Isabel De Madariaga’s Catherine the Great: A Short History provides the reader with an account of the crucial narrative contours of the rise and reign of Empress Catherine II of Russia. The work is a survey of a period of Russian history that is critically important yet largely overlooked. While not a detailed study or examination, De Madariaga’s Short History attempts to familiarize the reader with those salient historical episodes and developments that, taken in aggregate, coalesce into the Catherinite epoch. The clear object of De Madariaga’s work here is to give readers a reasonable summation of Catherine’s reign that can serve well as a stepping stone for further research and reading. The author executes these goals with a powerful sense of history and a clear command of the material.
Throughout A Short History, in dealing with Catherine II’s reign, De Madariaga casts the Empress in a consistently sympathetic light. The Catherine that is portrayed herein is a reluctant autocrat or a reformer in absolutist clothing. While some attention is given to various diplomatic and military crises, the overall emphasis of the work is placed on Catherine as an intellectually curious ruler with constitutional inclinations dealing with the obstacles of the entrenched, vested interests of the gentry that keep her from enacting her most liberalizing policies. Of all the aspects of Catherine’s rule, the most time and detail are given here to the various legislative and administrative reforms she was able to complete. The intellectual appetites of Catherine are discussed at length. Though De Madariaga never attempts to deny that Catherine ruled in the one nation that had codified and legitimized Serfdom just as it was being phased out in the rest of Europe, an effort is made to signal to the reader just how enmeshed in enlightenment thought Catherine was during her rule. Her frequent correspondence and friendship with figures such as Diderot, Montesquieu, and Voltaire are highlighted throughout this summative work. It is clear that the author wants to draw attention to the degree to which Catherine contemplated systems of government outside of Tsarist autocracy or considered modifications thereto. It is recounted with some repetition how intimately familiar she was with Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England. Care is taken to inform the reader that Catherine even wrote some 700 pages of notes thereon. One could almost argue that the central burden of the work is to provide a counterargument to the prevalent narrative of Tsarism, even Tsarinaism, as unidimensional despotism; De Madariaga insists that, while Catherine shared many things in common with her autocratic successors and forbears, she was indeed a complex figure and presented, in policy choices and in concrete reforms, shades of a liberalizing tendency and even hints of constitutionalism. However, in her generous treatment of Catherine’s rule, De Madariaga seems to largely overlook the fact that nothing at all was ever done to improve the lives of the Serfs during her rule.
De Madariaga uses enlightenment German cameralism as a lens through which to appraise Catherine’s hints at reform. The legislative commission, as well as the Instructions, are both evidence of cameralist influence. She portrays Catherine as laying out a foundation of precedent for future reform and liberalization in Russia through the inauguration of corporate rights for each of the free estates. She admits that Catherine’s legislative achievements fell short of her aims but insists that her desires for reform were genuine. Her defense of the lack of reform during Catherine’s reign is partially based on the idea that Catherine herself was not to blame for the continued bondage of the Serfs; her ability to enact policies that would threaten the power or wealth of the nobility was limited by her political reliance on the former for legitimacy and support. Her goal for administrative reform was, according to Madariaga, essentially a complete reworking of the entire administrative apparatus of regional, provincial, and local government. The Legislative Commission that Catherine convened called for the appointment of representatives from each of the social estates, except the Serfs (except for 90 percent of the population). This, along with the creation of juridical and legal avenues for townspeople and free peasants to advocate for redress of grievance, none of which existed before, are certainly to be lauded, but whether these are reasons enough to justify giving Catherine the benefit of the doubt as much as Madariaga does in the text is uncertain.
Significant attention is also paid to the scale of legislative reforms attempted during Cathrine’s reign. The twin Statutes to the Townspeople and the Nobility formed the bulk of a chapter that, while providing the reader with detail and analysis, seemed to wander in the weeds a bit in terms of facts and figures and other indulgences in hyper-specificity and tedious detail. The reasonable reader of history cannot deny that, prior to Catherine, even the nobility had no formal representation in the Russian body politic; the old duma of the Boyars was dissolved long before her reign. It is understandable that the author would thus decide to dedicate significant time to the uniqueness of the political representation permitted by the legislative commission. It also bears mentioning that this representation, however unprecedented and quasi-democratizing, was limited, imperfect, and entirely confined to the free estates; Serfs were given no concessions. A criticism of Madariaga’s framing here can be made based on the fact that she largely neglects to emphasize how nearly all of Catherine’s reforms systematically ignore the plight of the Serf, even after the Pugachev uprising.
