Between her two Turkish wars (1775-1785) Catherine returned to the legislative mania of her early years. Made wise by her experience with the "commission of the code" of 1767, she turned from Montesquieu to Blackstone and profited by the administrative knowledge of J. Sievers, a skilful adviser of German Baltic origin. She then published in 1775 her "statute of provinces," a good piece of organic legis lation. Here for the first time in Russian history a local unit of administration, judiciary and self-government, was created. The Statute introduced a regular system of courts of justice, separate financial and administrative offices and—last but not least—cor porations of local gentry meeting every three years to discuss their affairs and to elect their "marshals." This system lasted until the reforms of Alexander II. The reform of 1775 was completed by two "charters" granted in 1785 to "nobility" and to "burgesses." The charter of nobility served to perpetuate the power of the ruling class until the liberation of the serfs in 1861, while the burgesses' charter laid the basis for real municipal self-government.
The protection extended to the gentry inevitably created a growing disaffection on the part of the serfs, who impatiently awaited their turn for emancipation. In 1773 the Yaik (Ural) cossacks revolted under Pugachev, who called himself Peter III. He roused the Bashkirs and the serfs allotted to the factories in the Urals, assailed Kazan on the Volga and sacked it. Through the whole empire the peasants only awaited his coming to rise, but he did not feel equal to the task, nor could his bands stand against regular troops. He therefore suddenly returned to Cossack country, lost his army, was extradited by his associates, tried and beheaded in Moscow.
Catherine definitely turned her back on the liberal ideas of her youth after the beginning of the French Revolution. She
began to persecute representatives of the advanced opinion which she herself had helped to create. Radischev, the author of a spirited book, A Journey from Petersburg to Moscow, was sen tenced to death as a Jacobin in 1790, but the sentence was com muted to ten years' exile in Siberia. Novikov, a freemason who ac complished admirable educational and editorial work, was sent to Schlusselburg prison in 1792.
I.—Catherine's son and successor Paul mounted the throne when he was 44, with a bitter feeling of having been de prived by his mother of his right to succeed his assassinated father, Peter III. He hated Catherine's favourites and her policy, both internal and external. His ill-balanced mind and tyrannical proclivities inspired fear in his associates, and in the sixth year of his reign (1796-1801) he was the victim of a court conspiracy. He stabilized the succession of the Russian throne by his "imperial family statute" (1797, in force until 1917). He sent Suvarov to Italy to fight against the French revolution; and he ended his reign while preparing with Napoleon an expedition to India against England. In social questions Paul's policy was also inconsistent. He alleviated the serf's obligatory work for his landlord by re ducing it to three days in a week but he gave away the peasants of the crown to noble proprietors as serfs, in an even larger num ber than Catherine (120,00o yearly). This did not make him, however, popular among the nobility, as his exalted idea of the divine right of the tsars caused him to treat them in a purely oriental way. He used to say that a person could be reputed of importance only as long as he was permitted to converse with his majesty.