Catherine the Great

Catherine II, a German princess who had married into the Russian throne line, took power in a coup in June 1762. She overthrew her husband, Peter III, who died in custody days later. She ruled until 1796, one of the longest reigns in Russian history. She was born Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst, learned Russian, converted to Orthodoxy, and won over the guards regiments in St. Petersburg. She called herself an enlightened monarch, wrote to Voltaire and Diderot, and bought Diderot's library.¹²

She came to power in the empire Peter the Great had proclaimed, with a modernized army, a capital on the Baltic and a nobility trained to serve the state. Her goals were to win Black Sea ports and settle the fertile southern steppe. In wars against the Ottoman Empire she won the Treaty of Kucuk Kaynarca in 1774, which gave Russia access to the Black Sea and made Crimea's khanate independent, and she annexed Crimea in 1783. With Prussia and Austria she took large parts of Poland in the partitions of 1772, 1793 and 1795.¹²

Her reforms at home were limited. Her Instruction of 1767 drew on Montesquieu and Beccaria but the legislative commission she called produced no new code. The Pugachev rebellion of 1773 to 1775, a Cossack-led uprising that drew many serfs, scared the nobility, and her Charter to the Nobility of 1785 gave them greater rights while serfdom grew harsher and more widespread, especially after land was granted to favorites along with its peasants. Her court was a center of art, the Hermitage collection began under her, and she introduced smallpox inoculation to Russia by being inoculated herself in 1768.²³⁴