Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman (104 page)

Radishchev illustrated the effects of serfdom by creating numerous scenes described by “the traveler” as he passed through villages, towns, and staging posts during his journey. He portrayed the abuse of serf labor, the shocking verdicts of corrupt judges, and the defenseless situation of serf women at the mercy of predatory owners. In one episode, three brutal sons of a landlord attack, bind, and gag a beautiful serf maiden on the morning of her wedding day, intending to use her for
their “
beastly purpose.” The serf bridegroom sees what is happening, charges the three evildoers, routs them, and “
breaks the head” of one of them. As punishment, the landlord then orders a merciless flogging of the bridegroom. The young serf accepts this—until he sees the landlord’s three sons dragging his future wife back into their house. He breaks free, saves the girl, and faces his three enemies, whirling a fencepost over his head. At this point, other serfs arrive, and in the ensuing melee, the landlord and his three sons are beaten to death. All of the serfs involved are condemned to penal servitude for life. Radishchev told this story not only as an example of the nature of master-serf relationships but also to warn his readers that many serfs, driven to desperation, were only awaiting a chance to rise in revolt:

As a palliative to this grim prospect, Radishchev offered a plan for the gradual emancipation of serfs. All domestic serfs were to be emancipated at once; agricultural serfs would be granted full ownership of private plots and then be allowed to use their profits to buy their own freedom. They would be allowed to marry without asking their masters’ permission. And they would be judged in courts of their peers—that is, by other peasants.

Catherine read the book in June 1790 and filled the margins with notes. She gave Radishchev intellectual credit: “[The author]
has learning enough, and has read many books … he has imagination enough, and he is audacious in his writing.” She guessed that he acquired his
education in Leipzig, “
hence the suspicion falls on M. Radishchev, the more so because he is said to have a printing press in his house.” Had the book been written thirty or even twenty years earlier, Catherine might have recognized some of her own views; now, from her new perspective, she declared that “
the purpose of this book is clear on every page. Its author, infected and filled with the French madness, is trying in every possible way to break down respect for authority and the authorities, to stir up in the people’s indignation against their superiors and against the government.” She rejected Radishchev’s portrayal of the behavior of landowners and the condition of serfs and was outraged by his warnings of serf rage and impending revenge. The author, she declared, is “
a rabble-rouser, worse than Pugachev … inciting the serfs to bloody rebellion.” And he was inciting not only the peasants but the general population to disregard the authority of all rulers, from empresses down to local officials. In Radishchev’s denunciations of her government and his mingling of the Pugachev horrors with the new “poisons” being concocted in France, she saw an effort to propagate the beliefs of the revolutionaries in Paris and destabilize Russia at a time when the country was fighting two wars. The book, she wrote in a margin, “could not be tolerated.”

Radishchev was identified, arrested, and taken to the Peter and Paul Fortress for interrogation. He was not tortured. Even so, aware of the consequences for his family, he began to renege. He declared that his book had stemmed from vanity; he said he had wanted to win literary fame. He did his best to minimize retribution by admitting that his language had been exaggerated and that his accusations against government officials were inaccurate. He denied any intention of attacking Catherine’s government; he meant only to point out certain correctable shortcomings. He had not intended to rouse peasant against landowner; he had only wished to force bad landowners to be ashamed of their behavior. He admitted that he hoped for the freedom of the serfs but declared that he wanted to achieve this through legislative action, such as that already taken or proposed by the Empress Catherine. He threw himself on Catherine’s mercy. He was tried by the Central Criminal Court in St. Petersburg, charged with sedition and lese-majesté, and sentenced to death by beheading. The Senate routinely confirmed the verdict. In the interim, however, Catherine had forwarded the book to Potemkin for comment. Despite the personal attacks on himself as well as the empress, the prince advocated leniency.
“I’ve
read the book
you sent me. I am not angry,” he wrote to Catherine. “It seems, Matushka, he has been slandering you, too. And you also won’t be angry. Your deeds are your shield.” Potemkin’s moderate response calmed Catherine, who did what she always did: she commuted the death penalty and changed it to a sentence of ten years of Siberian exile.

