subject—she framed as samoderzhavie, the word used to describe the Russian autocracy. The

second—an unlimited power to do as one pleased—she described as samovlastie [lit. self-power].

This word, which might be translated as despotism, conjured up a corrupt and illegitimate form of

power. Importantly, Catherine argued that samovlastie was Peter’s personally chosen manner of

rule and was not intrinsic to autocracy in Russia. She did so by noting that Peter had received his

power from his predecessors, above all Elizabeth, but noted that Peter had willfully expanded the

prerogatives extended to him. Claiming to derive his prerogatives from Elizabeth, Peter had

seemingly “forgotten the principle of natural law [according to which] no-one could give to

another more right than they possessed themselves.”

One of the worst consequences of Peter’s attitude towards power, according to Catherine’s

Manifesto, was his contemptuous treatment of the Orthodox Church and its practices. This attack

on Russia’s religion took two forms. It manifested itself in Peter’s physical comportment. Peter

acted insolently during religious ceremonies, failing, for example, to bow his head in a show of

respect to religious icons, and even swearing at members of the clergy. Moreover, Peter sought to

“ruin” (razzorit’) the Church in his legislative projects, a reference to Peter’s hasty secularization

decree from March 21 as well as his attempts to remove icons from places of worship.

Catherine

also made explicit reference to Peter’s laws prohibiting places of worship in private houses, an

egregious measure that hurt those who could not pray anywhere else on account of their poor

health. Catherine presented Peter’s attacks on the Orthodox Church as a failure to acknowledge

or submit to important limits, not only those presented by divine and natural law—cornerstones of

Christian theology—, but also to show respect for Russia’s cultural heritage. Finally, she argued

that Peter’s attempts to undermine the Church would lead subjects to abandon their belief in, and

hence, fear of God. Subjects cut in Peter’s own image would neither acknowledge nor obey

legitimate limits to action, making life and governance impossible.

The Ascension Manifesto further asserted that Peter “despised” Russia’s civil laws (zakony

grazhdanskie) and that he refused to observe them.

As an example, she pointed to Peter’s failure

to name Paul his lawful successor in his ascension manifesto. Secondly, and no less critically, he

refused to respect the laws of government (zakony v gosudarstve). In particular, Peter “held in

contempt the state’s judicial institutions” (sudebnye mesta).

Above all, this was a reference to

Peter’s sidelining of the Russian Senate, the highest-ranking executive body and highest court of

appeal in Russia, established under Peter the Great. Because there was little distinction between

the judiciary and the administration in Russia, Catherine’s term, ‘sudebnye mesta,’ also designated

the larger array of executive and bureaucratic institutions that made up the Russian state. Other

‘sudebnye mesta’ included the imperial Colleges which presided over important branches of

Catherine II, “Manifest, 1762,” 218.

Ibid., 218.

Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine, 23.

Catherine II, “Manifest, 1762,” 218.

Ibid., 219.

governance, such as foreign affairs, the army, the judicial system, and the economy. They also

included chanceries and the remaining Prikazy – executive institutions dating to the seventeenth

century, which Peter the Great had partly replaced with the Colleges.

Peter III may not in fact

have violated each of these separate offices, but it is important that Catherine identified them as

part of the institutional structure of the state that the monarch must observe.

The same passage of the manifesto further cited Peter’s refusal to submit himself to a

working schedule, noting that he “neglected official business to the point that he did not even want

to hear about it.”

In essence, Catherine argued Peter’s style of rule constituted an attack on the

apparatus of government, destroying the institutional legacy left by Peter the Great. By doing so,

Peter III had broken the pledge he had made at his ascension, an important aspect of legitimacy in

Russia in the eighteenth century. While Peter III and others may have remembered Peter the

Great’s reign as marked by the implementation of radical reforms, Catherine downplayed that

aspect in this part of her manifesto. Instead, she cast the latter as a paragon of wisdom and restraint,

submitting to the norms and procedures of the state institutions that he had constructed. Indeed,

she accused her husband of wanting to cede control of the state to foreigners (v chuzhie ruki

otdat’).

This was a direct criticism of Peter’s decision to give foreign statesmen at the Russian

court unregulated access to his person, in some cases even permitting them to participate in

government at the expense of Russian noblemen. Catherine’s message was in part a restatement

of the idea that the monarch ought to recognize expectations about and understand the wisdom of

limiting his activity to the formal apparatus of government. In part it was also an explicit injunction

that the monarch should limit the formulation of policy to advisers drawn from the Russian state -

individuals who had risen meritocratically through the Table of Ranks (also founded by Peter the

Great), and who theoretically had proven both their competence and allegiance to the state and its

people. However, her criticism also suggested that the sovereign ought to maintain intact the

untrammeled nature the monarch’s power in all circumstances.

Overall, Catherine’s criticism of Peter involved tropes of despotism that were well

established in the political literature of Enlightenment Europe. Discussion of Peter’s samovlastie,

for instance, involved the notion of caprice and decision-making in the pure self-interest of the

ruler – both staple characteristics of despotic regimes.

In one respect, however, Catherine’s

manifesto contravened the standard literature of her age. Unlike Montesquieu for example, who

believed that despots continue to enjoy power in the absence of legitimacy (and who labelled

Russia as a despotism), Catherine argued that Peter had forfeited both legitimacy and power as a

result of his despotic practices. As Peter damaged his legitimacy, he turned his subjects against

him and was forced to relinquish any remaining claim to his position.

Panin clarified what is meant by ‘subednye mesta’ in his Imperial Council project, which he presented to Catherine

in December, 1762, defining them as: “коллегиями, канцеляриями, конторами и всякими другими приказами,

какова б звания ни были” (colleges, chanceries, offices, and all other prikazy, whatever they might be called), SIRIO,

vol. 7, 202. This project will be discussed below.

Catherine II, “Manifest, 1762,” 219.

Ibid., 218.

As noted in the Introduction, the figure of the despot featured prominently in the political philosophy of the

Enlightenment. The most important contemporary text that Catherine and most westernized Russian noblemen would

have been familiar with was Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (1748). In addition, Volume 4 of the Encylopedié,

which was published in the 1750s and was also known to the Russian elite, had a separate chapter on Despotism,

written by De Jaucourt. Lastly, The Adventures of Telemachus (1699), by François Fénelon, was an important earlier

text on good rule that influenced Montesquieu, and it enjoyed wide circulation in Russia in the eighteenth century.

For discussion of this text in relation to stoicism, see below.

Catherine was careful in the way she framed Peter’s downfall. On the one hand, she noted

that Peter had, through his “tireless recklessness,” brought his subjects to the point where they

were ready to “condemn him” and even “spill his blood.”

On the other hand, she studiously

avoided language that granted subjects the right to revolt, for it might in due course come to be

used against her. Correspondingly she insisted that God’s commandments prescribed “respect for

government power” and forbade disobedience. However, rebellion was not needed in Peter’s case:

Catherine argued that he had brought about his “own fall” (sobstvennym padeniem) and attributed

this to the working of Providence.

The logic of Catherine’s argument seemed to be that once

Peter had lost his legitimacy, his subjects ceased to be bound to him. This justified the decision of

Russia’s elite to deprive him of power and to ask Catherine to take his place. Theoretically, Peter,

who was stationed in Oranianbaum with his detachment of Holsteinian guards, continued to

control means that might have allowed him to rule by force. Instead, he capitulated and signed a

statement, prepared under Catherine’s auspices, that confirmed that he was unfit to manage the

burdens of autocratic power: only his abdication would stave off the total collapse of the Russian

state, and with it, his “eternal disgrace.”

Catherine, who made sure to include Peter’s abdication

statement in full in her Ascension Manifesto, allowed Peter to preserve thereby some modicum of

honor.

Catherine’s Manifesto sought to account for the crucial puzzle, why Peter sought to rule

the way that he did? According to the Manifesto, Peter’s failures were a limited understanding of

his station and his powers. Yet, she also suggested his failures stemmed from his own personality,

and indeed it is remarkable that she would expound on it at such length in her Manifesto.

Catherine did not utterly vilify Peter, as she noted that he did possess “good” and “humane

qualities.”

However, these qualities were outweighed by an excess of negative, destructive

emotions, which, when found in the person of a ruler, made him unfit for his station. Peter’s

emotions were deeply inimical to his responsibilities. Catherine’s Manifesto stated that he “hated”

Russia

and that this led him to direct his samovlastie against the country’s cultural and political

institutions. He also hated his own family, having “in his heart” a desire to “destroy her and their

son.”

Supposedly, he also despised his aunt, Empress Elizabeth, resenting the filial love that she

showed him, considering it a sort of “oppression,” even “enslavement.” During his time as Grand

Duke, Peter had shown “all sorts of bitterness” toward Elizabeth, causing her anger and grief; but

he supposedly hid his rancor out of fear that she might punish him. The extent of his contempt for

her only became apparent when he was certain that she was going to die. Catherine claims that

“before she had taken her last breath,” he had “purged himself of any memory of her”; on her

deathbed, “he refused to even look at her”; and, at her obsequies, an old and venerable ceremony,

he “gazed at her grave…with joy,” all the while making “ungrateful comments about her person.”

Catherine’s Manifesto is not entirely able to explain the source of Peter’s abnormality. At

one point it seems to identify his failure to recognize and submit to norms with his faithlessness,

stating he possessed not a “single trace of belief of Greek Orthodoxy.” Notably, she made this

“Manifest, 1762,” 219.

Ibid., 219.

Ibid., 222.

It is indeed strange that the manifesto, not just the memoir, would go into all the details described below (such as

that Peter would not look at Elizabeth on her deathbed).

Catherine II, “Manifest, 1762,” 217.

Ibid., 217.

Ibid., 218.

accusation again later in her memoirs in even starker terms, stating that “he was attached to no

creed and had no idea of the dogmas and principles of the Christian religion” and that she had

“never seen a more perfect atheist in practice than [him].”

Given that Catherine conceded in her

Manifesto that Peter had been carefully educated, his insouciance was not a product of his

upbringing, suggesting that there was a deeper physiological problem that afflicted him. The notion

that there was something wrong with Peter’s body seems to have been the conclusion of many

commentators who wrote about his strange character and behavior. For example, the contemporary

historian and critic, Mikhail Shcherbatov, claimed that Peter was “insane.”

After Peter’s death,

Catherine had an autopsy performed on Peter’s body, and she wrote about this in her letter to

Poniatowski noting they discovered he had and “inordinately small heart” that was “quite

withered” - a possible physiological explanation for his behavior.

Ultimately, it may have been

important that the sources of Peter’s unfitness for the throne remained unfathomable, for to be able

to explain them might have been to suggest that he could have been rectified in some manner. But,

if he could be shown to be an incorrigible delinquent, impervious to education, counsel, or any

other method of improvement, there would be no choice but to remove him from the throne.

Part 4: ‘Legal monarch’ or the Self-Limiting Ruler?

Historians have long emphasized the increasing importance in Russia of the notion of legal order

over the course of the eighteenth century.

Its rise reflected the growing influence in Russia of the

European Enlightenment and its ideal of making human institutions conform with reason.

Beginning in the reign of Peter I, the aspiration of building a legal order to replace confusion,

inefficiency, and arbitrariness permeated reform efforts in many areas of society including central

government. In order to mitigate political despotism, some thought that this legal order needed to

be all-encompassing so as to include not only the servitor, but the monarch as well.

This manner of thinking about sovereignty has been associated with Catherine. Cynthia

Whittaker, for instance, writes, “Catherine’s promise to establish a ‘legal monarchy’—a central

motif of political dialogue during her reign—attempted to remove the threat of despotism by

establishing laws that “would tie a monarch’s hands from doing evil.”

She traces Catherine’s

promise back to a key passage of her manifesto in which she presented a positive vision for her

ascension to the throne:

By our imperial word, We do most jubilantly promise to enact such state institutions

by which the government of our beloved fatherland can operate with strength and

within its proper boundaries, and so that each state office to be bequeathed to our

descendants will have its own limits and laws for the maintenance of their proper

order. Through this we hope to guarantee the integrity of the empire and of Our

Catherine II, The Memoirs of Catherine the Great, 149.

Mikhail Shcherbatov, On the Corruption of Morals in Russia, ed. and trans. by Antony Lentin (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1969), 220.

Catherine II, “Letter to Poniatowski,” 62.

See above all the works of Oleg A. Omel’chenko, including Kodifikatsiia prava v Rossii v period absoliutnoi

monarkhii (Moscow, 1989); “Zakonnaia monarkhiia” Ekateriny II (Moscow, 1993); and Monarkhiia

prosveshchennogo absoliutizma v Rossii (Ph.D. diss., Moskovskii gosudarstvennyi industrial’nyi universitet,

Moscow, 2001).

Whittaker, Russian Monarchy, 102. Whittaker draws on Oleg A. Omel’chenko’s concept of ‘legal monarchy,’ which

he sees as the defining ideology of Catherine’s reign: “Zakonnaia monarkhiia” Ekateriny II (Moscow, 1993).

Autocratic power that had been subverted somewhat by misfortune, and to deliver

the faithful subjects of the fatherland from their despondency and humiliation.

100

This statement points to a defining feature of Catherine’s reign: her adherence to the philosophy

of legal order and her firm commitment to pursue its construction whilst in power.

101

She shared

this aspiration with the Russian elite, and she would have calculated that it would gain their

approval. Having said that, the question remains whether Catherine’s pursuit of legal order would

encompass the sovereign. There are ambiguities in her position that are worth exploring.

One way to set up this problem is to look at a project proposed to Catherine within a month

of her ascension in July 1762 by Nikita Panin, who remained one of her key advisors in the first

decade of her reign. He proposed the formation of an ‘Imperial Council’ in response to Catherine’s

request that he investigate and formulate ideas for reforming central government – a project that

made sense in light of what was said in her Ascension Manifesto. In a lengthy preamble to his

project, Panin laid out an extensive critique of the Russian state. He thought that the monarchy

was not governing effectively because it lacked a robust or complete legal order. In a manner

similar to Catherine’s Ascension Manifesto, he credited Peter the Great with laying the foundations

of this order. Yet, the constant “unrest and “wars” of his reign prevented him from “bringing the

civil state apparatus to completion.” Subsequent rulers, who noticed flaws in the functioning of

government, he claimed, did not effectively resolve them, because they resorted to “temporary

arrangements and rules” that had no “direct institutional basis.”

102

According to the preamble, the weakness of the state’s institutional structure enabled the

abuse of station, or even worse, for government business to be taken over by unqualified

individuals, often as a result of personal patronage and favoritism, rather than meritocratic

promotion through the state structures. In some cases, Panin noted that they would even usurp the

right to command, referencing the private cabinets (kabinety) that they had set up for themselves.

103

In a crucial sentence that aligns with the idea of modern sovereignty, he claimed that state affairs

were often being run “more by the power (sila) of individuals, than the authority (vlast’) of state

offices.”

104

Panin thought that these tendencies had been flagrant in Elizabeth’s reign. He singled

out, for instance, Nikita Trubetskoi – who had served as general procurator (general-prokuror)

from 1740 to 1760.

105

Panin referred to him as a “random individual” who rose to his position

100

Catherine II, “Manifest, 1762,” 222. The Russian reads: “[Mы] наиcторжественнейше обещаем Нашим

Императорским Словом узаконить такия государственныя установления, по которым бы правительство

любезнаго Нашего отечества в своей силе и принадлежащих границах течение свое имело, чтоб и в потомки

каждое государственное место имело свои пределы и законы к соблюдению доброго во всем порядка, и тем

уповаем предохранить целость Империи и Нашей Самодержавной власти, бывших несчастием несколько

ниспроверженную, а прямых верноусердствующих своему отечеству вывести из уныния и оскорбления.”

101

On the importance of law to Catherine’s image as ruler, see Richard Wortman, Scenarios of Power, vol. 1

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 110-47.

102

Nikita Panin, “Bumagi, kasaiushchiiasia predpolozheniia ob uchrezhdenii imperatorskago soveta i o razdelenii

senata na departamenty v pervyi god tsarstvovaniia Ekateriny II,” Sbornik imperatorskogo russkogo istoricheskogo

obshchestva (hereafter SIRIO), vol. 7 (St. Petersburg, 1874), 212.

103

Ibid., 205-6.

104

Ibid., 209.

105

This post was established by Peter the Great in 1722 with the goal of managing the operations of the Senate and its

communications with the monarch. The General Procurator was one of the highest-ranking individuals in the

government. Because the Senate was in charge of archiving all existing laws, and because it was also the highest

judiciary instance, the General Procurator ought to have been responsible for upholding the law. De facto, the Senate’s

functions were ill-defined under Elizabeth, its prerogatives constantly infracted by other institutions, creating

through “courtly favor,” as a result of which he “observed neither laws nor good order” and “began

to corrupt everything with his caprice.”

106

Panin also drew attention to the Konferentsiia, an

imperial council founded in October 1756 in connection with the outbreak of the Seven Years War.

Panin claimed that this institution had no robust constitutional foundation, which meant it was

filled with individuals who began to rule on their own, making laws and controlling the

administration. For blame, he singled out the council’s audacious secretary, Dmitry Volkov.

According to Panin, Volkov assumed all sorts of powers that were totally inappropriate to his

station: “he managed ministers”; “selected” government business and “composed” policy, all in

accordance to his caprice. Moreover, “he forced ministers to sign off” on his schemes either by

invoking the “name of the empress” or even by citing decisions as “his own will” in order “to

mask” what were actually the designs of one of her favorites.

107

Volkov continued to play a central

role in managing state affairs under Peter III

108

– a period that Panin described as “such times when

there was not only an absence of established government, but of any written laws as well.”

109

Although Panin criticized these individuals, he did not blame “a few bad apples” but argued

that the solution to despotic practices involved reforming the state. Specifically, he wished to use

law to bind the monarch to well-defined channels and procedures, hoping to create a lock that

would insulate power from distortion and usurpation by political players. The nature of this lock

would inevitably have significant implications for the extent of the monarch’s prerogatives. When

we look at the details of the Imperial Council proposal, we find that Panin favored a strong lock,

for he proposed that all kinds of legislative commands issued by the monarch—be they akty,

postanovleniia, manifesty, gramoty, patenty

110

—not only pass through the council, but be

countersigned by the state secretary of the college department they concerned. This implied that

the Council would share in legislative power and the monarch could no longer legislate the Council

away if he or she desired.

Given that Catherine rejected Panin’s plan that she serve as regent, perhaps this was a

method to limit her power by other means. However, it seems more likely that Panin believed a

well-thought-out constitutional device would resolve the institutional defects he recognized under

previous rulers. Although Panin was not a republican,

111

his plan seemed to subscribe to

fundamental tenets of republican thought, namely that power should not be overly concentrated in

any one place, and that all power must be counterbalanced by another institution. This is supported

by the spirit of his preamble which pointed out that where individuals were not bound by law,

abuse of power would inevitably follow. Panin curiously presented his constitutional scheme as a

project left uncompleted by Peter the Great.

confusion and demoralization in its ranks. On the Senate under Elizabeth, see Istoriia pravitel’stvuiushchago senata

za dvesti let: 1711-1911, vol. 2 (St. Petersburg: Senatskaia tipografiia, 1911), 9-314.

106

SIRIO, vol. 7, 204.

107

Ibid., 207. At the Shuvalovs’ instigation, Volkov drew up a project that would have turned the Konferentsia,

constitutionally, into the place of decision making in 1761. However, it was not signed by Elizabeth. Catherine must

have been aware of this project (and of Elizabeth’s response), particularly as it is strongly implied in Panin’s discussion

above. Despite his criticism of Volkov, Panin’s Imperial Council project, too, tried to alter the operation of power,

and hence the terms of sovereignty.

108

Volkov was put under house arrest after Catherine’s coup, but was eventually rehabilitated.

109

Ibid., 210.

110

Species of commands. See Chapter 3.

111

In the historiography there has been some discussion of whether Panin was in fact a republican. See Ransel, The

Politics of Catherinian Russia, 20-1. Ransel argues his ideal was Montesquieu’s ‘balanced monarchy.’

The Imperial Council project seems to have gone through a number of drafts, to which the

empress may have contributed.

112

Ultimately, however, Catherine did not promulgate the statute

and it was thereafter deferred indefinitely. Unfortunately, no historical records provide us with

Catherine’s exact thoughts on Panin’s project or elucidate her reasons for letting it lapse. David

Ransel has plausibly suggested that Catherine was beholden to opposing political ‘parties’ that had

supported her in the overthrow of her husband; therefore, to accept the proposal would to have

been to favor one party at the expense of the other.

113

Similarly, Aleksandr Kamenskii has argued

that Catherine decided not to push ahead with Panin’s reform because she perceived it lacked broad

public support.

114

But she may also have recognized in Panin’s project a device that would

irrevocably limit the monarch’s prerogatives and believed that to adopt it would weaken, not

strengthen, sovereignty in Russia. In other words, Catherine did not subscribe to the notion of

constitutional or ‘legal’ monarchy, at least in the form that Panin presented it to her. It is

noteworthy that at no point in her reign did she enact legislation that would have bound her power

in such a manner. This is further bolstered by her later writings, which contain statements of her

political philosophy voicing her support for monarchy that was unlimited by such devices. The

most important of these was her instruction to the Legislative Commission, or Nakaz, which was

completed in 1767, discussed in Chapter 2. However, similar statements exist from earlier in her

reign, as for example Catherine’s secret instructions to her new general procurator, Alexander

Vyazemsky, written in February 1764. Here Catherine stated that Russia needed to be ruled by a

“single sovereign” who “has in himself all the means [or methods, sposoby] to counteract any type

of harm.” She noted that the Russian monarchy must seek to avoid any “division of its power or

strength” (razdrobleniiu vlasti i sily) and that “any other form of government” would “bring about

its ruin.”

115

Statements such as this possibly point to a disagreement between Catherine and those

who believed that sovereignty would be strengthened by constitutional devices. For Catherine, it

was critical that protocols and procedures mediate the commands of the monarch, as well as those

of state servitors, but they stemmed from the monarch’s capacity for self-regulation. As she noted

to Vyazemsky, it was the monarch who was best positioned to steer a correct path, understanding

that the common good and their personal interest were the same; all others were mere “hirelings.”

Returning now to the key passage in the Ascension Manifesto, cited above, we might ask

whether it should be read as expounding a constitutionalist position. The promise to “establish new

state institutions” makes this extremely tempting. However, this passage might alternatively be

understood to address the activities of the monarch’s servitors, and not the person of the monarch.

In sum, Catherine was promising legal clarification of the protocols and procedures associated

with subordinate offices. This too was clearly a Petrine project,

116

and perhaps she wished to

indicate to people like Panin that she intended to see this project completed. In addition, it is worth

pointing out a certain dissonance between this passage and the thrust of the remaining document.

Although Catherine resolved to establish new state structures, her argument against Peter III was

largely premised, as we have seen, on the idea that such structures already existed to some degree

and that he had decided to disregard them. If Catherine was advocating a constitutionalist position,

one might expect to have seen an explanation partially grounded in the inadequacies of the

112

An alternative text of the manifesto exists in the archives. It is not in Panin’s hand. See RGADA, f. 10, op. 1, ex.

4. A copy exists in RGADA, f. 10, op. 3, ed. 492.

113

Ransel, The Politics of Catherinian Russia, 99-138.

114

Aleksandr Kamenskii, The Russian Empire in the Eighteenth Century: Searching for a Place in the World, trans.

by David Griffiths (New York: Routledge, 2015), 208.

115

Catherine II, “Sekretneishee nastavlenie kniaziu Aleksandru Viazemskomu,” SIRIO, vol. 7, 347.

116

Referring to Peter the Great, not Catherine’s husband.

monarchy’s structure. While Catherine’s passage gestures in Panin’s direction, her Ascension

Manifesto departs from his Imperial Council project, which portrayed the institutions of the

Russian state as essentially incomplete. Her Ascension Manifesto made no such moves. Instead, it

was entirely preoccupied with an extensive critique of Peter as a person utterly unfit to reign.

Overall, the Ascension Manifesto is better seen as offering an alternative view in which

sovereignty was guaranteed not by law (which flowed from the monarch), but from restraint

wedded to wisdom.

117

The monarch ought to be able to discern what sort of order was in fact

beneficial for the autocracy’s legitimacy and power and self-limit accordingly. In Russia, such an

order included obedience to divine and natural law, as well as respect for the Orthodox Church

and Russian customs. Catherine also stressed that the monarch should observe civil laws and

restrict the exercise of their power through the state’s institutional structure. Again, Peter the Great

was invoked as the individual who supposedly established this system of modern sovereignty by

creating a new set of state institutions at the beginning of the eighteenth century. In contrast, the

story she tells of her husband is that he was both unable to control himself, and either unwilling or

incapable of understanding how restraint might help him govern well. Nonetheless, the Ascension

Manifesto’s schema for orderly power was only loosely formulated at this stage, especially with

regard to the monarch’s interactions with the state apparatus. Catherine vowed to establish ways

of exercising power that involved its servitors. However, in what ways and on what terms,

depended on a host of strategic decisions she had yet to take. Once in power, Catherine would seek

to involve these servitors in state power in a variety of ways in order to address the dangers of

despotism.

Might prudence lead the sovereign to break the law? This is a crucial question. In her

Ascension Manifesto, Catherine argued that the sovereign was morally bound to rule to the

interests of subjects and that in order to achieve the common good, the sovereign should obey civil

laws and observe established institutions and procedures in the exercise of his or her prerogatives.

However, it is quite conceivable that the interest of subjects might under certain circumstances

best be served by the monarch circumnavigating these norms. Catherine was quiet about this, but

it floated in the background as a distinct possibility, particularly if the monarch remained

constitutionally unbound. Even so, as the Manifesto suggests, breaking the law would risk eroding

the legitimate exercise of power.

117

The importance of restraint in generating power suggests a stoic ethic. An important neo-stoical text that we can

expect Catherine and the Russian elite to have read was Fenelon’s Adventures of Telemachus (originally published in

French in 1699). Elizabeth funded the publication of a translation of this text in 1747. See, Gary Marker, Publishing,

Printing and the Origins of the Intellectual Life in Russia, 1700-1800 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985),

55. Igor Fedyukin has suggested that by this time the work was already known in Russia and that it may have exerted

some influence on Russian policy. See his article, “‘An Infinite Variety of Inclinations and Appetites’: Génie and

Governance in Post-Petrine Russia,” Kritika: Explorations in Russia and Eurasian History, 11: 4 (Fall 2010), 741-62.

Catherine continued to be interested in stoical texts during her reign. For example, in 1768 she commissioned the

translation and publication of Marmontel’s Belisaire. Between 1768 and 1796 this text went through seven editions,

with print runs totaling 4000 copies, a large number by Russian standards. Similarly, Fenelon’s Adventures of

Telemachus went through four editions between 1767 and 1797. See, Marker, Publishing, 206. For a discussion of

stoical ideas during the empress’ reign, see Walter Gleason, Moral Idealists, Bureaucracy, and Catherine the Great

(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1981). For a wider discussion of stoicism in the political and moral

philosophy in the early modern period, see Christopher Brooke, Philosophic Pride: Stoicism and Political Thought

from Lipsius to Rousseau (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012).

Part 5: Catherine’s Mandate to Rule

Catherine was crowned empress on September 22, 1762, a little over two months after she

overthrew her husband. The haste with which this ceremony was performed was intended to

solidify her initial legitimacy as monarch and to further distinguish her from Peter, who had never

officially been crowned. The choice of Moscow for her coronation highlighted her adherence to

the traditions and procedures of the Russian monarchy.

Catherine legitimized her ascension by arguing that she had been elected by God and the

Russian people. This claim featured in both her ascension manifestos and it became part of the

rhetoric of legitimacy adopted by her supporters, including Panin.

118

It was also the response that

she gave to those who questioned her in private, by what right she had taken the throne.

119

Catherine played out her election by the Russian people in the theater of her coup. Scenes in this

drama included her proclamation as empress at the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg by the members

of the Holy Synod and the Senate, followed by an appearance to assembled troops—14,000, she

claimed, in total—all of whom dutifully pledged their allegiance to her.

120

In her Ascension

Manifesto Catherine spoke of the great eagerness with which “all ranks—the clergy, the military,

and the civilian”— had taken their oath of loyalty.

121

She noted also the bloodless nature of her

ascension, citing it as further evidence that she was the people’s choice. The same description of

events, with striking language, appears in her letter to Poniatowski, where Catherine figured

soldiers from the Ismailovsky regiment rushing up to her, “kissing [her] hands, [her] feet], [and]

the hem of [her] dress, calling [her] their savior”; likewise she described the Horse Guards as

having been in a “such a frenzy of joy as [she] had never before seen, weeping and shouting that

the country was free at last.”

122

Of course, such passages had their own strategic objectives, and

while they do not prove widespread support for her ascension, they at least suggest that popular

backing was critical to the terms in which Catherine sought to legitimate her seizure of power.

Contrasting herself to Peter, who ostensibly coveted power to satisfy his selfish whims,

Catherine’s Ascension Manifesto denied that she had any personal ambition and was reluctant to

reign.

123

Her actions, she claimed, were motivated by love for her son, Russia, and its subjects, all

of whom had been threatened with power in Peter’s hands. In her criticism of her husband, she

sought to highlight her fidelity to the Orthodox Church, thereby demonstrating a respect for

Russia’s cultural heritage and indicating her belief in God. To recognize God was also to recognize

moral duties, a prerequisite for legitimate rule. Finally, she displayed knowledge of Russia’s

political institutions and how integral they were to the monarch’s power. To claim election by the

people was to claim popular approval of her principles and the sovereignty project that she

espoused.

Did it matter that Catherine was a woman? In the eighteenth century, Russia had had a

number of female sovereigns, suggesting that women had become accepted as legitimate bearers

of political power by a sufficient number of the Russian elites.

124

By the same token, women were

118

SIRIO, vol. 7, 208.

119

Ekaterina Dashkova, The Memoirs of Princess Dashkova, ed. J. Gheith (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,

1995), 88.

120

Catherine II, “Letter to Poniatowksi,” 61.

121

Catherine II, “Manifest, 1762,” 220.

122

Catherine II, “Letter to Poniatowski,” 60-1.

123

Catherine II, “Manifest, 1762,” 217.

124

The historiography has tended to argue that female rule was a more serious challenge in Russia at the beginning of

the century. Sophia Alekseevna, for example, who acted as regent for Ivan V and Peter I between 1682-1689,

undermined her standing when she tried to accrue more power. During his reign, Peter I was responsible for bringing

often cast as weak-willed and capricious, making them susceptible to ineffective or even despotic

government.

125

And if, as Catherine thought, sovereignty demanded restraint, being a woman

might plausibly have been seen as a great weakness and would support arguments for

constitutional government. In her Ascension Manifesto, however, it was Catherine who criticized

Peter for his lack of restraint as ruler, thereby pointing out that as a woman, she was at no particular

disadvantage to a male ruler. What is more, she presented Peter as an immoral man who was cruel

to his wife (her) and their son,

126

which she contrasted with her own ‘motherly’ love for Paul and

her subjects. This indicates that female gender could also be used to make a positive claim for

legitimacy. In this case, Catherine suggested that love could help direct the female ruler to uphold

the dictates of sovereignty. She, a woman, could hence continue Peter the Great’s project of state

development.

6: Conclusions

In her Ascension Manifesto Catherine laid out a complex view of the monarchy’s power - one that

is best understood in terms of sovereignty. Power, she claimed, must be exercised in a regular and

orderly manner with reference to and through a series of norms and institutions. This line of

argument helped her to shift the question of legitimacy away from initial claims to the throne and

toward the monarch’s person and style of rule. This was the ground upon which she criticized her

husband, Peter III, a man who she thought exercised power in an arbitrary fashion, akin to a despot.

Peter may have had some conception of his great prerogatives; but his was a rudimentary,

absolutist conception that in Catherine’s mind did not qualify as sovereignty. Even if Peter was

merely the foil against which Catherine asserted her own qualities of rule, a comparison of their

ascension manifestos shows her understanding of the sovereign’s task to have been fundamentally

different.

The emphasis Catherine laid on the collaboration between the monarch and the state’s

political institutions was the most innovative and modern component of her theory. Above all, it

suggested that the monarch’s power could be dispersed, or at least, that involvement of the

monarch’s servitors was to be critical in activating and/or exercising that power. By recasting

sovereignty in such terms, Catherine imagined a new and arguably more difficult role for the

Russian monarch. Whereas Peter III understood his station in terms of command according to his

will (or whim), in Catherine’s system the monarch would be continuously called upon to closely

Russian women into the life of the court. He also crowned his second wife, Catherine I and sought to normalize the

idea of female rule. See Gary Marker, Imperial Saint: The Cult of St. Catherine and the Dawn of Female Rule in

Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University, 2007). Nonetheless, the issue of gender has been raised in relation to

Catherine II. See, for example, Brenda Meehan-Waters, “Catherine the Great and the Problem of Female Rule,” The

Russian Review. 34: 3 (July 1975), 294-307 and Victoria Ivleva, “Catherine II as Female Ruler: The Power of

Enlightened Womanhood,” Vivliofika: E-journal of Eighteenth-Century Russian Studies, 3 (2015), 20-46.

125

Mikhail Shcherbatov wrote of Catherine: “Generally speaking, women are more prone to despotism than men; and

as far as [the Empress] is concerned, it can justly be averred that she is in this particular a woman among women.

Nothing can irritate her more than that when making some report to her, men quote the laws in opposition to her will.

Immediately the retort flies from her lips” ‘Can I then not do this irrespective of the laws?’ …. Many lawsuits attest

to her arbitrariness.” Shcherbatov, On the Corruption of Morals, 247. In this passage Shcherbatov also identifies

Catherine as an opponent of constitutional monarchy. For a wider discussion on female rule, see chapter 8, in “Gender

and Power,” in Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2019), 303-36.

126

For an exploration of gender in the Ascension Manifesto, see Ruth Dawson, “Perilous Royal Biography:

Representations of Catherine II immediately after her Seizure of the Throne,” Biography, 27: 3 (Summer 2004), 517-

34.

manage the throne’s servitors while constantly surveilling her own interactions with them to

maintain order and allow power to operate smoothly. In the abdication statement that Catherine

had prepared, she had Peter acknowledge that he had not been able to “rule the Russian state”

because his physical constitution was unable to take the “load and burden” (tiagost’ i bremia) that

such rule demanded.

127

In addition to what the Manifesto made explicit, here perhaps she also

gestured at the extensive managerial activity that her understanding of sovereignty would demand

in practice. Not merely to command according to one’s will, but to tend to the constant and arduous

task of managing the state’s servitors was the great burden, the secular Passion, of the modern

sovereign.

Catherine claimed that Peter the Great was the founder of modern sovereignty in Russia.

Through his “tireless toil” he had built the apparatus of government and decided to exercise his

power through it. This, however, was Catherine’s conceit: it was her, not her predecessors, who

had the concept and was able to articulate it first as official state doctrine.

127

Catherine II, “Manifest, 1762,” 222.

Chapter 2: The Empress’ ‘Nakaz’: An Instruction in Sovereignty

1. Introduction

In 1765, three years after her ascension to the throne, Catherine began working in private on a

major document. This project, which took over two years to complete, was the ‘Instruction’, or, as

it is more commonly known by its Russian name, the Nakaz. This text comprised hundreds of

statute-like articles arranged thematically around political institutions, criminal law and judicial

procedure, and the economy, to name but a few. These articles were not all of the same type: some

were descriptive; whereas others had a distinctive normative quality. As a document, produced by

a reigning monarch, the Nakaz had no real precedent in Russia. And many of its statutes articulated

ideas that were novel to Russia’s political tradition. For example, it spoke at length about political

liberty and advocated the equality of all before the law. It also spoke out against slavery in passages

that could easily have been read as a criticism of the Russian institution of serfdom. A major use

of the text was to instruct the deputies of a national legislative commission, which the empress

convoked in 1767 in order to codify Russia’s outdated laws. But it was also strategically

disseminated throughout the offices of the civil administration, suggesting a wider significance of

its content. Catherine continued to refer to the text—and also re-direct her subordinates to it—at

various points of her reign, indicating her ongoing belief in the validity of its principles in guiding

state action. This is enough to secure its status as one, if not the most, important work of political

philosophy published in Russia in the eighteenth century.

Historians of Catherine’s reign have identified the Nakaz as a major source for

understanding her thinking on a variety of areas of state policy.

128

Some have interpreted the text

as a programmatic document. Isabel de Madariaga, for example, has called it a blueprint laying

down the principles of good government.

129

Others have identified it as expounding a doctrine of

‘legal monarchy’ according to which all actors were to be bound by law.

130

Scholars have also

been interested in how the empress compiled the text from foreign sources, either underlining its

derivative nature,

131

or conversely, pointing out how she understood and adapted these texts to the

Russian context.

132

This chapter builds on previous interpretations, while advancing the claim that the Nakaz

is the single most important document that lays out the empress’ views about the monarch’s

powers. In this connection, the chapter has three purposes. Firstly, it argues that the Nakaz, in a

much more detailed manner than her Ascension Manifesto, articulated a complex view of

monarchical power, which must to be understood in terms of sovereignty. Secondly, the chapter

128

F.V. Taranovskii, “Politicheskaia doktrina v “Nakaze” imperatritsy Ekateriny II, in Sbornik statei po istorii prava,

posviashchennyi M.F. Vladimirskomu-Budanovu (Kiev, 1903), and Basil Dmytryshyn, “The Economic Content of the

1767 Nakaz of Catherine II,” The American Slavic and East European Review, 19: 1 (February 1960), 1-9.

129

Isabel de Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), 151.

See also, Aleksandr Kamenskii, Ot Petra I do Pavla I (Moscow, 1999), 335-63.

130

See, above all, Oleg A. Omel’chenko, “Zakonnaia monarkhiia” Ekateriny II (Moscow, 1993). This interpretation

has been taken up in Anglophone literature by Cynthia H. Whittaker in Russian Monarchy: Eighteenth-Century Rulers

and Writers in Political Dialogue (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003).

131

V.O. Kliuchevskii, Kurs russkoi istorii, vol. 5 (Moscow, 1937), 60-85; G. Jones, "The Spirit of the "Nakaz":

Catherine II's Literary Debt to Montesquieu.” The Slavonic and East European Review. 76: 4 (1998), 658-67.

132

Isabel de Madariaga, “Catherine II and Montesquieu between Prince M. M. Shcherbatov and Denis Diderot,” in

Politics and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Russia: Collected Essays (London: Longman, 1998), 235-62; Paul Dukes,

“Introduction,” in Catherine the Great’s Instruction (Nakaz) to the Legislative Commission, 1767 (Newtonville, MA:

Oriental Research Partners, 1977).

highlights the most defining and distinguishing features of this sovereignty. The monarch must

ensure liberty, understood as security, produced by power that was both properly ordered and made

to operate to in a smooth and predictable manner. These ends were best secured by making power

diffuse, an arrangement that was not a limitation of sovereignty, but its facilitator. This system

would distinguish monarchy from despotism, which, in the views of Catherine and her

contemporaries, was a system of power guided by an absolutist ethic, presupposing that rulers

could do what they wanted. The system of sovereignty that the Nakaz laid out addressed two

pressing contemporary problems. One was the disorderliness of governmental power, including

overlapping spheres of authority, haphazard issuance of laws and decrees, and sudden alterations

among the highest-ranking servitors due to a loss of favor at court. Another problem was the

unclear relationship of members of the nobility to the state, specifically the ethical and legal bases

of their service, which had been rendered even less clear in 1762, when Peter III canceled Peter

the Great’s law that made state service mandatory for all members of the nobility.

133

The final purpose of this chapter is to highlight the managerial role of the monarch in

Catherine’s system of sovereignty. The Nakaz was a strategic text that the empress used to manage

powerholders in a way that helped realize its vision of sovereignty. It targeted not only the deputies

of the Legislative Commission, but also the noble servitors of the central bureaucracy. It sought to

impart to these individuals a unified understanding—grounded in reason—of the nature of the

monarch’s power and of their expected role within it.

134

Organizing the throne’s servitors has often

been seen as a task of imposing laws on them. However, the Nakaz, which the empress explicitly

stated was not to be understood as a law, highlights the importance of other ordering strategies,

while at the same time suggesting the limits of law in the empress’ mind. Catherine needed to

establish for its addressees a clear notion of the underlying normative and procedural principles of

sovereignty. It was only on this underlying understanding that law might later be imposed and be

successful. This was in fact one of the Nakaz’s central ideas, namely that monarch should seek to

lay the grounds for new legislation.

2: The Nakaz as Managerial Document

In its first edition, the Nakaz was a formidable document that comprised five hundred and sixty-

six individual articles divided over twenty chapters. It contained large tracts devoted to law,

society, and the Russian political system. Two additional chapters that appeared over the course

133

On the 1762 emancipation of the nobility and its place in a wider codificatory initiative begun under Elizabeth, see

Marc Raeff “The Domestic Policies of Peter III and his Overthrow,” The American Historical Review, 75: 5 (June

1970): 1289-1310; Robert E. Jones, The Emancipation of the Russian Nobility, 1762-1785 (Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 1973); A. V. Romanovich-Slavatinskii, Dvorianstvo v Rossii ot nachala XVIII veka do otmeny

krepostnogo prava (St. Petersburg, 1912); N. L. Rubinshtein, “Ulozhennaia komissiia 1754-1766 gg. i ee proekt

novogo ulozheniia ‘O sostoianii poddannykh voobshche’ (k istorii sotsial’noi politiki 50-kh—nachala 60-kh godov

XVIII v.” Istoricheskie zapiski, 38 (1951), 208-51; Elena Marasinova, “Vol’nost’ rossiiskogo dvorianstva” (manifest

Petra III i soslvnoe zakonodatel’stvo Ekateriny II),” Otechestvennaia istoriia, 4 (2007), 21-33; Sergei Pol’skoi, “Na

raznye chiny razdeliaia svoi narod…” Zakonodatel’noe zakreplenie soslovnogo statusa russkogo dvorianstva v

seredine XVIII veka,” Cahiers du monde russe, 51, 2/3 (2010), 303-28.

134

Richard Wortman has emphasized the role of display and representation in order to bind servitors to the state.

Catherine, he argues, tried to present herself as a the great ‘law-giver’ or ‘legislatrix’ and identifies the Nakaz and the

Legislative Commission as central components of her ‘scenario of power.’ Both these views overlook the non-

representational component of Catherine’s notion of sovereignty. Richard Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and

Ceremony in Russian Monarchy, vol. 1 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). The Nakaz was an attempt to

ground sovereignty on reason.

of 1768 treated the police and the economy. Catherine readily admitted that she appropriated the

majority of these articles from contemporary thinkers, above all, Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the

Laws (1750).

