The Russian nobility ( Dvoryanstvo) arose in the 14th century and essentially governed Russia until the October Revolution of 1917.
The Russian word for nobility, Dvoryanstvo (дворянство), derives from the Russian word dvor (двор), meaning the Court of a prince or duke (kniaz) and later, of the tsar. A noble is called dvoryanin (pl. dvoryane). As in other countries, nobility was a status, a social category, but not a title.
* Ancient nobility—which the descendants of Rurik and Gediminas and boyars inherited: e.g., the Shuyskies, Galitzins, Naryshkins, Khilkoffs, Gorchakovs, Belosselsky-Belozerskys and Chelyadnins.
Unlike the ancient nobility, which was exclusively hereditary, the remaining classes of nobility could be acquired. A newly designated noble was usually entitled to landownership. A loss of land did not automatically mean loss of nobility. In later Imperial Russia, higher ranks of state service (see Table of Ranks) were automatically granted nobility, not necessarily associated with landownership.
Titled nobility (титулованное дворянство) was the highest category: those who had titles such as prince, count and baron. The latter two titles were introduced by Peter the Great. A baron or count could be either proprietary (actual) ( владетельный (действительный))—i.e., who owned land in the Russian Empire—or titular (титулярный), i.e., only endowed with the title.
Hereditary nobility (потомственное дворянство) was transferred to wife, children, and further direct legal descendants along the male line. In exceptional cases, the emperor could transfer nobility along indirect or female lines, e.g., to preserve a notable family name.
Personal nobility (личное дворянство) was transferable only to the wife and was of much lower prestige.
Unpropertied nobility (беспоместное дворянство) was nobility gained by state service, but which was not entitled to land ownership.
In addition, the ancient nobility (Древнее дворянство) was recognized, descendants of historical boyars and knyazes.
Russian did not employ a nobiliary particle (as von in German or de in French) before a surname, but Russian noblemen were accorded an official salutation that varied by their ranks: your nobility (ваше благородие), your high nobility (ваше высокоблагородие), your high ancestry (ваше высокородие), etc.
In 1762 Peter III abolished compulsory military service for nobles. Marc Raeff (Origins of the Russian Intelligentsia) has suggested this was not a noble victory but a sign the state didn't need them as much now they had plenty of trained officials. From 1782, a kind of uniform was introduced for civilian nobles called uniform of civilian service or simply civilian uniform. The uniform prescribed colors that depended on the territory. The uniform was required at the places of service, at the Court, and at other important public places. The privileges of the nobility were fixed and were legally codified in 1785 in the Charter to the Gentry. The Charter introduced an organization of the nobility: every province (guberniya) and district (uyezd) had an Assembly of Nobility. The chair of an Assembly was called Province/District Marshal of Nobility.
By 1805, the various ranks of the nobility had become confused, as is apparent in War and Peace. Here, we see counts who are wealthier and more important than princes. We see many noble families whose wealth has been dissipated, partly through lack of primogeniture and partly through extravagance and poor estate management. We see young noblemen serving in the Army, but we see none who acquire new landed estates that way. (This refers to the era of the Napoleonic Wars. Tolstoy reported some improvement afterwards: some nobles paid more attention to estate management, and some, like Andrey Bolkonsky, freed their serfs even before the tsar did so in 1861.
Obrok or cash rent was most common in the north while barshchina or labour rent was found mainly in the southern Black Earth Region. In Nicholas I's reign the latter brought three times the income of cash rent though this needed less administration.
The nobility was too weak to oppose the emancipation of the serfs. In 1859, a third of noble's estates and two thirds of their serfs were mortgaged to noble banks or the state. The nobility was also weakened by the scattering of their estates, lack of Primogeniture and the high turnover and mobility from estate to estate.
After the October Revolution of 1917 all classes of nobility were legally abolished. Many members of the Russian nobility who fled Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution played a significant role in the White Emigre communities that settled in Europe, in North America, and in other parts of the world. In the 1920s and 1930s, several Russian nobility associations were established outside Russia, including groups in France, Belgium, and the United States. In New York, the Russian Nobility Association in America was founded in 1938. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there has been a growing interest among Russians in the role that the Russian nobility has played in the historical and cultural development of Russia.
