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    • The Serfs
    • Can We Abolish Serfdom?
    • Catherine, The Enlightened Sovereign
    • Catherine Defends The Serfs -A Bit
    • The Setback: Pugachev’s Rebellion
    • The Aftermath of The Rebellion
    • The Abolition of Serfdom

    The serfs started out as peasants, people who worked the fields. But the rulers made a succession of laws that stripped them of their freedom. When Catherine reached the throne, only 20% of the Russian peasants remained free; the rest had become “serfs,” aka slaves. According to the law, the serfs belongedto the land they were born in, and they wer...

    Catherine was not the first Russian ruler who thought of abolishing serfdom. Others had tried and failed before her. One of the problems was that Russia’s economy was heavilydependent on agriculture. And millions of serfs worked the fields. But the empress had a plan. She wanted to modernize the agricultural sector, like the Western countries were ...

    Catherine loved to read. And in her youth, she fell in love with the ideas of the Enlightenment, which, at the time, was a newish movement. These enlightened authors stated that all humans were entitled to the same rights. They thought everyone deserved to be free and happy, and that the job of a monarch was to enhance the life of his or her subjec...

    A few years later, Catherine outlawed the murder of serfs. She also granted them the right to appeal to the empress if one of their few rights had been trampled upon. Since traveling to Saint Petersburg, the capital, to see her was not possible for most serfs, Catherine ordered the courts across the country to hear the claims of the serfs. Some ser...

    So Catherine had been making some progress with the serf’s situation. And she was still intent on freeing them. But then, in 1773 -eleven years into her reign- there was a rebellion led by a Cossack called Pugachev. Pugachev had been in the army and had deserted. He now showed up in the fields and claimed he was Catherine’s dead husband, Peter IIIR...

    The revolt showed Catherine the weak points in the administration of her vast territory. She realized she needed stronger people in charge of the provinces. But more importantly, it completely changed her view of the peasants and serfs. Until then, she had seen them as harmless victims who needed saving. Now she saw them as a threat to the stabilit...

    Many of Catherine’s successors tried to abolish serfdom too, but they failed. It was only in 1861 that Emperor Alexander IIabolished it. In the 1860s, Emperor Alexander freed 46 million privately-ownedand state-owned serfs. That was about 70% of the Russian population. More on Catherine the Great: 1. Catherine the Great’s Lovers: These Are the 12 M...

  1. Nov 1, 2019 · November 01, 2019. • 5 min read. Was Catherine the Great a despot or a philosopher? A thoughtful queen fueled by concern for her people or a ruthless tyrant fueled by sex and power? Those...

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    • Michelle Konstantinovsky
    • She Wasn't Born as a Catherine or as a Russian. Born in 1729 in Prussia (modern day Poland) as Sophie von Anhalt-Zerbst, the woman who would later be known as Catherine the Great was the oldest daughter of a German prince named Christian August von Anhalt-Zerbst.
    • Her Progressive Legacy Gets Lost Among Lurid Tales. "More attention should be paid to Catherine II as legislatrix, someone with a very strong work ethic who issued numerous laws to restructure the state (to achieve administrative uniformity across a vast empire), society (by more clearly delineating different societal categories), and the very configuration of Russian towns (she had blueprints made for uniform buildings in town centers)," Victoria Frede, associate professor in the department of history at UC Berkeley, says via email.
    • Her Reign Was the "Golden Age of the Russian Empire" Catherine called herself a "glutton for art" and she was obsessed with European paintings and European-inspired architecture.
    • Her Love Life Was Complicated To Say the Least. It's no secret Catherine and Peter had a troubled marriage from the start. The fact that she didn't produce an heir after eight years of marriage led many to believe Peter either was unable to consummate the marriage or was infertile.
  3. Mar 3, 2024 · Catherine the Great's territorial ambitions, particularly her annexation of Crimea in 1783, left a mark on the modern-day relationship between Ukraine and Russia. It also significantly altered the demographic and political landscape, shaping Crimea's identity as a multi-ethnic territory.

  4. Catherine bestowed gifts, including land and titles, to her former lovers; one received more than a thousand indentured servants. Catherine faced over a dozen uprisings during her rule. Catherine the Great was reportedly tone-deaf and had to receive a signal to applaud at operas, concerts, and ballets.

  5. Aug 2, 2019 · by World History Edu · August 2, 2019. Catherine II, Empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796. Catherine the Great, also known as Catherine II, was an 18th-century Prussian-born princess that went on to become empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796. She took the throne after leading the 1762 palace coup d’état against her own husband, Peter III of ...

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