They were wrong.
Catherine moved quickly to consolidate her power after taking the throne. She studied policy and reached out to consultants and political actors who would both aid her and prove trustworthy. She ruled with a lighter touch, perhaps, than her husband, but she was certainly no push-over. Alexander writes that "Her style of governance was cautiously consultative, pragmatic, and 'hands-on,' with a Germanic sense of duty and strong aversion to wasting time."
She had absolute power, but she acted with a certain reserve, at least initially, which belied the fact that she would eventually become known in history as a toughened despot. Perhaps this notion of Catherine the Great as a despot was introduced due to her later years when she seemed to indicate an unwillingness to allow her son to ascend the throne, or perhaps it is because she was never committed to helping to improve the condition of the masses. But initially, at least, Catherine was a reserved but firm ruler.
Her first major accomplishments consisted of foreign policy efforts. From the very beginning, she set out to establish Russia as a great power by working with other European nations in both a military and a consultative capacity. For example, Russia allied with Prussia in 1764, just a short time after she had taken the throne, to intervene in a Polish conflict with Lithuania. This effort was designed to establish Poland as an outpost of the Russian state. Catherine desired to extend Russian territorial influence as well as cultural, economic, and political influence, and the move to annex Poland showed Catherine willing to use force in an interventionist manner in order to promote the state's interests.
Catherine also reached out to Europe in a number of capacities that were diplomatic rather than military. Russia mediated the end of the war of Bavarian Succession, and formed an alliance with Austria against the Ottoman Empire. As Alexander points out "Catherine engineered the Armed Neutrality of 1781, a league of northern naval powers to oppose British infringement of the commercial rights of neutrals amid the conflicts ending the American Revolution."
In terms of political culture, Catherine also showed herself to be a relatively forward thinker. Alexander claims that "Drawing on the published advice of German cameralist thinkers and corresponding regularly with Voltaire, Diderot, Grimm, and other philosophers, she promoted administrative efficiency and uniformity, economic advance and fiscal growth, and 'enlightenment' through expanded educational facilities, cultural activities, and religious tolerance."
While she never indicated any expression of interest in enhancing the plight of the poor, at least publicly, she "privately despised" serfdom even as she knew that "it could not be easily changed."
The Empress was the most educated and intellectual of all Russian rulers. She founded a society whose sole purpose was to translate books into Russian. She established the Hermitage and began the great national collections of art that endow it today. She established theatres festivals and other cultural events where Russians could gather in a sprit of equality and experience the growth of culture.
Of course, all was not perfect. Specifically, in 1772 and 1773, a Kossack uprising led by Emelian Pugachev was on its way to reaching Moscow, while the Russian army was tied up in a conflict with the Ottoman Empire. Fortunately, the uprising was defeated when Pugachev was captured and executed, but the fact that people had rallied against her rule, and more importantly had used her ex-husband's name as a rallying point, showed that her concentration on the world of intellect and international prestige had failed to move the masses to love her. This lesson stayed with her throughout her reign, and she was always somewhat weary of the masses.
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