Catherine the Great was a force of nature. Nowadays, we know Russia as a superpower, but it was not always so. A century before Catherine’s rule, Russia was considered a backward country. Catherine spent her three decades in power modernizing and strengthening her country. Her greatness resides in that she strove to make Russia great.
Catherine the Great’s reign is called Russia’s Golden Age.
So what were, exactly, her accomplishments?
1. Beautiful cities
When Peter the Great came into power in Russia, his European neighbours considered Russia a backward country. But Peter had great plans. And he began to modernize his country and turned it into an empire.
Among his favorite projects was the creation of new cities. He founded St. Petersburg in 1703, on the banks of the Neva River, and made it his capital.
Catherine, who married Peter’s grandson, followed in Peter I’s footsteps. And she, too, had a love for architecture and grandiosity.
Pretty and clean cities
Catherine embarked on an extensive building program.
She commissioned hundreds of new public buildings. The empress built orphanages, schools, hospitals, banks, theaters, libraries, universities, and any other type of building you can imagine.
She also gave new, prettier buildings to existing institutions.
Saint Petersburg, the Romanov’s new capital, was the city more thoroughly transformed during her reign. There, she commissioned buildings for the Academy of Sciences, the Stock Exchange, the Imperial Academy of the Arts, several universities, an orphanage, which had its own theater; a public library; a private theater; and palaces; among many other edifices.
Since the capital is a watery city (it has 93 rivers and canals), she also commissioned engineering works. She dug new canals, reinforced the banks of the existing canals with stone, deepened rivers’ beds, built embankments, erected stone bridges to replace wooden ones…
Moscow, the capital of the former dynasty, also got plenty of buildings. For example, the University of Moscow, the Senate, a huge orphanage, a state bank, and a massive shopping mall.
Her buildings had a practical purpose but also served to beautify the urbs.
The empress founded more than 100 new towns and cities. And she renovated the existing ones.
Catherine favored the new Neoclassical style in architecture. And she mostly hired Italian architects for her projects.
For health issues, she also banned cemeteries, slaughterhouses, polluting factories, and animal markets from the cities. She established places for trash disposal and declared it illegal to pollute the waterways.
Her Russia looked completely different from the Russia of a century before.
The empress wanted her cities to be great European centers. And she got her way with Saint Petersburg, which became one of Europe’s great capitals.
St. Petersburg still dazzles tourists today.
2. New laws for all
Catherine was a voracious reader. When she arrived in Russia as a teenager, she felt lonely, so she read.
At first, the German princess read novels. But then responsibility kicked in. She was going to marry the heir to the Russian throne and become a queen, after all. So she began reading more politically minded works.
She discovered the Enlightenment authors. And the teenager fell in love with their new ideas: reason, progress, equality, religious tolerance, separation of state and church, freedom and knowledge for all, happiness as an aim in life, the ability of each person to improve its lot.
So years later, when she became the tsarina, she wanted laws that reflected those concepts.
At the time, Russia was an autocracy where the monarch had all the power. The nobility had relatively few rights and had to ask the tsar’s permission for many things. And the other social classes were certainly not fairing much better, especially the tens of millions of Russians who were serfs. Serfs were peasants that were pretty much enslaved.
The famous ‘Instruction’
Enlightened Catherine wanted to change all that. So in 1767, she convoked leaders from all over Russia to form a Legislative Commission. She tasked them with creating the new laws.
Unexpectedly, the legislators were from all social classes -including the peasants but leaving out the serfs. Catherine wanted Russians from all backgrounds to have their say in the new laws.
So her legislators knew what type of laws she was expecting, she wrote an Instruction for them.
Her instruction declared the equality of all men (Russia was a deeply hierarchical society), the suppression of the death penalty and torture, and the abolition of serfdom.
She also stated that the government’s function was to protect the masses instead of oppressing them.
The progressive ideas of her majesty scandalized not only high-placed Russians but other European courts as well. Her booklet was banned in France.
The commission spent months arguing, and finally, the code of law came to nothing. By then, Catherine had been faced with more of the complexities of being a ruler. Besides, she was in the middle of a war with the Ottoman Empire. So when the Commission showed up empty-handed, she did not press on.
Yet Catherine’s Instruction is still regarded as ahead of its time. Later, the brand-new United States and Poland borrowed some of its ideas for their own constitutions.
3. Administration: new provinces
The empress was a good administrator. So she realized that her country was too big to be managed efficiently. And she divided it into more provinces.
Catherine created 50 semi-autonomous provinces with 500 districts. And she doubled the number of bureaucrats assigned to each province.
