1E - Foreign affairs and wars: Sweden
Catherine defended Russia's Baltic position, established control on the Black Sea and helped destroy the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth through partition. Comparing these theatres shows how military force, diplomacy and political opportunity produced different kinds of success.
Security, access and European influence
Catherine inherited Peter's Baltic gains and Russia's established place in European diplomacy. She wanted to protect those gains, make the southern frontier more secure, gain better access to the Black Sea and maintain influence in Poland. Prestige mattered too: success abroad could demonstrate the worth of a ruler who had seized the throne in a coup.
Objectives developed rather than remaining a single fixed plan from 1762. Nikita Panin sought a northern diplomatic system centred on Russia and other northern powers. Later cooperation with Austria and Potemkin's southern ambitions strengthened the focus on the Ottoman frontier. Maintaining a weak, dependent Poland could initially serve Russia better than dividing it with competitors. Partition became a way of responding to changing pressures, not necessarily Catherine's original preferred result.
The army, navy, diplomacy and court advisers all mattered. Russia's resources allowed campaigning in different theatres, but war imposed heavy costs in revenue and recruits. Success depended partly on opponents' weaknesses and on whether other European powers accepted the settlement. Therefore distinguish Catherine's aims, the achievements of her commanders and the circumstances making gains possible.
The Ottoman war and the settlement of 1774
Russian intervention in Poland helped widen tensions with the Ottoman Empire, which declared war in 1768. The conflict of 1768–1774 involved land campaigns around the Danube and the northern Black Sea, as well as a Russian naval expedition from the Baltic into the Mediterranean. Rumyantsev's victories at Larga and Kagul in 1770 strengthened Russia's position on land. At Chesme in the same year, the Russian fleet destroyed much of the Ottoman fleet.
These successes illustrated Russia's ability to project force beyond its immediate borders. They were expensive and did not mean that every ambitious scheme succeeded. Attempts to generate a sustained Greek rising against Ottoman rule fell short, and the government simultaneously faced Pugachev's revolt. Military strength had to be converted into an acceptable peace rather than unlimited conquest.
The Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca in 1774 gave Russia important Black Sea positions, including Kerch and Yenikale, and commercial and navigation advantages. It declared the Crimean Khanate politically independent of Ottoman rule, while preserving the sultan's religious role. The treaty did not annex the Crimea to Russia. Separating the khanate from Ottoman political control created an opening for growing Russian influence.
The agreement also offered Russia a basis for diplomatic representations concerning Christian religious interests. Avoid turning that into an uncontested grant to rule or protect every Orthodox subject of the Ottoman Empire. The scope and later use of those provisions became matters of interpretation and dispute. The strongest immediate success lay in the strategic and commercial gains around the Black Sea.
Annexing and securing the Crimea
Nominal independence did not bring stability to the Crimea. Russia intervened in its politics and supported Shahin Giray as khan, while resistance and Ottoman influence complicated his position. Potemkin argued for direct annexation. Catherine annexed the peninsula in 1783, ending the khanate's political existence and incorporating its population into the empire.
Annexation gave Russia a more secure base on the Black Sea. Potemkin directed development of southern settlements, ports and the Black Sea Fleet, including the naval base at Sevastopol. These arrangements linked military access, settlement and commerce. They also imposed a new imperial order on Crimean Tatars; strategic success for Russia could mean lost independence and insecurity for the conquered population.
The Ottoman Empire went to war again in 1787, seeking to reverse Russian gains. Russia fought with Austria as an ally, though Austrian participation did not produce identical successes. Russian commanders achieved victories including Suvorov's at Rymnik in 1789 and the capture of Izmail in 1790. The Treaty of Jassy in 1792 confirmed Russia's possession of the Crimea and moved the frontier west to the Dniester.
The outcome was a major contrast with 1739, when Russia could not secure the Crimea or an effective Black Sea fleet. Yet maximal ambitions went further than the settlement. Catherine and Joseph II discussed a Greek Project envisaging a transformed Ottoman order, but Constantinople was not conquered and a restored Byzantine empire was not created. Strategic gains were substantial even though these larger plans failed to materialise.
