Her parents didn't conceive a child when she was conceived or Catherine dies in infancy. Personally, I think Russia still modernizes like it did under her, but more slowly, this probably means napoleon beats the Russians. I expect slightly more of the central asians to convert to Orthodox christianity without Catherine to assist the spread of islam there, and whoever takes her place probably wouldn't be very tolerant of Islam. I said only slightly more, since with Catherine's modernization Russia conquered more of central asia faster
WI: Catherine the Great was never born?
- Thread starter Wr1t3r
- Start date
Can you, please, specify what “modernization” amounted to during the reign of CII?
This implies that Russian-Napoleon conflict was inevitable, which is highly questionable: Paul allied with him.
AFAIK, PIII (which place she took) was preaching equality of all religions.
We are getting back to the first question about modernization.😉
Peter II would probably still get removed from power.
The future depends on who replaces her as that person would probably not be as successful as her but this hypotetical person would probably manage most of its successes as they weren't done by personally by Catherine and would modernize Russia enough, if Russia still ends up fighting Napoleon on its own soil then they would win as the reasons why the Russian campaign was doomed are independent from Catherine.
Peter II died from the natural causes when she was 1 year old. You are talking about PIII and there is no reason to assume that he would be removed under any circumstances: most of the bad PR about him was invented by the interested party after the coup. BTW, CII implemented a number of his initiatives.
It seems that “modernization” is a popular term but how about providing an itemizing list to illustrate what was “modernized” and how?
AI with his specifics was not inevitable and so wasn’t Russian-French conflict. Anyway, Russian army of 1812 had extremely little in common with the army of CII.
From what I know Catherine finished the modernization process initiated by Peter the Great, I don't have a list of all the things that Catherine reformed during her reign (or the persons she appointed) .
I was mentioning the Napoleon conflict because the OP considered that Napoleon would win against this less modernized Russia I was therefore saying that I considered that if Napoleon still was to invade Russia he would still lose as the Russians' armies were inferior to the Grande Armée but thanks to other factors they won the war.
Catherine reformed Russia's financial system by modernizing tax collection methods and implementing fiscal policies to stabilize the economy. She also established the first Russian public bank. Catherine introduced new military technologies and weapons, including artillery improvements and the adoption of more advanced firearms. She also invested in the development of the Russian navy, expanding its fleet. The extraction of valuable minerals like iron, copper, and precious metals like gold and silver increased under CII. CII promoted the use of combined arms tactics, integrating infantry, cavalry, and artillery in coordinated military operations, allowing for greater flexibility and effectiveness on the battlefield. CII incentivized entrepreneurs to invest in, and encouraged the immigration of skilled workers and entrepreneurs from Western Europe to contribute their expertise to Russia's textile manufacturing with tax breaks, subsidies, and grants, which ended up creating new factories and the expansion of existing ones. She also invited foreign metallurgists and engineers, particularly from Western Europe, to Russia to introduce advanced smelting and refining techniques, established technical schools and training programs to educate Russian metallurgists and workers in modern techniques. Some of these new techniques were: the Bessemer Process, Coke smelting, cupellation and electrolysis.
There was some improvements but the process of changes kept going on during the reign of PI and after his death. Economy was not “stabilized”: CII was the first Russian monarch who accumulated a huge foreign debt and unrestricted emission of paper money resulted in their devaluation. Paul I had to take drastic measures to deal with this problem. As far as the fiscal policies were involved, Vyazemsky did a lot in that direction but effect was more than “balanced” by the endemic corruption, especially on the top level. Potemkin’s mismanagement of the state funds was notorious and CII ordered just to “write off” few disappearing millions for which he had absolutely no account. There were more backed up by a very flimsy documentation that was accepted. Alexey Orlov also could not account for millions after the 1st Archipelago Expedition. Add insane expenses on the favorites, huge grants of the state lands and peasants, etc.
First “public” bank was open in 1754 by Elizabeth. Catherine just increased its capital. And the bank was for nobility. It was called Nobility loan bank and it was given the loans secured by the estates or valuables. The first commercial bank opened in 1818.
Artillery reform had been done by Shuvalov during the reign of Elizabeth when the very good field howitzer was introduced. What new artillery types were introduced during the reign of CII? If anything, there were complaints about Paul inheriting artillery on the obsolete carriages.
Which “advanced firearms” are you talking about? Most of the infantry remained armed with the same flintlock muskets.
Now, this is true. Of course, a cynic may remark that the ships of the newly created Black Sea fleet had been slower than their Ottoman opponents and the victories had been won due to the skill of the leaders and crews, not quality of the ships. As far as the Baltic fleet is involved, during the 1st Archipelago Expedition some of the assigned ships did not manage to get out of the Baltic Sea, quite a few required significant repairs when they reached Britain and at least one had to be sold for wood and replaced by a purchased one.
They kept increasing from reign to reign but CII’s time did not see noticeable technological innovations. To be fair, in the 1770s on Nerchinsk plant some of the bellows had been switched from manually- to horse-powered.
