Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman (71 page)

When the Legislative Commission met again in St. Petersburg on February 18, 1768, it began by discussing the status of the nobility and the townspeople, the merchants, and the free peasants. Nobles asked that their prerogatives be extended in the form of greater power in provincial and local governments; they also wanted the right to enter commerce and industry in the towns. In addition, the noblemen argued
among themselves over definitions of the status and rights of the different layers of nobility. The old hereditary nobility demanded establishment of a strict demarcation between nobility of birth and men recently raised to noble rank for service or merit—men like the Orlovs.

Another bitter debate set noble landowners against town merchants. The nobility claimed the exclusive right to own serf labor and complete freedom in dealing with the serf problem, economically and administratively. The merchants, having heard from the
Nakaz
that all citizens were equal before the law, demanded the same privileges as the nobility, including the right to own serfs. The landowners fought to prevent this, just as the merchants were fighting the attempt by landowners to engage in industry and trade. In the end, both initiatives failed.

In the course of these debates between nobles and merchants on the right to own serfs, the larger, more explosive subject of serfdom arose. The assembly was divided between two fundamentally opposing viewpoints. Those who supported serfdom declared that the institution must be permanent; that it was the only solution to an economic problem that went deeper than the owner’s social status and privilege; namely, that serfdom was essential to the supply and control of labor in a huge, primarily agricultural country. Serfdom’s opponents spoke of the evils and human misery caused by a form of bondage approaching slavery. With economy and tradition on one side, and philosophy and compassion on the other, there appeared no bridge to span the gulf.

Catherine was no better able to find a solution than anyone else. In her original version, the
Nakaz
had gone as far as to advocate the gradual abolition of serfdom in Russia by allowing serfs, with the permission of their owners, to purchase their own freedom. The Russian nobility overwhelmingly opposed ideas like this, which had been stricken from the document before it went to print. The question of whether serfs should be allowed to own personal property apart from land came before the assembly. It led to heated discussions on the relationship between landowners and serfs, and the administrative and punitive powers landowners should have over their serfs. To the charge that the peasants were lazy and drunk, a liberal delegate replied, “
The peasant has his feelings. He knows that all he owns belongs to his landowner. How can he be virtuous when he is deprived of all means of being so? He drinks, not from laziness, but from downheartedness. The hardest worker becomes careless if he is constantly oppressed and owns nothing.”

Other enlightened landlords spoke in favor of legal limitations on landlords’ power over serfs; Bibikov, the marshal, urged that noblemen who tortured their serfs be declared insane, which would allow the law to seize their estates. But when specific improvements in the condition of serfs and the eventual abolition of serfdom were proposed, the speakers were shouted down. Liberals among the noble delegates were vilified and even threatened with death by extremist members of the conservative majority.

Catherine had hoped for support from Count Alexander Stroganov. He had been educated in Geneva and Paris, and it was he who had supported her at the moment when Peter III had shouted
“Dura!”
in a crowded banquet hall. But when Stroganov rose to speak in the Legislative Commission, he defended the institution of serfdom with passion. Prince Michael Scherbatov, who considered the hereditary nobility an institution ordained by God, argued that because Russia was a cold, northern country, peasants would not work without being forced to do so. The state could not force them, he said, because Russia was too large. Only the nobility could do it, but they had to do it in the traditional way, with no interference by the state.

The poet and playwright Alexander Sumarokov objected to the special privileges, such as immunity for life from corporal punishment, granted in advance to peasant delegates to the Legislative Commission. Sumarokov also objected to the principle of majority voting. “
The majority of votes does not confirm the truth, but only indicates the wishes of the majority,” he said. “Truth is confirmed by profound reason and impartiality.” Sumarokov further complained that “if the serfs were freed, the poor nobles would have neither cook nor coachman, nor lackey; their trained cooks and hairdressers would run away to better paid jobs and there would be constant disturbances requiring military force to put them down. Whereas at present landowners live quietly on their estates.” (“
And have their throats cut from time to time,” commented Catherine.) It was known, Sumarakov concluded, that lords loved their serfs and were loved by them. In any case, he said, the common people did not have the feelings of noblemen. (“And
cannot have in present circumstances,” Catherine noted.) In the end, the empress reacted to Sumarokov’s opposition by saying, “M. Sumarokov is a good poet … but he does not have sufficient clarity of mind to be a good lawgiver.”

