Russian Enlightenment

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The Russian Age of Enlightenment was a period in the 18th century in which the government began to actively encourage the proliferation of arts and sciences, which had a profound impact on Russian culture. During this time, the first Russian university was founded, a library, a theatre, a public museum, as well as relatively independent press. Like other enlightened despots, Catherine the Great played a key role in fostering the arts, sciences, and education.


Early developments[edit]



Shuvalov was also the patron of the greatest Russian polymathMikhail Lomonosov– who left his mark in various branches of science, religious philosophy, poetry, and fine arts.[1] Although his research inevitably eroded the authority of religious doctrines, Lomonosov himself was a devout Christian.

Catherine the Great[edit]

View of Ivan Shuvalov's art gallery

Catherine the Great considered herself an enlightened despot. She read the most prominent philosophes of the day, including Montesquieu and Voltaire and tried to adhere to Enlightenment ideas.[3] She wished to bring Russia up to par with its neighbors not only in a military sense, but also politically, culturally, and intellectually.

Many of Catherine's contemporaries questioned her adherence to Enlightenment ideals and thought she was an egoist, merely using concepts from the Age of Enlightenment to further her selfish gains.[4] Gender played a primary role in these criticisms. Contemporaries interpreted her personality as combining masculine strength with feminine vanity.[4]

"Westernization" carries different meanings in different countries over varying time periods. But in relation to Russia during the 18th century, the term meant legislative changes to economics, politics and culture. It also entails the Russian gentry's adherence to a set standard and its imitation of the Western values.[5] Westernization in Russia included the modernization of machinery, the refinement of a more efficient bureaucracy, and the acceptance of Western European tastes.[5]

Russia produced more goods, and enlisted thousands of troops during Catherine's reign. While she acquired new lands, including Crimea and Poland, updated the army, and supported burgeoning manufactures, she really wanted to westernize Russia by reforming it, specifically the lives of the gentry, qualitatively. Bringing Russia to an equal level with the rest of Europe intellectually was a major concern of Catherine's. For this reason she created laws that justified her rule.

Foreign policy[edit]

Almost every Russian ruler has sought to conquer ports in warm waters. Peter I fought the Ottoman Empire over the Crimea. Gaining access to the Crimea would have given Russia access to the Black Sea and the Dardanelles. While Russia occupied Poland, France realized that the Ottoman Empire was the only country in a position to topple Catherine. Supported by France, the Turks told Russia to leave Poland. Russia declared war on the Sultan immediately afterward.[6] After several successful victories including the destruction of the Turkish naval fleet, Catherine impressed many European powers. "Catherine, who had at first been treated as a dilettante in politics, now appeared to all the Western chanceries as an evil genius.[6]

Catherine returned to the Crimea in November 1776, and imposed a ruler for the reoccupation of the peninsula because of disturbances there.[7] The Crimeans revolted in 1778, after which the Russians went in the same year and installed their own leader to the throne.[7]

Because she gained significant diplomatic power in the early 1770s Catherine considered something called the "Greek Project".[4] This consisted of pushing the Turks out of Europe but it also carried another more utopian aspect: reclaiming Constantinople from Muslim to Orthodox Christian rule. The Second Turkish War, 1787–1792, ended with Russia gaining the fortress of Ochakov and the Black Sea shore to the Dniester river, and the Ottoman Empire recognizing Russia's annexation of Crimea.[4]

Retaking Constantinople and creating a Christian empire centered there does not appear to be a very enlightened plan. However, Catherine saw land grabbing as an easy way to assert Russia's intentions. By declaring that Constantinople would one day belong to Christians, she also appeased the Church, which still held significant influence in the 18th century. She wished to show Western Europe that her country would be a powerful presence in European political matters. Catherine's partition of Poland was an even more blatant example of power politics. Russia invaded three separate times, in 1772, 1793, and 1795, and divided the once important European state between itself, Austria and Prussia.[4] The 3rd May Constitution of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth voted in 1791 was considered by Catherine as a Jacobin[8] threat[9] and as a therefore presenting a threat to Russia's monarchy and its influence in Poland,[10][11] which ultimately led to a military expedition resulting in the destruction of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.[12]

Catherine's land acquisitions show the quantitative changes she made to the Russian Empire. But she went far beyond this type of modernization that Peter the Great used in Russia. The institution of laws and importation of liberal Western European thought served as means of expanding the state.