First, there was little new in this, the warfare was progressing with the time, and second Catherine had absolutely nothing to do with the military innovations or their “promotion”. Rumyantsev was never in charge of the Russian military and later was simply pushed aside, Dolgorukov-Crymsky did not make it into a fieldmarshal, Peter Panin, who presumably introduced the jager units, was kept out of any military business between taking Bendery and Pugachev Uprising, Suvorov had glory but very little of an influence and never even held an independent army command, Potemkin did some reasonable improvements in uniforms, which were abandoned and had no influence and definitely had nothing to do with either tactics or strategy, being pathetic in both areas.
And failed: entrepreneurship in industry needed labor and CII did everything in her power to deny it to the merchant class. By the end of CII reign Russian Russian merchants still did not have credit institutions which was a serious handicap in domestic trade and a killer of the international trade.
Started during the reign of PI and never stopped.
First, invitation of the big numbers of foreign specialists started during the reign of Tsar Alexey, if not earlier, and never stopped since then. Second, metallurgic industry was well-developed before Catherine: even in the 1710s Nevyansky Plant had the biggest furnace in the world, Nerchinsk Silver Plant existed since 1704 and in 1745 Berg Collegium contracted Saxon specialists for its modernization.
No offense but this is a pure nonsense: Bessemer took patent on his process in 1856 and in Russia it was first time implemented in 1866. What this has to do with Catherine? Russian metallurgy was using charcoal all the way to the post-NI reign.
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Stories about him came from Catherine, Dashkova and Bolotov. The rest picked up to be on the victor’s side.
Sorry, modernization process could not be “finished” by a simple reason of it not being something like “now I’m modernized and will stay that way doing nothing”. 😉
“Modernization” started at the reign of Mikhail Romanov and never stopped since then. It was already said a lot about the negative side of the Peter’s methods of “modernization” both by the professional historians and in this forum. Catherine was moving along the general lines but you have to separate self-/official-PR and the good intentions from the results and ling-term effect. The most visible results were really big territorial acquisitions (useful or not) but there was also a gross mismanagement and endemic corruption, which, combined with the numerous wars, destroyed Russian finances leaving Paul with a huge state debt and devaluated paper money.
Manufacturing was growing, but it kept growing before her reign and the fundamental problem was that it was based on on free entrepreneurship but on the serf-labor. Which, in a long run, was killing technological innovations all the way to mid-XIX when Russia already was lagging behind the developed European countries.
An army, which is a popular argument, was victorious. Against the Ottomans and Poles (who were just trying to create a modern army of their own). Not too much against the Swedes, who were already off their peak (and the Swedish navy scored a big victory) but it was suffering from the same problems as the whole state. Corruption was there with the officers being lax in their duties, getting (not for free) the prolonged leaves of absence and using subordinate soldiers as the household serfs. And their personal expenses had been too often coming out of the money intended for other use. Paul caused a considerable grudge among officers corps stopping these practices and improving soldiers food. BTW, while his uniform decisions were not too good (neither were those of the following reigns all the way to AIII who was … criticized for the “peasant” appearance of his uniforms), he was the first one to introduce the overcoats in Russian army.
Then, I wonder how “modernization” goes hand-to-hand with turning serfdom into an outright slavery and increasing pool of the serfs by the hundreds thousands by adding to it state peasants (who were formally free people)?
Quite agree on that.
I'm not an expert on Catherine's reign so I will let those who know more than me debate on the subject.
Catherine the Great did encourage the immigration of skilled workers and entrepreneurs from Western Europe to contribute to various sectors of Russia's economy, including textiles and metallurgy, this policy just continued under subsequent rulers, including Paul I.
Sources:
- "Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman" by Robert K. Massie discusses Catherine's efforts to modernize Russian industry and attract foreign entrepreneurs through tax incentives.
- "The Industrialization of Russia 1700-1914" by Peter Gatrell notes Catherine encouraged transfer of Western technical knowledge and attracted some skilled immigrants to establish new industries.
- "Catherine the Great and the Russian Nobility" by W.E. Mosse discusses Catherine's policies aimed at developing manufacturing sectors like textiles.
- "The Economy of Imperial Russia, 1700-1914" by A.G. Cross notes textiles as an important industry but does not mention immigration policies.
Anybody can claim that these stories were made up. Has actual historical work been done on this or are you just representing your own opinion here?
Serfdom's always been slavery, we just use an emic term for European cultures where we prefer etic descriptors for othered cultures. And slavery was highly beneficial to Russian aristocrats, so yes, in a way that really modernized the economy by greatly increasing the economic capacity of the ruling class. At the end of the day, the Russian state existed to service these people, and these people alone.
From what I can see the major reason I can see for Peter to marry her in OTL was that she was his closest living female relative on his father side, which meant he knew her and had interacted with her, otherwise I don’t think that Frederick the Great would have suggested someone from her family. So if not her we should look at someone else with connections to the Gottorps in Prussian service. Sadly it seem the closest candidate Sophia Charlotte of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck, (who married Catherina’s maternal uncle) is six years older than Peter III. A Secondary candidate could be Friederike Charlotte Antoinette of Dohna-Schlodien in Leistenau, but she suffer under being ten years Peter’s junior.