135

Catherine had been familiar with this text before she became empress, as we know

from commentaries she wrote in 1760 in response to a criticism of the work by Strube de Piermont,

a one-time professor of law at the Russian Academy of Sciences.

136

She rediscovered

Montesquieu’s book in 1765, when she embarked on her own attempt at codifying Russian law.

She said that “for two years” it became her “chief exercise” to “write out and think about

[Montesquieu’s] principles,” and that she “tr[ied] to understand him,” often “crossing out [one

day] what [she] had found very good [the previous day].”

137

In addition to Montesquieu, Catherine

drew on Cesare Beccaria’s On Crimes and Punishment (1764) for the sections of criminal law.

She also drew on cameralist works by Baron Bielfeld, and J. H. Gottlob von Justi, the physiocratic

writings of Francois Quesnay, and the Encyclopédie.

138

Notwithstanding all of these influences,

the Nakaz in its entirety was an independent and original document, converting excerpts from these

texts into separate articles, subtly changing their content, or using them in a manner unintended by

their authors. She also combined them, not only with one another, but with other principles that

she formulated herself. It is important that the Nakaz be read alongside the texts that inspired it,

but also, as its own text and on its own terms, that is a work in which Catherine sought to lay out

principles that were specific and appropriate for Russia.

The Nakaz first appeared in print in Moscow in July 1767. Catherine wrote the original

manuscript by hand in French. Today it lies in the library of the Russian Academy of Sciences

together with various materials collected for its composition. The French edition was accompanied

by a Russian translation that was produced by the empress with the help of one of her state

secretaries, Grigory Kozitsky. This was followed shortly thereafter by a German edition in St.

Petersburg, and an English version in London.

139

It is estimated that in total, more than 5,000

copies of the Nakaz in all its editions were produced in the eighteenth century.

140

The Russian

version, however,—the most important with respect to her servitors—went through eight printings

over the course of the empress’ reign.

141

Before its publication, the text underwent a number of drafts. Although it began as a private

project, from June 1765 Catherine began to show parts of the text to close confidants. A draft was

eventually read to the Senate and in 1767 she summoned a select group of high-ranking

individuals, loosely representing the military, administrative, and literary elite to criticize the

work.

142

Catherine claimed that they censured more than half of the work – a likely exaggeration;

135

Catherine II, “Sobstvennoruchnoe chernovoe pis’mo Ekateriny II k d’Alemberu s pokhvalami sochineniiam

Montesk’e i uvereniem, shto sochineniia d’Alambera posluzhat’ na blaro chelovechestvu,” SIRIO, vol. 10, 31.

136

Dukes, “Introduction,” 10-1. For more on Strube de Piermont, see W. E. Butler, “F. G. Strube de Piermont and the

Origins of Russian Legal History,” in Russia in the Age of Enlightenment: Essays for Isabel de Madariaga, ed. Roger

Bartlett and Janet Hartley (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990), 125-41.

137

“Ekaterina II i Montesk’e”, Vestnik evropy, (May 1903), quoted in Dukes, “Introduction,” 11.

138

Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine, 152. See N. D. Chechulin, Nakaz Imperatritsy Ekateriny II dannyi

kommissii po sochineniiu proekta novogo ulozheniia (Moscow, 1967) for the most extensive study of the Nakaz’s

composition.

139

Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine, 151.

140

[Catherine II], The Nakaz of Catherine the Great: Collected Texts, ed. William E. Butler and Vladimir A.

Tomsinov, (Clark, NJ: Lawbook Exchange), 18. For more on the publication history of the Nakaz in Catherine’s reign,

see Gary Marker, Publishing, Printing, and the Origins of the Intellectual Life in Russia, 1700-1800 (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1985), 166-7.

141

Gary Hamburg, Russia’s Path to Enlightenment (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 394-5.

142

“Mneniia o Nakaze,” SIRIO, vol. 10, 75-87.

however, subsequent versions saw a number of changes, including a reduction in the early

Montesquiean analysis of the Russian state, and significant cuts to the discussion of slavery in

Chapter 11. There she deleted passages that proposed serfdom be limited to six years and that serfs

be allowed to accumulate property so that they might buy their freedom.

143

The strategy of

soliciting opinions was part of her ethic of diffusing power in decision-making (see Chapter 3).

This was of special relevance to the Nakaz, for it concerned the shape and character of future

legislation, but also the nature of the political corporation that Catherine wanted the elite to be part

of and take part in.

The Nakaz’s widespread importance was highlighted by a decree, issued by the Senate in

September of that same year, requesting that fifty-seven copies of the text to be disseminated

amongst the central government institutions (prisutstvennye mesta), including the Senate (one for

each of its six departments), the imperial Colleges, and the Glavnyi Magistrat. A second ukaz in

April 1768, proclaiming the addition of a twenty-second chapter, added that copies of the Nakaz

also be sent to all provincial governors.

144

According to these ukazy, all recipient offices were to

enact and adhere to those articles that were relevant to their judicial and administrative matters.

Furthermore, they demanded that the Nakaz be read on a regular basis. The April ukaz specified

that officials gather on Saturdays, so that the text be read by them at least three times a year. When

not in use, the Nakaz was to be kept on the ‘judicial table’ (sudeiskii stol) next to the zertsalo – a

three-sided prism that displayed important pieces of legislation by Peter the Great on the protection

of the rights of subjects, and on the protocols and procedures of government offices.

By contrast, the propagation of the Nakaz was not extended for reading or copying to

‘chancellery clerks’ – functionaries who were not on the Table of Ranks. Thus, the empress wanted

to limit the Nakaz to a select audience of individuals occupying the most important positions within

the administrative apparatus. This policy suggested that the text contained ideas that were

important to them only; and conversely, that it might cause trouble if it fell into the hands of those

who were irresponsible or ignorant. Articles advocating political liberty, equality before the law,

and protection of the poor against the rich might be easily misunderstood or used against the state.

Likewise, Chapter 11’s criticism of slavery could lead to rumors amongst the peasantry that they

would be manumitted and given property – a potential cause of disturbances in the countryside.

Such had been the effect of Peter III’s proclamation of 1762 liberating the nobility from state

service. The Nakaz was a managerial document targeting the administrative, noble elite that was

deemed responsible and educated enough to understand its dictates. The rest of Russian society

could only indirectly benefit from its effects.

The Nakaz sought to generate in the administrative elite an esprit des corps by conveying

to them how their activity, which hinged on a specialized knowledge that the text laid out, was

critical for governance based on reason. Correspondingly, it emphasized that these servitors were

to see the fulfillment of their role in terms of virtue, but also as aligning with their personal interest,

bestowing honor, nobility, and the distinctions and privileges that followed therefrom. Chapter 15,

entitled “Of Nobility”—one of the chapters that was largely written by the empress herself—noted

that noble dignity arose from a “Love for their country” and “Observance of its Laws and Duties”

(Arts. 364 & 373).

145

Although she made a point of singling out military service as “essentially

143

Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine, 158-9.

144

PSZ, no. 12,977 and no. 13,106.

145

Taken from the English translation by Michael Tatischeff. Catherine II, The Grand Instructions to the

Commissioners Appointed to Frame a New Code of Laws for the Russian Empire, trans. by Michael Tatischeff

(London: T. Jeffery’s, 1768), 163-4. All English-language excerpts are taken from this text unless otherwise indicated.

necessary” for the “Existence and Support of the State” (Art. 366), in the very next article she

noted that the “administration of Justice,” that is the civil service, was “no less required in Time

of Peace than in War” and that without it the “State would be destroyed” (Art. 367).

146

In other

words, she viewed state servitors who competently exercised power in well-defined capacities as

a cornerstone of the success of monarchical government. Thus, the Nakaz reinforced the normative

bases on which the nobility was to serve the state—both militarily and administratively—which

had been muddled by Peter III’s decree of 1762.

3: Catherine’s Theory of Sovereignty

The Nakaz is commonly discussed in relation to the empress’ Legislative Commission. However,

Catherine, as we have already noted, envisioned the work to be of broader application to the state’s

servitors. She disseminated the text widely amongst their upper echelons and demanded that they

read it on a regular basis. Following the actual layout of the text, the two opening sections show

that the Nakaz sought to instruct these servitors about the monarchy’s power as well as their

operations as part of it. Similar to the empress’ Ascension Manifesto, we argue that the Nakaz laid

out a complex understanding of power that ought to be seen in terms of sovereignty. In a similar

manner, she elucidated important aspects of this monarch’s power, above all its normative ends

and the organizational and procedural principles that help satisfy these in Russia. But, in the Nakaz

this discussion was more rigorous and systematic. In this connection, one distinguishing feature of

the text was that it laid out a theory of sovereignty in rational terms, deriving from dictates of

natural law, but also observation and experience.

a. The Christian Principle

The Nakaz begins its theory of sovereignty in its opening article. Given its import, it should be

stated in full:

La Religion Chrétienne nous enseigne de nous faire les uns aux autres tout le bien

que nous pouvons.

Закон Христианский научает нас взаимно делать друг другу добро, сколько

возможно.

147

The Christian Law teaches us to do mutual Good to one another, as much as

possibly we can.

148

Thus, the Nakaz began by a laying out a fundamental duty to maximize the good. Catherine equated

this injunction—she uses the term ‘Christian law’ in the Russian edition—with the essence of the

Christian religion. In the very next article, however, she stated that she “[took] it for granted…that

The original French and Russian excerpts are drawn from the text in N. D. Chechulin’s authoritative study, Nakaz

imperatritsy Ekateriny II.

146

Ibid., 163.

147

Chechulin, Nakaz, 1.

148

Catherine II, The Grand Instructions, 69.

this Law prescribed by Religion, [was] rooted, or ought to be rooted in the Hearts of all People”

(Art. 2).

149

Therefore, it took on the character of a principle of natural law. Christians were at a

distinct advantage in understanding this law, but as a natural law, it could be grasped, either by

reason and conscience, by anyone, including religious schismatics as well as the diverse non-

Christian members of the Russian empire.

The imperative to do as much good as possible is presented in Article 1 as a general, but

not necessarily a political duty. Therefore, in the subsequent articles Catherine moved to show

how it justified a political relationship. Having grasped the Christian precept, she insisted that

“every honest Man in the Community [was] or [would] be, desirous of seeing his fatherland (sa

patrie) at the very Summit of Happiness, Glory, Safety, and Tranquility” (Art. 2) and “that every

Individual Citizen in particular, must wish to see himself protected by Laws, which should not

distress him in his Circumstances, but, on the Contrary, should defend him from all Attempts of

others, that are repugnant to this fundamental Rule” (Art. 3).

150

Accordingly, as legislator,

Catherine defined her own duty as producing laws that were conducive towards the fulfillment of

the Christian principle. Since this duty stemmed from both Christian law and reason, it was a

divinely ordained duty. As such, it also enjoined subjects to obedience to power that operated

accordingly. In this way, the Nakaz’s conception of the legitimate political relationship was framed

by a primacy of duty over right - a hallmark of the German natural law doctrines that the Russian

state had endorsed from Peter the Great onwards to train its servitors.

151

The Nakaz stated that the extent to which the Christian law was fulfilled constituted an

aggregate of “Happiness, Glory, Safety, and Tranquility.” Some critical functions that government

needed to fulfill in this connection included to secure the property and honor of individuals (Art.

114), to protect individuals from economic oppression (Art. 35), and, in keeping with the

enlightened opinion of the time, to ensure religious toleration and its corollary – to prevent

religious persecution (Art. 494). In addition, Catherine thought that all individuals were entitled to

a minimum of social welfare, which included a “sure Maintenance, food, proper clothing, and a

way of life not detrimental to the health of man” (Art. 346).

152

Above all, however, the government must endeavor to ensure liberty. In the Nakaz,

Catherine deployed the concept of liberty in two ways. In Articles 13 and 14 she articulated a

conception of “natural liberty” as something to be protected from government intrusion, a

noteworthy admission that a modicum of autonomy for ‘negative’ liberty was important.

Government, she explained, must act to direct people’s conduct “in such a manner that the greatest

good may be derived from all their operations, but that this must come at the least possible cost to

their natural liberty.” Elsewhere, in Article 39, she advanced a second conception of liberty, which

she called “civil,” or “political liberty”; such liberty she defined as “the Peace of Mind arising

from the Consciousness, that every Individual enjoy[ed] his particular Safety.” Such ‘peace of

mind’ required a system of law that would protect individuals from arbitrary interference from

others. Understood more broadly, however, it also necessitated political power that operated in an

orderly and predictable fashion. Erratic motions, such as the trampling of customs, the imposition

of unexpected laws, and the irregular observance and execution of existing laws by the monarch

149

Ibid., 69.

150

Ibid., 69-70.

151

On this topic see: J. L. Black, Citizens for the Fatherland: Education, Educators, and Pedagogical Ideals in

Eighteenth Century Russia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), 23-70; Marc Raeff, Origins of the Russian

Intelligentsia: The Eighteenth-Century Nobility (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1966), 148-71.

152

Catherine II, The Grand Instructions, 159.

or other agents of state power, were also major threats to such liberty. Fear still operated as a tool

of social control, but it remained compatible with civil liberty so long as it arose solely from

certainty of repercussions associated with breaking the law. Under no circumstance, however,

should subjects fear the monarch or the state’s officials. Adding her own addendum to the passage

from Montesquieu Catherine put it as follows: individuals should fear that law, “but…all alike

should fear the Laws only” (Article 39).

153

Catherine’s conception of liberty was indebted to Montesquieu, and there is good reason

to believe that her decision to adopt and advance this conception was deeply strategic.

154

There are

a number of possible reasons for this. Firstly, such a conception disassociated liberty from

[republican] self-governance, thereby allowing her to claim it as the aim of any well-constructed

political community, including monarchical government. Secondly, liberty, so understood, suited

a society in which individuals were differentiated by social groups. In such a society, while laws

and hence rights differed by social group, all individuals might still be said to enjoy equal liberty.

Finally, this conception addressed what Catherine and those who supported her ascension to the

throne in 1762 considered to be a major issue, namely power that operated in a disorganized and

arbitrary manner. Although Catherine laid out this problem in her Ascension Manifesto, the Nakaz

clarify it further by invoking this concept and advancing it as a metric, derived from the dictates

of natural law, for assessing legitimate power. This is not all, for the Nakaz was also a practical

document that sought to order power by imparting to the state’s servitors an understanding of how

it was to properly flow and be exercised, in part through them (see below).

In conclusion, Article 1 was the most significant statement in the Nakaz.

155

Above all,

opening the Nakaz with the Christian law confirmed that its fundamental concern was the task of

establishing the proper structure of political right, both universally as well as in the context of

Russia. Many of the subsequent principles and injunctions in the text must be seen as following

from this imperative, and their fulfillment would, in Catherine’s estimation, provide the best means

of realizing that law in Russia. The Christian law was a necessary component of proper

sovereignty, for without it, the power of the ruler would be fundamentally unstructured and hence

left undirected to society’s good. Proclaiming this precept as a foundational maxim of the Russian

state was meant to underline its distinction from despotic government. Once again, however,

Catherine failed to follow her mentor consistently. While Montesquieu had warned that

153

Here I adopt the the George Macartney/Paul Dukes translation, since it better aligns with the original French:

“…mais que tous ne craignent que les Loix.” See [Catherine II], The Nakaz of Catherine the Great: Collected Texts,

ed. William E. Butler & Vladimir A. Tomsinov (Clark, NJ: The Lawbook Exchange, 2009), 449.

154

In Montesquieu’s case, Annelien De Dijn has argued that he wanted to “wrest control over the concept liberty from

the republican admirers of classical liberty.” See Annelien De Dijn, “On Political Liberty: Montesquieu’s Missing

Manuscript.” Political Theory. 39: 2 (2011), 181-204. In a related article she marks as noteworthy that Catherine used

Montesquieu’s concept in the Nakaz: Annelien De Dijn, “Montesquieu’s Controversial Context: The Spirit of the Laws

as a Monarchist Tract,” History of Political Thought. 34: 1 (Spring 2013), 66-88. See also, Robin Douglas,

“Montesquieu and Modern Republicanism,” Political Studies 60 (2012), 703-19. For more on republican theories of

liberty in the early modern period, see the works of Quentin Skinner, including Hobbes and Republican Liberty

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) and Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2012).

155

I make no claim to any new or original discovery on this point. The importance of Article 1 has been acknowledged

by F.V.Taranovskii, “Politicheskaia doktrina v “Nakaze” imperatritsy Ekateriny II,” in Sbornik statei po istorii prava,

posviashchennyi M.F. Vladimirskomu-Budanovu (Kiev, 1903), 67-109. Nonetheless, Article 1 is largely ignored in

the secondary literature on the Nakaz.

Christianity had itself been a source of despotic ideas,

156

Catherine argued that the Christian

religion provided a bulwark against despotic government and provided a foundation for rightful

power. In this way, Catherine at once advanced a Montesquieuan conception of sovereignty, while

altering other components of his theories.

b. The Arrangement of Legitimate Power

The Christian principle laid out criteria for legitimate power, including that the ruler provide

liberty, understood as security, to their subjects. Hence, the Christian principle demanded an

arrangement of power such that these criteria, including liberty, be met. In the chapters

immediately following the Christian principle, the Nakaz laid out in detail what this arrangement

was to be in Russia. We explore this configuration in this section.

Firstly, Catherine claimed that monarchy was the only legitimate form of government in

Russia. Catherine justified this claim, not by custom, tradition, or scripture, but in terms of utility

in relation to the empirical challenges posed by Russia’s ‘natural constitution.’ In Article 9, she

wrote that the “Possessions of the Russian Empire extend upon the terrestrial Globe to 32 degrees

of Latitude, and to 165 of Longitude.” Such a large territory, she asserted, demanded monarchical

government, for “it was expedient so to be, that quick Dispatch of Affairs, sent from distant Parts,

might make ample Amends for the Delay occasioned by the great Distance of the Places” (Art.

10). Other forms of rule were too inefficient for such a large land; delayed decision-making would

impede any sort of governance. She stated unequivocally that this would “not only [be] prejudicial

to Russia, but would ultimately bring about its entire ruin” (Art. 11).

157

Although ‘dispatch’ was a critical legitimating feature of monarchy, given Russia’s natural

constitution, she also claimed that monarchy’s relative simplicity made it a better form of power.

As she stated later in the text, in matters of government “the most simple Expedients [were] often

the very best; and the most intricate the worst.” In this connection, she compared monarchy to a

“best constructed Machine” because it “employ[ed] the least Moment, Force, and fewest Wheels

possible” (Art. 514).

158

By her account, monarchy also contrasted favorably to “every other Form

of Government” when it came to adherence to the law. Not only in Russia, but everywhere, as she

claimed in Article 12, it was “better to be subject to the Laws under one Master, than to be

subservient to many” (Art. 12).

159

By implication, other forms of government were less likely to

produce the public good, above all liberty itself. Which exact models she had in mind, however,

remains unclear. Possibly, she had republican democracies in mind. But she more likely envisaged

rule by a small elite, a much more plausible threat in eighteenth-century Russia, as demonstrated

by the rule of the Supreme Privy Council in the reign of Catherine I, between 1726 and 1730. In

this connection, Catherine may have used the Nakaz to underline that in Russia, the rule of the

156

Vickie B. Sullivan, Montesquieu and the Despotic Ideas of Europe (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,

2017), 81-134.

157

Catherine II, The Grand Instructions, 71. Catherine had made a similar argument in her instructions to her new

general-procurator, Aleksandr Vyamzemsky, in February 1764, while at the same time stressing the importance of

monarchy to balance the different passions and interests of the empire’s disparate parts: “Российская империя есть

столь обширна, что кроме самодержавного государя всякая другая форма правления вредна ей, ибо все прочее

медлительнее в исполнениях и многое множество страстей в себе имеет, которые все к раздроблению власти

и силы влекут, нежели одного государя, имеющего все способы к пресечению всякого вреда и почитая общее

добро своим собственным, а другие все, по слову Евангельскому, наемники есть.” “Sobstvennoruchnoe

nastavlenie Ekateriny II kniaziu Viazemskomu pri vstuplenii im v dolzhnost’ general-prokurora,” SIRIO, vol, 7, 347.

158

Ibid., 193.

159

Ibid., 71.

nobility, and hence any action taken to formalize its political power through discrete institutions,

was illegitimate.

Secondly, the Nakaz explained how the monarch’s power was to be internally configured.

The main discussion occurs in Chapters 3 and 4 and is modeled on Montesquieu’s analysis of the

nature of monarchy in Part I of the Spirit of the Laws:

Article 18: The intermediate Powers, subordinate to, and depending upon the

supreme Power, form the essential Part of monarchical Government. Intermediate,

subordinate, and dependent powers constitute the nature of monarchical

government.

Article 19: I have said, that intermediate Powers, subordinate and depending,

proceed from the supreme Power; as in the very Nature of the Thing the Sovereign

is the Source of all imperial and civil Power.

160

Article 20: The laws, designed to be accepted as fundamental laws, necessarily

require Tribunals, which are as intermediary channels through which monarchical

power flows.

161

Catherine made clear that there was to be a single, indivisible, and ultimate source of

political power in the state, which originated in her person. Yet, at the same time she explained

that this power could be exercised in a dispersed manner without diminishing it or fragmenting its

underlying unity. Building on the claims of her ascension manifestos, Catherine again asserted that

the Russian state already possessed ‘intermediary bodies’ and that the monarch’s power was to

‘flow’ through them. Enhancing this configuration would help order and regularize the movements

of the state, thereby reducing arbitrariness and poor decisions. Ultimately, the proper channeling

of the monarch’s power would maximize liberty, the crucial metric by which the state’s

performance was to measured. Importantly, these intermediary bodies needed to be properly

designed and managed in order to resolve a tension that existed between them and the empress’

earlier justification of monarchy as the only legitimate form of government in Russia. Remember

that as Catherine stated, the country’s size necessitated efficient government with as few

‘movements, forces, and wheels as possible,’ therefore the ‘intermediate powers,’ if they were too

elaborate, might multiply and complicate these movements. The intermediate structures of the

Russian monarchy must remain simple. Any innovation that unnecessarily complicated the flow

of the monarch’s power beyond what was required for the production of liberty could be cast,

according to Catherine’s criteria, as illegitimate.

Adopting the idea of intermediary powers, the Nakaz detailed their unique characteristics

in Russia. In contrast to Montesquieu, for whom the noble estate, together with its corporate

freedoms and privileges, constituted the main intermediary power, the Nakaz spoke of the

160

Ibid., 73.

161

My translation. Catherine’s original French reads: [Article 18:] Les pouvoirs intermédiares, subordonnés et

dépendans constituent la nature du gouvernement. [Article 19:] J’ai dit: les pouvoirs intermédiares, subordonnés et

dépendans: en effet, le Souverain est la source de tout pouvoir politique et civil. [Article 20:] Des Loix fondamentales

d’un Etat supposent nécessairement des canaux moïens, c’est à dire des Tribunaux, par où se communique la puissance

souveraine.” Catherine II, The Nakaz of Catherine the Great, 115.

governmental organs of the Russian state.

162

This stance underlined the dependence of the nobility

on the state. At the same time, by asserting that power would flow through intermediary bodies,

the Nakaz highlighted that they would be involved in the exercise of power and that they should

understand this involvement as being critical to the monarchy’s sovereignty.

While the Nakaz laid out a system of proper sovereignty, it did not lay out a detailed

account of how all its component channels of power would be configured. The principal exception

to this was its discussion of the Russian Senate, which it proclaimed a critical body. In Chapter 4,

Catherine identified the Senate as the “Dépôt des Loix” (Art. 22), another term that she borrowed

from Montesquieu. The Senate should form a permanent political body that would communicate

and oversee the execution of the existing laws. Following Montesquieu, she stated that the Senate

had the responsibility of reviewing legislative bills originating from the monarch and

“examin[ing]” them, determining how they might be executed, and whether they contained any

potential defects (Art. 24). If the Senate deemed that new laws were “unconstitutional,”

163

or if

they were either “obscure” or “impossible to be carried into Execution,” it was expected to

“remonstrate” (Fr: représentation) to the monarch (Arts 21 & 24). If, however, “[it found] nothing

in them of that Nature,” the Senate “entered them in the Code of Laws” and “published them to

the whole Body of the People” (Art. 25).

164

Although the Senate was the principal body in this

process, Catherine stated in Article 27 that subordinate intermediary bodies also had the right and

the duty to scrutinize legislation and to make representations, either to the Senate or even to the

monarch directly. The Nakaz left the precise nature of this process obscure, but a possible

justification for this may have been that these subordinate bodies, which were tasked with carrying

out particular decrees, might identify difficulties unforeseen by the Senate, thereby adding a further

safeguard to the legislative procedure. Here Catherine likely had in mind the Russian Colleges,

which were divided according to area of government activity and possessed specialized

knowledge.

165

In another point of contrast, remonstrations were not public formalities, unlike

French parlements, which Montesquieu had in mind, but procedures internal to the apparatus of

the state.

166

Perhaps this vagueness was the outcome of the specific way in which Catherine defined

these bodies. It might also have been a deliberate attempt to maintain the infallibility of the

monarch’s commands once, at the end of this process, they were officially promulgated.

By highlighting intermediary bodies, the Nakaz admitted that for the monarch to govern

well, she could not govern entirely by herself. In sum, they fulfilled three roles. Firstly, they added

a dialogical component to legislative commands that helped refine their content, ensuring that they

were both implementable and appropriate. Secondly, they were a mechanism by which the

monarch’s will, once finalized, could in fact be accurately executed. Thirdly, since these bodies

operated on a procedural basis, the implementation of commands would become orderly and

regularized. All three of these points were crucial for the production of liberty, as defined by

Catherine. She made this point explicitly in Articles 98-99, where she identified the Senate, the

162

As discussed by Isabel de Madariaga, especially in, “Catherine II and Montesquieu between Prince M. M.

Shcherbatov and Denis Diderot,” in Politics and Culture, 235-62.

163

Catherine II, The Grand Instructions, 73.

164

Ibid., 74.

165

The Russian edition indicates “government bodies” (pravitel’stva), while the French text indicates “other law

courts” (autres Cours de Justice), which were in the eighteenth century located within the framework of the various

Colleges. Notably, in article 99, the French “un Sénat, avec des Chambres et des Tribunaux Subalternes” (a Senate,

with its chambers and subordinate courts) is rendered as “Senat, kollegii i nizhnie pravitel’stva,” (a Senate, Colleges,

and lower [government institutions]).

166

Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine, 153.

Colleges, and lower courts as guarantors of the “liberty and security of citizens.”

167

Hence, these

intermediary bodies directly served to legitimate the functioning of state power. Building on her

Ascension Manifesto (Chapter 1), Catherine also pointed to the wisdom of Peter the Great in

having created them (Art. 99), thereby again identifying him as the founder of modern sovereignty

in Russia.

Further, the Nakaz claimed that sovereign power must see the monarch uphold a strict

division between the legislative, which ought to remain the exclusive domain of the monarch, and

the executive branches. Catherine was adamant that the monarch should not personally administer

the law, but must rely on an independent system of judges and courts (Art. 149), who would carry

out judgments in the monarch’s name in accordance with laws as they formally decreed.

Involvement by the monarch in judicial decisions could only be a matter of last resort, issuing

decisions in individual cases to which there was no possibility of appeal. Any extemporaneous

decisions by the monarch necessarily constituted immediate changes to the law; but, as the Nakaz

had already made clear in Chapters 3 and 4, the procedure for making new laws in Russia involved

specific institutions and protocols. Ordinarily, therefore, monarchical intervention in judicial cases

was a violation of ordered power, which existed for the sake of good government. In addition, such

interference constituted an unexpected outcome, contravening the order that was to produce “Peace

of Mind,” and this alone would make it illegitimate. As with the formulation of the monarch’s will,

the administration of justice must involve clear procedures and protocols. Catherine accepted that

the “Formalities of the Law” were complicated, and that they frequently caused expense and delay.

Yet, she insisted that their existence was a necessary consequence of the government’s Christian

duty to protect the liberty and security of citizens. In her words, they were the “Price, which every

Citizen pa[id] for his Liberty” (Art. 112).

168

In contrast, justice without formalities was associated

with despotic power. Following Montesquieu, Catherine referenced the Turkish sultan who

supposedly personally presided over judicial cases and meted out punishments according to his

caprice (Art. 113). Although the exercise of power in such fashion might end dispute, it did not

satisfy the Christian imperative to maximize the good, which she proclaimed as the fundamental

principle of the Russian state.

The Nakaz theorized the monarchy’s power as a complex right that involved underlying

norms, and in practice, division and diffusion. This is reflected in one further precept, which is

often also considered to be a central tenet of modern theories of sovereignty, namely the separation

between the monarch as a private individual and as a person who exercised public power.

169

Catherine made this distinction in the context of a supplementary chapter on expenses, revenues,

and state administration, distinguishing between the royal estate and the property of the ruler as a

private person or landlord. In Article 625. for instance, she noted that the ruler might possess

estates as a private landlord in his own right and could dispose of them as he wished. However,

those held in the capacity of monarch must not be used according to private interest, but according

to the principles of legitimate political power. The monarch’s estate included the right to both

revenues of state property and impositions on the property of others (Art. 631). In neither case,

however, could the monarch impose burdens that would “exceed the Measure of [Citizens’]

Abilities” to pay them.

170

Therefore, although the monarch depended on public lands for revenues,

without which the state could not effectively function, the Nakaz emphasized that the power of the

167

Catherine II, The Grand Instructions, 90.

168

Ibid., 93.

169

See footnote 171 below.

170

Catherine II, The Grand Instructions, 217.

monarch was not to be conflated with the private, (economic) power of a dominus. This distinction

is further supported by Catherine’s call to avoid reducing subjects to slaves. Not only would this

be detrimental to political liberty, but it would risk turning the state into the household and the

sovereign into a master.

171

Underlying the Nakaz’s discussion of monarchical power was the figure of the despot, a

major preoccupation of the political literature of the period. In this debate, Montesquieu was the

major authority of the age. Despotism, he argued, was a system of power, not a system of

sovereignty,

172

and its defining characteristics were the absence of fundamental laws and the

presence of a ruler who “governed alone according to his will and caprice.” While the Nakaz failed

to satisfy all of Montesquieu’s concerns (for example, it did not lay out a law of succession),

173

171

For more on the public and official nature of the modern sovereignty, see Martin Loughlin, The Idea of Public Law

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 72-98. Blandine Kriegel, The State and the Rule of Law, trans. by Marc A.

LePain and Jeffrey C. Cohen (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 15-32; Michel Foucault,

“Governmentality,” in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, ed. Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and

Peter Miller (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991), 87-105. Also, Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of

Modern Political Thought, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 284-302, 349-60. Daniel Lee,

““Office is a Thing Borrowed”: Jean Bodin on Offices and Seigneurial Government,” Political Theory, 41: 3 (2013)

409-40. See Introduction for a detailed discussion of these and other sources.

172

Charles-Louis de Secondat de Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, ed. A. Cohler, B. C. Miller, and H. S. Stone

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 21. In this passage Montesquieu states that only republics and

monarchs, but not despotic states, wield “sovereign power.” In other words, despotism constituted a system of power,

but was not a system of sovereignty. This distinction is not an accidental feature of this passage, but runs through the

entirety of the Spirit of the Laws, thus it reflects something critical about Montesquieu’s classification. De Jaucourt’s

entry in the Encyclopédie, entitled “Despotism,” was heavily influenced by Montesquieu and it adopted the above-

mentioned distinction, characterizing despotism as a wielding an “autoritè despotique”, and limiting sovereignty to

monarchies, aristocracies, and democracies. “Despotisme” in Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences,

des arts et des métiers, etc., ed. Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert. The University of Chicago: ARTFL

Encyclopédie Project (Autumn 2017 Edition), Robert Morrissey and Glenn Roe

(eds), http://encyclopedie.uchicago.edu/. 4: 888. In the Nakaz Catherine adopted Montesquieu’s taxonomy in order to

describe the Russian monarchy. If one consults Chapter 2 in the original French, one immediately sees that Catherine

defined the Russian monarchy as ‘Souveraineté’ (Art. 13), the Russian monarch as a ‘Souverain’ (Art. 9), and the

power that the state possessed as a ‘une autorité souveraine’ (Art. 10). For a discussion of Montesquieu’s despotism

as a system of power, see Sharon Krause, “Despotism in The Spirit of Laws,” in Montesquieu’s Science of Politics:

Essays on the Spirit of the Laws, ed. D. Carrithers, M. Mosher, and P. Rahe (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield,

2001), 231-71.

173

Catherine intended to promulgate a clear law of succession when the Legislative Commission had completed its

work on a new law code. See Aleksandr Kamenskii, The Russian Empire in the Eighteenth Century: Searching for a

Place in the World, trans. by David Griffiths (New York: Routledge, 2015), 214-5. Although the Nakaz made no

specific mention of a law of succession, it laid out the ground upon which one might be designed. Take for instance,

Chapter 18, entitled “Of Inheritances.” Speaking of the inheritance of private patrimony (nepodvizhnee nasledie), she

asserted that inheritance required “fixed inviolable law(s),” so that the “right Heir might be easily known,” and “no

Disputes or Complaints arise about it” (Art. 412). She also noted that the order of inheritance was not defined by the

law of nature, but according to “political and civil laws.” Although the chapter remained firmly focused on the issue

of the property of subjects, there is an implicit suggestion that the transferal of the monarch’s power also required

some equivalent fundamental law. Catherine worked on a new law of succession, which we know from a number of

political blueprints. One of these, written in the late 1760s, asserted that a law of a succession was demanded by the

“first article” of the Nakaz—the Christian law—, “from which all legislation should flow.” History demonstrated that

states lacking such a law saw power “falter” leading to the “division of the state” and its invasion or even “complete

destruction” by “barbarian hordes.” In this connection, she explicitly mentioned the fall of the eastern Roman empire,

though Russian readers would undoubtedly have recalled comparable moments in Russia’s own history, above all the

period of Mongol invasion, and more recently, the Time of Troubles in the seventeenth century. The document

proposed a new law, entitled “the Imperial Statue of Catherine II,” whereby the throne would pass to the monarch’s

oldest son, beginning upon her death with the succession of her son, Paul. Interestingly, she rejected regency, saying

addressed the threat of despotism in Russia by seeking to rectify the proper exercise of power by

a sitting monarch. The text addressed this problem by asserting that the exercise of power be a

complex operation that involved the monarch in close coordination with her servitors. Catherine

believed that this view of power would be recognized by the Enlightenment philosophes, as well

as the Russian elites, as a legitimate system of sovereignty. It stood in stark contrast to the rule of

the despot, embodied most forcibly in the person of Peter III, who had exercised power alone and

in whatever manner he had found fit.

5. Managing the Legislative Commission

Although law-making will be treated at great length in the following chapter, it would be remiss

not to mention here the Legislative Commission of 1767, for it was the primary target of the

empress’ Nakaz. Critically, the Legislative Commission showcased the system of diffused power

that Catherine laid out in this text. Furthermore, the Nakaz directed the operations of the

commission, highlighting the managerial role that the monarch was to play in this new system.

When Catherine decided to move forward with her project to produce a new law code, she

made no claim to original discovery, but presented it as a culmination of a project once initiated

by Peter the Great at the start of the century. In her ukaz to the Senate from December 14, 1766,

she wrote, “[Peter] himself had noticed the insufficiencies and discrepancies of laws; and already

in 1700 it was decreed that the Ulozhenie be done again.” After Peter’s death, “in various years…,

particularly during the reign of Our Dearest Aunt Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, effort was made to

correct the civil laws.”

174

For this purpose, Elizabeth had set up a special codification commission

alongside thirty-five sub-commissions in 1754. Manned by high-ranking servitors, this

commission produced draft codes of civil and criminal law as well as a charter on the status of

subjects. The latter project sought to clarify a society of estates, although it was largely focused on

the privileges of the nobility, which arguably reflected the social composition of its framers.

However, none of these drafts were ever passed into law, possibly because of the outbreak of the

Seven Years War, but also possibly Elizabeth began to devote less and less time to governmental

affairs – a fact of which Catherine would have been very much aware.

175

Catherine, too, favored the use of a special commission and modeled her own codification

effort at least in part on previous attempts. However, in contrast to the numerous small, private,

that in the case of the son’s minority, the mother would be “crowned.” However, the text abruptly stopped thereafter

and it was never promulgated in any form. See Russkaia starina, 12 (1875), 384-5. In the late 1780s, Catherine worked

on a further piece of legislation aimed at reforming the Senate, which included a section about succession. There she

seemed to reaffirm Peter the Great’s policy, stating that the “autocratic and legislative power of the Imperial Majesty

designates the heir to the throne.” See her “Nakaz senatu,” in [Catherine II], Ekaterina II: izbrannoe, ed. G. O.

Babkova (Moscow: Rosspen, 2010), 620. We know from her writings to her secretary, Aleksandr Khrapovitsky, that

she had during this time been reading Feofan Prokovich’s Pravda voli monarshei—the justification text for Peter’s

law—and this may have prompted her to change her mind. However, in the manifesto, she ascribed to the Senate an

important role in facilitating this process, and even gave it the right to choose an heir in the case that the monarch had

failed to do so. This suggested that the law of 1722 needed to be better thought out, but that it could be an appropriate

structure of sovereignty in Russia – a sharp divergence from Montesquieu’s philosophy. Nonetheless, this, too,

remained unpublished, leaving Peter’s law in its original form and the question of the empress’ own successor still

unclear. See Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine, 307. Overall, given Catherine’s emphasis on predictability

and security as governmental priorities, one would have expected her to resolve the issue of succession definitively,

yet she hesitated. This was arguably a signal inconsistency.

174

PSZ, no. 12,801. The Sobornoe Ulozhenie was the great law code of 1649, drafted under tsar Alexei Mikhailovich

(1645-1676) by the Zemsky Sobor, a representative body drawn from the feudal estates.

175

See the discussion in Kamenskii, The Russian Empire in the Eighteenth Century, 186-8.

and exclusively noble-run committees that had been commissioned at various moments, she

favored a large, national body composed of deputies elected from various estates of the empire.

These, she envisioned, would play a major role in preparing the new law code. It has been

suggested that the Legislative Commission’s convocation might best be seen as a strategic political

move aimed at achieving a “public and resounding endorsement of the legitimacy of her rule.”

176

This might be partially true, but the need for a national body was also dictated by Catherine’s

belief that legislation needed to take into account local particularities, as Montesquieu famously

advocated.

177

Expressions of provincial needs were to take the form of instructions (also ‘nakazy’)

produced by inhabitants in the localities, which would be transported to the Legislative

Commission by their respective deputies.

Deputies for her Commission were determined by local elections, ensuring that only the

most sensible, well-informed, and upright individuals would qualify to participate. Their number

was determined by territorial units and favored the election of noblemen, who were

overrepresented in the resultant assembly. Nobles selected a single deputy for each district or uezd.

In contrast, categories such as odnodvortsy (free peasant farmers) and state peasants were

permitted a single deputy for each province, a much larger unit. Important government

institutions—the Senate, the Holy Synod (which represented the clerical estate), the imperial

Colleges, and select chanceries—each sent a single deputy, who were also noblemen. In its final

composition, the Commission consisted of 564 deputies, of which the most populous categories

were nobles (205) and merchants (167), whereas only 29 were peasants.

178

Catherine sought to bind these deputies to their task in two ways. Firstly, she granted the

deputies a number of privileges, including: a salary; immunity from capital and corporal

punishment, and torture; the protection of their property from confiscation; and badges signaling

their special status, which could be worn for the duration of their life, and in the case of noble

families, could be added to their family heraldry.

179

The bestowal of rewards suggest she was

influenced by Montesquieu’s idea that harnessing personal interest through a carefully constructed

system of honor was a reliable method of directing individuals to useful activity and one that was

excellently suited to monarchy.

180

At the same time, she wanted to instill a new sense of duty in

civil service. The deputies were sworn into their new positions in a grand ceremony in Moscow.

Catherine first directed them to the Uspensky Cathedral where they took a special oath that

reflected the importance of their station. In the oath the deputies pledged to the empress their

“unflagging faithfulness” and promised to complete the work of the commission according to the

rules that she had laid out. They also vowed not to be misled by “personal gain, friendships, feuds,

and hateful grudges,” but to be guided by “love for their country and fellow citizens.” Upon taking

the oath, the deputies were summoned to the palace where the empress gave them her

“approbation” and then “presented them with the Nakaz,” which they were now qualified to

receive.

181

The Nakaz was a critical element that Catherine hoped would allow the Legislative

Commission to succeed. Therefore, it was also a sort of indictment of previous monarchs, who had

failed to manage their codification commissions and their servitors properly. The empress

176

Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine, 162.

177

This view is explained at greater length below.

178

Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine, 150.

179

Ibid., 140.

180

See chapter 3.7 in Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, 27.

181

PSZ, no. 12,948.

trumpeted the uniqueness of the text, noting that while previous instructions “remained without

the desired success,” the Nakaz would “introduce unity into the principles and into the

deliberations” of the Legislation Commission, “unmatched by anything that had come before.” In

the empress’ mind then, it contained a system or a philosophy for the correct constitution of

Russia’s laws. Once the deputies had internalized this philosophy, becoming enlightened, they

would understand how to go about their legislative task in the proper way; as she herself put it in

her memoir, they would “begin to judge colors by their proper colors and not as a bunch of blind

men.”

182

As with other sections, the legal philosophy of the Nakaz was greatly influenced by

Montesquieu, in particular his notion that legislation must take into account the ‘spirit of the laws’

of a particular setting. This ‘spirit’ comprised a constellation of empirical factors: customs,

manners, religions, as well as the ‘natural state’—the geography and climate—of the country.

While the mandate of the Legislative Commission was to further explore what these factors might

be in various localities, the Nakaz anticipated their task by setting out what Catherine held to be

key elements of Russia’s ‘natural state,’ which was defined by its Christianity, geographical

position, and history. While Article 1 proclaimed Russia’s Christian mores, Article 6 famously

stipulated that by nature Russia was a “European State,” and that it required according laws and

political forms. In Article 7, she pointed to the difficulty which this project had been realized in

Russian history, noting that Russia’s manners and customs and been corrupted by foreign

conquests – a possible reference to the country’s subjection to Mongol rule between the thirteenth

and fifteenth centuries. However, she credited Peter the Great with beginning again the process of

reintroducing European mores, citing the ease with which he was able to do so as evidence of her

correct assessment of Russia’s natural state. In contrast to Montesquieu, who had used Peter to

highlight despotic political practices, Catherine identified him here as the founder of a new form

of sovereignty that not only involved an apparatus of servitors, but also a consensual approach to

rule, rooted in shared beliefs.