Thereafter, Radishchev was treated with relative leniency. After sentencing, he was taken from the court in chains, but the following morning the chains were struck off by Catherine’s order. He was allowed sixteen months to reach his place of exile four thousand miles east of St. Petersburg. Minister of Commerce Alexander Vorontsov, his patron and friend, sent him clothes, books, and a thousand rubles a year. Eventually, Radishchev, by now a widower, was joined in Siberia by his two youngest children, brought to him by his sister-in-law, who remained with him and bore him three more children. He constructed a large house for his family, his servants, and his books. He worked as an amateur doctor, taught his children, and read the books sent to him by his friends. Soon after Catherine’s death in 1796, her son, Paul, terminated Radishchev’s exile and allowed him to return to his estate near Moscow. In 1802, deeply depressed, he committed suicide, leaving behind the dying words of Cato: “
Now I am my own master.” His
Journey
was published in London in 1859. Three years later—sixty years after Radishchev’s death—Catherine’s great-grandson, Emperor Alexander II, abolished serfdom.

When partitioning Poland in 1772, Russia, Austria, and Prussia had imposed on that nation a constitution that limited the authority of the king and the Diet and left power in the hands of an independent, conservative aristocracy that refused to govern or be governed, leaving the country in a perpetual state of near-anarchy. Stanislaus Augustus, the king installed by Catherine, reigned for the next sixteen years, but in all important matters, Poland’s government was overseen by St. Petersburg. Territorially, Poland remained large, and through these years the resentment of many Poles against the partitioning powers, particularly Russia, continued to fester. In September 1788, with both Catherine and her ally Joseph II of Austria involved in war with Turkey, Poles saw their chance to make a change. A Polish Diet, hostile to Polish dependence on Russia, met and was almost immediately confederated. The liberum veto was set aside, enabling the Diet to make decisions by majority
vote. Amid an eruption of anti-Russian feeling and much verbal abuse of Catherine, Stanislaus warned of the danger of making unilateral changes in a constitution approved by the empress. He was ignored. During the following months, the confederated Diet proceeded to overturn the governmental structure endorsed by Russia for sixteen years. With her army in the south, Catherine could do nothing—for the moment, at least—but pretend not to notice.

The following year, 1790, Catherine suffered a series of political setbacks. In March, King Frederick William of Prussia, who in 1886 had succeeded his uncle Frederick the Great, surprised Russia and Austria by signing a defensive treaty with Poland, pledging military assistance against foreign interference. On May 3, 1791, the emboldened Polish confederated Diet, knowing that Russia was still enmeshed in war on the Black Sea, and also believing that Poland was now protected by its treaty with Prussia, voted to adopt a new constitution, providing for a hereditary, rather than elective, monarchy. The present ruler, Stanislaus, would be allowed to remain during his lifetime, but on his death, the crown was to become hereditary, passing from father to son in the house of the electors of Saxony. The liberum veto was to be abolished and replaced in the Diet by majority rule. The purpose of the new constitution was to weaken the old nobility and provide Poland with a more effective national government.

Catherine, realizing the extent to which the new constitution diminished the power of the old Polish nobility, on whom she relied to keep Poland weak, was alarmed. The Russian-Polish treaty of 1772 had been unilaterally scrapped. She had no troops available to uphold the old constitution, but, in her anger and frustration, she quickly found allies among the Poles themselves. The conservative Polish nobility, knowing that a weak central government was necessary if they were to keep power in their hands, also rejected the May 3 constitution. These noblemen, meeting in Grodno, formed their own new federation, proclaimed the restoration of the 1772 constitution, and sent a delegation to St. Petersburg to ask Catherine to help them.

