Catherine The Great's Influence On Russia

Catherine the Great was born in Stettin, Prussia . She was given the name Sophie Friederike Auguste by her father, Prince Christian August of Anhalt-Zerbest and her mother, Princess Johanna Elisabeth of Holstein-Gottorp. Catherine the Great started out as a minor German Princess. As she grew up, she got educated by tutors. She learned three different languages; German, French, and Russian. She was a very ambitious and intelligent student . In her free time she read a lot of books. Catherine worked extremely hard to master the Russian Language. She greatly enjoyed novels, plays, and verses. In 1744 Catherine traveled to Russia with her mother. But overall her mother didn’t have much interest in her. A couple years later Catherine got

Catherine began as a political and social reformer but as she got older she became for conservative. She extended the Russian Empire southwards and westwards; therefore it added the territories, Crimea, Belarus and Lithuania to it . In the year of 1762 Grand Duke Peter became Tsar Peter III; but he eventually got overthrown by Catherine the Great becoming the Empress after Elizabeth passing away. Also the Pugachev Rebellion of 1774 to 1775 gave big support to the western territories of Russia until it was demolished by the Russian Army . Later Catherine realized that her heavy reliance was in nobility in controlling her country; in conclusion she came up with reforms that gave more control over the land and the serfs. Also the 1785 Charter to the Nobility established it as one separate estate in Russian society and it assured all privileges. But Catherine ignored all the concerns she had previously for the Plight of the serfs. As a result the serfs’ status and rights decreased further. Catherine’s main interests were in education and culture. When writing the Instruction Catherine was influenced by writers such as Baron de Montesquieu who wrote The Spirit of the Laws, Cesare Beccaria who wrote an essay on Crimes and Punishments, William Blackstone who wrote Commentaries on the Laws of England, and Baron Bielefeld

Her Instructions consisted of twenty chapters and 526 articles. They were a guide for Catherine’s ideal type of government and society that she wanted for Russia. Her goal of the Instructions was to proclaim Russia’s place as a Modern European State rather than the Asiatic deposition Montesquieu had named it to be . They dealt with political, social, legal, and economic issues. In 1768 she issued a supplement that dealt with issues of public health, public order, and urban life. She also included in her Instructions the importance of education, abolishing torture, and limiting capital punishment. Catherine became inspired by Frederick II of Prussia since he came up with his own idea of the proper role of the monarch and the organization of the bureaucracy, so she sent a German translation of the Instruction to Frederick II after she finished writing and editing it . The Instructions conveyed a great deal of important legal thinking from the west and from that they created a language in which political and social discussions could be held by . In 1768 as a war broke out between Russia and Turkey the Legislative disbanded it . The Commission never succeeded in finalizing a draft of a law code. Therefore partial codes were issued later; some of them refer directly to Catherine’s Instructions; but a complete body of law code was never produced during Catherine’s