This new system of sovereignty was put on grand display by the empress’ Legislative

Commission. The monarch would formulate a new code of laws with the aid of a body of servitors

that operated according to proper principles of legislation. Such an arrangement necessitated a new

managerial role for the monarch. In the case of the Legislative Commission, the empress conducted

this managerial activity by means of a philosophical text, the Nakaz, which laid out the nature of

the monarchy’s sovereignty and stated clearly the meta-principles of Russian laws. To ensure the

Commission’s smooth operation, the empress ordered that the Nakaz be integrated into its day-to-

day operation. The deputies were obliged to keep a copy of the text on their working table and

refer to it during their work. Furthermore, drafts of completed laws would be checked by the

Commission’s Directional Committee to ensure that they were “compatible” with its precepts.

Lastly, in their final iteration, all the articles drafted by the Commission were to begin with

reference to the chapter and article of the Nakaz to which they conformed. Once this work was

complete, the code would be sent to the Senate for approval, and then finally to the empress for

confirmation.

183

Though the task was never completed, the process envisioned underscored

Catherine’s ambition to rule by regular and predictable procedures, with power diffused across

multiple institutions.

182

Catherine II, “Razkaz imperatritsy Ekateriny II-I o pervykh piati godakh ee tsarstvovaniia,” Russkii arkhiv, 1865,

479.

183

PSZ, no. 12,948.

Conclusion:

The subject of this chapter has been the empress’ Grand Instruction, the Nakaz. The chapter argued

that this tract was philosophically significant because it articulated a substantial theory of political

power that is best understood in terms of modern notions of sovereignty. In developing this theory,

Catherine was greatly influenced by Montesquieu. Yet, she also made her own modifications. One

argument for the originality of her specific formulation is that she conceptualized intermediary

powers as specifically official, bureaucratic channels. Moreover, the empress framed the existence

of intermediary bodies as a dictate of Christian law, both in deference to God’s will, and because

the Christian faith was the religion of the majority of Russia’s population. Therefore, Russian

sovereignty continued to be framed as religious. Nonetheless, the form of this order had less in

common with specific scriptural dictates than with contemporary ideas of how the natural world

operated, that is through regular, predictable movements based on divinely-ordained laws.

In contrast to the predominant focus of existing scholarship, this chapter has gone beyond

reconstructing a philosophical scheme for power. It has argued that both the Nakaz and the

philosophy that it espoused was itself a strategy of governing the monarch’s servitors. In this

respect, sovereignty in practice was the result of system management. This practical requirement

was also ultimately dictated by the abstract view of sovereignty that the empress wanted the

Russian elite to internalize through these strategies, namely that the exercise of sovereignty’s

prerogatives was a collaborative enterprise in which they were implicated.

The Nakaz distinguished Catherine from her deceased husband, Peter III, and not only

because he wrote no comparable document. He had failed to properly manage his relationship with

the throne’s servitors. In Catherine’s estimation, this was because he lacked self-control and

prudence, but also because he entertained incorrect and despotic ideas about his powers. Effective

sovereignty was more than commanding or making one’s will known in whatever manner one saw

fit; it was a complex psychological construct that demanded the careful and continuous attention

of the monarch. It involved ways of binding political actors to a certain way of doing things: this

entailed servitors’ awareness of self-interest and appeals to duty, but it also involved a reasoned

understanding of the order of power.

Chapter 3: Sovereignty and the Art of Command-Giving

1. Introduction

Catherine understood the practice of making decisions and issuing official commands, both

particular resolutions as well as law, as an art through which she could attain sovereignty. This

chapter contends that Catherine’s method of rule was motivated by specific ideas about how

command—central to the notion of sovereignty and governance more generally—should be

organized and carried out. To bring order to this activity was integral to her strategy of

transforming the eighteenth-century Russian monarch into a sovereign ruler.

Early modern theories of sovereignty accentuated the ruler’s right to issue commands, but

the empress approached this activity as more than a matter of merely issuing her own will.

Commanding in such a manner was to play the despot according to contemporary Enlightenment

literature. The sovereign monarch conducted command as part of an arrangement or mechanism

that involved the state’s servitors. This challenge was difficult and fraught with dangers: the prior

history of Russia in the eighteenth century had shown that granting others too much involvement

in the exercise of the monarch’s prerogatives could cause major contention, for it threatened the

unity of autocratic rule. Yet, careful management and engagement of this mechanism could

improve the regularity and dependability of government, strengthen the authority of commands,

and ultimately augment the monarch’s overall status in a way that enhanced sovereignty itself.

The empress made sure that she remained directly involved in the major reforms of her

reign. True, a large number of commands were formulated and composed by servitors on her

behalf, only to be briefly inspected and signed off by her. Her aides also edited and put all of her

commands into final official form before making sure that they were disseminated through the

proper institutional channels. Critical in this regard was her team of secretaries, which she greatly

expanded during her reign. Only by closely managing her servitors did the empress think she could

exercise the full extent of her prerogatives in a regular and ordered fashion. Working by herself,

she could achieve a mere parochial and incomplete force – the realm of mere power, but not

sovereignty. To operate this mechanism most effectively, the empress relied on legal structures,

which governed the work of the Colleges and the Senate. She even imposed a regimented structure

on her all-important secretaries. But law was only one form of management that she employed.

The apparatus of sovereignty required the monarch to develop and maintain working relationships

with her servitors, and to assert herself by making regular, final inputs.

2. Sovereignty, Command, and the Empress’ Theory of Legislation

Catherine’s notion of sovereignty sought to strengthen and widen the sphere of activity of secular

authority. Whereas medieval rulers of Central and Western Europe were often checked by a

patchwork of jurisdictions and subject to the laws of their kingdom, early modern theorists (and

practitioners) of sovereignty advanced claims about the supreme status of royal power and

emphasized the ruler’s unlimited right to command.

184

In Jean Bodin’s Six Bookes of the

Commonweale (1576), we see sovereignty defined in precisely these terms. Bodin noted that the

right to command was a complex right, comprising a number of prerogatives: appointing and

dismissing officers of the state; making war and peace; hearing final appeals; and deciding on the

value and weight of coinage. In the first instance, however, to command was the sovereign’s power

184

Tamar Herzog, A Short History of European Law: The Last Two and a Half Millenia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press, 2018), 119-20. For a more detailed discussion of literature on sovereignty, see the Introduction to

this dissertation.

to “give laws to all his subjects…without the consent of any other greater, equall, or lesser than

himselfe.”

185

At times, Bodin used the term ‘law’ loosely to designate any ‘right command’ of the

sovereign. Strictly speaking, however, the “law [was] a command of a Soveraigne concerning his

subjects in generall; or els concerning general things.”

186

Bodin, like others after him, offered the

idea of sovereignty as a rational solution to societal, above all, religious strife. During the

Enlightenment, sovereignty—the exercise of supreme and untrammeled power, considered to be

legitimate—was further seen as a potential tool for rational management and societal development,

predicated on the philosophes’ heightened confidence in humans’ capacity to understand and

harness nature. Rulers were gratified by sovereignty’s promise to magnify their status, yet

implementing sovereignty was a practical challenge: it required them to take on work, that is to

say to govern—to command—in a way that was commensurate in scope and vigor with the

supremacy that they wished to claim.

Peter the Great was the first of Russia’s rulers to embody these new ideas about power and

law in the Russian context. Peter asserted himself as an unlimited and active monarch, grounding

new political institutions and issuing commands that often went against national customs and

traditions as well as the Orthodox Church. Although his laws sometimes seem haphazard and

erratic, it has been suggested that Peter sought to put into practice German ‘cameralist’ theories of

governance. By issuing various ordinances, the monarch sought to establish a ‘well-ordered state’

that could harness in regular fashion the resources of society and nature and direct them towards

the ‘common good.’

187

According to Richard Wortman, Peter’s idea of the active legislator

subordinated an older notion of the tsar as the “righteous judge” and defender of divine justice.

188

Henceforth, the monarch’s command, understood as “an exercise of personal will,” would “itself

define the divine principle of pravda, justice, which could not stand apart from his person, or his

utterances.”

189

Peter also developed a system of written commands to transmit his will.

190

These

included reglamenty (regulations), ustavy (articles), nastavlenniia (admonitions), nakazy

(instructions), [zhalovannyye] gramoty (certificates or patents), and manifesty (manifestos). Then

and later, manifestos designated official declarations on matters of the utmost importance, such as

the ascension of a new ruler to the throne, declarations of war and peace, and, famously, in the

nineteenth century, the abolition of serfdom. The most common type of command, however, was

the ukaz, often translated as decree or edict. Ukazy were issued by the monarch—immenyi or

vysochaishii ukaz—, but they could also be issued by political institutions, notably the Senate. For

the most part, ukazy contained particular commands and resolutions on important matters and were

commonly used for governmental business. Despite the variety of these proclamations, Peter

185

Jean Bodin, The Six Bookes of a Commonweale, trans. by Richard Knolles (1606), ed. Kenneth D. McRae

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), 159.

186

Ibid., 156.

187

Marc Raeff, The Well-Ordered Police State and Institutional Change Through Law in Germanies and Russia,

1600-1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983); Marc Raeff, Understanding Imperial Russia: State and Society

in the Old Regime, trans. by Arthur Goldhammer (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), 25-55. In the

Russian-language historiography, see B. I. Syromiatnikov, ‘Regularnoe’ gosudarstvo Petra pervogo i ego ideologiia.

Chast’ pervaia (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo akademii nauk SSSR, 1943).

188

Richard Wortman, The Power of Language and Rhetoric in Russian Political History: Charismatic Words from

the 18

to the 21

Centuries (London: Bloomsbury Academic Publishing, 2017), 134-5.

189

M. A Kiselev, “Pravda i zakon vo vtoroi polovine XVII – pervoi chetverti XVIII veka” in Poniatiia o Rossii, vol.

1 (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2012), quoted in Wortman, The Power of Language, 134-5.

190

See Oleg A. Omel’chenko, Kodifikatsiia prava v Rossii v period absoliutnoi monarkhii (vtoraia polovina XVIII

veka) (Moscow: PUB, 1989) 4-6. Also, Elena Marasinova, “Zakon” i “grazhdanin” v Rossii vtoroi poloviny XVIII

veka: ocherki istorii obshchestvennogo soznaniia (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2017) 207-11.

observed no clear hierarchy of command forms, nor did he follow a distinct template for what

might strictly be called ‘law’ (zakon).

191

Each of the above command forms had the potential to

convey normative matter of varying degrees of significance. By contrast, Catherine emphatically

believed that commands should be arranged hierarchically according to their level of generality

and permanence, from particular ukazy, ranking lowest, to laws or zakony, ranking highest.

192

Laws, delineated as a particular category of command, were particularly important to her and she

believed that she must be especially vigilant in personally overseeing these.

According to the nineteenth-century Russian law digest, which contains many but not all

pieces of legislation, 5,798 directives were produced by the empress and governmental bodies over

the course of her thirty-four-year reign.

193

Heir to early modern ideas of sovereignty, she was

influenced by the Enlightenment’s call for monarchs to use their powers to activate society’s

untapped potential and to improve the morals of the population. She undertook the task of

codifying Russia’s laws in addition to reform projects in the political, economic, and social life of

the country. References to her law-making agenda in French Enlightenment writings, by Voltaire

and also in the Encyclopédie, show that she became a central figure in the eighteenth century’s

‘cult of the legislator.’ Her image as a great law-giver—in Russia of all places—was used by the

philosophes to encourage, partly by embarrassing it, the French monarchy into undertaking its own

legislative agenda. In France, as David Wisner has argued, the appearance of this ‘cult of the

legislator’ gained momentum mid-century during a period of growing struggle between the French

monarchy and the parlements.

194

Catherine had no small role to play in propagating her reputation

as the Enlightened legislator, and it was central to her scenario of power to a much greater extent

than any of her predecessors.

195

Admittedly, she was not the only one of Peter’s successors to

adopt the new understanding of the monarch as an active legislator. Notably, Elizabeth had

undertaken a major (if failed) codification effort. Yet, Catherine wanted to be seen as Peter’s

principal follower in taking up this role, and she was quite successful in convincing others this was

the case.

Enlightenment philosophes saw in sovereignty a tool that could bring all parts of society

under one a single authority that would govern them in a comprehensive, stable, and orderly

manner, by issuing commands, especially laws. In this connection, sovereignty might realize the

dream of early modern natural law, whereby people would be governed by laws that derived from

191

Nikolai Korkunov, Ukaz i zakon (St. Petersburg: M.M. Stasiulevich, 1894), 309.

192

Catherine did not equate all utterances of the monarch with law (zakon), but thought of it in terms of a hierarchy

of legislative devices arranged according to their permanence and strength. In Chapter 19 of the Nakaz, she explained

that, strictly speaking, “The whole Body of Laws was to be divided into three Parts.” At the bottom of the hierarchy

were ‘injunctions’ or ukazy. These implied “whatever [was] made upon some Emergency, and what is only occasional,

or relate[d] to some particular Person, and may be altered at any Time” (Art. 446). Above injunctions she placed

‘temporary institutions’ (vremennye uchrezhdeniia). These referred to “that Order by which all Affairs are to be

carried into Execution, and the different Instructions and Institutions which relate to them” (Art. 445). At the top were

laws (zakony). These were all ‘fundamental Institutions, which ought never to be altered, and the Number of such can

never be large” (Art. 444).

193

Aleksandr Kamenskii, Ot Petra I do Pavla I (Moscow: Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi gumanitarnyi universitet, 2001),

330.

194

David A. Wisner, The Cult of the Legislator in France, 1750-1830: A Study in the Political Theology of the French

Enlightenment (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1997), especially 39-63.

195

Richard Wortman, The Development of a Russian Legal Consciousness (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,

2010), 25; also, Richard Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy, vol. 1 (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1995), 110-47.

the commonalities in human nature.

196

In Catherine’s estimation, Russia was the ideal site to test

this proposition, precisely because of its vast size and diverse population. At the same time, the

philosophes were critical of contemporary secular authority, which failed to properly understand

and complete the project of sovereignty.

197

The figure of the despot in their writings bear this out.

The despot erroneously believed that sovereignty entailed that they could act as they wished, and

they exercised their purported prerogatives either by themselves or via a rudimentary mechanism

that did nothing to bolster their commands or magnify their status. Whether or not they deliberately

governed in their personal interest (rather than the common good), the failure to establish proper

arrangements of command-giving resulted in arbitrary legislation that violated natural law,

common sense, and local customs and traditions.

198

Such rulers might impose laws and cow their

subjects, but they could not govern the latter in a way that was commensurate with the ideal of

sovereignty.

Montesquieu famously singled out Peter the Great as a figure who displayed such despotic

tendencies in his actions, and it is possible that Catherine shared his critical assessment of him (see

below). However, a more clear-cut Russian example was Catherine’s deceased husband, Peter III,

whom she accused of violating proper procedures for formulating and issuing commands, and,

more generally, of believing that his station gave him the right to do whatever he wished. Even the

empress’ critics agreed with her on this point. Mikhail Shcherbatov, for example, tells the story

that Peter, needing an alibi for spending the night with his mistress, had his secretary, Count

Volkov, locked up in an empty room and instructed him, without any specific guidance, to produce

a major piece of legislation for the very next day. When Volkov was released the following

morning, he gave the emperor the law that he had produced (the manifesto on the emancipation of

the nobility!), and the latter approved it immediately and ordered it to be promulgated.

199

This

episode was meant to represent the ‘corruption of morals’ that had inflicted the Russian state and

its rulers over the course of the eighteenth century.

Heeding the warnings of philosophes, Catherine believed that law was a crucial tool of

government and enlightenment, while law-making was an activity that was intimately connected

with the status of public authority and that was fraught with a myriad of dangers and limitations

that could easily lead to negative outcomes. Amongst these were confusion, the paralysis of the

state’s institutions, and even widespread disobedience and rebellion. To make good laws, the

196

For an overview of the continued importance of natural law in the eighteenth century, see Knud Haakonssen,

“German Natural Law,” in The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought, ed. Knud Haakonssen,

M. Goldie, and R. Wokler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 249-90.

197

Especially relevant here is Vickie Sullivan, Montesquieu and the Despotic Ideas of Europe (Chicago: The

University of Chicago Press, 2017).

198

See, for example, Voltaire’s entry “Lois” in his Dictionnaire Philosophique (1764). It is likely that Catherine, an

avid reader of (and correspondent with) Voltaire, would have been familiar with this text. For more on the science of

legislation in the eighteenth century, see: Knud Haakonssen: The Science of a Legislator: The Natural Jurisprudence

of David Hume and Adam Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Donald Wince, “Science and the

Legislator: Adam Smith and After,” The Economic Journal, 94: 371 (September 1983), 501-20; David Lieberman,

“Blackstone’s Science of Legislation,” Journal of British Studies, 27: 2 (April 1988), 117-49; John W. Cairns “Ethics

and the Science of Legislation: Legislators, Philosophers, and Courts in Eighteenth-Scotland,” Jahrbuch für Recht

und Ethik, 8 (2000), 159-80. Ryan P. Hanley, “Enlightened Nation Building: The “Science of the Legislator” in Adam

Smith and Rousseau,” American Journal of Political Science, 52: 2 (April 2008), 218-34. For a more general overview,

see the entry, “Law,” in The Blackwell Companion to the Enlightenment, ed. John W. Yolton, Roy Porter, Pat Rogers,

and Barbara Maria Stafford (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1995), 275-7.

199

Mikhail Shcherbatov, On the Corruption of Morals in Russia, ed. and trans. by Antony Lentin (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1969), 229-32.

monarch needed to ensure that legislation was appropriate and authoritative – a complicated

undertaking. In the empress’ words, there was “no matter fraught with more difficulty than the

compilation of a new law,” and “it was impossible to apply enough deliberation and prudence [to

this task].

200

Deliberation meant in part allowing individuals other than the monarch to participate

in this process. Not only would this present the monarch with more information for determining

the content of the law, but subjects would know in advance that a new law was being prepared and

reassure them that they had to some degree been consulted and allowed to have their say. That

every legislative act was a trial of authority we see from the following self-summary of Catherine’s

legislative philosophy, which comes from an exchange with state-secretary Vasili Popov:

I investigate the circumstances, ask for advice, elicit the opinions of the enlightened

segment of society, and, on this basis, determine, what in advance I can be confident

will receive general approval. Then I issue my command (povelenie) and enjoy

what you call blind obedience. This, precisely, is the foundation of unlimited

power. But know well, that people do not blindly obey when your command is not

adjusted to customs, public opinion, and when, in issuing my command, I have

simply followed my own will, not thinking about its effects.

201

This statement is highly detailed and very significant. Amongst other things, Catherine explicitly

tied the status of the monarch’s authority to the extent to which others are consulted in some

capacity. To involve others and even to delegate—a form of restraint on the part of the monarch—

helped ensure that commands, when they were issued, were likely to meet with approval and hence

be obeyed.

Admittedly, Russia’s noble elites—the country’s ‘enlightened opinion’—were

disproportionally involved in this process. This reflected an aristocratic mindset, but also perhaps

a belief in the utility of collegial thinking—represented above all in the Senate and the Colleges—

which asserted that the common good could be achieved through the deliberation of small groups

of elites in dialogue with the monarch.

202

Nonetheless, she conceded that the monarch must

consult popular as well as elite opinion. The Legislative Commission notably included amongst

its 564 deputies, 208 townsmen, 54 Cossacks, 79 peasants, and 34 representatives from non-

Orthodox groups. In further guidelines to law-making she also contemplated a slightly different

strategy of consultation, noting that in order “to find out about the good and bad side of what one

wanted to enact,” it might be prudent to first have a “rumor spread about it in the marketplace”

and then to have someone report back on “what people ha[d] to say about it.”

203

However, once laws had been made, it was advisable not to annul them, for that

“demonstrated a lack of common sense (nerassuditel’nost’) and weakness, and would cause one

to “lose the trust of the people,” presumably as much as would a bad law. Catherine noted that the

only exception to this rule concerned the promulgation of ‘temporary regulations.’ Here, important

precautions were to be taken: these measures must be declared as such in advance, specifying how

200

Catherine II, Zapiski imperatritsy Ekateriny vtoroi (St. Petersburg: A. S. Suvorin, 1907), 629.

201

N. K. Shil’der, Imperator Aleksandr pervyi, vol. 1 (St. Petersburg, 1904), 279-80, quoted in Kamenskii, Ot Petra

I, 347-8.

202

For an account on collective decision-making and Peter I’s reforms, see Simon Dixon, The Modernisation of Russia,

1696-1825 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 128-9.

203

Catherine II, Zapiski, 629.

long they would be in force and whether and when they might be renewed.”

204

Again, to do

otherwise would threaten to undermine the government’s regular and predictable operation.

Aligning herself with Montesquieu, Catherine believed that laws must accord with

circumstances.

205

In her Nakaz she stressed that the legislator must make laws that were

“appropriate for the people for whom they were made,” citing the importance of particularities like

climate, way of life, religion, wealth, demographics, commerce, mores and manners. The legislator

therefore needed to be well informed. Everywhere, the emphasis on empirical knowledge of

domain and people brought the limitations of a single agent into stark relief.

206

But in larger states,

the ruler’s knowledge-deficit and the difficulty of overcoming it alone were much greater. This

deficit further necessitated prudent arrangements and practices that would help the monarch to

formulate reasonable commands.

One area where the legislator must exercise special caution pertained to the relationship

between law and custom. This was by no means a trivial matter. Peter the Great had brought this

issue to the fore through his westernization campaign at the beginning of the eighteenth century,

using laws to forcibly change Russian mores and manners. Catherine, who presented herself as

continuing Peter’s legacy, was also a westernizer, yet she understood the pitfalls this might create.

As she was aware, Montesquieu had treated this problem in Chapter 14, Book 19 of The Spirit of

the Laws, entitled “On the natural Means of changing the Manners and Customs of a Nation,”

where he referred to Peter’s decision to oblige the Muscovites to cut off their beards and shorten

their clothes. This, he believed, was an example of the intrusion of despotic ideas into European

political culture. In particular, he criticized Peter’s legislation for the rigor and violent penalties he

employed in enforcing it, undermining his subjects’ “sense of liberty” and “render[ing] them

unhappy.” Indeed, Montesquieu went so far as to suggest that Peter ruled his subjects as if they

were “beasts” not men.

207

Catherine was very interested in this chapter and drew upon it at least

five times in the Nakaz.

208

Without emphasizing it as a point of disagreement with Peter, whom

she did not mention, she proclaimed that laws could correct only what had been instituted by laws,

while customs must be corrected by custom. To do otherwise, to “alter by Law, which ought to be

altered by Custom…[was] extreme bad Policy.” (Art. 60).

209

Cultural and moral influence might

equally be necessary in paving the way for better laws, “to prepare the Minds of the People for

their Reception” (Art. 58).

210

204

Ibid., 629.

205

Montesquieu’s philosophy of law was anti-voluntarist. In the early chapters of The Spirit of the Laws, he argued

that laws were the “necessary relations arising from the nature of things” and that not even God could create the world

in a purely “arbitrary act” but only on the basis of what was possible. By analogy, the human law-maker was equally

limited – by human nature and the possible relations of justice that could exist between them. In this connection, he

made a pointed reference to the English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, noting that “to say that there was nothing just

or unjust, but what was commanded or forbidden by positive laws, is the same as saying that before the describing of

a circle all the radii were not equal.” Charles-Louis de Secondat de Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, ed. A. Cohler,

B. C. Miller, and H. S. Stone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 3-4.

206

On the importance of empiricism to the eighteenth-century ideal of ‘philosophical’ kingship, see Derek Beales, The

Enlightenment and Reform in Eighteenth-Century Europe (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2005). For the classic work on the

general move away from metaphysics in eighteenth-century philosophy, see Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of the

Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968).

207

Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, 316.

208

Articles 7, 59, 60, 61 & 63.

209

Catherine II, The Grand Instructions to the Commissioners Appointed to Frame a New Code of Laws for the

Russian Empire, trans. by Michael Tatischeff (London: T. Jeffery’s, 1768), 81.

210

Ibid., 80.

The legislator needed to ensure that laws were not only predictable and aligned with

circumstances, but that they also met crucial structural criteria – a task that required many hands.

Catherine was greatly preoccupied with this topic in the early years of her reign. As is well known,

she began reading Cesare Beccaria’s book, On Crimes and Punishments, in French translation in

1766,

211

and in the Nakaz, she openly subscribed to many of its ideas about the concept of law and

criminal law. In particular legislation needed to be clear, purged of internal and collective

contradictions, and publicly promulgated. Without meeting these criteria, the effectiveness of law

as a tool of government would be canceled or greatly impaired, and the citizen, as the empress put

it, “[would] be exposed to strange Accidents” (Art. 155).

212

Catherine invited her deputies of the Legislative Commission to participate in this project,

but her instructions were strict. Laws were to be “written in the common vernacular Tongue” (Art.

158).

213

Moreover, they must use a “plain direct Expression” instead of a “studied one,” “avoid

indeterminate Expression,” and “must not be filled with subtle Distinction” (Arts. 452, 454,

456).

214

Like her contemporaries, she believed that if law was stated clearly and simply, judges

would not have to interpret the law – the exclusive reserve of the monarch (Art. 151).

215

In addition,

laws must be “made for People of moderate Capacities, as well as for those of Genius” (Art. 452).

Composing them was not a “Logical Art,” but “the simple and plain Reasoning of a Father, who

takes Care of his Children and Family” (Art. 452).

216

Accordingly, all laws were to be publicly

available for common use in the format of a book that could be “purchased at as small a Price as

the Catechism.” The contents were to be taught in all schools alongside ecclesiastical texts (Art.

158).

217

In addition to meeting stylistic standards, Catherine set new standards for administering

the law, namely in a manner that maintained its autonomy and integrity. The empress was adamant

that monarchs observe moral constraints against breaking the law and should not administer the

law themselves. Instead, they must rely on an independent system of judges and courts, adhering

to Montesquieu’s conception of the division of powers (Arts. 100 & 149). Such a division between

the formulation of law and its administration would minimize arbitrary decisions. Catherine saw

the judge’s task in straightforward syllogistic terms: the “Duty of a Judge consists only in

examining closely, whether a Man has, or has not committed such a Fact, contrary to the Law”

(Art. 151).

218

In the following article, she explained that judgment involved one syllogism

consisting of two propositions: it must state the general law, the above-mentioned determination

of an action’s legality, followed by a “Conclusion consist[ing] either in the Acquittal, or

Punishment of the Party accused” (Art. 152).

219

Final rulings—commands issued in the monarch’s

name—were to contain the exact wording of the law as a further guard against the private opinion

of judges (Art. 130). Here we see another instance of the notion that the monarch’s sovereignty,

which demanded a demonstration of the normativity and regularity of state operations, was best

secured through the involvement of servitors and the delegation of particular tasks and

responsibilities to them.

211

See T. Cizova “Beccaria in Russia,” The Slavonic and East European Review, 40: 95 (June 1962), 389-90

212

Catherine II, The Grand Instructions…, 105.

213

Ibid., 106.

214

Ibid., 179.

215

Ibid., 178.

216

Ibid., 179.

217

Ibid., 106.

218

Ibid., 103.

219

Ibid., 179.

The machine of sovereignty was not a perfect device. Receiving counsel and expertise,

Catherine thought that the role of the monarch was to make, and be seen to make, a decision about

the common good, and this inevitably involved a choice in favor of some positions at the expense

of others. Nonetheless, sovereign power could hope to see its commands meet with ‘general

approval.’ This was an important metric for the empress. Taking power in 1762, she had asserted,

for example, that her legitimacy was telegraphed by the public approval she received. Equally, she

believed, laws that were appropriate for their setting that were more likely to meet with the same

response. Although Catherine continued to assert that her authority was divinely ordained, that is

to say it did not depend on the consent of subjects, empirical markers, such as approval and

disobedience, became increasingly important as measures of the integrity of the monarch’s

sovereign status.

220

Signs of disapproval or open disobedience directly challenged Catherine’s

narrative of legitimacy in the 1762 coup, and she understood these more generally to signal

inappropriate laws and poor governance. Disapproval, furthermore, necessitated resort to coercion,

which further challenged the claim to legitimacy and indicated that the monarch’s power was

trammeled.

The use of fear as a modus operandi to impose commands was the signal characteristic of

despotic government. Such a perverted and primitive form of power was incapable of fostering the

moral development of subjects (a core mission of sovereignty in the Enlightenment). In fact, just

as poor parenting produced bad children, it habituated subjects to vice and accustomed them to

violence. Furthermore, lacking moral force, power was unable to generate a sense of right as

obedience became a matter of prudence, rather than duty or virtue. In this connection, Catherine

believed that the monarch should always seek to harness human aspects of the psyche, such as

“love of country” as well as “shame, and the dread of publick Censure,’ which, in the Nakaz, she

contended could be powerful devices to “restrain… and deter Mankind from the Commission of a

Number of Crimes” (Art. 81).

221

3. The Apparatus of Command

The notion that the monarch’s power ‘flowed’ through official ‘channels’ and institutions of the

state was critical to the empress’ understanding of sovereignty (see Chapter 2). Any such

apparatus, which entailed the involvement of state servitors, multiplied the number of individuals

who participated in the monarch’s power in some capacity. Yet, it was through this expansion of

power beyond the monarch’s person that the scope and strength of its authority could be

augmented. Such a sovereign, no longer merely a single person, but a larger human machine,

would bring about regular and predictable movements. Catherine also envisioned such an

apparatus—through the back-and-forth between herself and its agents—as helping to ensure the

proper form and content of her commands, as described in the previous section. Catherine had her

own views on how this machine was to be designed and maintained.

As noted in Chapter 1, one of her principal allies, Nikita Panin, had put forward a project

for an ‘Imperial Council’ at the start of her reign. This Council would comprise between six and

eight individuals and process all legislative commands issued by the empress—be they akty,

postanovleniya, ukazy, manifesty, gramoty, patenty. Passing through the Council they would be

220

According to Igor Fedyukin, the prevailing theory at the beginning of the century had stressed that disapproval and

disobedience were expected responses to power, reflecting man’s unruly passions that needed to be forcibly

suppressed. Fedyukin, “’An Infinite Variety of Inclinations and Appetites’: Génie and Governance in Post-Petrine

Russia.” Kritika: Explorations in Russia and Eurasian History. 11: 4 (Fall 2010), 741-62

221

Catherine II, The Grand Instructions to the Commissioners…, 85-6.

countersigned by the state secretary of the department concerned. Panin argued that such a body

would lay out formal channels for the empress’ power, secure from interference of third parties,

through which the monarch would be able ‘embrace all parts of the state (…) for the common

benefit’ (Article 6).

222

Although Catherine did not enact this project, she nonetheless remained

sympathetic to the idea of conciliary bodies, and she did establish a new council—the Sovet pri

vysochaishem dvore—in connection with the war against the Ottoman empire in 1767. It operated

largely independently of her, meeting on a weekly basis.

223

From the start of her reign, however

Catherine favored existing institutions in formulating and issuing her commands. She made

extensive use of a personal chancery and emphasized the importance of the Senate.

One noteworthy feature of the empress’ system was its extensive use of written documents.

Within the Russian state in the eighteenth century, commands continued to be transmitted verbally,

but there was an attempt to curtail this practice in favor of written documents. Under Elizabeth in

1743, for example, the Senate was forbidden to carry out any of its proposals without written

decrees signed by the empress.

224

Elizabeth, however, continued to issue verbal commands though

her cabinet secretaries, who had the right to announce them on her behalf. Elizabeth’s practice of

command-giving was remembered by Catherine, who noted that “[the Empress] wrote and signed

nothing,” but issued verbal commands through third parties. Catherine did not approve of this,

pointing out that such commands were an inherently bad medium for managing the state’s

operations. As a tool of governance, for they were “badly understood,” and “badly transferred,”

and there was a constant danger of their distortion or even manipulation.

225

During her reign, she

did not entirely eliminate the legal force of verbal commands. In a decree from July 3, 1762, for

example, she confirmed the authority of senators, the general procurator, and the presidents of the

first three Colleges (foreign affairs, army, and navy) to convey verbal commands of the monarch,

and noted that commands conveyed by authorized individuals demanded “immediate execution”

as if they had been given by the empress herself. However, she declared that this authority did not

extend to “deprivation of life, honor, and property; determining forms of punishment; issuing of

monetary sums valued over 10,000 rubles; or granting of villages or ranks above that of lieutenant-

general (podpolkovnik).”

226

These prerogatives could only be carried out by a written ukaz.

Importantly, authorized persons could not convey verbal commands that contravened

confirmations and decrees that were written and signed by the monarch, suggesting that these

constituted a higher form of command. Furthermore, the Senate was instructed to make “exact

copies” of all verbal commands made by the sovereign. These would be presented back to the

222

SIRIO, vol. 7, 209-14.

223

Catherine’s attendance of the council’s sittings is not thoroughly recorded, but the handful of mentions. Following

a random sample from the court journal for 1775, it appears patchy. This matter, however, requires further

investigation. See for example, the three entries: 1) February 11, 1775, “по утру был Совет, в котором ЕЯ

ИМПЕРТАРСКОЕ ВЕЛИЧЕСТВО присутствовать соизволила (KFZ, 1775, p. 116); 2) February 19, 1775, “по

утру, был Совет, в котором ЕЯ ИМПЕРАТОРСКОЕ ВЕЛИЧЕСТВО быть не соизволила (KFZ, 1775, 140); On

this third occasion, Catherine appeared only towards the end of a sitting before heading straight to lunch: see February

9, 1775, “по утру был Совет в комнатах, подле комнат дежурных господ Генерал-Адъютантов. Пред полуднем

в 12-м часу, соизволила ществовать ЕЯ ИМПЕРАТОРСКОЕ ВЕЛИЧЕСТВО в Совет; по выходе из Совета,

обеденное кушанье ЕЯ ВЕЛИЧЕСТВО соизволила кушать в столовой комнате… на 14-ти кувертах. (KFZ,

1775, 113-4). The council did not necessarily overlap with the empress’ lunch guests. On this day, of her 13 guests,

only two had been at the council: Mikhail N. Volkonsky and Grigory Potemkin (her favorite).

224

PSZ, no. 8,695.

225

Catherine II, Sochineniia, ed. O. N. Mihaylov (Moscow: Sovetskaia Rossiia, 1990), 218-9.

226

PSZ, no. 11,592.

monarch on a weekly basis with indication of what had been executed, what not, and for what

reason.

227

The empress’ decision to uphold the legitimacy of verbal commands suggests that they

remained necessary to the functioning of autocracy and were not merely the result of the laziness

on the part of the monarch or of state officials.

228

Nonetheless, there was a clear preference for

written documents as an attempt to narrow how commands were meant to flow. Measuring the

exact extent to which verbal commands were employed in the empress’ reign presents a

challenging research agenda. However, the problem can be approached from the other end, since

we know that the empress’ government left an unprecedented written legacy. The documents

available range from senatorial reports and personal correspondence between officials to copious

instructions and commands written by the empress either personally or by her secretaries. The very

scale of these records indicates the centrality of written documents. For Catherine, the act of

writing meant larger participation in eighteenth-century intellectual life, but also her self-

fashioning as an Enlightenment monarch, as Kelsey Rubin-Detlev has shown in a major recent

work.

229

Most importantly, however, written documents represented the empress’ attempt to

construct sovereignty. Firstly, they helped protect the integrity of communications as they passed

down or up the state’s channels. Secondly, believed to be able to convey with greater clarity,

written commands could prevent disagreement and provide certainty about what actions were

required by whom, thus making them an effective tool of management. Often formulaic in nature,

they also emphasized the regularity and normativity of the state’s power. Where commands were

handwritten rather than printed—for example, in the state’s internal communications—legible

uniform cursive, such as that produced by the empress, could further help manifest orderliness.

230

a. The Empress’ Secretaries

From the moment of her ascension to the throne, Catherine began to conduct her activity through,

and with the help of, a team of personal secretaries that grew out of the imperial Kabinet (see

below). Catherine continued to develop her secretarial team, clarifying their procedures and adding

to its personnel. The team was a constant feature of her operation, even retaining its importance in

the second half of her reign – a period when she supposedly had consolidated her position as

Russia’s autocratic ruler. This body was not, therefore, a temporary concession born of an initially

insecure hold on power, but rather a critical component of her project of bringing order to the state.

The significance of her secretariat has not been fully appreciated in Anglophone literature.

231

The

Russian historiography has given its history greater attention, most recently in the thorough work

of Mikhail Pereshkin, who has studied the group’s composition, functions, and main periods of

development during the empress’ reign.

232

However, these works fail to draw strong enough

227

PSZ, no. 11,590.

228

For a discussion of Elizabeth’s use of verbal commands see M. B. Krichevtsev, Kabinet Elizavety i Petra III:

istoricheskii ocherk o lichnoi kantseliarii monarkhov (Novosibirsk: Novosibirskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 1993),

38-40.

229

K. Rubin-Detlev, The Epistolary Art of Catherine the Great (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2019).

230

Ibid., 192.

231

Isabel de Madariaga makes mention of a number of the empress’ secretaries at various points in her major work,

Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), but does not treat them

collectively in a separate section. More recently, Kelsey Rubin-Detlev has emphasized the importance of the empress’

secretaries in Catherine’s correspondence and the composition of her literary works, but does not emphasize their

significance with regard to sovereignty.

232

Mikhail Pereshkin, Institut stats-sekretarei pri Ekaterine II (1762-1796) (Ph.D. diss., Rossiiskaia akademiia

gosudarstvennoi sluzhby pri prezidente rossiiskoi federatsii. Moscow, 2004). See also L. G. Kisliagina, “Kantseliariia

conclusions about how the empress herself saw the role of her secretaries in her system of

sovereign power. For example, Pereshkin’s main conclusion is that the empress’ secretaries acted

as a ‘connection’ (sviayz’) between her and the state’s officials.

233

The contention of this section

is that through their regularized and closely coordinated activity on the empress’ behalf, they in

fact magnified the empress’ sovereignty. The notion that the secretariat was intended to extend the

monarch’s person and routinize its (her) activity leads us to question the conclusion, made

elsewhere, that its growth during the empress’ reign represented the culmination of Russian

absolutism, concentrating all decision-making in the empress’ hands.

234

Although Catherine saw

herself as the final decision-maker, the body manifested a contrary impulse - to exercise a

concentrated power in a delegated fashion.

Conducting one’s activities via a personal chancery had precedents in Russian history.

Early in his reign, Peter the Great had notably created the Kabinet to help conduct personal as well

as governmental matters. From 1704, Alexei Makarov served as its first secretary. Peter’s Kabinet

functioned as a node for correspondence with the constellation of institutions that he established –

the Colleges, the Senate, the Synod, in addition to Russia’s provincial governors. There is evidence

that it was also responsible for writing a number of legislative acts.

235

Peter’s secretariat fell by

the wayside after his death, but was restored by Elizabeth who wanted to return to the institutional

arrangements of her father. At least initially, Elizabeth treated it as an important body by seeking

to conduct all her affairs through it. Yet, it is questionable to what extent she was committed or

had a clear vision of its role. Over the course of her reign, she was seen to increasingly delegate

the conduct of her affairs to favorites, drawing the ire of people like Nikita Panin, who, as we have

seen, proposed a new device for the transmission of the monarch’s commands. Catherine, instead

committed herself to conducting her administrative affairs through a new secretarial chancery—

the ‘institute of state-secretaries’ (stats-sekretarei)—that grew out of the old Kabinet, which was

reassigned to carry out financial matters.

236

No doubt aware of Panin’s criticism, Catherine selected secretaries carefully. She chose

well-educated, enlightened personalities who had distinguished themselves in state service, often

under the auspices of important individuals through whom they became personally known to her.

Her most important secretary in the middle part of her reign, Alexander Bezborodko (1775-1796),

for example, had come to the empress’ attention as the head of the personal chancery of a highly

lauded military commander, Petr Rumiantsev. In contrast, Grigory Kozitsky (1768-1775) had been

stats-sekretarei pri Ekaterine II,” in Gosudarstvennye uchrezhdeniia Rossii XVI-XVIII vv., ed. N. B. Golikova

(Moscow: Izdatel’stvo moskovskogo universiteta, 1991), and Iu. V. Got’e, “Proiskhozhdenie sobstvennoi e. i. v.

kantseliarii,” in Sbornik statei po russkoi istorii posviashchennykh S. F. Platonovu (Peterburg: Tipografiia im.

Gutenberga, 1922), 346-55.

233

Pereshkin, Institut stats-sekretarei, 44.

234

Ibid., 4.

235

Ibid., 53-6.

236

The extent to which this secretarial chancery was a separate body is debated. John LeDonne, for example, states

that the “term as such did not exist.” However, he acknowledges a division of function between administrative and

financial affairs. John LeDonne, Ruling Russia: Politics and Administration in the Age of Absolutism, 1762-1796

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 27. Russian-language historiography has more confidently written

about the empress’ ‘stats-sekretarei’ as an innovation and a body that demands separate treatment. See the above-

mentioned works by Mikhail Pereshkin, L. G. Kisliagina, and Iu. V. Got’e. This literature contrasts with specific

scholarship on the Kabinet, above all V. B. Frederiks, ed., 200-letie kabineta imperatorskogo velichestva, 1704-1904:

istoricheskoe issledovanie (St. Petersburg: Golike i Vil’borg, 1911). A separate chapter on the Kabinet in Catherine’s

reign can be found there. See also O. G. Ageeva, Imperatorskii dvor Rossii, 1700-1796 gody (Moscow: Nauka, 2008)

155-66.

one of Lomonosov’s personal assistants. Regardless of their origin, they all possessed a single

qualification, literary ability, in particular experience and training for conducting correspondence,

and drafting political, above all legal documents. The majority of Catherine’s secretaries were

between the third and fourth rank of the civil ladder of the Table of Ranks. With the exception of

Petr Zavadovsky, who held the position briefly, none of the sixteen secretaries who served her for

varying lengths of time during her reign became favorites.

Grigory Nikolaevich Teplov. Print by D. Levitzky, 1772.

The empress’ ambitions for her secretariat as a device of sovereignty grew over time.

Initially, she used her first three state-secretaries, Adam Olsuf’ev, Grigory Teplov, and Ivan Elagin

to process petitions (chelobitnye), though the number of petitioners was so considerable that she

accepted and answered many of them personally.

237

However, she came to understand this

arrangement as a mistake, for it took up too much of her time and introduced the possibility that

she might make irregular ad hoc resolutions. Moreover, as the Senate supposedly made known to

her, it violated a previous rule that plaintiffs not be able to directly submit petitions to her person.