Peter had no say in the issue: the marriage was organized by Elizabeth. Otherwise, probably your reasoning is valid except for the fact that Elizabeth was not 100% predictable.
The point is that she was the Prussian candidate, and she was great for several reasons, related to Peter so no one could question her ancestry (even through it was very questionable by the standard of the time), her father was in service to Prussia so she was a extension of Prussian court, and unimportant enough that no one would care if she had ended up killed or imprisoned in Russia.
This policy of inviting the foreign specialists was started on a big scale by Peter I (“PI” stands for “Peter I”, sorry if I got you confused) and continued after him. It existed even before him: he got the first taste of a western culture in the German Settlement near Moscow and close to Izmailovo where he lived. The water-powered ironworks in Tula and Serpukhov had been founded in 1630s by a Dutch merchant Vinius whose son was later one of Peter’s close associates.
The practice never stopped and Catherine continued it. Are you saying that she started it or that without her these practices would stop? If not, where is the contradiction with what I’m saying?
IIRC the book correctly, he never wrote that she started these industries, which is the point. I already mentioned similar incentives which took place before her.
As did every ruler before her.
The point which you are refusing to address is that reliance upon a cheap serf-based work force delayed introduction of the new technologies because they did require an expensive equipment and that it, by definition, left most of the metallurgy and other industries (outside state-owned plants) in the hands of nobility who, as a rule, had neither knowledge nor real interest in technical issues and tended to treat their enterprises as cash cow supporting their lavish life styles (look at the Demidov family: founder was a blacksmith but the later ennobled generations let their “empire” to deteriorate). Russia kept producing and exporting big volumes of cast iron but by mid-XIX it became very short of steel.
Textile industry started on a big scale during the Peter’s reign and was expanded since then. Was already very big under Elizabeth and so was metallurgy. Did you pay attention to the facts listed in my post?
Of course, it was important. Russia was exporting sailcloth even before Catherine and there were big textile manufactures in Moscow during the reign of Elizabeth and probably even prior to it.
From which of these books did you get the story about her importing Bessemer process prior to its discovery? Ditto about Coke smelting and electrolysis?
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Quite agree. The only thing that I’m saying is that Peter married whom Elizabeth ordered him to marry. This does not invalidate the underlying reasoning.
uh, no. Both of those were Pyotr III's ideas
Let's compare apples with apples shall we?
Pyotr passed 192 new laws/ukazes during his reign. That works out to more than 30 per month.
Catherine passed an average of 12 per month during her reign. Pyotr Velikiy only eight per year.
Now, quantity is not the only rubric. There's quality too. Maybe Pyotr III really did spend his days in a drunken stupor like Katya claimed:
First up was the Law of Liberty of the Nobles (releasing the nobles from obligatory military service). It was so unpopular among the Russians that the nobles wanted to erect a golden statue to Pyotr III. One of the first things "gay Queen Katya what have you done?" (as she is called in a Ukrainian folksong) was to re-institute the former obligatory military service. It was only removed in 1785
Pyotr abolished the Secret Chancellery (re-instituted by Catherine, albeit under a different name) and declared that all Russian dealings be done in the open (again, re-instituted by his widow)
What pissed the Orthodox Church off? His ukaz for the "freedom of religion" (namely that the Church was no longer allowed to persecute Old Believers), combined with a second ukaz that abolished the Church's right to have any degree of control over non-religious lives of their members. Both of these were re-instituted by Catherine.
Oh, and Pyotr was so terrible he started the abolition of serfdom by forbidding officials to be rewarded with gifts of souls. This also set the Orthodox Church against him since one of the biggest holders of serfs (910,866 men, so double the number for women and children) was the monasteries. No fear, Catherine the Not-So-Great is Here, she put everything to right by cancelling Pyotr's ukaz. She didn't give the serfs back to the Church. But she didn't free them either. In fact, she gave so many serfs to Orlov, Potemkin and others, that she had to introduce serfdom in places (like Novo-Rossiye) where it hadn't existed before. In fact, under Catherine, Russian serfdom turned into little more than slavery, and there were four "slave markets" at Novgorod, Moscow, St. Petersburg and Samara. Serfs were now sold separately from the land, families could be broken up and parents separated from children or spouses from one another.
https://topwar.ru/163077-ryzhov-va-nedolgoe-pravlenie-petra-iii-lozh-i-istina.html
Also
if you want, you can argue it went back to Ivan the Terrible and Boris Godunov, but we must draw the line "somewhere"
how about we examine the facts at the time. Catherine's biography wasn't published until the 1840s, IIRC
As for Pyotr's phimosis, it is never mentioned or attested by anyone who'd be in a position to know - Catherine and Dr. Lestocq make no mention of it beyond the latter recommending to Elizabeth Petrovna the marriage be delayed for unspecified reasons. And the phimosis is first mentioned by a Frenchman, Jean Henri de Castéra, in a historiography of Catherine published after her death.
ISTR there was talk of him marrying a Saxon princess (the Austrian candidate) around this time as well