Between 1722 and 1845 hereditary nobility was given for long military service at officer rank, for civil service at the rank of Collegiate Assessor and with any order of the Russian Empire.
Between 1845 and 1856 hereditary nobility was bestowed for long service at the rank of Major and State Counsellor, to all holders of the Order of Saint George, the Order of Saint Vladimir,the Order of Saint Anne the Order of Saint Stanislaus. Since 1856, hereditary nobility was given to those rising to the rank of Colonel, captain of the first rank, and Actual State Counsellor, all grantee of the Order of Saint George,the Order of White Eagle, the Order of Saint Vladimir, the first class of the Order of Saint Anne and the first class of the Order of Saint Stanislaus. The qualification of nobility was further restricted - only someone rewarded with first class (degree) of any order of Russian Empire, the order Order of Saint George, and (from 1900)the order of Order of Saint Vladimir of the third class (or higher) could become hereditary noble. Grantees rewarded with lesser than first degree of other orders of Russian Empire,or of lesser degree in Order of Saint Vladimir, could became of personal nobility.
* The right of possession of populated estates (until 1861), including virtual ownership of the serfs who worked on the estates.
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In 1892 she met Alexej von Jawlensky, who desired to be her protégé, and in 1896 she, Jawlensky, and their servant moved to Munich. For the sake of Jawlensky's painting, Werefkin interrupted her painting for almost ten years.
She created her first expressionist works in 1907. In these she followed Paul Gauguin's and Louis Anquetin's style of "surface painting", while also showing the influence of Edvard Munch. In 1909, the Neue Künstlervereinigung München (New Association of Artists in Munich, NKVM) was founded. It became a forum of exhibitions and programming.
At the outbreak of the First World War, they immigrated to Switzerland, near Geneva. They later moved to Zurich. By 1918, they had separated, and Werefkin moved alone to Ascona, on Lago Maggiore. In 1924 she founded the artist group "Großer Bär" (i.e., Big Bear, Ursa Major).
In her later years, she painted posters. Her friends "Carmen" and "Diego Hagmann" protected her from poverty.
She was buried in the Russian graveyard in Ascona.
Category:1860 births Category:1938 deaths Category:Russian painters Category:Russian artists Category:Swiss painters Category:Expressionism
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
| Name | Catherine II the Great |
|---|---|
| Succession | Empress and Autocrat of All the Russias |
| Reign | 9 July 1762 - 17 November 1796 () |
| Coronation | 12 September 1762 |
| Predecessor | Peter III |
| Successor | Paul I |
| Succession1 | Empress consort of All the Russias |
| Reign1 | 25 December 1761 – 9 July 1762 |
| Reign-type1 | Tenure |
| Full name | Sophie Friederike Auguste |
| Spouse | Peter III of Russia |
| Spouse-type | Consort to |
| Issue | Paul I Anna Petrovna Aleksey Bobrinsky |
| House | House of Romanov House of Ascania |
| Father | Christian Augustus, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst |
| Mother | Johanna Elisabeth of Holstein-Gottorp |
| Date of birth | May 02, 1729 |
| Place of birth | Stettin, Pomerania, Kingdom of Prussia, HRE |
| Date of death | November 17, 1796 |
| Place of death | Saint Petersburg, Russia |
| Place of burial | Peter and Paul Cathedral in Saint Petersburg |
| Signature | SignatureEkaterina II.jpg |
Catherine II (, Yekaterina II Velikaya), also known as Catherine the Great (), was born in Stettin, Pomerania, Germany on as Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg. She reigned as Empress of Russia from after the assassination of her husband, Peter III, just after the end of the Seven Years' War until her death on .
Under her direct auspices the Russian Empire expanded, improved its administration, and continued to modernize along Western European lines. Catherine's rule re-vitalized Russia, which grew stronger than ever and became recognized as one of the great powers of Europe. She had successes in foreign policy and oversaw sometimes brutal reprisals in the wake of rebellion (most notably Pugachev's Rebellion).
