Catherine the Great

News of this imperial decree reverberated through the mining and industrial regions. Hearing mention of agreed-upon wages, serfs in the Urals and along the Volga promptly laid down their tools and went on strike. Production at the nation’s mines and foundries came to a standstill. Catherine recognized that her decree had been premature. To force the industrial workers back to work, she was compelled to follow Eizabeth’s path and send troops. General A. A. Vyazemsky, the future procurator general, was dispatched to pacify the Urals; in places where former revolts had been suppressed by the lash and the knout, Vyazemsky resorted to cannon.

Before he left on his mission, however, Catherine gave Vyazemsky additional instructions. Having suppressed the strikes, he was to investigate the situation in the mines, study the reasons for the workers’ discontent, and ascertain the measures necessary to satisfy them. He was authorized to remove and, where necessary, punish serf managers:

In a word, do everything you think proper for the satisfaction of the peasants; but take suitable precautions so that the peasants should not imagine that their managers will be afraid of them in the future. If you find managers guilty of great inhumanity, you may punish them publicly, but if someone has exacted more work than is right, you may punish him secretly; thus you will not give the common people grounds to lose their proper dutifulness.

Vyazemsky toured the Urals and the lower Volga, punishing serf ringleaders with beatings and sentences to hard labor. But he also took seriously the second part of his assignment, namely the investigation of grievances, and administered retribution to managers guilty of cruelty or extreme mismanagement.

Catherine is said to have read Vyazemsky’s report with compassion, but, having used force to put down the strikes, she was caught between extremes. The industrial serfs, feeling their new power, were suspicious of any proposals she might make to satisfy their complaints. Simultaneously, mine owners and local government officials argued that it was too early to offer reform or even leniency to a savage, primitive people who could only be kept in order by the knout. Thus, except for the change in the terms of acquiring serf labor made by her initial decree, the condition of the industrial serf remained unaltered. Troubles continued, violence was frequent, and a few years later, the Pugachev rebellion swept the entire region of the Urals and the lower Volga. For Catherine, the lesson was that more than intelligence and goodwill were needed to break down the traditions, prejudices, and ignorance of both the owners and the serfs.

She continued to try. In July 1765, she established a special commission to “seek means for the improvement of the foundries, bearing in mind the easing of the people’s burdens and their peace of mind as well as the national welfare.” In 1767, she spoke of action necessary to forestall a general uprising by the serfs to throw off “an unbearable yoke.” “If we do not agree to reduce cruelty and moderate a situation intolerable for human beings,” she said, “then they themselves will take things in hand.”

Catherine, familiar with the Enlightenment belief in the Rights of Man, was intellectually opposed to serfdom. While still a grand duchess, she had suggested a way to reform and eventually abolish the institution, although it might take a hundred years to accomplish. The crux of this plan was that every time an estate was sold, all serfs on the estate should be freed. And since, over a century, a large number of estates were likely to change hands, she said, “There! You have the people free!”

If she accepted the iniquity of serfdom, why did Catherine, on reaching the throne, award thousands of serfs to her supporters? In the first month of her reign, Catherine made gifts of no fewer than eighteen thousand crown and state peasants who had been enjoying a certain measure of freedom. Put in its best light, she may have believed that this reversal of her belief was temporary. She had to deal with an immediate situation. The landowning nobility, along with the army and the church, had put her on the throne. She wished to reward them. In Russia in 1762, wealth was measured in serfs, not land. If she was going to reward her supporters beyond granting titles and distributing jewelry, she gave them wealth. Wealth meant serfs.