One area of the book that seems comparatively underdeveloped is the space devoted to Catherine’s rise. While the first chapter does establish the basic historical context in which Catherine’s seizure of power occurs, certain elements and aspects are glossed over. A prime example of this is Madariaga’s terse treatment of the plot hatched and executed to remove Peter III from power by taking his life. “According to the available evidence she was not informed of the plot to murder her husband; on the other hand she must have realized that if he remained alive he would be a constant threat to her hold on the throne, and that her supporters were unlikely to let him live.” (3) This kind of hedgy and equivocating statement alerts readers quite early on to Madariaga’s desire to spend more time on the admirable aspects of Catherine II, which are many, to the possible detriment of a more balanced view overall. While the work stops short of outright hagiography, this example of downplaying unsavory aspects of Catherine’s personality in favor of sympathetic traits is not the only one present in this survey. In Madariaga’s dealings with Catherine’s innovations in the field of ethnic resettlement and assimilation, there are yet more jarring examples of the deliberate absence of seemingly warranted criticism. Only one paragraph is devoted to the creation of the Pale of Settlement and the double tax on Jews living in the Empire. “Yet, in spite of the broadly tolerant character of Catherine’s legislation, one of the most repressive features of nineteenth-century Russian policy towards the Jewish community dates from her reign. This was the setting up of the so-called Pale of Settlement” (141). In an earlier paragraph on the same page, De Madariaga describes the origin of Catherine’s “tolerant policy toward the Jews…” as coming from her lack of religious zealotry. Only a few paragraphs later, she describes the disproportionate tax levied on the Jewish townspeople and residents. Her insistence on coupling admissions of targeted ethnic repression with professions of Catherine’s tolerance read as incongruous and indicative of a wider pattern of emphasizing the positive aspects of Catherine’s reign and minimizing or explaining away the negative ones.
De Madariaga devotes considerable time to discussing the tenacity and single-mindedness with which Catherine faced the succession of crises that assailed her government. From the diplomatic intrigue, the clandestine plots to bet on a successor other than the Empress, the various Wars with Turkey, and the confusing geopolitical evolution of alliances to the massive cossack and peasant uprising led by Pugachev, each challenge Catherine faced is represented in Madariaga’s work with a detailed description of the methods the Empress used to overcome them. A picture of Catherine as a dedicated, serious ruler who relied on loyal military figures like Potemkin yet kept enough of her own initiative and strategic acumen to maintain herself in an advantageous position emerges from the narrative. Her willingness to bet on risky military solutions to diplomatic problems is presented, such as her adoption of the policy of armed neutrality to deal with the threats from the British Navy. Catherine’s Imperial character begins to truly show when she demonstrates to the other European rulers her complete willingness to commit Russian men and material to the projection of hard power in the Black Sea and elsewhere. In evaluating De Madariaga’s portrayal of Catherine as a ruler, it is important to note that the aspect of her reign that is most comprehensively dealt with, and that which has the most space dedicated to its exploration in the text, is Catherine’s various legal, administrative, and social reforms. While many dimensions of Catherine’s reign are confined to one chapter or only a page or two, the legislative and administrative reforms that she enacted are analyzed and described in a number of separate chapters. Understanding Catherine as a policymaker, influenced by Enlightenment thinkers yet still largely wedded to absolutist ideals, is made possible by the author’s detailed study of the Instructions and the dual Statutes to the Townspeople and the Nobility.
In distilling the grand narrative of Catherine’s thirty-year reign into an eminently readable and largely enjoyable survey, De Madariaga succeeds in producing an engaging, thoughtful account of a pivotal era in Russian History. While acknowledging Catherine’s penchant for favorites, the book refrains from a gossipy, tabloid depiction of her love life. Catherine is treated largely as any contemporaneous sovereign would be; an analysis of her policy decisions, the changes during her reign, and the impact she had on the course of Russian history are included. A certain respect for Catherine as an intellectual, as a strategist, as a stateswoman, and as a human being, is obvious in Madariaga’s treatment of the Empress. Madariaga explores the life of a sovereign who, rising through a coup, with no legitimate claim to the throne, went on to rule for more than thirty years, presided over the rise in influence of Russian military power, instituted the most comprehensive administrative reforms in Russian history as well as the first steps toward representative government, albeit imperfectly, fostered the emergence of the thitherto dormant Russian intelligentsia, and led a life of passion, learning, and romance. While the work is less than even-handed in its assessment of the downsides of Catherine’s rule, it never fails to take Catherine’s reign seriously and to impart to the reader the importance of the victories, reforms, and velleities of a complex and contradictory ruler. Ultimately, Isabel De Madariaga’s Short History is engaging, far-reaching in its areas of focus, and detailed in its examination of the reign of Catherine the Great.
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