Download Catherine the Great Activity - Marion County Public Schools

Rulers of the Age of Enlightenment (Activity)
Enlightened Despot - During the 18th century, enlightened despots were European kings and queens
who had absolute power over their domains yet at the same time, inspired by the ideals of
Enlightenment philosophy, attempted to make their governments more rational and efficient. Those
despots were often in conflict with the clergy and the nobility, who wished to retain their traditional
privileges.
Catherine the Great of Russia was seen by some people as Catherine the Great and by
others as an unscrupulous, undisciplined, and self-serving ruler.
Directions:
1. Read her biography.
2. Then try to imagine yourself as one of the following
characters mentioned in her biography.







Peter III
A member of the aristocratic class
A criminal
A serf
A member of the Cossacks
A student
A peasant
3. Write a short description of stating what each person
would have thought of Catherine the Great's reforms, and
whether they would have viewed her as an Enlightened
Despot or Selfish Ruler.
Peasant
A peasant is a person of the lower class who works as a landowner or agricultural laborer. Peasants in
historic times had limited or no access to education, culture, or economic development and often
worked for the wealthy. The peasant class has tended to decrease with industrialization, as farming is
mechanized and rural dwellers move to the cities. The small-scale agriculture peasants typically engage
in, in which they consume almost of all of what they produce, is often seen as inefficient in developed
countries.
Catherine the Great
For more than 30 years, Catherine the Great
ruled Russia with such energy and flair that she stamped an entire
epoch with her name. She is admired as Catherine the Great by most
Russians because the country became strong enough under her rule to
threaten the other great powers, and her brilliant court was conversant
with the most interesting cultural developments in Europe. Her critics
point to her unscrupulous methods, undisciplined private life, and lack
of compassion for the poor. She identified her own interests with those
of the Russian state and worked without respite for its glorification.
Catherine was born a princess on May 2, 1729, but not in Russia. She
was named Sophie Freiderike Auguste at her birth in the German
principality of Anhalt-Zerbst. Her father, Christian August, served as a
general in the Prussian Army, and her mother was Princess Johanna
Elizabeth of Holstein-Gottorp. This connection to Holstein brought
additional power to the family. Catherine received her formal education
from a tutor, who taught her religion, history, and French.
At age 15, Catherine traveled to Russia, where she met the youth whom
her parents had arranged for her to marry. Karl Ulrich was the German
duke of Holstein-Gottorp, but he was also the grandson of Peter I and was in line to inherit the Russian
throne as Grand Duke Peter. Catherine assumed the title Grand Duchess Catherine Alekseyevna and
married Peter the following year in 1745. Peter was a difficult man with personality disorders and a
fondness for alcohol who brought Catherine a great deal of humiliation during the 18 years of their
marriage. Her ambition to remain attached to the future ruler of Russia kept Catherine in the loveless
marriage, though she deceived her husband with several lovers.
In January 1762, Empress Elizabeth died, and the throne passed to Peter, who became Peter III. Though
he was unfit in many ways to rule an empire, Peter's most alarming drawback at the moment of his
ascension was his devotion to Frederick II of Prussia, with whom Russia was at war. Peter made peace
with Frederick and also made plans to thwart Catherine's ambitions and have her removed from the
court, but Catherine too had plans. Moreover, Catherine had the support of the military and the Streltsy,
or royal guard, who helped her to seize power. She also had the support of much of the aristocratic
class, who admired her sophisticated nature. When Catherine had herself proclaimed empress in mid1762, Peter abdicated and retired to his country estate, where he was killed one week later, undoubtedly
by Catherine's supporters.
Though she had usurped the throne, Catherine was truly dedicated to the future of Russia and was
determined to increase its strength and power. She was also excited by the idea of fomenting a national
culture, one that shared the ideals of the Enlightenment but was more than just an imitation of
intellectual movements in France. She threw herself into the duties of a ruler, moving on several fronts
at once. Though Catherine admired the ideas of such Enlightenment theorists as Jean-Jacques
Rousseau and the Baron de Montesquieu, she knew that the reforms they suggested would be difficult
to implement in Russia.