Catherine believed in Enlightenment political thought. She reformed the strong and powerful bureaucracy Peter the Great established.[13] She established fifty "gubernii" provinces, divided into ten districts.[4] 300,000 to 400,000 people lived in each province and 20,000 to 30,000 lived in every district.[4] A governor, and a network of officials, divided by executive, legislative, and judicial functions were ideally supposed to run each province. Catherine also wanted the gentry to play a role in local political affairs.[4]

Catherine's political reforms went beyond perfecting Russia's bureaucracy. Her Nakaz or "Instruction" expressed her political ideals.[14] She wrote this for her Legislative Commission, summoned in 1767 to draft a Code of Laws for Russia.[14] Representatives from all the free estates of the realm, government bodies, and non-Russian people considered the state of Russia's laws. Several of her advisers suggested putting in place a council to regulate legislation but this was promptly rejected.[13] Once Catherine began to lose the slightest amount of power she reverted to the ways of the past: autocratic rule. She ruled through a series of functional colleges headed by boards under presidents, who worked in cooperation with an appointed administrative Senate of 20 or 30 people.[14] The Senate possessed no legislative powers.[14] Catherine kept the power to pass laws.

She realized the need for the establishment of laws.[13] Some argue that Catherine used the Enlightenment as a way of placing "her rule on firm philosophic foundations and providing a national guide for the moral leadership of Europe."[3] Others say she used her laws for purely practical reasons. She established a civil law code in January 1774 and a criminal code during the second half of the 1770s, but never finished a unitary code.[15] She drew heavily in the Nakaz from the latest continental jurisprudence but ignored references to natural law.[15]

Criticism of the Empress's reforms abounded. Professor Semeon Desnitskii, a follower of Adam Smith, suggested that Catherine institute elections every five years of a representative Senate and separation of powers.[13] Mikhail Kheraskov used novels and poems to show that the duty of the autocrat was to transition from an enlightened absolute monarch to a constitutional or limited monarch.[13]

To understand the significance of Catherine's rule, one must look back on Peter the Great's reign. Peter established the idea of a "reforming tsar." He broke away from the old Muscovite conception of the Russian sovereign as "good tsar."[13] From his reign on all tsars were judged by the standard of: modernizing economics, society, politics and cultural life, gaining influence abroad, and leading Russia on secular Western European ideas.[13] No longer did leaders paternalistically protect the Russian homeland.

Russia became a major European power because of Peter's reforms. From Peter's rule set the precedent for succeeding leaders. For the next 150 years, Russian rulers followed "reform conservatism" which consisted of maintaining the state's power, fighting off fundamental change, but also adopting progressive changes that gave the autocracy a feature of liberalism, which was actually conservative in practice.[13]


Considered the "only articulate ideologist to rule Russia between Ivan IV and Lenin", Catherine not only wanted to have military and political equality with Western European countries but she also strove to emulate their enlightened rule by supplanting western thought and practices onto the Russian gentry.[3] Catherine did this because of universal standards Europeans used to compare themselves.[16]

In contrast to Peter I, who regulated Russian society through public ceremony and legislation, Catherine promoted "the internal mechanisms of behavior regulation."[16] She attempted to achieve this remarkable goal through education. Russia set up state-run schools that provided students with learning in the three Rs, as well as about behavior proper for citizenship.[16] The schools stressed two principles above all else: the need to be patriotic, and the need to accept innovation.[16]

The upper classes' increased purchasing power caused them to see themselves as equals to the French, British, Swiss, Danish and Swedes. This led the gentry, viewed as the "pillar of absolutism and of the Russian state,"[5] to "domesticate—in the most literal sense of the word—the appointments of Western European polite society."[16]

