These developments enabled Catherine to reorient her foreign policy from the formerly northern European impetus of Panin's system onto the increasingly promising direction of the south. The turn towards the south made a good deal of sense from the viewpoint of the economic development of the empire. Peter I's incorporation of the Baltic coast had paid off in handsome commercial opportunities. In the south, moreover, the land was richer, it was sparsely settled, the growing season was longer, and the ancient Greekports in the area illustrated clearly enough the commercial possibilities of the region.
In the meantime, a struggle for influence at the Russian court climaxed such as to serve the new orientation of Russian policy. Nikita Panin lost the struggle to Prince Grigorii Potemkin and his associate in Catherine's foreign chancery, A. A. Bezborodko. What the change portended was the abandonment of the Prussian alliance and Panin's favoured Northern System, its emphasis on peace and the status quo, and a turn towards the grander ambitions of Potemkin in south Russia at the expense of the Turks. The project of driving the Turks out of the Balkans was the kind of affair that appealed to Catherine's vanity.
The new outlook was soon embodied in an exchange of notes between Catherine and Joseph II, an exchange that stipulated the notorious grand design known as the 'Greek Project'. It envisioned a partitioning of the Ottoman dominions of the Balkans between Russia and Austria; the establishment of an independent kingdom of Dacia in Romania, presumably for Prince Potemkin; and, in the event of sufficient military success, the complete destruction of Turkey and the restoration of the ancient Byzantine Empire under Catherine's grandson, appropriately named Constantine.
In the wake of the Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainardzhi, the Crimea had degenerated into civil war between the Russian and the Turkish parties. In April 1783, the last native puppet ruler of the territory abdicated in favour of the Russian crown, and the annexation of the territory to Russia was proclaimed. It is possible that Catherine was thus trying to provoke a renewal of the Turkish war, but the Turks prudently held their fire.
The war was nevertheless not long in coming. Catherine's new ally, Joseph II, paid her a visit, and together they took a spectacular and provocative trip to New Russia in the south in summer 1787. By this time a Russian Black Sea fleet graced the harbour of Sebastopol. The visit itself was a tangible symbol of the widely rumoured Greek Project, and it sufficed to provoke a Turkish declaration of war. Swedish and Polish responses to the opportunity were not long in coming. Gustav III of Sweden declared war on Russia in July 1788. Fortunately for Russia, his campaign was handicapped by the revolt of some of his officers, and he was forced to conclude the Treaty of Verela (August 1790) on the basis of the territorial status quo ante bellum.
The campaign against the Turks was hampered by a revolt in the Austrian Netherlands, the death ofJoseph II and the diversion of Austrian attention to the challenge of the French Revolution. Catherine thus had to content herself with much less than her dreams of the Greek Project. The Treaty of Jassy (January 1792) enabled Russia to annex Ochakov and the territory between the Dniester and the Bug and recognised the annexation of the Crimea. Catherine did not, however, surrender the Greek Project, which was written explicitly into the Austro-Russian treaty of January 1795.
Neither had the Poles neglected the opportunity provided by Russian war with both the Turks and the Swedes. Unfortunately for them, they were engaged by the intrigues of King Frederick William II of Prussia in a series of illusions both foreign and domestic. Counting on the support of a new alliance with Prussia, the Poles devoted themselves belatedly to constitutional reform, scrapping elective monarchy, the liberum veto and the practice of confederations alike (the constitution of 3 May 1791). Succession to the throne was settled on a hereditary basis in the House of Saxony. These noble efforts soon fell victim to characteristically Polish ill fortune, however, as the Russians made peace with Sweden and Turkey, and the coming of the French Revolution turned the attention of Prussia and Austria westwards. Catherine had in these circumstances no trouble sponsoring a party of her own in Poland and sent an army to support it. In the face ofthis challenge, Frederick William shamelessly deserted his new Polish ally and consummated an alliance with Russia for a new partition of Poland (January 1793). The second partition provoked a patriotic revolt led by the hero of the American Revolution, Tadeusz Kosciuszko, but the combined actions of the armies of Russia, Prussia and Austria condemned it to fail, and the third partition consummated the oblivion of Poland (several treaties of 1795-7).
By reference to the standards prevailing in the age, the foreign policy of Catherine was a great success. She conquered 200,000 square miles of new territory and expanded the Russian population from 19,000,000 to 36,000,000.
Yet there is here another element of this story, one taken too little into account. If the opposition of the Russian nobility to the reforming aspirations of the monarchy is well known, its opposition to Russian foreign policy is less familiar.
The Greek Project, for example, provoked dissent even in the inner circle of Catherine's government. As the French ambassador reported in 1786, 'the Russian ministers' loathed the plans of Potemkin.
Their secret wishes are for peace; war and conquests do not offer them any personal advantage; each of them sees in [war and conquests].. .complications for their departments [of government] and fatal possibilities for the empire. [Alexander] Vorontsov fears the stagnation of commerce; Bezborodko, numerous obstacles in the course of diplomacy; all of them [fear] the growth of the power of Prince Potemkin, [but] everyone dissimulates his opinions for fear of losing the favor of the empress.5
The Austrian ambassador, Louis de Cobenzl, reported the same attitudes in 1795: 'The entire Russian ministry, without exception, disapproves this project of the empress.'6 The second partition of Poland exhibits the same conflict. The opposition gathered around Alexander Vorontsov, but it was the expansionist party around Potemkin and the Zubovs that triumphed.
In fact, the phenomenon was far older and broader than we have appreciated. We may recall the division of Russian society over Ivan IV's Livonian War or the Dolgorukiis and Golitsyns who transferred the capital briefly back to Moscow in I727. An English diplomat characterised the nobility's attitude typically in the 1740s:
5 Louis-Philippe de Segur, Memoires, 3 vols. (Paris: Eymery 1827), vol. II, pp. 293-4.
6 Cobenzl to Thugut, 5 January 1795; Alfred von Arneth (ed.), 'Thugut und sein politisches System', Archivfur osterreichische Geschichte, 42 (1870): 442.
There is not one among [them] who does not wish St Petersburg at the bottom of the sea and all the conquered provinces gone to the devil; then they could all move back to Moscow, where, in the vicinity of their estates, they could all live better and cheaper. Moreover, they are convinced that it would in general be much better for Russia to have no more to do with the affairs of Europe than it formerly did but to limit itself to the defense of its own [traditional] old territories.[104]
104
Robert E. Jones, 'The Nobility and Russian Foreign Policy, 1560-1811',