by Riazanovsky
At that time Potemkin and Catherine the Great nursed very far-reaching aims which came to be known as "the Greek project." Roughly speaking, the project involved conquering the Ottomans, or at least their European possessions, and establishing - re-establishing the sponsors of the project insisted - a great Christian empire centered on Constantinople. Catherine the Great had her second grandson named Constantine, entrusted him to a Greek nurse, and ordered medals struck with a reproduction of St. Sophia! Austria finally agreed to allow the project after receiving assurance that the new empire would be entirely separate from Russia and after an offer of compensations in the Balkans and other advantages. Yet, like many other overly ambitious schemes, the Greek project proved to be ephemeral. Neither it nor its chief promoter Potemkin survived the Second Turkish War.
Turkey declared war on Russia in 1787 after the Russians rejected an ultimatum demanding that they evacuate the Crimea and the northern Black Sea littoral. The Porte enjoyed the sympathy of several major European powers, especially Great Britain which almost entered the war in 1791, and before long Sweden gave active support by attacking Russia. Catherine the Great had Austria as her military ally. The Second Turkish War, 1787-92, was confined to land action. Russian troops led by Suvorov scored a series of brilliant victories over Turkish forces, notably in 1790 when Suvorov stormed and won the supposedly impregnable fortress of Ismail. Incidentally, it was Michael Kutuzov, the hero of 1812, who first broke into Ismail. At the end of the war, Suvorov was marching on
Constantinople. By the Treaty of Jassy, signed on January 9, 1792, Russia gained the fortress of Ochakov and the Black Sea shore up to the Dniester River, while Turkey recognized Russian annexation of the Crimea. Russia had reached what appeared to be her natural boundaries in the south; the Turkish problem could be considered essentially solved.
The Partitioning of Poland
Catherine the Great's Polish policy turned out to be as impressive as her relations with Turkey. In a sense the partitioning of Poland, an important European state, represented a greater tour de force than the capture of a huge segment of a largely uninhabited steppe from the Ottomans. But, whereas the settlement with Turkey proved definitive and, as many scholars have insisted, logical and natural, the same could not be asserted by any stretch of the imagination in the case of Poland. Indeed, the partitioning of that country left Russia and Europe with a constant source of pain and conflict.
It has often been said, and with some reason, that Poland was ready for partitioning in the second half of the eighteenth century. Decentralization and weakening of central power in that country rapidly gathered momentum from about the middle of the seventeenth century. Elected kings proved increasingly unable to control their unruly subjects. The only other seat of central authority, the sejm, or diet, failed almost entirely to function. Composed of instructed delegates from provincial diets, the sejm in its procedure resembled a diplomatic congress more than a national legislature. The objection of a single deputy, the notorious liberum veto, would defeat a given measure and, in addition, dissolve the sejm and abrogate all legislation which it had passed prior to the dissolution. Between 1652 and 1674, for example, forty-eight of the fifty-five diets were so dissolved, almost one-third of them by the veto of a single deputy. The only traditional recourse when the sejm was dissolved consisted in proclaiming a confederation, that is, a gathering of the adherents of a given position; a confederation could no longer be obstructed by a liberum veto, and it tried to impose its views by force. The Polish political system has been described as "anarchy tempered by civil war."
The weakness of the Polish government acquired additional significance because that government had to face many grave problems. The Polish king ruled over Poles, Lithuanians, White Russians, Ukrainians, and Jews, not to mention smaller ethnic groups, over Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants, and subjects of Hebrew faith. He had to contend with an extremely strong and independent gentry, which, composing some eight per cent of the population, arrogated to itself all "Polish liberties," while keeping the bulk of the people, the peasants, in the worst condition of serfdom imaginable.
And he had to deal with powerful and greedy neighbors who surrounded Poland on three sides.
The last point deserves emphasis, because, after all, Poland did not partition itself: it was divided by three mighty aggressors. In fact, in the eighteenth century, Polish society experienced an intellectual and cultural revival which began to spread to politics. Given time, Poland might well have successfully reformed itself. But its neighbors were determined that it would not have the time. It was the misfortune of Poland that precisely when its political future began to look more promising, Catherine the Great finally agreed to a plan of partition of the kind which Prussia and Austria had been advancing from the days of Peter the Great.
The last king of Poland - and Catherine the Great's former lover - Stanislaw Poniatowski, who reigned from 1764 to 1795, tried to introduce certain reforms but failed to obtain firm support from Russia and Prussia, which countries had agreed in 1764 to co-operate in Polish affairs. In 1766-68 the allies reopened the issue of the dissidents, that is, the Orthodox and the Protestants, and forced the Polish government to grant them equal rights with the Catholics. That concession in turn led to violent protest within Poland, the formation of the Confederation of Bar, and civil war, with France lending some support to the Confederation, and Turkey even using the pretext of defending "Polish liberties" to declare war on Russia. Eventually Russian troops subdued the Confederates, and the first partition of Poland came in 1772.