The choice of Sophia as wife of her second cousin, the prospective tsar Peter of Holstein-Gottorp resulted from some amount of diplomatic management in which Count Lestocq, Peter´s aunt (the ruling Russian Empress Elizabeth) and Frederick II of Prussia took part. Lestocq and Frederick wanted to strengthen the friendship between Prussia and Russia in order to weaken Austria's influence and ruin the Russian chancellor Bestuzhev, on whom Empress Elizabeth relied, and who acted as a known partisan of Russo-Austrian co-operation.
The diplomatic intrigue failed, largely due to the intervention of Sophie's mother, Johanna Elisabeth of Holstein-Gottorp. Historical accounts portray Catherine's mother as a cold, abusive woman who loved gossip and court intrigues. Johanna's hunger for fame centered on her daughter's prospects of becoming empress of Russia, but she infuriated Empress Elizabeth, who eventually banned her from the country for spying for King Frederick of Prussia. The empress knew the family well: she herself had intended to marry Princess Johanna's brother Charles Augustus (Karl August von Holstein), who had died of smallpox in 1727 before the wedding could take place. Nonetheless, Elizabeth took a strong liking to the daughter, who on arrival in Russia spared no effort to ingratiate herself not only with the Empress Elizabeth, but with her husband and with the Russian people. She applied herself to learning the Russian language with such zeal that she rose at night and walked about her bedroom barefoot repeating her lessons (though she mastered the language, she retained an accent). This led to a severe attack of pneumonia in March 1744. When she wrote her memoirs, she said she made up her mind when she came to Russia to do whatever was necessary, and to profess to believe whatever required of her, to become qualified to wear the crown.
Princess Sophia's father, a very devout German Lutheran, strongly opposed his daughter's conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy. Despite his objection, on 28 June 1744 the Russian Orthodox Church received Princess Sophia as a member with the new name Catherine (Yekaterina or Ekaterina) and the (artificial) patronymic Алексеевна (Alekseyevna, daughter of Aleksey). On the following day the formal betrothal took place. The long-planned dynastic marriage finally occurred on 21 August 1745 at Saint Petersburg. Sophia had turned 16; her father did not travel to Russia for her wedding. The bridegroom, known then as Peter von Holstein-Gottorp, had become Duke of Holstein-Gottorp (located in the north-west of Germany near the border with Denmark) in 1739.
The newlyweds settled in the palace of Oranienbaum, which remained the residence of the "young court" for many years to come.
Count Andrei Shuvalov, chamberlain to Catherine, knew the diarist James Boswell well, and Boswell reports that Shuvalov shared private information regarding the monarch's intimate affairs. Some of these rumours included that Peter took a mistress (Elizabeth Vorontsova), while Catherine carried on liaisons with Sergei Saltykov, Grigory Grigoryevich Orlov (1734–1783), Stanisław August Poniatowski, Alexander Vasilchikov, and others. She became friends with Princess Ekaterina Vorontsova-Dashkova, the sister of her husband's mistress, who introduced her to several powerful political groups that opposed her husband.
Catherine read extensively and kept up-to-date on current events in Russia and in the rest of Europe. She corresponded with many of the prominent minds of her era, including Voltaire and Denis Diderot.
The new tsar's eccentricities and policies, including a great admiration for the Prussian king, Frederick II alienated the same groups that Catherine had cultivated. Besides, Peter intervened in a dispute between his Duchy of Holstein and Denmark over the province of Schleswig (see Count Johann Hartwig Ernst von Bernstorff).
Peter's insistence on supporting Frederick II of Prussia, who had seen Berlin occupied by Russian troops in 1760 but now suggested partitioning the Polish territories with Russia, eroded much of his support among the nobility. (Russia and Prussia fought each other during the Seven Years War (1756–1763) until Peter's accession.)
