Catherine the great and the impact she made to the world

Catherine the great
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Catherine the great and the impact she made to the world
Her background
Catherine the Great was born in 1729 in Stettin. She was the longest serving female leader of Soviet Union. She started ruling when her husband was assassinated. She later died in 1796. During her tenure, Russia grew marvelously and this made her to be accorded recognition and was seen as one of the Europe great powers. In her ruling, she sought advice from her favorites i.e. Gregory Potemkin and Orlov and was also assisted by the most successful generals. Catherine the great ruled at a time when Soviet Union was growing rapidly through diplomacy and conquest.
During her reign, she was ambitious and had good plans on foreign and domestic affairs. During her early years of ruling, she worked hard to secure her position because she was of the view that many influential individuals thought her as a usurper. She was also aware that she had to win the goodwill of the military and the nobles so that to avoid being overthrown by a coup. She however took every opportunity to make peace with the nobles and the militants while she hit sharply at the ones who wanted to substitute her with her son, Paul who was seen as the right ruler. Catherine had the view that for Russia to excel in domestic affairs it needed to be peaceful and this peace needed a foreign policy which was cautious and this led her to appoint Nikita Panin to be the head of foreign affairs.
Her impact to the Russian empire and the rest of the world
She expanded borders of Russia to the black sea and central Europe. She also enhanced westernization and civilization. She however valued education and made it compulsory and she was viewed as valuing the elites very much. She was so much attached to making Russia’s educational facilities very strong and she gave serious thoughts to many educational plans and it is in 1786 she adopted a plan of offering educational system which was large scale. Unfortunately, she did not make it to execute the plan fully as she later died. Even though she did not carry out the plan fully, she made an improvement because the number of basic and secondary schools went high during her reign. Her successor’s carried out the parts of her plan that had remained. She valued philosophies of Western Europe and culture close to her and wanted to be near like- minded people. She had a belief that a new Russia would be created by availing European education to the children of Russia. However, she believed that education could make a change in the hearts and minds of people of Russia and make them come out of backwardness. She therefore ensured that individuals were developed morally and intellectually and this was by availing them with knowledge and skills and by promoting civic responsibility.
In addition, the fact that Catherine valued education very much made her to appoint Ivan Betskoy to be her advisor on matters related to education. Ivan gathered information about education facilities from Russia and other neighboring countries. She set up a commission to debate on educational matters and she sought advice from educational pioneers in Britain. In 1764, she asked Dr. Dumaresq to visit Russia and she appointed him to be part of the commission on education matters. This commission was engaged with the task of studying the reforms which were installed by the earlier leaders. This commission recommended the creation of a system of education which was general from children of 5 to 18 years but the serfs were not included. These recommendations were not taken seriously because the commission was called off. In 1765, Dumaresq wrote to his learned friend in Britain and asked for advice. According to Dr. Brown, education in a democratic country must be under the control of the state and be based on a...