Church politics. P. Makkaveev Religious and church views of Empress Catherine II National and religious policy of Catherine 2

The article describes the characteristics of the religious policy of the times of Catherine II. The work of the secularization commission of 1764, changes in the selection of candidates for high church posts, an attempt to reform theological educational institutions, attitudes towards different confessional groups in different regions of the empire are analyzed. to the end of the XVII Art. accompanied by the strengthening of the autocratic principle and the diminution of the political significance of individual estate-feudal groups. That is why it was so acute by the middle of the 18th century. - the era of the final creation of the absolutist system of power - the issue of eliminating the land ownership of the Orthodox clergy arose in religious policy, which determined the secularizing course of the Russian government. By carrying out secularization, the state power ended a long struggle with the clergy for political hegemony, eliminating their claims to power functions. At the same time, the ruling regime sought to soften the intensity of class conflicts, which became a constant factor in the socio-political state of the country both in the 17th and 18th centuries. was introduced to Lutheran Protestantism from infancy. Invited to Russia by Empress Elizabeth Petrovna as a bride, and then wife of Grand Duke Peter Fedorovich (future Emperor Peter III), in June 1744 she was baptized according to the Orthodox rite and became Grand Duchess Ekaterina Alekseevna. She quickly understood the importance of Orthodoxy for the Russian people and, unlike her husband, in every possible way demonstrated her piety, but brought up on the ideas of rationalism of educational philosophy, she did not perceive Orthodoxy very deeply. Nevertheless, Catherine understood the importance of the church for state power and administration and strictly performed religious rituals. By the beginning of the reign of Catherine II, the following situation had developed in relations between the state and spiritual feudal lords (monasteries, bishops' houses, churches): having experienced a strong blow from the government of Peter the Great , which put part of the income of the spiritual owners under the control of the state, the monastic and bishop administration, taking advantage of the weakness of the supreme power under Peter's successors and the contradictions among the secular landowners, managed by the mid-40s. XVIII century almost completely restore yours. „„. „.Ppo © Komissarenko A.I., Chekunova A.E., 2008 economic independence. Since 1757, a new stage began in the relationship between the state and the church, caused primarily by the growth of social protest of the peasantry in spiritual estates, which is dangerous for absolutism. At a meeting of the Conference at the highest court on September 30, 1757, Empress Elizabeth management instead of "monastic servants", the establishment of "staff maintenance" of monasteries, equalization of monastic and bishop peasants in taxes with the landlords. The government, thus, was forced to rush to develop a secularization program. Its most general principles were formulated by the end of 1761 and found expression in the secularizing decrees of Peter III (February 1762). At the same time, the measures taken for the execution of these decrees were limited in scope and not fully thought out. Catherine II, who reigned on the Russian throne on June 28, 1762, did not yet feel firmly at the pinnacle of power and did not want to aggravate relations with the hierarchs of the Orthodox Church in this regard, as well as seeking to emphasize her break with the policy of her deposed husband - Peter III, she signed a decree on August 12, 1762 on the transfer of all estates to the clergy, thus returning the relationship between the absolutist state and the clergy to the period before 1757. The ecclesiastical administration's jubilation on this occasion was, however, short-lived, since the very first steps of the new government showed that there would be no complete return to the past. Only tactics changed, while the goal remained the same, and, unlike the epochs of Elizabeth Petrovna and Peter III, it acquired a more conscious character both by the Empress Catherine II herself and by her closest advisers. In the same August 1762, the new ruler handed over to Prince Ya.P. Shakhovsky's order on "consideration of the synodal ..., bishops<.. .> and monastic estates. ”Since the fall of 1762, all these directions of domestic policy Catherine II entrusted one of her secretaries of state G.N. Teplov and Novgorod Metropolitan D. Sechenov, who actively supported the June coup. In the papers of G.N. Teplova has preserved an extensive collection of various materials related to the preparation and implementation of the secularization of spiritual possessions. G.N. Teplov, in his review of government measures for the initial period of the new reign, written in 1769, considered the creation of the Commission on Spiritual (Church) Domains on November 27, 1762 as the most important milestone on the road to reform. Members of the Commission were: from the clergy - Metropolitan Dmitry (Sechenov) of Novgorod, Archbishop Gavriil of St. Petersburg, Bishop Sylvester of Pereyaslavl, from the secular authorities - Senator Count I. Vorontsov, Prince B. Kurakin, Prince S. Gagarin, Chief Prosecutor of the Synod, Prince A. Kozlovsky and actual state councilor G.N. Teplov, who actually headed it. Control over the economic life in the estates was entrusted in accordance with the instructions given on November 29, 1762, to the "messengers or traveling economists." Thus, in the possession of the church, a regime of government supervision and guardianship was introduced. By creating the Commission on Spiritual Estates and outlining a plan of its activities, the absolutist government, without openly announcing its intentions to seize ecclesiastical land property and peasants from spiritual lands, affirmed a firm desire to subordinate to its supervision the entire economic life of the church-monastery village and the social policy of the spiritual feudal landowners. Immediately after its inception, the Commission began looking for measures to establish social peace in spiritual fiefdoms. By the end of 1763, the Commission had information about the unrest of peasants in 42 estates of 5 bishops' houses and 23 monasteries, in no less than 12 cases troops were used to suppress them. ... Teplova on May 12, 1763, the Board of Economics, subordinated, unlike other central bodies of the empire, not to the Senate, but directly to the Empress herself, which especially emphasized the importance of this direction of the government course. This, in fact, an extraordinary institution made a lot of efforts to establish a description of economic life in the spiritual domain. By January 1, 1764, the Collegium had received more than 1,500 detailed descriptions - "officers' inventories", which were checked in the Collegium by the head of the counting expedition, Collegiate Counselor Andreyan Pozdnyakov. In the summer of 1763, a conflict arose between the Board of Economics and the Moscow Synodal Office due to the reluctance of the synodal authorities to provide complete information about their rental income. Reacting to the complaint on this matter of Prince B. Kurakin - the President of the College and M. Dmitriev-Mamonov, filed on July 31, 1763, the Empress on August 9, 1763 sharply reprimanded the Krutitsa Metropolitan, the head of the Moscow Synodal Office Ambrose, demanding from him “motherly<...>diminish the power of our decrees<...>and with the College<...>agree with the same zeal and zeal. " To counteract the ambitions of the Moscow church elite, on January 8, 1764, in the old capital, by imperial decree, a separate office of the College of Economy was established, headed by State Councilor Chikhachev. Through the efforts of collegiate officials in the state treasury in 1763 - early 1764. 612677 rubles were collected from the spiritual lands. 20 kopecks of the expected 940,758 rubles, or 65.12%. The collegium of austerity, with the explicit, and more often hidden, opposition of the clergy could not be an effective tool in the hands of the absolutist state in the withdrawal of money (feudal rent) while maintaining the previous legal status of spiritual lands. The Commission on Spiritual Estates developed the general outlines of the forthcoming secularization reform. An important role in this was played by G.N. Thermal document - "Opinion about the monastic villages", presented by him to Catherine II and approved by her. The inexpediency of preserving spiritual land ownership in the state was formulated by the author as follows:<...> behind monasteries, bishops' houses .., did not bring aid to the state .., in every way it would be more to burden than to serve it to its advantage. " Opinion was a carefully prepared project for the secularization of spiritual possessions (from the political, social, fiscal, administrative sides). In numerous appendices to the document (letters Z, Zh, I, I, K, L, M, N), the principles of the abolition of most of the monasteries and the states of the few left under the jurisdiction of the Synod were substantiated. The main ideas of this project formed the basis for the secularization of spiritual land ownership carried out in accordance with the manifesto on February 26, 1764. Church (monastic and bishop's) lands and peasants were transferred to state ownership and were subject to the jurisdiction of the College of Economics. 8.5 million dessiatins were transferred to the treasury. land, over 910 souls m. and more than 5 million rubles. annual income. Dioceses and monasteries were divided into three "classes", and only 3 dioceses were assigned to the first, 8 to the second, and 15. The sums for their maintenance were determined accordingly. So, if a 1st class male monastery had the right to receive 2017 rubles annually from the state treasury, then a 3rd class monastery only 806 rubles. The Trinity-Sergius Lavra, placed outside the category, was assigned 10,070 rubles per year, this amount was also replenished with donations from the imperial court, the noble aristocracy and wealthy merchants. In general, not all monasteries (there were more than 900) received regular maintenance, but only less than half of their number. The rest were either closed or had to move to the position of parish churches. Overall, the secularization of 1764 brought a sensitive gift to ecclesiastical and monastic land tenure. Lands and peasants fell under the jurisdiction of the College and began to be called "economic". In 1786, a secularization reform was carried out in Ukraine - on the territory of the Kiev, Chernigov and Novgorod-Seversk dioceses, in 1788 - in the Kharkov, Yekaterinoslav, Kursk and Voronezh provinces, and in 1793-1795. - in the annexed provinces of Lithuania, Western Belarus and Western Ukraine. In total, as a result of secularization, 272 monasteries received state support, more than 500 were abolished, the number of monastics was reduced by more than 2 times. The reform dealt a blow to the Church, but the protest of the clergy was rather weak. Secularization was criticized by the pupils of the Kiev Academy - the Rostov Metropolitan Arseny (Matseevich), convicted in 1763, defrocked, and in 1767 and a monk and died in prison in the Revel Castle, the Tobolsk Metropolitan Pavel (Konyuskevich), dismissed in 1768 G. The most important result of the reform was the elimination of the previously powerful and semi-independent from the state layer of spiritual feudal lords, while about 8.5 million dessiatins were transferred to the absolute power. land and almost a million souls m. Secularizing measures testified to the crisis of the patrimonial-serf system in the context of the development of capitalist relations and attempts to find the first approach to the emancipation of the peasants “from above.” With the accession of Catherine II, the selection for the highest church posts changed. When choosing candidates for the episcopal see, Catherine II, unlike her predecessors, relied on immigrants not from Little Russia, but from Great Russia, who were more loyal to the empress's policy. Among them, the first role in the Synod was played by the Archbishop of Novgorod Dmitry (Sechenov), who almost lost his episcopal see under Emperor Peter III for opposing his plans for the secularization of church estates, and under Catherine II became “the main figure in the confiscation of land from churches and monasteries and the main judge over Arseny Matseevich. ”A prominent member of the Synod was also Bishop of Pskov Gedeon (Krinovsky), who graduated from the Moscow Academy, who became archimandrite of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra and a court preacher under Catherine II. Bishops Dmitry and Gedeon provided "patronage" to the pupils of the same Academy, Gabriel (Petrov), who received the chair of Bishop of Tver (from 1770 - Archbishop of Petersburg), and then the post of rector in the Academy, Bishop Platon (Levshin), who took the position of a law teacher at the court the future emperor Pavel Petrovich. In September 1771, during the "plague riot", the last "of the Kievites" who rose to the leadership of the Russian Church during the period of Peter's reforms, the Moscow archbishop Ambrose (Zertis-Kamensky), died. At the same time, it would not be superfluous to say that, giving preference to the Great Russians in appointment to the episcopal see, Empress Catherine II respected the preaching and missionary talents of the bishops - "Kievites" - Samuel Mislavsky and Georgy Konissky. The synod was still under the control of the government officials. - prosecutors. During the reign of Catherine II they were: Prince A. Kozlovsky, I. Melissino, P. Chebyshev, S. Akchurin, A. Naumov, Count. A. Musin-Pushkin (who opened the "Lay of Igor's Campaign"). Some of them held anti-clerical, educational positions, for example, I. Melissino, and P. Chebyshev, being a freemason, openly preached atheism). The government of Catherine II sought to "make spiritual power an accomplice and obedient instrument in achieving political goals." Considering herself, in her own words in a letter to Voltaire, “the head of the Greek church,” Catherine II demanded unquestioning obedience from both secular and spiritual authorities. In the bishops, she saw ordinary officials, whom she could bring closer to herself or deprive her of her benevolence. At the same time, the empress understood the need to improve the education and moral level of the Orthodox clergy, paying attention to the problem of reforming spiritual and educational institutions. In 1762, a Commission was established to develop a plan for the transformation of theological schools. According to the reform project (1766), it was supposed to divide the spiritual educational institutions into higher, middle and lower ones, to introduce new subjects, modern teaching methods. The project was not implemented. To train teachers, Catherine II planned to open a theological faculty at Moscow University, but this idea was not implemented. XVIII century the government carried out a "debriefing of the clergy." In 1778 spiritual staffs were established. In this regard, supernumerary clergymen and their children over 15 years old, who did not study in theological seminaries, were ordered to be assigned "to secular teams to distribute them to different estates in accordance with their wishes." Education in theological institutions was also hampered by government orders on the appointment of monetary salaries to seminaries, clearly insufficient for their full-fledged teaching and educational activities. In relation to the schism, the government of Catherine II continued the policy of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna and Emperor Peter III, seeking to include schismatics in the emerging civil society. In the early 60s. XVIII century centers of the Old Believers were formed: Pomorie, Starodubye (Chernigov province), Kerzhenets (Nizhny Novgorod province), Irgiz. Their communities arose in Moscow - the Rogozhskoye cemetery, where the priests united, the Preobrazhenskoye cemetery - the center of the bespopovtsy, the Pokrovskaya chapel - the union of the Feodosievites and the Pomors. Many schismatics fled abroad. A special attraction for them was the Vetka region in Poland. Even during the reign of Empress Anna Ioannovna, during the Russian-Polish war, the forces of several army regiments returned from Vetka to Russia and sent to various provinces about 40 thousand people, and their villages were burned. But by the beginning of the 40s. XVIII century The branch again became populous due to the continuous influx of fugitive Old Believers. In 1762 and in subsequent years, the government of Catherine II to the schismatics (they were forbidden to call themselves Old Believers or wanderers as early as 1745. by the decree of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna) it was proposed to return to Russia and settle at will in any place of the Russian state, but there were almost no people willing to respond to these calls. In 1764, troops were sent to Vetka, which ruined it, more than 20 thousand bezpopovtsy - schismatics were forcibly sent to settle in Siberia. Other centers of schism were also devastated, for example Starodubye, part of the schismatics escaped government repression by going to the river. Ingul. With regard to the schismatics - priests, the government adhered to a more moderate course. Popovtsy experienced great difficulties in appointing bishops. During the reign of Catherine II, they made seven attempts to find (“get”) a bishop, even appealed to the Synod, but they did not achieve anything. In 1787, the schismatics were given complete freedom, the double capitation salary and their special lists were abolished. The very name "schismatic" was also officially canceled. The adherents of the Old Believers were allowed to be elected to public office. Signs of reconciliation between the Old Believers and official Orthodoxy in the form of "common faith" also appeared. The co-religionist movement became widespread in the 80s and 90s. XVIII century in Starodubye, Irgiz, Ingul. In 1800, the Synod approved the rules of unity of faith drawn up by Metropolitans Gabriel and Plato. Supporters of the old rituals were allowed to open churches, cathedrals, chapels. The question of the attitude towards Catholics acquired particular relevance in connection with the partitions of Poland in the 7090s. XVIII century As a result of the first partition in 1772, the territory of Eastern Belarus was ceded to the Russian Empire. In October 1772 it was divided into the Pskov and Mogilev provinces. To the manager of the lands "annexed from the Commonwealth" to the President of the Military Collegium, CountZG. Chernyshev was ordered by a personal decree of August 13, 1772 to issue on his own behalf a notice of "unlimited freedom in the public exercise of faith." On November 22, 1773, the Belarusian Catholic diocese was established, headed by the former vicar of the Vilna diocese, Bishop Stanislav Sestrentsevich-Bogush of Malla, who henceforth became known as the Bishop of Belarusian Catholic Churches in Russia. On February 6, 1774, the Belarusian Catholic Diocese received a special "Certificate of Merit", which guaranteed all Catholic orders the inviolability and integrity of their movable and immovable property. It should be noted that the order of Pope Clement XIV of July 21, 1773 on the abolition of the Order of the Jesuits (Society of Jesus, created in 1534. to fight the Reformation) was ignored by the Russian government. Although the empress did not allow the order to enter the capitals, she expanded its rights and privileges in Belarus (exemption from the payment of a poll tax and other state taxes). The Jesuit Order was attractive to government circles for its teaching activities, which were deployed by four of its colleges - in Polotsk, Orsha, Vitebsk and Dinaburg (Dvinsk) and two residences - in Mstislavl and Mogilev. Education in them was free, and the Polotsk Collegium accepted Orthodox Christians, including Russian nobles, into their audiences. The future famous medalist Fyodor Petrovich Tolstoy (1783-1873) studied at the Polotsk "collegium" at the age of eight. He recalled: “At the Polotsk Jesuit monastery in the vicinity<...>the city was<...>twenty thousand souls of peasants ... in Polotsk<...>- I went to study with the Jesuits, to the pastor to learn German, went on horseback, danced at balls. " According to his recollections, more than 700 students studied at the college. He took a course in agronomy and architecture, studied the basics of drawing, drafting and painting and “went to school classes<.>learn from<.>Jesuit teachers of sciences ”. Tolstoy was especially attached to the father Gruber, "like a native father." For the future master medalist, of particular importance was the fact that Father Grubber “to paint<...> he taught me himself and found me to have a great ability for this art. " The Jesuit Vitebsk collegium also studied the son of the Mogilev vice-governor, the famous memoirist L.N. Engelhardt, who, however, assessed the level of classes conducted under the guidance of Jesuit teachers, was not very high. Russian historiography pointed out how important the issue of the role of Jesuit propaganda in the policy of Catherine II regarding the Greek Catholic (Uniate) Church is. The Russian government hoped for a gradual return of the Uniates to Orthodoxy. In this regard, it believed that the Jesuits, dissatisfied with the pope's act to ban their order, launched anti-Pope propaganda. These hopes turned out to be illusory. The government took action of its own. After the second partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1793), Empress Catherine II openly declared the need to abolish the union and took steps to strengthen the authority of Orthodoxy in the western regions of the empire. also because the empress "wanted to have at her disposal people who could be sent under the guise of missionaries to Alaska or California to be used in the course of the colonization of this region, close to the American possessions of Spain." As the Italian researcher S. Pavone rightly noted, the reasons that forced Catherine II to patronize the Jesuit Order, despite the papal prohibition, "were more concerned with the interests of the ruler in the European arena." She saw in them a stronghold of conservatism "in the face of the process of destruction of old states" - the idea of ​​using the order for anti-revolutionary purposes was accepted with even greater energy by Paul I, who made it possible to establish a Jesuit collegium even in the imperial capital of St. Petersburg with the subordination of Belarusian Jesuit schools to it. On June 17, 1773, Catherine II proclaimed the principle of religious tolerance, the affairs of the "infidels" were transferred from the jurisdiction of the diocesan bishops to the jurisdiction of the secular administration. This was of particular importance for the Muslim population. The previously prohibited construction of mosques, at which madrasahs were created, was allowed. Tatar Murzas and "officials" from 1783 were allowed to be admitted to military service and the assignment of officer ranks, which made it possible to receive the nobility. However, to obtain a rank above the Prime Major, the Empress's permission was required. Under Catherine II, a decree was being prepared stating that all Muslims who showed themselves to be loyal to the empire and had a noble origin were equated in privileges with the nobility.This decree was already signed by Paul I. The government of Catherine II did not interfere with the teaching of Tatar, Arabic, Turkish and other oriental languages ​​and the study of the Koran in the Kazan gymnasium and madrasah. The active educational activities of S.Kh. Khalfin (1732-1785) and his son I.S. Khalfin, who in 1778 compiled the first printed Tatar alphabet, a Russian-Tatar dictionary (more than 20 thousand words) and other manuals. In 1787, an Arabic text of the Koran with notes was printed in St. Petersburg. The imperial religious policy in Bashkiria was more complicated. The active participation of the Bashkirs in the uprising led by E.I. ° Pugachev caused an increase in control over the Bashkir communities. In 1782, the court for minor criminal and civil cases was withdrawn from the hands of the foremen, which was transferred to the lower reprisals, which existed in parallel with the same reprisals for the Russian peasants. In 1788, a spiritual Mohammedan meeting was established in Bashkiria, headed by the mufti, subordinate to the Ufa governor's office, and later to the office of the Orenburg governor. The secular administration began to resolve issues of appointment and to spiritual Muslim positions, as well as disputes and cases that, according to Sharia, are subject to analysis in the councils of mullahs and elders. She also monitored the execution of military service by the Bashkirs (border service and participation in wars). The development of Siberia and the expansion of arable land, developed by Russian peasants, contributed to the spread of Orthodoxy among the local population. With the collapse of the Dzungar state under the blows of the Manchu-Chinese troops in the middle of the 18th century. the former Dzungar vassals - the Zaisangs of the southern Altai clan groups (duchin) - entered Russia. After that, the influence of the life of the Russian peasants increased, and among the local population (for example, the Trans-Baikal Buryats), the craving for settled life and agriculture increased. Whole villages of newly baptized Buryats appeared, who switched to a settled life. The Buryats and Evenki horse breeders were entrusted by the government of Catherine II with the duty to carry out border service, to defend, including their lands, from the raids of the Mongol khans and taishas. At the same time, this contributed to the spread among the Buryats, especially the Transbaikal, Buddhism in the form of its special variety - Lamaism. Western Buryats in the 18th century. retained their old religion (shamanism), which gradually gave way to Orthodoxy by the end of Catherine's reign. Buddhism in the form of Lamaism since the 17th century. was also distributed among the Kalmyks who lived in the interfluve of the Yaika (Ural), Volga, Don in the Caspian region, on the Terek and Kum. From the otchevskaya in 1771, most of them went to China, in the Astrakhan province, about 13 thousand families remained. At the end of the 18th century. some of them (mainly living in the Don region) were attributed to the Cossack estate of the region of the Don army and gradually converted to Orthodoxy. The principle of religious tolerance also extended to the Jews. The main mass of the Jewish population, professing Judaism, lived in those areas that were ceded to Russia as a result of the partitions of Poland at the end of the 18th century, where they had lived for several centuries. As a result of these events at the end of the 18th century. on the territory of the Russian Empire there were about 676 thousand Jews. Most of them lived in rural areas and townships, engaged in handicrafts, petty trade, trade and intermediary operations. By decree of Catherine II in 1791, the government limited the area of ​​residence of the Jewish population to the Pale of Settlement. Then in 1801-1828. several thousand more Georgian Jews and almost 7 thousand Mountain Jews of the Eastern Caucasus (Tats) entered the Russian Empire. In accordance with Catherine's legislation, the Jewish population was given the full right to practice their faith (Judaism), to open houses of prayer - synagogues and educational institutions. The government did not forbid the Jews to believe in the almighty God Yahweh, the inspiration of the Old Testament (which includes the Torah, or the Pentateuch of Moses) , the dogma of the coming of the Messiah and other religious provisions of Judaism. Preachers-rabbis enjoyed great prestige among believing Jews. The bulk of the Jewish population of Russia was organized into religious communities, the Kagals, under the strict leadership of the rabbis. during the crisis of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and its division, the Karaites, whose ancestors lived on the territory of the Khazar Kaganate, became part of the Russian Empire, and by the XIII century. settled in the Crimea in Solkhat (Old Crimea). At the end of the XIV century. most of them were relocated to the lands of the principality of Lithuania (in the Trok, Lutsk, Galich region) by decree of the Grand Duke of Lithuania Vitovt. Ethnically Türks, they are from the 10th century. professed Judaism, standing out in it as a special sect that rejects the Talmud. They denied rabbinic Judaism, recognized as a holy book only the Tanakh - the holy scripture (written Torah), consisting of three parts of the canon (Torah - the law, Neviim - the teaching of the prophets, Ketuvim - Scripture). This teaching of the Karaites differed from rabbinic Judaism, based on the tradition of interpreting the Torah (Pentateuch of Moses) through the Talmud (the Oral Torah is a book of legal and religious-ethical provisions of Judaism). The Karaites were not subjected to religious persecution in Russia either in the 18th or 19th centuries, on the contrary, in 1863 they were completely equal in rights with the Orthodox. Thus, the religious policy of the absolutist regime of Empress Catherine II was characterized by a gradual departure from the sharp opposition »Religion - official Orthodoxy to other faiths of multi-ethnic Russia, the establishment of religious tolerance while maintaining certain political restrictions for non-Orthodox ethnic groups. Sources and literature V. Milyutin On real estate of the clergy in Russia. - M., 1859; Rostislavov D. Research experience about the property and income of our monasteries. - SPb., 1876 Buganov V.I., Preobrazhensky A.A., Tikhonov Yu.A. The evolution of feudalism in Russia. Socio-economic problems. - M., 1980. Chekunova A.E. Patrimony and peasants at the end of the 17th - first quarter of the 18th century. (based on materials from the Donskoy Monastery). / Author's abstract. Cand. diss. - M., 1979. - S. 16-17 Bulygin I.A. Monastic peasants in Russia in the first quarter of the 18th century. - M., 1977. Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts (hereinafter - RGADA). - F. Senate (No. 248). - Op. 40. - Book. 3066. - L. 482-482 ob.RGADA. - F. Senate ... Op. 42. - Book. 3575. - L. 148-171. Ibid. - F. Senate. Book. 3404. - L. 557 ob.-558. Shakhovskoy Ya.P. Notes of Prince Yakov Petrovich Shakhovsky, Chief of Police under Biron, Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod, Prosecutor General and Conference Minister under Elizabeth, Senator under Catherine II: 17051777. - SPb., 1872 .-- S. 193. RSAAD. - State Archives of the Russian Empire. Discharge 18. - Op. 1. - D. 197. - L. 1-327. Ibid. - State Archives. Rank 10 (Cabinet of Catherine II). - Op. 1. - D. 9. - L. 1-11. Ibid. - F. Commission of Church Estates (No. 305). - Op. 1. - D. 75. - L. 1-5 rev .; F. Senate. Op. 1. - Book. 3400. - Sheet 2-3 ob. Zavyalov A.A. The question of church estates under Empress Catherine II. - SPb., 1900 .-- S. 215-248. RSAAD. - F. Collegiums of Economy (No. 280). - Op. 4. - D. 1775. - L. 119-126. Ibid. - State Archives. Digit 10. - Op. 3. - D. 432. - L. 5 rev. Ibid. - F. Senate. Op. 1. - Book. 3400 - L. 356-357 Ibid. - State Archives. Digit 10. - Op. 3. - D. 432. - L. 23-29. Ibid. - State Archives. Discharge 18. - Op. 1. - D. 197 .-- L. 210 Verkhovsky P.V. Inhabited immovable estates of the Holy Synod, bishops' houses and monasteries under the closest successors of Peter the Great: the College of Economics and the Office of the Synodal Economic Government (July 15, 1726 - May 12, 1763): Research in the history of Russian law. - SPb., 1909 .-- S. 323-345. RSAAD. - F. Relations of the Russian sovereigns with government places and officials for internal affairs (No. 168). - Op. 1. - D. 231. - L. 1. Komissarenko A.I. Russian absolutism and clergy in the 18th century (Essays on the history of the secularization reform of 1764). - M., 1990 .-- S. 119-120. Ibid. - S. 121-126; Russian Orthodoxy: Milestones in History. - M., 1989. - S. 284-286. Komissarenko A.I. Russian absolutism and clergy in the 18th century - pp. 125-134. I. Znamenskiy. The position of the clergy in the reign of Catherine II and Paul I. - M., 1880. P. 45. Kartashev A.V. Essays on the history of the Russian Church. - T. 2. - M., 1992. - S. 452-453; Rusak V. History of the Russian Church from the time of its foundation to the present day [Printed in the USA], 1993. - P. 275. Rusak V. History of the Russian Church. - pp. 275-276. I. Znamensky. The position of the clergy in the reign of Catherine II and Paul I. - pp. 59-60. Ibid. - P. 61. Project of the Faculty of Theology under Catherine II in 1773 // Bulletin of Europe. 1873. - No. 11; A.I. Milovidov The pedagogical views of Empress Catherine II and their influence on the reform of the theological school. - Vilna, 1905. Znamensky I. The position of the clergy in the reign of Catherine II and Paul I. - pp. 76-98; A.V. Dulov Russian Orthodoxy: an outline of history. - Ulan-Ude, 2000 .-- S. 181-183. Guryanova N.S., Krammi RO. Historical scheme in the writings of the writers of the Vygov literary school // Old Believers in Russia (XVII-XVIII centuries). - Sat. scientific papers. M., 1994. - S. 120-138; Russian Orthodoxy: Milestones in History. - S. 306-308. Pavlova M.A. Attitude towards the Jesuits of Catherine II and her inner circle // Russia and the Jesuits. 1772-1820. - M., 2006 .-- P. 63. Pavlova M.A. Attitude towards the Jesuits. - S. 70-71; Ershova I.Yu. To the question of the reasons for the preservation of the Order of the Jesuits in Russia during the reign of Catherine II // Russia and the Jesuits. - S. 91-101. Tolstoy F.P. Notes of Count Fyodor Petrovich Tolstoy. Compiled by A.E. Chekunova, E.G. Gorokhov. M., 2001. - S. 61-63, 69; Father Gruber (1740-1805) - an influential representative of the Jesuit order. After Pope Clement XIV banned the Jesuit Order in 1773, he moved to Belarus. Under Emperor Paul I, he was invited to St. Petersburg. In 1802 he was elected general of the Order (Tolstoy F.P. Notes. P. 226). Engelhardt L.N. Notes. M., 1997. - S. 17-20. Moroshkin M.Ya. Jesuits in Russia from the reign of Catherine II to our time. - SPb., 1867 .-- S. 114-115. Lushpai V.B. Antipapal speeches of the Jesuits. // Russia and the Jesuits. S. 137-139. Schop Soler A.M. Die Spanisch - russischen Beziehungen im 18 Jahrhundert / Wiesbaden, 1970. S. 101; Alperovich M.S. Society of Jesus in the empire of Catherine II // Russia and the Jesuits. P. 110. Pavone S. Survival of the Jesuits in Russia in the journalism of that time: some opinions // Russia and the Jesuits ... S. 131-134. Complete collection of laws of the Russian Empire. - Ed. 1. - T. 19. - No. 13996. Gaziz G. History of the Tatars. - M., 1994. Rudenko S.I. Bashkirs. Historical and demographic essays. - M.-L., 1955 Vyatkina K.V. Essays on the history and life of the Buryats. - L., 1969 Batmaev M.M. Kalmyks in the ХУИ-ХУШ centuries. Events, people, everyday life. - Book. 1-2. - Elista, 1992-1993. Domestic history. History of Russia from ancient times to 1917. Encyclopedia. T. 2. - M., 1996. - S. 115-116. Dubnov S.M. General history of the Jews. - Book. 1-3. - SPb., 1904-1906; Berlin I.Z. Historical destinies of the Jewish people on the territory of the Russian state. - Pg., 1919. - S. 12-20. Religious encyclopedia. Minsk, 2007. - S. 510, 796-804, 806-818; Karaite folk encyclopedia. - T. 1. - M., 1995. Domestic history. Encyclopedia. - T. 2. - M., 1996. - S. 496. Arkadij Komisarenko, Antonina Chekunova RELIGIOUS POLITICS OF KATHERINE II The article is devoted to the characteristic of the religious politics of Ketherine II. Work of the secularization committee in 1764, the change of the way of candidate selection for the supreme church posts, the attempt of the reform of seminaries, the attitude towards different confessional groups in different regions of the Empire are analyzed. , secularization, clergy, Orthodoxy. Released on March 5, 2008.

