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Catherine the Great and the Development of a Modern Russian Sovereignty, 1762-1796

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Catherine the Great and the Development of a Modern Russian Sovereignty, 1762-1796 Catherine the Great and the Development of a Modern Russian Sovereignty, 1762-1796 By Thomas Lucius Lowish A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Victoria Frede-Montemayor, Chair Professor Jonathan Sheehan Professor Kinch Hoekstra Spring 2021 Abstract Catherine the Great and the Development of a Modern Russian Sovereignty, 1762-1796 by Thomas Lucius Lowish Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Berkeley Professor Victoria Frede-Montemayor, Chair Historians of Russian monarchy have avoided the concept of sovereignty, choosing instead to describe how monarchs sought power, authority, or legitimacy. This dissertation, which centers on Catherine the Great, the empress of Russia between 1762 and 1796, takes on the concept of sovereignty as the exercise of supreme and untrammeled power, considered legitimate, and shows why sovereignty was itself the major desideratum. Sovereignty expressed parity with Western rulers, but it would allow Russian monarchs to bring order to their vast domain and to meaningfully govern the lives of their multitudinous subjects. This dissertation argues that Catherine the Great was a crucial figure in this process. Perceiving the confusion and disorder in how her predecessors exercised power, she recognized that sovereignty required both strong and consistent procedures as well as substantial collaboration with the broadest possible number of stakeholders. This was a modern conception of sovereignty, designed to regulate the swelling mechanisms of the Russian state. Catherine established her system through careful management of both her own activities and the institutions and servitors that she saw as integral to the system. She used a variety of management strategies that included imposing laws, issuing instructions, and routinizing interactions with administrators. While Catherine’s system, which was noble oriented, had limited purchase in the vast Russian countryside, it established clear expectations about the legitimate exercise of power. After her death, the system would not tolerate lightly any violation of its principles. Catherine’s successors, Alexander I and Nicholas I, largely adhered to these arrangements, allowing the Russian monarchy to remain a robust and viable form of government in the first half of the nineteenth century. 1 Table of Contents Acknowledgments ii Introduction 2 1. Peter III: The Overthrow of a Russian Despot 15 2. The Empress’ ‘Nakaz’: An Instruction in Sovereignty 36 3. Sovereignty and the Art of Command-Giving 52 4. The Empress’ Body: The Routines and Geography of Power 74 5. Emel’ian Pugachev and the Limits of the Empress’ Sovereignty 90 Conclusion 111 Bibliography 115 i Acknowledgments This dissertation would not have been completed without the help and encouragement of a great many people. Mabel Lee, Erin Leigh Imana, and Todd Kuebler were pillars of support in the history department, guiding me through the graduate program and finding department funding for archival work in Russia. This research would have been challenging without Igor Alexandrov, who gave me a place to live and restored my spirits after many a dismal day in the archives with his wisdom and good humor. In Berkeley, Liladhar Pendse helped me find electronic manuscripts of Russian books and dissertations, and Zachary Kelly and Jeffrey Pennington of Berkeley ISEEES provided me with a place to read and write on campus. I also owe a debt to many people who took time out of their day to read and comment on my work directly. These include Edward Walker, Daniel Lee, Thomas Dandelet, Yuri Slezkine, Shannon Stimson, and the participants of the Desert Russian History Workshop. I also thank the members of the Berkeley Russian History Kruzhok for their years of friendship, comradery, and pizza, but also their decisive comments on an early draft of chapter 3. Amongst the many individuals that have helped me, I want to single out three who have most greatly influenced my graduate studies and this dissertation. Jonathan Sheehan, whose class in the first semester of graduate school drew me to the history of the Enlightenment, carefully read and commented on all the chapters of this dissertation when they were at an early stage. He constantly posed hard questions and made numerous suggestions about the work’s organization and what its central emphasis might be. I also thank Kinch Hoeskstra, who taught me the importance of careful textual analysis and of how to think better about the tricky concept of sovereignty. I thank him for taking me on as one of his students and for always making time for me, despite being in another department. My greatest debt is to Victoria Frede-Montemayor. From the first day of my graduate studies, she spared no effort in making me a better historian, always holding me to the highest standards, while encouraging me at every turn. She was a constant