Catherine called the gentry, in her Nakaz as "an Appellation of Honour, which distinguishes all those who are adorned with it from every other Person of Inferior Rank."[16] In 1785, she fused the notion of reward for service with the idea of inherited rank in "Declaration of the Rights, Freedom and Privileges of the Well-Born Russian Nobility": "The right to the name of dvoryanin (gentry) comes down from the quality and virtue of those men who took the lead in ancient times and distinguished themselves by particular service."[16] She codified this by ordering assemblies of the gentry in regional centers to keep genealogical records.[16] Catherine's reforms allowed those with historically powerful families to keep their status in society, and others to rise due to service.[16] A nobleman no longer showed his refinement through his servitude to the court but through what he owned and what company he kept.[16]

Catherine's Smol'nyi Institute in St. Petersburg,[15] based on the French Maison royale de Saint Louis,[15] taught upper-class girls polite manners in society and gave them a moral education.[16] Girls studied not only "dance, music, sewing drawing, and household economy" but also "law, mathematics, languages, geography, history, economy, architecture, science, and ethics."[16]

Quarenghi's design for the Smolny Institute

Her Sub-Commission on Education concerned itself not with the subtleties of sciences, but with primary, secondary, and higher education. The idea was to teach children the duties required of those who live in society.[14] The Sub-Commission began its work in May 1768 and used English universities, the Prussian system of national education and "Irish school" as models.[14] The state then established free, co-educational high schools and primary schools in provincial towns in 1786.[15] By 1764, district towns received primary schools however; rural schools did not come into existence.[15] Few children attended public schools. Around 176,000 children passed through Russian public school between 1786 and 1796.[15] Russia lacked the finances and teachers to run schools properly.[15]

Secularization, a "western" principle, officially came to Russia through monetary necessity. Of course Enlightenment ideas about religion influenced the gentry but Catherine established the Commission on Church Lands on February 6, 1764 to support the finances of the state.[15] The appropriation of Church lands to the state brought a substantial amount of money, land, and peasants under Catherine's control.[15]


The state's efforts to "westernize" Russia's gentry greatly affected their economic cirmcumstances. The wealthiest classes gained more income in order to afford education and western habits.[5] The gentry consisted of a fairly impoverished majority and small extremely wealthy minority.[15] The lower gentry farmed and lived slightly better than the few serfs they had.[15] In 1777, 59 percent of the gentry owned less than twenty serfs.[15] The lives of serfs and peasants remained relatively the same during Catherine's reign. In 1762 the peasantry was divided into three groups: private serfs, Church peasants, and state peasants.[14] Consisting of 56 percent of the peasantry, private serfs were bound to their villages because of tax purposes and military conscription.[14] Their masters had a legal responsibility to feed them in time of famine, care for them in old age, and pay their poll-tax.[14]

The upper classes of Russia put more money into manufacturing, which grew during Catherine's reign.[15] The number of enterprises increased from 600–700 in 1762 to over 2,000 when her reign ended.[7] Russian agriculture grew during Catherine's reign due to the economic pressure put upon the gentry that needed more wealth in order to indulge in Western European tastes.[5] The gentry used potentially arable land in old areas as well as new land on the peripheries of the empire.[5] This expansion occurred during the 1780s and 90s.[5]

Throughout Catherine's reign she tried to find a balance between liberal political economic ideas in the tradition of Adam Smith, and the strong regulation started by Peter I.[15] She preferred hired labor in industry, lowered internal tariffs and custom duties, and did not support monopolies.[15] Catherine forbade the purchase of serfs for industry.[7]

Mining was a source of Russian wealth. Catherine invited German minerology expert Franz Ludwig von Cancrin to Russia and put him in charge of a major salt mine at Staraya. Cancrin's son Georg von Cancrin joined him later in Russia, where he rose to the post of Minister of Finance.