In the history of the church under Catherine II, two significant events took place - the secularization of the possessions of the clergy and the proclamation of religious tolerance, that is, the end of the policy of forced Christianization and the persecution of other believers.

On accession to the throne, Catherine made a promise not to encroach on the possession of the church. This was a tactical step by the Empress, designed to pacify the clergy, if not explicitly, then secretly hostile to the manifesto of Peter III. As soon as Catherine felt the inability of the clergy to seriously resist secularizing plans, she created a commission of secular and clergy, which was entrusted with deciding the fate of church land tenure. She even prepared an emotionally rich accusatory speech before the members of the Synod, ending with the words: "Do not hesitate to return to my crown what you have stolen from her imperceptibly, gradually." The need for a pathetic speech disappeared, the synodals showed humility and obedience. The only hierarch who dared to openly raise his voice against secularization was Metropolitan Arseny Matseevich of Rostov.

Arseny could not frustrate the secularization plans of the Empress, and she perfectly understood this. And if Catherine prepared a severe punishment for the rebel, then this action most likely had a personal motive - open hostility. Unrestrained in language, Arseny (with whom he paid) once allowed himself to speak harshly and unflatteringly about the Empress, and this response turned out to be known to her.

The implementation of the Manifesto of February 26, 1764 "On the secularization of church estates" had important consequences. The manifesto finally resolved the age-old dispute over the fate of church estates in favor of secular power. The established one and a half-ruble quitrent from the former monastery peasants (called "economic"), ensured the receipt of the treasury in 1764-1768. 1 million 366 thousand rubles of the annual quitrent, of which only a third was allocated for the maintenance of monasteries and churches, 250 thousand were spent on hospitals and almshouses, and the rest of the money (over 644 thousand rubles) replenished the state budget. In the 1780s, the quitrent sum reached 3 million rubles, and together with other economic income - 4 million, of which only half a million was spent on the maintenance of the clergy, and 7/8 of the income went to the state.

From now on, each monastery had a government-approved staff of monastics and "primary" persons, for the maintenance of which a strictly established amount was released. The clergy, thus, turned out to be completely dependent on the state, both economically and administratively, that is, they were elevated to the rank of officials in robes.

Another consequence of secularization was the improvement in the situation of the former monastic peasants. Work in the monastic corvee was replaced by monetary rent, which to a lesser extent limited the economic activities of the peasants. The economic peasants, in addition to the areas they had previously cultivated, received part of the monastic lands for use. Finally, they freed themselves from patrimonial jurisdiction - the court of monastic authorities, torture, etc.