238

In order to provide greater order and efficiency to petitions, she decided to compartmentalize her

personal chancery in a manner similar to Panin’s proposed reform of the Senate. This reform dates

237

Catherine II, “Razkaz imperatritsy Ekateriny II o pervykh piati godakh ee tsarstvovaniia,” Russkiii arkhiv, 1865,

4, 472. See also Erik Amburger, Geschichte der Behördenorganisation Russlands von Peter dem Grossen bis 1917

(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1966) 83; PSZ, no. 11,868.

238

Mikhail Pereshkin, Institut stats-sekretarei…, 83. Catherine did not want petitioners circumventing the Senate by

appealing to her. See PSZ, no. 11,867.

to a decree from June 11, 1763, in which the empress ordered that all petitions would be submitted

to three ‘state-secretaries,’ Adam Olsuf’ev, Grigory Teplov, and Ivan Elagin.

239

This reform lay

the basis of the ‘kantslerskii poriadok’

240

or ‘chancery order’ that would operate throughout the

empress’ reign, where one part of the chancery was permanently dedicated to petitions, whilst

another was occupied with other matters. As the chancery expanded, the empress would assign

new secretaries to handle petitions before promoting them to other matters. The reform clarified

an official channel and provided rules for how petitions were to be processed. Catherine gave her

secretaries the authority to make critical decisions on petitions, including whether they needed to

be delegated to a different part of the state (such as a specific college) or whether they warranted

the attention of empress herself. The empress served as an invigilator, regularly inspecting the

registers (reestry) of petitions sent to her.

241

Still, her secretaries resolved many of the petitions by

themselves, with the empress merely signing off on their resolutions.

The secretaries also played a critical role as a point of communication with the most

important individuals and offices in the state apparatus. Catherine relied on them, not only to

transmit her own communications, but as an information node that would enable her to better

understand pressing tasks and how they might best be resolved. She also charged them with reading

miscellaneous communications and summarize their most relevant contents. Additionally, the

empress regularly called on them to collect information for her (zaprosy) from specific institutions,

above all the Senate, the Synod, the Chief Magistracy (Glavnyi magistrat), and provincial

offices.

242

Catherine charged her secretaries with researching, writing, and editing different forms

of commands beyond their work on petitions. It is possible that Grigory Teplov, who did not

officially receive the secretarial title until 1763, helped define in her mind the secretariat’s potential

role. During his first eighteen months, he recorded himself involved in the composition of over

one-hundred and twenty documents, including amongst others, eight manifestos, four instructions,

as well as fifty-eight ukazy to the Senate, seventeen to the colleges and eight to provincial

governors and town councils.

243

We know he was the author of a number of important

proclamations connected with the empress’ coup, above all her Ascension Manifesto (June 28),

Peter III’s abdication proclamation, and the announcement of the latter’s death.

244

Catherine closely supervised her secretaries’ work on commands. Even minor ukazy

sometimes went through a draft stage (chernovik) that the empress inspected and annotated in red

pencil.

245

It is noteworthy that many commands would in fact be initiated and wholly written by

her secretaries before being shown to her. In the final years of her reign, Adrian Gribovsky noted

in his diary that fellow secretary, Dmitrii Troshchinsky, “examined all of the Senate’s criminal

and litigatory (tiazhebnye) cases that depended on a decision by the monarch, and wrote for them

ukazy that Bezborodko would take to [the empress] for signing only.”

246

This points to a significant

delegation of authority. Addressing her final years on the throne, Khrapovitsky’s journal provides

239

Ibid., 62-97. PSZ, no. 11,858.

240

Adrian M. Gribovskii, Zapiski o imperatritse Ekaterine velikoi polkovnika, sostoiashago pri ee osobe stats-

sekretarem (Moscow: Universitetskaia tipografiia, 1864), 26.

241

Pereshkin, Institut stats-sekretarei, 127.

242

Ibid., 148-9.

243

Ibid., 76.

244

Ibid., 75-8. For secondary literature on Teplov, see Wallace Daniel, Grigorii Teplov: A Statesman at the Court of

Catherine the Great (Newtonville, MA: Oriental Research Partners, 1991).

245

Rubin-Detlev, The Epistolary Art of Catherine the Great, 193.

246

Gribovskii, Zapiski, 22.

firm evidence that the empress maintained her strategy of allowing secretaries to play a central

role in penning commands.

Of course, the empress was not prepared to merely play the role of invigilator. She poked

fun at herself, noting she suffered from bouts of ‘legislomania’ and that she couldn’t go a day

without writing something.

247

More importantly, she needed to be seen, as autocrat, to exercise

power in person on important matters. Especially in the second half of her reign she worked on a

number of projects in the field of public law. Even here, however, she continued to rely heavily on

her secretaries, whom she involved in her legislative projects as researchers, advisors, and editors.

Again, Khrapovitsky speaks of her involvement in these projects, including her work on a further

reform of the Senate in the 1780s, which she did not complete. Working on these later public law

projects, Catherine tried to incorporate ideas of the English jurist, William Blackstone, whose

Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-1770) she had begun studying.

248

She involved

Khrapovitsky to help her in this task, as we see from the following instruction that she sent to him:

Read all [my] notes on Blackstone with a pen in your hand and make a note of all

those parts that would be appropriate to incorporate into the laws. Then read my

regulations in its parts along with the notes to various parts presented by the general

procurator [of the Senate], and, again with pen in your hand, make a note what

should be added to the new legislation, and what should be left out.

249

Here again, we see Catherine as the initiator of a legislative project. She chose and commented on

Blackstone’s Commentaries of her own accord, but nevertheless delegated significant authority to

Khrapovitsky in overseeing their application. Equally significant is her mention of the general

procurator’s report: her active involvement of the principal members of her government, in this

case the Senate, in the formulation of commands, soliciting their opinion. As the instruction

indicates, much of this dialogue took place via written correspondence that flowed through her

secretaries. Gribovsky, however, reminds us that such exchanges also took place in her daily

meetings with her secretaries and principle state servitors (see Chapter 4).

250

She would discuss

with them matters on all fronts, from “measures” pertaining to the “security and prosperity of the

state,” “military actions,” “solving deficits in the state’s expenditures,” and “how to correct the

faults of major state and judicial offices.” They would also listen to and discuss the

“Senate’s reports,” and debate whether to “confirm” or overturn a sentence passed on a particular

member of the nobility.

251

Even so, Catherine also often interacted with her secretaries in writing, which we know

from the vast number of personal written instructions that have survived. These notes were short

informal, often unsigned, and sometimes in French. She would write them on small pieces of paper

and hand them to her secretaries personally during her mandatory daily morning meetings with

them, or have them sent to them depending on her location. These instructions represented a

preliminary step in the activation of sovereign power. She stamped many of these instructions, not

with the official state seal, which was reserved for promulgation, but with her personal, didactic

247

Catherine II, “Pis’ma Ekateriny vtoroi k baronu Grimmu,” Russkii arkhiv, vol. 2 (1878), 61.

248

See Marc Raeff, “The Empress and the Vinerian Professor: Catherine II’s Projects of Government Reform and

Blackstone’s Commentaries,” OSP, 7 (1974), 18-41.

249

A. V. Khrapovitsky, Dnevnik A. V. Khrapovitskago, 1782-1793 (Moscow: Universitetskaia tipografiia, 1901), 61-

250

Gribovskii, Zapiski, 52.

251

Ibid., 56.

one. As she explained in a letter to Voltaire, her seal depicted a bucolic scene, with the superscript,

‘The Useful’ (poleznoe), in which a “bee flies from plant to plant collecting honey to carry to her

hive.”

252

Catherine was the queen bee, but the seal also features two other bees at work: she wanted

to remind her servitors that they were integral to the success of the sovereign’s mission to bring

about a bustling, prosperous, and happy hive/state.

Photograph of the empress’ personal seal on an instruction to her secretaries.

Russian State Library, f. 323, o. 1347, d. 5.

In some cases, Catherine had drafts of commands sent to specific departments for special

editing. For example, in a message to Adam Ol’sufev from August 23, 1763, she instructed him to

“have the attached ukaz sent to the College of Foreign Affairs to be rewritten and then sent back

to me for signing.”

253

For the most part, however, she relied on her secretaries to be final editors

and to put these drafts into appropriate ‘decree form’ (ukaznuiu formu).

254

In addition to

incorporating corrections, this meant checking for consistency, clarity, and orthographic mistakes,

since Catherine was not confident of her written Russian. It was also necessary to adjust the style

of the decree to match the official Russian used in formal proclamations. Through this activity the

secretaries ensured a certain uniformity to the monarch’s commands. Finally, the secretaries were

charged with transmitting these commands through the appropriate channels of government. In

most cases, this meant the Senate, which was responsible for the registration and promulgation of

new laws.

252

Catherine II, Documents of Catherine the Great, ed. W. Reddaway (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

2011), 4.

253

Catherine II, Pis’ma Ekateriny II k Adamu Vasil’evichu Olsuf’evu 1762-1783 (Moscow, 1863), 41.

254

Gribovskii, Zapiski, 11.

b. The Senate

Peter the Great founded the Senate in 1711 as the supreme political institution of the Russian state

apparatus. After his death the Senate’s position fluctuated, including most recently under Peter III

who curbed its powers.

255

In contrast, Catherine understood it as an integral part of sovereign

power. She envisioned a division of responsibilities between herself and the Senate whereby she

carried out legislative prerogatives, and the Senate would play the role of the executive power. The

Senate was therefore a crucial intermediary channel that converted her instructions into legitimate,

official proclamations. In one place in her Zapiski, she described the Senate as “giv[ing] life to

commands through its edicts for [their] execution and registration.” Part of this process involved

the right to make ‘representations’ concerning the content of legislative projects, in theory opening

a further dialogical step in the command process. In addition, she ascribed to the Senate three

other powers, those of: “giving magistrates their civil jurisdiction”; of “receiving appellations from

all courts”; and of having “some oversight of [state] finances.”

256

The empress therefore expected

the Senate to issue on its own accord commands in relation to these three jurisdictions. As

Catherine noted in the Nakaz, these commands represented her power, but it was crucial that they

did not emanate from her actual person.

Catherine scrutinized the Senate’s operations when she came to the throne and concluded

that it was not entirely fit for its important role. The Senate was inefficient, threatening the

regularity of state operations. She also believed the people who served in it to be ignorant, not only

concerning the laws,

257

but also with regard to the basic geographic and demographic aspects of

the country. During one of her first visits in 1762 she was famously astounded and angered that

the senators did not even have a map of the empire. Ignorance, above all of basic empirical data

relevant to Russia severely compromised its role as editor of her legal projects and as an

autonomous command-giver that operated in her name. There were other serious problems

concerning the Senate’s function. Some criticisms are revealed in her secret instruction of 1764 to

Aleksandr Vyazemsky, detailing his responsibilities as her new general procurator following the

dismissal of his predecessor, Aleksandr Glebov, for corruption. In a tone reminiscent of Panin’s

Imperial Council proposal, she told Vyazemsky that “all [state] offices and the very Senate itself

have on many occasions overstepped their boundaries.” She reminded him that although the Senate

had been “established for the execution of laws,” it frequently promulgated “its own legislation,

and of its own accord awarded ranks, privileges, and villages.” Catherine went on to say that it

even “oppress[ed] (gonenie) lower offices” and had “brought them into a dire state.” These she

described as have been “cowed into indescribable servility.” Commoners had completely forgotten

the “regulations” (reglament) which in fact “command[ed]” them to make appeals to the Senate

and ultimately to the monarch “against Senatorial decrees, [that were] not lawful.”

258

Catherine

thereby accused the Senate of abusing its station. More fundamentally, perhaps, her criticism

pointed to an ignorance of sovereignty and how it was organized.

255

Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine, 25. For a longer account of the Senate in Peter III’s reign, see Istoriia

pravitel’stvuiushchago Senata za dvesti let, 1711 – 1911, vol. 2 (St. Petersburg: Senatskaia tipografiia, 1911), 315-

25.

256

Catherine II, Zapiski, 645.

257

In the Nakaz Catherine called the Senate the “dépôt des loix”, emphasizing Senators’ responsibility to know what

the law was, or at the very least, how to find it.

258

SIRIO, vol. 7, 347.

Catherine issued legislation so as to bring order to the Senate. A weighty manifesto in

December 1763, reformed the Senate together with almost all central government institutions.

259

Adopting Panin’s proposal from the previous year, the reform divided the Senate into six

departments in order to improve its efficiency (four in Saint Petersburg; two in Moscow) through

an internal delegation of authority. Each department would operate under the auspices of a chief

procurator (ober-prokuror), with the exception of the first. This remained under the general

procurator and handled domestic and political affairs. All incoming matters to the Senate were to

be sent to corresponding departments where they would be resolved “according to the law.”

Resolutions required unanimous approval, but only of the senators within the department

concerned. Any resolution made by an individual department was to “regarded as if it had been

made by the entire Senate.” When departments could not reach agreement, the case would be

forwarded to the general procurator, who would assemble all available senators to deliberate. If

this failed to resolve a matter—because there was no corresponding law or the law was unclear—

it would be conveyed to the empress for resolution. Often, she would resolve the case by

reformulating the relevant passage. Otherwise, the original decision of the Senate department

would remain in place.

260

Catherine expected the Senate to be able to carry out its assigned duties without her

continuous intervention, and she sometimes expressed extreme frustration when it failed, scolding

the senators in no uncertain terms. For example, in one well-known case involving the rights of

“little-Russians” (Ukraine) she reprimanded the Senate for “wasting her entire morning” by

sending her a matter in which the laws concerned were “hardly nebulous.”

261

As this case

demonstrates, Catherine needed her senators to make sure that they knew (on her behalf) the

existing law. Catherine’s anger at having to make a final decision in these matters might seem to

amount to a renunciation of sovereignty; however, it indicates clearly how she came to think about

sovereignty as dependent on a multi-person mechanism in which authority and the exercise power

were delegated and each constituent part knew what role it was to play.

The empress also employed other strategies to manage her Senate servitors. At the

beginning of her reign, she undertook frequents visits to the Senate - a total of eighteen times at

regular intervals in 1763. But she discontinued these in subsequent years.

262

It is possible that the

empress came to view such visits as detrimental to the mechanism she envisioned, composed of

discrete if interlocking parts. Her visits would symbolically disturb this division. Given that Senate

sessions occupied the whole morning, she may also have believed such visits would interfere with

her responsibilities. Over time, Catherine came to rely on the general procurator to help her

invigilate and manage the Senate in order to ensure it carried out its delegated authority, albeit

within its bounds. As we have seen, she could display frustration; however, her admonishment

tended to appeal to her subordinates’ better selves. In a letter to Vyazemsky of 1778, for example,

she urged him to remind them of their “not-to-be-forgotten duty…of safeguarding the wealth,

integrity, and well-being of society” and that “the more one [was] given power in such matters, the

more, in conscience, one [was] accountable to God, [her], and the Fatherland.” Vyazemsky was to

encourage them to apply “their zeal and skill”, and to “endeavor to fulfill the importance of their

station, to set a good example and offer encouragement to their subordinates.” Finally, she wished

him to caution his underlings that transgression of the Senate’s institutional boundaries would

259

PSZ, no. 11,989.

260

SIRIO, vol. 2, 90, quoted in Kamenskii, Ot Petra I, 292.

261

PSZ, no. 13,555.

262

Taken from the entries of the court journal (Kamer-furersky tseremonial’nyi zhurnal) for 1763-1765.

cause “the public…to lose faith in proper order,” seeing that it had “broken down at its very

foundation.”

263

During Catherine’s reign, the Senate did not initiate or formulate new legislative projects,

suggesting she was successful in managing its designated role. In the few instances when its

commands created new normative content, such as in the case of land surveys (mezhevaniia), or

in the making of certain judicial decisions, it submitted them to the empress for approval.

264

It is

possible that the empress solicited the Senate’s opinion through her correspondence and meetings

with the general procurator and her secretaries, however further research is required on this point.

The same can be said of the Senate making ‘representations’ to the sovereign. Unlike the French

parlements’ issuances, which were formal public acts, Catherine envisioned these as internal

dynamics in the Russian system, which make them more difficult to locate in archives. In one point

in his diary Gribovsky states that “material for ukazy were normally substantially reworked in the

Senate…or in other departments” – work that involved “considering both laws relevant to the

matter and [current] circumstance.”

265

Unfortunately, Gribovsky uses the past tense, suggesting

thereby that this practice had ceased to be a feature of Catherine’s arrangement and had been

replaced by the work of secretaries who specialized in orthography, such as Bezborodko, whom

he mentions in the preceding sentence.

Above all, the Senate was charged with the registration and promulgation of new laws. For

this it maintained its own print-house. Depending on the nature of the command, newly printed

proclamations would be sent to particular institutions, but in most cases, they would be sent to all

public offices (prisutstvennye mesta), the Moscow department[s] of the Senate, the Holy Synod,

provinces and individual towns. At a local level, new legislation that needed to be promulgated

was displayed and read out by officials in public spaces. They also continued to be read out in

churches by parish clergy after Sunday mass.

266

Continuing another practice that dated back to

Peter the Great’s reign, the St. Petersburg Chronicle, which came out on a bi-weekly basis and was

closely managed by the state, reported the promulgation of very important decrees; however, its

role in detailing new legislation, broadly understood, is easily overstated.

267

Finally, the Senate

also printed a small number (no more than a few hundred in total) for general distribution in St.

Petersburg and Moscow.

268

Official copies could be requested by readers at police quarters that

were responsible for their dissemination.

269

Overall, Catherine’s government went to great lengths to disseminate its decrees to the

greatest possible extent. This project had been begun in earnest by Peter the Great, and she

continued the use the same machinery that the latter had deployed for this purpose, even if they

may have conceived of this project in different terms, a question requiring further research. For

example, as some scholars have suggested, Peter saw sovereignty and its commands in more

coercive terms, whereas, Catherine, as I have argued, emphasized knowledge of the law as an

important precondition for liberty. Another important question that requires further research is

263

SIRIO, vol. 13, 460-1.

264

See discussion in Istoriia pravitel’stvuiushchago Senata, vol. 2, 505-6.

265

Gribovskii, Zapiski, 10.

266

Peter the Great had regularized this practice: Gregory L. Freeze, The Russian Levites: Parish Clergy in the

Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977), 31.

267

Gary Marker, Publishing, Printing, and the Origins of the Intellectual Life in Russia, 1700-1800 (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1985), 23-4.

268

Istoriia pravitel’stvuiushchago Senata, 505-6.

269

For example, see the description of the dissemination of the empress’ manifesto on the convocation of her

legislative commission, St. Peterburgskie Vedomosti, no. 6, 1767.

whether Catherine intensified the state’s strategies of promulgating the monarch’s commands.

There is good reason to think that this was the case. For example, the empress’ reorganization of

provincial government of 1775 saw the establishment of additional printing presses in provincial

administrative centers to produce more official communications.

270

We know also that Catherine

sought to make many of her decrees available through book publishers.

271

This was matched by a

greater interest in law and official notices by the population, above all by Russia’s political

servitors who were motivated to inform themselves of laws relevant to administrative functions

and their privileges. This no doubt reflected their self-interest, but it was possibly also a sign of a

new commitment, encouraged by the empress, to understand law and themselves as integral to the

state’s operations.

272

Some of these officials were graduates of the first Russian law faculty at

Moscow University in 1755 and would have had the requisite knowledge to appreciate finer

nuances.

The Senate dealt frequently with the problem of fake proclamations by jokesters or

malcontents. In March 1765, the Senate, in response to one such incident, was ordered by

Catherine to issue a statement declaring that “henceforth no ukazy or manifestos intended for

public promulgation and execution, issued from the sovereign’s name, or from the Senate, were to

be considered valid unless they were printed and marked (pechatnye).”

273

The statement further

delineated the official channels for the monarch’s powers. The peasant rebel, Emel’ian Pugachev,

produced elaborate printed manifestos that imitated the form and style of official documents,

suggesting that the state had in fact been successful at disseminating its commands in the

countryside, and that such forms of communication had become accepted and were authoritative.

Pugachev used these documents as a useful medium to communicate his commands, but also as a

visual artifact of power, indicating the law’s source, and hence its legitimacy (see Chapter 5).

4. The Empress’ Law-Making

Historians have identified and underlined different periods in Catherine’s activity as a law-maker

(for example, the very beginning of her reign; or the decade following the Pugachev rebellion,

which saw her provincial reform and major legislation on the nobility and Russian towns).

274

Yet,

law-making remained a constant and consistent element of the empress’ reign. In accordance with

her beliefs about legislation, many of the empress’ reforms, particularly her largest, were

protracted projects, going through a number of stages of research, writing, and editing, which took

months or years to complete, often involving contributions by miscellaneous individuals and

commissions. The empress herself remained closely involved in these legislative projects: she

initiated them, she appointed and coordinated their collaborators, she wrote and edited drafts, and

she made the final decision on when laws were ready for issue. Not all laws, however, made it to

this final stage. Catherine died with a number of significant legislative projects unpublished, either

because they were unfinished, or possibly because, after close consideration, they were deemed

inappropriate.

275

The 1770s and 1780s saw drafts of a charter to the state peasantry,

276

as well as a

270

Marker, Publishing, 139.

271

Ibid., 198.

272

Ibid., 199-200.

273

PSZ, no. 12,090.

274

See for example, part VI of Isabel de Madariaga’s history of the Catherinian period, entitled “The Reforming

Decade,” in Russia in the Age of Catherine, 277-324.

275

Ekaterina II: izbrannoe, 301-737.

276

Catherine II, “Proekt imperatritsy Ekateriny II ob ustroistve svobodnykh sel’skikh obyvatelei. Soobshcheno V. I.

Veshniakovym,” SIRIO, vol. 10, 447-98.

comprehensive criminal code (ugolovnoe ulozhenie).

277

Towards the end of her reign, we know of

plans for the further reform of high government. These included a plan for a new Imperial Council,

a High Chamber of Justice (Glavnaia Raspravnaia palata),

278

and a second reform of the Senate

that her secretary, Khrapovitsky, started working on in the spring of 1787.

279

Other work in the

field of public law included an attempt at a law of succession as well as further statements on the

character of the monarch’s prerogatives – further evidence of her ongoing interest in the

development of sovereignty.

280

As we have argued, Catherine believed that the involvement of state servitors in the

formulation and promulgation of commands enhanced their force. Accordingly, the empress

solicited different forms of counsel. In addition to her secretaries, she established a large number

of special commissions with the goal of studying and offering solutions to important issues. These

included the commissions on land-surveying (1765), commerce (1766), and roads (1785). The

most notable, however, was the Legislative Commission of 1767, which she tasked with compiling

a new code of Russian laws in accordance with the guidelines that she laid out in her Nakaz (see

Chapter 2). Consistently, the monarch operated through state servitors who carried out functions

in her name. Through the multiplication of bodies, the monarch was no longer strictly a single

individual, but an aggregate person who could carry out more work than any single ruler could

achieve by herself. This aggregate person had internal dynamics that allowed it, if it operated

properly, to enhance the force of commands and widen the scope of her activity. Catherine believed

that the Legislative Commission, following the Nakaz as an operating manual, could maintain her

voice within this machine while at the same time achieve the immense task of codifying Russia’s

laws.

Over the course of her reign, however, Catherine modified her role in this legislative

process. Aleksandr Kamenskii has noted that although the empress’ participation in law-making

was always decisive, her immediate involvement in legislative projects became greater as her reign

progressed.

281

One important moment that marked this transition was the abandonment of the

above-mentioned Legislative Commission, beginning in December 1768, when she prorogued the

Commission’s main assembly as a result of the outbreak of war with the Porte. Although there are

suggestions from her correspondence with Vyazemsky, the General procurator, that the empress

intended to recall the main assembly after the war’s conclusion, she never did.

282

It is unclear from

the available sources, why Catherine allowed the Commission to lapse and shifted towards a

different legislative practice.

On the surface, it would seem that the empress’ decision to prorogue the Commission

signaled a rejection of the ideas about legislation and sovereignty outlined above. With its long,

heated debates, and its failure to complete a draft of even a single section of code, the Commission

was clearly ponderous, and Catherine may have seen these delays as compromising the

277

Catherine II, “Ugolovnoe ulozhenie,” in Ekaterina II: izbrannoe, 370-449.

278

Catherine II, “O zakoneniakh voobshche.” ibid., 634-59.

279

Catherine II, “O Senate,” ibid., 556-600.

280

In addition to “O uzakoneniakh” (mentioned above), see “Nakaz senatu” in Oleg A. Omel’chenko, “K probleme

pravovykh form rossiiskogo absoliutizma vtoroi poloviny XVIII v.” in Problemy istorii absoliutizma: sbornik

nauchnykh trudov (Moscow: Vsesoiuznyi iuridicheskii zaochnyi institut, 1983) 25-62. Also, Catherine II, “Pravila

samoderzhaviia” in Ekaterina II: izbrannoe, 603-5; “O vlasti i prerogativakh imperatorskogo velichestva” in

Ekaterina II: izbrannoe, 605-8; “Sobstvennyi chernovoi proekt manifesta imperatritsy Ekateriny II”, RGADA, f. 10,

op. 1, d. 12.

281

Kamenskii, Ot Petra I, 330.

282

Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine, 167-8.

monarchy’s supposed efficiency, which she proclaimed as one of that system’s principle

advantages. Experience with the Commission in no way shook the empress’ conviction that law-

making should be interactive, but prompted a change of strategy, by which she created a smaller,

tighter process, in which she would be more closely involved.

The empress’ commitment to law-making as a dialogical activity is exemplified in the

approach she took to the major reforms of the subsequent decades. Take, for example, Catherine’s

provincial reform of November 1775, which transformed the governing apparatus of the Russian

countryside and defined it for the next one-hundred years. Between 1774 and 1775, she wrote over

six-hundred pages of material, comprising several of the six drafts that the project went through.

283

Although Catherine was the sole initiator of the statute, and she drafted much of the wording of

the legislation, there was nothing precipitous about her plans, which were based on a decade of

careful consultation. The reform originated in October 1764, when the empress requested

governors to collect geographical and demographic information on their provinces and submit

proposals for a new territorial division. Some governors showed initiative, such as Yakov Sievers,

of Novgorod, who was especially influential.

284

She also drew heavily on the work of one sub-

commission of the Legislative Commission, which provided a wealth of documents, such as

extracts from laws, maps, and population statistics. Instructions (nakazy) submitted by the

Commission’s elected deputies further informed her thinking, later supplemented by further

proposals from the governors of Kazan and Moscow. Last, but not least, the first partition of Poland

in 1772 had given her room to experiment, observing the results of new administrative

arrangements in the two new guberniias of Mogilev and Pskov. Along the way, she continued to

consult with Sievers, as well as the commander-in-chief of Moscow, Michael Volkonsky, and the

legal scholar, Semen Desnitskii. Her secretaries, Petr Zavadovsky and Aleksandr Bezborodko,

were also heavily involved in providing the empress with necessary documents and preparing the

final document. Catherine did not involve the Senate, though she did confer with her general

procurator, Viazemsky, and she charged it with the implementation of the new statute after its

promulgation.

285

Conclusion

Active legislation, developed in Russia since the reign of Peter the Great, was essential to the

modern concept of sovereignty as Catherine understood it. In Catherine’s understanding,

sovereignty, understood as the exercise of supreme and untrammeled power, considered

legitimate, was by no means synonymous with despotism, or tyranny, nor did it preclude

consultation and delegation of power. Despotism was embodied in her deceased husband, who,

she thought, mistakenly understood his absolute station purely in terms of commanding. Such a

system might impose laws on subjects, but it could not produce the comprehensive, systematic,

and authoritative rule that was commensurate with sovereignty. The empress chose to exercise her

prerogatives in an arrangement carefully designed and maintained with the help of others. This

mechanism was designed to overcome the intellectual or physical limitations of any single

283

The statute involved a new territorial division of provinces into gubernias and uezdy. A substantial component of

the reform was the introduction of a hierarchy of separate judicial apparatuses for each estate. See Madariaga, Russia

in the Age of Catherine, 277-91.

284

For a detailed account, see Robert E. Jones, Provincial Development in Russia: Catherine II and Jakob Sievers

(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1984).

individual. Knowledge was the deficit that most concerned the empress. The Enlightenment’s

emphasis on empirical observation necessitated manpower for its collection and processing, which

required a group of collaborators. Knowledge was required for the monarch’s decisions to embody

reason, and reason alone could justify the extraordinary concentration of power and authority in

the monarch. Only through consultation could monarchical decisions manifest the necessary

qualities of rule - its normativity, regularity, and its public and official nature. This system

inevitably placed unique burdens on the person of the monarch: the empress needed to manage her

servitors and make continual inputs into the process of legislation. At the same time, delegation to

others also unburdened the ruler, enabling her to do more by doing less. Enlightened ideas, the

principles of prudence, and an awareness of the difficulty of her own position dictated a mechanism

of sovereignty that sought to realize sovereign government by diffusing power from the empress

across a wider body of institutional power-sharers.

Chapter 4: The Empress’ Body: The Routines and Geography of Power

1. Introduction

This chapter is about the monarch’s body, understood not as a metaphysical or legal category,

286

but as a physical person who occupies specific spaces and who is engaged in a range of daily

activities and interactions on a recurring basis. The organization of daily routines and rituals at

monarchical courts, such as Versailles, has been widely discussed as part of royal strategy to

structure and convey the monarch’s sovereign status.

287

The Russian court in the eighteenth

century was no exception. Catherine, like her predecessors, used such activities to demonstrate the

monarchy’s greatness and its cultural parity with the West.

288

Moreover, Russian rulers (Catherine

included) used ceremonies, both large and small, to create a theater of distinction that elevated the

monarch and their highest-ranking servitors, endowing their power with an aura of majesty.

289

At the same time, Catherine had argued in Nakaz that the glory of the monarch was also

dependent on their ordered power. Both administrative and courtly functions and ceremonies, this

chapter argues, served to manifest this ordered power through their regularity and careful

organization, and these activities functioned as an important regulating mechanism. Catherine

meticulously ordered her life, meeting with state servitors and upholding a strict timetable of court

functions, ceremonies, and rituals. These interactions were carefully managed and ran according

to procedures and protocols that she enforced. Through these operations the empress manifested

her belief that power, properly ordered, was to be measured by the regularity and predictability of

its operations. Catherine understood her activity in these terms. In a private meeting with Count

Ségur, the French ambassador, she noted, “[I have] laid down certain principles, a pattern of

conduct and government from which I never swerve…here everything is constant; every day

resembles those that have gone before it. As everyone knows what he can rely on, no one feels

anxiety.”

290

The statement succinctly captures not only the manner in which Catherine managed

the expectations of her servitors, through predictable and routinized patterns of interaction with

her, but also the management of their interactions with and expectations of one another.

286

Above all: Ernst Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2016). For a similar

discussion in the Russian case, see Michael Cherniavsky, Tsar and People: Studies in Russian Myths (New York:

Random House, 1969).

287

See Peter Burke, The Fabrication of Louis XIV (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992). Writing of Louis XIV,

Burke notes that magnificence was meant to give the king ‘éclat’: “Eclat was another keyword of the time, with

meanings ranging from a ‘flash’ of lightning to a ‘clap’ of thunder, but always referring to something unexpected and

impressive. Magnificence was considered to be impressive, in the literal sense of leaving an ‘impression’ on the

viewers like a stamp on a piece of wax.” Magnificence added to the glory of the monarch (p. 5). For a broader

discussion of courtly representational culture in the eighteenth century, see T. C. W. Blanning, The Culture of Power

and the Power of Culture: Old Regime Europe, 1660-1789 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

288

On the modernization of the Russian court in the eighteenth century, see Ol’ga G. Ageeva, Imperatorskii dvor

Rossii, 1700-1796 (Moscow: Nauka, 2008); P. Keenan, St. Petersburg and the Russian Court 1703-1761 (New York:

Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); and Simon Dixon, The Modernisation of Russia, 1696-1825 (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1999), 118-26.

289

Richard Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Cermony in Russian Monarchy, vol. 1 (Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 1995). See also Stephen L. Baehr, “‘Fortuna Redux’: The Courtly Spectacle in Eighteenth-Century

Russia,” in Great Britain and Russia in the Eighteenth Century: Contacts and Comparisons, ed. Anthony G. Cross

(Newtonville, MA: Oriental Research Partners, 1979), 109-22.

290

Count Ségur, Memoirs and Recollections of Count Ségur, Ambassador from France to the Courts of Russia and

Prussia, vol. 2 (London, 1826), 284.

The main primary sources used in this chapter are the understudied ceremonial court

journals (kamer-furerskie zhurnaly), published for most years of the empress’ reign.

291

Compiled

by court officials, these document much of the monarch’s daily activity. Catherine evidently

valued the journals, as she steadily expanded the amount of detail they provided as to her location

at certain times of the day, listing the persons present at audiences and other meetings, including

luncheons and dinners.

292

In addition, she regularly had entries published in the St. Petersburg

Chronicle, communicating her movements to a broader public. The journals also cover celebratory

events at court that the empress attended such as religious holidays, state ceremonies, and other

public events. Having researched all of the available journals between 1762 and 1796, this chapter

can make many general observations about the empress’ routines across the broad span of her

reign. Where offered, examples have been drawn from entries that are exceptionally detailed.

As useful as the court journals are, however, they do not cover all aspects of the empress’

daily life; nor do they provide first-person accounts of what it was like to witness the events that

they registered. As a result, this chapter also draws on a range of journals and memoirs produced

by various individuals who spent time at the Russian court and were in a position to observe or

directly interact with the empress. The memoirs of foreign visitors and diplomats such as William

Coxe and Count Ségur, as well as the diary of her last secretary, Adrian Gribovsky, are amongst

the most useful texts in this regard.

2. The Routines and Geography of Power

a. Administrative Routines

Immediately after her ascension to the throne, Catherine began to carefully manage her daily

activity and establish daily routines governing her interactions with particular individuals in

specific locations during the day. These activities included regular meetings in private rooms with

the servitors through whom she conducted state affairs. She also made regular public appearances

in court - to have meals with selected members of the royal family and nobility, and to observe a

variety of religious and state holidays. Her regular attendance was also integral to a variety of

functions in the palace, such as weddings and baptisms, ‘court days’ (kurtagi), balls and

masquerades, musical and theatrical performances, to which a wider cross-section of St.

Petersburg’s elites were invited.

293

Catherine frequently travelled between palaces, above all to

Tsarskoe Selo and Oranienbaum outside of St. Petersburg. But, as diaries and the entries of the

court journals attest, these changes of location had no noticeable impact on her daily routines. As

the upper echelons of state administration tended to accompany her—they had their own houses

nearby her summer palaces—changes of location did not alter the overall routine or compromise

state business. Catherine adhered to a strict regimen, rarely taking days off; although she did work

in moments of respite and leisure into her daily life. Regular movements and carefully controlled

interactions and appearances managed the administrative and courtly elite and to keep them

aligned in the correct relationship to the monarch and to one another.

294

They also helped construct

291

Kamer-fur’erskii tseremonial’nyi zhurnal (henceforth KFZ), 177 volumes, (St. Petersburg, 1853-1917).

292

L. V. Tychina and N. V. Bessarabova, Kniaginia Dashkova i imperatorskii dvor (Moscow: MGI im. E. R.

Dashkovoi, 2006), 14.

293

On the differing publics attending such events, see Douglas Smith, Working the Rough Stone: Freemasonry and

Society in Eighteenth-Century Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University, 1999), 53-90.

294

In this respect, Catherine’s court functioned in a manner similar to Louis XIV’s Versailles. See Blanning, The

Power of Culture, 29-52.

sovereignty by telegraphing the supposed normativity of power’s operation. In this section we lay

out what these daily routines were.

Catherine II during a walk in the Tsarskosel’skii Park. Painting by Vladimir L.

Borovikovsky, 1794. Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

With the exception of some important religious and state holidays, as well as most Sundays,

the empress’ day was divided between administration and the court. One source that helps us

reconstruct her daily routine is the diary of Adrian Gribovsky, one of her last state secretaries, who

worked for her between 1795 and 1796. As he observed, the empress would rise around eight

o’clock in the morning, after which she spent an hour in her personal cabinet writing

correspondence or working on legislation and decrees. Thereafter she drank a cup of coffee (she

rarely had breakfast) and went to her bedroom where she took a seat at one of two small tables

adjacent to the entrance of the waiting room. When she was ready, she rang a bell to call the valet-

de-chambre on duty, and he in turn summoned whoever she had requested from those already

assembled. They would enter her bedroom, bow their heads and kiss her hand if she offered it,

then take a seat at the table opposite to work with her on official business. The empress, Gribovsky

noted, met with individuals on a one-to-one basis, normally beginning with the chief of police

(ober-politseimeister), followed by her secretaries. Additionally, she would meet with specific

ranks on different days. From his diary, we know that in 1796 she met with the vice chancellor as

well as the governor and the procurator (gubernskii-prokuror) of St. Petersburg on Saturdays; the

chief procurator (ober-prokuror) of the Holy Synod and the master of requests (general-

reketmeister) on Wednesdays; the general procurator of the Senate on Mondays; and on Thursdays

along with the commander-in-chief of St. Petersburg (glavnokmandiushii).

295

The empress’ morning interactions took place in private apartments with highly-ranking

individuals she saw often and knew well, including her secretaries and senior servitors. Though

governed by etiquette, these meetings had an air of cordiality and relaxed formality, dispensing

with extensive formalities or representational displays intended to 'elevate’ their participants.

296

Indeed, throughout administrative meetings, she regularly remained dressed in her sleeping gown

and her white gauze night cap. Such a scenario suggests that these meetings must be interpreted in

other terms. Certainly, Catherine’s administrative meetings were intended to demonstrate her

industry or commitment to governance.

297

But even more so, they were crucial components of the

empress’ system of modern sovereignty. The absence of formalities signified that these meetings

were spaces of dialogue, not of hierarchical command. Meeting with specific servitors on an

individual basis, Catherine facilitated the transmission of the monarch’s power through official

‘intermediary’ channels that lay at the core of her system. And their regular and recurring nature

made the flow of power orderly and predictable. Finally, these interactions demonstrate that the

locus of government affairs was not so much the court as a whole, but was specifically localizable

within certain rooms in Catherine’s palaces, which served as the inner sanctum of power. Their

hidden operations, as, too, their restricted access—people of lesser rank and foreign diplomats

were not allowed to see her at these times—added a certain mystery to power and represented the

proper hierarchical order of sovereignty respectively.

298

Admittedly, there were inevitable variations to this routine over time. For example, writing

about the organization of her day in 1778, Coxe stated that the empress rose as early as six, and

would be “engaged in public business” with her secretary until eight or nine, followed by her

ministers of state, and aid-de-camps at ten. This is a much earlier start to the day than what

Gribovsky described in 1796 but this is a change that one might reasonably be expected as the

empress became older. Nonetheless, these routines maintained their integrity throughout her reign

and applied independent of her location. The French Ambassador, Count Ségur, who accompanied

the court during Catherine’s journey to the Crimea in 1787, commented that “the regular system

of passing her days, to which the Empress had accustomed herself, varied as little as possible when

she was travelling…at six o’clock she got up and transacted business with her ministers, and then

she breakfasted and received [members of the court].”

299

b. Lunch

Catherine would be occupied with state matters in her private rooms until midday. Thereafter she

returned to her dressing room where her ladies-in-waiting would prepare her attire for her entrance

to court. Her hairdresser, Kozlov, prepared her hair (low, old-fashioned style with backward facing

frisette over the ears). As with her austere hairstyle, on regular days Catherine preferred simple

unadorned silk dresses in a combination of lilac and white, signifying that her daily appearance in

295

A. Gribovskii, Zapiski o imperatritse Ekaterine velikoi polkovnika, sostoiashago pri ee osobe stats-sekretarem

(Moscow: Universitetskaia tipografiia, 1864), 27. For a history and discussion of court ranks, see Ageeva,

Imperatorskii dvor, 198-352.

296

Gribovskii, Zapiski, 28.

297

Isabel de Madariaga, Catherine the Great: A Short History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 131-44.

298

On exclusion as key to the representation of power, see Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the

Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, translated by Thomas Burger (Cambridge, MA: MIT

Press, 1991), 8-9.

299

Ségur, Memoirs, vol. 3, 10-1. See also vol. 2, 260-1.

court were not about ceremonial display. Still, public appearances were integral to the life of the

palace, and the functioning of the court required continuous input from the monarch, who needed

not only to organize events and invite individuals to them, but also to attend them in person. At

the same time, leaving her private rooms in the palace did not automatically give all of the palace’s

visitors access to her. The empress’ surrounding social spaces remained highly ordered, meaning

it would be more accurate to speak of levels of accessibility where various ranks of individuals

were able to see and/or interact with her at different times.

Lunch was arguably the most important moment in the daily regimen of the court. Besides

feeding hungry courtiers, it occupied three functions: it maintained a predictable pattern of

visibility by the empress to the highest-ranking state officials; it obligated those officials to

maintain the daily routines of the court; and, through seating arrangements, it maintained

hierarchies of power between them. On many days, lunch was the only appearance the empress

made outside her private domain. The guest list was highly repetitive and highly selective, ranging

across court and civil functionaries as well as military commanders, reflecting both rank and

degree of influence at court. Typically, the empress dined in the dining room or less commonly

when in Winter Palace, in the gallery or the Hermitage, depending on the size of her company.

Guests had to be personally invited by the empress, with the exception of her favorites who were

able to attend at their pleasure. Even on days when she did not leave her apartments, she was joined

by two or three other people. When she dined in court, she was accompanied by around a dozen

intimates, though the court journals do not consistently record the composition of her entourage.

In addition to favorites, who were steady attendees, Catherine’s company consisted of senior

servitors, drawn from the top two or three military, civilian, and court tiers of the Table of Ranks.

Two top court functionaries, Chief Equerry (ober-stallmeister)

300

Lev Naryskin (from 1762), and

Marshal of the Court (gof-marshall) Fedor Bariatinsky (from 1778), both of whom were

responsible for organizing court activities, and were therefore particularly important in

maintaining court routines in consultation with the empress. We might also mention the vice

chancellors, Aleksandr Golitsyn (1762-1778) and Ivan Osterman (1775-1796), as well as General-

in-Chief (general-anshef) Iakov Bruce, one of the most regular attendees through to his death in

1791. In his diary of 1792, Gribovsky noted that towards the end of her reign, Catherine regularly

invited Hofmarschall Fyodor Bariatinsky, General-in-Chief Petr Passek, as well as the senator,

head-chamberlain (ober-kamerger), and privy councillor (tainyi-sovetnik), Aleksandr Stroganov.

Anna Protasova (freilein and kamer-freilein from 1785) was one of the empress’ closest female

confidents and was regularly present at lunch.