In the 1762, the Church owned two-thirds of ploughed land.[15] After Catherine's reform, secularized Church land brought the state "an annual income of 1,370,000 rubles, of which less than 463,000 was returned to the Church each year between 1764 and 1768."[15]

Catherine and Voltaire[edit]





Voltaire as propagandist

A foreign-born woman and usurper of the Russian throne, Catherine the Great held no legitimate claim to the crown. Her sole connection with the house of Romanov derived from her marriage to the late Emperor, Peter III, whose murder she was widely known to have orchestrated. The royals who held genealogical claims to the throne overtly devised plots to replace the new Tsarina. Both Ivan VI and Paul I, armed with supporters, threatened Catherine's rule, as well as the guards who possessed the military might to overthrow the Empress.[20] In a letter to Voltaire on September 21, 1762, Catherine acknowledged the conspirators and potential traitors all around her: "Every guardsman when he looks at me can say: 'I made that woman.'" A shrewd politician, Catherina also knew she needed the support of the Court, the public, and other powerful regimes in order to maintain power, suppress rebellion, and emerge as a leading world power.

Catherine's letters to Voltaire often served as a means to woo the influential philosopher to her cause. Rather than pursue intellectual subjects, Catherine utilized her letters to flatter and cajole the philosopher. While Voltaire often attempted to initiate the Empress in an intellectual dialogue, Catherine often sidestepped his inquiries.[21] For example, "Voltaire did try to start a discussion…in the case of the [Claude Adrien] Helvetius translation by Golitsuin. In response to Voltaire's comments…Catherine blithely agrees…but confesses she has not read the book yet,".[22] One has the impression that Voltaire would have liked to dwell on literary, philosophic or artistic subjects as he did with his other correspondents. However, Catherine was far more interested in winning the philosopher's approval than in entering a philosophical dialogue. The content of her letters does not permit one to see her primary motives as anything other than propagandistic. She is not at all interested in broadening her cultural and intellectual horizons. Catherine seeks no advice from Voltaire on how to rule Russia….Instead Catherine tries to impose her views, justify her policies and explain away her failures. Voltaire is, for Catherine, the best method of diffusing favorable information in Europe.[23] As a testament to Catherine's political ingenuity, she skillfully kept Voltaire at arm's length, feigning a belief in absolute liberalism in her letters while, in practice, implementing repressive reforms in her country. For example, the opinion she shares with Voltaire regarding serfdom did not always correspond with the laws she passed. "The Empress turned over 800,000 peasants to private proprietors. The 1763 law limiting freedom of movement by requiring the peasant to get a permit from the landlord before he/she could leave the property has been cited as evidence that Catherine enserfed peasants in the name of fiscal expediency,".[24] Catherine's correspondence largely acted as propaganda intended to assure Voltaire (and Europe) of Russia's prosperity.[22] Handicapped by distance and a lack of information, Voltaire was simply too willing to believe in Catherine's liberalism.

Despite her impure intentions, Catherine remained a loyal and unwavering disciple of Voltaire. Catherine revered the philosopher whose work she had read since her youth. Upon receiving a poem from Voltaire dedicated to her, the empress was "totally overwhelmed by her emotions…In a letter full of flattery and profound respect…Catherine announced that she had no desire to read any literary works that were not written as well as Voltaire's,".[25] She often called Voltaire her "teacher", her "thinking instructor", and her "master of thought,".[26] After his death in 1778, Catherine wrote letters to her contemporaries imploring them to study and memorize his works. "She believed that the study of his work educated citizens, that it helped to form geniuses, heroes and writers, and that it would help to develop thousands of talents,".[27] Her devotion to Voltaire after his death remains evident of her sincere and genuine reverence of him.

