The order of Catherine II was compiled by the Empress personally as a guide for a specially convened Commission with the purpose of codifying and drawing up a new code of laws of the Russian Empire, whose activities were in 1767-1768. However, this document cannot be considered only practical instructions. The text of the Order included the thoughts of Catherine about the essence of laws and monarchical power. The document demonstrates the empressās high education and characterizes her as one of the brightest representatives of Enlightened absolutism.
Empress personality
Born Sophia-Frederic-Amalia-Augusta Anhalt-Zerbst (in Orthodoxy Ekaterina Alekseevna) was born in 1729 in Pomeranian Stettin in a generous but relatively poor family of Prince Christian-Augustus. From an early age, she showed interest in books, thought a lot.
Strong ties of kinship have been established between the German princes and the Russian Romanov dynasty since the time of Peter I. For this reason, Empress Elizaveta Petrovna (1741-1761) chose the wife of the German princesses for the heir to the throne. The future Catherine II was her husband's second cousin.
Relations between the spouses did not work out, the heir openly cheated on his wife. In speed, the empress cooled to Catherine. It was not good for their relationship that Elizabeth immediately took her newborn son, Peter and Catherine, Paul, to her, and actually eliminated her mother from his upbringing.
Rise to power
Barely inheriting the throne, Peter immediately demonstrated his inability to rule the state. The shameful exit from the successful Seven Years' War and the incessant feasts provoked a conspiracy in the guard, which was led by Catherine herself. Peter was removed from power during a palace coup, after a while he died under mysterious circumstances in prison. Catherine became the new Russian Empress.
The state of law in the Russian Empire
The official legal code of the state was the very outdated Council Code, adopted as early as 1649. Since that time, both the nature of state power has changed (from the Moscow kingdom it turned into the Russian Empire) and the state of society. Almost all Russian monarchs felt the need to bring the legislative framework in line with the new realities. It was practically impossible to apply the Council Code in practice, as the new decrees and laws directly contradicted him. In general, legal confusion has become a complete mess.
Catherine did not immediately decide to rectify the situation. It took her some time to feel firmly on the throne, to deal with other possible applicants (for example, Ivan Antonovich deposed in 1741 had formal rights to the throne). When this was over, the empress set to work.
Composition of the Stated Commission
In 1766, the Empressās Manifesto was issued, which later formed the basis of the āOrderā of Catherine II commission on the drafting of a new Code. Unlike previous bodies created for this purpose, the new commission had a wider representation of citizens and peasants. A total of 564 deputies were elected, of which 5% were officials, 30% were nobles, 39% were citizens, 14% were state peasants, and 12% were Cossacks and foreigners. Each elected deputy had to bring orders from his province, in which the wishes of the local population would be collected. It immediately became clear that the range of problems was so wide that many delegates brought with them several documents at once. In many ways, this paralyzed the work, since the study of just such messages was to begin the work of the Stated Commission. The "order" of Catherine II, in turn, was also one of the recommendations made.
Activities of the Stated Commission
In addition to drafting a new code of laws, the Organized Commission had to find out the mood of society. Due to the complexity of the first task and the backwardness of the second, the activity of this meeting ended in failure. The first ten meetings were spent on assigning various titles to the Empress (Mother of the Fatherland, Great and Wise). The "order" of Catherine II and the work of the Stacked Commission are inextricably linked. Her first meetings were devoted specifically to reading and discussing the message of the empress to deputies.
A total of 203 meetings were held, after which no specific steps were taken to improve the situation in the country. Especially often at these meetings, economic transformation was discussed. The formed commission, on Catherine IIās āPunishmentā, was supposed to probe the ground for the liberation of the peasants, but deep contradictions were revealed between the deputies on this issue. Disappointed in the activities of the commission, Catherine first suspended its activities, citing the war with Turkey, and then completely dismissed it.
The structure and history of the writing of "The Order" of Catherine II
The only obvious evidence of the existence of the Stated Commission was a document drawn up by the empress. This is a valuable source not only on the history of Enlightened absolutism and intellectual ties between Russia and Europe, but also a testament to the state of affairs in the country. The āorderā of Catherine II totaled 526 articles, divided into twenty chapters. Its content covered the following aspects:
- issues of government (in general, and Russia in particular);
- principles of lawmaking and translating laws into practice (the branch of criminal law has been especially developed);
- problems of social stratification of society;
- financial policy issues.
Catherine II began work on the āOrderā in January 1765, and on July 30, 1767 his text was first published and read at meetings of the Stacked Commission. Soon, the empress supplemented the original document with two new chapters. After the failure of the commission, Catherine did not abandon her brainchild. With the active participation of the Empress in 1770, the text was published as a separate publication in five languages: English (two versions), French, Latin, German and Russian. There are significant discrepancies between the five versions of the text, made explicitly at the behest of their author. In fact, we can talk about five different versions of the āOrderā of Empress Catherine II.
Document Sources
Due to her deep education and relations with European enlighteners (Catherine was in correspondence with Voltaire and Didro), the Empress actively used the philosophical and legal works of foreign thinkers, interpreting and clarifying them in her own way. Montesquieu's essay, On the Spirit of Laws, had a particularly strong influence on the text of the Order. 294 articles of the Catherineās text (75%) are somehow related to this treatise, and the empress did not consider it necessary to hide it. Her document contains both extensive citations from Montesquieu's work and those cited briefly. The order of Catherine II of the laid commission also demonstrates the Empressās acquaintance with the works of Kene, Beccaria, Bilfeld and von Justi.