In July 1762, barely six months after becoming the Tsar, Peter committed the political error of retiring with his Holstein-born courtiers and relatives to Oranienbaum, leaving his wife in Saint Petersburg. On 8 and 9 July the Leib Guard revolted, deposed Peter from power, and proclaimed Catherine the Empress of Russia. The bloodless coup succeeded; Ekaterina Dashkova, a confidante of Catherine who became President of the Russian Academy in 1783, the year of its foundation, seems to have stated that Peter seemed rather glad to have rid himself of the throne, and requested only a quiet estate and his mistress.
But eight days after the coup, on 17 July 1762 – just six months after his accession to the throne – Peter III died at Ropsha, at the hands of Alexei Orlov (younger brother to Gregory Orlov, then a court favorite and a participant in the coup). Historians find no evidence for Catherine's complicity in the supposed assassination. (Note that at that time other potential rival claimants to the throne existed: Ivan VI (1740–1764), in closed confinement at Schlüsselburg, in Lake Ladoga, from the age of 6 months; and Princess Tarakanova (1753–1775).)
Catherine, although not descended from any previous Russian emperor, succeeded her husband as Empress Regnant. She followed the precedent established when Catherine I (born in the lower classes in the Swedish East Baltic territories) succeeded her husband Peter I in 1725.
Legitimists debate Catherine's technical status: seeing her as a Regent or as a usurper, tolerable only during the minority of her son, Grand Duke Paul. In the 1770s a group of nobles connected with Paul (Nikita Panin and others) contemplated the possibility of a new coup to depose Catherine and transfer the crown to Paul, whose power they envisaged restricting in a kind of constitutional monarchy. However, nothing came of this, and Catherine reigned until her death.
During her reign Catherine extended the borders of the Russian Empire southward and westward to absorb New Russia, Crimea, Northern Caucasus, Right-Bank Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and Courland at the expense, mainly, of two powers the Ottoman Empire and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. All told, she added some 200,000 miles² (518,000 km²) to Russian territory.
Catherine's foreign minister, Nikita Panin (in office 1763–1781), exercised considerable influence from the beginning of her reign. A shrewd statesman, Panin dedicated much effort and millions of rubles to setting up a "Northern Accord" between Russia, Prussia, Poland, and Sweden, to counter the power of the Bourbon–Habsburg League. When it became apparent that his plan could not succeed, Panin fell out of favor and Catherine had him replaced with Ivan Osterman (in office 1781–1797).
Catherine agreed to a commercial treaty with Great Britain in 1766, but stopped short of a full military alliance. Although she could see the benefits of Britain's friendship, she was wary of Britain's increased power following their victory in the Seven Years War, which threatened the European Balance of Power.
The Russian victories allowed Catherine's government to obtain access to the Black Sea and to incorporate the vast steppes of present-day southern Ukraine, where the Russians founded the new cities of Odessa, Nikolayev, Yekaterinoslav (literally: "the Glory of Catherine"; the future Dnepropetrovsk), and Kherson. The Treaty of Kutschuk Kainardzhi, signed 10 July 1774, gave to the Russians the "new" territories at Azov, Kerch, Yenikale, Kinburn and the small strip of Black Sea coast between the rivers Dnieper and Bug. The treaty also removed restrictions on Russian naval or commercial traffic in the Azov Sea, granted to Russia the position of protector of Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire, and made the Crimea a protectorate of Russia.
Catherine annexed the Crimea as late as 1783, a mere nine years after the Crimean Khanate had gained nominal independence, which had been guaranteed by Russia, from the Ottoman Empire as a result of her first war against the Turks. The palace of the Crimean khans passed into the hands of the Russians. In 1786, Catherine conducted a triumphal procession in the Crimea, which would help provoke the next Russo-Turkish War.
The Ottomans re-started hostilities in the second Russo-Turkish War (1787–1792). This war proved catastrophic for the Ottomans and ended with the Treaty of Jassy (1792), which legitimized the Russian claim to the Crimea and granted the Yedisan region to Russia.