Throughout her reign, Catherine remained committed to intellectual pursuits and encouraged members of her court to engage in them as well. The empress provided her palace staff with a library and reportedly spent an average of 80,000 rubles annually on books.[28] In his essay, "Catherine the Great: Enlightened Empress?" Simon Henderson implores the reader to consider the constraints the empress faced when deciding if she was truly an enlightened despot. Henderson asserts that despite her deceptive tactics, she always possessed an "unswerving commitment to modernizing Russia,".[28] Early on, Catherine concerned herself with the philosophies and culture of the enlightenment. Though she often agreed with their liberal positions, her status in court was entirely reliant upon the support of noble families. As a result, the Empress could not always implement reforms the way she would have liked. For example, when confronted with the issue of serfdom, Catherine initially suggested in her proposal of "the Instruction" that landowners offer serfs the option to "purchase their freedom" [29] or that the government limit the period of servitude to six years.[29] However, the nobles omitted this section from the document as it did not benefit them. "Rather than seeing her as insincere in her concern for the peasantry, historians have recently highlighted…what she might have achieved had the circumstances been different,".[24] Despite the constraints, Catherine did manage to implement few policies that benefitted the serfs. In 1767 it was forbidden for foster parents to enserf illegitimate children and in 1781 enserfment of prisoners of war was prohibited and a law passes that saw marriage of a free man to a serf woman emancipate the woman. Catherine is known to have investigated and then bought out landowners who were reported to ill-treat their serfs,.[24] Voltaire outwardly supported emancipation of the serfs. The philosopher believed that the Russian aristocracy "should not permit the vast majority of the people to go on suffering from the arbitrariness of [the] very laws who ought to be to afford protection to each and all,".[30] Furthermore, in an attempt to create a more educated bureaucracy, Catherine moved to bring better education to her people. In 1786, she established the Russian Statute of National Education to launch a national school system.[24] As a result of her campaign to modify Russia, Catherine successfully introduced the tsardom to the Western world and furthered the degree to which it was involved in European affairs. While Catherine worked to bring enlightenment principles to Russia, Voltaire worked to improve her reputation in Europe. The philosopher enthusiastically adopted her cause, commending her to friends in high places, advising her in politics, and distributing her texts to the liberal media, thereby cementing her title as an enlightened despot. "Voltaire participated in a campaign to protect Catherine's reputation…he wrote pamphlets in support of her policies…[and] published her pronouncements in the western press,".[31] In a letter to Marquis D'Argenson, a French statesman, Voltaire asked him to help "re-establish [Catherine's] reputation in Paris", (Lentin 13). Catherine, happy with rise to popularity, admits to Prince De Ligne: "It was certainly Voltaire who brought me into fashion,".[31]

However, Voltaire certainly recognized the benefits of fraternizing with the Empress of Russia. The philosopher enjoyed socializing with Europe's elite and often boasted of his influential friends. "He avowed the usefulness of having a crowned up [his] sleeve…".[32] Furthermore, as a result of his association with Catherine, Voltaire saw it beneficial for his own reputation to rid the Empress of her disparaging image. "As Catherine's name was linked more and more to that of the philosophes, it became important that she be cleared of such any unsavory charges,".[33] Thus neither pen pal was possessed entirely "pure" intentions. Yet, despite their ulterior motives, the correspondence remains an important document recording the political pursuits of an Empire. Catherine's alignment with Voltaire acted as an early indication of the Russian tsardom moving towards closer relations with Europe.



Both Catherine and Voltaire wrote to each other in generally approbatory tones. Voltaire's letters to Catherine have been described as "a catalogue of extravagant and unqualified compliments, and fulsome approbation of her policies."[35] He even addressed her as "my Catherine." While Catherine also flattered Voltaire in her letters, she wrote in a more contrived manner, perhaps due to the fact that her secretary Pictet thoroughly revised the letters (unlike the letters she wrote to Frederick the Great) prior to sending them.[19] The main difference between the two sets of letters seems to be that "[Catherine] compliments Voltaire, to tickle his vanity and play on his prejudices", while Voltaire's compliments "convey undertones of hero-worship."[19]

Domestic affairs




Nevertheless, Voltaire made clear his stance regarding serfdom in his submission for an essay competition held by the Free Economic Society of St. Petersburg in 1767. For the subject topic of the contest, Catherine chose "the merits of private ownership of land by the peasants." Voltaire's essay, to his disappointment, only received an honorable mention.[37]

Foreign affairs

The majority of Catherine and Voltaire's correspondence took place during the years 1769–1778, a period in which Catherine found herself largely involved with foreign affairs. Thus, much of their correspondence focuses on Russia's wars in Poland and Turkey and on the themes of religion and civilization.[38]

When Catherine first invaded Poland, Voltaire believed, contrary to popular opinion, that she had done so based on religious tolerance. He believed that she wanted to restore the rights of the non-Catholic Polish minorities rather than to acquire Polish land. Voltaire was proven wrong in 1772, after Catherine's first partition of the country. However, he never condemned Catherine for deceiving him, but rather congratulated both her and the Poles on the outcome. Their discussions of Poland thus reveal what Peter Gay has called a "lack of accurate information, compounded by a deliberate refusal to learn the truth."[39] The affair greatly damaged Voltaire's reputation in Europe.