In accordance with the ideas of the Enlightenment, Catherine adhered to a policy of religious tolerance towards other believers. So, if under the pious Elizaveta Petrovna the Old Believers continued to collect double the per capita tax, attempts were made to return them to the bosom of true Orthodoxy, excommunicated from the church, to which they responded with self-immolation actions ("burns"), as well as by flight or to remote places, or outside the country, then Peter III allowed the Old Believers to worship freely, and the tolerance of Catherine II extended further - in 1763 she abolished the Schismatic Office, established in 1725 to collect double poll tax and tax "from beards." At the same time, since 1764, Old Believers who did not shy away from the "sacraments of the church from Orthodox priests" were exempted from the double per capita tax. The government's tolerant attitude towards the Old Believers contributed to the economic prosperity of the Old Believer centers in Starodub (now the Bryansk region), Kerzhenets (now the Nizhny Novgorod region) and others, where wealthy merchants appeared. Moscow merchants-Old Believers in the early 70s of the 18th century. created the Rogozhskaya and Preobrazhenskaya communities - organizations that owned large capital and gradually subordinated the Old Believer communities to their influence on the outskirts of Russia.

The Empress's religious tolerance was also manifested in the end of the infringement of the rights of Muslims. So, those of them who converted to Orthodoxy were no longer provided with advantages in inheriting property. Catherine allowed Tatars to build mosques and open madrasahs that trained Muslim clergy.

CONCLUSION

From the middle of the 17th century. the estate-representative monarchy grows into an absolute one, which reflects the entry of feudalism into a new stage of its existence - the era of late feudalism. The class division of society is formed as a class division. The class system acquires the features of isolation and conservatism. The form of government under absolutism remains, in principle, the same - monarchic, but its content and external attributes change. The power of the monarch becomes unlimited, the proclamation of him as emperor emphasizes the power, both in the external and in the internal spheres.

For the formation of absolutism, the reforms of Peter I played an important role. First of all, it is necessary to highlight the estate reforms only because they had a global scale and determined the status of the estates.

The nobility took on a new level. There was friction between him and the boyars, but as a result of the reforms, both classes received fiefdoms and estates. Peter strove to make everyone civil servants and for this he changed the order of inheritance. He issued the Decree "On single inheritance", that is, now only one son could inherit the land (at the same time, the right to sell real estate, etc. was limited), and those who did not receive the inheritance had no choice but to go to government already in the 30s they refused to inherit).

In 1722, the "Table of Ranks" was issued, which determined the order of service and, in fact, the hierarchy of society as a whole. The significance of this document is not only in this - the Report Card allowed people from the lower classes to curry favor with the nobility. For example, in military service, even reaching the lowest rank of an officer, a person automatically received personal nobility, but without land, and when he reached the 6th rank, he was hereditary, but also without land allotment. Thus, during this period, the difference between the nobility and the boyars disappears completely.

The clergy becomes part of the state apparatus, subordinate and controlled by its interests. Peter I creates the Great Synod.

The urban estate also changed, but it was not united, but was divided into guilds. Town halls and other local government bodies were created.

The social characteristics of the peasantry also changed. Most of the peasants became dependent on the nobles, and the free were now called state peasants, there were also palace peasants. Since that time, the division into peasants and slaves disappears, which was facilitated by the Reform of Peter I "On the poll tax", which also did not distinguish between them.

There have been changes in the structure and activities of government bodies. Russia became an Empire in 1721, and Peter I became Emperor. A law was proclaimed, which spoke of the unlimited and non-controllability of the imperial power. The order of succession to the throne was also enshrined in law, which stated that the Emperor could leave power to anyone at his discretion and without restrictions.

Under Peter I, the Boyar Duma ceased to meet, but the need for a deliberative body did not disappear, so it was initially replaced by the Consulate of Ministers, and later in 1711 by the Senate. The Senate was created by Peter at the time of his departure on the campaign as a body that replaced him during his absence, but after that it remained active. The Senate was a body with deliberative, executive and judicial powers, and gradually even got some opportunities to make decisions that were lawful and binding, but the tsar could very easily overturn them.

In 1717-1719. in sectoral management, the command system of management is replaced by a collegial one. The collegiums possessed not only administrative but also judicial power. The collegium was headed by its president, but he was only the chairman and nothing more. In contrast to the orders, the collegiums had regulations on the structure. Initially, the collegiums were about 10 and of the bottom there were three most important - military, naval and foreign affairs. Representatives of these three collegia remained in the Senate even when representatives of all the others were removed from its composition.

Under Peter I in 1708, provinces were organized, which changed the order in the division of Russia into territorial and administrative units. The provinces were divided into provinces (in which the governors ruled), and those, in turn, into counties.

Courts were born, and the first of them were court courts, which existed in every district. In addition, in some cities there was a judge, and where there was none, magistrates exercised judicial powers. Peter also created a system of military and naval vessels. Prosecutors' offices are being organized, which were created from above. First, in 1722, the rank of Prosecutor General was created, then the fiscal (created in 1711 as employees of the secret oversight body) were reassigned to him. At first, the prosecutor's office was a general oversight body, in addition, the attorney general supervised the Senate. Bar associations appear.

At the same time, Peter I made an attempt to destroy the competitiveness in the process. He made this attempt in 1697 by issuing a decree on the transfer of all cases to the wanted list (that is, there were no confrontations with witnesses, etc.), but in reality this did not succeed. In 1715, a part of the future military regulations appeared called "A Brief Image of the Trial", according to which all cases were searched. In 1723, another decree "On the form of the court" was adopted, which established the procedure for conducting cases on private applications.

The development of law during this period is characterized by the development of state and administrative law as a branch. Regulations were introduced. At the same time, no significant shifts have occurred in civil law. In criminal law, there has been a codification in the field of military criminal law. "Military Articles" published.

The period of "enlightened absolutism" and the 34-year reign of Catherine II, in particular, left a bright mark on the history of Russia. The originality of the Empress's personality, her outstanding qualities of a statesman and the greatness of what she has done are striking. If Peter the Great established himself on the shores of the Baltic, Catherine the Great - on the shores of the Black Sea, expanding the borders to the south and incorporating the Crimean Peninsula into the Empire. This alone is enough for the descendants to remember with gratitude the name of Catherine II. Under Catherine, the spread of enlightenment reached a high level, the first magazines began to be published, writers appeared whose works sound relevant today, and historical science has achieved major successes. Ekaterina was distinguished by an incredible capacity for work: "I passionately love being busy and I find that a person is only happy when he is busy." Another time she wrote: "I love to work by nature and the more I work, the more fun I become." It is enough to look at the Empress's daily routine to see how much time she devoted to the affairs of government. Catherine energetically and constantly legislated, her pen was the author of such important acts of the reign as the "Order" of the Legislative Commission, Institutions on the provinces, Letters of gratitude to the nobility and cities, and many others. But Catherine wrote not only decrees, manifestos and instructions. She left a colossal epistolary legacy. According to her confession, versification was completely inaccessible to her, she did not understand music, but she willingly composed plays, vaudeville.

The ideas of moderate enlighteners were not only shared by the Empress. Some Russian nobles established personal relations with French enlighteners and, like Catherine, were in correspondence with them.

The French Revolution put an end to the flirtation with the ideas of the Enlightenment, both of Catherine herself and her entourage. The storming of the Bastille, alarming information about the burning of noble castles and feudal letters reminded the Russian nobles of the events of the Peasant War in Russia. The order on which, as the favorite of Catherine Platon Zubov wrote, “calmness, confidence and prosperity were based” collapsed. A new era was approaching — the era of the disintegration of serfdom and the new growth of capitalist relations.

QUESTIONS FOR SELF-CONTROL

1. The main prerequisites for the formation of an absolute monarchy in Russia. The main features and characteristics of Russian absolutism.

2. Development of the state system in the first half of the 18th century.

3. State reforms of the first quarter of the 18th century.

4. Classical reforms of Peter I. Legal status of the nobility. Table of ranks.

5. Give a brief description of the socio-political system of Russia in the 2nd half of the 18th century.

6. What do you think the expression means: "Enlightened" absolutism as a special political regime.

7. "Order" of Catherine II. Legislated Commission of 1767

8. What were the main principles of the Provincial reform of 1775 expressed in?

9. The importance of the church policy of Catherine II on the further development of Russian society.

Literature

1. Military article // Reader on the history of state and law / Comp. Yu.P. Titov. M., 1997.
2. Bakaev Yu.N. History of state-church relations in Russia. Khabarovsk, 1994.
3. Demidova N.F. Serving bureaucracy in Russia in the 17th century. and its role in the formation of absolutism. M., 1987.
4. Efimov S.V. Peter's transformations and Russian society in the first half of the 18th century // History of Russia: people and power. SPB., 1997.

5. History of the domestic state and law: Textbook. Part 1 / Ed. O.I. Chistyakov. 3rd ed., Revised. and add. M. MSU. 2007.

6. Diploma for the rights, liberties and advantages of the noble Russian nobility //

7. Reader on the history of state and law / Comp. Yu.P. Titov. M., 1997.

8. Moiseev V.V. The history of government in Russia. M., 2010.

TALION LAW (from Lat. Tаlio, genus. Item tаliоnis - retribution, equal in force to the crime) - the principle of punishment that has developed in the tribal society. It consisted in inflicting the same harm on the perpetrator that was inflicted on them ("an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth").

The ease with which Catherine passed from Lutheranism to Orthodoxy on the eve of her marriage to Grand Duke Peter Fyodorovich suggests that she was not very religious. Throughout her life, the Empress, perhaps, belonged to the group of agnostics. True, references to God and Divine Providence are prominently featured in her official addresses and documents, and even in private correspondence, and the honorary religious functions of the Orthodox Empress Catherine II performed with the greatest punctuality. But the deep currents of religious, spiritual life did not touch her soul, and mysticism seemed to her obscurantism and nonsense. In addition, the empress was completely devoid of musical ear, so that even this aspect of the Orthodox liturgy did not say anything to her imagination and feelings. Being a reasonable person, she did not consider either violent treatment or persecution of religious minorities permissible - as long as all her subjects believed in some god and performed the rituals prescribed by their religion. She saw religion as a valuable factor in maintaining order in society and maintaining public and personal morality, but she never allowed the church to challenge the influence of state power.

The empress's views on religion were openly stated in articles 494-496 of her "Order". Here she expressed strictly utilitarian principles without touching on theological issues. Acting as a proponent of "reasonable" religious tolerance for the sake of peace in the society of a multinational empire, she noted in article 496: "Persecution irritates human minds, and the permission to believe according to one's own law softens the most cruel hearts ..." 1

• 1 Documents of Catherine the Great. The Correspondence with Voltaire and the Instruction of WE in the English Text of 1768 / Hd. by W. F. Reddaway. Cambridge. 1931. p. 209.

In the first decade of her reign, Catherine in a number of cases had to resolve issues related to individual religious communities, but it was not until June 13, 1773 that the empress issued a general document on religious policy in the Russian Empire. This was not an official "patent" on religious tolerance following the example of the decree of Emperor Joseph II. Tolerance was proclaimed in it, according to a typical Russian custom, not directly, but rather indirectly - in the context of permission to build mosques. The decree declared: "As the Most High God on earth tolerates all faiths, languages ​​and confessions, then Her Majesty, from the same rules, resembling His Holy faith, and in this will be pleased to act." Therefore, the Holy Synod was ordered to prohibit the church authorities throughout the country from taking on the solution of all issues related to other religions, leaving this to the civil authorities (including questions about the construction of religious buildings) 2.

The first problem of religious policy that confronted Catherine after her accession to the throne concerned the Jews. There were very few Jews in Russia then, since in the old Moscow times they were not allowed to settle in the country. However, the Jews inhabited the Polish part of Ukraine, some of their communities in Little Russia managed to survive the fierce pogroms during the uprising of Bohdan Khmelnitsky in the 16th century. Several Jewish prisoners of war settled even in Great Russia, and turned a blind eye to this, although they were not allowed to enter Moscow. In 1727, Catherine! issued a decree on the expulsion of all Jews from Russia and from Little Russia, but it was not carried out, because the Jews and the Fal and too important role in the Little Russian economy 3. Religious intolerance of the 18th century reached its peak when, in 1738, one Jew was accused of converting a Russian naval officer to Judaism, and both were publicly burned on July 15, 1738 in St. Petersburg 4. More effective than in 1727, the decree on the expulsion of the Jews was issued by Empress Elizabeth in 1742.According to her will, even the honored court physician, Sephardic Jew Antonio Nunei Ribeiro Sanchez, was forbidden to return to his post in Russia and was deprived of his honorary membership in the Academy of Sciences 5 .

• 2 PSZ. T. XIX. No. 13996, June 23, 1773. A conflict arose between the Kazan governor and the Orthodox clergy, since the governor, relying on the relevant articles of the "Order", gave permission to build two mosques.
• 1 Gessen Yu. History of the Jewish people in Russia. L., 1925.T. I. S. 9 ff. In 1740, 292 Jews and 281 Jewish women, who lived in 130 yards, were ordered to leave Little Russia.
• 4 PSZ. T. X. 7612, Ziyulya 1738

Catherine II, four or five days after her reign, attended one of the ordinary sessions of the Senate and discovered on the agenda, dating back to the time of Peter 111, a proposal to allow Jews to settle in Russia. The Empress decided that it would hardly be wise to begin her reign with a step that would be perceived as a serious departure from the word she had just given to protect the Orthodox faith. One of the senators brought her out of the difficulty, suggesting that she first turn to the decree of the Empress Eli testaments regarding a previous similar project. After reading the words of the late empress: “I don’t want an interesting profit from the enemies of Christ,” Catherine plucked up the courage to postpone the solution of this issue. In the Manifesto of December 4, 1762, on the invitation of foreigners to settle in Russia, it was clearly stated that it did not concern Jews 7.

However, the Empress nevertheless considered the settlement of Jewish colonists on Russian lands, firstly, useful for reclaiming the empty lands of Novorossiya, and secondly, as a means to increase the extremely small Russian “third estate”. Therefore, simultaneously with the decree of 1762, which did not concern Jews, an instruction was issued to the authorities of the South of Russia: to allow all immigrants to their lands without distinction of race and faith. It was this formulation that was commonly used when it came to Jews 8. In 1764, Catherine ordered Prince Dashkov, who was with the Russian army in Poland, to take under his protection all Jews wishing to leave for Russia 9. The first special permission for Jews to settle in Novorossiya was given in 1769 10

Nothing testifies more clearly to the limitations of absolute power than the secret measures that Catherine resorted to to develop the settlement of Jews in Russia. In April-May 1764, in a private letter (compiled by G.G. Orlov, the Empress's chief assistant in matters of foreign colonists), she ordered the Livonian governor Brown to allow several merchants (apparently Jewish) from Novorossiya to settle in Riga, as well as issue passports a number of people heading from Mitava to St. Petersburg, "without specifying their race and faith." Catherine wrote in her own hand in German: “If you don’t understand me, it’s not my fault ... Keep it all a secret” 11. Thus, seven Jews, including the rabbi, were secretly taken to the capital, where for some time they settled in the house of the confessor of the empress herself, and the court pretended not to notice their religion 12.

• 5 PSZ. T. XI. No. 8673, December 2, 1742
• ь Compositions of Empress Catherine II. SPb., 1907.T. XII. S. 570.7 PSZ. T. XVI. No. 11720.
• * Bartlett R. Human Capital. The Settlement of Foreigners in Russia. 1764-1804. Cambridge, 1979. P. 90.
• 9 C 6 RIO. T. LI.C. 440.
• 10 Bartlett R. Op.cit .; nC3. T. Xviii. N9 13383. November 16, 1769 Jewish prisoners of war were allowed to live in Russia (see: Gessen Yu. Law and Life: How restrictive laws on residence in Russia were created. St. Petersburg. 191!. P. 18).

With the appearance of Jews in Riga, who were tasked with recruiting and transporting Jewish colonists to southern Russia, the question arose again about the status of the Jewish population of Livonia. The uncontrolled influx of Jews into Riga "on the way to Novorossiya" alarmed the city council, and its members resorted to the old practice - they opened a special "hotel" for Jews outside the city. All of them were supposed to settle there, unless they paid off this limitation of a hundred thalers. In 1765, there were 36 Jews among the inhabitants of Riga. On February 8, 1766, Governor Brown issued a patent limiting the activities of Jews outside Riga. Here they were allowed to trade in some goods (except for any old junk) through the intermediary of Riga merchants. Jews who did not buy liberation for a hundred talers were supposed to live outside the walls of Riga. In the rest of Livonia, Jews were not allowed to either settle or be hired 13.

The rights of Jews to permanent residence in the Ostsee provinces were more clearly formulated in 1783, when, by agreement between Russia and Courland, this former duchy ceded a small piece of land around Sloka to Livonia. In 1785, Catherine allowed people to settle there "without distinction of race or religion." Now the Jews of Riga were mainly attributed to the Sloka. The only exceptions were the so-called "Schützjuden" - privileged Jews, free from restrictions on residence, who were allowed to settle in Riga itself 14. So, in Livonia, where a well-developed organized urban class already existed, and therefore there was no need to artificially increase the number of the "third kind of people", Catherine was content with a modest dose of religious tolerance, sufficient to help trade and give people engaged in it, a certain protection of the law, but insufficient for the Jews to obtain the status of permanent residents or equal rights with the population of the whole of Finland.