From 1788 to 1790 Russia fought in the Russo-Swedish War against Sweden, a conflict instigated by Catherine's cousin, King Gustav III of Sweden, who expected to simply overtake the Russian armies still engaged in war against the Ottoman Turks and hoped to strike Saint Petersburg directly. But Russia's Baltic Fleet checked the Royal Swedish navy in a tied battle off Hogland (July 1788), and the Swedish army failed to advance. When Denmark declared war on Sweden in 1788 (the Theater War), things looked bleak for the Swedes. After the decisive defeat of the Russian fleet at the Battle of Svensksund in 1790, the parties signed the Treaty of Värälä (14 August 1790) returning all conquered territories to their respective owners and confirming the Treaty of Abo, and peace ensued for 20 years, aided by the assassination of Gustav III in 1792.
In 1764 Catherine placed Stanisław Poniatowski, her former lover, on the Polish throne. Although the idea of partitioning Poland came from the Prussian king Frederick the Great, Catherine took a leading role in carrying this out in the 1790s. In 1768 she formally became protectress of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, which provoked an anti-Russian uprising in Poland, the Confederation of Bar (1768–1772). After smashing the uprising she established in the Rzeczpospolita a system of government fully controlled by the Russian Empire through a Permanent Council under the supervision of her ambassadors and envoys.
After the French Revolution of 1789, Catherine rejected many principles of the Enlightenment that she had once viewed favorably. Afraid that the May Constitution of Poland (1791) might lead to a resurgence in the power of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and that the growing democratic movements inside the Commonwealth might become a threat to the European monarchies, Catherine decided to intervene in Poland. She provided support to a Polish anti-reform group known as the Targowica Confederation. After defeating Polish loyalist forces in the Polish War in Defense of the Constitution (1792) and in the Kościuszko Uprising (1794), Russia completed the partitioning of Poland, dividing all of the remaining Commonwealth territory with Prussia and Austria (1795).
The emergence of these Assignation rubles was due to large government spending on military needs, leading to a shortage of silver in the treasury (as all the calculations, especially in foreign trade, were conducted exclusively in silver and gold coins). Assignation ruble circulated on equal footing with the silver ruble; there was an ongoing market exchange rate for these two currencies. The use of these notes continued until 1849.
Catherine's patronage furthered the evolution of the arts in Russia more than that of any Russian sovereign before or after her.
Catherine had a reputation as a patron of the arts, literature and education. The Hermitage Museum, which occupies the whole Winter Palace, began as Catherine's personal collection. At the instigation of her factotum, Ivan Betskoi, she wrote a manual for the education of young children, drawing from the ideas of John Locke, and founded (1764) the famous Smolny Institute, admitting young girls of the nobility.
She wrote comedies, fiction and memoirs, while cultivating Voltaire, Diderot and d'Alembert all French encyclopedists who later cemented her reputation in their writings. The leading economists of her day, such as Arthur Young and Jacques Necker, became foreign members of the Free Economic Society, established on her suggestion in Saint Petersburg in 1765. She lured the scientists Leonhard Euler and Peter Simon Pallas from Berlin to the Russian capital.
Catherine enlisted Voltaire to her cause, and corresponded with him for 15 years, from her accession to his death in 1778. He lauded her accomplishments, calling her "The Star of the North" and the "Semiramis of Russia" (in reference to the legendary Queen of Babylon, a subject on which he published a tragedy in 1768). Though she never met him face-to-face, she mourned him bitterly when he died, acquired his collection of books from his heirs, and placed them in the National Library of Russia.
in the background.]]
Within a few months of her accession in 1762, having heard that the French government threatened to stop the publication of the famous French Encyclopédie on account of its irreligious spirit, Catherine proposed to Diderot that he should complete his great work in Russia under her protection.
Four years later, in 1766, she endeavoured to embody in legislation the principles of Enlightenment she learned from studying the French philosophers. She called together at Moscow a Grand Commission—almost a consultative parliament—composed of 652 members of all classes (officials, nobles, burghers and peasants) and of various nationalities. The Commission had to consider the needs of the Russian Empire and the means of satisfying them. The Empress herself prepared the "Instructions for the Guidance of the Assembly", pillaging (as she frankly admitted) the philosophers of Western Europe, especially Montesquieu and Cesare Beccaria.
