Catherine the Great - Empress and Autocrat of 18th Century Russia

Empress Catherine II of Russia (1729-86), commonly known as Catherine the Great, was one of Russia's greatest and most energetic rulers. Following in the footsteps of her predecessor Peter I (Peter the Great), she pursued the Westernization and territorial expansion of Russia.

Born into a German royal family, she married the heir to the Russian throne, the future Peter III. As an intelligent and energetic woman, she wanted to be accepted into her adopted land of Russia and so learned its history and language.

After Peter III became an unpopular ruler, was forced to abdicate and a few days later was murdered, Catherine became the ruler (Empress) of Russia.

In 1767 Catherine issued a famous edict known as the "Instruction" in which she advocated social and economic reforms. However, she also insisted in it that Russia's vast territory needed a strong central government and that she as Empress should, therefore, have absolute power.

As she stated in the "Instruction": "The sovereign is absolute; for, in a state whose expanse is so vast, there can be no other appropriate authority except that which is concentrated in him."

She further stated in the "Instruction" that "the landlords' serfs and peasants... owe their landlords proper submission and absolute obedience in all matters, according to the laws that have been enacted from time immemorial by the autocratic forefathers of Her Imperial Majesty... and which provide that all persons who dare to incite serfs and peasants to disobey their landlords shall be arrested and... punished forthwith as disturbers of the public tranquillity, according to the laws and without leniency." (A Source Book for Russian History, G. Vernadsky, trans. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972).

In her court at St. Petersburg, she promoted the culture and ideas of Western European countries, such as France, England and Italy. She patronized Italian opera and fine arts, French literature, philosophy and etiquette, and English ideas.

She built sumptuous palaces and other buildings in her capital, St Petersburg, mostly designed by foreign architects that she admired. One of these buildings, the Hermitage, was built to house her collection of magnificent European art treasures and it survives to this day as one of the world's greatest art museums.

She corresponded with French writers and Enlightenment philosophers (philosophes), such as Voltaire. She attempted to be, like Frederick the Great of Prussia, an "enlightened despot", and to bring in social reforms inspired by Locke, Montesquieu and Beccaria. She drew up of a new legal code, built schools (though these were to be mostly for the children of the aristocracy), constructed hospitals, promoted women's education, and introduced smallpox vaccination.

She encouraged Russian trade, industry and the exploitation of the country's natural resources in order to increase the country's wealth.

At the same time, in 1774-75 she faced and suppressed a popular rebellion led by the Cossack Pugachov. She decided that she needed the support of the nobility in order to control the country. To this end she gave up any Enlightenment ideas of abolishing serfdom in Russia and, instead, signed a Charter to the Nobility actually allowing the nobles to increase the number of serfs that they could own, and giving the nobles a number of further generous privileges to win their support.

Catherine tried her utmost to win glory and power for Russia. Under Catherine's leadership, Russia's armed forces seized Byelorussia (modern-day Belarus) from Poland (in and after 1772), the Crimea and other parts of Turkey (1774; 1792), and the Baltic territory of Courland from Sweden (1790).

In the latter part of her reign, Catherine, like many other sovereigns of Europe, became frightened by the excesses of the French Revolution, such as its execution of King Louis XVI of France, and she turned her back on many of the Enlightenment ideas that she had formerly wished to espouse. She became more conservative, ceased trying to be an "enlightened despot" and instead she became a pragmatic autocrat.

On her death bed, Catherine the Great is reported to have said: "I shall be an autocrat: that's my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that's His."

When Catherine died, Russia's territories had greatly expanded, having acquired the Crimea and the northern shore of the Black Sea, as well as land that is in today's Ukraine, Belarus, Poland and Lithuania.

Some social reforms had, it is true, occurred; but the life, rights and status of the serfs -- the great majority of Russia's population -- had greatly worsened. Her policy of imitating the culture of Western Europe led to even further widening of the gap between the privileged ruling classes and the millions of down-trodden peasants.

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The Help Desk in the 21st Century

Where do you go if you have a problem with your satellite television or broadband service provider? Whom do you call if your have a problem with your computer's installation system or if your printer just died on you before a major presentation? Who is the one person who can quickly help you stop that whining noise and smoke that your lap top is generating right in the middle of the conference call you are having with your boss? If you are like me, the auto dial function on your telephone will have the number of your friendly global help desk! According to me, the help desk is the best invention of man in the twenty first century. The computer and all the electronic gadgets are over hyped. Technology changes much before it becomes affordable in the first place. And gadgets and gizmos are flooding the marketplace like never before. If there is anything at all that has remained consistent through all the tumult, it has been the ubiquitous help desk.

