Catherine's patronage furthered the evolution of the arts in Russia more than that of any Russian sovereign before or after her. She subscribed to the ideals of the
Enlightenment and considered herself a "philosopher on the throne". She showed great awareness of her image abroad, and ever desired that Europe should perceive her as a civilized and enlightened monarch, despite the fact that in Russia she often played the part of the
tyrant. Even as she proclaimed her love for the ideals of liberty and freedom, she did more to tie the
Russian serf to his land and to his lord than any sovereign since
Boris Godunov (reigned 1598-1605).
Catherine had a reputation as a patron of the arts, literature and education. The
Hermitage Museum, which now occupies the whole of the
Winter Palace, began as Catherine's personal collection. At the instigation of her factotum,
Ivan Betskoi, she wrote a manual for the education of young children, drawing from the ideas of
John Locke, and founded the famous
Smolny Institute for noble young ladies. This school would become one of the best of its kind in Europe, and even went so far as to admit young girls born to wealthy merchants alongside the daughters of the nobility. She wrote comedies, fiction and memoirs, while cultivating
Voltaire, Diderot and
D'Alembert — all French
encyclopedists who later cemented her reputation in their writings. The leading economists of her day, such as
Arthur Young and
Jacques Necker, became foreign members of the
Free Economic Society, established on her suggestion in Saint Petersburg. She lured the scientists
Leonhard Euler and
Peter Simon Pallas from
Berlin to the Russian capital.
Catherine enlisted Voltaire to her cause, and corresponded with him for 15 years, from her accession to his death in 1778. He lauded her with epithets, calling her "The Star of the North" and the "
Semiramis of Russia" (in reference to the legendary Queen of
Babylon). Though she never met him face-to-face, she mourned him bitterly when he died, acquired his collection of books from his heirs, and placed them in the
Imperial Public Library.
Within a few months of her accession, having heard that the French government threatened to stop the publication of the famous French
Encyclopédie on account of its irreligious spirit, she proposed to Diderot that he should complete his great work in Russia under her protection. Four years later she endeavoured to embody in a legislative form the principles of Enlightenment which she had imbibed from the study of the French philosophers. She called together at
Moscow a Grand Commission — almost a consultative
parliament — composed of 652 members of all classes (officials, nobles,
burghers and
peasants) and of various nationalities. The Commission had to consider the needs of the Russian Empire and the means of satisfying them. The Empress herself prepared the
Instructions for the Guidance of the Assembly, pillaging (as she frankly admitted) the philosophers of the West, especially
Montesquieu and
Cesare Beccaria. As many of the democratic principles frightened her more moderate and experienced advisers, she refrained from immediately putting them into execution. After holding more than 200 sittings the so-called Commission dissolved without getting beyond the realm of theory.
Under her reign, Russians imported and studied the classical and European influences which inspired the "Age of Imitation".
Gavrila Derzhavin, Denis Fonvizin and
Ippolit Bogdanovich laid the groundwork for the great writers of the nineteenth century, especially for
Aleksandr Pushkin. Catherine became a great patron of
Russian opera (see
Catherine II and opera for details). However, her reign also featured omnipresent
censorship and state control of publications. When
Radishchev published his
Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow in 1790, warning of uprisings because of the deplorable social conditions of the peasants held as
serfs, Catherine
exiled him to
Siberia.
