The system rested on the availability to all nobles of the minimum education necessary for entrance and promotion in service. As a consequence, cultural policy became a major concern of the government and the nobility alike; the members of the service class demanded that institutions of learning be set up to prepare the nobility for better careers, permitting them to skip the lowest ranks. That demand was fulfilled in 1731 with the creation of the Corps of Cadets. In the course of the following decades, the original corps was expanded, and other special institutions for training the nobility were added. General education became accessible to a large stratum of the rank-and-file nobility with the founding of the Moscow State University in 1755, although the lack of automatic preferment for its graduates kept it from being popular among the wealthier nobles until the end of the century. The Corps of Cadets and similar public and private institutions also acted as substitutes for local and family bonds; these schools were also the seedbeds for an active intellectual life, and their students played a leading role in spreading the literature and ideas of western Europe in court circles and in the high society of the capitals.
The service noblemen were also landlords and serf owners. The majority of them, however, were quite poor for a number of reasons, chief among which were the low productivity of Russian agriculture, absentee management, and the scattered and splintered character of the landholdings. The average small or middling estate yielded only the bare necessities for the survival of the serviceman's family. As long as he remained in service, away from the estate, and without capital, he could do little to improve his property, especially since any change in the agrarian routine would have to be accepted by his peasant-serfs and the noble neighbours among whose lands his own lay scattered in an inextricable patchwork. He thus depended on the ruler for additional income, either in the form of a salary or as grants of land (and serfs) in reward for service. The salary was not very large, it was often in kind (furs), and it was paid out rather irregularly; lands and serfs could be obtained only from the ruler, and most went to favourites, courtiers, or high dignitaries. Service, it is true, provided the nobleman with some extras, such as uniforms, sometimes lodgings, and—most important—greater accessibility to court, cultural life, and education for his children. Thus, he remained in service and took little direct interest in his estates and serfs.
Elizabeth's chief adviser, Pyotr Shuvalov (Shuvalov, Pyotr Andreyevich, Count), had the government grant exclusive privileges and monopolies to some of the nobility, hoping to involve them in the development of mining and manufacturing. Shuvalov also initiated a gradual loosening of state controls over economic life in general. He began to dismantle the system of internal tariffs, so that local trade could develop; he strengthened the landlord's control over all the resources on his estate; and he gave the nobles the right to distill alcohol.
At the same time, the landlords were obtaining still greater power over their serfs. The full weight of these powers fell on the household serfs, whose number increased because their masters used them as domestics and craftsmen in their town houses to make the Western-style objects with which they surrounded themselves. When noblemen established factories or secured estates in newly conquered border areas, they transferred their serfs to them without regard for family or village ties. The operation of most estates was, in the absence of the landlord, left to the peasants. This only perpetuated the traditional patterns of agriculture and made the modernization and improvement of agricultural productivity impossible.
Elizabeth's reign also witnessed Russian victories over Turkey that expanded and consolidated the empire's control in southwestern Ukraine, between the Bug (Buh) and Dniester rivers, and promoted settlement in Ukraine. Moreover, Russia was interfering more and more in the domestic politics of Poland and in the diplomatic game of central and western Europe. Elizabeth joined Austria, France, Sweden, and Saxony in a coalition against Prussia, under Frederick II, Great Britain, and Hanover; this led to Russia's involvement in the Seven Years' War. Russian armies were successful in conquering East Prussia and occupied Berlin briefly. The empress's death saved the king of Prussia from total disaster.
The reign of Catherine II (the Great; 1762–96)
Elizabeth too was childless, and the throne passed to the heir she had selected—her nephew the duke von Holstein-Gottorp, who became Peter III. Peter III made himself personally unpopular with St. Petersburg society; in addition, he allowed his entourage (mainly his Holstein relatives and German officers) to take control of the government. The regular hierarchy of officials—particularly the Senate—was pushed into the background; power passed into the hands of the emperor's favourites, while a modernized police, under the personal control of a general who was one of the emperor's minions, spread its net over the empire. The pro-Prussian foreign and military policy pursued by Peter III (who abruptly ended Russia's victorious involvement in the Seven Years' War) and his treatment of his wife, Catherine, provoked much resentment. As a result, the emperor lost all support in society. It was easy for Catherine, with the help of the senators, high officials, and officers of the guard regiments (led by her lover Grigory Orlov (Orlov, Grigory Grigoryevich, Graf) and his brothers), to overthrow Peter on June 28 (July 9, New Style), 1762. Thus began the long and important reign of Catherine II, whom her admiring contemporaries named “the Great.”
The daughter of a poor German princeling, Catherine had come to Russia at age 15 to be the bride of the heir presumptive, Peter. She matured in an atmosphere of intrigue and struggle for power. She developed her mind by reading contemporary literature, especially the works of the French Encyclopaedists and of German jurists and cameralists. When she seized power at age 33, she was intellectually and experientially prepared, as the more than 30 years of her reign were to show.
The historiography of Catherine's reign has been dominated by two approaches: a dramatization and romanticization of her personal life, which was indeed colourful for the number and variety of her lovers; and the viewpoint of 19th-century liberalism, which took literally her self-description as a “philosophe on the throne.” Marxist and Soviet historians, to the extent that they have dealt with her reign at all, see it primarily in terms of the pressures put on the state by the serf-owning nobility faced with the demands of an expanding market economy. In recent years, scholars have seen Catherine's government as working to further the formation of a modern civil society in which social classes and groups pursue their own interests rather than serving the needs of the state exclusively.