301

So, too, were Iakov Bruce’s wife, Praskov’ia

Bruce, and, after the latter’s fall from grace in 1779, Aleksandra Branitskaia, - another individual

mentioned by Gribovsky.

302

As this list suggests, Catherine used her luncheons to interact with a

select cadre of individuals, each representing various aspects and channels of power. Their regular

presence reinforced power’s orderliness by underscoring that there was a specific time and place

for select individuals to interact with her, as well as nipping in the bud confusion or disappointment

as to who would receive the coveted invitation.

One’s position in the Table of Ranks did not automatically qualify individuals to attend

luncheon, nor was it a requirement. Notably, some of the highest-ranking civil officials, such as

the head of the College of Foreign Affairs, Nikita Panin, first rank on the Table of Ranks, and his

300

Catherine raised the chief equerry from the 3

to 2

rank in 1766.

301

In addition to establishing the Table of Ranks, Peter the Great had introduced a new system of rank for women at

the imperial court. It was drawn from French and German models. See Ageeva, Imperatorskii dvor, 235-60.

302

A. Gribovskii, Zapiski, 30

successor Alexander Bezborodko, were rarely present, as was also true of the General Procurator,

Alexander Vyazemsky. By contrast, some of the empress’ secretaries—Sergei Kozmin, Ivan

Elagin, and Adam Olsuf’ev—of far lower in rank, made occasional appearances, but were not

regular guests. The grand duke, Paul, who was only nine years old at the beginning of his mother’s

reign, tended to eat in full court on feast days. He had his own apartments and his own schedule,

which only partly overlapped with those of the empress, above on all Sundays, when he attended

liturgy and spent time in her company.

303

Foreign dignitaries and ministers were rarely seen at

lunch. They were able to see the empress on Sundays, during large court evens, at special

audiences, but as a rule were not able to see or interact with her at any other time.

Lunch lasted for no more than an hour, and when it was over the guests would immediately

depart and Catherine would return to her quarters. There she often hosted private audiences.

Diderot, for example, who was one of her guests of honor in late 1774 and 1775, was granted

private meetings with the empress between three and six o’clock about three days a week.

304

other times, she undertook light exercise and other short excursions. Gribovsky, however, noted

that towards the end of her reign she was less active and replaced walks and outings with indoor

rest. She would read a book or listen to the foreign post, which arrived twice weekly, whilst making

paper models. The foreign post would be read out to her by her favorite from 1791to 1796, Platon

Zubov, or in his absence, Arkadii Morkov. As a last resort she turned to her secretary Popov, who

was always on duty in the adjacent room. In the summers, she frequently napped alone.

305

c. Evening Entertainment

From about six o’clock, a group of notables would again assemble in the palace to spend the

evening with the empress. These intimates constituted a small company of highly ranked Russian

servitors, personally invited by Catherine, and there was general overlap with her lunchtime guests.

On most days of the week, the empress would invite these guests to spend time with her, either in

one of the courtly rooms, or in her private apartments, listening to music or playing cards or chess.

About once a week she would invite them to the Hermitage for theatrical performances or a

masquerade. Evening events marked yet another occasion for the organization and ordering of St.

Petersburg’s elites, both local and diplomatic. Inviting a wide group of spectators into her palaces,

required them to submit themselves to courtly protocols, while the same events placed hierarchies

between them on visible display.

Private events, limited to a closed circle, made the empress’ preferences even more publicly

notable. Visiting the Winter Palace in 1778, William Coxe, noted that in the winter, these private

functions would take place on Thursday evenings. Admittedly not an eye-witness, he commented

on the character of these private events. He noted that servants were “excluded” and “supper and

various refreshments [were] presented on small tables, which [rose] and [fell] through trap-doors.”

Furthermore, as with the ordinary evening gatherings in her private apartments,

306

“all ceremony

[was banished], as far as was consistent with the respect due to a great sovereign.” Throughout the

rooms, there were “many directions” outlining the proper comportment in this select space. The

“general tendency” of these was to “encourage freedom, banish etiquette, and invite the most

303

Paul’s routines were described by the memoirs of his tutor, S. A. Poroshin, Zapiski, sluzhashchie k istorii ego

imperatorskago vysochestva blagovernago gosudaria tsesarevicha i velikago kniazia Pavla Petrovicha, naslednika

prestolu rossiiskago (St. Petersburg, 1844).

304

A useful discussion of their meetings can be found in: Inna Gorbatov, Catherine the Great and French Philosophers

of the Enlightenment. (Bethesda, MD: Academica Press, 2006), 168-71.

305

Gribovskii, Zapiski., 31.

306

Ségur, Memoirs, vol. 3 (London, 1826), 59.

unrestrained ease.”

307

Such instructions did more than demonstrate that there were strict standards

of etiquette at other times: they underlined more generally that sovereignty was about ordered

spaces governed by specific expectations of comportment, and that the creation and maintenance

of this order was the task of the monarch. This order was maintained by the monarch through

various strategies: controlling access, either personally or through court functionaries; being

present in those spaces at predictable moments for such gatherings to occur; and, as Coxe’s story

indicates, using in the final instance written instructions in a manner very much comparable to law

to communicate and instill comportment, be it strict etiquette, or more relaxed interaction.

While Catherine mostly limited her daily interactions to a small number of individuals

drawn from the higher echelons of the political elite, she also hosted masquerades and theatrical

performances open to a wider public, who had to get tickets through written requests to the court

booking-office, the pridvornaia kontora. Theater, in particular, was a major attraction during

Catherine’s reign. Originally commissioned by Elizabeth, the first theater in the Winter Palace

opened in 1763. This was followed by a second in Tsarskoe Selo in 1765,

308

and a third in the

Hermitage in 1776.

309

The theater has been widely discussed as a means of imposing mores on the

elites.

310

While it permitted entry to people not in state service, the theater reaffirmed the Table of

Ranks, since individuals were assigned to specific spaces in the parterre or loges depending on

their rank. Individuals who took their place conceded their status, although this was most

complicated for foreigners, who lacked a position in the Table of Ranks.

311

But while it reaffirmed hierarchy, the theater was for many a rare opportunity to see and

be in the monarch’s presence.

312

Catherine’s loge would be located either straight across from the

stage, or immediately to the side of the stage. The former position allowed her to be seen by

privileged guests in other loges. In contrast, the empress’ positioning to the side made her more

widely visible. It also allowed visitors to watch the stage and to see simultaneously the empress’

reaction to the performance.

313

Catherine often switched loges during a performance, as did Paul,

who usually joined her in the second act. Apart from Sunday liturgy, this was one of the few places

where Catherine and Paul encountered one another in public.

314

Alexander—his son—began to

be taken to her loge in 1779, when he was only 1½ years old. Catherine thereby advertised the

stability and longevity of the dynasty.

315

Catherine also held masquerades that were open to the broader public. During his visit,

Coxe mentions that there were two or three of these events at court in the winters and that “persons

of all rank were admitted.” The attendance was large, on one occasion in the Hermitage reaching

as many as eight-thousand people. For this event a “magnificent suite of twenty apartments,

handsomely illuminated, were opened.” Coxe relates how these spaces corresponded to social

307

William Coxe, Travels in Poland, Russia, Sweden, and Denmark, vol. 2 (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1802),

141.

308

Alexeï Estratov, Les Spectacles Francophones à la Cour de la Russie (1743-1796). L’Invention d’une Société

(Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2016), 188.

309

The first performance at the Hermitage is recorded in KFZ, 1776, 210-1.

310

Evstratov, Les Spectacles Francophones; Elise Wirtschafter, The Play of Ideas in the Russian Enlightenment

Theater (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University, 2003). On the numerous plays that Catherine wrote herself, see Lurana

D. O’Malley, The Dramatic Works of Catherine the Great: Theatre and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Russia

(Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2017).

311

Evstratov, Les Spectacles Francophones, 193-5, 197-8.

312

Ibid., 193-5.

313

Ibid., 198-9.

314

Ibid., 199.

315

Ibid., 199-200.

status, hence were carefully ordered. The most important of these was a large oblong room - also

used for “common balls.” In the middle of this chamber was a space “enclosed with a low railing,

appropriated to the nobility who danced.” The dances of “the burghers, and other persons who had

not been presented [to the empress]” took place in another hall. The other rooms of the event were

used for tea and refreshments as well as cards, for which many tables had been set out. Guests

were not only separated by rooms, but also more conspicuously by their dress. The nobility, for

example, “generally wore dominos,” whereas those of inferior rank “appeared in their own

provincial clothes, perhaps embellished with occasional ornaments.”

316

Catherine would make a

much-anticipated appearance at such events. Accompanied by a small entourage of high-ranking

intimates, she would walk “in great state through the several rooms.” Sometimes, she would sit

down to play cards (probably Macau) in one of the salons, inevitably drawing large crowds that

were held at a distance; however, she preferred to retire to her private rooms after a short period

time, and only those who had been presented to her at a private audience would be allowed to

accompany her.

Even from these few examples it is possible to see that these celebrations were highly

organized events involving protocols and procedures that all present were to some extent

responsible for upholding. In this regard, it is important that corresponding entries in the court

journals are of great length and detail. Such events, held with scrupulous regularity, were again

opportunities to manifest ordered power. However, since ordered power involved assignment of

individuals to their proper places, celebrations also needed to bring into greater resolution to a

broader public the unequal proximity of different groups to the monarch.

d. ‘Kurtagi’

Catherine regularly held so-called kurtagi on Sundays, either at noon after liturgy (but before

lunch) or in the evenings. Translated as ‘court-days,’ these were formal receptions held in one of

the state rooms, to which high-ranking Russian nobles and foreign guests would be invited. For

foreign dignitaries either visiting or stationed in St. Petersburg, such functions were one of the few

occasions on which they would be able to spend time with the empress. The court journals were

fairly reliable in recording kurtagi. Take, for instance, an early entry from January 12, 1763, when

the empress was in Moscow: “In the evening, at seven o’clock, foreign ministers and Russian

notables assembled in the gallery and there began a kurtag which the empress attended; it ended

at ten o’clock.”

317

Interactions with the empress were carefully managed at kurtagi. For example,

Russian notables and foreign ministers would greet the empress in separate rooms. Making her

rounds, the empress would be accompanied by the chief chamberlain (ober-kamerger) and the

equerry (shtalmeister) who would formally present each guest to her. Upon being presented,

Russian guests had to bend their knee, whereas foreigners were expected to kiss her hand. After

making an initial round, she would proceed to the throne room where she received further greetings

and conversed with her guests for about half an hour. During this audience strict etiquette was

required. According to Gribovsky, the empress normally stood alone, about four steps in front of

the collected company. She would approach those with whom she wished to talk, but this remained

entirely at her discretion, for none of her guests had the right to begin a conversation with her. In

general Catherine would speak with many of her guests, but there “were some she never spoke

to.”

318

316

Coxe, Travels, 139-40.

317

KFZ, 1763, 8.

318

Gribovskii, Zapiski, 33.

More rarely, foreign dignitaries were given special audiences with the empress.

319

These

audiences, too, followed strict protocol, which are detailed in the court journals. On these days

dignitaries would be first asked to wait in a separate waiting room until called when the empress

was ready. When the time came, they would be collected by a master of ceremonies and first led

through a series of state rooms and down the main palace staircase. There they were met by the

vice chancellor who led them through a further set of halls to the audience chamber, where they

were presented to the empress.

320

Such a passage through the grandest spaces of the palace was

calculated to produce a strong visual impression. More importantly, however, we see how it also

manifested specific aspects of power that the empress thought important. Strict procedure

exhibited the normativity of that power, whereas the actual passage of the envoy to the empress

through physical spaces of the palace, guided by high-ranking state servitors, at once displayed

and manifested the monarchy’s intermediary channels. Only via the latter could foreign dignitaries

obtain access to the monarch. Certainly, the body of the empress was important in maintaining

these ritual hierarchies. However, particular palace functionaries, in this instance the master of

ceremonies and the vice chancellor, also had a critical role to play. In other words, sovereignty

involved tactics for ordering individuals, requiring the collaboration of multiple persons, including

the empress, her courtiers, bureaucrats, regular guests, and one-time visitors.

Receiving the Turkish Embassy in the Winter Palace. Engraving after a drawing

by J. L. de Veilly and M. Makhyev, 1796.

That Catherine tightly controlled the accessibility of her person in relation to foreign

diplomats is particularly significant and deserves comment. Ensuring that they held minimal

physical proximity, especially vis-à-vis her Russian servitors who took precedence over them in

her schedule, she advertised their lack of influence and forced them to conduct state business in a

319

For a detailed history of diplomatic ceremony in Russia in the eighteenth century, see Ol’ga G. Ageeva,

Diplomaticheskii tseremonial imperatorskoi Rossii: XVIII vek (Moscow: Novyi kronograf, 2013).

320

See, for instance, the entry for May 4, 1791: KFZ, 1791, 289-96.

distant and mediated manner. As she did with her daily routines, she established this form of

interaction early, allowing her to distinguish herself from her husband, Peter III, who was seen to

have allowed foreign diplomats to usurp political power. This new order was commented on by

the English ambassador, the Earl of Buckinghamshire, who, wishing to meet with the new empress

in 1762 was told that, “though the late Emperor had sometimes received papers himself, her present

Majesty chose rather to have them conveyed through the channel of her ministers.”

321

e. Religious and State Ceremonies

The empress also maintained a regular schedule of religious and state ceremonies. The observation

of religious rites formed one of the most demanding parts of the empress’ weekly schedule. These

ceremonies were essential to display her adherence to the traditions of the Russian state and her

status as a Christian monarch, and Catherine adhered to them rigorously. They also helped her

bind high-ranking state officials, regardless of their personal piety, to Christian principles, which

she had argued were the foundations of properly ordered power.

These ceremonies were part of cultural inheritance of the Russian monarchy and here,

Empress Elizabeth was a crucial point of cultural orientation.

322

The court journals from

Elizabeth’s reign, admittedly less detailed than those of Catherine, outline a calendar of religious

and state festivals that is similar to the one presented below. Elizabeth celebrated all of the most

important Orthodox feasts, the name days of the members of the Russian royal family, and the

celebrations of chivalric orders, including the Order of St. Catherine, which the future empress,

(then still Sophia of Anhalt-Zerbst), was inducted into shortly after her arrival. The tradition of

inviting officers of important Russian military regiments to dine with the empress on assigned days

was also firmly in place. So, too, were a host of lesser court events, such as kurtagi, weekly operas,

comedies, balls, and masquerades (some of which were private, others open to a wider public).

Empress Elizabeth invited and expected Catherine to take part in important, particularly religious

functions, from weekly mass to fasting at Lent and the extensive devotions of Holy Week. These

involved early-morning matins beginning at 3am, followed a few hours later by mass. The young

princess, eager to win the empress’ favor and to raise her prestige in court made a concerted effort

to attend these, even though she found them completely exhausting. Her husband, in contrast,

tended to feign illness.

The vast majority of feast days that Catherine observed during her own reign were

Orthodox holidays, organized around the Twelve Feasts of the Eastern Orthodox Church,

beginning with the Nativity of Mary on September 8 and ending with Dormition on August 15.

323

Despite the greater Marian focus of the Eastern Church, the most important period nevertheless

remained the beginning of Lent, through Easter until Pentecost. In addition to the Twelve Feasts,

the empress marked a number of supporting Christian festivals, including the celebration of the

birth and death of John the Baptist, the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, and the Intercession of

Theotokos, a feast that had added importance because of the central role played by the tenth-

century Slavic fool-in-Christ, the blessed Andrew (Andrei Iurodivyi). Furthermore, two religious

holidays involved celebration and veneration of the most important icons of Russian Orthodoxy –

321

October 25, 1762, Despatches and Correspondence of John, Second Earl of Buckinghamshire, Ambassador to the

Court of Catherine II of Russia, 1762-1765, ed. A. Collyer, vol. 1 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1900), 81.

322

Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine, 1-21.

323

For a study of religious ceremony in the Russian court, see Simon Dixon, “Religious Ritual at the Eighteenth-

Century Russian Court,” in Monarchy and Religion: The Transformation of Royal Culture in Eighteenth-Century

Europe, ed. M. Shaich (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 217-48.

the Theotokos of Vladimir and the Theotokos of Kazan. Russian state holidays were tied to

Christian Saints’ days. These included, above all, the days of the Russian chivalric orders. At the

beginning of the empress’ reign, these were three: the Orders of St. Andrew, St. Catherine, and St.

Alexander Nevsky.

324

Catherine added a further two during her reign that were closely modeled

on the latter. In 1769, following the outbreak of war with Turkey, she founded the Order of St.

George, honoring valiance in battle; in 1782, on the year of her twentieth-year jubilee, she

established the Order of Vladimir the Great which was awarded for outstanding military as well

as civil service. Finally, we might add name-days of the empress and the grand duke; Catherine’s

coronation; and New Year’s Day.

Though it is difficult to generalize about feast days, as a rule, they were hosted by the

empress in the imperial palace. Invariably, all were marked by special church services which she

attended. Some consisted of little more than this.

325

Generally, however, they involved celebratory

lunches accompanied by various entertainments to which she invited the upper segments of the

Russian nobility, the clergy, and foreign guests. At the same time, many of these often served to

celebrate the distinction of a handful of Russian military and civil servitors, above all the Russian

chivalric orders. Coxe, for instance, recalls that he was invited to be a spectator at the celebratory

lunch for the knights of the Order of St. Andrew in 1778, which was hosted by the empress. The

lunch itself was a highly ritualized event attended by court officials in ceremonial attire (two

hofmarschalls and the chief master of ceremonies). The strict organization of space was equally

on display on New Year’s Day when Catherine would invite members of the local merchantry to

the palace, but not to the day’s celebratory lunch – an honor extended to only a few hundred people

drawn exclusively from the “clergy (dukhovnye chiny) and notables…of the first four ranks.”

326

A few of the feast days involved departures from the palace, opening the possibility for

moments of public pageantry and, perhaps, a chance for common people to see the empress, albeit

at distance. For example, on the Feast of the Transfiguration in 1771 (August 6), the court entry

states that Catherine, accompanied by her ‘court staff (pridvornyi shtab) and the Generalitet’ (the

first four military ranks) journeyed in carriages from the Winter Palace to the Church of the

Transfiguration for a special service with members of the Preobrazhenskii guards regiment.

327

August 30, 1769, celebrating Alexander Nevsky and the eponymous chivalric order, the empress,

accompanied by the grand duke and her courtly staff, went from the Summer Palace to the

monastery, the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. This time the collected company journeyed by foot, and

the empress, who was dressed in the full regalia of the chivalric order, was assisted by several

chamberlains who carried the train of her robe. At the monastery’s gates, the empress was greeted

with a sacred cross by the high-ranking clergymen (znatnoe dukhovenstvo). Thereafter she

followed a procession of crosses into the church, herself trailed by the knights of the chivalric

order, arranged by seniority and in rows of two.

328

Finally, one of the most public celebrations

was the anniversary of the empress’ ascension to the Russian throne (June 28). For example, on

324

For a history of these orders, see Gary Marker, Imperial Saint: The Cult of St. Catherine and the Dawn of Female

Rule in Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2007). See also, Helju A. Bennett, “Chiny, Ordena, and

Officialdom,” in Russian Officialdom: The Bureaucratization of Russian Society from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth

Century, ed. Walter M. Pintner and Don K. Rowney (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1980),

162-89.

325

The Nativity of Mary, held on September 8, is an example, despite its status as one of the ‘great feasts’ of the

Orthodox Church.

326

KFZ, 1762, 2.

327

KFZ, 1771, 277.

328

KFZ, 1769, 74-5.

this day in 1763, Catherine undertook a trip around St. Petersburg, beginning from Tsarksoe Selo

and ending at the Summer Palace. After an intermediate service in the Kazan Cathedral, the final

segment of the trip involved a public procession down Nevsky Prospect where she was met at

stages by various groups: first the Russian and foreign merchantry, followed by the commanders

and senior officers of the first Cadet, then the Engineering and Artillery, and finally Naval Corps.

When she arrived at the Summer Palace, she was awaited by Russian notables of the first five

ranks in addition to foreign ministers, who subsequently congratulated her.

329

In conclusion, Catherine’s fastidious and careful observance of state celebrations were as

important to manifesting her operating principles. In addition to demonstrating her Russianness,

they manifested the regularity, predictability, and organized nature of power. Moreover, they were

ordering tools that, through the arrangement of the bodies around the sovereign’s physical person,

allocated individuals to their proper place and represented the proper ‘channels’ of interaction with

the monarch. Certainly, my interpretation does not claim to exhaust the purposes of the court.

Catherine, like her predecessors, used the court for entertainment and for telegraphing Russia’s

wealth and greatness.

330

What we are speaking about is a crucial addition to how her court should

be seen – as a tool for building modern sovereignty.

4. The Empress’ Favorites

Favorites cannot be overlooked in dealing with the empress as a physical person who interacted

with select individuals in specific locations and at certain moments during the day. What was their

place within these regularities of the empress’ life? Did they bolster or undermine the above system

of power that she sought to construct? Historians have treated Catherine’s favorites as if they were

a critical aspect of her reign and granted them considerable attention, arguably more than those of

her predecessors. Some have suggested that favoritism was qualitatively different during her reign.

John Alexander, for example, has argued that favoritism progressed during Catherine’s reign to

the point that it became ‘institutionalized.’

331

Similarly, Aleksandr Kamenskii argues that in the

decades following the Pugachev uprising, favoritism spiraled out of control as a string of

temporary lovers came and left.

332

Leaving this and other specific interpretations aside for the

moment, it is important to note that favoritism was a permanent feature of the empress’ reign. It is

also a fact that Catherine had a large number of favorites, at least twelve (excluding those before

her ascension). The majority of these were short-lived, or ‘ephemeral men’ (vremenshchiki), as

they were labelled by contemporaries. Only three—Grigory Orlov, Grigory Potemkin, and Platon

Zubov—occupied their position for a number of years. Both the number and permanent presence

of favorites suggest that there was something systemic about the phenomenon under the empress’

reign, an important consideration for our purposes.

Understandably, the empress’ favorites attracted much attention and were of great interest

to her contemporaries, who commented on their personalities and on their relationship with her.

Although it has been suggested that favoritism had become an accepted practice by Catherine’s

reign, the harsh nature of some contemporary commentary indicates that favorites posed a general

problem for empresses, especially male favorites. Whereas the taking of mistresses by emperors

329

KFZ, 1763, 139-142.

330

Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine, 327-43.

331

John T. Alexander, “Favourites, Favouritism, and Female Rule in Russia, 1725-1796,” in Russia in the Age of

Enlightenment: Essays for Isabel de Madariaga, ed. R. Bartlett and J. Hartley (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990),

117.

332

Kamenskii, “Catherine the Great,” 55.

was unlikely to precipitate trenchant criticism—there is even the suggestion that it was a way of

representing potency

333

—female rulers who took male companions ran into accusations of sexual

waywardness and of allowing intimates to illegitimately influence political power.

334

Prejudice

against female rulers is very noticeable in the writings of critics such as Mikhail Shcherbatov. It is

also noticeable in the commentaries of foreigners at court. Take, for example, the memoirs of

Charles Masson, who, despite praising the “regular life” and the “exterior decorum” Catherine

maintained in public

335

—a noteworthy acknowledgment—had this to say about the Russian

empresses of the eighteenth century:

The reigns of these women afford a strong argument in favor of those nations who

have never suffered the scepter to be placed in the hands that were formed for the

distaff; for it would be difficult to find six reigns more prolific in wars, revolutions,

crimes, disorders, and calamities of every kind. That the manners of the Court were

softened I am ready to admit; but then they were corrupted, and wretchedness

increased in equal proportion with luxury, and disorder. Abuses of every kind,

tyranny and licentiousness became the very essence of government…When women

reign their lovers tyrannize over the people, and all in power plunder them.

336

Masson singled out Catherine, arguing she went further than her female predecessors. In fact, she

“availed herself of her power to exhibit to the world an example of which there is there is to be

found no model…making the office of favorite a place at Court, with an apartment, salary, honors,

prerogatives, and, above all, its peculiar functions.”

337

In some measure, modern historians have

repeated Masson’s claims.

There is no doubt that Catherine was deeply attached to many of her favorites, above all

Potemkin.

338

And she was hurt by their rejection, such as by Mamonov, who left her for Princess

Shcherbatova, and by their infidelities, such as Ivan Rimsky-Korsakov’s affair with Praskovia

Bruce.

339

Without going into precarious psychological analyses, relationships with favorites may

have provided her with certain emotional balance that her life as monarch denied to her, including

the long hours of official interactions that she needed to observe. At the same time Catherine’s

many liaisons made possible accusations of licentiousness.

340

Certain decisions she made likely

enabled further criticism in this regard. It is true, for example, that she allowed her favorites to

reside in the palace in adjoining rooms with private access to hers. In some cases, she may have

also shown poor judgment in selecting them (Mamonov and Rimsky-Korsakov), though pure bad

333

Blanning, The Power of Culture, 70.

334

Ruth Dawson, “Eighteenth-Century Libertinism in a Time of Change: Representations of Catherine the Great.”

Women in German Yearbook: Feminist Studies in German Literature & Culture. 18 (summer 2002), 67-88.

335

Charles François Philibert Masson, Secret Memoirs of the Court of St. Petersburg during her Reign and that of

Paul I., by one of her Courtiers (New York: Merrill & Baker, 1904), 69.

336

Ibid., 280.

337

Ibid., 280.

338

See Catherine II and Grigory Potemkin, Love & Conquest: Personal Correspondence of Catherine the Great and

Prince Grigory Potemkin, ed. and trans. by Douglas Smith (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University, 2004). For a

discussion of their correspondence, see also Kelsey Rubin-Detlev, The Epistolary Art of Catherine the Great (Oxford:

Voltaire Foundation, 2019), 60-3.

339

Madariaga, Catherine the Great, 210.

340

Although Catherine’s string of lovers could count as licentiousness, accusations of debauchery are not supported

by the source base. See Rubin-Detlev, The Epistolary Art, 125. For a broader account of these accusations, see the

epilogue in John T. Alexander, Catherine the Great: Life and Legend (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).

luck may also have been a factor. That her favorites became increasingly younger men over time

(Zubov, her final favorite, was 40 years her junior), certainly also raised objections, again

reflecting poor judgment on her part.

When it comes to the issue of sovereignty, however, the official roles and special

prerogatives Catherine granted favorites at celebrations and within her daily routine require special

scrutiny. The court journals, which we have used extensively, show a mixed picture. During state

celebrations, the entries indicate that they neither played distinct roles nor occupied any special

place. And, while they were present at ceremonial lunches, she did not always allow them to sit in

close proximity to her.

341

All this indicates that Catherine sought to carefully manage how her

favorites were seen in more public settings. That both Coxe and Gribovsky fail to comment on

their presence or involvement during kurtagi further corroborates this view. At the same time, the

court journals point to their perennial presence at the empress’ daily lunches and in her smaller

entourage. Finally, on the days when she decided to have lunch or dinner in her private rooms, her

favorites would be one of only a handful of guests.

342

That the composition of these small

gatherings is recorded by the court journals suggests that the company she kept was a matter of

common knowledge in the palace: indeed, it was advertised as such. While Catherine undoubtedly

kept order rigorously at state functions, these more quotidian manifestations of favor may have

disrupted the appearance of ordered power, even if they did not overturn her schedule.

In weighing all the evidence, it is important to note that Catherine’s favorites were not,

objectively, more powerful than her predecssors’. Even Orlov, Potemkin, and Zubov never

enjoyed the influence of Ivan Shuvalov, who at the end of Elizabeth’s reign effectively ran the

government in her name.

343

However, given Catherine’s own theory of sovereignty, including her

emphasis on properly ordered power, favorites posed an objective problem, an arbitrary element

in this order. They were free to see the empress when they pleased. Gribovsky, for example, noted

that Zubov “always dined with the empress without invitation,”

344

and he would also appear

spontaneously during her morning meetings with ministers, disrupting official business.

345

thereby undermined the integrity of intermediary channels. Furthermore, while Catherine

continued to directly oversee affairs, relying in her legislative activities on the same institutions as

before, in her later years she allowed her favorites to function as intermediaries. As a result, they

garnered considerable influence. Isabel de Madariaga argues that Zubov was particularly nefarious

in this regard, since in her final years he was able to usurp control of foreign policy away from the

Imperial Council.

346

This was one of the reasons why he caused more damage to her reputation

than Potemkin, who, despite his great influence, was willing and able to work with other key

powerholders in Catherine’s system.

347

341

See, for example, the celebratory meals held on the following occasions: New Year’s Day, January 1, KFZ, 1771,

25; the Commemoration of Catherine’s Ascension, June, 28, KFZ, 1776, 381; and Catherine’s Name Day, November

24, KFZ, 1783, 586. However, there were times when this order was also broken, and Catherine allowed her favorites

to sit next to her. Catherine sat at a separate table with Potemkin at the New Year’s celebration in 1778, KFZ, 1778,

6; Potemkin also sat one seat removed from her at the meal held for Annunciation on March 25, 1791: KFZ, 1791,

205.

342

For instance, KFZ, 1769, 8; and KFZ, 1774, 15.

343

Alexander, “Favourites,” 115.

344

Gribovskii, Zapiski, 30.

345

Ibid., 28.

346

Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine, 566.

347

Ibid., 564-5.

Nonetheless, even before Zubov, some of Catherine’s favorites were able to intersect the

channels of her system. A rare insight into their unwelcome presence at the Imperial Council is

provided by a private letter from Nikita Panin to his brother detailing a critical meeting with the

empress following the destruction of Kazan by the rebel, Pugachev, in July 1774. He noted the

presence of two favorites—the outgoing Vasil’chikov and the person who was then in the process

of replacing him, Potemkin—in addition to the general procurator, the vice chancellor, the

president of the College of War, the general-in-chief, the Russian field marshal, the empress, and

Panin himself. Panin had disparaging things to say about all of those present, but he was most

critical of Catherine’s favorites. Vasil’chikov he depicted as a superfluous individual who sat,

listened with “insolent indifference,” and said nothing, having “absolutely no ideas” to contribute.

In contrast, presaging the continued conflict Panin would have with him in subsequent years, he

depicted Potemkin as a menace – entitled, impertinent, and of a “brazenness of thought” that was

utterly unjustified by his “age or practical experience.” Worst of all, Potemkin had managed to

talk the empress into what Panin considered to be a foolish plan of action and had deliberately

“greatly predisposed” her against Panin. Fearing the “destruction of the empire,” Panin was forced

to confront the empress afterwards in her private rooms to change her mind.

348

Panin’s disparaging

remarks might have arisen at least in response to the direct and personal threat that Potemkin posed

toward him. He may also have held Potemkin and Vasil’chikov in personal disdain. But, he also

disliked the favorites’ presence on principle, as we know from his earlier Imperial Council

project.

349

Still, the very fact that Panin was irked by the presence of favorites during a key policy

meeting indicates a flaw in Catherine’s system of managing her favorites. These infringed on the

ideal of ordered power she constructed, and this may be one reason why her contemporaries so

heavily criticized them—and her for them. Overall, however, they were neither fatal to her reign,

nor did they entirely negate the efforts that she made in building her system of sovereignty.

4. Conclusion

The subject of this chapter has been the monarch as a physical person and the variety of daily

activities she conducted to manifest characteristics sovereign power. Close scrutiny of the

empress’ routine indicates that she deliberately led a highly organized and ordered life, divided

between state affairs and courtly functions. These patterns underwent few changes over the course

of her reign. The empress’ activities fulfilled a multiplicity of purposes. For example, meetings

with secretaries and servitors were essential to the transmission of commands via ‘intermediary

channels.’ Orthodox religious rituals upheld her commitment to rule as a Christian monarch, as

promised in the Nakaz. Feast days of the Russian chivalric orders bound military and civil servitors

into ceremonial routines while upholding and displaying gradations of power between them. Meals

and entertainment not only allowed the empress to cultivate the personal fidelity of the upper

echelons of the Russian elite, but created a system of access that displayed her person to the

individuals who served her at regular intervals, once again delineating their place in an elaborate

hierarchy. Above all, however, it was the overall structured nature of the empress’ activity—its

predictable rhythms and carefully managed interactions with others—that manifested the

normative structure of sovereignty. Again, law was not the only tool of constructing normativity,

but strategies of managing bodies – the monarch’s own and those in her orbit. In so doing,

Catherine again sought to distinguish herself from her husband, Peter III, who had failed to

demonstrate ordered power either at court or in his exercise of executive functions. So too, did she

348

“Pis’mo grafa Nikity I. Panina grafu Petru Paninu,” July 22, 1774. SIRIO, vol. 6, 75.

349

SIRIO, vol. 7, 200-17.

distinguish herself from Elizabeth, who had been more successful in her public setting, but led a

disorganized life in other ways: “without regular hours for going to bed or getting up, nor for meals

or dressing.”

350

Elizabeth was famously pious and we know that her piety influenced her activities

as monarch, from her devoted observation of religious ceremonies to her decision to place a

moratorium on the death penalty.

351

In the Nakaz, however, one sees a different conception of

what it means to be a Christian ruler: to ensure the regular and predictable operation of power via

its proper channels. In this sense, Catherine’s meticulous observation of religious and state

ceremonies, and her carrying out of state affairs in the manner that she did on a daily basis, may

themselves be viewed as acts of Christian discipline.

This chapter has contributed to our understanding of ceremonies and rituals in the Russian

court by pointing out significance of their regularity and predictability in Catherine’s reign.

Moreover, it has shown how such events did not necessarily elevate all equally but through careful

management served to put individuals in their proper places, as demanded by the dictates of

sovereignty. One of the most important uses the empress made of functions was to place foreign

diplomats at an acceptable distance, thereby again distinguishing herself from her husband who

had given them excessive access to his person and hence to political power. While adding a crucial

dimension to these practices, the chapter also suggests that Catherine accorded rituals and

ceremonies diminished importance in the development of sovereignty, which was grounded in her

particular manner of carrying out executive, administrative, and judicial matters. As we have seen,

many of the empress’ routines were directed at ordering these activities. Furthermore, they

occurred away from the public gaze, in an inner sanctum of power governed by its own regularities

and procedures.

350

Catherine II, The Memoirs of Catherine the Great, trans. by M. Budberg, (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1955), 226.

351

Elena Marasinova, “Zakon” i “grazhdanin” v Rossii vtoroi poloviny XVIII veka: ocherki istorii obshchesvennogo

soznaniia (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2017), 67-120.

Chapter 5: Emel’ian Pugachev and the Limits of the Empress’

Sovereignty

1. Introduction

From the beginning of her reign, Catherine encountered a number of opponents to her rule.

Amongst the elites, some chose to challenge her at least in part on her own proposed terms. For

example, a series of conspiracies within the imperial guard regiments in the first decade of her rule

were partially motivated by a concern that she had allowed the Orlovs to gain undue political

power.

352

Some wished to remove her in favor of her son Paul, suggesting also a continued concern

over her legitimate claim to rule outright. In 1773, Paul, who had turned eighteen the previous

year, allegedly agreed to one of these schemes concocted by the Holstein diplomat, Caspar von

Saldern.

353

Given the history of palace coups in the eighteenth century, Catherine knew to take

such conspiracies very seriously. She appointed secret commissions to investigate them, and she

punished their participants with loss of noble status and exile to the Far East.

354

Nonetheless, not

one of these plots found any significant support, especially at the highest echelons of power, and

this suggested that she was able on the whole to maintain the support of the elite, both in her and

in her sovereignty project.

Catherine, however, also had to deal with various forms of popular discontent. While

persistent peasant unrest and violent clashes between the state and peripheral groups in the first

decade of her rule were not unique to her reign, the regular appearance of pretenders who assumed

the identity of the deceased emperor, Peter III, was a disconcerting development.

355

Although

pretenders were no new phenomenon in Russia, their large number—there was a least twenty-four

over the course of her reign—as well as their popularity pointed to the empress’ lack of legitimacy

in the countryside. These pretenders were invariably commoners but also outsiders, such as

Cossacks or religious schismatics, particularly ones who had fallen afoul of the authorities.

Assuming the identity of Peter III, they claimed to be legitimate monarchs, thereby overtly

challenging the empress’ sovereignty. They attracted followers by addressing local grievances and,

more generally, by promising to defend the common people from the oppression of the elites, who,

the pretenders claimed, had engineered their (the monarch’s) overthrow and were the principal

architects of the common people’s oppression.

The most significant of these disturbances was begun by a Don Cossack, Emel’ian

Pugachev, in the south-eastern borderlands in September 1773. After ‘revealing’ himself as the

deceased Peter III to the Yaik Cossacks, he was able to garner widespread support by actively

disseminating decrees in the countryside, and very quickly he and his followers constituted a

significant military threat of several thousand individuals. They began to capture towns and routed

government troops that were sent to pacify the area. Pugachev also laid siege to the town of

Orenburg and set up a base nearby in Berda from which he oversaw operations. Despite regular

setbacks, Pugachev was frequently able to reinvigorate his base and eventually to mount a major

assault on the Russian heartlands. In July 1774 his forces razed the city of Kazan to the ground

352

John T. Alexander gives the best concise account of all of these conspiracies in Catherine the Great: Life and

Legend (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 162-67, & Autocratic Politics in a National Crisis: The Imperial

Government and Pugachev’s Revolt, 1773-1775 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1969), 11-43.

353

Alexander, Catherine the Great, 166-7.

354

Ibid., 162-7.

355

See Philip Longworth, “The Pretender Phenomenon in Eighteenth-Century Russia,” Past and Present, 66 (February

1975), 70.

and even threatened Moscow province. However, he eventually faltered in the face of an escalated

military response and was ultimately detained, tried, and finally executed alongside a handful of

accomplices in January 1775.

It is significant that Pugachev managed to appeal to a wide variety of groups. Although the

rebellion began amongst Cossacks, the pretender came to stand at the head of a large and diverse

force that also comprised serfs, factory workers, odnodvortsy (single-homesteaders), Old

Believers, Bashkirs, and Tatars. Furthermore, the scale of his rampage had few precedents. The

rebellion managed to draw in hundreds of thousands of people over large swathes of territory

between the Volga river and the Urals, leading to the breakdown of government control. It also

wrought considerable violence and destruction. Exact figures are difficult to establish, but it is

frequently stated that the rebels killed 1,572 nobles (including wives and children), 237 clerics,

1,037 officers and officials, and 600 government troops.

356

Additionally, there was widespread

looting and destruction of property, particularly of factories and government buildings. The rebels

themselves also suffered severe casualties: as many as 20,000 were killed in battle; over three

hundred were executed; and several thousand were sentenced to corporal punishment in

widespread punitive measures.

357

The Pugachev rebellion was one of the largest uprisings in the history of the Russian

monarchy, and, for this reason, it has garnered considerable scholarly attention. This body of

literature has analyzed many aspects of the rebellion, amongst them its preconditions and causes,

the miscellaneous groups that were involved, including their views and the specific nature of their

participation, and the course of military events.

358

Soviet studies emphasized most forcibly its

‘anti-feudal’ elements, particularly the violence of serfs against their landlords, which

predominated during the final stages of the rebellion as Pugachev moved south along the Volga.

359

However, others have emphasized the Cossack component of the revolt, or have questioned the

overall revolutionary character of the rebellion,

360

citing the absence of any clearly stated and

unifying agenda.

361

356

These figures are given by Isabel de Madariaga in Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great (New Haven: Yale

University Press, 1981), 269, & Alexander, Autocratic Politics, 211-2.

357

See Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine, 266-7.

358

The first major Russian study, arguably still the authoritative study is N. Dubrovin, Pugachev i ego soobshchniki,

3 vols (St. Petersburg, 1884). In the Anglophone literature, see especially the works of John T. Alexander, above all

Emperor of the Cossacks: Pugachev and the Frontier Jacquerie of 1773-1775 (Lawrence, KS: Coronado Press, 1973),

which provides a general synthesis as well as a close chronological account of the rebellion. Also, Philip Longworth,

“The Last Great Cossack-Peasant Rising,” Journal of European Studies, 3 (1973), 1-35. On its causes as well as an

attempt to situate the rebellion within a broader European context, see above all Marc Raeff, “Pugachev’s Rebellion,”

in Preconditions of Revolution in Early Modern Europe, ed. R. A. Forster & J. P. Green (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins

University Press, 1970), 161-202. The rebellion understandably features in major studies of Catherine’s reign. For

example, Isabel de Madariaga dedicates the large part of two chapters to the rebellion in her authoritative work, Russia

in the Age of Catherine, 239-73.

359

V. V. Mavrodin (ed.), Krest’ianskaia voina v Rossii, 3 vols (Leningrad: 1961, 1966, 1970) and the works of A. I.

Andrushchenko, especially Krest’ianskaia voina (Moscow, 1969). A review of this and other Soviet works can be

found in the Anglophone literature: John T. Alexander, “Soviet Historiography on the Pugachev Revolt: A Review

Article,” Canadian-American Slavic Studies, IV (Fall 1970), 602-17. This interpretation has been adopted to some

extent in Anglophone literature. See, for example, Paul Avrich, Russian Rebels 1600-1800 (New York: Shocken

Books, 1972).

360

Philip Longworth calls it a Cossack-peasant movement. See, “The Last Great Cossack-Peasant Rising,” Journal of

European Studies, 3 (1973), 1-35.

361

For example, Dorothea Peters, Politische und gesellschaftliche Vorstellungen in der Aufstandsbewegung unter

Pugačev, 1773-1775. Wiesbaden: O. Harrowitz, 1973.

The purpose of this chapter is to add another perspective to the aforementioned literature

by arguing that the rebellion demonstrated a significant limit to the empress’ sovereignty project.

Through his pretension, Pugachev sought to advance a particular conception of monarchical

sovereignty, one that reflected popular expectations about the exercise of power. These were

sharply at odds with the empress’ ideals. Certainly, many of Pugachev’s followers would have

needed to suspend disbelief as they hailed a thirty-five-year-old Cossack as the German-born

emperor of all Russia. This chapter focuses on the expectations and motivations that encouraged

rebels to accept his assumed identity. Believers require reasons to believe and non-believers

require motives to suspend their disbelief. By what means Pugachev appealed to their expectations

about legitimate power, or sovereignty is the organizing question of this chapter, which thereby

sheds light on the limits of Catherine’s own sovereignty.

