Catherine the Great Augments the Power of Estate Owners

Catherine II, or Catherine the Great (1729–1796), led the Russian empire following the deposition of her husband, Peter III, in 1762. Born Sophia Augusta Frederica in Prussian-controlled Pomerania (in present-day Poland), Catherine converted to the Russian Orthodox Church and married the Russian tsarevich, or heir apparent, Peter in 1745. In 1762, her husband the tsar was deposed in a coup d’état and assassinated eight days later. Taking the throne in his stead, Catherine oversaw an impressive expansion of Russian territory and embraced Enlightenment ideals, but her harsh treatment of Russia’s peasant population — evidenced here in two decrees — may reveal her dependence on the support of the Russian landowning nobility and the practical limits of absolutism.

Upon our accession to the imperial throne of all Russia, we learned, to our great displeasure, that the peasants of some landlords, seduced and deluded by false rumors spread by unscrupulous people, had departed from the obedience due to their landlords and had proceeded to commit many unruly and defiant acts. We are firmly convinced that such false rumors will presently die away by themselves; the deluded peasants will recognize that from thoughtlessness they have fallen into grievous crime and will forthwith repent, endeavoring thereafter to earn forgiveness through mute submission to their masters. Nevertheless, in order to check the spread of such evil and to prevent any false rumors from being disseminated again and credulous peasants being corrupted thereby, we deem it right to make known herewith that . . . inasmuch as the welfare of the state, in accordance with divine and public laws, requires that each and every person be protected in the enjoyment of his well-earned property and his rights, and, conversely, that no one step beyond the bounds of his rank and office, we therefore intend to protect the landlords in their estates and possessions inviolably and to keep the peasants in their proper submission to them.

To be announced for the information of the whole populace: In consequence of the confirmation given by Her Imperial Majesty, on the eighth of January [1765], to a report submitted by the Senate, it has been ordained that, should an estate owner desire to commit any of his people [i.e., serfs] who deserve just punishment for recalcitrance to penal servitude in Siberia, for the sake of stricter discipline, the College of the Admiralty shall take the same in charge and employ them at hard labor for as long as their estate owners wish; and during the time such people remain at hard labor they shall be provided with food and clothing from the treasury on the same basis as convicts; and whenever their estate owners desire to take them back, they shall be returned without argument, with the sole reservation that if such people during their stay have not worn their clothes and footwear for the full prescribed term, these shall be taken away from them and returned to the treasury.

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