That unusual attempt to solve the Polish problem stemmed in large part from complicated considerations of power politics: Russia had been so successful in the Turkish War that Austria was alarmed for its position; Frederick the Great of Prussia proposed the partition of a part of Poland as a way to satisfy Catherine the Great's expansionist ambitions and at the same time to provide compensation for Austria - which in effect had taken the initiative in 1769 by seizing and "re-incorporating" certain Polish border areas - as well as to obtain for Prussia certain long-coveted Polish lands which separated Prussian dominions. By the first partition of Poland Russia obtained White Russian and Latvian Lithuania to the Dvina and the Dnieper rivers with some 1,300,000 inhabitants; Austria received so-called Galicia, consisting of Red Russia, with the city of Lemberg, or Lvov, of a part of western Podolia, and of southern Little Poland, with a total population of 2,650,000; Prussia took the so-called Royal, or Polish, Prussia, except Danzig and Thorn. Although moderate in size and containing only 580,000 people, the Prussian acquisition represented the most valuable gain of the three from the political, military, and financial points of view. In all, Poland lost about one-third of her territory and more than a third of her population.
This disaster spurred the Poles finally to enact basic reforms. Changes
began in 1773 and culminated in the activities of the celebrated Four Years' Diet of 1788-92 and in the constitution of May 3, 1791. The monarchy was to become hereditary, and the king obtained effective executive power; legislative authority was vested in a two-chamber diet with the lower chamber in a dominant position; the liberum veto disappeared in favor of majority rule; the diet included representatives of the middle class;
a cabinet of ministers, organized along modern lines, was created and made responsible to the diet. The Polish reform party profited from the benevolent attitude of Prussia, which hoped apparently to obtain further concessions from new Poland; Russia and Austria were again preoccupied with a Turkish war. But the May constitution brought matters to a head. While Prussia and Austria accepted it, Russia instigated the organization of the Confederation of Targowica in defense of the old order in May 1792. When the Russian army entered Poland on the invitation of the Confederaion, the Prussians reversed themselves and joined the invaders. The second partition of Poland followed in January 1793. This time Russia took more of Lithuania and most of the western Ukraine with a total of 3,000,00C inh
abitants; Prussia seized Danzig, Thorn, and Great Poland with a combined population of 1,000,000; Austria did not participate. In addition, Russia obtained the right to move its troops into what remained of Poland and control its foreign policy.
The Poles responded in March 1794 with a great national uprising led by Thaddeus Kosciuszko. But, in spite of their courage, their fight was hopeless. The Poles were crushed by the Russians, commanded by Suvorov, and the Prussians. Austria rejoined her allies to carry out the third partition of Poland in October 1795. By its provisions, Russia acquired the remainder of Lithuania and Ukraine, with 1,200,000 inhabitants, as well as the Duchy of Courland, where Russian influence had predominated from the time of Empress Anne; Prussia took Mazovia, including Warsaw, with 1,000,000 people; Austria appropriated the rest of Little Poland, with Cracow, and another 1,500,000 inhabitants. Poland ceased to exist as an independent state.
The partitioning of Poland brought tragedy to the Poles. Its impact on the successful aggressors is more difficult to assess. As Lord and other historians have shown in detail, Prussia, Russia, and Austria scored a remarkable, virtually unprecedented, diplomatic and military coup. They dismembered and totally destroyed a large European state, eliminating an old enemy, rival, and source of conflicts, while at the same time adding greatly to their own lands, resources, and populations. Eastern Europe fell under their complete control, with France deprived of her old ally. Significantly, after the division of Poland, the three east European monarchies for a long time co-operated closely on the international scene - partners in crime, if you will. Yet, even some of the philosophes praised at least the first partition of Poland, calling it "a triumph of rationality." But the Poles thought differently and never accepted the dismemberment. As a result, Poland, Polish rights, and Polish boundaries remained an unresolved problem, or series of problems, for Europe and the world. For imperial Russia, the partitioning of Poland resulted in, among other things,
the Polish support of Napoleon in 1812 and the great rebellions of 1831 and 1863.
Russian scholars like to emphasize that the Russian case contrasted sharply with those of Prussia and Austria: in the three partitions of Poland Russia took old Russian lands, once part of the Kievan state, populated principally by Orthodox Ukrainians and White Russians, whereas the two German powers grabbed ethnically and historically Polish territory; the Russians, therefore, came as liberators, the Prussians and the Austrians as oppressors. If Catherine the Great deserved blame, it was not for her own acquisitions, but for allowing Prussia and Austria to expand at the expense of the Poles. Much can be said for this point of view, for it states the facts of the dismemberment correctly; yet at least two caveats seem in order. The brutal Russian policy toward Poland had to allow for the interests of other aggressors and indeed led to further repartitioning, with Warsaw and the very heart of the divided country linked to Russia in 1815. Also, Catherine the Great herself cared little about the faith or the ethnic origins of her new subjects. She thought simply in terms of power politics, position, and prestige - everything to the greater glory of Russia, and of course, to her own greater glory. After suppressing the Confederation of Bar, Russian troops also suppressed a desperate uprising of Ukrainian peasants against their Polish and Polonized landlords. These landlords continued to dominate and exploit the masses quite as effectively after the partitions as before them. In fact, some Ukrainian historians have complained that the oppression increased, because the strong Russian government maintained law and order more successfully than had the weak Polish authorities.