362

2. The Anatomy of a True Monarch

Emel’ian Pugachev, born 1742, was a Don Cossack from Zimoveiskaia province. He had been a

military conscript, participating in the Seven Years War and again in the Russo-Turkish War up

until 1771, when he fell ill. Shortly thereafter he deserted and became a fugitive, spending time in

Polish Ukraine and escaping multiple detentions, until he adopted a new guise, revealing himself

as Peter III to the Yaik Cossacks two years later. Why Pugachev decided to become a pretender is

not fully elucidated by his depositions. He mentions the encouragement he supposedly received

from Old Believers who had provided him with refuge from the authorities. It is probable he was

also inspired by the example of another recent pretender in the area, Fedot Bogomolov (a runaway

serf), who had generated much commotion amongst the Don Cossacks. Nonetheless, his readiness

to take on the role of pretender must have emanated from a strong sense of purpose, for the risks

involved were high. In December 1772, Bogomolov was publicly lashed, his nostrils slit, his face

branded, and was exiled to Siberia, dying on his way there. One historian has suggested that

Pugachev was motivated by anger at his endless military service and by the state’s refusal to allow

him to retire when he was ill.

363

In the intervening period, it is plausible that he also came to

imagine himself as a champion of the common people.

Pugachev was abetted by a large number of Yaik Cossacks, a group that had long-standing

grievances against the Russian state, which had curtailed their traditional autonomy and privileges

over the course of the eighteenth century.

364

Catherine’s reign saw these advances continue. In

1765 the War College mandated military service and abolished the Cossacks’ right to elect their

own officers. And with the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish War in 1768, the state began to conscript

Yaik Cossacks into the regular military, which was seen as a further affront to their Cossack

liberties. Many Yaik Cossacks were Old Believers and they also resented having to shave their

beards – a requirement of regular military service. Although the empress eventually responded to

their numerous petitions by establishing a commission to investigate their grievances, that body’s

operations further stoked the flames, eventually leading to a violent insurrection in January 1771.

Severe punitive measures, including extensive corporal punishment and exile to Siberia, as well

362

The chapter builds off Isabel de Madariaga’s suggestion that the followers of pretenders “lived in a world of

simultaneous belief and disbelief – believing in order to justify themselves, in order not to sin against the divinely

appointed tsar from whom alone an improvement in their lot could be expected; and disbelieving the moment they

came up against the harsh reality of arrest and brutal punishment,” Russia in the Age of Catherine, 240.

363

Longworth, “The Last Great Cossack-Peasant Rising,” 16.

364

For a good account of this, see Avrich, Russian Rebels, 180-3.

as the decision to replace the Yaik ataman with a military functionary, left lasting resentment and

a large number of Cossacks looking for a way to instigate further unrest.

It was a small group of these disaffected Cossacks—Denis Karavaev, Maksim Shigaev,

Ivan Zarubin (nicknamed ‘Chika’), and Timofei Miasnikov—whom Pugachev first approached.

What exactly they discussed is unclear, but according to his depositions, he sought to convince

them of his identity or at least his readiness to play the part of pretender. He showed them his

‘sovereign marks’ - supposed bayonet wounds from the palace coup of 1762, but actually scars

left by peptic ulcers from an earlier illness. He also told them of his miraculous escape and how at

his burial, another body was substituted for his own. Finally, he accounted for his whereabouts in

the intervening time, asserting that he had wandered the Russian borderlands before journeying to

Egypt and then to Jerusalem. Providence had led him back to the Yaik in order to “stand up for

and appease” the Cossacks and the “whole common people” (chern’), who, he had learnt, were

oppressed.

365

The same group of four Cossacks then helped to fashion him as a presentable

monarch, providing him with official banners and what they believed to be fitting attire: a beshmet

(quilted coat), a green kaftan (tunic), a hat (in lieu of a crown), a pair of boots, and various other

leather items. Finally, they sought out a ‘scribe’—a literate Yaik Cossack named Ivan Pochitalin—

who penned the pretender’s first official declarations and decrees that broadcast news of his

appearance into the surrounding countryside.

366

Authentic depiction of the rebel and imposter Emel’ian Pugachev. Painted by an

unknown artist at the request of the Russian government during Pugachev’s

detention in Simbirsk, October 1774. Rostov Kremlin State Museum.

365

September 16, 1775, “Protokol pokazanii E. I. Pugacheva na doprose v iaitskoi sekretnoi komissii,” in Emel’ian

Pugachev na sledsvtvii. Sbornik dokumentov i materialov, eds. R. V. Ovchinnikov & A. S. Svetenko (Moscow: Iazyki

russkoi kul’tury), 74.

366

Ibid., 76-7.

The use of pretension was a distinctive and important feature of the rebellion. Pugachev

and the Cossacks who abetted him thought this was an appropriate device to draw followers.

Catherine’s own reign notwithstanding, pretension had numerous other precedents in Russian

history. The first major period to see large number of pretenders followed the death of Ivan IV in

1584, known as the Time of Troubles. During this period a number of claimants to the Russian

throne masqueraded as royal princes, above all the youngest son of Ivan IV, Tsarevitch Dmitry.

The latter had died under mysterious circumstances in 1591 after being exiled with his mother to

Uglich by Boris Godunov, a Russian boyar who served as regent for Dmitry’s older brother, and

who had—illegitimately, as many felt—consolidated power for himself after the latter’s death.

One of the pretenders managed to take Moscow in 1605 and install himself as monarch, only later

to be denounced as a ‘false’ tsar and killed by a group of boyars. After 1613 the new Romanov

dynasty was able to acquire legitimacy and this coincided with a decline in the number of

pretenders.

367

However, they continued to appear periodically in similar scenarios of uncertainty

about rightful succession. In the eighteenth century, there were pretenders who claimed to be

Tsarevich Alexei, who had died after being detained for participating in an alleged conspiracy

against his father, Peter the Great.

368

As we see, the appearance of pretenders often coincided with periods of uncertainty around

succession and they often took on the identity of individuals who were seen to have been

illegitimately denied power. A large body of scholarship has developed around pretenders and has

shown how these individuals drew on existing norms of authority. For instance, during the early

modern period, the self-stylization of pretenders reflected the sacralization of the Russian

monarchy, which imparted divine attributes to the monarch and posited their selection via

predestination.

369

By advancing themselves as legitimate replacements, however, pretenders

sought to underline their unique qualities to match expectations about what a true monarch was.

Since many pretenders came from and sought to appeal to the commonality, they often reflected

popular expectations concerning the duties of monarchs and how they were to exercise power. In

this connection, another important interpretation argues that pretenders were influenced by popular

legends, which incorporated millenarian Christian visions of deliverance, of a monarch who would

bring succor and justice to the common people.

370

The origins of such popular legends, however,

remain debated.

371

Bearing in mind the many long traditions that may have informed popular

expectations, the burden remained on the pretender to express what true monarchy might mean in

a particular time and place.

In Pugachev’s case, it is noteworthy that he, just as a number of pretenders before him,

chose the figure of Peter III, suggesting thereby that the latter was a highly credible model for

pretension. At first glance, this is intriguing. Born Karl Peter Ulrich, Peter was a German prince,

367

On early modern Russian pretenders, see Boris A. Uspenskij, “Tsar and Pretender; samozvančestvo or Royal

Imposture in Russia as a Cultural-Historical Phenomenon,” in The Semiotics of Russian Culture, ed. Ann Shukman

(Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Contributions, 1984), 259-92; K. V. Chistov, Russkie narodnye sotsial’no-utopicheskie

legendy, XVII-XIXvv (Moscow, 1967); and the works of Maureen Perrie, including “‘Popular Socio-Utopian Legends’

in the Time of Troubles,” The Slavonic and East European Review 60: 2 (April 1982), 221-43; Pretenders and Popular

Monarchism in Early Modern Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); and “Popular Revolts,” in The

Cambridge History of Russia, ed. Maureen Perrie, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 600-17.

368

Perrie, Pretenders and Popular Monarchism, 238.

369

Uspenskij, “Tsar and Pretender.”

370

Chistov, Russkie narodnye sotsial’no-utopicheskie legendy.

371

See, especially Perrie, Pretenders and Popular Monarchism.

a scion of the House of Holstein-Gottorp, with a protestant upbringing and a weak grasp of the

Russian language. He was militantly pro-Prussian while contemptuous of the Orthodox Church

and Russian traditions. He had also emancipated the nobility, but not the peasants, from mandatory

state service, allowing them to return and live on their country estates, which some did. However,

the large number of imposters that appeared after his overthrow suggest that he was perceived

differently. A positive image of Peter III may have drawn strength from ameliorative policies such

as the reduction of the salt tax, the transfer of ecclesiastic peasants to state serfs, and the curtailing

of restrictions on religious schismatics. His quick and sudden removal by palace elites, and perhaps

even the empress’ subsequent attempts to discredit him and the way he exercised power, may have

worked to confirm a positive popular narrative about him. According to this narrative, Peter had

been intent on improving the lot of Russia’s common people, but was removed by rapacious elites

who wanted to bar this agenda.

In seizing on the identity of Peter III, Pugachev needed to capitalize on the rumors and

narratives that circulated around him in order to articulate and carry out an agenda that could draw

followers. Yet Pugachev and his accomplices also tailored their appeals to older traditions whereby

the pretender as true monarch offered succor and justice to the common people. The promises they

made to attract various groups to join him and his rebellion contained common themes centering

on the restoration of ancient laws, rights, and privileges. For example, in his first proclamation,

addressed to the Yaik Cossacks, Pugachev promised to grant them the “rivers from the mountains

to the [Caspian] sea, and lands and pastures, as well as monetary payment, the regular supply of

lead, and powder, and grain.”

372

This promise referred to the restoration of traditional fishing and

grazing rights as well as traditional compensation for state service. According to Yaik legends,

this arrangement dated back to a supposed charter that had been granted to them by tsar Michael I

(r. 1614-1645).

373

Similarly, Pugachev’s ukaz to the Bashkirs in Orenburg province from October

1, 1773, promised to return the arrangement that supposedly prevailed during the time of Peter the

Great: “as your ancestors, fathers and grandfathers had served the blessed hero and sovereign Peter

Alekseevich [Peter the Great], and had been rewarded by him, so will I now and henceforth reward

you…with lands, waters, salt, faith and prayer, pastures, and monetary payments.

374

A manifesto

aimed at the peasantry from July 1774 declared, “all serfs who were in bondage to landowners,

are now to be loyal subjects of his crown and ..[and that they] would be grant[ed] liberty and

freedom (vol’nost’) and to be forever Cossacks, without demands of military conscription, the poll

tax or any other monetary levees.” He also promised to grant them “possession of land, forests,

grasslands, fisheries and salt lakes without redemption payments or feudal dues.”

375

While it is tempting to see Peter III’s emancipation of the Russian nobility as a model of

freedom, or volia or vol’nost’, this final example suggests that Pugachev and his followers had a

different conception in mind, namely the freedom of the Cossacks to live in autonomous

communities, a right granted to previous generations in return for loyalty to the tsar.

376

Pugachev,

372

September 17, 1773, “Immenoi ukaz kazakam iaitskogo voiska,” in [E. I. Pugachev], Dokumenty stavki E. I.

Pugacheva povstancheskikh vlastei i uchrezhdenii, ed. A. I. Aksenov, R. V. Ovchinnikov, and M. F. Prokhorov

(Moscow: Nauka, 1975), 23.

373

See the discussion in ibid., 371.

374

October 1, 1773, “Immenoi ukaz bashkiram nogaiskoi i sibirskoi dorog orenburgskoi gubernii,” ibid., 28.

375

July 28, 1774, “Manifest, ob’’iavlennyi vo vsenarodnoe izvestie zhiteliam goroda Saranska i ego okrug,” ibid., 46-

376

Pugachev’s military forces were led by starshiny and atamany, indicating that they were structured along traditional

Cossack lines. See Philip Longworth, “Peasant Leadership and the Pugachev Revolt,” The Journal of Peasant Studies

2: 2 (1975), 192. Peter III’s idea of vol’nost’ for the nobility is discussed by Sergei Pol’skoi in “Konstitutsiia i

however, extended freedom to other groups of the commonality, understanding that it would have

wide appeal. This was particularly the case for the Russian peasantry, which imagined its own

similar form of vol’nost’ or volia – to be subjects of the tsar, but to live in self-governing peasant

communities that possessed their own land and had their own customs and laws, and not to be

subject to the arbitrary powers of landlords and government officials.

377

In both the Cossack and

peasant conceptions of vol’nost’, in so far as vol’nost’ had been taken away from them by the

monarch, only the monarch—a true monarch—could return it to them.

378

A true monarch would also hold to account those individuals who had perverted these

previous arrangements. Pugachev directed much of his vitriol and violence at the Russian nobility,

which he referred to in some of his decrees as the dvoriantsvo (the post-Petrine elite), in others

using the antiquated term boyar. He levelled a number of charges against this group: of oppressing

the common people by imposing taxes and feudal dues,

379

of violating the common peace, and

opposing the emperor’s will.

380

Pugachev mainly identified these individuals as landowners

(pomeshchiki, and sometimes votchinniki – another antiquated term). But he also had in mind the

powerholders he thought controlled St. Petersburg (one ukaz specifically mentions the “main

senators”), the generals and officers who led the army, and the state’s officials (not all of whom

were technically noblemen).

381

All of these, he claimed, had illegitimately captured power and

had installed themselves as something akin to a ruling class, although this is not a term he used.

Motivated by self-interest, they no longer served the monarch, only themselves, exercising a

“tyranny” over Russia’s people and preventing plans for vol’nost’.

382

Rebel decrees presented the Russian nobility as having become morally wicked. Their

greatest sin was arguably greed, which had led them to usurp power and oppress the common

people with taxes and labor dues. But they were also wicked because they punished commoners

without mercy. Pugachev accounted for their depravity by citing their abandonment of Christian

law, which taught obedience to the monarch and the kind and compassionate treatment of others.

In places, the decrees tied the abandonment of Christianity to the penetration of Western culture.

This was an idea that had long been asserted by the Orthodox Church, but in the eighteenth century

was voiced by Old-Believers, to whom Pugachev also appealed. In this connection, the decrees

sometimes mention the nobility’s adoption of insidious, foreign (particularly German) customs,

and new laws requiring “beard-shaving” and “other various practices” contrary to Russian ways

and the Christian faith.

383

This reinforced the notion of the true Russian monarch as a defender of

Russian customs and of Orthodox belief (understood broadly). One way in which Pugachev tried

to further embody these ideals was to be publicly greeted by offerings of bread and salt, and by

attending church service when he arrived in new localities.

384

fundamentalye zakony v russkom politicheskom diskurse XVIII veka,” in Poniatiia o Rossii, vol. 1 (Moscow: Novoe

literaturnoe obozrenie, 2012), 130-1. On the Cossack idea of ‘vol’nost,’ see Haruki Wada, “The Inner World of

Russian Peasants,” Annals of the Institute of Science, University of Tokyo, 20 (1979), 65-6.

377

Daniel Field, Rebels in the Name of the Tsar (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 6-7, 31-3; Haruki Wada, “The Inner

World of Russian Peasants,” 62-7.

378

Field, Rebels, 7.

379

June 19, 1774, “Immenoi ukaz bashkirskomu starshine Adylu Ashmenevu i sotniku Mukashu Suteevu,” in

Dokumenty stavki, 44-5.

380

December 1, 1773, “Manifest, ob’’iavlennyi vo vsenarodnoe izvestie,” ibid., 36.

381

August 15, 1774. “Immenoi ukaz atamanu i kazakam berezovskoi stanitsy i vsemu donskomu voisku,” ibid., 50.

382

Ibid., 51.

383

Ibid., 50-1.

384

Emel’ian Pugachev na sledstvii, 82.

To underline his moral excellence, Pugachev trumpeted his mercy, promising to pardon all

who acknowledged their wrongdoings and submitted to him, including the wretched ‘boyars’.

More often, however, he stressed his ‘righteous anger’ and the ‘terrible punishment’ that would

befall all who failed to recognize him as monarch. Pugachev issued decrees that authorized his

followers to identify these wrongdoers according to his criteria and to bring them to him or even

punish them in his stead. For instance, his manifesto of December 29, 1773, which was full of

explicit imperatives, read as follows:

Whoever refuses to submit and resists – whoever they may be: boyar, general,

mayor, captain or others …cut off their heads, and if they have property, bring it to

the tsar; bring their carts, horses, and weapons, and distribute their provisions to

our soldiers. At one time, these people stuffed themselves at your expense, deprived

my servants [he uses here the antiquated term rab] of their freedom and liberty; but

now you will strike them down if they do not yield. Whoever recognizes me,

whoever has taken a direct path to me, let them join and carry out military service.

Those who follow me will not be harmed.

385

Many of his followers refrained from immediate murder, as if acknowledging that the monarch,

not they, must be the arbiter of life and death, giving him a chance to enact mercy. They rounded

up their victims and brought them to Pugachev, who would listen to their complaints and decide

on and preside over punishment. Pugachev offered a few accounts of this violence in his

deposition. In Alatyr in July 1774, for example, he executed twelve landlords brought to him by

peasants from the surrounding countryside. Another fifteen executions took place in Saransk, and

a further five in Penza. In a possible attempt to highlight his merciful nature, he spared a

noblewoman, whom he took with him to Tsaritsyn.

386

Many popular uprisings in Russian history, sometimes involving pretenders, directed

themselves against the monarch’s evil agents, rather than the monarch.

387

Pugachev, however, did

not like Catherine, though he claimed on some occasions to wish to reunite with her in St.

Petersburg. On other occasions, he represented her as a usurper who had wrongfully denied power

to their son, Paul, whom he defended as ostensibly the rightful heir, and whom he made a point of

speaking affectionately about in front of others. For instance, during a church service in Ilek, he

ordered the clergy to make specific reference to his ‘son,’ Pavel Petrovich, in the litanies, but to

exclude the empress. He also announced that when he arrived in St. Petersburg he would “send

[the empress] packing to a monastery,” where she could “pray forgiveness to God for her sins.”

388

Pugachev only mentioned this once in his depositions, but it is reasonable to assume that such

denunciations of the empress were regular parts of his act.

In denouncing the empress and defending his son, it seems that he was defending some

notion of primogeniture in succession. Alternatively, his denunciations of her reflected the

385

December 29, 1773, “Manifest, ob’’iavlennyi vo vsenarodnoe izvestie,” in Dokumenty stavki, 37.

386

“Protokol pokazanii E. I. Pugacheva na doprose v moskovskom otdelenii tainoi ekspeditsii Senata”, in Emel’ian

Pugachev na sledsvtvii, 202-3.

387

See the discussion in Maureen Perrie, “Popular Monarchism: The Myth of the Ruler from Ivan the Terrible to

Stalin,” in Reinterpreting Russia, ed. Geoffrey Hosking and Robert Service, (London: Arnold, 1999), 170-82. See also

Michael Khodarkovsky, “The Stepan Razin Uprising: Was It a “Peasant War”?” Jahrbücher für Geschichte

Osteuropas, 42: 1 (1994), 1-19.

388

“Protokol pokazanii E. I. Pugacheva na doprose v iaitskoi sekretnoi komissii,” in Eme’lian Pugachev na sledstsvii,

82.

patriarchal sentiments of the commonality. Women were not excluded from pretension, as shown

by the case, in 1774, of ‘Elizaveta Vladimirskaia’—a female pretender who claimed to be the

daughter of Empress Elizabeth and her favorite, Alexei Razumovsky. However, the latter never

gained the following that many other pretenders were able to elicit. The issue of succession aside,

it is possible that Pugachev saw the empress more generally as an illegitimate ruler for the way in

which she had chosen to exercise power, namely in favor of elites, not the common people. There

is some basis for this supposition. Her reign saw the extension of the nobility’s local power and

their privileges over serfs.

389

Her decree of 1767 also prohibited direct petitions to the monarch

from the peasantry – a policy which has been seen as destroying the traditional concept of the

monarch held by the people.

390

Ultimately, Pugachev’s denunciations of the empress suggest he

saw her as more than a victim of noble machinations, and he believed that such denunciations

would be popular with Russia’s common people.

Pugachev made extensive use of written commands and decrees, drafted with the help of a

few literate ‘scribes’ or ‘secretaries’ (he used both terms). These written commands, which were

only circulated in manuscript form, were important in establishing and maintaining a functioning

and credible governing apparatus. They also conveyed—in an established and recognized

manifestation of power—news of his appearance and his policies into the countryside. Pugachev’s

scribes sought to replicate the documentary hierarchy of the imperial state, from manifestos and

ukazy through to more minor commands such as nastavleniia, which were also written by his

lieutenants. The scribes further sought to replicate the unique style and lexicon of imperial

proclamations on the basis of existing decrees, likely found during the looting of government

offices, from which they copied words, phrases, and sometimes longer passages. They used as

models actual decrees from Peter III’s reign as well as some dating back to the reign of

Elizabeth.

391

When Catherine’s government started disseminating its own decrees in the

countryside in an attempt to counter Pugachev’s propaganda effort, they began to use his

proclamations, too, for they were likely easily obtained.

392

By drawing on earlier decrees as their models, Pugachev’s aides presented him above all

as an ‘autocratic emperor’ (samoderzhavnyi imperator) – the standard address of eighteenth-

century Russian monarchs. Overall, there was considerable continuity between Pugachev’s

decrees and earlier ones, as the content of older promulgations was recycled for practical purposes.

Nonetheless, there is evidence that Pugachev’s scribes departed from imperial models. For

instance, one manifesto from December 29, 1773, presented Pugachev in martial terms, naming

him as the “soderzhatel’ voisk” (keеper of armed forces) and “velikii voitel” (great warrior),

phrases not otherwise used in previous decrees.

393

Other addresses underlined his divine status by

evoking comparisons with Christ or God: for instance, he was, the “king of kings” (nad tsari

tsar’),

394

and elsewhere, the “shining sovereign of two worlds” and “lord of all creatures” (nado

vsemi tvar’mi).

395

389

See the section “Pravovoe polozhenie krest’ianstva,” in M. N. Gernet, Istoriia tsarskoi tiur’my, vol. 3 (Moscow:

Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo iuridicheskoi literatury, 1960), 64-79.

390

This argument is made by Raeff in “Pugachev’s Rebellion,” 172. For the actual decree, see PSZ, no. 12,633.

391

For instance, December 1, 1773, “Manifest, ob’’iavlennyi vo vsenarodnoe izvestie,” in Dokumenty stavki E. I.

Pugacheva, 35. See especially footnote 22 about this proclamation on p. 379 of Dokumenty stavki.

392

Ibid., 376-7.

393

December 29, 1773. “Manifest, ob’’iavlennyi vo vsenarodnoe izvestie”, ibid., 37

394

October 1, 1773, “Immenoi ukaz bashkiram nogaiskoi i sibirskoi dorog orenburgskoi gubernii”, ibid., 28.

395

December, 1773, “Immenoi ukaz atamanu V. I. Tornovu,” ibid., 41.

Another distinctive feature of the Pugachev’s attempts to be a monarch was the ‘College

of War’—a governing organ named after the imperial War College—which the pretender

established at his base at Berda on November 6, 1773, and later repeatedly tried to reestablish after

a string of military defeats.

396

The College, which consisted of several individuals, some of whom

where literate, carried out a large range of important operations of government: it managed the

organization, movements, and provisions of troops, issuing instructions and edicts to Pugachev’s

lieutenants, and it oversaw a treasury (kazna). Further, it issued money to troops, as Pugachev paid

his soldiers according to Cossack tradition, and purchased needed provisions from peasants.

397

Crucially, the College administered justice through a number ‘judges’ (sudi). Soon after the

College was established, Pugachev ordered that all capital cases, mainly the trial of captured

landowners and government officials, were to be administered by the College and he forbade that

death sentences be issued by commanders away from Berda.

398

Importantly, the College also

sought to settle disputes that arose between the rebels. Although the College prepared decrees for

Pugachev, as testified by one of its secretaries, Maksim Gorshkov, it dealt with no other written

business. All the aforementioned cases brought to the College were “reviewed and decided by [its]

judges orally.”

399

One these ‘judges’, Ivan Tvorogov, claimed that Pugachev had established the War College

because “he had gotten bored of having to issue ukazy himself” on a multitude of pressing

concerns, such as the “levying of troops, the pillaging of estates and the killing of the landowners.”

In addition, as Tvorogov testified, Pugachev needed to address the “many complaints” that were

being made against the Cossacks and Bashkirs in his following for the “devastation that they were

causing to the common people.”

400

Tvorogov’s account of Pugachev’s boredom may be true

(Gorshkov offers a similar account),

401

yet, significantly, Pugachev did not abdicate from this

work, instead seeking a manner in which that work could be carried out more efficiently. The War

College therefore represented an attempt to establish a credible governing agency that would

address the concerns and expectations of his followers.

Still, the College was based on very superficial knowledge of the actual institution that it

was named after, and it seems unlikely that it embodied any deep ideological tenets about how the

monarch’s power was to be organized or to flow. Whereas the actual organs of the imperial

government, such as the Senate and the Colleges, allowed for a diffusion of power along a variety

of legislative, executive, and judicial functions, Pugachev’s College combined them

indiscriminately. Furthermore, there was no attempt to codify the activity of the college’s officials

in any way. No strict procedure here is discernible, as shown by Tvorogov, who explained that

when various people were brought to the College, they were sometimes interrogated by the judges

and sometimes by Pugachev himself.

402

Ultimately, the organization of power was less important

than the College’s ability to provide a mechanism for carrying out the pretender’s policies. Like

Pugachev’s decrees, the operations of his ‘War College’ stood in contrast to the official institutions

of the Russian state that blocked ameliorative policies, or conversely, acted as an instrument of

oppression.

396

The most exhaustive account of this body is by V. A. Spirkov, “Gosudarstvennaia voennaia kollegiia vosstavshikh,”

in Krest’ianskaia voina, vol. 2, 444-63.

397

Ibid., 460.

398

Ibid., 461.

399

Pugachevshchina, ed. S. A. Golubtsov, vol. 2 (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe isdatel’stvo, 1929), 113.

400

Ibid., 143-4.

401

Ibid., 113.

402

Ibid., 143-4.

100

It is important that Pugachev sought to address conflicts between his followers. According

to Ivan Pochitalin’s testimony, Pugachev had strong feelings about this obligation, noting that he

“disliked the robbery of innocent people” and “mercilessly punished” many of his own followers

if they were found guilty of such crimes.

403

Pugachev’s willingness to punish his followers

extended beyond the rank-and-file. For example, in March 1774, Pugachev executed one of his

lieutenants, the Yaik Cossack, Dmitry Lysov, after receiving complaints that he and a group of

Cossacks had attacked a number of local villages, robbing the peasants, and murdering the

landlords against the peasants’ wishes.

404

It is possible that such actions helped Pugachev maintain

his credibility as a merciful monarch in the eyes of common supporters and helped reconcile them

to the preeminent position that he gave the Yaik Cossacks.

405

Ultimately, however, it is probably incorrect to see Pugachev as a ‘true monarch,’ much

less as a sovereign who fulfilled any standard criteria applied to this designation. What many

commoners experienced was the arbitrary distribution of spoils and wanton killing by Pugachev’s

confederates. Widespread looting and wanton violence point to considerable disobedience and

limited control by the pretender over many of his followers, particularly over the Cossack warriors

who acted as his de facto officer class.

406

Moreover, his reliance on promises of vol’nost’ and the

goods that littered his announcements substantially weakens the case that he had significant power:

these were promises made against future delivery, which he could not possibly extend at the time

they were offered, and Pugachev was likely aware of this.

407

Pugachev saw himself under constant

pressure to carry out his promises. Tellingly, he often acquiesced to the punishment of those

brought to him by his followers. Frequently, he preferred to delegate when making decisions about

executions, announcing that “if they thought [their quarry] such a bad person, then they should

hang [them].”

408

There are also instances when he was openly challenged. For example, the

403

Ibid., 111.

404

Emel’ian Pugachev na sledstvii, 188.

405

Ivan Zarubin claimed in his deposition that the execution of Lysov demonstrated how Pugachev had “multiplied

his power over them” and how he “acted severely toward [his subjects] and punished [them] according to his will.”

See Pugachevshchina, vol. 2, 136.

406

Take, for example, the testimony of the peasant Leontei Nazarov, a serf from Orenburg uezd, who described the

arrival of a small party of four Cossacks in December 1773. When the Cossacks arrived, they approached Nazarov

and his fellow serfs with sabers drawn and threateningly told them that Peter III had given them their freedom and

ordered them to stop working the lord’s land. Thereafter they took the peasants to the manor, where, finding only his

wife and their three daughters, took their money, fur coats, and dresses. Taking Nazarov with them, they then returned

to the house of the mayor of the village where they drank beer and wine and spent the night. The next day the Cossacks

set off for two other neighboring villages. There again they read out ukazy from Peter III to the serfs, declaring their

freedom from dues and forbade them, under pain of death to further serve their landlords. They then pillaged the

estates and shot one of the landlords, who had decided to resist them. Returning to Nazarov’s estate the next day and

learning that the noblewoman had hidden in the forest, they ordered the serfs to seek her out and bring her to them.

They first coerced her to hand over the rest of her money and possessions, then shot and speared her to death. They

ordered the peasants (Nazarov included) to participate in the murder by beating her with wooden clubs, and then told

them to hide her corpse. Thereafter, they instructed the serfs to distribute the woman’s juvenile daughters for adoption

amongst themselves. Finally, they departed, having collected the estate’s possessions and livestock, leaving for the

villagers only five sheep and one calf. Pugachevshchina, vol. 3, 11-3.

407

In his deposition, Ivan Tvorogov, commander and judge in Pugachev’s ‘War College’, attributed much of

Pugachev’s success to his enticing decrees. He noted that from the beginning of his enterprise Pugachev had

disseminated decrees with the express purpose of “seducing (obol’shchat’) the population with promises of liberty,

freedom from feudal dues (podatei), the cross and beard, as well as all sorts of other benefits.” These attracted great

numbers in short time, who came to join his company “with great enthusiasm from all sides.” Pugachevshchina, vol.

2, 142.

408

Emel’ian Pugachev na sledstvii, 168.

101

noblewoman spared by Pugachev on the road to Penza was subsequently whipped to death at the

hands of one of his most senior lieutenants, Andrei Ovchinnikov, who had a vendetta against her

husband. When Pugachev reprimanded him for acting without instruction, Ovchinnikov warned

him that “[they] didn’t want to live in a world, where [Pugachev] was going to bring along the

very evildoers that had plundered them” and that they “would no longer serve him under such

circumstances”, a rebuke which supposedly left him in silence.

409

Nonetheless, while Pugachev did not enjoy the supreme and untrammeled power that he

claimed over his followers, his pretense was not unimportant. Indeed, it was through his pretension

that he articulated a series of promises that appealed to his followers’ beliefs and expectations

about sovereignty and through which he attracted followers. These expectations were at odds with

those of the empress. Overall, Pugachev had a weak notion of the monarch’s power flowing

through state servitors or any governmental apparatus, which the monarch was meant to maintain.

Rather, he was guided by the opposite sentiment, namely that sovereignty was guaranteed by the

clear absence of any mediation of his will. A weak notion of the state meant no notion of

‘fundamental laws’; instead, legitimacy largely originated in the monarch’s righteousness and

goodness that indicated his divine predestination to rule. Accordingly, a true monarch would act

to bring succor to Russia’s common people, restoring to them a host of goods, above all freedom—

vol’nost’—and its accompanying customary laws, rights, and privileges. These goods had

supposedly been enjoyed by their ancestors under previous rulers under a prior arrangement, but

they been taken away from them by elites and an empress who had managed gain control of power.

The granting of vol’nost’ could have been framed as a form of natural justice, but it was framed

as, and arguably drew its legitimacy from, the return of a lost past.

410

Civil law played little to no

role in Pugachev’s conception. Wrongdoers were punished for their transgression of Christian

morality, and in so far as they deliberately deprived the commonality of vol’nost’, they had violated

no civil law, but a fundamental arrangement of justice.

Throughout his rebellion, many of Pugachev followers, above all his Cossack

collaborators, exercised power by situating themselves within the pretender’s fantasy without

necessarily following or needing any strict directive from him. In the end, while Pugachev, the

pretender, was indispensable as a figure who tried to realize certain ideals, it was this vision of

power that had persuasive force. It did so because it reflected the expectations of Russia’s

miscellaneous common people beyond the imperial capitals. The size of Pugachev’s following and

the great unrest that he precipitated, suggest that his was a better vision than the one advanced by

St. Petersburg and the empress.

3. Trammelled Sovereignty

As the rebellion spread and became a major threat to the Russian state, Catherine made efforts to

learn as much as possible about it. At the end of November 1773, she set up the first of two secret

commissions (initially in Kazan, then in Orenburg). Operating first under the auspices of General

Bibikov, and later under Petr Panin, but still directly subordinated to her personally, these

commissions were tasked with investigating Pugachev, identifying the origins of his destructive

enterprise, and establishing why the rebellion had been able to take root. The commission garnered

information from the pretender’s decrees and by interrogating captured rebels, including Pugachev

409

Ibid., 204.

410

Philip Longworth sees Pugachev as representing a form of natural justice. See “The Last Great Cossack-Peasant

Rising,” 23.

102

himself. Perplexed by the problem of how a lone Cossack vagabond, without education or

possessions, had been able to mount such a serious challenge to the state, the empress at first

suspected that he was part of some larger conspiracy (perhaps by Old-Believers), or an agent of

foreign powers who wished to destabilize her rule.

411

However, the investigations consistently

failed to bear out any of these suspicions and the matter was conclusively ended by the final

interrogations of the rebel leaders in Moscow at the end of 1774.

In her official proclamations and correspondence with her servitors, we find Catherine

describing Pugachev in a variety of ways: she called him ‘samozvanets’ (a pretender), ‘vor’ (a

thief), ‘razboinik’ (a brigand), ‘ubiitsa’ (a murderer), and more generally, ‘zlodei’ (an evildoer).

Another term that often appears, and one that is also used by her servitors in their addresses to her,

was that of ‘izverg’ – a ‘monster’ or ‘abomination’. An izverg was a person who rejected their

human nature or humanity, treating others cruelly without empathy or remorse.

412

The figure of

the izverg takes on added significance in the context of Enlightenment thinking, which pinned

hopes on the potential of nature to direct individuals—either through their natural sentiment or

reason—towards the good. More specifically, it directed individuals towards faith in God, and to

obedience to morals and laws, both natural, and human.

Still more reprehensible was that Pugachev had decided to direct his malice, not towards

isolated individuals, but to destroying the larger political community. In this connection, Catherine

also called him a ‘vrag gosudarstvennyi’ – literally ‘state enemy’, but best understood in the

context of her usage as someone who deliberately attacked and tried to dismantle the state’s

sovereignty. The empress articulated her views in her pubic proclamations about the rebellion. In

her manifesto of December 1773, she stated that Pugachev had “seduce[d] and coerce[d]” the

inhabitants of Orenburg province into committing egregious crimes against their fellow citizens.

Drawing on past precedents, she asserted that he was following the example of the “traitor” and

“state enemy,” Grishka Rasstriga (the first ‘false-Dmitry’), who had plunged Russia into a period

of political instability and civil strife—The Time of Troubles—at the end of the sixteenth century.

The manifesto concluded by calling Pugachev a “destroyer of the Sacred Union of Civil Society,”

and thus “an offender against Divine laws and the Christian Church.”

413

A second proclamation penned by Nikita Panin under the empress’ auspices, while

recapitulating these arguments, further noted that Pugachev had promised to “extricate [people]

from obedience to any type of power” by tricking them into thinking that “the creator…had

established human society [such that it could exist] without intermediate powers between the

monarch and the people.”

414

The specific reference to ‘intermediate powers’ as a fundamental

component of the monarchy’s sovereignty has been greatly discussed in previous chapters and

should not come as a surprise. Still, it is significant that Panin would include a relatively novel

phrase in addresses to the commonality as a whole. Such arguments, however, were vulnerable to

criticism. The promised benefit of intermediary powers, namely liberty understood as security,

though rhetorically alluring, was not immediately and tangibly measurable, especially to the

common people who were to be governed through these new intermediaries. Additionally,

previous justifications for the nobility’s privileged status had not openly presented the nobility as

411

Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine, 248-9.

412

See the entry “Izverg” in Slovar’ russkogo iazyka XVIII veka, vol. 9 (St. Petersburg: Nauka, 1997), 14.

413

Zapiski o zhizni i sluzhbe Aleksandra Il’icha Bibikova (St. Petersburg: Morskaia tipografiia, 1817), prilozheniia,

XV-XVIII.

414

See manifesto “B” in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii A. S. Pushkina, ed. G. N. Gennadi, vol 6 (St. Petersburg, 1871),

prilozheniia, 194-6.

103

power-agents. Instead, their right to land and serfs was justified by their duty to serve the state on

the battlefield, which exposed their bodies to the danger of death or considerable physical harm.

Catherine and her senior advisors showed no awareness that their arguments for the

necessity of ‘intermediary powers’ might prove weak in the eyes of commoners. Instead, in a

manner typical of the mentality of the Enlightenment, Catherine emphasized their general

benightedness, which made the common people susceptible to ‘seduction.’ In the aforementioned

decree of October 15, Catherine wrote: “any reasonable person may judge that the blinding and

corruption of such common people and by such a largescale lie, could not have had such a

disastrous and tragic effect, had it not been aided by the deep ignorance in which the [people of

Orenburg] province were, as a result of their comparative isolation, more greatly steeped than

others.”

415

From Catherine’s perspective, what was needed to garner support for the kind of system of

sovereignty she sought to construct was Enlightenment - the development of man’s intellectual

and moral faculties. It would do so by imparting correct expectations of power, of its legitimate

purposes, and, how, accordingly, that power ought to properly flow (including through

intermediary powers). Enlightenment could not prevent ‘evildoers’ such as Pugachev from

stepping forward to threaten the stability of governance. Yet, the dissemination among the wider

populace of a more critical, empirically-minded understanding and awareness of the world would

lessen the purchase of their fraudulent decrees and political conspiracy theories. Even from

Catherine’s own perspective, however, Pugachev’s rebellion pointed to specific difficulties that

her project of sovereignty faced in Russia; it could only succeed in the long term. As her statement

of October 15 further suggested, the country’s vast dimensions were a problem in their own right.

It left isolated pockets underexposed to the edifying effects of properly-ordered governance and

social intercourse. In her view, Russia’s large size was undoubted also a factor in its long history

of “imposters, fraudsters, and traitors,” who continued to inspire others to commit similar

crimes.

416

Appealing to her subjects’ reason, the empress even commissioned Mikhail Shcherbatov

in April 1774 to author a history of imposters to further expose such individuals and substantiate

her own claims about them.

417

Catherine, who saw the monarch as the principal agent responsible

for ensuring ordered power and advancing Enlightenment, hoped that such counter-propaganda

would help unmask Pugachev and end his hold over the minds of the common people. Another

strategy of Enlightenment that she employed was to order Pugachev’s declarations to be publicly

burnt by an executioner.

418

She believed enough in the efficacy of proclamations to have some

reissued, but the act also showed her awareness that the efficacy of these strategies was limited.

419

Much more than the circulation of information was required to master this rebellion, which

very quickly overwhelmed the capacities of provincial government in Orenburg and Kazan to

maintain order. Shortly thereafter, in early November 1773, the insurgents routed a division of

irregulars, sent to pacify the province. From this point on, the rebellion became a major problem

for Catherine and began to force her to make irregular decisions and resort to measures that she

found distasteful. In late November, she tasked General Aleksandr Bibikov—a distinguished

415

Zapiski o zhizni i sluzhbe Aleksandra Il’icha Bibikova, VIII.

416

Ibid., X.

417

See the discussion in Alexander, Autocratic Politics in a National Crisis, 120-2.

418

August, 1774, “Sobstvennoruchnaia zapiska Ekateriny II k kn. Viazemskomu o publikovanii ot Senata, shtoby

pugachevskie ukazy byli sozhigaemy chrez palacha,” in SIRIO, vol. 13, 441.

419

See, for example, “Sobstvennyi chernovoi manifest Ekateriny II s predosterzheniem naroda protiv prisoedineniia

k Pugachevu” from March 15, 1774, ibid., 397.

104

military officer and former president of her Legislative Commission—with mounting an escalated

military response to the crisis. What is more, she planned to give him extended jurisdictional

powers in the afflicted provinces. On

November 28, 1773, she attended the Imperial Council in

person (a rare occurrence) in order to discuss with its members her proposed measures. The

minutes of the meeting suggest that the empress was uncertain whether the management of civil

matters should be subordinated to a newly appointed governor, or to the newly appointed general,

and she voiced the concern that granting two individuals with overlapping prerogatives might lead

to conflict, thereby nudging the Council to consider a new set of executive powers. The Council

agreed on this step, arguing that the areas in question were already in such a state of open rebellion

or uncertainty, that they could not be reliably governed without military power - in other words,

they had experienced the complete disintegration of sovereignty.

420

Although there was a number of precedents for endowing offices with considerable

prerogatives,

421

the appointment of an individual with supreme jurisdictional power over more

than one province was a highly unusual step that reflected the challenge the rebellion was seen to

pose. According to Catherine’s instructions of November 29, 1773, Bibikov was charged with

reimposing order in the countryside, and he was given full discretion regarding the resources and

measures needed to achieve this goal. In addition to complete jurisdiction over the afflicted areas,

an accompanying ukaz prepared by the empress instructed that all “ecclesiastical, military, and

civil powers”—such as the Holy Synod, the College of War, and the Senate—to carry out all of

his demands quickly and accurately. Bibikov was also granted the right to produce “in his own

name any type of written or printed publications,” so long as he considered them necessary to his

assignment.

422

This, too, was unusual given the rigorous procedures Catherine established for

issuing her proclamations.

Catherine saw the campaign against the rebellion not solely in terms of overcoming

Pugachev’s military threat, but of reestablishing sovereignty in the countryside. To do so, she had

to reinstall governmental order and respect for the law and institutions of the state, not merely

reimpose obedience through force. But since the provinces were in outright disarray, the rebellion

posed a serious dilemma. Although she gave Bibikov full discretion, her rescript of November 29,

indicated a hope that he might find a way to balance between these two demands. For example,

she instructed Bibikov to disseminate her own counter-manifestos, and her bestowal on him of the

authority to produce printed publications suggests she hoped he would continue to employ a

strategy of persuasion. Furthermore, she also offered guidelines as to how force could be

employed. Consider this passage, in which she ordered Bibikov the following:

…to observe with great detail all the movements and maneuvers of the

troublemakers, to understand directly their strengths, how they are connected, their

available provisions, and their internal organization structure – in a word the

physical and moral state of all their parts. [Having gained] greater advantage in this

way, take up arms against them and proceed with dominance and superiority—the

likes of which is borne of a strength that is governed by enlightenment and skill—

420

Arkhiv Gosudarstvennogo soveta, vol. 1 (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia vtorago otdeleniia sobstvennoi E. I. V.

kantseliarii, 1869), 443.

