In the 18th-century, the Cossacks were a warrior-based, semi-nomadic people originating in eastern Ukraine and southern Russia, formed of different groups—including the Don Cossacks and Zaporizhzhia Cossacks—with their own territorial organizations and dynamic agreements. By the 18th century, Russia’s expansionist tendencies relied on Cossack loyalty, as these groups effectively maintained key buffer zones on the Empires borders. Russia’s increase in size and power into Cossack areas caused conflicts through that century, as shown in Massie’s discussion of the Pugachev rebellion. His book uses the Cossack identity to explore the huge and nebulous nature of the Russian Empire under Catherine. By the end of the 18th century, Cossacks were effectively treated as a military class in Imperial Russia who received land and grants from the state in return for the feudal military service of male family members.

Founded in the 1680s by Peter the Great, the Russian Imperial Guards became elite bodyguard units for the imperial ruler and their family. Initially they were created as “play regiments,” for war games.

The Nakaz, or Instruction of Catherine the Great was a statement of legal principles published in 1767 as a guide to governance for her Legislative Commission (the authority which wrote and enacted laws in Imperial Russia). Heavily influenced by Enlightenment thinkers such as Diderot and Montesquieu, the Nakaz presented a paternalistic ideal of monarchy and was liberal in its ideals and principles, promoting the legal equality of all free men and increased civic cohesion. Massie uses this document, especially its drafting process, to reveal Catherine’s political beliefs and aims shortly after succeeding to the throne. He shows how, in practice, this document was a pragmatic compromise between Catherine and her more conservative advisors, and part of Catherine’s trajectory from reformist ideals to a more conservative retrenchment later in life. Despite this, Massie credits it as a “remarkable” achievement, which stimulated the political debate “of ideas that had never before publicly been discussed in Russia” (361).