ABSTRACT
After Peter there were six sovereigns in thirty-seven years. Three of them were women. In 1762 Catherine of Anhalt-Zerbst came to the throne with the army coup which deposed her husband: it was the third palace revolution of the period. With Catherine a degree of political stability returned to Russia. Her reforms only look insignificant when contrasted with the bold and ‘enlightened’ affirmations of her early years. She was apparently unable, however, or unwilling, to check the assertion of noble rights, and her reign saw the climax of the regressive movement which had set in since Peter’s death. A measure of reaction was inevitable because of the radical and alien nature of Peter’s reforms. How far did it go? How much was left of the spirit and substance of Peter’s regime? Before those questions can be answered it must be stressed that by the end of Peter’s reign the noble class as a whole was already consolidating its position, like its counterparts in other countries, in the expanding armed forces and government. Service to the tsar was having a centripetal influence, countering local loyalties: a man forgot his native Smolensk or Novgorod, remembering only that he was a councillor or a dragoon. There was a greater degree of administrative stability in the subsequent reigns than is indicated by periodic political upheavals. The ‘aristocratic reaction’ in Russia was more limited and superficial than the phrase suggests.