• 11 Hesse Op. Cit. S. 16-17.
• 12 Ibid (quote from a letter from Catherine II to Diderot).
• 13 Buchhottz A. Geschichte der Juden in Riga. Riga. 1899. S. 64. 67-69,123-128.
• 14 PSZ. T. XXII. No. 16146. Decree to Governor-General Brown of February 4, 1785 See: Buchholtz A. Op. cit. S. 69GY. It was about very small numbers: in 1895 there were only 89 Jewish merchants and 44 bourgeois in Sloka.

With the annexation of a part of the Commonwealth to Russia in 1772, a completely new set of problems arose. Despite all the suffering that the Jews endured in the 17th - 18th centuries. From the Ukrainian Cossacks, Polish Catholics, Swedish Lutherans, Orthodox Russians, these lands still retained large Jewish communities, which in a number of cities outnumbered the Christian population 15.

The traditional Jewish system of organizing society, which has developed over the centuries, was the kagal - an elected body, usually headed by a rabbi, who managed all the affairs of the Jewish community in a given area and was responsible to the crown for paying taxes and performing all kinds of duties. There were podkagals in small villages. Representatives of the Kagals played the role of a lobby in the Polish Sejm, acting in the interests of Polish Jewry in general 16.

The manifesto, which proclaimed the annexation of the Belarusian provinces of Poland, specifically spoke of the Jews as a group to which the mercy and generosity of the emperor were extended. They were reaffirmed the rights granted by the Polish kings to freely practice the rituals of their religion and property 17. Despite the fact that the criteria for determining who is a Jew, who is not, were never clearly formulated, they were purely religious. A Jew who converted to Christianity, in the legal sense, ceased to be a Jew. ”1 But Russia's policy towards its new Jewish subjects was torn between two opposite tendencies: it was necessary to preserve the kagal with its power in the community and the ability to perform those functions that the state had not yet I had the strength to take over, but at the same time I wanted to end the Jewish isolation that the autonomous institute of kagala conserved, and to include Jews in the all-Russian urban class.

• 15 Hesse Yu. History of the Jewish people ... T. 1. S. 58 and notes. 33. In 1784 in the Mogilev province I 161 Jews were assigned to the merchants (there were 321 merchants from Christians), and 14,258 Jews (and 7126 Christians) were assigned to the bourgeoisie. In the Polotsk province there were 467 Jewish merchants and 646 Christians, 6955 Jews and 7824 Christians. Jews here constituted 2.76% of the total population and 37% of the urban population. However, I. Levitats points to the unreliability of digital data (Leviiais I. The Jewish Community in Russia 1772-1844. N. Y., 1970. P. 18).
• 16 Hesse Yu. Decree. op. S. 30 ff.
• 17 PSZ. T. XIX. N9 13850, August 16, 1772. Since then, the offensive word "Jew" has officially disappeared from Russian decrees, being replaced by the neutral word "Jew".

At first, the Russian authorities supported the kagal system and numbered every Jew behind his community, like any merchant or bourgeoisie behind the corresponding magistrate or town hall. He was subject to the power of the kagala not only in spiritual matters, but also in legal, financial and administrative matters. Jews paid a capitation tax at the rate of one ruble per male soul and tax instead of recruiting. Jews living on private land were subject to the jurisdiction of the landowners, as in Polish times.

With the introduction of the "Institutions for the Governance of Provinces" in the new Mogilev and Polotsk provinces in 1778, the integration of Jews into Russian society noticeably increased. Litigations of Jews with Christians or cases of bills were now considered by the magistrate, if it was about the townspeople, and the lower zemstvo courts for the villagers. In January 1780, the Jews of Mogilev and Polotsk were allowed to enroll in the merchant class or bourgeoisie, depending on the size of their capital. Jewish merchants, instead of a poll tax, were now supposed to pay a tax of one percent on the declared capital, just like Russian merchants 19. In 1783, the Jews were ordered to pay the same taxes that the Russian population paid, directly to the Russian magistrates, to which the functions of issuing passports were also transferred from the kagals. Jews participated in local elections in 1783, and several people were elected to the governing bodies. In response to the protests of public opinion and even opposition from local officials, Yekaterina ordered the governor of Mogilev and Polotsk, General P.B. Passek, to ensure that the chosen Jews were allowed to perform their official duties. But anti-Semitism was too strong here, in areas with a predominantly Jewish population, elections were held for separate curiae, and all together was aimed at excluding the emergence of Jews in major leadership positions. So, although 25 Jews were elected in the Mogilev province, including seven burgomasters or members of town halls, not one of them got into the city magistrate, although there were 375 Jewish merchants and 196 Christian merchants, as well as 2709 Jewish burghers and 2703 Christian.

• 18 This question was clearly raised in the decree of October 17, 1776. See: Klier J. D, The Ambiguous Legal Status of Russian Jewry in the Reign of Catherine II // Slavic Review. 1976. Vol. 35. No. 3. P. 804-817.
• 19 PSZ. T. XX. No. 14962, January 7, 1780; T. XXI. No. 15130, March 10, 1781
• 20 f ecceH [Q y K az. op. S. 58 and note. 33.

Just two years later, in 1785, a dispute arose about the civil rights of the Jews of Mogilev and Polotsk due to the fact that, according to the Charter, the cities expanded the range of elective bodies to which Jews, as members of the urban estate, could elect deputies. Magistrates and administrations often showed reluctance to grant these rights to their Jewish fellow countrymen. To call the magistrates to order, in 1786 the Empress had to send a personal decree to the Governor-General of Mogilev. Whether he acted remains unknown. At the same time, Ekaterina strongly rejected the request of the Jews to preserve their traditional judicial system 21. Assimilation was on the agenda.

At first glance, liberal measures, which granted Jews equality before the law with the Christian urban population, imposed restrictions on them that they did not know in Poland, but which lay on the Russian urban class. We are talking about restrictions on freedom of movement associated with registration in the city. The decree, according to which all people assigned to the urban class had to leave the countryside and move to cities, hit the Jews very painfully, and, probably, was aimed against them 22. Indeed, many Jews settled in the countryside, earning a living as landlord factors, renting distilleries and taverns. And Belarusian cities were mostly miserable clusters of wooden houses, where it would have been difficult for Jews to settle and get a livelihood. Another blow was dealt to them by the introduction in Belarus in 1783 of the Charter on Distillation of 1781, which confirmed the prohibition of this craft to all non-nobility estates - both the crowds, the bourgeoisie, and the Jews 23.

• 21 PSZ. T. XXII. N ° 16391, May 7, 1786 In no other European country except Tuscany did the Jews have such municipal rights. See: Baron S. W. The Russian Jew under Tsars and Soviets. N. Y., 1964. P. eighteen.
• 11 Hesse Yu. Decree. op. S. 74-77.

The deputies from the Kagals more than once appealed to the Empress with complaints about these legal restrictions, and finally, on May 7, 1786, a decree was issued, which was the earliest in Europe official recognition of the civil equality of Jews 24. It recognized that Jews are subjects of the Russian state, enjoying all the rights and privileges due to their status and occupation. They should have been allowed to rent distilleries and taverns on the same terms as everyone else. This meant that from now on, the authorities would unofficially tolerate the presence of Jews in the countryside. Jews were allowed to elect representatives to all city institutions on an equal basis with other population groups and were placed under the jurisdiction of provincial courts. The Kagalam left those functions that were performed by secular gatherings in Christian communities, making them responsible for paying the poll tax. They were also allowed to resolve issues of faith and ritual and perform some of the functions of public charity orders.

Legislation of the 80s brought to the Jewish communities a certain protection and status, at least in the former Polish provinces. It is not surprising, therefore, that when in 1780 Catherine visited Mogilev together with the Austrian emperor Joseph I, the decoration of Jewish streets and the illuminations and fireworks arranged by kagals turned out to be the most magnificent and striking 25. And yet, although the authorities may have intended to create serious preconditions for the development of the Jewish urban class, the orders they issued were often so ambiguous and inaccurate that it was easy for anti-Semitic governors or local authorities to bypass them.

In the 90s. XVIII century There was a change in Russian policy towards Jews that was never satisfactorily explained.

• 21 See: Le Donne J. Indirect Taxes in Catherine "s Russia. II. The Liquor Monopoly // JGOE. 1976. Vol. 24. Ns 2. P. 173-207; Gessen J. Law and Life ... P . 33.
• 24 Pipes R. Catherine 11 and the Jews // Soviet Jewish Affaires. Vol. 5. No. 2. P. 3 - 20; PSZ. T. XXH. Jsfe 16391, May 7, 1786 r.
• 25 C6RIO. T. I. C. 384 and further (Day note of the travels of Empress Catherine II ").
• 7b The question is. the extent to which the provisions of the May 1786 decree were enforced is in need of further research.

In December 1789, the Jews of Belarus applied for permission to be assigned to merchants outside Minsk and Polotsk, and a small group of very wealthy Jewish merchants actually settled in Moscow. The Moscow merchants, who could not tolerate any competitors, be it an Orthodox peasant or a Belarusian Jew, in 1790 complained to the Senate about deceitful and crafty competitors damaging their trade, and emphasized that they were doing this not out of religious prejudices, but in hopes of interests of trade. The complaint of the Moscow merchants was considered by the Council at the Imperial Court on October 7, 1790. The Council discussed that not a single law allows Jews to settle in the inner Russian cities and that their presence there does not bring any particular benefit. Therefore, it was decided to allow Jews to freely settle only in Belarus, as well as in Catherine's donkey in all and Tauride provinces (i.e. in the Crimea) 27. However, at this time, the authorities still did not intend to limit the rights of Jews to choose their place of residence to a greater extent than the Orthodox population. We must not forget that, with the exception of the nobility, all estates in Russia experienced great difficulties in moving around the country. Jews were sent to vast areas with a small population, within which they received more freedom of movement than Russian merchants in Russia itself. (Potemkin welcomed all immigrants to his lands; it was even said that at one time he was going to create a special "Israel" regiment 28.)

According to the second and third partitions of Poland, Russia annexed to its possessions new areas with a significant Jewish population (in 1793 - Volyn and Podolia, and in 1795 - Vilna and Grodno provinces). Their Jewish population was extended in general the same civil and religious rights as the Belarusian Jews. But in 1794, Catherine announced a sharp change in the course of policy towards the Jews. By a decree on June 23, 1794, the rate of per capita tax and taxes on the Jewish population was doubled in comparison with Christians of the same estates 29.

• 27 PSZ.T.XHI.M. 17006. December 23, 1791 See also: AGS. T. |. S 365-368.
• n For Potemkin's views, see: Ligne Ch. prince de. Memoires et melanges histo riqueset litteraires. Paris. 1827. Vol. II. P. 103 ft "(letter to Joseph II).
• 29 PSZ. T. XXIV. N9 17224, July 1, 1794; Gessen Y. History of the Jewish people ... T. 1. P. 86 and notes. eleven.

At the same time, the territories of legal settlement of Jews were expanded at the expense of three Little Russian provinces (Kiev, Chernigov and Novgorod-Severskaya).

The decree of 1794 was interpreted in different ways. Was it marked by the beginning of state anti-Semitism? Or was it a measure aimed solely at raising tax revenues during the financial crisis in order to make up for the losses incurred by the treasury due to the release of Jews from recruitment? Or did the decree reflect the fear of Jews as carriers and agents of the rebellious ideas of the French Revolution? 30 Or, perhaps, this decree responded to the government's desire to move people from the densely populated western border regions to the deserted southern regions received from the Port through the Yassky world? After all, the settlers received a temporary exemption from all taxes, and subsequently this contributed to the development of one of the largest cities of Russian Jewry, Odessa 31.

Russia had a much longer and closer relationship with Muslims than with Jews. They began at the time of the Golden Horde, which converted to Islam in the 14th century, and intensified after the conquest in the 16th century. Tatar khanates - Kazan and Astrakhans who brought Russia numerous Muslim subjects. Throughout the XVII century. the state implemented harsh measures to convert Muslims to Orthodoxy and punished returning to Islam. Muslims, who seduced Christians from the path of Orthodoxy, were burned at the stake. By the middle of the century, the Muslim population had almost completely left the cities and existed mainly in rural communities, deliberately withdrawn into their own world.

Peter I achieved the conversion of Muslims to Orthodoxy with the help of such incentives as the granting of money and fur coats from the royal shoulder, exemption from taxes or recruitment, without abandoning coercive measures. In 1731, a Commission was established for the baptism of the Gentiles of the Kazan and Nizhny Novgorod provinces and other places, and in the 1740s it was renamed into the Office of an officer from new affairs. She was in charge of the civil and religious administration of Islamic affairs in general. The Chancellery performed these functions in an extremely rude manner in Muslim districts: children were abducted, adults were forcibly baptized, and mosques were destroyed 32.

• 30 R. Pipes emphasizes this last aspect of Catherine's policy (Pipes ft. Op. Cit.). But I find his arguments unconvincing, since the presence of Jews in Moscow, of course, would be less dangerous than in the border regions of the empire. The fact that all foreign Jews were ordered to leave Russia in 1792 reflects, rather, suspicion of foreigners in general, and not just Jews.
• 31 It should be noted that the Jews continued to remain free from recruiting (with the payment of a special tax) (PSZ. T. XXIII. No. 17432, January 21, 1796).

Catherine's first step in relation to Islam was the abolition of the Officer's Chancellery from New Baptismal affairs in 1764. “The baptized Tatars were equated in position with the rest of the state peasants, freeing them for another three years from the poll tax and recruitment. But as soon as the newly converted Tatars stopped feeling pressure from the side of the Chancellery, they began to fall away from Orthodoxy in droves and return to Islam.The new position of the government towards Muslims again manifested itself in December 1766, when the Tatar population of the Urals and the Volga region was invited to send deputies to the Legislated Commission.34 The deputies arrived in Moscow, supplied, as it should be, with orders from the collectors, which outlined their needs and sorrows. Most of the orders were of an economic nature. Among them were complaints about the seizure of land, about the restriction of the economic activities of the Tatar population, but there was also talk about religious persecution Muslim MPs asked to lift all economic restrictions , to restore the rights of the Tatar nobility, to legitimize the Islamic faith 35. During the debate, two Muslim deputies strongly opposed the proposal to consider the testimony of Muslims under oath on the same grounds as the testimony of Russian schismatics, and insisted on the full legitimacy of the oath on the Koran.

During her trip in 1767, the Empress Kazan herself made a very favorable impression. As she wrote to Nikita Panin on May 27, this city was worthy to become the capital of some kingdom. She settled in a merchant's stone house, where there were "nine chambers in a suite, all upholstered in silk, gilded armchairs and canapeas, everywhere a pier glass and marble tables under them." While in Kazan, Catherine received delegations of different classes and allowed the construction of a mosque 38.

• and Lemercier Quetquejay C. Les Missions Orthodoxes en Pays Musulmans de Moyenne et Basse Volga, 1552-1865 // CMRS. 1967. Vol. Vlll.Nb 3.P. 369-403; 2enkovskyS. A. Pan-Turkism and Islam in Russia. Harvard University Press, I960.
• "PSZ.T. XVII. No. 12721, April 2, 1764 r.
• 14 Among 52 deputies from the non-Russian population there were twenty Tatars and two Bashkirs. Three of these Tatars were Christians and 17 were Muslims. See: A. Florovsky. L The composition of the legislative commission 1767-1774 Odessa. 1915.S. 469.
• ib Some of these orders were published in: SBRIO. T. CXV. S. 304 ff. They testify to the coordinated actions of various groups of the Muslim population of the Kazan province.
• * Ibid. T. XIV. S 135.156-159.

The decree on religious tolerance, if you can call this document that way, appeared in 1773 specifically regarding the construction of mosques and marked the beginning of a new period in the life of the Muslim community of Russia 39. Religious persecution has officially ended, replaced by passive religious tolerance. This was followed by a decree of 1776, which abolished the restrictions on the economic activity of the Tatars 40. When Crimea was annexed to Russia, a more consistent policy began to be pursued here, probably largely due to the fact that Ekaterina and Potemkin fully agreed on these issues. Both of them understood that it was necessary to win over to their side the religious and secular elite of Crimea, where there were about one and a half thousand mosques, and 25% of the land belonged to mosques and various religious institutions 41. Therefore, the Russian authorities left the existing Islamic structures unchanged, and the Orthodox Church was not ordered to interfere in local spiritual affairs.