A more conservative approach was taken by Mikhail Shcherbatov, a publicist and historian whose notion of liberty was influenced by the works of Rousseau. Shcherbatov delivered a scathing criticism of the existing social institutions, maintaining that mass education—rather than far-reaching political reforms and the abolition of serfdom—may be more effective in improving the morals of Russian society.



Catherine's friend Yekaterina Dashkova—sometimes viewed as a precursor of feminism—led the Russian Academy of Sciences for many years. In 1783, she instituted the Russian Academy, which she modeled after the French Academy. Seeking to promote knowledge and study of the Russian language, the Russian Academy prepared the first comprehensive dictionary of the Russian language.



Parasha Zhemchugova, a serf actress-turned-countess.



Even Catherine's favourite poet, Gavrila Derzhavin—who sought in his odes to combine amusement with instruction—would see some of his poems banned from print during the last years of her reign.


See also: Russian opera





Other music[edit]









  1. ^ a b Gonchar, L. F (2008). Philosophy. Part 1. Moscow: Moscow State Industrial University. p. 300. ISBN 9785276014753. 
  2. ^ ФИЛОСОФСКИЙ ВЕК ИВАН ИВАНОВИЧ ШУВАЛОВ (1727–1797) ПРОСВЕЩЕННАЯ ЛИЧНОСТЬ В РОССИЙСКОЙ ИСТОРИИ (PDF). Saint Petersburg: Russian Academy of Sciences. 1998. 
  3. ^ a b c Billington, James H. The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretive History of Russian Culture. Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1966. pp. 217–26. Print.
  6. ^ a b Troyat, Henri. Catherine the Great. New York: Penguin Books, 1980. n.p. Print.
  7. ^ a b c d de Madariaga, Isabel. Catherine the Great: A Short History. Vol. 1. n.p.: Yale University, 1990. N. pag. 1 vols. Print.
  18. ^ For an overview of Catherine's many intellectual interests, see: Frank T Brechka, "Catherine the Great: The Books She Read", The Journal of Library History 4, no. 1 (Jan. 1969): 39–52.
  20. ^ (Lentin 9)
  21. ^ (Wilberger 19)
  22. ^ a b (Wilberger 157)
  23. ^ (Wilberger 182)
  24. ^ a b c d (Henderson 17)
  25. ^ (Gorbatov 74)
  26. ^ (Gorbatov 65)
  27. ^ (Gorbatov 66)
  28. ^ a b (Henderson 15)
  29. ^ a b (Henderson 16)
  30. ^ (Neserius 36)
  31. ^ a b (Lentin 14)
  32. ^ (Lentin 16)
  33. ^ (Wilberger 147)
  34. ^ a b Carolyn H. Wilberger, "Voltaire and Catherine the Great." in Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, ed. Theodore Besterman (Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation, 1976), 159.
  • A. Lentin. Voltaire and Catherine the Great: Selected Correspondence. 1974. p. 9.
  • Wilberger, Carolyn. Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century. 1976. p. 158.
  • Henderson, Simon. "Catherine the Great: Enlightened Empress?" 2005. p. 15.


  • Wirtschafter, Elise Kimerling. "Religion and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Russia: Father Platon at the Court of Catherine II", Slavonic & East European Review, Jan–April 2010, Vol. 88 Issue 1/2, pp. 180–203
  • Zhivov, Viktor M.. "The Myth of the State in the Age of Enlightenment and Its Destruction in Late Eighteenth-Century Russia", Russian Studies in History, Winter 2009/2010, Vol. 48 Issue 3, pp. 10–29