Catherine was eager to help. The May 3 constitution was far from radical, but to Catherine there seemed a disturbing similarity between it and the developing attack on the monarchy in France. By July 1791, peace with Turkey was near, and the Russian army would soon be available to support the conservative Poles. She had already told Potemkin, during his last visit to St. Petersburg, that she intended to appoint him
commander in chief in this new campaign. There were risks to be considered. Both Leopold of Austria and Frederick William of Prussia, concerned about the deteriorating situation in France, and hoping to calm the increasing turmoil behind their backs in eastern Europe, had agreed to accept Poland’s new May 3 constitution. Frederick William did so as Poland’s new ally; Leopold because he wished to be free to concentrate on France. Both monarchs urged Catherine to join them.

Catherine, who had already decided to act alone if necessary, refused. She tried instead to persuade the Prussians and Austrians to support her approach. She bluntly told her own College of Foreign Affairs in December 1791 that she would never agree to the new Polish political structure, and that she was determined to act. Prussia and Austria “
will oppose us with only a pile of written paper,” she predicted. She anticipated protest, but Austria, facing war with France, would do nothing, and if Prussia’s agreement to ignore its treaty with Poland had to be bought with additional Polish territory, she would agree to another partition. As for the Poles themselves, she understood that to restore the 1772 constitution, an invasion by the Russian army would be necessary.

Behind Catherine’s militant new Polish policy was the fact that, despite her talk of a crusade against France, her real worries lay closer to home. She was angered by the steps the Poles had already taken and alarmed by what might follow. An effective, potentially revolutionary regime in Poland would be dangerous to Russia. Was she to ignore this possible threat in order to fight Jacobinism in France? Her duty was to deal with the enemy in the place most threatening to her. She was determined, she told Grimm, to “
exterminate that nest of Jacobins in Warsaw.” This was the façade of her argument, but she revealed her real strategy in an outburst to her private secretary on November 14, 1791: “
I am breaking my head to push the courts of Vienna and Berlin to involve themselves in the affairs of France. The Austrian court is willing but the court of Berlin refuses to move.… There are reasons which I cannot explain [to them]. I wish to engage them in these affairs in order to have elbow room. I have in mind much unfinished business and it is necessary that they be kept busy so that they cannot hinder me.” Her “unfinished business” was to restore Russian control of Poland.

On April 9, 1792, France unintentionally assisted Catherine by declaring war on Austria. The empress could now be certain that Austria
would not honor its promises to Poland to support the May 3 Polish constitution. At the end of April, she informed Berlin and Vienna of her intention to invade Poland; on May 7, sixty-five thousand Russian troops crossed the Polish border, followed by another thirty-five thousand a few weeks later. Poland immediately appealed to Frederick William of Prussia on the basis of the 1790 defensive treaty. The king of Prussia behaved as Catherine had foreseen. Anticipating war with France, he betrayed his treaty obligation to assist Poland, declaring that he had not been consulted about the May 3 constitution and that this absolved him of treaty commitments. He was not, he declared, “obliged to defend a constitution drawn up without his knowledge.” Stanislaus, again playing both sides, first swore to fight for the May 3 constitution and then attempted to negotiate with Catherine by offering to give up the throne to her grandson Constantine. She was not interested. Having nothing further to offer, the Polish king ordered the Polish army to lay down its arms.

The military occupation proceeded smoothly, but Russia soon found itself caught in a thicket of political difficulties. The conservative Polish leaders Catherine was supporting fell to squabbling among themselves and proved unable to govern. By December 1792, Catherine had decided that the only solution to growing chaos was to formalize the occupation in a second partition. Frederick William was offered the areas in the north and west that Prussia had long desired. He accepted. Both Russia and Prussia declared that their actions were aimed at fighting Jacobinism in Poland. Frederick William announced that he was forced to send his army to protect Prussia from the raging Jacobinism across his border. Catherine continued to use this argument. “
Apparently you ignore that the Jacobiniere of Warsaw were in correspondence with the Jacobin Club in Paris,” she wrote to Grimm. In January 1793, Russia and Prussia secretly signed a treaty that sealed the Second Partition of Poland.