Latest / The Romanov Dynasty: Rise, Power, and Bloody End — Fexingo History / Catherine the Great and the 1767 Legislative Commission
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about Catherine the Great's grand projects — the Greek Project, the Tauride Voyage, the Charter to the Nobility. But there's one enormous experiment she launched early in her reign that tends to get overshadowed: the Legislative Commission of 1767. Luna: The one where she wrote that famous Instruction? Lucas: Exactly — the Nakaz. Catherine was a voracious reader of Enlightenment thinkers, especially Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws and Beccaria's On Crimes and Punishments. She basically synthesized their ideas into a blueprint for legal reform. The Nakaz called for equality before the law, limits on torture, and even questioned serfdom — though carefully. Lucas: She convened hundreds of delegates from across the empire: nobles, townspeople, state peasants, even non-Russian communities like the Cossacks and Tatars. They were supposed to discuss a new legal code. But it quickly became a platform for competing interests. Luna: So it was like an early parliament? Lucas: In theory. But Catherine never intended to share real power. She wanted advice, not legislation. Still, the debates were astonishingly open for an autocracy. We know exactly what was said because the transcriptions survived — over 600 sessions across a year and a half. Lucas: One of the most dramatic debates was over serfdom. A noble deputy from Kostroma, Grigory Korobin, stood up and argued that peasants were not property but subjects with natural rights. He cited the Nakaz itself — Catherine's own words — to demand reform. Luna: That must have caused a stir. Lucas: It did. The conservatives went on the attack. The most powerful voice against reform was Prince Mikhail Shcherbatov, a historian and noble who wrote a counter-proposal defending serfdom as ancient and necessary. He claimed that freeing the serfs would ruin the economy and lead to chaos. Lucas: And you know what? Catherine didn't side with either. She let them argue for months. She was gathering intelligence — seeing who her allies and enemies were. But she never actually enacted the reforms the Nakaz promised. Partly because the Ruling Senate resisted, and partly because events intervened. Luna: The Pugachev Rebellion? Lucas: Exactly. The Pugachevshchina of 1773–1775 terrified the nobility. In their minds, any talk of freeing serfs was a direct cause of peasant revolt. Catherine quietly shelved the Nakaz and pivoted to strengthening the autocracy. The commission was dissolved in 1768 under the pretext of war with the Ottoman Empire. Lucas: But the ideas didn't vanish. The Nakaz was translated into French, German, and Latin. It circulated across Europe. Voltaire praised it. Catherine herself said later that the commission taught her 'what the empire needed' — even if she didn't act on it. Luna: So it was more about image than substance? Lucas: Partly. But also about testing the limits of reform. And the transcripts were later used as evidence in trials — like during the Pugachev investigation, to show what 'dangerous' ideas were circulating. So it had long bureaucratic legs. Lucas: I think the commission also reveals something about Catherine's character. She genuinely believed in Enlightenment principles — up to a point. But she was a pragmatist. She knew that pushing too hard against the nobility would end her reign. So she used the commission as a safety valve. Luna: It's interesting that she never reconvened it, though. Lucas: Right. After the rebellion, she reorganized provincial administration with the 1775 Statute on Provinces, which centralized power. The Zemsky Sobor — the old advisory council — was never revived. The commission was her one experiment with representative input, and it failed to produce legal change. Lucas: But the Nakaz itself had a surprising afterlife. Catherine had one of her sons read it as a textbook. And later reformists, like Alexander I's young advisors, dusted it off. So the ideas survived even if the institution didn't. Luna: What about the delegates from the non-Russian regions? Did they have much say? Lucas: They did, surprisingly. The Bashkirs complained about land grabs. The Tatars asked for religious tolerance. The Cossacks wanted autonomy. All of it was recorded. Catherine even created a special commission just to analyze the petitions. So the empire heard its diverse subjects — even if it didn't always listen. Lucas: And that's the core tension of Catherine's reign: the Enlightenment autocrat who wanted to be seen as a philosopher-queen, but governed through absolute power when it mattered. The Legislative Commission was the stage where she performed that conflict. Lucas: Honestly, if today's episode was worth a coffee to you, that's the link — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. We keep this show ad-free because of listeners like you, and it lets us dive into these weird, forgotten corners of history. Luna: Yeah, it's a nice way to say thanks if you enjoyed it. And we really appreciate it. Lucas: So after the commission dissolved, Catherine turned her attention to foreign wars and the Greek Project. But the Nakaz remained a touchstone. Decades later, when Alexander II finally emancipated the serfs in 1861, his advisors went back to Catherine's words. In a way, the commission planted seeds that took a century to grow. Luna: So it wasn't a total failure — just a very slow one. Lucas: Exactly. And that's often how reform works in an autocracy: bold ideas, then retreat, then a later generation picking up the thread. Catherine's commission is a perfect case study.