The initiative to create a central administration for the Muslim population of Russia belongs to the enterprising Orenburg governor Igelstrom, who came to the conclusion that by supporting Islam, the Russian state could wean the Tatar tribes from their nomadic customs. In the fall of 1785, Catherine agreed with Igelstrom's recommendations, as a result of which the construction of numerous mosques, kara van-sarais, and madrasahs began 42. In 1786, Muslim schools were subordinated to the Commission for the Establishment of Public Schools in Russia, which was entrusted with printing textbooks for Muslims at the expense of the Russian government in Russian and Tatar, which from now on received the rights of the official language of Muslims of Russia 43. Finally, in 1788-1789. the central administration of all Muslims of the Russian Empire was established, first stirring in Oren Burg, and then in Ufa. It was an organ parallel to the Holy Synod for the Orthodox, although it did not receive the same status. It took the form of the supreme assembly of the Muslim clergy and was in charge of overseeing religious life, supervising the professional training of the clergy, distributing appointments to mullahs, and inspecting mosque schools. The Spiritual Assembly considered questions of doctrine, cases of marriages and divorces. Civil cases involving Muslims were to be referred to the Russian secular courts. The Muslim mufti, or head of the Spiritual Assembly, like other top Muslim officials, received the nobility and the right to own estates with Muslim peasants. It was forbidden to admit mullahs and ulema from the Ottoman Empire or from the Bukhara Khanate to Russia 44.

• ¦ "S6RIO. T. X. S. 202.
• and Zenkovsky S. A. Op. cit. P. 17.
• 39 PSZ. T. XIX. No. 13996. See above, p. 802.
• 40 PSZ. T. XX. No. 14540. November 22, 1776
• 41 See: A. W. Fisher, Enlightened Despotism and Islam under Catherine II // Slavic Review. 1968. Vol. XXVII. P. 542-553.
• 42 PSZ. T. XXII. Nb 16255, September 4, 1785

The diploma of the Muslim Spiritual Assembly served as the legislative basis and formalization of the religious and cultural life of Muslim Russia before the Bolshevik revolution 45. She created a system of assimilation of Muslim Tatars in the Russian state with the help and efforts of their own leaders. At this stage, the task of cultural “Russification” was pursued only to the extent necessary for the implementation of administrative control. The official language of the Spiritual Assembly of Muslims proclaimed Russian (with translation into Tatar), but in all other cases, the unlimited use of national languages ​​remained within the Muslim community.

The cessation of religious confrontation and the inclusion of the Muslim elite in the Russian state system greatly facilitated the development of regions with a Tatar population and the establishment of tranquility in them. Gradually, the local nobility lost its former importance, and when trade with Central Asia became the main occupation of the Tatars, a powerful merchant layer formed among them, which benefited from the new order 46.

• 43 Rescripts of February 25, 1782 and May 2, 1784 allowed the construction of mosques on the lands of the Kirghiz-Kaisaks (Lemercier - Quelquejay C. Op. Cit. P. 393).
• 44 See: PSZ. T. XXII. No. 16710, September 22, 1788; N ° 16711; T. XXIII. N? 16759, April 20, 1789.

When dealing with Jews and Muslims, Catherine I enjoyed perfect freedom of hands: one of these religious communities, the Jewish, had no supreme head at all, and the second, Muslim, formally obeyed the Turkish sultan as a kha lif, but Russia could afford to ignore him. ... More complex problems arose with the Catholic community, because the Catholics had a supreme head outside Russia, and his authority could not be ignored.

In the XVII century. the influx of foreigners into Russia, among whom there were many Scots in-Catholics, such as Patrick Gordon, caused the need for Catholic churches and schools. In 1685, a couple of Jesuit fathers managed to unofficially open a church and a school, but Patriarch Joachim persuaded Peter I in 1689 to expel the Jesuits. An extensive program of attracting foreign specialists to the Russian service led Peter I to the decision in 1702 to pursue a policy of wide religious tolerance (albeit limited to Christian confessions), but prohibiting, however, any form of proselytism. Little by little, members of various Catholic orders began to appear in Russia, and pastors were allowed to live in private homes as chaplains or spiritual mentors. In 1721, mixed marriages were allowed, provided that the Orthodox spouses would not be converted to another faith, and the children would be brought up in Orthodoxy.

• 46 Trade turnover with Central Asia increased from 83,000 rubles. in 1773-1777 up to 624,000 rubles. in 1793-1797 and up to 11,336,000 rubles. in 1830 (Zenkovsky S. A. Op. cit. P. 20). Russian historians of the 19th century, for example, D. A. Tolstoy, sharply criticized this policy of religious tolerance and the efforts of the authorities to achieve the "Russification" of the Tatars with the help of the Tatar mullahs. Wed the work of E. Fisher (Fisher A. W. Op. cit. P. 551), which contains excerpts from the publication undertaken by D.A. ...
• 47 The history of Catholicism in Russia is studied II. Pearling (Pieriing P. La Russie et le Saint Siege. Paris, 1912. Vol. I - V) and D. A. Tolstoy (Tolstoy D. A. Roman Catholicism in Russia: Historical Research. St. Petersburg, 1876. Vol. I - I), whose work was first published in French in 1863-1864. Pearling sees the case as an inveterate papist, and Tolstoy as an Orthodox Russian nationalist. It is often difficult to bring together their versions of certain events, but nevertheless, such an attempt is made in this work. M. Moroshkin, like D. A. Tolstoy, was resolutely opposed to the Jesuits (Morosh kin M. Jesuits in Russia during the reign of Catherine II and up to our time. St. Petersburg, 1867-1870. Ch. 1-11). Wed See also: ZatkoJ.J. The Organizatin of the Catholic Church in Russia, 1772-1874 // SEER. 1965. Vol. LV 1 II. No. 101. P. 303-313.

Catholic communities in Russia seem to have been extremely unlucky with their choice of priests. Here there were eternal strife between the clergy and believers, between priests of different orders, and, as a rule, because of church funds and property, and for justice they turned to the Russian authorities. The largest of these unworthy squabbles took place shortly after Catherine's accession to the throne, in 1766. 49 The Empress gladly intervened in this matter and, without consulting any Catholic authorities, on February 12, 1769, issued her “Regulations given St. Petersburg Roman Catholic Church "in Russia. In it, she announced her intention not to interfere in the questions of Catholic doctrine, and then ordered that six Franciscan priests be allowed to stay in Russia. The Empress decreed that the Catholic community should choose its head and eight syndics, or elders, to help it, to solve financial problems; that a school for Catholic children should be opened (which students of other faiths were not allowed to attend); that Catholic buildings and property are exempt from city taxes; that Catholic priests undertake not to engage in proselytizing; and, finally, that all disputes should be referred to the Justitz Collegium for Affairs of Livonia, Estonia and Finland (which was already in charge of Lutheran affairs) * 0.

Thus, Catherine 11 rejected the right of Rome to appoint priests or control Catholic property in Russia. For a Russian Orthodox historian such as DA Tolstoy, her politics embodied the wise assertion of state control over the Roman Catholic community in Russia, now protected from the arbitrariness of its clergy. From the point of view of the Catholic historian P. Pearling, this same measure was presented as an example of Russian despotism, which deprived Rome of the right to appoint priests. It was never recognized as legitimate by the papal throne (among other reasons, and because it undermined the primacy of Rome, encouraging the participation of elected representatives of the community in the management of its affairs). Nevertheless, despite the efforts of Rome in subsequent years to force Catherine to soften these measures, the "Regulations" of 1769 were adopted in practice and even survived the concordat concluded between Russia and Rome in 1847. "

• 48 PSZ. T. VI. JSfe 3814, 18 August 1721 (on permission for Swedish prisoners of war to marry Russian women). The law was passed in order to hand off the crown princess Anna Petrovna to the Duke of Holstein.
• 44 Ibid. T. XVII. No. 12776, November 6, 1766
• 50 Ibid. T. XVIII. No. 13251. 13252.
• "" ¦ Tolstoy L. A. Decree. op. S. 178-179.

The first partition of Poland here, too, completely changed the previous picture. Suddenly, about 100 thousand Catholic subjects, as well as about 800 thousand Uniates, were under the rule of Russia. This presented the Russian government with a threefold problem. First, it was necessary to ensure the independence of the Catholic communities of Belarus from the Polish Catholic hierarchy. Secondly, it was necessary to create a new hierarchy and structure of the Eastern Catholic Church, as well as to regulate relations between this new church organization, the Russian state and the papal see. Third, Russia almost immediately faced the question of whether to obey the papal decree on the dissolution of the Jesuit order, announced under pressure from France and Spain by the bull Dominus ac Redemptor of July 21, 1773 (new style).

In the manifesto on the annexation of Belarus, Catherine promised to respect the faith of her population, and by the September 1773 treaty with Poland she pledged to maintain the unchanged position of Catholicism. However, the Russian tradition of the domination of the state over the church, which had managed to firmly take root, inevitably meant that Madame would interpret the concept of the status quo in her own way and would remove any external (or internal) control over the institutions of the Catholic Church independent of the state. This meant that Russian Catholics would enjoy the freedom to practice church rituals, and the state would not interfere in doctrinal issues, but at the same time the principles that governed relations between the state and the Orthodox Church would now govern its relations with the Roman Catholic faith. ... In a sense, Russia's policy towards the Catholic Church was even more arbitrary, because the Catholic Church did not even have such a body as the Holy Synod, capable of acting as an intermediary between the flock and the government.

• "Pierling P. Op. Cit. Vol. V. P. 16.

So, completely ignoring Rome and not consulting the Catholic clergy, on December 14, 1772, the empress issued a decree defining the status of Roman Catholics in Belarus and throughout Russia, completely removing them from the power of the Polish bishops and abbots. From now on, a new Mogilev episcopacy was established, where Bishop Stanislav Sestreksevich-Bogush was appointed. All the catholics of the Russian Empire were subordinate to the Mogilev parish, wherever they lived, and all Roman Catholic monasteries were transferred under the authority of Bishop Sestrentsevich (which was contrary to usual Catholic practice). To help the bishop, a conshistory (like a Protestant one) was elected to manage church property in accordance with the Charter of 1769. The bishop received a truly royal state salary - 10 thousand rubles. in year. In litigations not related to questions of faith, the courts for Catholics of the first and second institutes appointed the Justitz Collegium for Livonia, Estonia and Finland and the Senate. The property of monks who did not swear allegiance to the Russian empress, as well as monasteries on the former Polish lands, were subject to confiscation. In 1786, the Catholic Church was opposed to acquiring estates, although individual priests and bishops were still allowed to own land as individuals. In addition, Catherine introduced the practice, which was later confirmed by an official decree, to prevent the entry into force of papal bulls and breves in Russia before the Senate considered them 54.

These actions of the empress, who did not take into account anyone, who at her own discretion arranged the affairs of the Catholic Church in Russia, insulted the papacy, in particular such steps as the appointment of a bishop by imperial decree, the establishment of the size of the diocese and the legal subordination of the church to the authority of the secular College. Bishop Sestrentsevich, in need of confirmation from the Pope, unsuccessfully maneuvered between St. Petersburg and Rome, correcting his reports as needed. But the pope could do little, as he was in an awkward position - he needed Catherine's help in suppressing the Jesuit order.

• "PSZ. T. XVIII. No. 13580; T. XIX.. N9 14073, November 22, 1773; T. XXII. N ° 16616, January 26, 1788; Tolstoy D. A. Decree. Op. P. 43 It is known that the policy of Catherine II in relation to the Polish Church was formed under the influence of Z. G. Chernyshev (Governor General of the two new provinces), Saldern, who was then negotiating in Poland, and G.N. ti showed himself to be a zealous adherent of the ideas of the Enlightenment.
• 44 Tolstoy D.A. Decree. op. P. 22; PSZ. T. XXI. Si 15326.

The Polish lands annexed by Russia housed four Jesuit colleges, two residences and fourteen missions, including a large Jesuit college in Polotsk, founded by Stefan Bathory, with a 35,000-volume library. About 200 Jesuits served in them, including 98 priests 35. At first, Catherine ordered Z. G. Chernyshev, the governor-general of the Mogilev and Polotsk provinces, to look after the Jesuits “like the most insidious of all Latin orders” 56. However, the Jesuits, it seemed, were ready to obey orders from Rome and curtail their activities. Three of them, who had sworn allegiance to Russia, were summoned to St. Petersburg, and Ekaterina was pleasantly surprised by their brilliant mind and secular manner.

The court now began to discuss what to do with the Jesuits. Count Zakhar Chernyshev wanted everything to remain as before, because he appreciated the Jesuits for their ability to teach and educate. To all appearances, G.N. Teplov adhered to the same opinion. But NI Panin had a low opinion of this "sectarian gathering of holy fathers who, to their great shame, do a poor job of teaching youth" 58. One can only guess at what decision Catherine stopped at this moment. Of course, it would be difficult to replace the Jesuit collegia with something without "bringing in" new priests from Poland or elsewhere, so she could honor it best to attract those whom Rome had rejected. On the other hand, one should not underestimate how great the temptation was to show off the might of Russia before the papacy. Catherine treated Rome in much the same way as Maria Theresa, but, being an Orthodox empress, she could afford to be ironic over the Holy See.

In November 1773, the Russian empress decided not to bring into effect the papal bull on her territories to dissolve the Jesu order. As Zakhar Chernyshev said to those Jesuits who had already prepared to submit to Rome, “believe me, the holy bishops will be grateful to us someday for saving you” 59.

• 55 Moroshkin M. Decree. op. S. 53-54 and notes. 3 to p. 54.
• 56 PSZ.T. Xviii. No. 13808.
• 57 Tolstoy D.A. Decree. op. P. 45.
• 58 N.I. 11anin - O.M. Shtakelberg. October 23, 1779 // SbrIO. T. I. P. 478.
• 59 Pierling P. Op. cit. P. 52.

So, while Pope Pius VI tried to persuade Catherine to moderate the reorganization fervor towards the Catholic hierarchy and, under pressure from the Bourbons, sought to ban the activities of the Jesuits in its reign, the Empress created for them a privileged position in the Russian Empire. The only one of all religious orders, they were excluded from the jurisdiction of Bishop Sestrentsevich. The Jesuits chose their own provincial father and disposed of their property themselves. An even more daring step was taken in 1777, when Catherine allowed the opening of a Jesuit novitiate in Polotsk, which served as a source of replenishment for the order. In 1780, on the occasion of a meeting with Emperor Joseph II, the Empress visited the Jesuit college in Polotsk and was amazed at their activities. Until the end of her reign, she patronized the Jesuits. All efforts of Rome to challenge all decisions or to come to a deal with her were resolutely suppressed. According to the empress, she defended the Jesuit order as "a society only beneficial for that region, and, of course, the most useful of other Roman monastic institutions, besides idleness and excommunication from any civilian mutual benefit, which does not conclude anything else." Her patronage went so far that she ordered to withdraw from circulation the extremely critical History of the Order of the Jesuits, published by NI Novikov in the early 1980s. 62

By the mid-70s. various maneuvers managed to force the pope to recognize Sestrentsevich as bishop of Mogilev, but Ekaterina wanted to achieve a higher rank for him. She could always put pressure on Rome, frightening the Catholics of the Eastern rite. Like most of her contemporaries from Orthodox officials and subsequent Orthodox historians, the Empress considered the Uniate faith an ugly hybrid of the dogmas of one religion and the rituals of another, an artificial structure invented specifically in order to avert the population of Belarus from its adherence to Moscow, because the wolf in it was in sheep's clothing to lead the trusting flock astray. The Uniate Bishop Smogorzewski remained in Poland after the first partition, and Catherine, naturally, did not recognize the authority of the bishop outside the borders of her state.

• 60 See the consideration of this question in Pearling (ibid. P. 95 ff) and in DA Tolstoy (7alstoyD /). 19), as well as: PSZ. T. XIX. No. 14582, 16/27 February 1777
• 61 Catherine II - to O. M. Stackelberg to Warsaw, February 14, 1780 // SbrIO. T. I. C. 488.
• 62 Tolstoy D.A. op. S. 83 ff; letter of Catherine II to an unknown person, written on September 23, 1784 // S6RIO. T. XXV 11.P. 338.

Approaching the Uniates in the same way as the Roman Catholics, she established a new Uniate Polotsk bishopric, which had jurisdiction over all the Uniates of the Russian Empire and over the monks of the Uniate Basilian order. The management of the Uniate property was carried out from now on in accordance with the Charter of 1769. But the Empress left the Uniate episcopal see vacant, and while the leadership was carried out by the consistory 63. When the Pope began to demand the appointment of a bishop for the Unites, Catherine in response asked to ordain Sestrentsevich to the rank of archbishop. But the Pope hesitated, and then she herself elevated the Mogi Left Catholic Diocese to the rank of archbishopric, and Sestrentsevich-Bogush was placed at its head on February 20, 1782. Now it was Catherine's turn to ask the pope for a mantle for the new archbishop, who aroused deep distrust in Rome as the potential “nuovo papa dell” impero russo ”-“ the new pope of the Russian Empire. ”This is exactly what Catherine was now frightening Rome with. harsh expressions of the rescript to her envoy in Poland, Count Stackelberg, through whom negotiations with the papal nuncio were conducted there, she said that if her wishes were not met halfway, the Pope would lose all influence in Russia, the Roman Catholic Church would be banned as an incompatibility complying with the laws of the Russian state, and Belarus will be lost to Rome forever, because its people are only waiting for a signal to declare themselves Orthodox 64.