As many of the democratic principles frightened her more moderate and experienced advisers, she refrained from immediately putting them into execution. After holding more than 200 sittings the so-called Commission dissolved without getting beyond the realm of theory.
In spite of this, Catherine did begin issuing codes to address some of the modernization trends suggested in her Nakaz. In 1775 the Empress decreed a Statute for the Administration of the Provinces of the Russian Empire. The Statute sought to efficiently govern Russia by increasing population and dividing the country into provinces and districts. By the end of her reign, there were fifty provinces, nearly 500 districts, more than double the government officials, and they were spending six times as much as previously on local government. In 1785 Catherine conferred on the nobility the Charter to the Nobility, increasing further the power of the landed oligarchs. Nobles in each district elected a Marshal of the Nobility who spoke on their behalf to the monarch on issues of concern to them, mainly economic ones. In the same year, Catherine issued the Charter of the Towns, which distributed all people into six groups as a way to limit the power of nobles and create a middle estate. Each of these charters had major flaws, and Catherine seemingly could not gain the reform she long desired for her country. Catherine also issued the Code of Commercial Navigation and Salt Trade Code of 1781, the Police Ordnance of 1782, and the Statue of National Education of 1786. In 1777, the Empress described her legal innovations within a backward Russia, to Voltaire, as progressing "little by little".
During Catherine's reign, Russians imported and studied the classical and European influences that inspired the Russian Enlightenment. Gavrila Derzhavin, Denis Fonvizin and Ippolit Bogdanovich laid the groundwork for the great writers of the nineteenth century, especially for Alexander Pushkin. Catherine became a great patron of Russian opera (see Catherine II and opera for details).
When Alexander Radishchev published his Journey from Saint Petersburg to Moscow in 1790 (one year after the start of the French Revolution) and warned of uprisings because of the deplorable social conditions of the peasants held as serfs, Catherine exiled him to Siberia. (The same sort of censorship also happened at that time in many other European countries as a reaction to the civil violence in France.)
Catherine appointed Ivan Betskoy to be her adviser on educational matters. Through him, she collected information from Russia and other countries about educational institutions. In addition to appointing Betskoy as her educational adviser, she established a Commission composed of T.N. Teplov, T. con Klingstedt, F.G. Dilthey, and the historian G. Muller. She also sought advice on her educational projects from British education pioneers, particularly Rev. Daniel Dumaresq and Dr. John Brown. In 1764, Catherine sent for Dumaresq to come to Russia and then appointed him to the educational Commission. The Commission studied the reform projects previously installed by I.I. Shuvalov under Elizabeth and under Peter III. They then submitted their own recommendations for the establishment of a general system of education for all Russian orthodox subjects from the age of 5 to 18, excluding serfs. However, no action was taken on any recommendations put forth by the Commission due to the calling of the Legislative Commission. In July 1765 Dumaresq wrote to Dr. John Brown about the commission’s problems and received a long reply containing very general and sweeping suggestions for education and social reforms in Russia. Dr. Brown argued that in a democratic country, education ought to be under the state’s control and based on an education code. He also placed great emphasis on the “proper and effectual education of the female sex,” which was bound to impress Catherine because, two years prior, she had commissioned Ivan Betskoy to draw up the General Program for the Education of Young People of Both Sexes. This work emphasized the fostering of the creation of a ‘new kind of people’ raised in isolation from the damaging influence of a backward Russian environment. The Establishment of the Moscow Foundling Home (Moscow Orphanage) was the first attempt at achieving that goal. It was charged with admitting destitute and illegitimate children in order to educate them in any way the state deemed fit. Since the Moscow Foundling Home was not established as a state funded institution, the Home represented an opportunity to experiment with new educational theories. However, the Moscow Foundling Home proved not to be very successful mainly due to the extremely high mortality rates preventing many of the children from living long enough to develop into the enlightened subjects the state desired.