Borrowings from Montesquieu were not always direct. In her work, Catherine used the text of a treatise by the French enlightener with comments by Eli Luzac. The latter sometimes took a rather critical position in relation to the commented text, but Catherine did not pay attention to this.
Government Issues
The basis of her political and legal doctrine, Catherine laid the dogmas of Orthodox dogma. According to the views of the empress, faith should permeate all elements of the state system. No legislator can compose prescriptions arbitrarily, he must bring them into line with religion, as well as with the will of the people.
Catherine believed that in accordance with both the Orthodox creed and the popular aspirations for Russia, the monarchy is the most optimal form of government. Speaking of this more broadly, the empress noted that with its effectiveness the monarchy significantly exceeds the republican system. For Russia, the emperor must also be an autocrat, since this directly follows from the peculiarities of its history. The monarch not only draws up all the laws, but only he alone has the right to interpret them. Current management affairs should be decided by specially created bodies that are responsible to the sovereign. Their task should also include informing the monarch about the inconsistency of the law with the current state of affairs. At the same time, government agencies must guarantee society protection from despotism: if the monarch adopts a decree contrary to the legislative framework, he should be informed about this.
The ultimate goal of power is to protect the safety of every citizen. In the eyes of Catherine, the monarch is a figure leading the people to the highest good. It is he who should contribute to the continuous improvement of society, and this is again carried out by the adoption of good laws. Thus, from the point of view of Catherine, legislative activity is both a cause and a consequence of monarchical power.
The āorderā of Catherine II of the Stated Commission also justified and recorded the existing division of society into classes. Empress considered the allocation of privileged and non-privileged layers to be natural, directly related to historical development. In her opinion, equalization of estates in rights is fraught with social upheaval. The only possible equality is their equal submission to the laws.
It should be noted that Catherine did not say a word about the position of the clergy. This is consistent with the ideological program of Enlightened absolutism, according to which the separation of clergymen in a special layer is unproductive.
Lawmaking
Concrete methods of enacting laws and their implementation were almost never paid attention to. Catherine was limited only to the general ideological scheme, directly related to issues of state structure. Perhaps the only aspect of interest to Catherine in this complex of problems is the restriction and possible abolition of serfdom. This consideration was directly derived from the idea of āāthe equality of all before the law. The peasants belonging to the landlords could not use this right. There was an economic interest in this: Catherine believed that the rental relationship between the peasant and the landowner led to the decline of agriculture.
In her work, the empress introduced the previously unknown principle in Russia of the hierarchy of normative acts. It was especially stipulated that some normative acts, for example, imperial decrees, have a limited validity period and are adopted due to special circumstances. When the situation stabilizes or changes, the execution of the decree becomes optional, according to the "Order" of Catherine II. Its significance for the development of law also lies in the fact that the document required that the legal norms be stated in clear language for each subject, and that the normative acts themselves should be few in order not to create contradictions.
Economic issues in the structure of "Order"
The special attention paid by Catherine to agriculture was related to her idea that this particular occupation is most suitable for rural residents. In addition to purely economic considerations, there were ideological ones, for example, the preservation of the patriarchal purity of morals in society.
For the most efficient land use, according to Catherine, the transfer of the means of production into private property is needed. The empress soberly assessed the state of affairs and understood that the peasants worked in a foreign land and for the benefit of others much worse than for themselves.
It is known that in the early versions of The Order, Catherine II devoted a lot of space to the peasant question. But these sections were subsequently significantly reduced after discussion by the nobles. As a result, the solution to this problem looks amorphous and consistent, more likely in a recommendatory spirit, and not as a list of specific steps.
The āorderā, written by Catherine II, provided for changes in financial policy and trade. The empress resolutely opposed the guild organization, allowing her existence only in craft workshops. Welfare and economic power of the state are based only on free trade. In addition, economic crimes had to be tried in special institutions. Criminal law should not apply in these cases.
The result of the activity of the Stated Commission and the historical significance of the āOrderā
Despite the fact that the goals stated during the convocation of the Stated Commission were not achieved, three positive outcomes of its activities can be distinguished:
- the empress and the upper classes of society received a clearer picture of the true state of affairs thanks to the orders brought by the deputies;
- the educated society became more familiar with the advanced ideas of the French Enlightenment at that time (thanks in large part to the Catherineās āOrderā);
- Catherineās right to occupy the Russian throne was finally confirmed (before the decision of the Stated Commission on the assignment of the empress the title of Mother of the Fatherland, she was perceived as a usurper).
Catherine II appreciated her āPunishmentā very highly. She ordered that the copy of the text be in any public place. But at the same time, access to it was only among the upper strata of society. The Senate insisted on this in order to avoid rumors among the subjects.
The "order" of Catherine II was written as a guide to the work of the Stated Commission, which predetermined the prevalence of general philosophical reasoning over specific proposals. When the commission was dissolved, and the adoption of new laws did not take place, the empress in her decrees began to say that a number of articles of the āOrderā were binding. This was especially true of the prohibition of torture during the trial.
At the same time, it should be noted that the main thing in which the significance of the āPunishmentā of Catherine II consisted is still related to the ideological sphere: Russian society became acquainted with the greatest achievements of European philosophical thought. There was a practical consequence. In 1785, Catherine issued two Letters of Merit (to the nobility and cities), which recorded the rights of philistines and privileged sections of society. Basically, these documents were based on the relevant paragraphs of the āOrderā. The work of Catherine II, therefore, can be considered the program of her reign.