So that everything would work efficiently, the Romanov tsarina spent six times more in local administration than her predecessors.
4. Health: public hospitals and more
Catherine’s predecessor was Empress Elizabeth (the daughter of Peter the Great). And Elizabeth had established the first College of Medicine in Russia.
But during Catherine’s reign, it still did not produce enough doctors for such a big country. So Catherine lured Western physicians to Russia with the promise of high salaries. To some, she even gave houses.
Up until then, Russia had very few hospitals. And most of those were for military personnel, like the now-called Hospital no. 40 and the Kurakin Almshouse. The almshouse had been founded by the aristocratic Kurakin family. It attended veterans free of charge.
So as part of her health reforms, Catherine decreed that there should be a public hospital in every province. Also, that every county should have at least one physician, one surgeon with assistants, and a pharmacist.
That way, every Russian would have access to health services.
How to face plagues
The Bubonic plague struck in 1770, killing tens of thousands of Muscovites. Catherine reacted immediately. She sent doctors, medicines, food, clothes, and money to Moscow.
Furthermore, she created shelters and orphanages for the kids who had just lost their parents.
And since there were not enough nurses, she promised to free the serfs who volunteered at the hospitals.
She also lowered the taxes of the territories that had been struck by the plague.
Venereal diseases were also a problem in her country. So in 1783, Catherine established a hospital to treat them. She knew many would not seek treatment out of fear/shame of being discovered. Therefore, the tsarina made sure that privacy was respected. The hospital was not to register the real name of its patients.
Inoculations
Then there was the smallpox situation. Smallpox was the fearsome disease that wiped out entire populations. In 1767, it had killed 20,000 people in the north of the country, in Siberia.
Catherine liked to keep informed about the newest ideas, so she heard about the inoculation against smallpox.
The technique was rather new, and many were afraid of it. Yet, progressive Catherine called to court a Scottish doctor who was experimenting with the procedure. And she got inoculated in 1768.
In case things went wrong and her subjects blamed the doctor, she prepared a runaway vehicle for him to flee to safety.
But the experiment had a happy ending. And Catherine, who was known for her generosity, gave the doctor many gifts and made him a baron.
As to why she opted to be a guinea pig for the inoculations, she explained: “My objective was, through my example, to save from death the multitude of my subjects who, not knowing the value of this technique, and frightened of it, were left in danger.”
By 1800, two million Russians had followed the Empress’ example and had inoculated themselves against the mortal disease.
5. Education: a public school system
Catherine firmly believed in education. She thought that through it, she could modernize Russia.
If enough people learned enlightened-progressive ideas, she reasoned, they would prosper and make the country prosperous in turn.
She favored boarding schools. She thought a new kind of human could be educated there, far from the influence of parents and society.
Before the tsarina, there were only private schools in Russia, and a few schools run by priests or by generous donors.
The single state-funded school in existence was the Cadet Corps, a military institution that prepared noble boys to become officers.
Catherine reformed it all. She called pedagogues from Russia and abroad and created a commission in charge of education.
She added to the curriculum of the Cadet Corps. Aside from the military subjects, the boys were now also to learn sciences, philosophy, history, law, and ethics.
And she established a second boarding school in St. Petersburg. This one, the Smolny Institute for Noble Maidens, was for noble girls. They were to learn a broad range of subjects, including chemistry, physics, French, and history. The school would prepare them for university.
Smolny was the first state-funded institute of higher education for girls in Europe.
Free education for all
Catherine wanted her ‘new kind of human’ everywhere in Russia. So she decreed the creation of public schools.
There would be primary and secondary schools for boys and girls. And what was more extraordinary, these free schools would accept children of all social classes. The only ones excluded were, once more, the unfortunate serfs (almost enslaved peasants).
The empress ordered each province to build schools. The aristocracy helped with the costs.
Now she needed capable teachers for her many new schools. So she founded an institute in St. Petersburg to train them: the Teacher’s Seminary.
She also founded a third boarding school, the Novodevichii Institute. It was a twin of the Smolny. But while the Smolny was only for noble girls, this one accepted the daughters of commoners. It taught the same classes, and it, too, prepared them for university.
By the end of Catherine’s reign, there were 549 state schools. It is a small number for Russia’s population, but before her, there were none.
The empress recognized that the reforms took time to implement. She wrote to Voltaire, the famous writer of the Enlightenment with whom she corresponded, that the country was improving “little by little.”
And Catherine’s successors followed her example and kept building schools.