421

Notable examples included that of the general procurator who managed the monarch’s interactions with the Senate.

Provincial governors also had historically wielded considerable prerogatives.

422

November 9, 1773, “Spisok s reskripta, s sobstvennoruchnoiu pripiskoiu Ekateriny II Bibikovu o predstavlennoi

emu vlasti i merakh k ukroshcheniiu pugachevskogo bunta,” in SIRIO, vol. 13, 370.

105

that one must always have in dealing with the common rabble that is moved solely

by wild agitation and benightedness of religious or political fanaticism.

423

As this passage suggests, the empress wanted Bibikov to employ force with extreme precision and

appropriate pressure. Such use of force would do enough damage to the disrupt the internal

dynamics of the rebellion, and yet still manifest the orderliness and controlled nature of the state’s

power, calculated to awe both combatants and bystanders.

Under Bibikov’s command, the Russian state was able to apply offensive pressure on the

rebellion, routing them in a number of engagements, and retaking several towns, including Ufa,

Chelyabinsk, Ekaterinburg, and Orenburg, which had been under siege for six months. These

advances seemingly reassured the empress to such an extent that when Bibikov suddenly died of

cholera on April 20, she seemed urgent to return to normal operations by allowing his position to

lapse. She then appointed Fyodor Shcherbatov, a lesser-known figure, to oversee the continued

military operations against the rebellion, but without the same jurisdictional prerogatives that

Bibikov had enjoyed.

424

In her rescript of May 1, 1774, she ordered Shcherbatov to capture

Pugachev and provide military support to provincial governors where needed, but that he should

leave the “reestablishment of internal peace and civil order” to those governors. As she reasoned,

they were the “rightful masters of these territories” and they “better knew the condition and

disposition of the people [there].”

425

Apparently, she wished to mark Shcherbatov’s appointment

as a transition away from a mode of power that she believed had been temporarily necessary, but

was ultimately incompatible, indeed damaging to, sovereignty.

This decision proved premature. Pugachev managed to rebuild his forces after fleeing north

into Bashkiria, and he attacked and sacked the city of Kazan on July 12. Although Pugachev was

not able to take the fortified kremlin (and the secret commission located there), or to maintain

control of the city, the event broadcast the rebellion’s immediate threat to the Russian heartlands,

and signaled the pretender’s enduring strength as well as the inadequacy of the government’s

response. On July 21 Catherine attended another session of the Imperial Council to address the

pressing crisis and decide on new extraordinary measures. She was sufficiently dismayed that she

considered going to Moscow in order to reassure its inhabitants through her presence. However,

Nikita Panin and Zakhar Chernyshev dissuaded her, fearing the gesture would only escalate the

sense of danger and encourage further rebels. It would also invite foreign threats by suggesting a

state of internal disarray. Instead, Catherine and the council concluded it was again necessary to

appoint another individual with supreme jurisdictional powers.

426

With the destruction of Kazan and the rebellion entering its eleventh consecutive month,

Catherine likely felt growing pressure to display decisive command. Her capacity to select a

replacement was limited by the ongoing prosecution of the First Russo-Turkish war, and Nikita

Panin, her foreign minister, was able to take advantage of her quandary. He hectored her into

423

Ibid., 369. The original Russian reads, “…наблюдать бдительным оком все движения и предначинания

возмутителей, дабы познав прямо их силы, их связь в земле, их ресурсы в пропитании, их внутреннее между

собою физическое и моральное их положение во всех частях онаго, после с тем большими выгодами поднять

на них оружие и действовать с тою поверхностью, каковую мужество, просвещением и искуcством

руководствуемое, долженствует всегда иметь предь толпою черни, движущеюся одним бурным фанатизма

духовнaго или политическaго вдохновением и помрачением.”

424

See Arkhiv Gosudarstvennogo soveta, vol. 1, 443.

425

“Sobstvennoruchnyi chernovoi rescript Ekateriny II k kn. F. F. Shcherbatovu o priniatii im glavnago nachal’stva

nad voiskom po sluchaiu konchiny A. Bibikova”, May 1, 1774, SIRIO, vol. 13, 404.

426

Arkhiv gosudarstvennogo soveta, vol. 1, 454.

106

appointing his brother, Petr Panin, to Bibikov’s position - a move she greatly resented because she

saw it as a power-grab that suggested her weakness.

427

Catherine also personally disliked Petr

Panin. She had disapproved of his siege of Bender in 1770, believing it to have come at too large

a cost of Russian blood. And since his retirement to his Moscow estate shortly thereafter, he had

irritated her by frequently criticizing government policy, including her handling of the rebellion.

428

Once appointed, Petr Panin further annoyed her by making an extensive list of demands that

included not only complete power over military units, inhabitants, towns, and government officials

in the affected areas, but also the right, which Bibikov did not have, to choose his own military

staff.

429

In the end, however, Catherine’s reluctant acceptance of Panin was probably an astute

move, likely to appease her critics and bring decisive military leadership that would finally pacify

the rebellion. But the cost was to permit extensive oppressive measures that were both inimical to

her project of sovereignty and threatening to her reputation abroad.

With its emphasis on liberty and on political power based on consent, the Enlightenment

had expressed heightened concern about the use of force in governance. Force enjoined obedience

through fear and had no edifying or moral effect. It was a signal characteristic of illegitimate and

despotic government: not only did despots used force as a modus operandi, they also resorted to

arbitrary and disproportionately severe methods, from the routine use of torture to gruesome forms

of corporal (mostly capital) punishment. Catherine was not categorically opposed to capital

punishment, but she believed that it was only to be applied to exceptional threats to the monarch’s

sovereignty. In 1764, for example, she had sanctioned the use of the death penalty in the

punishment of Vasily Mirovich, a Ukrainian officer who had broken into Schlüsselberg Fortress

in an attempt to release the ex-emperor, Ivan VI. And in 1771, four people were executed for the

murder of Archbishop Ambrosius during the infamous plague riot in Moscow. On the whole,

however, she had continued Elizabeth’s policy to commute death sentences.

430

Moderation in the application of violent force was a key feature of Catherine’s self-

representation as a monarch. In her Nakaz, written only six years previously, she had made a

number of statements declaring her commitment to Cesare Beccaria’s philosophy of criminal

procedure and punishment. This entailed more than the simple adage that the punishment be

commensurate to the crime. Beccaria had modeled his theory of punishment on gravity – a mild

force, yet one that managed to hold reliably the planets in orbit. What mattered was not the severity

of punishment, but that punishment was predictable and regular, which he believed would lead to

a confluence of notions of crime and punishment (i.e., cause and effect) in the mind of the would-

be criminal. Furthermore, like gravity, punishment was calculated according to a precise law of

427

Catherine revealed these concerns in a letter to Potemkin in July: “Darling, as you see from the attached items,

Count Panin deigns to have his brother made into a lord (vlastitel’) with unlimited power in the better part of the

empire, that is, in Moscow, Nizhegorod, Kazan, and Orenburg provinces, another others are sous-entendu; and if I

sign, then not only will prince Volkonsky be upset and embarrassed, but I will be no better protected, for I, fearing

Pugachev, will be praising and elevating this first-class liar and man who has personally offended me in front of

everyone…,” “Sobstvennoruchnaia zapiska Ekateriny II k G. A. Potemkinu po povodu predostavleniia gr. P. Paninu

iskliuchitel’noi vlasti dlia usmireniia pugachevskago bunta”, July 1774, SIRIO, vol. 13, 421.

428

John T. Alexander, Autocratic Politics..., 167.

429

In the end, Catherine did not permit Panin to appoint the general of his choice, or to control the secret commission,

which remained under her control. Her rescript to him from July 29 was largely recycled from the one she had sent to

Bibikov eight months earlier and granted him the same extensive command over military and civil apparatus. The

only major difference was it now applied to three, not two provinces.

430

The most authoritative discussion on the death penalty in Russia in the eighteenth century is in Elena Marasinova,

“Zakon” i “grazhdanin” v Rossii vtoroi poloviny XVIII veka: ocherki istorii obshchestvennogo soznaniia (Moscow:

Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2017), 67-119.

107

proportionality: the pain of punishment need only marginally outweigh the pleasure of the crime

(a view Catherine endorsed in Article 32 of her Nakaz). This doctrine of proportionality sought to

solve the problem of how punishment could retain some edifying content, for it demonstrated

which crimes were worse than others. In contrast, universal severity confused this hierarchy in the

mind of the subject and underlined the depravity and arbitrariness of power.

431

Although Bibikov had carried out harsh punitive measures of its own, Panin had been

critical of the state’s response to the crisis, seeing it as tepid and unsuited to pacifying the rebels.

Writing to his brother on July 22, 1774, he noted that only a “rapid change of direction” could now

save the teetering Russian heartlands and secure the well-being of the Russian nobility, which he

understood to have been the primary targets of Pugachev’s wrath.

432

Signally, Petr Panin thought

that defeating Pugachev’s army and capturing the pretender would not be enough, for the common

rabble—the chern’—had become too impassioned and emboldened to respond to a moderate

exercise of force. The state needed to reassert its authority over the chern’ and put it on a

“correctional path,”

433

and this could only be achieved by threatening and carrying out widescale

and highly visible punishment of the rebellion’s participants. Panin was upfront about his

intentions to use force and instill fear. This being the only language he thought commoners

understood, it was the only way in which the “rabble” could be “bridled.”

434

Panin issued public declarations promising mass punishment of offenders. Those who had

actively joined the rebels, having taken direct part in violence as well as those who had facilitated

and abetted this activity, were to have their head and feet cut off prior to execution, their

dismembered bodies displayed on public roads. Where individual perpetrators could not be found,

the inhabitants of villages where crimes had occurred would be induced to hand over whichever

persons they thought guilty or else face systematic punishment determined by lots: first, every

third man would be hanged; second, one in hundred would be hanged by the rib; finally, all

remaining adults would be flogged.

435

Panin also announced that in the case of renewed unrest in

a village, he would sentence all male adults without exception “to the most horrible execution”

and “give their wives, children and lands to others.”

436

While he assured the empress that this last

measure was merely a threat, Panin acted on many of his other threats, hanging rebels from gallows

or the rib and even having them broken on the wheel. Corpses were also displayed on roads and

along rivers for people to see and left to rot for weeks. Several thousand also suffered other forms

of corporal punishment – they were knouted, beaten, and even had their ears cut off.

437

Indicative

of his general approach, when Panin finally got his hands on Pugachev in Simbirsk in October

1774, he struck him several times in the face, tore his beard out, and forced him to kneel before

the assembled people to confess his evildoings.

438

While Panin understood that his measures

431

Michel Foucault famously argues that brutal executions that involved the mutilation of the criminal’s body were

previously meant to demonstrate state’s absolute power. See Part I of his influential work, Discipline and Punish. The

Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (London: Penguin Books, 1991).

432

26 July, 1774, “Pis’mo grafa P. I. Panina grafu N. I. Paninu,” SIRIO, vol. 6, 77. John Alexander argues that Panin

saw himself as the “gentry’s angel of vengeance and retribution.” (185)

433

For example: August 3, 1774, “Donesenie P. I. Panina imperatritse Ekaterine II,” SIRIO, vol. 6, 92.

434

Ibid., 92.

435

In Sochineniia Derzhavina, vol. 5, 288, quoted in Alexander, Autocratic Politics, 185.

436

August 30, 1774, “Donesenie grafa P. I. Panina Imperatritse Ekaterine II,” SIRIO, vol. 6, 129.

437

P. A. Geisman and A. N. Dubovskoi, Graf Petr Ivanovich Panin, 1721-1789 (St. Petersburg: N. V. Vasil’evna,

1897), 77-80.

438

October 1, 1773, “Iz pis’ma komanduiushchego karatel’nymi voiskami pravitel’stva general-anshefa grafa P. I.

Panina svoemu bratu – kantsleru grafu N. I. Paninu o izbienii E. I. Pugachva pri predvaritel’nom publichnom doprose

na gorodskoi ploshchadi Simbirska,” Voprosy istorii, no. 7 (1966), 108.

108

offended the empress’ sensibilities, he claimed he was unleashing the law to its full extent.

439

And

he may even have thought that harsh punishments helped accentuate the monarch’s mercy and

compassion when rebels were in fact spared. At any rate, Panin believed his methods were an

important demonstration—not only to Russian commoners, but to Catherine herself—of what the

Russian monarch needed do to maintain order in the countryside.

440

Pugachev was brought to Moscow and tried in December 1774. The empress decided not

to arrive in the city until Pugachev’s trial and punishment had taken place, thereby asserting the

independence of the judicial branch. Yet, she also assigned the trial to a large, ad hoc court made

up of governmental elites. It consisted of the members of the Senate, the Holy Synod, the

presidents of the Colleges and all other individuals of the first three ranks. While the special court

reflected the gravity of Pugachev’s crimes, it ensured that the pretender and his main accomplices

would be judged by those classes of individuals who had been major targets of his rebellion. This

was a concession that the empress felt she needed to make. Still, she worried about the

vindictiveness of the court and she tasked Viazemsky, her general procurator, to oversee the trial

and attempt as best he could to moderate the court’s sentences.

Although Catherine knew that Pugachev would be subjected to the death penalty,

441

she

wanted to avoid any “painful executions” and to limit the total number of death sentences to three

or four people.

442

However, Viazemsky had difficulty carrying out her will. On December 28, he

wrote to her stating that many of the Moscow nobility wanted “no small number” of executions

and were in favor of great severity - a position that Petr Panin strongly advocated for after his

arrival in Moscow.

443

In the end, Viazemsky managed to commute three of a possible nine death

sentences to corporal punishment. And in Pugachev’s case, he was able to persuade the court to

leave out his breaking on the wheel. Still, Pugachev was to be to be quartered alive, his head and

his limbs to be put on public display in the four corners of the city.

444

Viazemsky was certain that

the empress would be displeased by this outcome. Although he knew Catherine would accept the

necessity of multiple death sentences, and even, begrudgingly, the public display of Pugachev’s

“lifeless body”, which, as he explained, was deemed “necessary to produce a strong impression on

the unruly mob (chern’),” she would disapprove of the inhumanity of such a punishment. Unable

to change the decision of the court, Viazemsky’s only available solution was to arrange for the

439

August 5, 1774, “Donesenie grafa P. I. Panina Imperatritse Ekaterine II,” SIRIO, vol. 6, 117.

440

Panin boasted to the empress that he had accomplished everything that she had charged him with in a report to her

on January 25, 1775. See, “Donesenie grafa P. I. Panina Imperatritse Ekateriny II,” SIRIO, vol. 6, 199-200.

441

For example, Catherine wrote in a letter to Grimm on November 4 that Pugachev was being taken to Moscow “to

be hanged.” November 4, 1774, “Catherine II à Grimm” Catherine II & Friedrich Melchior Grimm, Une

correspondence privée, artistique et politique au siècle des Lumières, Edited by Sergueï Karp, Tome 1 (Moscow:

Centre Internationale d’Étude du XVIII Siècle Ferney-Voltaire, 2016), 17. It seems probable that she knew that

Pugachev would be sentenced to a more severe form of execution, but was doing her best to influence public opinion

abroad.

442

“Doklad general-prokurora Senata kniazia A. A. Viazemskogo imperatritse Ekaterine II ob obriade suda nad E. I.

Pugachevym i ego soratnikami,” Voprosy Istorii, no. 9 (1966), 140.

443

December 28, 1774 “Donesenie general-prokurora Senata kniazia A. A. Viazemskogo Ekaterine II o slozhnosti

predstoiashchei raboty suda po delu E. I. Pugacheva i ego soratnikov v sviazi s vystupleniiami moskovskogo

dvorianstva s trebovaniiami zhestokikh kaznei dlia bol’shinstva obviniemykh po moskovskomu protsessu,” ibid., 141.

444

December 31, 1774 “Donesenie general-prokurora Senata kniazia A. A. Viazemskogo Ekaterine II o resul’tatakh

obsuzhdeniia na zasedanii Senata voprosa of kazni E. I. Pugacheva i ego soratnikov i o merakh nakazaniia drugikh

obviniaemykh po moskovskomu protsessu’, ibid., 145.

109

executioner to decapitate Pugachev first. Such a move, he argued to the empress, might be

interpreted as a “mistake” and was more likely to “be excused.”

445

Pugachev was executed on January 10, 1775. The execution took place on Bolotnaya

Square not far from the Kremlin and was attended by a large crowd of people, both nobles and

commoners from Moscow and the surrounding villages.

446

Pugachev did not try to provoke the

crowd, but was contrite, accepting the priest’s final blessings before crossing himself profusely

and praying for forgiveness from the people. However he acted, he must have known that a last-

minute reprieve was unlikely. Yet, Viazemsky succeeded in saving him from the full-extent of his

sentence, the executioner reversing the order of punishment at the last moment. As carried out,

Pugachev’s brutal execution represented a compromise, one that was highly visible to all

onlookers. Far from a display of sovereignty, the untrammeled power of the monarch to dispense

justice as she saw fit, Pugachev’s death demonstrated the empress’ trammeled sovereignty both in

the countryside and St. Petersburg. To all those who had read her Nakaz, the incompatibility

between the execution and her own principles was evident. While she did her best to justify the

extensive punishment of the rebels by asserting their depravity, it was clear to all that not her will,

but the wishes of the nobility had produced the harshest possible response, and had, ultimately,

sentenced their monarch to endorse a medieval form of punishment.

447

Although sovereignty is

never complete, Pugachev’s rebellion was a reminder that her particular project had far to go and

much work was yet needed.

Conclusion

For Pugachev and his followers, the extension of the state into the Russian countryside was not

consonant with sovereignty. It brought taxes, landowners, government officials, bonded labor,

and the disruption of traditional arrangements. Far from upholding those arrangements, as the

rebels believed was the empress’ duty, she had actively undermined the traditional equivalence

between obligations and rights that had bound provincials in service to the state. The violent end

to the rebellion likely accelerated the state’s control over the periphery, while also forcing the

empress to reassert her support for the noble estate and its right to own serfs. This was a major

problem. At the heart of Catherine’s sovereignty project lay the ideal of an orderly and reasonable

(monarchical) power that provided liberty—understood as the security of person and

possessions—to its subjects. So long as the monarch upheld the nobleman’s right to untrammeled

and arbitrary power over serfs’ bonded labor, the liberty of the nobleman would continue to depend

on the pacification of the serf. The court that sentenced Pugachev made considerable reference to

the “plight” of the nobility. Its sentence of January 10, 1775, claimed the legitimacy of precedent

by appealing in part to the penalties in the Law Code, or Ulozhenie, of 1649 for transgressions

against nobles and government officials.

448

This emphasis was deliberate. As Viazemsky wrote in

a missive to the empress the day before, the court believed it necessary for its sentence “to

demonstrate to the nobility that her Imperial Majesty firmly intended to guarantee the well-earned

445

January 2, 1774, “Donesenie general-prokurora Senata kniazia A. A. Viazemskogo Ekaterine II ob otpravlenii na

ee odobrenie prigovora po delu E. I. Pugacheva i ego soratnikov, o sekretnykh rasporiazheniiakh otnositel’no obriada

kazni E. I. Pugacheva”, ibid., 146

446

For an eye-witness account, see Zapiski Andreia Timofeevicha Bolotova, 1773-1795, vol. 3 (St. Petersburg:

Tipografiia V. S. Balasheva, 1873), 486-91.

447

Over the course of the early modern period it became more common for judges, who were invariably noblemen, to

intervene to diminish horrific penalties. See the chapter, “Justice,” in Julius R. Ruff, Violence in Early Modern Europe,

1500-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 73-116. See also, Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 3-31.

448

January 10, 1775, PSZ, no. 14,233.

110

rights and privileges of the nobility,” and to demonstrate “to the peasantry, that she intended to

ensure their obedience and keep them to their duties.”

449

The major problem for Catherine was

that, in provinces at a great distance from the capital, the very relations between noble landholders

and their serfs were far from the control of the empress. Thus, the very promise to guarantee peace

and security to all of her subjects, nobility and serfs alike, was proven empty by the Pugachev

revolt and its aftermath, demonstrating how hollow the empress’ project of sovereignty proved on

the margins.

449

9 January, 1775, “Iz doneseniia general-prokurora Senata kniazia A. A. Viazemskogo Ekaterine II o poluchenii

odobrennogo eiu prigovora po delu E. I. Pugacheva i ego soratnikov o podpisanii sententsii na sudebnom zasedanii

Senata 9 ianvaria 1775g,” Voprosy istorii, no. 9 (1966), 147.

111

Conclusion

Historians, Marc Bloch reminds us, must always be “testing [their] classifications in order to

justify their existence, and, if it seems advisable, to revise them.”

450

Acting on this imperative, this

dissertation claims that the study of the Russian monarchy should reconsider its analytical arsenal

and to add to its investigations the concept of sovereignty - the exercise of supreme and

untrammeled power, considered legitimate. Russian monarchs, it claims, were not interested in

mere power, authority, or legitimacy, but sovereignty: they wanted to wield supreme and

untrammeled power like their Western counterparts. Constructing sovereignty was no easy task,

but this also added to its appeal, for success in this project would add to Russia’s glory and

underline its parity with the West. Sovereignty was also desirable in its own right, for to wield

supreme and untrammeled power would allow Russia’s monarchs to bring order and progress to

their great territory and the lives of their multitudinous subjects.

This dissertation has argued that Catherine the Great, the Russian empress between 1762

and 1796, was a crucial figure in this process. It argues that across the duration of her reign she

formulated and put into practice a new system of monarchical sovereignty. Catherine’s major

insight had been that the exercise of supreme and untrammeled power, and the recognition of

monarchs’ claims as legitimate required substantial collaboration with the broadest possible

number of stakeholders within the nobility. As such, it required consultation and careful delegation

of power. The product was the first modern system of autocratic sovereignty in Russia. This system

equated liberty with security and was centered on strong procedures and institutions that assisted

the monarch as well as on rule through consultation and consensus. Catherine believed that

operating principles such as these were compatible with Russian autocracy and that they were

integral to its strength and continued viability. To establish such a new system of sovereignty was

the principal, indeed the legitimating project of her reign, and she worked hard to implement it

into her later years through fastidious practices, routines, and legislative initiatives. Her long

reign—one of the longest in Russian history—demonstrates that she was successful at doing so.

The empress’ system established clear expectations about the proper exercise of power,

and after her death this system would not tolerate rulers that violated its principles. When her son

Paul succeeded her in 1796, he was seen to subvert her arrangements through erratic policies and

behavior, much like his father, Peter III. By continually appointing and firing senior servitors,

taking sharp and unexpected turns in foreign and military policy, and governing from his hard-to-

reach palace of Gatchina, Peter III failed to create patterns of predictability in the high

administration.

451

Like his father, he was soon deposed, murdered by a group of noblemen in

March 1801. In contrast, Paul’s successors—his sons—were more careful to conduct their

activities within the spirit of the system that she had established. Of these, Alexander I (b. 1777),

was most directly influenced by the empress herself. Catherine, had paid close attention to his

education, appointing for him an enlightened tutor, César de la Harpe, and even compiling for him

a comprehensive syllabus that notably included her Nakaz.

Before coming to power in 1801, Alexander had spoken privately of broad and ambitious

changes to Russian society and the state, including the emancipation of the serfs and the creation

of a constitution. In the early years of his reign, he continued to discuss these with an unofficial

committee (known to historians as the Unofficial Committee). Yet, he soon backed away from his

two boldest designs, precisely because he knew they would never find agreement in the Senate or

450

Marc Bloch, The Historian’s Craft (Delhi: Aakar Books, 2017), 147.

451

Cynthia H. Whittaker, Russian Monarchy: Eighteenth-Century Rulers and Writers in Political Dialogue

(DeKalb: Northern Illinois University, 2003), 181-83.

112

within the bureaucracy. If anything, the most influential reforms he did pursue were attuned to

Catherine’s state-building enterprise. For example, in 1802 he replaced the Petrine Colleges with

Ministries—each under a minister responsible to the monarch—, which further clarified the

intermediary channels between the throne and the state’s administrative organs. And, in 1810, he

also established an advisory legislative body, the State Council. Alexander’s successors, Nicholas

I (r. 1825-1855) and Alexander II (r. 1855-1861) both continued to see government institutions

and cooperation with enlightened servitors as integral to the monarchy’s sovereignty. Admittedly,

Nicholas frequently used a personal chancery and special emissaries—mainly military men—to

bypass regular state channels. Yet, the very fact that these actions damaged his reputation shows

monarchs were judged by the high standards that Catherine’s system had established.

Alexander I. Portrait by Vladimir L. Borovikovsky, 1802-3. The Russian State

Museum.

Adherence to the empress’ system allowed the Russian monarchy in the nineteenth century

to be not only a viable, but also a dynamic political machine, able to undertake an ambitious

modernizing agenda in government, the economy, and society at crucial moments. Its signal

success was arguably the ‘Great Reforms’ of Alexander II’s reign, which, amongst other things,

abolished serfdom, introduced a modern judicial system, and established new forms of local

government. The abolition of serfdom was preceded by years of in-depth and often painful

consultation with the nobility. Committees were appointed; noble assemblies were consulted;

113

ministries were tasked with data-gathering and drafting proposals.

452

In this sense, the most

important landmark of Alexander II’s reign reflected very little of his opinions as to its terms,

rather reflecting consultation and compromise with hundreds if not thousands of interested parties

(arguably, all but the serfs).

One advantage of Catherine’s system was that it was neither rigid nor complete. The

empress herself had seen her system in such terms, leaving behind a number of unfinished reforms,

including, as we have seen, schemes to further clarify the prerogatives of the monarch. The notion

that the monarch’s sovereignty could permit a diffusion of power allowed the monarchy to

envision greater political participation in local administration. This was particularly important after

1861, for the monarchy needed to maintain the support of the peasantry which had been made free,

but not in the way that it had long awaited. Alexander II’s introduction of the zemstvos, which

included elected peasant delegates, was the first decisive step in this direction. Equally important

was that that the Russian monarchy could consider constitutional devices that strengthened

procedures regulating the exercise of power and broadened participation in central decision-

making in St. Petersburg. In 1881, for instance, Alexander II approved a plan by his minister of

internal affairs, Loris Melikov, to create a consultative commission of officials and private

individuals, including zemstvo representatives, to help prepare legislation. However, Alexander’s

sudden assassination by revolutionaries meant that the reform was never enacted.

Catherine’s system, however, began to be challenged after Alexander II’s death. His son,

Alexander III (r. 1881-1894), abandoned his father’s plans to establish consultative commissions

and he weakened the powers of the zemstvos. This was the beginning of an exclusionary ethic that

weakened the participation of both elites and commoners in power. Alexander III thought that the

monarchy’s authority would be strengthened by emphasizing what he considered to be traditional

autocratic rule in addition to Russian nationalism and a commitment to Orthodoxy.

453

Coming to

power in 1894, his son, Nicholas II, immediately aligned himself with these autocratic principles

in a famous address at Tver’, where he described aspirations for representatives of the zemstvos to

play a consultative role in domestic administration as “senseless dreams.” Nicholas’ autocratic

ethic was bolstered by his piety and a belief that sovereign power must solely reflect his verdicts,

for they were God’s will and were therefore not to be disputed. This ethic led Nicholas to

stubbornly resist calls for more extensive forms of political participation and constitutional

reforms, and this put him increasingly at odds not only with the commonality, but also the Russian

elites. This was one cause of the Revolution of 1905, which forced him to establish a Russian

parliament—the Duma—and to concede that laws could not be passed without its approval.

However, the monarch retained absolute veto powers as well as the right to dismiss the Duma at

any time. Nicholas was never reconciled with this new arrangement, and, seeing the Duma as

trammeling rather than bolstering his supreme powers, was often in conflict with that institution,

dismissing it four times between 1906 and his abdication in 1917.

The notion of autocracy that guided the final two Russian monarchs claimed ancient

lineage. Yet, the history of the Russian monarchy since 1762, or, as Catherine would have us

believe, since the reign of Peter the Great, saw moves to develop a modern form of sovereignty,

according to which the monarch’s ability to exercise supreme and untrammeled power, considered

452

David Moon, The Abolition of Serfdom, 1762-1907 (New York: Routledge, 2014), 56-69. See also Bruce W.

Lincoln, In the Vanguard of Reform: Russia’s Enlightened Bureaucrats, 1825-1861 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois

University Press, 1982).

453

See, above all, Richard Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy, vol. 2

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 159-523.

114

legitimate, was dependent on strong procedures and institutions that involved others. To abandon

this project, above all at a time of accelerating industrialization, with the complexities that such a

process unleashed, was likely to be a significant decision. The collapse of the monarchy in 1917

suggests that the system that Alexander III and Nicholas II adopted was unable to meet these

challenges and that adopting such a system was a mistaken path.

115

Bibliography

Primary Sources:

A Lady at the Court of Catherine the Great: The Journal of Baroness Elizabeth Dimsdale, 1781.

Edited by Anthony Cross. Cambridge: Crest Publications, 1989.

Arkhiv kniazia Vorontsova. Edited by Petr Bartenev. 40 vols. Moscow: V. Got’e, 1870-1895.

Beccaria, Cesare. On Crimes and Punishments and Other Writings. Edited and translated by

Richard Bellamy and Richard Davies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Bodin, Jean. The Six Bookes of a Commonweale. Translated by Richard Knolles (1606) and edited

by Kenneth D. McRae. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962.

[Catherine II]. Catherine II’s Charters of 1785 to the Nobility and the Towns. Edited and translated

by David M. Griffiths and George E. Munro. Bakersfield, CA: Charles Schlacks Jr., 1991.

––––––Catherine II et Gustave III: une correspondence retrouvée. Edited by Gunnar von

Proschwitz. Värnamo: Fälth & Hässler, 1998.

––––––Catherine the Great: Selected Letters. Translated by Andrew Kahn and Kelsey Rubin-

Detlev. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.

––––––Correspondence of Catherine the Great, when Grand-Duchess, with Sir Charles Hanbury-

Williams and Letters from Count Poniatowski. Edited by the Earl of Ilchester and Mrs.

Langford Brooke. London: Thornton Butterworth Ltd, 1928.

––––––Documents of Catherine the Great. Edited by William F. Reddaway. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2011.

––––––“Ekaterina i Potemkin: podlinnaia ikh perepiska, 1782-1791.” Russkaia starina. No. 16

(1876), 33-58, 239-62, 441-78, 571-90; no. 17, 21-38, 205-16, 403-26, 635-52.

––––––“Ekaterina II: sobstvennoruchnye ee poveleniia, pis’ma i zametki, 1770-92.” Russkaia

starina. No. 3, 310-25, 474-84, 605-27, 689-99; no. 8, 60-86, 212-20, 653-90, 853-84; no.

9, 37-56, 285-300, 473-504; no. 11, 489-96; no. 12, 384-90; no. 14, 444-54.

––––––Izbrannoe. Edited by G. O. Babkova. Moscow: Rossiiskaia politicheskaia entsiklopediia

(rosspen), 2010.

––––––[and Potemkin, Grigory] Love & Conquest: Personal Correspondence of Catherine the

Great and Prince Grigory Potemkin. Edited and translated by Douglas Smith. DeKalb:

Northern Illinois University Press, 2004.

––––––Nakaz imperatritsy Ekateriny II dannyi kommissii po sochineniiu proekta novogo

116

ulozheniia. Edited by N. D. Chechulin. Moscow, 1967.

––––––Perepiska s raznymi osobami. St. Petersburg, 1807.

––––––“Pis’ma Ekateriny II k gr. P. V. Zavadovskomu (1775-1777).” Edited by Ia. Barskov.

Russkii istoricheskii zhurnal. Bk. 5 (1886), 223-57.

––––––“Pis’ma Ekateriny vtoroi k baronu Grimmu (12 January 1794).” Russkii arkhiv. 3 (1878),

5-240.

––––––“Pis’ma gosodaryni imperatritsy Ekateriny II-i k kniaziu Mikhailu Nikitichu

Volkonskomu.” In Osmnadtsatyi vek, edited by Petr Bartenev. Vol. 1. Moscow, 1869.

––––––Pis’ma i bumagi imperatritsy Ekateriny II khraniashchiesia v imperatorskoi publichnoi

biblioteke. Edited by A. Bychkov. St. Petersburg, 1873.

––––––Pis’ma i zapiski impertritsy Ekateriny vtoroi k grafu Nikite Ivanovichu Paninu. Moscow,

1863.

––––––“Pis’ma imperatritsy Ekateriny II k Grimmu (1774-1796).” Sbornik imperatorskogo

russkogo istoricheskogo obshchestva. Vol. 23. St. Petersburg, 1878.

––––––Pis’ma imperatritsy k Adamu Vasil’evichu Olsuf’evu, 1762-1783. Edited by M. N.

Longinov. Moscow, 1863.

––––––“Sobstvennoruchnye ukazy i pis’ma imperatritsy Ekateriny velikoi.” Edited by D. V.

Tsvetaev. Zhurnal Ministerstva iustitsii. 10 (1915), 182-218.

––––––Sochineniia imperatritsy Ekateriny II. Edited by A. N. Pypin. 12 vols. St. Petersburg, 1901-

1907

––––––Sochineniia imperatritsy Ekateriny II. Edited by A. Smirdin. 3 vols. St. Petersburg, 1849-

1850.

––––––The Grand Instructions to the Commissioners Appointed to Frame a New Code of Laws

for the Russian Empire. Translated by Michael Tatischeff. London, 1768.

––––––The Memoirs of Catherine the Great. Translated by M. Budberg. London: Hamish

Hamilton, 1955.

––––––The Memoirs of Catherine the Great. Translated by M. Cruse and H. Hoogenboom. New

York: Random House, 2006.

––––––The Nakaz of Catherine the Great: Collected Texts. Edited by William E. Butler and

Vladimir A. Tomsinov. Clark, NJ: The Lawbook Exchange, 2010.

117

––––––[and Friedrich M. Grimm]. Une correspondence privée, artistique et politique au siècle

des Lumières. Edited by S. Karp. Vol. 1. Moscow, 2016.

––––––Voltaire and Catherine the Great: Selected Correspondence. Translated and edited by

Antony Lentin. Newtonville, MA: Oriental Research Partners, 1977.

––––––Zakonodatel’stvo Ekateriny II. Edited by O. I. Chistiakov, T. E. Novitskaia, D. I. Arapov,

V. M. Kleandrova. 2 vols. Moscow: Iuridicheskaia literatura, 2000-1.

––––––Zapiski impertritsy Ekateriny vtoroi. St. Petersburg, 1907.

Corberon, Marie Daniel Bourrée de. Journal intime: un diplomate français à la cour de Catherine

II, 1775-1780. 2 vols. Paris, 1901.

Coxe, William. Travels in Poland, Russia, Sweden, and Denmark. Vol 2. London: T. Cadell and

W. Davies, 1802.

Cross, Anthony, ed. Engraved in the Memory: James Walker, Engraver to the Empress Catherine

the Great, and His Russian Anecdotes. Oxford: Berg, 1993.

[Dashkova, Catherine Romanovna]. The Memoirs of Princess Dashkova. Edited by Jehanne M.

Gheith. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995.

Diderot, Denis. Observations sur l’Instruction de S.M.I aux députés pour la confection des lois.

Paris: Marcel Rivière, 1921.

––––––Political Writings. Edited by John Hope Mason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1992.

Engel’gardt, L. N. Zapiski, 1766-1836. Moscow, 1867.

Fénelon, François. Telemachus. Edited by Patrick Riley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1994.

Frederick II. “An Essay on Forms of Government.” In Posthumous Works. Vol. 5. London, 1789.

––––––The Refutation of Machiavelli’s Prince, or Anti-Machiavel. Translated by Paul Sonnino.

Athens: Ohio University Press, 1981.

Fonvizin, D. I. The Political and Legal Writings of Denis Fonvizin. Edited and translated by Walter

Gleason. Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis Publishers, 1985.

––––––Sobranie sochinenii. 2 vols. Leningrad, 1959.

––––––Zhizn’ grafa Nikity Ivanovicha Panina. St. Petersburg, 1786.

118

[Golovina, V. N.] Memoirs of Countess Golovine: A Lady at the Court of Catherine II. Translated

by G. M. Fox-Davies. London: David Nutt, 1910.

Golubtsov, S. A., ed. Pugachevshchina. 3 vols. Moscow, 1926-1931.

Gribovskii, Adrian M. Vospominaniia i dnevniki. Edited by Petr Bartenev. Moscow, 1899.

––––––Zapiski o imperatritse Ekaterine velikoi polkovnika, sostoiashago pri ee osobe stats-

sekretarem. Moscow: Universitetskaia tipografiia, 1864

Hobbes, Thomas. De Cive. Edited by Richard Tuck and Michael Silverthorne. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1998.

––––––Leviathan. Edited by Richard Tuck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Harries, James. Diaries and Correspondence of James Harris, First Earl of Malmesbury. Edited

by the Third Earl of Malmesbury. Vol. 1. London: Richard Bentley, 1844.

Haxthausen, G. “Doneseniia datskogo poslannika gr. Gakstgauzena o tsarstvovanii Petra III i

perevorote 1762 goda.” Translated by N. A. Belevoi. Russkaia Starina, No. 158 (1914),

539-47; no. 160 (1914), 70-80, 262-83, 504-12; no. 161 (1915), 274-82, 532-44; no. 162

(1915), 33-7, 295-8; no. 164 (1915), 359-63; no. 169 (1917), 105-15.

[Hobart, J., The Earl of Buckinghamshire]. Despatches and Correspondence of John, Second Earl

of Buckinghamshire, Ambassador to the Court of Catherine II of Russia, 1762-1765. Edited

by A. Collyer. 2 vols. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1900-1902.

Kamer-fur’erskii tseremonial’nyi zhurnal. 177 vols. St. Petersburg, 1853-1917.

Karamzin, N. M. Istoricheskoe pokhval’noe slovo Ekaterine vtoroi. Moscow, 1802.

––––––Karamzin’s Memoir on Ancient and Modern Russia. Translated by Richard Pipes. Ann

Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2005.

[Khrapovitskii, A. V.] Dnevnik A. V. Khrapovitskago, 1782-1793: po podlinnoi ego rukopisi, s

biograficheskoiu stat’ei i ob’’iasnitel’nym ukazatelem Nikolaia Barsukova. Moscow:

Universitetskaia tipografiia, 1901.

Ligne, Charles Joseph de. Mémoires, Lettres et Pensées. Edited by Alexis Payne. Paris : Éditions

François Bourin, 1990.

Macartney, G. The Present State of Russia. London, 1768.

Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Prince. Edited by Quentin Skinner and Russell Price. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1988.

119

Martynov, M. N. ed. Vosstanie Emel’iana Pugacheva: sbornik dokumentov. Leningrad, 1935.

Masson, Charles François Philibert. Memoirs of Catherine II and the Court of St. Petersburg

during her Reign and that of Paul I, by one of her Courtiers. New York: Merrill & Baker,

1904.

Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat. The Spirit of the Laws. Edited by Anne Cohler, Basia

Carolyn Miller, and Harold Samuel Stone. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Osmnadtsatyi vek. Edited by Petr Bartenev, ed. 4 vols. Moscow, 1869.

Ovchinnikov, R.V. ed. “Sledstvie i sud nad E.I. Pugachevym.” Voprosy istorii (1966), no. 3, 124-

38; no. 4, 111-26; no. 5, 107-21; no. 7, 91-109; no. 9, 137-49.

[Peter I]. Peter the Great: His Law on the Imperial Succession. The Official Commentary.

Translated and edited by Antony Lentin. Oxford: Headstart History, 1996.

––––––The Spiritual Regulation of Peter the Great. Translated and edited by Alexander V. Muller.

Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1972.

Piermont, Frédéric-Henry Strube de. Lettres Russiennes. Paris, 1978.

Polnoe sobranie zakonov rossiiskoi imperii. 1649-1913, 234 vols. St. Petersburg, 1830-1916.

Poroshin, Semen Andreevich. Zapiski, sluzhashchiya k istorii ego imperatorskago vysochestva

blagovernago gosudarya tsesarevicha i velikago kniazia Pavla Petrovicha, naslednika

prestolu rossiiskago. St. Petersburg, 1844.

Pufendorf, Samuel. On the Duty of Man and Citizen According to Natural Law. Edited by James

Tully. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

[Pugachev, Emel’ian I.]. Emel’ian Pugachev na sledstvii: sbornik dokumentov i materialov.

Edited by R. V. Ovchinnikov and A. S. Svetenko. Moscow, 1997.

––––––Dokumenty stavki E. I. Pugacheva povstancheskikh vlastei i uchrezhdenii. Edited by A. I.

Aksenov, R. V. Ovchinnikov, and M. F. Prokhorov. Moscow: Nauka, 1975.

––––––Manifesty i ukazy E.I. Pugacheva. Edited by R.V. Ovchinnikov. Moscow, 1980.

Putnam, Peter, ed. Seven Britons in Imperial Russia, 1698-1812. Princeton: Princeton University

Press, 1952.

Richardson, William. Anecdotes of the Russian Empire. In a series of Letters written a few years

ago from St. Petersburg. New York: Arno Press, 1970.

120

Rulhière, M. de. Histoire ou Anecdotes sur La Révolution de Russie en l’Annee 1762. Paris, 1797.

Saldern, Caspar de. Histoire de la Vie de Pierre III, Empereur de toutes les Russies, présentant,

sous un Aspect impartial, les Causes de la Révolution arrivée en 1762. Metz: Collignon,

1802.

Sbornik imperatorskogo russkogo istoricheskogo obshchestva. 148 vols. St. Petersburg, 1867-

1916.

Ségur, Louis-Philippe. Memoirs and Recollections of Count Ségur: Ambassador from France to

the Courts of Russia and Prussia. 3 vols. London: Henry Colburn, 1825-7.

Senatskii arkhiv. 15 vols. St. Petersburg, 1888-1913.

Shcherbatov, Mikhail. M. On the Corruption of Morals in Russia. Translated and edited Antony

Lentin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969.

––––––“Zamechaniia na bol’shoi nakaz Ekateriny II.” In Neizdannie sochineniia. Moscow, 1935.

The Muscovite Law Code (Ulozhenie) of 1649. Edited and translated by Richard Hellie. Irvine,

CA: Charles Schlacks Jr., 1988.

Voltaire. Philosophical Dictionary. Edited and translated by Theodore Besterman. London:

Penguin Books, 2004.

––––––Political Writings. Edited and translated by David Williams. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1994.

Secondary Sources

Ageeva, Ol’ga G. Diplomaticheskii tseremonial imperatorskoi Rossii: XVIII vek. Moscow: Novyi

kronograf, 2013.