The threat worked, and in January 1783 Rome surrendered. A papal legate was sent to Russia, and on December 15/26, 1783, the final agreement was signed concerning the archbishopric of Mogilev. The new archbishop was ordained on January 10, 1784. But even here Catherine was able to achieve a change in the wording of the oath taken by the archbishop. Formula: “I will begin with all my might to persecute and strike heretics, schismatics and rebellions against our Lord and against his appointed governors [ie dad. - Auth.] ", as the empress stated, it contradicted the sovereign rights of the Russian Empire and damaged “the inalienable respect that religion, only tolerant, is obliged in this case to show the dominant religion in the country where it found refuge” 65. Then the text of the archbishop's oath was corrected accordingly.

• 63 Pierling P. Op. cit. P. 116 flf; PSZ.T. XXI. No. 15326, January 17/28, 1782 The Archbishop received unlimited power over the white and black Catholic clergy in the Russian Empire. He himself was directly subordinate to the Senate, and then to the Empress. Supporters of the constitutional structure of the church hierarchy in France cited this decree in 1792 as an example of a concession. made by the papacy, which approved the "civic organization" of the clergy (Pierling P. Op. cit. P.144).
• 64 Ibid. R.! 23; SbRIO. T. I. P. 525, November 4, 1782

The appointment by Catherine in 1784 of the Uniate Bishop Irakli Lisovsky as the head of all the white and black Uniate clergy of Russia played an important role in Rome's compliance. Satisfied Catherine was not slow to demand a cardinal's hat for Sestrentsevich, but then the pope refused her on the grounds that no cardinals were appointed in countries ruled by non-Catholic monarchs.

The second and third partitions of Poland did not bring about qualitative changes in Catherine's policy, but incredibly expanded the scope of its application. Russia absorbed six Roman Catholic and four Uniate dioceses. The Empress, again on her own initiative, established three new Catholic dioceses on the ruins of the previous ones, namely - Inflyantskaya (with a cathedra in Vilna), Pinsk and Letichevskaya. The new bishops were on a state salary of 3-4 thousand rubles. a year and were placed on an equal footing with the Archbishop of Mogilev 67. The position of the Uniates became extremely vulnerable. If once they persecuted the Orthodox, now it is their turn to endure the oppression. Soon, not a single Uniate parish church remained in all of Podolia. Many Uniate parishes became redundant and were abolished as their flocks "returned in flocks" to Orthodoxy. Only the constant presence of the Jesuits, according to the historian D. A. Tolstoy, prevented the whole of Belarus from converting to Orthodoxy 68. The four Uniate bishoprics on the former Polish lands were now simply abolished, and the entire Uniate community was not subordinated to the Bishop of Polotsk Irakli Lisovsky. The papal approval of these arbitrary steps of Catherine was already discussed under Paul I, when the negotiations were conducted by the papal legate Archbishop Litta 64.

• 65 Tolstoy D.A. Decree. op. Application. S. 6, 36 and note. 2. Catherine also ordered to omit one phrase in the text of the oath, which stated that the archbishop is obliged not to alienate church property without the permission of the Pope. The approval of the amendments outlined by the empress was granted by the Pope in two breves of January 17, 1784: Pastoralis Sollicitudo (dated back to April 26, 1783) and Onerosa pastoralis officii (dated December 19, 1783). See: Sipovic S. The Diocese of Minsk, its Origin, Extent and Hierarchy // Journal of Belorussian Studies. 1970. Vol. II. No. 2. P. 177 ft *.
• 66 Tolstoy D.A. Decree. op. P. 38.
• 67 Ibid. P. 44; PSZ. T. XXIII. No. 17370, 17380, September 6, 1795

As a result, the empress, either under the influence of the secular spirit of the Enlightenment, or, as it seems more likely, driven by the Russian tradition of the subordination of the church to the state, established the existence of Catholic communities in her empire as she pleased. She left for the state the right to determine which issues relate to the sphere of doctrine and ritual, so as not to be included in them, and which ones relate to the organization and finances of the community, to which the state control extended. It also affirmed the right of the state to determine the size of parishes, to decide who will lead them, and to appoint a bishop. The Empress placed the non-Orthodox communities under the jurisdiction of the Russian secular courts and made the state an intermediary between the pope and the Catholic hierarchy within the borders of Russia, even in such traditionally Catholic areas as the annexed Polish lands.

There were no such problems with Protestant communities. And not because the Orthodox Church approved of the Reformation, no: when a Protestant was baptized into Orthodoxy, he should have absolutely unambiguously cast Luther into a curse. The conflict between Orthodox and Protestants led several times to violence and destruction of Protestant churches, but then they were rebuilt anew in the suburbs of Moscow, behind the ring of city walls, where the foreign settlement was moved in 1652. With the abolition of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, an edict of tolerance followed in relation to pro testants, and in 1689 the Huguenots were invited to settle in Russia. Peter the Great approved the status of Protestants in Russia with a manifesto addressed to foreigners in 1702, in which he promised to respect freedom of conscience. Under Peter 1, the number of Protestants within Russia grew very quickly, and not only due to immigration, but also as a result of the conquest of the Ostsee provinces, as well as the appearance of numerous Swedish prisoners of war who decided to settle in Russia. Many of the highest state dignitaries from Peter's entourage were also Protestants. To the displeasure of the Orthodox church hierarchy, Peter even granted Livonia, Estonia and Eastern Finland the right to preserve Lutheranism as the state religion.

• 68 DA Tolstoy claims that the Russian authorities were ordered not to use force. But it is hard to believe that on the annexed Polish lands, almost 3.5 million people were converted from the Uniate faith to the Orthodox without applying any pressure.
• 69 Sipovic C. Op. cit. R. 181-182.
• 70 Catherine was determined to do the same in Poland as she did in Belarus. that is, to destroy all monasteries dedicated to the contemplative life as "idle and useless", and only preserve those. that they were doing things useful to society. Only death prevented her from taking these measures. The attitude of Russian officials to church property is reflected in the words of Prince N.V. Repnin, the governor of Pskov, who believed that the property of the monasteries was state property, granted to them for liturgical purposes. That. that a considerable share of church property was donated by private individuals to him. obviously, it did not occur to my head (Tolstoy DA Decree. op. pp. 45-46. 48. note. 2).

The religious communities of the Baltic regions were organized in the consistory and subordinated to the Justitz Collegium for the affairs of Livonia, Estonia and Finland. There was no other single general organization of the Lutheran and Reformed communities; they remained independent of each other and recruited priests in Germany. In the second half of the 18th century. Protestant communities have become much more numerous as a result of the policy of developing colonies and the increase in the number of German settlements in Russia. By 1790, about 20 thousand Protestants of various stripes lived in St. Petersburg in total, and Peterschule, a school at the Lutheran Church of St. Peter, was famous for the scholarship of its teachers 71.

There remained one more religious community, the head of which was a foreign sovereign, namely the Anglican one. But none of the Russian rulers of the 18th century. did not try to establish state control over this community, which was, in essence, a real English club. For the first time, an independent Anglican congregation was formed in 1706 in Moscow, but in 1723 it moved to St. Petersburg, when the English trading post was transferred from Arkhangelsk to the new capital. From that time on, it was the English trading post or the Russian company that appointed and supported the chaplains of the British community at their own expense and together shared funds for the construction of a small church and a house for a priest in St. Petersburg, which opened in 1754. One of its abbots, the Reverend Daniel Dumaresque , appointed to the post in 1747 and living in Russia intermittently until 1762, was well known to Catherine I. She consulted with him about the upbringing of Grand Duke Paul, and in 1764 sent for him to invite commission to develop educational reform 72.

• See: E. Amburger, Geschichte der Protestantismus in Russland. Stuttgart. 1961.

Most of the Anglican priests were honored people, and two of them were particularly distinguished for their success in acquainting the British public with Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church. John Glen King published the book "Rites and Ceremonies of the Greek Church in Russia" in 1772, and William Tooke, who served as a priest in St. Petersburg from 1771 to 1792, translated into English many works about Russia and was himself a member of Free Economic Society.

Political events did not affect the position of the Anglican community in Russia, since, by no means being an official institution, the local Anglican Church served to some extent as an ambassadorial church, with a special bench for the British ambassador 73.

It was not only foreign faiths that benefited from the atmosphere of comparative religious tolerance in the 1970s. XVIII century Measures were also taken to win over to the side of the authorities the Old Believers, both those who had priests and "bespopovtsy" who played an important role in the economic development of Russia. Indeed, their role has been compared to the contribution of the English Puritans and Calvinists on the continent to the development of the European economy.

The main centers of the Old Believers since the 70s. were formed in Moscow. One of the most extreme sects, which denied private property, the inheritance of worldly goods and coming from the West from deprivation - tobacco, potatoes, alcohol, tea, European dress, founded in 1771 a community around its cemetery in the village of Preobrazhen with something near Moscow. At the same time, a priest's community settled in Rogozhsk. With the tacit consent of the empress, these settlements were actively supported by Grigory Orlov. Old Believer cemeteries, which served as social, religious and charitable centers of communities, soon turned into sources of financial and entrepreneurial power. More and more Old Believers flocked back to Moscow. Their ascetic lifestyle, religious and moral discipline, and strict observance of customs soon allowed them to accumulate capital. In Old Believer communities throughout Russia, they have developed a network of reliable business agents. The Old Believers even had their own secret language. All this explains the more and more important role played by the Old Believers (who came from serfs or state peasants) in such a large weaving center as Ivanovo, in the industry and trade of the entire South of Russia, in the Urals 74.

• 73 See chap. 31.
• 73 See: Cross A.G. Chaplains to the British Factiry in St. Petersburg 1723-1813 // Ruropean Studies Review. 1972 Vol 2. No. 2. P. 273-287 (and also see the references given by the author of this article to his own works and other publications).

Catherine's policy towards the Old Believers, which, apparently, was laid in Ukraine by Rumyantsev and pursued in the capital by Potemkin, was a compromise, according to which the Old Believers were allowed to adhere to their own ritual, while recognizing the authority of the Orthodox Church. This trend was known in Russia as “common faith”. In 1781, the first discussions began in Little Russia with the participation of the Old Believer priest Nikodim and continued in St. Petersburg with the participation of Potemkin. Potemkin rejected the demand of the Old Believers that all of them be transferred under the authority of a single bishop, subordinate directly to the Synod, regardless of their place of residence, as contrary to church laws. But the Most Serene Prince found a way to meet the wishes of the Old Believers, when a new Crimean diocese was established in his own Taurida province, and a single bishop headed all the Old Believers. Thus, they avoided the jurisdiction of local Orthodox hierarchs where they lived. Potemkin had a penchant for the old faith and wanted to populate his vast empty lands as soon as possible, and therefore in 1785 he built a monastery of the same faith and several Old Believer parish churches in the Crimea, trying to attract them to the settlement. The position of the Old Believers improved in other respects as well: they were no longer forced to wear distinctive clothing, from 1782 they were forbidden to be called schismatics, and from 1785 they began to be hired into public service. They were allowed to wear beards and traditional Russian costume, because the bans of Peter I were no longer binding.

• 74 See: Portal R. Anx origines d "une bourgeoisie industrielle: BlackweH W. The Old ttelieversand the Rise of Private Industrial Enterprise in Early 19" "- (> ntury Moscow // Slavic Review. 1965. Vol. 24. N ° 3.P. 407-424.

Of course, not all Old Believer communities responded to these reforms. The transformations were most successful among the "priestly" communities and among the economically prosperous part of the Old Believers. The poorest communities often resisted innovations with all their might, while among the “non-popovtsy” these transformations failed altogether. In any case, the entire co-religion movement lost its scope with the death of Potemkin 75.

In the statistical data on the population of Russia in the 18th - 19th centuries. the exact number of Old Believers was never indicated. They could well constitute up to 20% of the peasantry. In the XVIII century. there were very few of them among the nobles, but a solid number among the merchants. The role of Old Believers in Russian society and economy gradually increased.

• 75 See: Andreev V.V. Excavation and its significance in folk Russian history: Historical sketch. SPb., 1870. S. 294 ff.

In general, a policy of religious tolerance was pursued in Russia under Catherine II (1762-1796). Representatives of all traditional religions have not experienced pressure or oppression. Thus, in 1773, a law on the tolerance of all religions was issued, prohibiting the Orthodox clergy from interfering in the affairs of other confessions; secular authorities reserve the right to decide on the establishment of temples of any faith.

Having ascended the throne, Catherine canceled the decree of Peter III on the secularization of lands near the church. But already in February 1764 she again issued a decree depriving the Church of her land property. Monastic peasants number about 2 million. of both sexes were removed from the jurisdiction of the clergy and transferred to the management of the College of Economics. The jurisdiction of the state included the estates of churches, monasteries and bishops. In Ukraine, the secularization of monastic possessions was carried out in 1786.

Thus, the clergy became dependent on the secular authorities, since they could not carry out independent economic activities. Catherine achieved from the government of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth an equalization in the rights of religious minorities - Orthodox and Protestants.

Under Catherine II, the persecution of the Old Believers ceased. Continuing the policy of her husband, Peter III, who was overthrown by her, the Empress supported his initiative to return the Old Believers and the economically active population from abroad. They were specially assigned a place on the Irgiz (modern Saratov and Samara regions). They were allowed to have priests.

The free resettlement of Germans to Russia led to a significant increase in the number of Protestants (mainly Lutherans) in Russia. They were also allowed to build churches, schools, and freely perform divine services. At the end of the 18th century, there were more than 20 thousand Lutherans in St. Petersburg alone.

The Jewish religion retained the right to publicly practice its faith. Religious affairs and disputes were left to the Jewish courts. The Jews, depending on the capital they had, were assigned to the corresponding class and could be elected to local government bodies, become judges and other civil servants.

By the decree of Catherine II in 1787, in the printing house of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, for the first time in Russia, the full Arabic text of the Islamic holy book of the Koran was printed for free distribution to the "Kirghiz". The publication significantly differed from the European ones, primarily in that it had a Muslim character: the text for publication was prepared by Mullah Usman Ibrahim. In St. Petersburg, from 1789 to 1798, 5 editions of the Koran were published. In 1788, a manifesto was issued, in which the empress commanded "to establish in Ufa a spiritual assembly of the Mohammedan law, which has in its department all the spiritual ranks of that law, ... excluding the Tauride region." Thus, Catherine began to build the Muslim community into the system of state structure of the empire. Muslims received the right to build and restore mosques.

Buddhism has also received government support in the regions where it has traditionally been practiced. In 1764, Catherine established the post of the Hambo Lama - the head of the Buddhists of Eastern Siberia and Transbaikalia. In 1766, Buryat lamas recognized Catherine as the incarnation of the Bodhisattva of White Tara for her benevolence towards Buddhism and humane rule.

(21.04.1729, Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland) - 6.11.1796, St. Petersburg), imp. All-Russian (from December 25, 1761; on the throne from June 28, 1762), wife of the im. Peter III. Daughter of Prince Christian Augustus of Anhalt-Zerbst, regimental commander in Stettin in the service of the Prussian king, and Princess Johann Elisabeth, who came from the House of Holstein-Gottorp. Through relatives of the mother was connected by blood ties with several. royal houses of Europe, in particular, was the niece of a Swede. cor. Adolf Fredrik. Baptized in Lutheranism with the name Sophia Frederic Augustus. Received a home education.

Stay at the Russian court.

In Feb. 1744 at the invitation of the imp. Elizaveta Petrovna Sofia arrived in Russia to marry her second cousin, the Holstein-Gottorp Hertz. Karl Peter Ulrich, who came to Russia, converted to Orthodoxy with the name Peter Feodorovich and was declared heir to the throne. Sophia was taught the basics of Orthodoxy by Archimandrite. Simon (Todorsky; later Archbishop of Pskov). On June 28, 1744, she converted to Orthodoxy, and received the name Ekaterina Alekseevna. Betrothed June 29, Aug 21 1745 married to the Great. book Peter Feodorovich. However, the marriage was unsuccessful, the relationship with her husband and imp. Elizaveta Petrovna was extremely difficult. In 1754 led. the princess gave birth to a son, Paul (later emperor Paul I Petrovich). According to some information, the child's father was one of her favorites, gr. S. V. Saltykov, to-ry immediately after the birth of the heir was sent abroad. The child was taken away from his mother, Elizaveta Petrovna took up his upbringing. After. EA was surrounded by favorites, the project of her marriage with G.G. Orlov was discussed, in 1774 she secretly married G.A.Potyomkin.

Conducted. the princess diligently studied Russian. language, daily for several. hours practiced in Russian. grammar, read books, to-rye received from the library of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. She studied the history of Europe, including the "History of Henry the Great" Archbishop. A. de Perefix, "General history of Germany" J. Barr, sovr. French literature (works by C. L. Montesquieu, Voltaire, D. Diderot, C. A. Helvetius, etc.). It was at this time that the views and beliefs of the bud began to take shape. empress. EA was carried away by the idea of ​​a “philosopher on the throne,” an “enlightened monarch,” who should bring wise laws, enlightenment, and increase the welfare of citizens to his people.