Catherine nevertheless convened a commission in 1767 to compile a new code of laws and provided
the delegates with a Nakaz, or set of instructions, so voluminous and liberal it surprised many. She had
worked on the Nakaz for two years, writing much of it but borrowing heavily from Enlightenment
authors. She asserted that all subjects should be equal before the law, torture should be abolished,
capital punishment used only in extreme circumstances, and religious dissent should be tolerated. She
did not advocate dismantling serfdom but did raise questions about its legitimacy. Yet the delegates to
the commission, from all walks of life, could not agree among themselves on anything, and the
commission eventually dissolved without producing anything.
Frustrated by the obstacles to internal reform, Catherine turned to the arena of foreign affairs to build
the prestige of the empire and her place within it. In 1768, war with Russia's traditional enemy, the
Ottoman Empire, brought early victories and seemed quite popular. As the fighting dragged on,
however, it caused certain hardships that were intensified by the outbreak of a plague in Moscow. It
was under these conditions that a rebellion erupted in the Ural Mountains in 1773 and spread popular
uprisings across a wide swath of the empire.
The rebellion was led by Emelyan Pugachev, a former leader of the Don Cossacks. It spread swiftly
throughout southeast Russia as some 30,000 rebels captured towns and cities, burned the houses of
noblemen, and tortured government officials. Pugachev readied his troops to invade Moscow in 1774,
but fortunately for Catherine, the war with Turkey was concluded at this time, and she was able to
deploy her best troops against the peasant rebels. It did not take long for the veteran force to crush the
rebellion, and Pugachev was executed in 1775.
The severity of the rebellion changed Catherine's attitude toward Russia's poor majority, however.
Having once believed the condition of serfdom to be inhumane, Catherine now worked to better
systematize the bondage of Russia's agricultural laborers. She imposed serfdom where it had not
existed previously, as in the Ukraine, and used the forced labor of 95% of the population to help finance
her other projects. Ten years later, in 1785, she would issue the Charter of the Nobility that ended the
obligations of noblemen toward the government and exempted them from direct taxes and corporal
punishment.
Catherine engaged in administrative reforms that made government more efficient and pursued the
expansion of the education system. She began elementary schools in some districts, high schools
appeared in the major cities, and she organized a college of medicine at the University of Moscow. In
the field of health, she encouraged the use of inoculations and quarantines, effective against smallpox.
The government also undertook a massive building campaign.
It was after the defeats of Pugachev and the Ottoman Turks that Grigori Potemkin began his career as a
political adviser to Catherine, who did not, as a rule, delegate important matters to others. Although she
had many lovers—her voracious sexual appetite caused scandalous talk—and on numerous occasions
accepted their advice in the political realm, she maintained control. Potemkin, her chief minister from
1774 until 1791, and with whom she had an affair for two years, was the one man among her advisers
who exerted great power. Potemkin was an experienced diplomat, and his audacious advice prompted
Catherine in her expansion of the empire.
Catherine handled foreign relations realistically and aggressively and had already annexed territory
along the Baltic coast and through the partition of Poland even before Potemkin came to power. It was
Potemkin, however, who planned the acquisition of the Crimea from the Turks. Catherine wanted to
obtain Bessarabia and control the Black Sea, Constantinople, and the Dardenelles Straits. In 1783,
Potemkin arranged the annexation of Crimea from that principality's khan, a crucial acquisition that
established Russian power on the Black Sea. Catherine soon established the city of Odessa, which
fulfilled the Russian desire for an important warm-water port. Unsatisfied, Catherine was determined to
end the Turkish presence in Europe. In 1787, Russia entered into an alliance with Austria and again
went to war on the Ottomans. A treaty five years later resulted in the Turks finally withdrawing their
troops from between the Bug and Dnieper rivers and confirmed Catherine's complete control of the
Crimea.
In 1793, Catherine again sent Russian troops into Poland and in cooperation with Prussia, arranged a
second partition. This time, Catherine obtained most of Lithuania and the western Ukraine. A third
partition occurred in 1795 after an uprising led by Tadeusz Kosciuszko. The arrangement gave
Catherine the rest of Lithuania and the Ukraine, along with Courland, while Prussia and Austria also
received substantial territory. Poland was thus eliminated as an independent nation; all told, the
partitions resulted in Russia gaining 190,000 square miles.
