Was Catherine the Great really an enlightened ruler?

In part. Catherine the Great read the Enlightenment philosophers, protected one of them, and tried to put their ideas into law, but she kept serfdom in place and punished a writer who criticised it. Historians often include her among the enlightened despots, rulers who tried to govern by reason while keeping absolute power.

She came to the throne by force. Born a German princess, Catherine married Peter, a grandson of Peter the Great, at 16. Peter became emperor in 1762 and was deposed seven months later, and Catherine overthrew him in a coup d'état. Her reign of over 34 years saw new cities, universities and theatres founded.

The Enlightenment side is real. When France threatened to stop publication of the Encyclopédie, she proposed that Diderot finish it in Russia under her protection. In 1766 she called a Grand Commission at Moscow of 652 members of all classes, including peasants. She frankly admitted that her instructions to it pillaged Western philosophers, especially Montesquieu and Beccaria. But as democratic principles frightened her advisors, she held back, and after more than 200 sittings the Commission dissolved without getting beyond theory.

She was also willing to take a personal risk. She had herself inoculated against smallpox, a method then considered controversial, and by 1800 about 2 million people in the empire had been inoculated.

On serfs, though, the story turns. The economy depended on serfdom, and under her landowners gained the power to sentence serfs to hard labour in Siberia. She already knew what a serf revolt looked like: Pugachev, a rebel claiming to be her dead husband, had promised to end serfdom before his rising was crushed in 1774. In 1790, when Alexander Radishchev warned of new uprisings, she had his book burned and him exiled to Siberia.