Catherine The Great Instruction Essay

During the reign of Peter the Great, Russia was reformed socially and politically. He brought Russia into the international scene and attempted to incorporate European culture into Russian society. Due to his legacy, Catherine the Great idolized Peter and tried to include his image into her reign. Catherine ruled as Empress of Russia from 1762 until 1796 and many reforms, including the Instruction, were carried out. Since the Russian legal code remained unchanged from 1649 onward, Catherine decided to create her Instruction in 1767 to deal with various issues surrounding Russian society. One of the issues was the Russian economy, which stood in poor shape during her reign. Therefore, Catherine the Great created The Instruction in order to revise

The Instruction contained 655 articles in total, which was separated into three parts. A significant part of the Instruction was made available on July 30, 1767 and dealt with laws regarding crime and punishment, social classes, and religious tolerance. Later on, 129 articles were added to manage the police, government spending, and revenues (Dmystryshyn, 1960, p. 1). In order to the Instruction, Catherine had to create a Legislative Commission composed of various ethnicities, social groups, etc. Catherine invited various members of the noble classes, government personnel, merchants, free peasants, and people who lived on the outskirts of the Russian Empire that did not identify with the mainstream Russian culture. The elections for the assembly to pick out members for the Legislative Commission were based off of physiographic territory and social rank. The government personnel consisted of 29 delegates to the assembly, the noble ranks consisted of 142 delegates, the property owners that resided in towns consisted of 209 delegates, the free peasants consisted of 56 delegates, the various ethnic groups such as Cossacks consisted of 44 delegates, and there were 54 delegates for the Russian tribes. Serfs were considered property and were disallowed representation at the assembly. In total, the Legislative

Peter redefined the duty of the Russian autocracy by binding together the notion of an autocrat who rules over the populace without any limitations and the notion of the autocrat who reforms society for the benefit of the populace (Whittaker, 1992, p. 78). Catherine wanted to become the enlightened and reforming despot that Peter the Great was, but she also realized the flaws that he possessed that she saw in herself. She criticized Peter for moving the capital to St Petersburg as opposed to moving it elsewhere and Peter’s failure to change the Sobornoye Ulozheniye of 1649 (Rasmussen, 1974, p. 56). However, Catherine was also unsuccessful in changing the Russian legal code as the Legislative Commission was a failure because it had not accomplished its task and she realized that this showed she herself had shortcomings much like Peter did (Rasmussen, 1974, p. 59). Nevertheless, Catherine had a vast amount of respect toward Peter and she used his image to her advantage as a political device. She used his image to overthrow Peter III and gain power over the throne. She realized that this was a necessity because “her claim to power was shaky and she worked to buttress it by projecting the image of a reforming tsar […]” (Whittaker, 1992, p. 92). Catherine did not ascend to the throne by legal right, but she had ascended to it because she had usurped her husband in order to claim power. Therefore, she