Catherine's "enlightened absolutism" never encompassed republicanism—indeed, she opposed the
French Revolution as too extreme. For the most part, her Enlightenment reforms did not extend beyond
society's upper levels, and tensions long present in Russia worsened. To monarchists, Catherine
appeared highly successful, gaining territory and forging both a truly national state and a European
power. However, the peasants suffered enormously, and the government often functioned chaotically.
When Catherine died in St. Petersburg on November 17, 1796, she left behind a nation whose exterior
appearance hid huge internal problems.
PETER III
Peter III was czar of Russia for six months during 1762. He is considered one
of Russia's worst rulers for his irresponsible behavior and for voluntarily
returning all the territory Russia had gained during the Seven Years' War.
Peter was born on February 21, 1728, the son of Duke Charles Frederick of
Holstein-Gottorp and Anna Petrovna. His mother was the daughter of Peter I
(the Great) and Catherine I. Because his mother died young in 1731 and his
father died in 1738, Peter was placed in the care of military tutors under the
supervision of his uncle, Adolph Frederick, the Bishop of Lubeck. A Swedish
marshall named Brummer was his primary tutor and treated Peter with
harshness that frequently crossed into abuse. He forced Peter to kneel for
hours on dried peas after making mistakes. Instead of producing a young
officer, the tutors brought up an immature, emotionally unbalanced boy who
had no experience of kindness and whose proudest moment was being
promoted to lieutenant by his distant father.
In 1742, Peter was summoned to Moscow to the court of his aunt, Empress Elizabeth Petrovna. She
named him her heir and supervised his conversion to Russian Orthodoxy. Peter never sufficiently
learned Russian, and neither Elizabeth nor a specially recruited team of teachers could correct the
defects in Peter's early education, although they tempted him with a series of miniature scientific and
military models that Peter used as toys. Disgusted, Elizabeth decided to find Peter a wife and
concentrate on developing their offspring as future czars. She chose Sophia of Anhalt-Zerbst, a cousin
of Peter's from a minor German court, and brought her to Russia for betrothal in 1744. From the
beginning, Sophia made an effort to fit into the Russian court. She took the name Catherine after her
conversion to Orthodoxy. Peter, who was jealous of her success, caught measles and nearly died; the
cost of his survival was a hideous rash of pockmarks that alarmed his future bride.
Peter and Catherine were married in St. Petersburg, and Elizabeth awaited the birth of an heir. When
nothing happened, she literally locked up the young couple in their apartments under the strict
supervision of chaperones. While under that pressure, Peter revealed his ugly nature. He beat dogs,
abused servants, and threw tantrums, none of which endeared him to Elizabeth (who described him as
a monster) or to his young wife. Eventually, in September 1754, Catherine gave birth to a son named
Paul, who was probably fathered by Serge Saltykov with Elizabeth's blessings. Now having done his
duty, Peter was allowed to take a mistress of his own and chose Elizabeth Vorontsova, an uncouth,
badly behaved aristocrat whose tastes matched his own. During those years, Peter was embarrassed
and humiliated by Catherine's affair with Gregory Orlov. He conspired to turn the empress against
Catherine over her contacts with the English ambassador and one of the Russian generals, but failed.
Empress Elizabeth died on January 5, 1762, leaving Russia in the middle of the Seven Years' War
against Prussia. Peter acted swiftly to end the war and enter a treaty of aid with Prussia, an action that
outraged the Russian officer corps. Peter behaved badly at Elizabeth's funeral (he forced his attendants
to chase his train and refused to pay homage), while Catherine won much admiration for serving as
chief mourner. Peter openly planned to get rid of Catherine and marry Vorontsova and made that
obvious by excluding Catherine from toasts and prayers for the royal family. Peter seemed determined
to outrage all sections of Russian society. He snubbed priests by establishing a Lutheran chapel in the
palace, brought in a Holstein bodyguard unit, and planned to turn Russian resources to conquests in
northern Germany.
