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The Economic Content of The 1767 Nakaz of Catherine II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

Basil Dmytryshyn
Basil Dmytryshyn*
Affiliation:
Portland State College
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Extract

Among the enlightened despots of eighteenth-century Europe, Catherine II, Empress of Russia, occupies an outstanding place. In the voluminous literature devoted to her reign, some authors glorify her foreign policy, her wars and her conquests. Others praise her domestic rule and her administrative reorganization of Russia. There are many who laud her enlightenment, her relationship with the outstanding men of letters, and her contribution to and patronage of education. There are also those who condemn her treatment and extension of serfdom and who call her a “plagiarist and a hypocrite.” Finally, there are those who stress her questionable morals. And while there are numerous presentations of Catherine's economic policies, except for brief references, very few of the works on Catherine treat her economic ideas. These may be glimpsed in various of her writings but above all in her Nakaz or Instruction to the Legislative Commission of 1767-68.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Slavic and East European Review , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , February 1960 , pp. 1 - 9
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1960

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References

1 See for instance Michael, T. Florinsky, Russia. A History and An Interpretation (New York: Macmillan, 1953), I, 545–68Google Scholar.

2 A recent Soviet work on the history of Russian economic thought devotes only three pages to the Nakaz .Pashkov, A. I., ed., Istorija russkoj ekonomicheskoj mysli (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1955), pp. 458–61;Google Scholar see also Peter, I. Lyashchenko, History of the National Economy of Russia to the 1917 Revolution (New York: Macmillan, 1949), p. 301.Google Scholar

3 Reddaway, W. F., ed. Documents of Catherine the Great. The Correspondence with Voltaire and the Instruction of 1767 in the English Text of 1768 (Cambridge: University Press, 1931), p. xxiii Google Scholar.

4 Kliuchevsky, V. O., A History of Russia. Translated by Hogarth, C. J.(London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1931), V, 31.Google Scholar

5 Reddaway,op. cit., p. xxiv.Google Scholar

6 Catherine to Geoffrin, Mme., as cited by Bogoljubov, V., Novikov, N. I. i ego vremja, (Moscow: Sabashnikov, 1916), p. 18 Google Scholar. On Catherine's relations with Montesquieu, see Pypin, A. N., “Ekaterina II i Monteske,” Vestnik Evropy, XXXVIII, Bk. 5(May, 1903), 272–300 Google Scholar,

7 Art. 655. All italics are Catherine's unless otherwise noted,

8 Art. 606 and 297.

9 Art. 302 and 313.

10 Art. 295.

11 Art. 260-61.

12 Art. 296 and 425.

13 Art. 303-08.

14 Art . 311.

15 Art. 303.

16 Art . 299.

17 Art. 607

18 Art. 607.

19 Art. 425.

20 Art. 603.

21 Art. 604.

22 Art. 265.

23 Art. 266.

24 Art. 267.

25 Arts. 270, 269, and 271.

26 Art. 275.

27 Art. 272.

28 Art. 273.

29 Art. 274.

30 Arts. 280, 282, and 286.

31 Arts. 282-3.

32 Art. 313.

33 Arts. 299-301.

34 Art. 619.

35 Art. 314.

36 Art. 401.

37 Art. 613.

38 Art. 323

39 Art. 317.

40 Art. 319. While Catherine was critical of laws restricting trade in any form, such as laws barring finished goods and allowing only raw materials, at the same time she disapproved of the nobility's participation in trade. Arts. 326, 325, 359, 360, 330, 331, and 379.Google Scholar

41 Art. 590.

42 Art. 327

43 Art. 328.

44 Art. 326.

45 Art. 235. Though Catherine considered smuggling a crime she felt that smugglers ought not to be punished as criminals but that they should be obliged “to labour for the Publick, the Produce of which should be calculated, and settled according to the Value of that Sum, of which he intended to defraud the Revenue.”Google Scholar

46 Art. 321.

47 Arts. 614, 615, and 626.

48 Art. 616.

49 Arts. 618 and 620.

50 Art. 619.

51 Art. 576.

52 Art. 577.

53 Arts. 578, 554, and 555.

54 Art. 579.

55 Art. 33.

56 Art. 448.

57 Art. 454.

58 Art. 453.

59 Art. 39.

60 Art. 35.

61 Art . 589.

62 For a detailed study of the Commission, see Florovskij, A. V., “Iz istorii ekaterinskoj zakonodatelnoj kommissii 1767 g.Vopros o krepostnom prave,” Zapiski Imperatorskago Novorossijskago Vniversiteta Istoriko-filologicheskago Fakulteta (Odessa: 1910), Vypusk III, 319 pp.Google Scholar

63 Kliuchevsky, op. cit., V, 43.Google Scholar

64 “Preface to the French Edition of the General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money,” International Economic Papers. No. 4 (1954), p. 68.Google Scholar