Catherine the Great and the Nakaz

Catherine II, a German princess who seized the Russian throne from her husband Peter III in a 1762 coup, cultivated an image as an enlightened empress. She corresponded with Voltaire, bought Diderot's library in 1765 while letting him keep it and paying him as its librarian, and hosted him in St Petersburg in 1773 to 1774. In 1767 she summoned a Legislative Commission of deputies from many social groups, except serfs on private estates, to draft a new law code, guided by her Instruction, or Nakaz.

The Nakaz borrowed heavily from Montesquieu and Beccaria, condemning torture, favoring equality before the law and limiting the death penalty, and the French government banned its publication in France as too liberal. Yet the commission produced no code and was suspended in 1768 when war broke out with the Ottoman Empire. Catherine also founded the Smolny Institute for girls in 1764 and expanded schooling. Historians debate whether the commission was a sincere reform effort or an exercise in information-gathering and image-making.