With the support of the army and the Orlovs, Catherine planned to overthrow Peter and rule herself. In
June 1762, she was crowned empress as Catherine the Great while Peter and Vorontsova were en route
to the country estate at Peterhof. With 14,000 Russian soldiers marching against him, Peter fled to
Kronstadt, where he was forced to surrender to Catherine. He was placed under house arrest and sent
to the royal estate at Ropsha. Peter sent a stream of messages to Catherine, offering to abdicate and
asking that Vorontsova join him in imprisonment. Fearing Peter's existence would give opportunity to
enemies, Catherine and Orlov arranged that he be killed there on July 18, 1762. Peter's death was
explained as a severe case of colic, and the body was displayed publicly (the strangulation marks
around his neck were neatly hidden by a neckerchief). Years later, Emilyan Pugachev, a Cossack rebel,
claimed to be Peter III, escaped from prison and living in hiding.
COSSACKS
The Cossacks are a Russian tribal group of horsemen
from the west Asian steppes who are known for their
warlike nature. The Cossacks probably originated
from the serfs in the Moscow area during the 14th and
15th centuries. They fled their peasant lives under the
yoke of the aristocratic boyars and established
farming and stock-raising communities along the
Dnieper, Don, Kuban, and Ural rivers and in Siberia.
The name is probably from the Turkic kazak, which
translates variously as "freeman" or "wanderer." They
first appeared as raiders and pirates in the 1500s and
became both soldiers of the czar and pioneers almost
by accident.
In 1581, the Cossacks were hired by a merchant family,
the Stroganovs, to drive back Tatars who had been
controlling Siberia and raiding into Muscovite lands.
Siberia was seen as a potential source of wealth in
furs that the Stroganovs, with royal support, could exploit. To benefit trade, the Stroganovs also hoped
to turn the Cossacks, who had often raided their caravans, into allies or else to see them die at the
hands of the Tatars.
Under the leadership of Yermak, their hetman (chief), 800 Cossacks entered Siberia in September 1581.
Why they launched their campaign at the beginning of winter is a mystery, as they suffered in the open.
In the spring of 1582, they pushed deeper into Siberia and met forces of the main Tatar chieftain,
Kutchum Khan. At first, the Cossacks fared well against superior forces because they had harquebuses
and the Tatars had no experience with gunpowder. With those matchlocks, Yermak defeated Kutchum's
forces and captured Kutchum's capital at Sibir. However, the Cossack chief had lost many of his men to
disease, exposure, and guerrilla warfare by the Tatars. Although Yermak died a year later (after most of
his men), the power of the Tatars was broken, and the Russian czar Ivan IV expanded his country
eastward.
The early Cossacks tended to move and raid by river, establishing villages and trading posts at river
junctions and engaging in pillage and commerce much like the early founders of Russia, the Vikings.
The Cossacks tamed the frontier for their own purposes, but at the same time, they acted as willing or
tacit agents of the czar. By the 1630s, Cossacks had reached the Pacific Ocean, and a generation later,
they had traversed the Aleutians into North America. Their wandering also took them southward toward
the Caspian and Black seas, with Russian authority and settlement moving in behind them. In 1650, the
Russian Khabarov led a Cossack force across the Amur River in search of sables. They encountered
Manchu tax collectors and soon thereafter, Chinese troops. Russians sparred with Manchus along the
frontier for almost 40 years, and the Cossacks did most of the fighting. After signing a treaty in 1689
that ceded control of central Asia to the Manchus, the Cossack tradesmen looked toward the Pacific.
Cossack fur traders explored and trapped in Alaska, western Canada, and even the Rocky Mountains.
Meanwhile, Cossack and Russian interests did not always coincide in the western lands. Although they
served Czar Ivan IV in his campaigns in Astrakhan and the Crimea, relations with later czars ebbed and
flowed. During the Time of Troubles, a conflict over the throne between Boris Godunov and Dimitri III, a
pretender claiming to be Ivan IV's grandson, the Cossacks seized the opportunity to establish a
homeland for themselves along the Don River.
In 1648, the Cossack uprising began after the Poles attempted to acquire territory in the Ukraine that
was populated by Zaporogue Cossacks. The Poles attempted both to impose feudalism on the
population and to ban the Russian Orthodox Church. Under the leadership of hetman Bohdan
Khmelnytsky, a mixed Cossack and Muslim Tatar army from the Crimea routed a Polish army at Korsun.