Catherine took care of the orphans too. She built state-funded orphanages in the two largest cities: Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Both institutions raised and thoroughly educated the children, like the other schools. Plus, the pupils learned a professional craft according to their abilities, such as accountancy or metallurgy. And if they were inclined to keep studying, they were prepared for university.
Universities
The Romanovs, namely Peter the Great and Empress Elizabeth, had already founded a few universities.
Catherine the Great expanded the existing universities. And she created several more, especially technical ones, as she wanted Russia to have more scientists.
The tsarina founded the State University of Land Management, based in Moscow and dedicated to training highly qualified personnel for agriculture (Russia’s economy depended on agriculture); Saint-Petersburg Mining University, to produce engineers specialized in the mining and metals industries (an area she wanted to develop); and Moscow State University of Geodesy and Cartography, which trained students in the Earth Sciences. All of those universities still exist.
And for each institution, the empress, of course, commissioned new beautiful neoclassical buildings.
6. More charities: allowing others to lend a hand
The government could not take care of all of Russia’s poor, so in 1775 Catherine allowed private individuals to establish charities.
The nobility stepped up and founded orphanages, almshouses, asylums for people with mental disorders, and other institutions.
7. Culture & arts: let’s polish
The arts were another of Catherine’s passions.
When she arrived in Russia, she was surprised to find out that elite Russians did not have pride in their own culture. So she began to promote it, supporting Russian writers, composers, and the like.
The empress founded the Imperial Russian Academy to study the Russian language and literature.
She also sent local composers like Dmitry Bortniansky to train in Europe. And she backed the first-ever public concert in Russia in 1764, two years after her ascension to the throne.
Twelve years later, she allowed a prince to build the Bolshoi Kamenny Theater for opera and ballet performances. That was the first permanent theater open to the public.
The empress was a fan of theatre too. She wrote some plays herself -as well as the first children’s book published in Russia- and had a private theater built next to her palace in St. Petersburg. The tsarina and her friends loved gathering there to watch plays.
To train actors and directors, she founded the Russian State Institute of Performing Arts.
And she expanded the Imperial Academy of the Arts, which trained architects, sculptors, and painters.
Catherine also established the first public library in Russia: the Imperial Public Library. This library is nowadays the eleventh largest in the world (and second-largest in Russia).
Her own collections
Now, almost all of that was for the people. For herself, Catherine amassed a fantastic art collection that included 4,000 paintings from the greatest European masters, from Raphael to Rembrandt. She also bought 10,000 drawings, 16,000 coins and medals, and 10,000 engraved gems.
She also got herself 38,000 books because the palaces’ libraries were almost empty.
Later on, she shipped them to her new public library. Among those books were the private collections of her friends Voltaire and Diderot, which she had bought from their heirs.
Her other collectibles, including her paintings, are now exhibited at the Hermitage Museum, her former residence in Saint Petersburg.
The Hermitage is the second-largest museum in the world and has one of the best collections of Western Art, mainly thanks to Catherine.
8. Religion: tolerance is key
Catherine promoted religious tolerance. During her reign, no one was persecuted for their faith. That was quite unusual for any 18th-century country.
The majority of her subjects were part of the Russian Orthodox Church (a branch of Christianity). But there were also Muslim, Jewish, and Catholic minorities in her empire.
Catherine had converted to the Orthodox faith after arriving in Russia. Yet, she was not really religious and did not treat any of the churches extraordinarily well. As a matter of fact, the mainstream Orthodox Church suffered quite heavily under her. She expropriated their lands and made them dependent on the government.
This was because the sovereign was pragmatic. She did not want any church to create problems for her by having too much power. She did not want them interfering with government or with education, which she had secularized. But she did respect their existence.
A proof of her open-mindedness is that when the empress convoked the Legislative Commission -the one that was to write the new laws for the country-, she invited Muslim scholars to participate.
She even built towns and mosques for the Muslims. Again, it was a pragmatic decision. She had taken lands from the Ottoman Empire and now had Muslim subjects who were nomadic. She wanted them to settle down and become more economically productive.
The tsarina also received the Jesuits, a Catholic order, when they were expelled from other European countries.
But she did struggle a bit after conquering Poland since the deed flooded her with millions of Catholics and Jews.
Catherine restricted the mobility of her Jewish subjects. They were to remain in the recently conquered territories. Yet, that was not so odd for Russians, for they had never been free to move from one place to another anyways. And it served an economic purpose: Catherine wanted those territories to remain settled.
Still, people of all faiths were at least safe in Catherine’s Russia.