Not long after the Moscow Foundling Home, Catherine established the Smolny Institute for Noble Girls in order to cater to the education of females. The Smolny Institute emerged as the first of its kind in Russia. At first the Institute only admitted young girls of the noble elite, but eventually it began to admit girls of the petit-bourgeoisie as well. The girls that attended the Smolny Institute, Smolyanki, were often accused of being ignorant of anything that went on in the world outside the walls of the Smolny buildings. Within the walls of the Institute they were taught impeccable French, musicianship, dancing and complete awe of the Monarch. At the Institute, enforcement of strict discipline was central to its philosophy. Running and games were forbidden and the building was kept particularly cold because it was believed that too much warmth was harmful to the developing body, just like excess play.
During the years 1768-1774, there was no progress made in setting up a national school system. However, Catherine herself continued to investigate educational theory and practice in other countries. She made many educational reforms despite the lack of establishment of a national school system. The remodeling of the Cadet Corps 1766 initiated her many educational reforms. It then began to take children from a very young age and educate them until the age of 21. The curriculum was broadened from the professional military curriculum to include the sciences, philosophy, ethics, history, international law, etc. This policy in the Cadet Corps influenced the teaching in the Naval Cadet Corps, and in the Engineering and Artillery Schools. After the war and the defeat of Pugachov, Catherine laid the obligation to establish schools at guberniya – a provincial subdivision of the Russian empire ruled by a governor - level on the Boards of Social Welfare which were to be set up with the participation of elected representatives of the three free estates.
By 1782, Catherine arranged another advisory commission to study the information gathered about various models of educational systems in many different countries. A system produced by a mathematician, F Aepinus stood out in particular. He was strongly in favor of the adoption of the Austrian three tier model of trivial, real and normal schools at village, town and provincial capital level. In addition to the advisory commission, Catherine established a Commission of National Schools under P.I. Zavadovsky. This commission was charged with organizing a national school network, training the teachers and providing the textbooks. Finally, on August 5, 1786, the Russian Statute of National Education was promulgated. The Statute established a two-tier network of high schools and primary schools in guberniya capitals that were free of charge, open to all of the free classes (non-serfs), and co-educational. It also regulated, in detail, the subjects to be taught at every age and the method of teaching it. In addition to the textbooks translated by the Commission, teachers were provided with the Guide to Teachers. This work, divided into four parts, dealt with teaching methods, the subjects taught, the behavior of the teacher, and the running of a school. Two years after the implementation of Catherine’s educational program, a member of the National Commission inspected the institutions being established. Throughout Russia, the inspectors encountered a patchy response. While the nobility put up appreciable amounts of money for these institutions, they preferred to send their children to private, more prestigious institutions. Also, the townspeople tended to turn against the junior schools and their pedagogical methods. When all was said and done, it is estimated that about 62,000 pupils were being educated in some 549 state institutions near the end of Catherine’s reign. This was only a miniscule amount of people compared to the size of the Russian population.
Religious education was also strictly reviewed. At first, she simply attempted to revise clerical studies, proposing a reform of religious schools. This reform never progressed beyond the planning stages. By 1786, Catherine chose to simply exclude all religion and clerical studies programs from lay education. By separating the public interests from those of the church, Catherine began a secularization of the day to day workings of Russia. She transformed the clergy from a group which wielded great power over the Russian government and its people to a segregated community which was forced to depend on the state for compensation. The last of her lovers, Prince Zubov, was 40 years her junior.
In her memoirs, Catherine indicated that her first lover, Sergei Saltykov, had fathered Paul, but Paul physically resembled her husband, Peter. Catherine kept near Tula, away from her court, her illegitimate son by Grigori Orlov, Alexis Bobrinskoy (later created Count Bobrinskoy by Paul).
King August III of Poland died in 1763, and therefore Poland needed to elect a new ruler. Catherine supported Poniatowski as a candidate to become the next king.
Catherine sent the Russian army into Poland to avoid possible disputes right away. Russia invaded Poland on 26 August 1764, threatening to fight and forcing Poniatowski to become king. Poniatowski accepted the throne, and thereby put himself under Catherine's control. News of Catherine's plan spread and Frederick II (others say the Ottoman sultan) warned her that if she tried to conquer Poland by marrying Poniatowski, all of Europe would oppose her strongly.