Foreign Policy: Certain Other Matters
Catherine the Great's foreign policy encompassed a wide range of activities and interests in addition to the relations with Turkey and Poland. Important developments included the Russian role in the League of Armed Neutrality, a war against Sweden, and the empress's reaction to the French Revolution. Russia advanced the doctrine of armed neutrality at sea in 1780 to protect the commerce of non-combatant states against arbitrary actions of the British who were engaged in a struggle with their American colonies. Several other European countries supported Russian proposals which eventually became part of international maritime law. Russia and her partners in the League insisted that neutral ships could pass freely from port to port and along the coast to combatants, that enemy goods in neutral ships, except contraband, were not subject to seizure, and that to be legal a blockade had to be enforced, rather than merely proclaimed.
Sweden, as already mentioned, attacked Russia in 1788, when the Russian armies were engaged in fighting Turkey. The Swedes repeatedly threatened St. Petersburg; however, the war proved inconclusive. The Treaty of Werala signed in August 1790, merely confirmed the pre-war boundary. Denmark, allied with Russia, participated in the hostilities against Sweden.
The French Revolution made a strong impression on Catherine the Great. At first she tried to minimize the import of the events in France and to dissociate them from the main course of European history and the Enlightenment. But, as the Revolution became more radical, the empress reacted with bitterness and hostility. At home she turned against critical intellectuals and indeed against much of the cultural climate that she herself had striven so hard to create. In respect to revolutionary France, she became more and more antagonistic and broke off relations in 1793 after the execution of Louis XVI. Of course, she also used the confusion and disarrangement produced in Europe by the French Revolution to carry out the second and third partitions of Poland without interference. Some historians believe that only the empress's sudden death prevented her from joining a military coalition against France.
Evaluations of Catherine the Great
Much has been written for and against Catherine the Great. The sovereign's admirers have included many intellectuals, from eighteenth-century philosophes led by Voltaire to Sidney Hook, who not long ago proclaimed her an outstanding example of the hero who makes history. The empress has received praise from numerous historians, in particular specialists in the cultural development, foreign relations, and expansion of Russia, including such judicious scholars as B. Nolde and Isabel de Madariaga. A few, for instance V. Leontovich, also commended her policy toward the gentry, in which they saw the indispensable first step in the direction of liberalism - rights, privileges, and advantages had to be acquired first by the top social group, and only after that could they percolate downward.
The critics of Catherine the Great, who have included many pre-revolutionary Russian historians as well as the Soviet scholars as a group, have concentrated overwhelmingly on the empress's social policy and the social conditions during her reign. Above all, they have castigated the reign as the zenith of serfdom in Russia. For this reason many of them would deny that Catherine II, in spite of her display and championing of culture, was an enlightened despot in the sense in which this term would apply to Emperor Joseph II of Austria, who did care for the masses. Even though very few social historians have ascribed personally to the empress a fundamental influence on the evolution of Russian society, they have
been repelled by the contrast between her professedly progressive views and her support of serfdom, as well as by the ease and thoroughness of her accommodation to that great evil. Her immediate successors, Paul and Alexander I, showed different attitudes.
But whatever judgment we make of the empress - and it should be clear that the views mentioned above rarely clash directly, covering as they do different aspects of Catherine the Great's activity - we must recognize the importance of her reign. In foreign policy, with the acquisition of southern Russia and the partitioning of Poland; in internal affairs, with the development of serfdom and of the gentry position and privileges; and in culture, with striking progress in Westernization, the time of Catherine the Great marked a culmination of earlier trends and set the stage for Russian history in the nineteenth century. But before we turn to Russia in the nineteenth century, we have to consider the reign of Paul and some broad aspects of the evolution of Russia from
Peter the Great to Alexander I.
The Reign of Paul
Emperor Paul was forty-two years old when he ascended the throne. In the course of the decades during which his mother had kept him away from power, he came to hate her, her favorites, her advisers, and everything she stood for. Reversing Catherine the Great's decisions and undoing her work was, therefore, one salient trait of Paul's brief reign, 1796-1801. Another stemmed directly from his character and can best be described as petty tyranny. Highly suspicious, irritable, and given to frequent outbreaks of rage, the emperor promoted and demoted his assistants with dazzling rapidity and often for no apparent reason. He changed the drill and the uniforms of the Russian army, himself entering into the minutest details; imperial military reviews inspired terror in the participants. Paul generously freed from prison and exile those punished by Catherine the Great, including liberal and radical intellectuals and leaders of the Polish rebellion such as Kosciuszko. But their places were quickly taken by others who had in some manner displeased the sovereign, and the number of the victims kept mounting. Above all, the emperor insisted on his autocratic power and majesty even in small things like dancing at a palace festival and saluting. As Paul reportedly informed the French ambassador, the only important person in Russia was the one speaking to the emperor, and only while he was so speaking. With the same concept of the majesty of the Russian monarchy in mind, and also reacting, no doubt, to his own long and painful wait for the crown, Paul changed the law of succession to the Russian throne at the time of his coronation in 1797: primogeniture