Believing that his people alone could not defeat the Poles, Khmelnytsky offered his homeland, the
Ukraine, to Czar Alexis I. Under the Act of Pereyaslav, Russia took over the Ukraine in return for
guaranteed local autonomy for the Cossacks. The Russo-Polish Wars continued until 1667 with the
occasional interference of Sweden and the shifting loyalties of various Cossack and Tatar forces.
Russia gained most of the Ukraine. When Czar Alexis I proved tyrannical, Stepan Razin led an uprising
that temporarily established an independent state around Astrakhan and Tsaritsyn (present-day
Volgograd).
The Cossacks once again fought for the czar when Peter I captured the Black Sea port of Azov in 1696,
a battle in which the Don Cossacks played the major role. In 1705, Peter I created a new army by
drafting a peasant out of every 20 households for lifetime military service, but he raised a separate
force of 100,000 Cossacks. When Catherine the Great, known as Catherine the Great, became czarina,
she too had mixed relations with the Cossacks. Although she invited 54 Cossacks to be among the 564
representatives from across Russia to assist in drafting a new legal code, her reluctance to emancipate
the serfs provoked a Cossack revolt. In 1772, Emelyan Pugachev, a Don Cossack and veteran of service
in the Russian Army during the Russo-Turkish Wars and the wars against Prussia, claimed that he was
Peter III (who had died some years earlier) and stated he would overthrow the usurper Catherine the
Great. With the aid of almost every contingent in southern Russia that had a grudge against Catherine
the Great, Pugachev raised 20,000 men and captured a number of cities, including Kazan and Saratov,
before marching on Moscow. Catherine the Great looked to the nobility for aid, and disciplined imperial
troops defeated the Pugachev Rebellion. The rebels surrendered their leader to Catherine the Great,
cementing the fate of serfs as well as the relationship between the monarch and the aristocracy.
Another role in which the Cossacks gained notoriety was in attacks on Jews. During the War of the
Polish Succession, Cossacks had instituted pogroms in the territory they occupied, and when Czar
Alexis I joined with the Cossacks against Poland, his armies killed Jews as well. Again in Catherine the
Great's time, they slaughtered Jews along the Polish frontier. In 1734, 1750, and 1768, Cossacks
ravaged Jewish communities in Kiev and throughout the Ukraine. In the last instance, they claimed to
have a document from Catherine the Great herself giving them authority "to exterminate the Poles and
the Jews, the desecrators of our holy religion." By this time, the Cossacks had become master
horsemen, and the image of the pogroms against the Jews was to be equated with the Cossack on
horseback.
In the 19th century, the czars began to use the Cossacks not only as part of the army but also for
suppressing political dissent. The reputation they had developed in the pogroms was reinforced by the
appearance of Cossack cavalry breaking up meetings of whatever groups the government deemed
dangerous. When the Russian Revolution of 1905 began, Cossack troops forced it into submission.
Cossack horsemen fought for the czar during World War I, but when the Russian Revolution of 1917
began, the Cossacks had had enough and would not help Czar Nicholas II. However, they did fight
against the Russian Red Army during the Russian Civil War, although they were ultimately defeated and
forced to submit to the communist system.
The Cossacks were forbidden after the Russian Revolution to serve in the military or even maintain
their cavalry traditions, but in 1936, Joseph Stalin relented and formed Cossack units that fought
against the Germans. Some, however, emulated other Ukrainians who welcomed the Nazi Party as
liberators from the communists, and some Cossack units served with the Germans. Whether fighting
for or against the invaders, Cossacks went into battle on horseback, probably the last time any large
mounted units will ever operate in warfare.
In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Cossack people have enjoyed something of a
resurgence. In all their old territories, but mainly in Kazakhstan, various associations have formed to
perpetuate their culture. Such organizations have spread as far northward as Moscow and St.
Petersburg. Cossacks still seem to fight on both sides of the Russian government, however, by
demanding local autonomy yet protesting Russian cession of territory like the Kuril Islands. In 1992,
Boris Yeltsin gave the Cossacks the status of an ethnic group and called for the use of Cossack troops
to protect Russia's borders.