She had no intention of marrying him, having already given birth to Orlov´s child and to the Grand Duke Paul by then. She told Poniatowski to marry someone else to remove all suspicion. Poniatowski refused; he never married.
Prussia (through the agency of Prince Henry), Russia (under Catherine), and Austria (under Maria Theresa) began preparing the ground for the Partitions of Poland. In the first partition, 1772, the three powers split between them. Russia got territories east of the line connecting, more or less, Riga–Polotsk–Mogilev.
In the second partition, in 1793, Russia received the most land, from west of Minsk almost to Kiev and down the river Dnieper leaving some spaces of steppe down south in front of Ochakov, on the Black Sea.
After this, uprisings in Poland led to the third partition, 1795, one year before Catherine's death.
-Aleksey Grigorievich Bobrinsky, ( 11 April 1762 – 20 June 1813 in his estate of Bogoroditsk, near Tula). Born three months before the deposition and assassination by the Orlov brothers of her husband Peter III]]
Grigory Orlov and his other three brothers found themselves rewarded with titles as Counts, money, swords and other gifts. But Catherine did not marry Grigory, who proved inept at politics and useless when asked for advice. He received a palace in St. Petersburg when Catherine became Empress.
Orlov died in 1783. His and Catherine's son, Aleksey Grygoriovich Bobrinsky, (1762–1813) had one daughter, Maria Alexeeva Bobrinsky (Bobrinskaya), (1798–1835) who married aged 21 in 1819 the 34-year-old Prince Nikolai Sergeevich Gagarin (London, England, 12 July 1784 – 25 July 1842, assassinated by a furious servant he employed) who took part in the Battle of Borodino (7 September 1812) against the Napoleonic forces, and later served as Ambassador in Turin, the capital of the Duchy of Savoy .
In 1772, Catherine wrote to Potemkin. Days earlier, she had found out about an uprising in the Volga region. She appointed General Aleksandr Bibikov to put down the uprising, but she needed Potemkin's advice on military strategy.
Potemkin quickly gained positions and awards. Russian poets wrote about his virtues, the court praised him, foreign ambassadors fought for his favor, and his family moved into the palace. He later became governor of New Russia.
In 1780 the son of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, Emperor Joseph II of Austria, toyed with the idea of determining whether or not to enter an alliance with Russia, and asked to meet Catherine. Potemkin had the task of briefing him and traveling with him to Saint Petersburg.
Potemkin also convinced Catherine to expand the universities in Russia to increase the number of scientists.
Potemkin fell very ill in August 1783. Catherine worried that he would not finish his work developing the south as he had planned. Potemkin died at the age of 52 in 1791.
* Yemelyan Pugachev (1740/1742–1775) identified himself in 1773 as Tsar Peter III of Russia (Catherine's late husband). His armed rebellion, aiming to seize power and to banish the Empress to a monastery, became a serious menace until crushed in 1774. The authorities had Pugachev executed in Moscow in January 1775.
* Avgusta Tarakanova, born ca. 1744, the daughter of Elizabeth of Russia in her morganatic marriage with Alexis Razumovsky, lived in exile abroad. The Empress Catherine ordered her abduction by force in 1785 and confined her in a nunnery in Moscow. She died in 1810.
* Princess Tarakanova (1753–1775) declared herself in Paris in 1774 as Elizabeth's daughter by Alexis Razumovsky and as the sister of Pugachev. The Empress Catherine dispatched Alexey Orlov to Italy, where he captured Tarakanova in Livorno. When brought to Russia in 1775, Tarakanova went to prison in the Peter and Paul Fortress, where she died of tuberculosis in December 1775.
* Catherine commissioned "The Bronze Horseman" statue, which stands in Saint Petersburg on the banks of the Neva River. She had the large boulder it stands on transported from several leagues away. Catherine had it inscribed with the Latin phrase "Petro Primo Catharina Secunda MDCCLXXXII," meaning "Catherine the Second to Peter the First, 1782," to gain legitimacy by connecting herself to the "Founder of Modern Russia." This statue later inspired Pushkin's famous poem The Bronze Horseman (1833).
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