9. Economy: innovating
Catherine tried to strengthen Russia’s economy. She founded the Assignation Bank. It accepted deposits and, for the first time, issued paper money in Russia. It had branches throughout the country.
She also gave the nobility more rights and education, and thus, more independence. She allowed and encouraged them to take on economic activities. That way, they would not depend on government positions.
And since many lands in her vast territory were unoccupied, she built towns. And she invited both Russians and foreigners to settle there. She hoped the newcomers would make those areas prosperous.
With that expectation, she especially invited Germans. The Germans had developed new farming techniques -from production and milling to sheep raising and even manufacturing. Russia depended heavily on agriculture. And she hoped the Germans would bring their efficient techniques and that the locals would copy them. To entice them, she offered them lands and many benefits. It worked. Thousands of Germans arrived and settled along the Volga river and boosted agriculture.
But Catherine did not want Russia to depend solely on agriculture, so she started to exploit other resources. The empress promoted mining and factories. And she created the already mentioned technical universities to form students in those fields.
10. Territory: more is better
Catherine ruled in the 1700s.
The idea of invading other countries seems barbaric now. But in Catherine’s time, it was something European countries did to expand their own territories.
Catherine added 518,000 km2/200,000 mi2 (that is about the size of modern France or the state of Texas) to her already huge country.
She mostly expanded towards the south and west. To the south, to gain access to the Black Sea. And to the west, by occupying lands in Eastern and even Central Europe (Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, Caucasus, Belarus, Courland, Crimea).
Originally, Russia and Poland got along. But then Poland, governed by one of Catherine’s ex-lovers, became too strong for the comfort of their neighbors.
So its neighbors -Russia, Prussia, and Austria- partitioned Poland among them, taking all its lands. Poland ceased to exist in 1795.
During Catherine’s reign, Alaska, in the Americas, was also more heavily colonized.
11. Navy: finally, the Black Sea Fleet
Having access to the Black Sea had long been a dream of the Russian rulers. They had access to the Pacific Ocean on the east and to the northern seas.
But the Black Sea would open up the routes to the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic. This meant more trade with all the wealthy Mediterranean countries and a military presence in the Black Sea.
The problem was, the land next to the Black Sea had been taken by the Ottoman Empire. And the Ottomans had a reputation for invincibility.
But Catherine’s army was one of the strongest and largest in Europe.
She finally conquered those territories and opened Russian ports in the Black Sea (again, this was 18th century imperial mentality; nonetheless, Catherine’s European neighbors were appalled at her actions).
Then, she built herself a new fleet.
The famous Black Sea Fleet went on to win many battles for the Russians. It still exists and is considered iconic.
The new fleet was a nice addition to her existing Baltic and Caspian fleets.
12. Diplomacy: always the diplomat
Even when other European countries were consternated by Catherine’s expansionism, she kept strong diplomatic ties with them. Well, with the ones she did not plan on invading.
Her main allies were Austria (Holy Roman Empire), France, Denmark-Norway, and for a while Russia’s former enemy, Prussia.
She kept her treaties so Russia would be perceived as less of a threat and the European countries would not join forces against her.
And Catherine, ever more present in the European scene, acted as a mediator of international disputes. For example, when Prussia and Austria were at war over the Bavarian Succession (1778-1779), Catherine helped mediate the conflict between them.
13. Trade: yes, please
Catherine wanted Russia to become an economic powerhouse. So she lifted trading restrictions and encouraged commerce.
She signed a trading treaty with her nemesis Great Britain in 1766. And since most of Russia’s territory is in Asia, the empress was keen on establishing trading relations with wealthy India. She also sent a diplomatic mission to her neighbor Japan to trade with them, but the Japanese turned her down.
In an interesting and precedent-setting move, the empress established the League of Armed Neutrality. The league allowed neutral countries to trade with nations that were at war.
Before the league, the warring countries would keep neutral nations from trading with their enemies -usually by sinking their commercial ships.
14. Russia becomes a power player
The image of Russia greatly improved in Europe. In a few decades, it changed from being seen as a faraway and backward country to being considered a European power player.
During Catherine’s reign, it was also seen as a nation that had arts and education in the forefront, a powerful army -perhaps the most powerful in Europe-, beautiful cities, a cultured dazzling court that attracted the great minds of Europe, and that was under strong leadership.
And those were Catherine the Great’s accomplishments.
What makes Catherine extraordinary is her vision for her country, how focused she was on her job, and how capable she was at it.
The empress believed that “the end of monarchy is the glory of the citizens, of the state, and of the sovereign.” So she worked tirelessly, aiming at achieving that glory for all three.
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