Catherine the great enlightened despot. Catherine’s Domestic Policies 2022-11-01
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Catherine the Great, also known as Catherine II, was the Empress of Russia from 1762 until her death in 1796. During her reign, she implemented a series of sweeping social, economic, and political reforms that earned her the reputation as an "enlightened despot."
Catherine was born in Stettin, Prussia (now Szczecin, Poland) in 1729. She was raised in a household where she was exposed to the ideas of the Enlightenment, a intellectual movement that emphasized reason, individual rights, and liberty. As a result, Catherine was well-educated and had a strong interest in Enlightenment philosophy.
Upon ascending to the throne in 1762, Catherine set out to modernize and westernize Russia. She implemented a series of legal reforms, including the Charter of the Towns, which granted more freedoms to urban dwellers and granted them the right to elect their own officials. She also established a new criminal code that reduced the use of capital punishment and introduced trial by jury.
Catherine was also a patron of the arts and sciences. She founded the Imperial Academy of Arts and Sciences and encouraged the development of education and scholarship in Russia. Under her reign, Russia experienced a cultural and intellectual flowering known as the "Catherine Era."
Despite her enlightened policies, Catherine was also a strong autocrat who did not hesitate to use her power to crush dissent. She suppressed the Pugachev rebellion, a peasant uprising, with brutal force, and she was not above using censorship to control the flow of information.
Overall, Catherine the Great was a complex figure who combined enlightened ideas with autocratic rule. She implemented significant reforms that improved the lives of her subjects and made Russia a more modern and enlightened society, but she also used her power to suppress dissent and maintain her own authority.
Catherine’s Domestic Policies
However, many of the democratic principles scared her more moderate and experienced advisors, and after more than 200 sittings, the Commission disbanded without ever moving beyond theory. Her fibbing and self-aggrandising exchanges with Voltaire only make it worse. Catherine also paid special attention to mining 35. However, military conscription and economy continued to depend on serfdom, and the increasing demands of the state and private landowners led to increased levels of reliance on serfs. It is argued that Catherine the Great perceived alchemy as a Western practice promoted by foreign charlatans and by mystically-inclined Freemasons, which threatened to undermine the foundations of her vision of Russia being a beacon of reason and enlightenment. Needless to say, from thereon emerged a sense of dissatisfaction with the current scheme of things. Petersburg: Voltaire's Library in Russia.
When Catherine the Great Invaded the Crimea and Put the Rest of the World on Edge
These settlers were said to be responsible for feeding the Russian population in the next three decades 34. How Did Catherine The Great Influence Russia 489 Words 2 Pages For example, she built towns, renovated as long as expanded old towns in Russia. The lasting political effect of the Enlightenment can't be overstated. Clough, and Paul Edward Hedley Hair. The French Revolution of 1789 sets itself apart from every revolution that had gone before by being a revolution centered on theories. She was also very active in arts and culture, with interests in education and religious affairs.
‎Hindsight: Catherine the Great: An enlightened despot? on Apple Podcasts
At the beginning of Catherine's reign, China had just seized a district on the River Amur containing silver that allegedly belonged to Russia. Catherine was not born to rule Russia. Local Heroes: The Political Economy of Russian Regional Governance. Politician to the finger-tips, she sought their attention, not simply out of vanity, but with the very material purpose of consolidating her position at home and abroad. Sharpe, 2005 , 16.
For Catherine, the only way for a government to be able to carry out effective reforms was to exert absolute authority over the people 19. The Russians became the first Europeans to colonize Alaska, creating Russian America. After the Toleration of All Faiths Edict of 1773, Muslims were permitted to build mosques and practice freely. A landowner could punish his serfs at his discretion and under Catherine the Great gained the ability to sentence his serfs to hard labor in Siberia, a punishment normally reserved for convicted criminals. Randall, Reluctant Capitalists: Russia's Journey through Market Transition New York: Routledge, 2001 , 33.
Going to church became even less important to the nobility. Host Melvyn Bragg investigates the history of ideas and debates their application in modern life with his guests Janet Hartley, Professor of International History at the London School of Economics; Simon Dixon, Professor of Modern History at the University of Leeds; and Tony Lentin, Professor of History at the Open University. Catherine encouraged Russia's existing fur trade based mainly in Siberia and promoted hunting expeditions to the recently-discovered Alcutian Islands. In 1768, however, Catherine's prospectors found valuable silver deposits on the Mongolian frontier. The highgrade system came to prominence in St.
How Voltaire praised the 'enlightened despot' Catherine the Great
Not surprisingly, the council was never established. How does science move between cultures? Alston, Education and the State in Tsarist Russia Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1969 , 15. The Enlightenment also stressed the importance of education, and as a result of this, literacy rates experienced a major upward trend. Patrons and connoisseurs of art eventually emerged from the aristocracy. Hermitage Museum A museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
(PDF) Was Catherine the Great an Enlightened Despot?
When Peter realized that the naval fleet, army, and senate were loyal to Catherine, he was arrested and had no choice but to abdicate. Gaining its momentum among the working class and eventually expanding to the aristocracy, Enlightenment ideologies questioned the traditional social and political practices of the time. The students from the gentry were taught religion, Russian, foreign languages, arithmetic, geography, history, heraldry, the elements of law, drawing, music, knitting, sewing, dancing and society manners. But she waged cruel wars. She agreed, further increasing Russia's profits from foreign trade from zero to 1,806,000 rubles in 1781-yielding a customs and exercise revenue of 600,000 rubles 52.
Being chased out of power by his own wife made Peter forever associated with impotence, incompetence and indecisiveness 6. To the general public, Catherine is perhaps best known for conducting a string of salacious love affairs. A board headed by Gregory Orlov placed advertisements in foreign newspapers, inviting settlers and offering attractive terms such as free lodging for six months; seeds, livestock and ploughs; and exemption from taxes for five, ten or thirty years, depending on the landowner's skills. Under her reign, Russia's mining revenue increased by 30% annually or 13 million rubles per year 41. She cultivated and corresponded with French encyclopedists but did not support a free-thinking spirit among her own subjects as much as among famous French philosophers. Mr Bompard said Voltaire, who lambasted the French monarchy during the Enlightenment for its excesses, approved of her role as an "enlightened despot".