––––––Imperatorskii dvor Rossii, 1700-1796. Moscow: Nauka, 2008.

Alexander, John T. Autocratic Politics in a National Crisis: The Imperial Russian Government

and Pugachev’s Revolt, 1773-1775. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1969.

––––––Catherine the Great: Life and Legend. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.

––––––Emperor of the Cossacks: Pugachev and the Frontier Jacquerie of 1773-1775. Lawrence,

KS: Coronado Press, 1973.

––––––“Soviet Historiography on the Pugachev Revolt: A Review Article.” Canadian-American

Slavic Studies, IV (Fall 1970): 602-17.

121

Amburger, Erik. Geschichte der Behördenorganisation Russlands von Peter dem Grossen bis

1917. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1966.

Andrushchenko, A. I. Krest’ianskaia voina. Moscow, 1969.

Anderson, M. S. Eighteenth-Century Europe, 1713-1789. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966.

Anisimov, Evgenii V. Zhenshchiny na rossiiskom prestole. St. Petersburg: Norint, 1998.

––––––Gosudartsvennye preobrazovanniia i samoderzhavie Petra velikogo v pervoi chetverti

XVIII veka. St. Petersburg: RAN, Institut rossiiskoi istorii, 1997.

Austin, John. The Province of Jurisprudence Determined. Edited by Wilfred Rumble. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Avrich, Paul. Russian Rebels, 1600-1800. New York: Shocken Books, 1972.

Babkova, G. O. “Reformy Ekateriny II v oblasti ugolovnogo prava v sravnitel’noi perspektive:

proekt ugolovnogo ulozheniia i kommentarii na angliiskie zakony U. Blekstouna.” In

Fenomen reform na zapade v vostoke Evropy v nachale novogo vremeni (XVI-XVIII vv.):

sbornik statei, edited by M. M. Krom and L. A. Pimenova. St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo

evropeiskogo universiteta v Sankte-Peterburge, 2013. 270-89.

Baehr, Stephen L. “From History to National Myth: Translatio imperii in Eighteenth-Century

Russia.” The Russian Review. 37: 1 (January 1978), 1-13.

––––––“‘Fortuna Redux’: The Courtly Spectacle in Eighteenth-Century Russia.” In Great Britain

and Russia in the Eighteenth Century: Contacts and Comparisons, edited by Anthony G.

Cross. Newtonville, MA: Oriental Research Partners, 1979. 109-22.

––––––The Paradise Myth in Eighteenth-Century Russia: Utopian Patterns in Early Secular

Russian Literature and Culture. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990.

Bain, Nisbet. Peter III, Emperor of Russia: The Story of a Crisis and a Crime. New York: AMS,

1971.

Baker, Keith M. Inventing the French Revolution: Essays on French Political Culture in the

Eighteenth Century. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Bartlett, Roger P. “Catherine II’s Draft Charter to the State Peasantry.” Canadian-American Slavic

Studies. 23: 1 (Spring 1989), 35-57.

Bartelson, Jens. A Genealogy of Sovereignty. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Bartlett, Roger and Hartley, Janet, eds. Russia in the Age of the Enlightenment: Essays for Isabel

de Madariaga. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990.

122

Bates, David. States of War: Enlightenment Origins of the Political. New York: Columbia

University Press, 2011.

Beales, Derek. The Enlightenment and Reform in Eighteenth-Century Europe. New York: I. B.

Tauris, 2005.

Berlin, Isaiah. Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas. Edited by Henry Hardy.

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.

––––––Freedom and Its Betrayal: Six Enemies of Human Liberty. Edited by Henry Hardy.

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002.

––––––Liberty: Incorporating Four Essays on Liberty. Edited by Henry Hardy. Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2002.

––––––The Power of Ideas. Edited by Henry. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013.

––––––The Proper Study of Mankind: An Anthology of Essays. Edited by Henry Hardy. New York:

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000.

Bil’basov, V. A. Istoriia Ekateriny. 2 vols. Berlin, 1900.

Black, J. L. Citizens for the Fatherland: Education, Educators, and Pedagogical Ideals in

Eighteenth-Century Russia. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979.

Blanning, T.C.W. Joseph II. Harlow, UK: Longman, 1994.

––––––The Power of Culture and the Culture of Power: Old Regime Europe, 1660-1789. Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 2002.

Bloch, Marc. Feudal Society. Translated by L. A. Manyon. 2 vols. Chicago: The University of

Chicago Press, 1961.

––––––The Historian’s Craft. Delhi: Aakar Books, 2017.

Boesche, Roger. “Fearing Monarchs and Merchants: Montesquieu’s Two Theories of Despotism.”

The Western Political Quarterly. 43: 3 (December 1990), 741-61.

Borisova, Tatiana. “Russian National Legal Tradition: Svod versus Ulozhenie in Nineteenth-

century Russia.” Review of Central and East European Law. 33 (2008), 295-341.

––––––“The Digest of Laws of the Russian Empire: The Phenomenon of Autocratic Legality.”

Law and History Review. 30: 3 (August 2012), 901-25.

Brennan, James F. Enlightened Despotism in Russia: The Reign of Elizabeth, 1741-1762. New

123

York: Peter Lang, 1987.

Brett, Annabel and Tully, James, eds. Rethinking the Foundations of Modern Political Thought.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Brooke, Christopher. Philosophic Pride: Stoicism and Political Thought from Lipsius to Rousseau.

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012.

Brown, Wendy. Walled States, Waning Sovereignty. New York: Zone Books, 2017.

Bryce, James. Studies in History and Jurisprudence. 2 vols. Oxford, 1901.

Burgess, Glenn. Absolute Monarchy and The Stuart Constitution. New Haven: Yale University

Press, 1996.

Burke, Peter. The Fabrication of Louis XIV. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.

Butler, William, ed. Russian Law: Historical and Political Perspectives. Leyden: A. W. Sijthoff,

1977.

Cairns, John W. “Ethics and the Science of Legislation: Legislators, Philosophers, and Courts in

Eighteenth-Century Scotland.” Jahrbuch für Recht und Ethik. 8 (2000), 159-80.

Carrithers, David W., Mosher, Michael., and Rahe, Paul., eds. Montesquieu’s Science of Politics:

Essays on the Spirit of the Laws. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001.

Cassirer, Ernst. The Philosophy of the Enlightenment. Translated by Fritz C. A. Koelln and James

P. Pettegrove. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979.

Cherniavsky, Michael. “The Old Believers and the New Religion.” 25: 1 (March 1966), 1-39.

––––––Tsar and People: Studies in Russian Myths. New York: Random House, 1969.

Chistov, K.V. Russkie narodnye sotsial’no-utopicheskie legendy XVII-XIX vv. Moscow: Nauka,

1976.

Cizova, T. “Beccaria in Russia.” The Slavonic and East European Review. 40: 95 (June 1962),

384-408.

Collins, James B. The State in Early Modern France. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

2009.

Daly, Jonathan W. “On the Significance of Emergency Legislation in Late Imperial Russia.” Slavic

Review. 54: 3 (Autumn 1995), 602-29.

Daniel, Wallace L. Grigorii Teplov: A Statesman at the Court of Catherine the Great. Newtonville,

124

MA: Oriental Research Partners, 1991.

Dawson, Ruth. “Eighteenth-Century Libertinism in a Time of Change: Representations of

Catherine the Great.” Women in German Yearbook: Feminist Studies in German Literature

& Culture. 18 (Summer 2002), 67-88.

––––––“Perilous Royal Biography: Representations of Catherine II immediately after her Seizure

of the Throne.” Biography. 27: 3 (Summer 2006), 517-34.

De Dijn, Annelien. “On Political Liberty: Montesquieu’s Missing Manuscript.” Political Theory.

39: 2 (2011), 181-204.

––––––“Montesquieu’s Controversial Context: The Spirit of the Laws as a Monarchist Tract.”

History of Political Thought. 34: 1 (Spring 2013), 66-88.

––––––“Rousseau and Republicanism.” Political Theory. 46: 1 (2018), 59-80.

––––––“Was Montesquieu a Liberal Republican?” The Review of Politics. 76 (2014), 21-41.

Ditiatin, Ivan. Stat’i po istorii russkago prava. St. Petersburg, 1895.

Dixon, Simon. Catherine the Great. New York: HarperCollins, 2009.

––––––“Religious Ritual at the Eighteenth-Century Russian Court.” In Monarchy and Religion:

The Transformation of Royal Culture in Eighteenth-Century Europe, edited by M. Schaich.

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. 217-48.

––––––The Modernisation of Russia, 1696-1825. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

––––––“The Posthumous Reputation of Catherine II in Russia, 1797-1837.” The Slavonic and East

European Review. 77: 4 (October 1999), 646-79.

Dmytryshyn, Basil. "The Economic Content of the 1767 Nakaz of Catherine II." The American

Slavic and East European Review. 19: 1 (February 1960), 1-9.

Dolbilov, M. D. “Rozhdenie imperatorskikh reshenii: monarkh, sovetnik, i “vysochaishaia volia v

Rossii XIX v.” Istoricheskie zapiski. 9: 127 (2006), 5-48

Douglas, Robin. “Montesquieu and Modern Republicanism.” Political Studies. 60 (2012), 703-19.

Dubrovin, N. Pugachev i ego soobshchinki. 3 vols. St. Petersburg: Tipografiia I. N. Skorokhodova,

1884.

Dukes, Paul. Catherine the Great and the Russian Nobility: A Study Based on the Materials of the

Legislative Commission of 1767. London: Cambridge University Press, 1967.

125

––––––The Making of Russian Absolutism, 1613-1801. London: Longman, 1990.

Duran, James A. “Catherine II, Potemkin, and Colonization Policy in Southern Russia.” The

Russian Review. 28: 1 (January 1969). 23-36.

Dyzenhaus, David. “Kelsen, Heller and Schmitt: Paradigms of Sovereignty Thought.” Theoretical

Inquiries in Law. 16: 2 (2015), 337-66.

Dyzenhaus, David & Poole, Thomas, eds. Hobbes and the Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2012.

Edelstein, Dan. “Political Thought.” In The Cambridge Companion to the French Enlightenment,

edited by Daniel Brewer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.

Eliseeva, Ol’ga. Ekaterina velikaia. Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 2010.

Elias, Norbert. The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations. Translated

by Edmund Jephcott, Edmund. Edited by Eric Dunning, Johans Goudsblom & Stephen

Mennell. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2000.

––––––The Court Society. Translated by Edmund Jephcott. New York: Pantheon Books, 1983.

Erren, Lorenz. “Feofan Prokopovich’s Pravda voli monarshei as Fundamental Law of the Russian

Empire.” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History. 17: 2 (Spring 2016), 333-

60.

Evstratov, Alexeï. Les Spectacles Francophones à la cour de Russie (1743-1796): l’Invention

d’une Société. Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment. Oxford: Voltaire

Foundation, 2016.

Fedyukin, Igor. “’An Infinite Variety of Inclinations and Appetites’: Génie and Governance in

Post-Petrine Russia.” Kritika: Explorations in Russia and Eurasian History. 11: 4 (Fall

2010), 741-62.

Field, Daniel. Rebels in the Name of the Tsar. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989.

Figgis, Neville. The Divine Right of Kings. New York: Harper & Row, 1965.

Filmer, Robert. Patriarcha and Other Political Works. Edited by J. P. Sommerville. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punishment: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan

Sheridan. Penguin: London, 1971.

Fowler, M.R. and Bunck, J.M. Law, Power, and the Sovereign State: The Evolution and

Application of the Concept of Sovereignty. University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 1995.

126

Franklin, Julian. Jean Bodin and the Rise of Absolutist Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1973.

Frederiks, V. B. ed. 200-letie kabineta imperatorskago velichestva, 1704-1904: istoricheskoe

issledovanie. St. Petersburg 2011.

Freeze, Grigory L. The Russian Levites: Parish Clergy in the Eighteenth Century. Cambridge,

MA: Harvard University Press, 1977.

Fukuyama, Francis. The Origins of Political Order from Prehuman Times to the French

Revolution. London: Profile Books, 2012.

Fuller, Lon L. “Positivism and Fidelity to Law – A Reply to Professor Hart.” Harvard Law Review.

71: 4 (1958), 630-72.

––––––The Morality of Law. Revised edition. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969.

Geisman, P. A. and Dubovskoi, A. N. Graf Petr Ivanovich Panin, 1721-1789. St. Petersburg: N.

V. Vasil’evna, 1987.

Gleason, Walter. Moral Idealists, Bureaucracy, and Catherine the Great. New Brunswick, NJ:

Rutgers University Press, 1981.

––––––“Political Ideals and Loyalties of Some Russian Writers of the Early 1760s.” Slavic Review.

34 (1975), 560-75.

Gorbatov, Inna. Catherine the Great and the French Philosophers of the Enlightenment:

Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, and Grimm. Bethesda: Academica Press, 2006.

Gosudarstvennye uchrezhdeniia Rossii XVI-XVIII vv. Edited by N. B. Golikova. Moscow:

Izdatel’stvo moskovskogo universiteta, 1991.

Got’e, Iu. “Proiskhozhdenie sobstvennoi e. i. v. kantseliarii.” In Sbornik statei po russkoi istorii

posviashchennykh S. F. Platonovu. Peterburg, 1922. 346-55.

Graham, B., Gordon, C., and Miller, P. eds. The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality.

Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991.

Green, Leslie. The Authority of the State. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988.

Griffiths, David M. “Catherine II: The Republican Empress”. Jahrbücher für Geschichte

Osteuropas. Neue Folge, 21: 3 (1973), 323-44.

––––––“Eighteenth-Century Perceptions of Backwardness: Projects for the Creation of a Third

Estate in Catherinian Russia.” Canadian-American Slavic Studies. 13: 4 (Winter 1979),

127

452-72.

Grimm, Dieter. Sovereignty : The Origin and Future of a Political and Legal Concept. Translated

by Belinda Cooper. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015.

Haakonssen, Knud. The Science of a Legislator: The Natural Jurisprudence of David Hume and

Adam Smith. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a

Category of Bourgeois Society. Translated by Thomas Burger. Cambridge, MA: MIT

Press, 1991.

Hamburg, Gary. Russia’s Path to Enlightenment. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016.

Hampson, Norman. The Enlightenment. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1968.

Hanley, Ryan Patrick. “Enlightenment Nation Building: The “Science of the Legislator” in Adam

Smith and Rousseau.” American Journal of Political Science. 52: 2 (2008), 219-34.

Hart, Herbert L. A. “Positivism and the Separation of Laws and Morals.” Harvard Law Review.

71: 4 (1958), 593-629.

––––––The Concept of Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Henshall, Nicholas. The Myth of Absolutism: Change and Continuity in Early Modern European

Monarchy. New York: Longman, 1992.

Herzog, Tamar. A Short History of European Law: The Last Two and a Half Millenia. Cambridge,

MA: Harvard University Press, 2018.

Hinsley, F. H. Sovereignty. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

Hobsbawm, Eric. Bandits. New York: The New Press, 2000.

––––––“Peasants and Politics,” The Journal of Peasant Studies. 1: 1 (1973), 3-22.

––––––Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movements in the 19

and 20

Centuries. New York: Norton, 1965.

Hoch, Steven L. Serfdom and Social Control in Russia: Petrovskoe, a Village in Tambov. Chicago:

The University of Chicago Press, 1986.

Hoekstra, Kinch. “Early Modern Absolutism and Constitutionalism,” Cardozo Law Review 34: 3

(February 2013), 1079-98.

Hosking, Geoffrey. “Patronage and the Russian State.” The Slavonic and East European Review.

128

78: 2 (2000), 301-20.

Hughes, Lindsey A. J. “Courts at Moscow and St. Petersburg, c. 1547-1725.” In The Princely

Courts of Europe: Ritual, Politics, and Culture under the Ancien Régime, edited by John

Adamson. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1999.

––––––Russia in the Age of Peter the Great. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.

––––––Sophia, Regent of Russia, 1657-1704. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990.

Israel, Jonathan. A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of

Modern Democracy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010.

––––––Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750. Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 2002.

Istoriia pravitel’stvuiushchago senata za dvesti let, 1711-1911. Edited by N. D. Chechulin. 2 vols.

St. Petersburg: Senatskaia tipografiia, 1911.

Ivanov, O. A. Ekaterina II i Petr III: istoriia istoricheskogo konflikta. Moscow: Tsentrpoligraf,

2007.

Ivleva, Victoria, “Catherine II as Female Ruler: The Power of Enlightened Womanhood,”

Vivliofika: E-journal of Eighteenth-Century Russian Studies, 3 (2015), 20-46.

Jones, Gareth W. Nikolay Novikov: Enlightener of Russia. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1984.

––––––The Spirit of the "Nakaz": Catherine II's Literary Debt to Montesquieu.” The Slavonic and

East European Review. 76: 4 (1998), 658-67.

Jones, Robert E. “Catherine II and the Provincial Reform of 1775: A Question of Motivation.”

Canadian Slavic Studies. 4 (1970), 497-512.

––––––Provincial Development in Russia: Catherine II and Jakob Sievers. New Brunswick, NJ:

Rutgers University Press, 1984.

––––––“The Charter to the Nobility: A Legislative Landmark?” Canadian-American Slavic

Studies. 23: 1 (Spring 1989), 1-16.

––––––The Emancipation of the Russian Nobility. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973.

Jouvenel, Bertrand de. Sovereignty: An Inquiry into the Political Good. Chicago: The Chicago

University Press, 1957.

Kalmo, Hent, and Skinner Quentin, eds. Sovereignty in Fragments: The Past, Present, and Future

129

of a Contested Concept. Cambridge: Cambridge Univeristy Press, 2014.

Kamenskii, Aleksandr. “Catherine the Great.” Soviet Studies in History. 30: 2 (1991), 30-65.

––––––Ot Petra I do Pavla I. Moscow: Rossiisskii gosudarstvennyi gumanitarnyi universitet,

1999.

––––––Pod sen’iu Ekateriny…: vtoraia polovina XVIIIv. St. Petersburg: Lenizdat, 1992.

––––––The Russian Empire in the Eighteenth Century: Searching for a Place in the World.

Translated and edited by David Griffiths. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1997.

Kantorowicz, Ernst. The King’s Two Bodies. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016.

Keenan, Paul. St. Petersburg and the Russian Court, 1703-1761. New York: Palgrave Macmillan,

2013.

Khodarkovsky, Michael, “The Stepan Razin Uprising: Was it a “Peasant War”?” Jahrbücher für

Geschichte Osteuropeas 42: 1 (1994), 1-19.

Kiselev, Mikhail M. “Montesquieu’s Treatise De L’Esprit des Lois and Fundamental Laws in

Russia in the Early 1760s.” Quaesio Rossica. 5: 4 (2017), 1131-48.

Kivelson, Valerie A. Autocracy in the Provinces: The Muscovite Gentry and Political Culture in

the Seventeenth Century. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996.

––––––“The Constitutional Crisis of 1730 and the Evolution of Noble Political Culture.” In

Imperial Russia: New Histories for the Empire, edited by Jane Burband and David L.

Ransel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998.

––––––“Kinship Politics/Autocratic Politics: A Reconsideration of Early Eighteenth-Century

Political Culture.” In Imperial Russia: New Histories for the Empire, edited by Jane

Burband and David L. Ransel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998.

Kliuchevskii, V. O. Kurs russkoi istorii. Pereizdanie. Vol. 5. Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe

sotsial’no-ekonomicheskoe izdatel’stvo, 1937.

Koenigsberger, Helmut G. Early Modern Europe, 1500-1789. New York: Longman, 1987.

Kollmann, Nancy. “Ritual and Social Drama at the Muscovite Court” Slavic Review. 45: 3

(Autumn, 1986), 486-502.

Koselleck, Reinhart Critique and Crisis: Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern Society.

Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1998.

Krasner, Stephen. Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999.

130

Krichevtsev, M. B. Kabinet Elizavety Petrovny i Petra III: istoricherskii ocherk o lichnoi

kantseliarii monarkhov. Novosibirsk: B. i, 1993.

Kriegel, Blandine. The State and the Rule of Law. Translated by Marc A. LePain and Jeffrey C.

Cohen. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.

Krieger, Leonard. An Essay on the Theory of Enlightened Despotism. Chicago: The University of

Chicago Press, 1975.

––––––Kings and Philosophers, 1689-1789. New York: W. W. Norton, 1970.

Lappo-Danilevskii, A. S. “Ideia gosudarstva i glavneishie momenty eia razvitiia v Rossii so

vremen smuty do epokhi preobrazovanii.” Golos minuvshago. 2 (1914), 5-38.

––––––“L’Idée du l’état et son évolution en Russie depuis les troubles du XVII siècle jusqu’aux

réformes du XVIIIe.” In Essays in Legal History, edited by Paul Vinogradoff. London:

Oxford University Press, 1913.

Lee, Daniel. "Sources of Sovereignty: Roman Imperium and Dominium in Civilian Theories of

Sovereignty." Politica Antica. 2 (2012), 79-93.

––––––““Sovereignty as a Borrowed Thing”: Jean Bodin and Offices and Seigneurial

Government.” Political Theory. 41: 3 (2013), 409-40.

––––––“Unmaking Law: Jean Bodin on Law, Equity and Legal Change.” History of Political

Thought. 39: 2 (Summer 2018), 269-96.

LeDonne, John P. Absolutism and Ruling Class: The Formation of the Russian Political Order,

1700-1825. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.

––––––Ruling Russia: Politics and Administration in the Age of Absolutism, 1762-1796. Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1984.

––––––“The Ruling Class: Tsarist Russia as the Perfect Model.” International Social Science

Journal. 136 (May 1993), 285-300.

Lentin, Antony. “Did Montesquieu Know Pravda voli monarshei?” Study Group on Eighteenth-

Century Russia Newsletter. 27 (1999), 18-25.

––––––“Some Reflections on Pravda voli monarshei.” Study Group on Eighteenth-Century Russia

Newsletter. 24 (1996), 3-7.

Leonard, Carol S. Reform and Regicide: The Reign of Peter III of Russia. Bloomington: Indiana

University Press, 1993.

131

––––––“The Reputation of Peter III,” The Russian Review. 47: 3 (July 1988), 263-92.

Lieberman, David. “Blackstone’s Science of Legislation.” Journal of British Studies. 27: 2 (1988),

117-49.

––––––The Province of Legislation Determined: Legal Theory in Eighteenth-Century Britain.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Lieven, Dominic, ed. The Cambridge History of Russia. Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2006.

Lincoln, W. Bruce. In the Vanguard of Reform: Russia’s Enlightened Bureaucrats, 1825-1861.

DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1982.

Longworth, Philip. “The Last Great Cossack-Peasant Rising.” Journal of European Studies, 3

(1973): 1-35.

––––––“The Pretender Phenomenon in Eighteenth-Century Russia,” Past and Present. 66

(February 1975), 61-83.

––––––“The Pugachev Revolt: The Last Great Cossack-Peasant Rising.” In Rural Protest: Peasant

Movements and Social Change, edited by H. A. Landsberger. London: Macmillan. 194-

256.

––––––The Three Empresses: Catherine I, Anne I and Elizabeth of Russia. New York: Holt,

Rinehart and Winston, 1973.

Loughlin, Martin. “Droit Politique.” Jus Politicum: Revue de Droit Politique. 17 (2017), 295-335.

––––––Foundations of Public Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

––––––Political Jurisprudence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.

––––––Sword & Scales: An Examination of the Relationship Between Law & Politics. Oxford and

Portland, Oregon: Hart Publishing, 2000.

––––––The Idea of Public Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

––––––“Why Sovereignty?” In Sovereignty and the Laws: Domestic, European, and International

Perspectives, edited by Richard Rawlings, Peter Leyland, and Alison L. Young. Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 2013, 34-49.

Lipski, A. “A Re-Examination of the “Dark Era” of Anna Ioannovna,” The American Slavic and

East European Review. 15: 4 (December 1956): 477-88.

Madariaga, Isabel de. Catherine the Great: A Short History. New Haven: Yale University Press,

132

1990.

––––––Politics and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Russia. London: Longman, 1998.

––––––Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981.

––––––“Sisters under the Skin.” Slavic Review. 41: 4 (Winter 1982), 624-28.

Makarov, A. N. Uchenie ob osnovnykh zakonakh v russkoi iuridicheskoi literature XVIII-pevoi treti

XIX veka. St. Petersburg, 1913.

Marasinova, Elena. “Zakon” i “grazhdanin” v Rossii vtoroi poloviny XVIII veka: ocherki istorii

obshchestvennogo soznaniia. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2017.

Marker, Gary. Imperial Saint: The Cult of St. Catherine and the Dawn of Female Rule in Russia.

DeKalb: Northern Illinois University, 2007.

––––––Publishing, Printing, and the Origins of the Intellectual Life in Russia, 1700-1800

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985.

Massie, Robert. Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman. New York: Random House, 2016.

Mavrodin, V. V., ed. Krest’ianskaia voina v Rossii. 3 vols. Leningrad: 1961, 1966, 1970.

McGrew, Roderick E. Paul of Russia, 1754-1801. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.

Meehan-Waters, Brenda. “Catherine the Great and the Problem of Female Rule.” The Russian

Review. 34: 3 (July 1975). 294-307.

Miller, A., Sdvizhkov, D., and Shirle, I., eds. Poniatiia o Rossii. 2 vols. Moscow: Novoe

literaturnoe obozrenie, 2012.

Molloy, J. Fitzgerald. The Russian Court in the Eighteenth Century. 2 vols. London: Hutchinson,

1906.

Morigawa, Michael S. and Halperin, Jean-Louis, eds. Interpretation of Law in the Age of

Enlightenment: From the Rule of King to the Rule of Law. New York: Springer, 2011.

Munro, George. “The Charter to the Towns Reconsidered: The St. Petersburg Connection.”

Canadian-American Slavic Studies. 2: 1 (Spring 1989), 17-35.

Myl’nikov, Aleksandr. Petr III: povestvovanie v dokumentakh i versiiakh. Moscow: Molodaia

gvardiia, 2009.

Naumov, Viktor Petrovich. “Elizaveta Petrovna.” Russian Studies in History. 32: 4 (1994), 37-72.

133

Oda, Hiroshi. “The Emergence of Pravovoe gosudarstvo (rechtstaat) in Russia.” Review of Central

and East European Law. 3 (1999), 373-434.

Okenfuss, Max J. “Catherine, Montesquieu, and Empire.” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas.

Neue Folge. 56: 3 (2008), 322-29.

O’Malley, Lurana Donnels. The Dramatic Works of Catherine the Great: Theatre and Politics in

Eighteenth-Century Russia. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2017.

Omel’chenko, Oleg A. Kodifikatsiia prava v Rossii v period absoliutnoi monarkii (vtoraia

polovina XVIII veka). Moscow, 1989.

––––––“Monarkhiia prosveshchennogo absoliutizma v Rossii.” Ph.D. diss., Moskovskii

gosudarstvennyi industrial’nyi universitet, 2001.

––––––Problemy istorii absoliutizm: sbornik nauchnykh trudov. Moscow, 1983.

––––––Problemy pravovoi i politicheskoi ideologii: sbornik nauchnikh trudov. Moscow, 1989.

––––––“The “Legitimate Monarchy” of Catherine the Second: Enlightened Absolutism in Russia.”

Russia Studies in History. 33: 4 (1995), 66-94.

––––––Zakonnaia monarkhiia Ekateriny II: prosveshchennyi absoliutizm v Rossii. Moscow, 1993

Outram, Dorinda. The Enlightenment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Pangle, Thomas. Montesquieu’s Philosophy of Liberalism. Chicago: The University of Chicago

Press, 1973.

Papmahl, K. A. Freedom of Expression in Eighteenth-Century Russia. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1971.

Pereshkin, Mikhail Iur’evich. “Institut stats-sekretarei pri Ekaterine II, 1762-1796.” Ph.D. diss.,

Rossiiskaia akademiia gosudarstvennoi sluzhby pri prezidente rossiiskoi federatsii.

Moscow, 2004.

Pennington, Kenneth. The Prince and the Law, 1200-1600: Sovereignty and Rights in the Western

Legal Tradition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

Perrie, Maureen. “Popular Monarchism: The Myth of the Ruler from Ivan the Terrible to Stalin,”

in Reinterpreting Russia, edited by Geoffrey Hosking and Robert Service. London: Arnold,

1999. 170-82.

––––––“Popular Socio-Utopian Legends” in the Time of Troubles.” The Slavonic and East

European Review. 60: 2 (April 1982), 221-43.

––––––Pretenders and Popular Monarchism in Early Modern Russia. Cambridge: Cambridge

134

University Press, 1995.

Peters, Dorothea. Politische und gesellschaftliche Vostellungen in der Aufstandsbewegung unter

Pugačev, 1773-1775. Wiesbaden: O. Harrowitz, 1973.

Petschauer, Peter. “The Education and Development of an Enlightened Absolutist: The Youth of

Catherine the Great, 1729-1762.” Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1969.

Pettit, Philip. Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government. Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 1997.

Pintner, Walter M. & Rowney, Don K., eds. Russian Officialdom: The Bureaucratization of

Russian Society from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century. Chapel Hill: The University

of North Carolina Press, 1980.

Pipes, Richard. Russia under the Old Regime. New York: Penguin, 1995.

Poe, Marshall. “What Did Russians Mean When They Called Themselves ‘Slaves of the Tsar’?”

Slavic Review. 57 (1998), 585-608.

Poggi, Gianfranco. The Development of the Modern State. A Sociological Introduction. Stanford:

Stanford University Press, 1978.

––––––The State: Its Nature, Development, and Prospects. Stanford: Stanford University Press,

1990.

Poole, Stanley B. R. “Peter III and Pugachev.” In Royal Mysteries and Pretenders. London,

Blandford, 1969.

Problemy istorii absoliutizma: sbornik nauchnykh trudov. Moscow, 1983.

Prokhovnik, Raia. Sovereignty: History and Theory. Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2008.

Raeff, Marc. Michael Speransky, Statesman of Imperial Russia, 1772-1839. The Hague: Martinus

Nijhoff, 1969.

––––––Origins of the Russian Intelligentsia. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1966.

––––––“Pugachev’s Rebellion.” In Preconditions of Revolution in Early Modern Europe, edited

by Robert Forster and Jack P. Greene. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970.

161-202.

––––––“The Domestic Policies of Peter III and his Overthrow.” The American Historical Review.

75: 5 (June 1970), 1289-310.

––––––“The Empress and the Vinerian Professor: Catherine II’s Projects of Government Reform

135

and Blackstone’s Commentaries.” Oxford Slavonic Papers. New Series, 7 (1974), 18-41.

––––––“The Well-Ordered Police State and the Development of Modernity in Seventeenth- and

Eighteenth-Century Europe: An Attempt at a Comparative Approach.” American

Historical Review. 80 (1975), 1221-43.

––––––The Well-Ordered Police State: Social and Institutional Change Through Law in the

Germanies and Russia, 1600-1800. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983.

––––––Understanding Imperial Russia: State and Society in the Old Regime. Translated by Arthur

Goldhammer. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984.

––––––, ed. Catherine the Great: A Profile. New York: Hill and Wang, 1972.

––––––, ed. Russian Intellectual History: An Anthology. With an introduction by Isaiah Berlin.

New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966.

Ragsdale, Hugh. Tsar Paul and the Question of Madness: An Essay in History and Psychology.

Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988.

Ram, Harsha. “Russia and the Oriental Despot,” India International Centre Quarterly, 21: 2/3,

The Russian Enigma (Summer - Monsoon, 1994), 31-46.

Rasmussen, Karen M. “Catherine II and Peter I: The Idea of a Just Monarch.” Ph.D. diss.,

University of California Berkeley, 1966.

––––––“Catherine II and the Image of Peter I,” Slavic Review, 37: 1 (1978), 51-69

Ransel, David L. “Character and Style of Patron-Client Relations in Russia.” In Klientelsysteme

in Europa der frühen neuzeit, edited by Antoni Maczak. Berlin: Oldenbourg

Wissenschaftsverlag, 1988, 211-31.

––––––“Nikita Panin’s Imperial Council Project and the Struggle of Hierarchy Groups at the Court

of Catherine II.” Canadian Slavic Studies. 4 (1970), 443-63.

––––––“Political Perceptions of the Russian Nobility: The Constitutional Crisis of 1730.”

Laurentian University Review. 3 (1972), 20-38.

––––––The Politics of Catherinian Russia. The Panin Party. New Haven: Yale University Press,

1975.

Riasanovsky, Nicholas V. A Parting of Ways: Government and the Educated Public in Russia,

1801-1855.

––––––“Oriental Despotism and Russia.” Slavic Review. 22 (December 1963), 644-49.

136

––––––The Image of Peter the Great in Russian History and Thought. Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 1985.

Riley, Patrick. “How Coherent is the Social Contract Tradition?” Journal of the History of Ideas.

34: 4 (October – December 1973), 543-62.

––––––Will and Political Legitimacy: A Critical Exposition of Social Contract Theory in Locke,

Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013.

Rogger, Hans. National Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century Russia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press, 1960.

Roosevelt, Priscilla “Emerald Thrones and Living Statues: Theater and Theatricality on the

Russian Estate.” The Russian Review. 50: 1 (January 1991), 1-23.

Rowen, Herbert H. The King’s State: Proprietary Dynasticism in Early Modern France. New

Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1980.

Rowland, Daniel. “Did Muscovite Literary Ideology Place Limits on the Power of the Tsar (1540s-

1660s)?” The Russian Review. 49: 2 (April 1990), 125-55.

Rubiés, Joan-Pau. “Oriental Despotism and European Orientalism: Botero to Montesquieu.”

Journal of Early Modern History. 9: 1 (2005), 109-80.

Rubin-Detlev, Kelsey. The Epistolary Art of Catherine the Great. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation,

2019.

Ruff, Julius R. Violence in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2001.

Runciman, David. Pluralism and the Personality of the State. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1997.

Sagar, Paul. The Opinion of Mankind: Sociability and the Theory of the State from Hobbes to

Smith. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018.

Sbornik statei po russkoi istorii posviashchennykh S. F. Platonovu. Würzberg: Jal-reprint, 1978.

Schaich, Michael, ed. Monarchy and Religion: The Transformation of Royal Culture in

Eighteenth-Century Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Schippan, Michael, Die Aufklärung in Russland im 18. Jahrhundert. Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz

Verlag, 2012.

Schmitt, Carl. Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. Translated by

George Schwab. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985.

137

––––––The Concept of the Political. Translated by George Schwab. Chicago: The University of

Chicago Press, 2007.

Schneewind, J. B. The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modern Moral Philosophy.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Scott, H. M., ed. Enlightened Absolutism: Reform and Reformers in Later Eighteenth-Century

Europe. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1990.

Shackleton, Robert. Montesquieu: A Critical Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961.

Shchebal’skii, P. K. “Perepiska Ekateriny s gr. N. I. Paninym.” Russkii vestnik. 45 (1863), 748-62.

Shennan, Joseph H. Liberty and Order in Early Modern Europe: The Subject and the State, 1650-

1800. London: Longman, 1986.

––––––The Origins of the Modern European State, 1450-1725. London: Hutchinson University

Library, 1974.

Shklar, Judith. Montesquieu. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Skinner, Quentin. “A Third Concept of Liberty.” Proceedings of the British Academy. 117 (2002),

237-68.

––––––Hobbes and Republican Liberty. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

––––––“Hobbes and the Purely Artificial Person of the State.” The Journal of Political Philosophy.

7 (1999), 1-29.

––––––The Foundations of Modern Political Thought. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1978.

––––––“The Republican Ideal of Political Liberty.” In Machiavelli and Republicanism, edited by

G. Bock, Q. Skinner, and M. Viroli. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

––––––“The State.” In Political Innovation and Conceptual Change, edited by T. Ball, J. Farr, and

R. L. Hanson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

––––––Liberty before Liberalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Smith, Douglas. Working the Rough Stone: Freemasonry and Society in Eighteenth-Century

Russia. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1999.

Smithers, William W. “Russian Civil Law. The Period of the Tzarinas: 1725-96. Part IV.” The

American Law Register (1898-1907). 52: 11 (November 1904), 678-700.

138

Sorell, T., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1996.

Starr, Frederick S. Decentralization and Self-Government in Russia, 1830-1870. Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1972.

Strayer, Joseph. On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State. Princeton: Princeton University

Press, 1973.

Strugnell, Anthony. Diderot’s Politics: A Study of the Evolution of Diderot’s Political Thought After

the Encyclopédie. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973.

Sullivan, Vickie B. Montesquieu and the Despotic Ideas of Europe. Chicago: The University of

Chicago Press, 2017.

Syromiatnikov, B. I. ‘Regularnoe’ gosudarstvo Petra pervogo i ego ideologiia. Moscow:

izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1943.

Tamanaha, Brian. On the Rule of Law: History, Politics, Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2000.

Taranovsky, F.V. “Politicheskaia doktrina v “Nakaze” imperatritsy Ekateriny II.” Sbornik statei po

istorii prava, posviashchennyi M.F. Vladimirskomu-Budanovu. Kiev, 1903. 67-109.

Thompson, Martyn P. "The History of Fundamental Law in Political Thought from the French

Wars of Religion to the American Revolution." American Historical Review. 91 (1986),

1103-28.

Tomaselli, Sylvana. “The Spirit of Nations.” In The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century

Political Thought, edited by Mark Goldie and Robert Wokler. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2006.

Troitskii, S. M. Russkii absoliutizm i dvoriantsvo v XVIII v.. Moscow: Nauka, 1974.

Tuck, Richard. The Sleeping Sovereign: The Invention of Modern Democracy. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Tunc, André. “Royal Will and the Rule of Law: A Survey of French Constitutionalism Under the

Ancien Regime.” In Government Under Law, edited by Arthur E. Sutherland. Cambridge,

MA: Harvard University Press, 1956.

Turchetti, Mario. “‘Despotism’ and ‘Tyranny’: Unmasking a Tenacious Confusion,” European

Journal of Political Thought. 7: 2, 159-82.

Ullmann, Walter. Principles of Government and Politics in the Middle Ages. London: Methuen,

1961.

139

Uspenskij, B. A. “Tsar and Pretender; samozvančestvo or Royal Imposture in Russia as a Cultural-

Historical Phenomenon.” In The Semiotics of Russian Culture, edited by Ann Shukman.

Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Contributions, 1984, 259-92.

Valensi, Lucette. The Birth of the Despot: Venice and the Sublime Porte. Translated by Arthur

Denner. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993.

Van Horn Melton, James. The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2001.

Venturi, Franco. “Oriental Despotism.” Journal of the History of Ideas. 24: 1 (January – March,

1963), 133-42.

Vincent, Andrew. Theories of the State. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987.

Viroli Maurizio. Republicanism. Translated by A. Shugaar. New York: Hill and Wang, 2002.

Wada, Haruki. “The Inner World of Russian Peasants.” Annals of the Institute of Social Science,

University of Tokyo. 20 (1979), 61-94.

Walicki, Andrzej. A History of Russian Thought From the Enlightenment to Marxism. Stanford:

Stanford University Press, 1979.

Wallace, Daniel. Grigorii Teplov: A Statesman at the Court of Catherine the Great. Newtonville,

MA: Oriental Research Partners, 1991.

Ware, Timothy. The Orthodox Church: An Introduction to Eastern Christianity. Penguin, 2015.

Waugh, Daniel Clarke. “We Have Never Been Modern: Approaches to the Study of Russia in the

Age of Peter the Great.” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas. 49: 3 (2001), 321-45.

[Weber, Max]. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Edited and translated by H. H. Gerth and

C. Wright Mills. New York: Routledge, 2009.

Weickhardt, George G. “Political Thought in Seventeenth-Century Russia.” Russian History. 21:

3 (Fall 1994), 316-337.

Whisenhunt, William B. In Search of Legality: Mikhail M. Speranskii and the Codification of

Russian Law. Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 2001.

Whittaker, Cynthia H. “Chosen by “All the People”: The Idea of an Elected Monarchy in

Eighteenth-Century Russia”. Acta Slavica Iaponica, 18 (2001), 1-18.

––––––“Russian Monarchy: Eighteenth-Century Rulers and Writers in Political Dialogue.

DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003.

140

––––––“The Idea of Autocracy Among Eighteenth-Century Russian Historians.” Russian Review.

55 (1996), 149-71.

––––––“The Reforming Tsar: The Redefinition of Autocratic Duty in Eighteenth-Century Russia.”

Slavic Review. 51 (1992), 77-98.

Winch, David. “Science and the Legislator: Adam Smith and After.” The Economic Journal. 93:

371 (1983), 501-20.

Wirtschafter, Elise. K. Religion and Enlightenment in Catherinian Russia: The Teachings of

Metropolitan Platon. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2013.

––––––The Play of Ideas in Russian Enlightenment Theater. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University

Press, 2003.

Wisner, David A. The Cult of the Legislator in France 1750-1830: A Study in the Political

Theology of the French Enlightenment. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1997.

Wolff, Larry. Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment.

Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994.

Wolff, Robert P. In Defense of Anarchism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.

Woronzoff-Dashkoff, A. Dashkova: A Life of Influence and Exile. American Philosophical Society,

2008.

Wortman, Richard S. Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy. 2 vols.

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995-2000.

––––––“Russian Monarchy and the Rule of Law: New Considerations of the Court Reform of

1864.” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History. 6: 1 (Winter 2005), 145-

70.

––––––Russian Monarchy: Representation and Rule. Collected Articles. Boston: Academic

Studies Press, 2013.

––––––The Development of a Russian Legal Consciousness. Chicago: The University of Chicago

Press, 1976.

––––––The Power of Language and Rhetoric in Russian Political History: Charismatic Words

from the 18

to the 21

Centuries. London: Bloomsbury Academic Publishing, 2017.

––––––“The Representation of Dynasty and “Fundamental Laws” in the Evolution of Russian

Monarchy.” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History. 31: 2 (Spring 2012),

265-300.

141

––––––Visual Texts, Ceremonial Texts, Texts of Exploration: Collected Articles on the

Representation of Russian Monarchy. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2014.

Wren, Melvin. The Western Impact on Tsarist Russia. Huntington, NY: Robert E. Krieger

Publishing Company, 1976.

Yaney, George L. The Systematization of Russian Government: Social Evolution in the Domestic

Administration of Imperial Russia, 1711-1905. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973.

Zaretsky, Robert. Catherine and Diderot: The Empress, the Philosopher, and the Fate of the

Enlightenment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019.

Zhivov Viktor. “The Myth of the State in the Age of Enlightenment and Its Destruction in Late

Eighteenth-Century Russia.” Russian Studies in History. 48: 3 (2009), 10-29.

Zitser, Ernst A. The Transfigured Kingdom: Sacred Parody and Charismatic Authority at the Court

of Peter the Great. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004.