Rise to power

In the last years of the reign of Elizabeth Petrovna, EA became much more popular than Peter Feodorovich at court, in the capital's society and in the guards. After the death of the Empress on December 25. In 1761, Peter III came to power, with whom EA practically did not communicate. The growing dissatisfaction with the emperor's policy helped her organize a conspiracy, the leaders of which were Counts N.I. Panin, K.G. Razumovsky, G.G. and A.G. Orlovs and the king. E.R.Dashkova. On June 27, 1762, PB Passek, one of the participants in the conspiracy, was arrested, which hastened the development of events. On June 28, EA arrived in St. Petersburg (Peter III was at that time in Oranienbaum), where the guards units swore allegiance to her. The emperor, seeing the hopelessness of the resistance, signed an abdication and was arrested. Through several. days he died under unexplained circumstances at the manor in Ropsha (near St. Petersburg). According to the most widespread version, he was killed by A.G. Orlov, who may have acted at the behest of E.A.Offits. the version said that Peter III died of "indigestion". 22 Sep 1762 E. A. was crowned in the Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin.

Domestic policy

EA came to power in a difficult period for the country. In her "Notes" she recalled that in 1762 the treasury was empty, the army had not received salaries for a long time, thousands of peasants were "in obvious disobedience to the authorities." The Empress intended to complete the imp. Peter I, the process of forming a regular state-va and carry out a number of reforms related to the ideas of the Enlightenment: to strengthen the rule of law, formalize the rights and obligations of different classes, and increase the well-being of citizens. She was convinced that such a large state as Russia should be ruled by an autocratic monarch. In the article “On the Greatness of Russia”, EA wrote: “If only someone were so crazy to say: ... I do not care about this greatness and this space of Russia, if only every private person lived in contentment; better it will be different; to such a madman, I would answer: know that if your government is transformed into a republic, it will lose its power, and your regions will become the prey of the first predators. " For the structure of Russian society, she considered the only class structure of the European type to be the only acceptable one, in which the duties, rights and privileges of each class would be reduced to a single legislative scheme.

EA concentrated legislative activity in her Cabinet, to-ry headed by the State Secretary. As a result of the 1763 reform, the Senate was divided into 6 departments, headed by chief prosecutors. At the head of the Senate was the Attorney General. The powers of the institution were reduced, it lost the legislative initiative and became a body of control over the activities of the state. apparatus and the highest court.

The most important defect of the social structure, according to E.A., was serfdom. She condemned “wild noble despotism” from a humanistic t. Sp. and considered it a brake on the country's socio-economic development. In her “Notes”, EA noted: “A predisposition to despotism ... is instilled from an early age in children who see how cruel their parents treat their servants; after all, there is no house in which there would be no iron collars, chains and various other instruments for torture at the slightest fault of those whom nature has placed in this unfortunate class, which cannot break its chains without crime. "

However, society was not ready to abolish serfdom, the nobility could not support the reform, in addition, serfdom provided the country's economy. Nevertheless, the empress did take some steps to restrict serfdom. In 1764, the secularization of church lands was carried out, as a result of a cut approx. 2 million monastic peasants were transferred to the state and began to enjoy certain civil rights, for example. could send their deputies to elected bodies. Since 1771, the right of landowners to sell peasants without land was restricted, and from 1775 free people and peasants who were released were prohibited from registering as serfs. For the newly founded cities, serfs were redeemed, to-rye became townspeople, "free inhabitants". At the same time, serfdom was extended to Ukraine, state awards were widely practiced. peasants to landowners, a number of decrees were issued that expanded the rights of landowners in relation to serfs. From Jan. 1765 the owners were allowed to send serfs to hard labor, from 22 Aug. In 1767, the peasants were forbidden to file complaints against the landowners to the Empress, complaints were sent to the lower courts. The case of the landowner of Moscow province reached the court. D.N.Saltykova (Saltychikha), known for extremely cruel treatment of serfs. In 1768 she was sentenced to death, commuted to life imprisonment in the Moscow monastery in the name of St. John the Baptist.

EA's board was characterized by the development of the economy and trade. On March 5, 1765, the Commission on General Land Surveying was established, which established new principles for land surveying. The general survey, which began in 1766, assigned each owner of his land. The landowners received from the state legal guarantees of the inviolability of their property, which the monarch could no longer confiscate. In 1765, the Free Economic Society was established in St. Petersburg, whose task was to rationalize agriculture and increase its productivity. Since 1766 the society has been publishing "Proceedings". The revival of trade was facilitated by the introduction into circulation of paper money - bank notes (1768), the expansion of banking operations (from 1770 the acceptance of deposits for safekeeping was introduced), the signing of a manifesto on freedom of entrepreneurship (1775), the emergence of new credit institutions (the State Loan Bank was established in 1786) ... The number of manufactories and factories has increased significantly. During the reign of EA, the amount of state funds increased more than 4 times. income, but large spending (primarily on wars) led to a sustained budget deficit, and the issue of paper money contributed to inflation.

One of the most important tasks facing the authorities was the work to streamline legislation. In 1767, in Moscow, a Commission met to draw up a new code - a code of laws, which was supposed to replace the Cathedral Code of 1649. More than 550 deputies from the nobility, state officials took part in the work of the commission. institutions, townspeople, state. peasants, odnodvorets, Cossacks, "foreigners"; from the clergy attended the Tver Bishop. Gabriel (Petrov), there were no representatives from the serfs. According to the Empress, the new set of laws was to become a kind of "social contract" between various strata of society.

EA turned to the deputies with the "Order" (PSZ. T. 18. No. 12949), which was compiled from the works of encyclopedists (first of all, the works "On the Spirit of Laws" by Montesquieu and "On Crimes and Punishments" by Ch. Beccaria), it formulated and substantiated the principles of enlightened absolutism: "nothing should be prohibited by laws, except that which may be harmful either to everyone in particular, or to the entire society ..."; "The judgments of the judges must be known to the people, as well as the evidence of crimes, so that every citizen can say that he lives under the protection of laws ..."; “A person cannot be considered guilty before a judge is sentenced, and laws cannot deprive him of his protection before he is punished ...”. Without pretending to be original ideas, EA became the first monarch in Europe who turned the fruits of educational thought into a concrete political document and tried to be guided by it in politics. Voltaire took the Mandate with enthusiasm: “Lycurgus and Solon would approve of your creation, but they could not, of course, do something like that. Everything in him is clear, brief, fair, full of firmness and love for mankind. " Franz. cor. Louis XV ordered to confiscate all copies of the "Instruction" that came to France and burn them in the market square, which contributed to the growth of EA's popularity among educators. However, some of them criticized the "Order". In particular, Diderot believed that in practice the monarch's despotism in Russia is not limited in any way.

In the course of the work of the Commission for drawing up a new code of 1767-1768. a large number of materials have been accumulated, to-rye after. were used by EA in the preparation of many. legislative acts. However, the code was never drawn up, primarily due to differences in the interests of the estates. In 1768, the work of the commission was interrupted due to the outbreak of the war with Turkey.

Russian tour. war of 1768-1774 depleted the country's resources, the population was impoverished. The discontent of the peasants manifested itself in numerous speeches. On Sept. In 1771, a Plague Riot broke out in Moscow, the rebels killed the Moscow Archbishop. Ambrose (Zertis-Kamensky). In 1773 the Pugachev uprising began. EA understood the severity of the situation of the population on the outskirts of the empire and called the mining workers who supported EI Pugachev "murmurs of justice." In the repeatedly published "exhortatory" manifestos, ordinary participants in the uprising were asked to go home and they were guaranteed amnesty. Then, to pacify the insurgents, punitive armies were sent, the commanders of which EA ordered not to use torture during interrogation of prisoners (inquest "with bias" were canceled in 1774). The insurgents were finally defeated in 1775.

After the suppression of the uprising, EA took up the ad. reform. Local Cossack self-government in the Ukraine and the Don was liquidated. Back in 1764, Ukrainian was abolished. hetmanship, in 1775 - the Zaporozhye army, and civil administration was introduced for the Don army. 7 nov. In 1775, a decree was signed "Institutions for the administration of provinces" and the province began. reform. The country's territory was divided into provinces (by the end of EA's reign there were 50 of them), headed by governors subordinate to the Senate. The provinces were divided into counties, the provinces were abolished. The reform strengthened local power by allowing grassroots administrations to respond in a timely manner to violations of the rule of law. In the provinces, orders of public charity were created, in charge of schools, hospitals, hospitals, almshouses, orphan, work and restraining homes. The orders received funds for charitable activities. In 1775, a judicial reform was carried out, according to a cut a network of local courts, special for each class, was created. This made it possible to sort out most of the cases on the ground. To eliminate conflicts that arose between representatives of different classes, in each province, class-wide chambers of the criminal and civil courts were created. The "Charter of the Deanery or Policeman" (1782) laid the legal foundations for the organization of the police.

Apr 21 In 1785, the "Charter to the nobility" was published, in which the privileges of the upper class were fixed: the monopoly right to own land, subsoil and serfs, exemption from taxes, recruitment, corporal punishment, the right to choose whether to enter or not to enter the state was confirmed. service, etc. In the provinces and counties, local noble assemblies began to be established. At the same time, the "Letter of Commendation to Cities" was published. Depending on the occupation and financial situation, the townspeople were divided into 6 categories: “real urban inhabitants” (real estate owners), “eminent citizens”, foreigners and nonresidents, merchants of 3 guilds, guild craftsmen, townspeople (other artisans and laborers). The rights and obligations of the townspeople were stipulated, the foundations of self-government were introduced: the meeting of the "city society", the general city council. Thanks to these documents, for the first time in the history of Russia, the range of rights and obligations of the estates was legally fixed. It was planned to create a similar document for the peasantry, but this idea was not implemented.

EA patronized education, sciences, arts. Under her, the systemic development of wives began. education, in 1764 the Educational Society for Noble Maidens was opened, a privileged educational institution for noblewomen at the St. Petersburg Smolny monastery in honor of the Resurrection of the Lord. Since 1765 at the ob-ve worked a department for "bourgeois girls". The St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences became one of the leading scientific bases in Europe; an observatory, a physics study, an anatomical theater, a botanical garden, instrumental workshops, a printing house, library, archive were founded. In 1783, Dashkova became the head of the Academy of Sciences and the Russian Academy, created in the same year on her initiative, which from 1789 to 1794 produced an explanatory dictionary of Russian. language. In the lips. and uyezd cities, main and small folk schools were opened, children of all classes, except for serfs, were accepted in them, lessons were conducted according to standard state. programs and textbooks. In 1786, the "Charter of public schools" was approved. In 1795, the Public Library was founded in St. Petersburg.

O. I. Eliseeva

Religious politics

E. A. was raised by her father as a Lutheran and hesitated for a long time before converting to Orthodoxy. But when in 1744 E. A. fell seriously ill and she was asked to call the Lutherans. pastor, she demanded to send for Archim. Simon (Todorsky), which made her more popular at court. Unlike Peter III, EA tried to demonstrate her religiosity. The Empress observed fasts and church rituals, but during the Liturgy, sitting in the choir, she allowed herself to play solitaire or discuss with state officials. Affairs. At the same time, over the years, she became more and more aware of the mystical significance of her choice of faith. In the note “On Omens” she wrote: “In 1744, on June 28 ... I adopted the Greek Russian Orthodox Law. In 1762 on June 28 ... I accepted the All-Russian throne ... On this day ... the Apostle begins with the words: "I entrust you my sister Thebes, a servant."

In the XVIII century. in Russia, the idea of ​​secularization of church lands was popular, which was also adopted by E.A. 1762 canceled the attempts of secularization undertaken by Peter III, which aroused the discontent of the clergy. However, the idea itself was not discarded, it was decided to create a special commission to study the problem of bud. secularization reform and the development of regulations. In nov. In 1762, by the decree of E.A., the Commission on Church Estates was established, headed by the Novgorod Metropolitan. Dimitri (Sechenov), which was actually led by the Secretary of State G.N. Teplov. The most important measure in the preparation of the reform was the descriptions of the monastic and bishop's estates, which were carried out by army officers. On May 12, 1763, the Collegium of Economy was recreated, which was charged with the responsibility of preparing and carrying out the reform of church estates and peasants.

26 Feb In 1764, a decree was issued "On the division of spiritual estates" with a manifesto "On the jurisdiction of all bishops and monastic peasants of the College of Economy" (PSZ. T. 16. No. 12060). That. the secularization of church lands was formalized by law. All the estates of the Synod, bishops' houses and monasteries were transferred to the ownership of the state and were subject to the jurisdiction of the Collegium of Economics, formerly. monastic peasants began to be called economic peasants and began to pay a quitrent to the treasury in the amount of 1 p. 50 k. From the heart, only small gardens, vegetable gardens and pastures were left to mon-ryam. 8.5 million dessiatins were transferred to the treasury. land, approx. 2 million peasants (men and women) and more than 1.5 million rubles. annual income. At the same time, the treasury was entrusted with the material maintenance of bishops' houses, monasteries and theological schools (in total, only 188 thousand rubles were allocated annually). The dioceses were divided into 3 classes: the 1st included 3 dioceses, the 2nd - 8, and the 3rd - 15. The monasteries were also divided into 3 classes. In accordance with the class, the amount for the maintenance was determined, and in the monasteries - and the number of monastics. The male mon-ry of the 1st class had the right to annually receive 2017.5 rubles from the treasury. and support up to 33 monastics, 2nd class - 1311.9 rubles. and contain up to 17 people, monitors of the 3rd class - 806.3 rubles. and contain up to 12 people. Outside the ranks were the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, as well as cathedral mon-ris: Alexander Nevsky (after the Lavra), Vladimirsky in honor of the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos, Ipatievsky in the name of the Holy Trinity, Novgorod-Seversky in honor of the Transfiguration of the Lord , Chernigov Borisoglebsky and Miracles in honor of the Miracle of the Archangel Michael in Khonekh. The laurels were assigned maintenance in the amount of 10,070 rubles. per year (this amount was replenished by donations from the im. court). The rest of the monasteries either became secondary (they were also divided in 1764 into 3 classes depending on the number of monastics and existed on donations and funds from the sale of various products, as well as on income from monastic gardens, vegetable gardens), or were abolished, attributed to larger ones, applied to parish churches. Apr 10 1786 secularization reform was carried out on the territory of the Kiev, Chernigov and Novgorod-Seversky governorships, April 26. 1788 - in Kharkov, Yekaterinoslav, Kursk and Voronezh governorships, and in 1793-1795 - in the annexed provinces of Lithuania, West. Belarus and Zap. Ukraine. In total, as a result of secularization, 272 monitors received state support, more than 500 were abolished, the number of monastics was reduced by more than 2 times.

The reform dealt a blow to the Church, but only a few people protested. Secularization was criticized by the Rostov Metropolitan. sshmch. Arseny (Matseevich), convicted in 1763, defrocked, and in 1767 - a monastic rank and died in prison; Tobolsk Metropolitan. St. Pavel (Konyuskevich), dismissed in 1768. When choosing candidates for the bishop's chair, E.A., unlike her predecessors, relied on immigrants not from Little Russia, but from Great Russia, who were more loyal to the empress's policy.

Ye. A.'s assistants in the field of spiritual enlightenment were primarily the Moscow Metropolitan. Platon (Levshin) and Novgorod and St. Petersburg Metropolitan. Gabriel (Petrov). The future Met. Plato made a welcoming speech during the visit of the Empress to the Trinity-Sergius Lavra in 1763. EA was delighted with him and soon appointed him the teacher of the law of the heir led. book Pavel Petrovich. She paid attention to the problem of the reform of theological and educational institutions. In 1762, a Commission was created to develop a plan for the transformation of theological schools. According to the reform project (1766), it was supposed to divide the spiritual educational institutions into higher, middle and lower, to introduce new subjects, more modern. teaching methods. The project was not implemented. To train teachers, EA intended to open a theological faculty at Moscow University, but this idea was also not implemented.

Nevertheless, the system of educational institutions developed. In the seminaries, the range of general education disciplines expanded, and higher philosophical and theological classes were opened. Russian as the language of instruction began to supplant Latin. Thanks to Met. Plato significantly improved the level of teaching at the Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy in Moscow and at the Trinity Seminary. In 1788, on the basis of the Slavic-Greek-Latin seminary at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, the Main Seminary was created, designed to prepare teachers for theological schools.

Continuing the policy of Elizabeth Petrovna and Peter III, EA strove to include the Old Believers in the emerging civil society. By the beginning. 60s XVIII century centers of the Old Believers were formed: Pomorie, Starodubye, Kerzhenets, Irgiz. The main center during this period was Moscow, where there were large communities of Beglopopovites, as well as Bespopovites: Fedoseevites, Pomors and Filippovites. In addition, many Old Believers remained on the Vetka in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Since 1762, EA suggested that they return to Russia and settle anywhere, but there were almost no volunteers. In 1764, troops were sent to Vetka, more than 20 thousand bespopovtsy were forcibly sent to settle in Siberia. Other centers of the Old Believers were also destroyed, for example. Starodubye. The authorities adhered to a moderate course in relation to the runaway populists. Beglopopovtsy 7 times made attempts to find a bishop, even appealed to the Holy Synod, but they did not achieve anything. In 1788, the Old Believers were given some freedoms, the name “schismatics” was officially abolished, and the double capitation salary was abolished. Old Believers were allowed to be elected to public office. In the 80-90s. XVIII century in Starodubye, on Irgiz, on Ingul, unanimity became widespread as a form of reconciliation with Orthodoxy. Church while preserving the old rituals.

