Manifesto extending noble liberties

On 14 November 1773, Catherine the Great issued the manifesto titled "On granting freedom and liberty to the entire Russian nobility," reaffirming and expanding the rights first granted under Peter III's 1762 Manifesto on the Freedom of the Nobility. This decree confirmed the Russian nobility's exemption from obligatory state or military service, a privilege that had previously bound noble families to the crown through generations of compulsory service dating back to Peter the Great.

The timing of this manifesto — issued amid the early upheaval of the Pugachev Rebellion, a massive peasant and Cossack uprising that threatened the social order — reflects Catherine's strategic dependence on noble loyalty to maintain stability. By further securing and confirming aristocratic privilege, she sought to bind the nobility more closely to her regime at a moment when the foundations of serfdom and noble authority were under direct challenge from below.

This manifesto exemplifies the central paradox of Catherine's reign: while she corresponded with Enlightenment philosophers and spoke the language of reform and liberty, her policies concretely consolidated the power and privileges of the noble elite at the expense of the peasantry, whose bondage in serfdom deepened during her rule. The 1773 manifesto laid crucial groundwork for the more comprehensive Charter to the Nobility she would issue in 1785, cementing noble privilege as a defining feature of imperial Russian society until the 19th century.