Government administration under Catherine

The reforms of local government carried out by Catherine also contained contradictions. The successors of Peter I had not solved the problem of local administration. St. Petersburg relied on appointed officials, too few in number and much given to abuse and corruption, and on the informal control exercised by individual landowners and village communes. However, a great peasant rebellion led by Yemelyan Ivanovich Pugachov (Pugachov, Yemelyan Ivanovich) in 1773–74 demonstrated the inadequacy of this system. Taking up suggestions of various officials and mindful of the information and complaints offered by the deputies to the Legislative Commission (1767–68), Catherine shaped the local administration into a structure that remained in force until the middle of the 19th century and also served as a foundation for the zemstvos (zemstvo) (local elected councils), established in 1864. The basic pattern was established by the statute on the provinces of 1775 and complemented by the organization of corporate self-administration contained in the Charters to the Nobility and the Towns (1785). Essentially, the reforms divided the empire's territory into provinces of roughly equal population; the division paid heed to military considerations. Each of these units (guberniya ) was put under the supervision and responsibility of a governor or governor-general acting in the name of the ruler, with the right of direct communication with him. A governor's chancery was set up along functional lines (paralleling the system of colleges) and subordinated to and supervised by the Senate. The regular provincial administration was assisted by officials who were elected from among the nobility for the countryside and from the higher ranks of townspeople for the cities; these elected officials took care of routine police matters in their jurisdictions, helped to enforce orders received from the central authorities, and assisted in the maintenance of law and the collection of taxes. Other elected personalities (marshals of the nobility and heads of city councils) protected the interests of their respective classes and helped to settle minor conflicts without recourse to regular tribunals. This delegation of some administrative functions to the local level multiplied the number of state agents on the local level but also fostered a sense of responsibility among the active and cultured members of the local upper classes. On the other hand, the serfs and the lower classes in the towns found themselves without anyone to protect their interests.

Catherine made no fundamental changes in the administration of the central government. The system of colleges was retained, but the authority of the presidents increased at the expense of the boards, initiating an evolution that culminated in the establishment of monocratic ministries in 1802. The Senate supervised all branches of administration, regulating the orderly flow of business. The Senate was also involved—albeit indirectly—in coordination, mainly because its procurator general, Prince Aleksandr A. Vyazemsky, held the office for a quarter of a century with the full trust of the empress. At the same time, the judicial functions of the Senate as a high court of appeal and administrative review were widened.

The major institutional weakness of the Petrine system remained—namely, the lack of a body to coordinate the jurisdictions and resolve the conflicts of the colleges and to plan policies and control their implementation. A ruler as energetic, hardworking, and intelligent as Catherine could perform these tasks almost single-handedly, as had Peter I; but with the growing complexity of administration even Catherine felt the need for such a body, if only to reduce her involvement in every small detail or contested matter and to provide a wider scope for government by permanent laws (law code) and uniform regulations.

A major need of the empire was an up-to-date code of laws. The last code, issued in 1649, had become largely inoperative as a result of Peter's reforms and the transformation of society. Peter and his successors had recognized this need by appointing commissions to prepare a new code; none of the several efforts having reached a successful conclusion, Catherine tried to tackle the job again, but in a different manner. In 1767 she convoked a commission of representatives elected by all classes except private serfs. For their guidance she drafted an instruction (Catherine the Great, Instruction of) largely inspired by Western political thinkers, but, far from providing a blueprint for a liberal code, it emphasized the need for autocracy. In its civil part the instruction owed much to German political philosophy and natural-law jurisprudence, putting the individual's duties before his rights, emphasizing the state's responsibility for the welfare of the nation, and encouraging the pursuit of material self-interest within the established order. Although not implemented by the commission (which was adjourned indefinitely in 1768), the instruction stimulated the modernization of Russian political and legal thought in the early 19th century.

In her social policy Catherine aimed at steering the nobility (aristocracy) toward cultural interests and economic activity so as to reduce their dependence on state service. (They had already been freed from compulsory service by Peter III in 1762. ) To this end she ordered a general land survey that fixed clearly and permanently the boundaries of individual estates, and she granted the nobility the exclusive right to exploit both the subsoil and surface resources of their land and to market the products of their estates and of their serfs' labour. The nobles also obtained a monopoly of ownership of inhabited estates, which in fact restricted ownership of agricultural serfs to the noble class. Catherine hoped to stimulate agricultural expansion and modernization by providing easy credit and by disseminating the latest techniques and achievements of Western agriculture through the Free Economic Society, founded in 1765. She also fostered the nobility's corporate organization. The Charter to the Nobility (Gentry, Charter to the) (1785) gave the corps of nobility in every province the status of a legal entity. The corporation's members gathered periodically in the provincial and district capitals to elect a marshal, who represented their interests before the governor and the ruler himself; they also elected a number of officials to administer welfare institutions for the nobility (schools, orphanages, and so on), to help settle disputes, and to provide guardianships for orphans. The corporate life of the nobility did not develop as well as expected, however, and the nobility never became the class it was in Prussia or England, but the charter did foster a sense of class consciousness and afforded legal security to the members and their property. The periodic electoral meetings stimulated social intercourse, led to a livelier cultural life in the provinces, and helped to involve the nobility in local concerns. The charter provided both a framework and the stage for the gradual formation of a “civil society” whose members cultivated interests, activities, and values independent of the state's—a trend that would come to full bloom and manifest itself in the first half of the 19th century.

Turning the nobility's interests toward economic activity brought the return home of many landowners to supervise the operation of their estates. Interested in obtaining greater income, they not only intensified the exploitation of serf labour but also interfered in the traditional routine of the village by attempting to introduce new agricultural techniques. In most cases, this meant increased regimentation of the serfs. The secularization of the lands (estates) of monasteries and episcopal sees in 1764 had brought a considerable amount of land into the possession of the state. To reward her favourites and to encourage the nobility to economic activity, Catherine gave away large tracts with many peasants, who now had to work for ambitious and capricious masters.

Serfdom, which had never been acceptable to the Russian peasant, now became particularly burdensome and unjust; it became even more so since the lord's extensive police powers removed his serfs from the state's protection, and the new local officials enforced strictly the prohibition against appealing to the sovereign for relief. There were also the specific grievances of the Cossacks, whose traditional liberties had been sharply curtailed and their social organization undermined, as well as the discontent of the nomadic peoples forced to accept a new way of life. Peasant misery erupted in rebellion, led by the Cossack Yemelyan Pugachov (Pugachov, Yemelyan Ivanovich), that engulfed all of eastern European Russia in 1773–74. The peasant forces captured a number of towns and cities before they were finally defeated by government armies. The revolt demonstrated the inadequacy of local controls and was thus partly responsible for the reform of provincial administration mentioned above. It also brought the educated elite to a new awareness of the profound alienation of the peasantry from the culture of St. Petersburg.

The reign of Catherine II was a period of active town planning and building (urbanization). The number and size of the urban centres grew slowly but steadily. Along with new cities in the south, many old towns were rebuilt and developed. The renaissance of the old provincial centres was in part due to the administrative reforms of 1775 and 1785, which brought an influx of officials and nobles. Along with them came craftsmen, artisans, and merchants. An act of Peter III that permitted peasants to trade in neighbouring towns without passports or controls at the gates gave impetus to the emergence of a class of small merchants from among the peasantry. This trend received support from the administrative reorganization of the towns and the limited degree of corporate self-administration granted by the Charter to the Towns of 1785.