Defending the Baltic against Sweden
Gustav III of Sweden attacked Russia in 1788 while Russian forces were engaged against the Ottoman Empire. Sweden hoped to exploit that commitment, challenge Russian influence and recover its position in the Baltic. The conflict threatened the approaches to St Petersburg and forced Catherine to divide military and naval attention.
Fighting on land in Finland and at sea produced an uneven record. The Russian navy checked the Swedish advance at Hogland in 1788, but Sweden won a major victory at Svensksund in 1790. Such reverses prevent a description of the war as an uninterrupted Russian military triumph. Sweden also faced internal opposition and could not translate its naval success into the territorial recovery it sought.
The Peace of Värälä in 1790 restored peace without territorial changes. Russia retained its Baltic possessions and protected St Petersburg, but obtained no new Swedish territory. The war was therefore a defensive strategic success with considerable costs. It also disrupted plans to send a Baltic fleet to the Mediterranean during the Ottoman war. Success in one theatre had to be considered against the opportunity costs imposed on another.
This comparison clarifies why a treaty without gains can still represent success. If the objective is to defend existing possessions against an attacker, preserving them matters. If the criterion is expansion, however, the Swedish war was much less successful than the southern wars.
From Polish influence to partition
Catherine helped secure the election of Stanisław August Poniatowski as king in 1764. Russian pressure, exercised through troops, diplomats and sympathetic Polish elites, sought to preserve influence over the Commonwealth. Intervention concerning religious dissidents and the political constitution provoked resistance, including the Confederation of Bar from 1768. Polish divisions provided opportunities, but Russian coercion was an active cause of the crisis.
The First Partition of 1772 divided territory between Russia, Prussia and Austria. It helped manage competition among those powers as Russian victories against the Ottomans disturbed the regional balance. Russia gained eastern lands, while Prussia and Austria obtained compensation and strategic advantages. Catherine achieved territorial gains but shared the Commonwealth with rivals rather than keeping it wholly within Russia's influence.
Polish reformers then sought to strengthen the state. The Constitution of 3 May 1791 challenged the political arrangements through which Russia maintained control. Catherine supported conservative magnates in the Targowica Confederation and invaded in 1792, presenting intervention as the defence of the existing order. The Second Partition of 1793 involved Russia and Prussia; Austria took no share on this occasion.
Kościuszko's uprising in 1794 resisted foreign domination. Russian and Prussian forces defeated it; Suvorov's assault on Praga, near Warsaw, was accompanied by a massacre of civilians. In the Third Partition of 1795 Russia, Prussia and Austria divided the remaining territory. The Commonwealth ceased to exist as an independent state, and Poniatowski abdicated.
Partition enlarged Russia and removed an independent neighbour that might escape its control. It also strengthened rival partitioning powers and brought diverse, resistant populations under Russian rule. Russia's gains were not merely an enlightened restoration of order: they were achieved through coercion and the destruction of another state's sovereignty.
Uneven victories and lasting expansion
Catherine's strongest achievements were lasting ones: control of the Crimea, a Black Sea naval position and extensive western territories. These altered Russia's strategic situation more durably than the conquests returned by Peter III in 1762. The Swedish settlement preserved existing strength rather than expanding it.
For a worked judgement, compare the claim that Catherine achieved all her foreign-policy aims with the results. Jassy and the partitions provide strong evidence of security, access and increased territory. Svensksund, the abandoned Greek Project and the need to give competitors shares of Poland qualify an unlimited-success argument. Costs in lives, money and resistance also matter, even if they do not cancel strategic gains.
A defensible conclusion is that Catherine greatly expanded Russia's power and secured important practical objectives, especially in the south. She did so through a changing mixture of military capability, advisers' plans, diplomacy and opportunities created by opponents' crises. She could not dictate every European outcome or accomplish every maximal ambition. Judging achievement therefore requires both the extent of the gains and the limits of control.
Catherine's Baltic policy defended earlier gains, her southern policy created new maritime strength, and her Polish policy moved from influence to annexation through partition. Each requires its own measure of success.