EA initiated a massive resettlement of foreign colonists (primarily Germans) to various regions of the country (the Volga region, Ukraine, Crimea, the Baltic states). This significantly increased the number of Protestants (mainly Lutherans), as well as Catholics in Russia. They were allowed to build schools, churches, and freely perform divine services. Dec 14. 1772 a Catholic was created. diocese in Mogilev, in the jurisdiction of which all Catholics fell. parishes and mon-ri lat. rite on the territory of the empire. The Uniate was preserved. diocese in Polotsk. The Catholics were supervised by the Justitz Collegium of Livonian, Estonian and Finnish affairs. Papal bulls could not be made public in Russia without the approval of the empress. Since 1794, after the 2nd partition of the Rzecz Pospolita, in the Right-Bank Ukraine, a massive process of joining the Uniates to Orthodoxy began. Churches.

By a decree of June 17, 1773 (PSZ. T. 19. No. 13996), EA proclaimed the principle of religious tolerance, the affairs of the "infidels" were transferred from the jurisdiction of the diocesan bishops to the jurisdiction of the secular administration. This was of particular importance for the Muslims. population. The construction of mosques, which had been prohibited before, was allowed, under which madrassas were created. Since 1783, admission to the military service of the Tatars was allowed. Murzas and "bureaucratic people" and the assignment of officers' ranks to them, which made it possible to obtain the nobility. However, to obtain a rank above the Prime Major, the Empress's permission was required. Under EA, a decree was being prepared stating that all Muslims who showed themselves to be loyal to the empire and had a noble origin were equated in privileges with the nobility. This decree was signed only by Paul I in 1797. The active participation of the Bashkirs in the Pugachev uprising caused an increase in control over their communities. In 1782 from the jurisdiction of the Bashkirs. foremen, the court on minor criminal and civil cases was seized, transferred to the lower reprisals, which existed in parallel with the same reprisals that dealt with the cases of the Russian. peasants. By decree of 22 Sept. 1788 a Muslim was established in Ufa. The spiritual assembly, headed by the mufti, in charge of the mullahs (except for the mullahs of the Tauride region and western provinces) and subordinate to the Ufa governorship, and later the office of the Orenburg governor. By decree of 23 Jan. 1794 Muslims were discovered in Simferopol. Spiritual government for the Tauride region. and app. provinces headed by the mufti. As a result, the mullahs were determined by the state. content, the secular administration began to resolve issues about the appointment of mullahs, as well as disputes and cases that, according to Sharia, are subject to analysis in the councils of mullahs and elders. She also monitored the execution of military service by the Bashkirs (border service and participation in wars). Back in 1769, Tatars began to be taught at the Kazan gymnasium. language and foundations of Islam. With an encouraging policy towards Muslims. the culture of the Tatars is associated with the educational activities of S. Kh. Khalfin and his son I. S. Khalfin, who made up the 1st printed Tatars. alphabet (1778), Russian-Tatars. dictionary (more than 20 thousand words) and other manuals. In 1787 an Arab was printed in St. Petersburg. Quran text with notes.

The principle of religious tolerance extended to the Jews, the number of whom in Russia increased significantly after the divisions of the Commonwealth. By decrees of 1791 and 1794 in places of compact residence of Jews, the Pale of Settlement was established, outside the cut they could not live. The conversion of Jews to Christianity removed all restrictions.

The development of Siberia contributed to the spread of Orthodoxy among the local population. Whole villages of baptized Buryats entrenched in the land appeared. The Buryats and Evenks were given the duty to carry out border service, protecting the territory from Mongol raids. khans and tayshes. At the same time, this contributed to the spread of Buddhism in the form of Lamaism among the Buryats, especially the Trans-Baikal ones. In 1771, a significant part of the Kalmyks, who lived in the interfluve of the Yaik (Ural), Volga and Don, on the Terek and professed Lamaism, migrated to China, in the Astrakhan province. left approx. 13 thousand families. Some of them (gl. Arr. From the Don region) were attributed to the Cossack estate of the land of the Don Cossack, and some of them gradually passed into Orthodoxy.

A. I. Komissarenko

Foreign policy

From the beginning of her reign, Ye. A. personally directed foreign policy, not transferring control over it even to the most prominent Russian diplomats of that time (for example, Panin, and later A. A. Bezborodko). The new foreign policy course, according to E.A., was that Russia had to follow its own interests, not submitting to the influence of K.-L. Europ. state-va.

The most difficult foreign policy issues remained Polish and Turkish. The first in time before EA was the Polish. a question that caused a clash of interests between Russia, Prussia and Austria. Russia tried to subordinate the Rzeczpospolita to its influence. EA tried to build in Polish. the throne of his protege. In 1764, after the death of Cor. August III, in the instructions of the Russian. The empress demanded to the diplomats in Warsaw to support the contender for the crown, "useful to the interests of the empire, who, apart from us, from nowhere could have any hope in achieving this dignity." The new Polish became such a person. cor. Stanislav Ponyatovsky, in the past one of the favorites of E.A. He hoped that after the coronation the Russian empress would marry him, but this did not happen. Russia, together with Prussia, fought for the equalization of the rights of the dissidents of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Orthodox and Protestants) with the rights of Catholics. Feb 13 In 1768, the Warsaw Pact was concluded between Russia and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which provided for the equality of dissidents with Catholics, as well as the right of Russia to defend the interests of Orthodox Christians in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In response to this, the Bar Confederation, a military alliance that opposed the treaty, was created in the city of Bar (Podolia).

The problem of Ukrainian reunification. and Belarusian. land with Russia was resolved by partitions in 1772, 1793 and 1795. Commonwealth between Russia, Prussia and Austria. The Russian Empire became part of the Right-Bank Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania. It is characteristic that after the partitions, EA refused to accept the title of Queen of Poland, thereby emphasizing that Russia had returned the lands that had once been part of the Old Russian state. After the annexation of the Right-Bank Ukraine, the Empress congratulated those close to her on the acquisition of the "Russian cradle", that is, those lands where Russia had once originated. In March 1794, an uprising began in Poland under the hands of. T. Kosciuszko, a cut in October. was suppressed by c. A. V. Suvorov.

Aggravation of relations with the Crimean Khanate and Turkey led to the 2nd Russian-tour. wars. EA adhered to the "first shot" rule - the peace had to be violated by the opponents of Russia; both wars began with an attack by Turkey, behind a cut were large Europ. powers: first France, and then Great Britain, Prussia and Sweden, who did not want the strengthening of Russia in the south. Both wars ended in victory for Russia.

26 nov. 1769 E.A. established the Order of St. George for awarding generals and officers for military merits, at the same time she took upon herself the insignia of the order of the 1st degree. During the Russian tour. wars of 1768-1774 Russia inflicted a number of defeats on Turkey, in particular in June 1770 in the Chesme naval battle (commanded by A. G. Orlov) and in July at the battle at Cahul (commanded by P. A. Rumyantsev). Rus. the Baltic fleet was transferred to the Mediterranean and practically destroyed the tour. fleet. The occupation of the territory of the Danube principalities allowed the Russian. troops to support the liberation movement of the Balkan peoples against the Ottoman Empire. According to the Kuchuk-Kainardzhiysky peace treaty signed in July 1774, Russia received the lands of Novorossiya (Northern Black Sea region), the right to have a Russian fleet on the Black Sea, as well as to defend the Christians of the Ottoman Empire and the Danube principalities dependent on it, the Crimean Khanate was declared independent. This opened up ample opportunities for further advancement south. The task was set to liquidate the Crimean Khanate. Under pressure from Russia, Shagin-Girey was elected khan, and by the manifesto of April 8. 1783 the Crimean Peninsula was annexed to Russia. It began to be actively populated by colonists and turned into a military outpost. In the summer of 1787, EA with a numerous retinue of courtiers and foreign diplomats made a trip to the Crimea in order to demonstrate the country's readiness for a war for the Black Sea. On July 24, 1783, EA and cargo. Tsar Heraclius II signed the Treaty of George, according to which Russia established a protectorate over the Kartli-Kakhetian kingdom, protecting it from Turkey and Persia.

Russian tour. the war of 1787-1791, to-Ruyu Russia waged in alliance with Austria, was marked by major victories Russian. the army under the command of Suvorov, Potemkin, Rumyantsev and the fleet led by adm. right. Feodor Ushakov. Iasi peace, concluded in December. 1791, led to the consolidation of Russia on the banks of the Black Sea, the borders of the empire advanced to the Dniester, and Turkey recognized the annexation of Crimea to Russia. In parallel with this war, the Russian-Swede was fought. the war of 1788-1790, caused by the desire of Sweden to return the lost in the XVIII century. territory. The attacks of the Swedes were repulsed, and in August. In 1790 the Peace of Verelsky was concluded, which confirmed the territorial acquisitions of Russia. On the annexed lands in the North. Black Sea region in the 1770s-80s. new cities arose: Odessa, Kherson, Nikolaev, Sevastopol, Simferopol, etc.

In 1779, E.A. acted as a mediator between Prussia and Austria in the war for the Bavarian succession and became the guarantor of the Teschen peace, which established a balance of power in Sacred. Roman Empire. EA, inspired by the successes of the 70s and 80s, had the intention to unite the efforts of the Europeans. powers for the joint expulsion of the Turks from Europe, restore the Byzantine Empire and elevate his grandson to her throne. book Konstantin Pavlovich. EA discussed the "Greek project" in her correspondence with Austr. imp. Joseph II, However, no concrete steps were taken to implement the project, since it was calculated on the joint efforts of St. Petersburg, Vienna, London and Paris, whose interests did not coincide.

EA did not allow herself to be drawn into conflicts that were alien to the interests of Russia. Thus, during the war for independence, Amer. colonies (1775-1783) Great Britain tried to attract EA to its side and asked to send Rus. expeditionary corps. The Empress not only refused Britain's military support, but also in 1780 came out with a declaration of naval armed neutrality. This act of international law made it possible for neutral powers to defend their ships in the war zone with weapons. The majority of Europeans have joined the declaration. state, which left the UK in de facto isolation.

As a result of the foreign policy pursued by EA, the Russian Empire, relying on a powerful army and navy, achieved impressive successes, annexed significant territories and received a decisive voice in common European affairs. According to Ye. A., she could be sure that without her "not a single gun would fire in Europe."

Literary activity

EA was versatile. She wrote plays (the comedy "O Time!" history "(1783-1787), compiled the Life of Venerable. Sergius of Radonezh.

The greatest influence on the development of Rus. society has rendered her experiences in journalism. Since 1769, E.A. has published anonymously. "All sorts of things", which in a mild form ridiculed the shortcomings of people: frivolity, panache, hypocrisy, cruel family manners and thoughtless copying of foreign customs. At the same time, the rule was declared "never to call weakness vices." Satirical journals began to appear following the example of "Anything and everything", but the insufficiently sharp tone of this publication soon ceased to satisfy the young galaxy of publishers, "Anything and everything" was criticized. In particular, N. I. Novikov, who published "Truten", "Pustomelya", "Painter", etc., led the polemic with the magazine.

Since the 50s. EA composed autobiographical Notes and additional sketches for them. They were not intended for the general public and reflected the early years of EA's life and the early period of his reign. She carried on an extensive correspondence, including with Voltaire, Diderot, Stanislav Poniatovsky.

End of the reign

In the last years of EA's reign, such events as the French Revolution of 1789 and the execution of Cor. Louis XVI, to-rye led to E.A.'s disappointment in educational ideals. By participating in the anti-French. coalition, she abandoned the idea of ​​combating the revolution by intervention in France, believing that this would ruin the cause of the French. monarchy and make the revolution more popular. In Russia, EA began to pursue a repressive policy. Masons were especially displeased with her. Criticizing them, EA wrote a polemical op. "The Mystery of the Anti-absurd Society", as well as the comedies "The Deceiver", "The Seduced One" and "The Siberian Shaman." From ser. 80s Freemasons were persecuted, a number of lodges were closed, and secret supervision was established for the "free masons". The decree of 1787, forbidding secular persons to print books of spiritual content, was also largely directed against the Freemasons. The arrest of A.N. Radishchev and Novikov was connected with the persecution of them. Radishchev was arrested in 1790 after the publication of the book. "Travel from St. Petersburg to Moscow", sentenced to death, commuted to exile to Siberia. Novikov was instructed to "test in faith" Archbishop. Plato (Levshin). Despite his favorable opinion, all of his printing houses were taken away from Novikov, and in 1792 he was arrested and imprisoned in the Shlisselburg fortress.

The Empress was afraid to transfer power to the heir to Pavel Petrovich, considering him an unbalanced person. There is evidence that E. A. wanted power to pass to her grandson, led. book Alexander Pavlovich (later Emperor Alexander I), bypassing her son, and even prepared an appropriate document, but death prevented the implementation of these plans. EA asked to be buried in the closest to the place of death of the mon-re or in the city cemetery and to wear mourning as little as possible. She was buried on 18 December. 1796 in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg, at the same time the remains of Peter III were reburied there.

O. I. Eliseeva

Cit .: Op. SPb., 1901-1907. 12 t .; Op. M., 1990; Letters to the chief prosecutors Svyat. Synod // RA. 1870. No. 4-5; Notes of the imp. Catherine II. M., 1990; Life of St. Sergia: East. discharge // ZhMP. 1992. No. 10. S. 37-42.

Lit .: Project bogosl. fact under Catherine II: 1773 // BE. 1873. T. 6. No. 11. S. 300-317; Znamenskiy P.V. Readings from the history of Russian. Churches during the reign of Catherine II // PS. 1875. Part 1. S. 3-22, 99-143, 228-254, 392-418; Part 2. S. 3-44, 327-347; Part 3.S. 87-109, 354-411; Prilezhaev E.M. Synod to the Catherine Commission on the compilation of a new code // KhCh. 1876. Part 2. No. 9/10. S. 223-265; Chudetsky P. Experience ist. research on the number of Russian monasteries closed in the 18th and 19th centuries. K., 1877; Ikonnikov V.S. Time of Catherine II. K., 1881-1882. 4 issues; Semevsky V.I. Peasants in the reign of the im. Catherine II. SPb., 1881-1901. 2 t .; Brickner A.G. The Story of Catherine II. SPb., 1885.5 h. M., 1996.3 t .; Bilbasov V.A.Story of Catherine II. SPb., 1890-1896. T. 1-2, 12; Arkhangelsky A.S. Imp. Catherine II in the history of Russian. literature and education. Kaz., 1897; Lappo-Danilevsky A.S. An outline of the domestic policy of the imp. Catherine II. SPb., 1898; Zavyalov A.A. The question of the church. estates with imp. Catherine II. SPb., 1900; Klimov N.F. Church and clergy in the reign of im. Catherine II. SPb., 1902; Milovidov A.I. Pedagogical views of the imp. Catherine II and their influence on the reform of theological school. Vilna, 1905; Petrov N.I. Kievskaya Acad. in the reign of Catherine II // TKDA. 1906. No. 7. S. 453-494; No. 8/9. S. 582-609; No. 11. S. 245-297; Pokrovsky I. M. Catherine Commission on the preparation of a new code and the church. questions in it. Kaz., 1910; Pokrovsky V. I. Catherine II: Her life and works. M., 1910; Chechulin N. D. Catherine II in the struggle for the throne: (Based on new materials). L., 1924; Tarle E. V. Catherine II and her diplomacy. M., 1945.2 hours; Madariaga de I. Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great. L., 1981 (Russian translation: Madariaga I. Russia in the era of Catherine the Great. M., 2002); Alexander J. T. Catherine the Great: Life and Legend. Oxf .; N. Y. 1989; Kamensky A.B. Catherine the Great // VI. 1989. No. 3. S. 62-89; he is. "Under the Senya of Catherine ...": 2nd floor. XVIII century SPb., 1992; A. I. Komissarenko Rus. absolutism and clergy in the 18th century: Essays on the history of the secularization reform of 1764, M., 1990; Omelchenko O. A. "Legal Monarchy" of Catherine II: Enlightened Absolutism in Russia. M., 1993; Old Believers in Russia: (XVII-XVIII centuries): Sat. scientific. tr. M., 1994; Catherine the Great: The Age of Growth. stories: Mezhdunar. conf. Abstracts. report SPb., 1996; Anisimov E.V. Women on the rise. throne. SPb., 1998; Pavlenko N.I. Catherine the Great. M., 2000, 2006. (ZhZL); Catherine II: Annot. bibliography publications / Comp. I. V. Babich, M. V. Babich, T. A. Lapteva. M., 2004; Sereda N.V. Governance reform of Catherine the Great. M., 2004; Bessarabova N.V. Travels of Catherine II across Russia. M., 2005; Catherine II: Pro et contra. SPb., 2006; Eliseeva O. I. Potemkin. M., 2006. (ZhZL).