ABSTRACT
The death of Peter the Great saw Russia in a state of complete exhaustion. It is very doubtful if the country could have stood the strain of further wars and reforms even if he had lived. The taxable resources of country and its manpower were diminishing and the peasants were seeking their usual method of relief by illegal flight to Cossack lands and the Tartar borders. The smaller nobility of days of Ivan the Terrible had become the only nobility by coalescing with remnants of the older class. Peter’s titanic energy had for a while made this class conform to his will and to the service of the state. Catharine, of course, tried to extend the system of limited popular representation by summoning from time to time a selected Zemsky Sobor or conference of classes of the community to advise her on projected reforms. Nevertheless Catharine’s reign brought many reforms in the state administration, the beginnings of an educational system.