Its only over the last 10 years that the Help Desk, as we know it today, has become an important component in the corporation. Before that time corporations were not geared up to offer a streamlined customer service. Customers would have to struggle through detailed instruction unaided, or make numerous calls to the "Customer Service" Department.

The concept of the help desk started off as a service offering, provided by makers of new IT products and services to clients, who were still unfamiliar with the new age technology. But as users have gotten more savvy, the products and services too have become even more complex. Which makes the role of the help desk even more important. Take Windows itself. This simple operating system started off as Windows 1.0. It grew over the years to become Windows 3.0, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, 97, 2000 and now XP. Obviously, each new version has seen the features increase. And each passing year has seen more users start taking up desktop computing as a real option.

This has only meant more work for the people at the Microsoft help desk. As the versions increased and the features expanded, the conventional help desk too expanded to become much more than a mere service offering. Software products and services almost being on par made the quality of the after sales service a critical component in the competitive marketplace. And the help desk, being at the forefront of this arena, has had to adapt and evolve.

So, the typical help desk of today is staffed not just with people who can familiarize you with products and their features, but also specialist engineers and technicians who can troubleshoot your problems and provide you with the correct solution, often within the duration of a simple telephone call. And since the business demands skilled professionals who come with an innate understanding of technology, better prospects have emerged for IT professionals.

In fact, in keeping with the global outsourcing trend, most help desk jobs have moved to countries like India and China where there is no shortage of skilled manpower, and the quality of the professionals is assured. The beneficial cost structures have also contributed to this trend. For like I mentioned earlier, the products may evolve and newer versions may come up. But unless the help desk remains an integral part of the service offering, there will be no exponential increase of market share.

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My Century (New York Review Books Classics)

My Century (New York Review Books Classics) Review

Andre Malraux wrote that only three books -- Robinson Crusoe, Don Quixote and The Idiot--retained their truth for those who had seen prisons and concentration camps (see: Les Noys de l'Altenburg (Paris 1948)). It's an odd remark--what did he mean, "seen"? Suffered in? Or watched newsreel footage on the History Channel? One cannot escape the conviction that Malraux is trying to hype the aroma of glamour around his own life.

But this is a distraction. The question is: I wonder what he thinks of the extraordinary array of "witness literature" from Europe beginning, perhaps, with Dostoevsky's "House of the Dead" and ending (one may hope?) with Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipelago."

In this chorus, Aleksander Wat's "My Century" stands as a luminous example. Wat was a Pole: Jewish by background but at last a convert to Christianity. He was a poet and a "literary person" before and after World War II. Along the way, he spent time in 13 (or was it 14?) different prisons, all simply for being who he was."

His "memoir" is not precisely something he "wrote." Wat spent the year 1964-5 in Berkeley. There he fell in with Czeslaw Milosz, a great poet in his own right. Largely with the encouragement of Milosz, he "dictated" his story in a series of interviews which have been somewhat recast for this book. It's just as harrowing as you would expect it to be it has its uplifting side, driven by Wat's amazing inner resouurces: one thing about a good education, it gives you stuff to think about in Prison. And even at the worst, his sense of humor does not fail him. He recounts the story of the citizens of Bukhara, who surrendered to Ghengis Khan--only to have Ghengis Khan order their massacre. As Ghengis Khan explained to the elders:

"You must have sinned greatly against God if he sent Ghengis Khan down on you!"

Aside from Wat's own story, the NYRB edition includes an astonishing narrative by his wife, recounting a particularly dreadful chapter in her own prison years.

There is a promising-looking biography by Tomas Venclova, but I haven't read it. Wat died in 1967, I believe (though I can't seem to pin this down) a suicide.

My Century (New York Review Books Classics) Overview

Aleksander Wat's memoirs provide a powerful and moving account of life in Eastern Europe in the devastating 20th century. The questions Wat raises here were put to him by fellow Pole and poet Czeslaw Milosz. Wat describes a vanished world of artistic innovation and political rebellion, but the heart of the book is Wat's encounter with evil in the Soviet camps and his subsequent religious conversion. My Century is a spiritual testimony - admirable, moving, and strong.

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