guiding light in the writing of this dissertation, providing detailed comments and criticisms, and helping me see not only the overall story, but also why what I was doing was important. I am incredibly fortunate to have had such a person as a mentor for such a substantial period of my life. To her I have deep and ever-lasting gratitude. Lastly, I mention my friends. Natasha, who helped me find my feet in Moscow all that time ago, and who taught me the Russian language through our long conversations. I miss those days. And Danny, Jon, and Agnieszka in Berkeley. We came. We read. We forgot. But became wiser. There are none finer to have spent these wonderful years with. All that is good in the pages that follow, I attribute to help of these people. All its shortcomings, weaknesses, misjudgments, and errors are entirely my own. Berkeley, CA April 2021 ii Я предоставляю много власти людям, употребляемым от меня на службу. // I bestow much power on those who are employed in my service. - Catherine the Great, from Zapiski Gribovskogo 1 Introduction In 1762 the thirty-three-year-old empress consort of Russia, Catherine Alekseevna, overthrew her husband, the emperor, Peter III, after a reign of merely six months. At first, many supposed that she would act as regent for their son, Paul; yet, she quickly consolidated power for herself, ruling for thirty-four years until 1796, making her one of the longest-reigning rulers in Russian history. Catherine II, or “Catherine the Great” as she has come to be better known by posterity, aspired to be an enlightened ruler. Historians have rightly credited her with undertaking a number of reforms that modernized central and provincial government, encouraged the growth of towns and enterprise, and furthered education. The major, albeit unsuccessful, codification effort of the country’s laws has also garnered substantial attention.1 From the outset, however, Catherine’s principal project—the only one she spoke of at length in her ascension literature—was to bring order to the exercise of political power in Russia. Catherine justified her overthrow of Peter III by invoking his incorrect understanding of and inability to wield sovereign power. In some basic sense, all monarchs aspire to sovereignty - the exercise of supreme and untrammeled power, and the recognition of their claims as legitimate.2 Although Catherine and Peter shared this rudimentary conception, she believed that Peter had an incorrect understanding of what legitimate, untrammeled power meant, making him the opposite of a sovereign monarch: a despot. Seizing the throne for herself, she promised to rectify Peter’s errors, which, in her mind, undermined Russia’s military and political prestige. She was not alone in this judgment: those high-ranking Russian statesmen who organized the coup that 1 The books on Catherine’s reign are numerous. In the Anglophone literature the definitive general study continues to be Isabel de Madariaga’s Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), followed by John T. Alexander, Catherine the Great: Life and Legend (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989) and Simon Dixon, Catherine the Great (New York: HarperCollins, 2009). In the post-Soviet Russian historiography, see Aleksandr Kamenskii, “Pod sen’iu Ekateriny…”: vtoraia polovina 18v (St. Petersburg: Lenizdat, 1992) and Ol’ga I. Eliseeva, Ekaterina velikaia (Moscow, 2013). 2 This definition of sovereignty builds on standard basic definitions of the concept. For example: “The term sovereignty originally and for a long time expressed the idea that there is a final and absolute authority in the political community,” F. H. Hinsley, Sovereignty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 1. And more recently: “Sovereignty, though its meanings have varied across history, also has a core meaning, supreme authority within a territory,” Daniel Philpott, “Sovereignty,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2020 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL=https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2020/entries/sovereignty/. I add the term ‘untrammeled’ to the more common adjective ‘supreme.’ ‘Supreme’ conveys the idea that there was no power superior to that of the monarch, but that idea was no point of contention or concern in eighteenth-century Russia. ‘Untrammeled,’ in contrast, conveys the notion of power that meets neither restriction nor resistance, and this better captures debates around legitimacy that were important to Catherine. Sovereignty is often defined in terms of ‘authority’ in order to underline legitimacy as a core component. However, I maintain that ‘power,’ understood simply as the capacity to act (above all, to carry out political acts), works better. ‘Power’ helps highlight the fact that not every monarchical decision or action was deemed legitimate. Peter III, for example, exercised power, but in a way that even senior advisors perceived as illegitimate. Eventually, the perception that his actions were illegitimate resulted in a loss of the (untrammeled) powers he claimed.
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