Despite Catherine’s personal beliefs and misgivings regarding serfdom,
the reactions by nobles in the assembly made her back away from further confrontation. Her recognition of the inherent danger in keeping this huge majority of the population in permanent bondage appeared in a letter she wrote to Procurator General Vyazemsky:

As her Enlightenment principles were battered in the assembly, Catherine, aware that she governed primarily through the support of the nobility, decided that she could not go further. Later, she commented:

The discussions in St. Petersburg were proving even more unproductive and divisive than those in Moscow. The commission continued to stumble along, burdened by procedure, by conflicts of class, and by the generally impossible nature of its task. The twenty-nine Russian peasant delegates played little part in the discussions, except for one indefatigable delegate from the Archangel peasantry who spoke fifteen times. Many peasant delegates simply transferred their limited right to speak to noblemen from their districts. The few free peasants who did speak concentrated on grasping their chance to lay their complaints before the empress herself. Catherine, listening as they jumbled together every abuse, burden, and future fear, realized how far they were—and how far she now was—from Montesquieu. By the autumn of 1768, still without seeing any concrete results, the empress was tired. The commission had dragged on for eighteen months through more than two hundred sessions and not one new law had been written.

In the summer and fall of 1768, the attention of the empress and her ministers was turning in a different direction. Russia’s involvement in neighboring Poland and the shadow of a possible war with Turkey loomed over the sessions of the Legislative Commission. Catherine’s enthusiasm for a new code of laws faded, and when Turkey declared war in October 1768, her thoughts and energies were directed toward this new challenge. Already, a number of noblemen who were assembly delegates were leaving to serve as officers in the army. On December 18, 1768, Count Bibikov announced that, by order of the empress, the full Legislative Commission would be prorogued indefinitely, although a subcommission would continue to meet. The last session of the full assembly took place on January 12, 1769, after which delegates dispersed to their homes, where they were to await a further summons. The subcommission met intermittently, but by September 1771, even this had ceased. At intervals in 1772 and 1773, the procurator general was informed that the empress intended to summon the full assembly after the conclusion of the Russo-Turkish war. But no summons ever came. The Legislative Commission never met again.

No new code of Russian laws was produced. The distance stretching between an Enlightenment philosopher’s definition of an ideal monarchy and the immediate problems of everyday life in rural Russia was simply too great. Catherine looked to Montesquieu, but the nobles wanted confirmation and extension of status and privileges, and the peasants wanted restitution for broken fences, trampled crops, and illegally felled timber. Nevertheless, eighteen months and 203 sessions of effort were not entirely wasted. The documents submitted and discussed by delegates in the full assembly and the subcommissions contained a wealth of valuable information. Studying this mass of detail—these hundreds of grievances and competing claims—reinforced Catherine’s conviction that the stability of Russia depended on maintaining the absolute authority of the autocracy.

Along with strengthening Catherine’s belief in absolutism, something else had happened. Under the stimulus and protective cover of the
Nakaz
, the discussions in the full assembly and the various subcommissions had furnished delegates with new ideas that had never before been publicly discussed in Russia. In some cases, delegates actually quoted from a specific paragraph of Catherine’s
Nakaz
, using the authority of the empress to introduce and support their own ideas. Ultimately,
despite the failure of the Legislative Commission to create a new law code, it made a contribution to the nation’s history. Taken together, the summons, the elections, and the 203 assembly sessions established a precedent for popular participation in government. It was the first attempt in imperial Russia to give the people a voice in their own political destiny.

Some have believed that the Legislative Commission achieved nothing, and that from the beginning both the
Nakaz
and the Legislative Commission were created simply for show, as no more than propaganda to impress Catherine’s Enlightenment friends abroad. This judgment is shallow. Naturally, Catherine welcomed Voltaire’s overheated praise for the
Nakaz
, but it does not follow that she wrote it simply to catch Voltaire’s eye and win his blessing. Indeed, the Catherine scholar Isabel de Madariaga says:

It is worth noting that Catherine’s writing of the
Nakaz
and summons to the Legislative Commission took place nine years before Thomas Jefferson wrote, and the Continental Congress voted to approve, the American Declaration of Independence. It preceded by twenty-two years Louis XVI’s summons to the Estates-General. None of Catherine’s successors on the Russian throne dared to summon such an assembly again until 1905, when Nicholas II was forced by revolution to sign a document transforming Russia from an absolute autocracy to a semiconstitutional monarchy—and then, in 1906, to summon Russia’s first elected parliament, the State Duma.

53
“The King We Have Made”

A
NEW LEGAL CODE
adapted to the needs of contemporary Russia was important to Catherine, but conduct of foreign policy ranked first among her concerns. From the beginning of her reign, Catherine pursued an active, forward strategy in the tradition of Peter the Great. As soon as she took the throne, she assumed absolute control of Russia’s relations with foreign states. It was to inform her use of autocratic authority that she immediately demanded that she be shown all diplomatic dispatches arriving at the College of Foreign Affairs.