24 Russian Expansion under Catherine the Greattheless, Catherine did not allow her advisers to dominate her. Potem-
kin would have preferred a more forward policy in the Caucasus as
well as the Balkans, but in the former Catherine clearly restrained
him. Bezborodko in his fragmentary memoirs expressed the opinion
that Catherine was committed to the "Greek project," but that is
clearly what he wanted to believe. Moreover, he used the account of
the "Greek project" to show what an important role he played in
Catherine's government.^3
For all Catherine's professed concern over Christians living under
Muslim rule, her actions in the Caucasus showed that she never al-
lowed that issue to force her along a course that was not chosen
first and foremost on the basis of Russia's best interests. She certainly
did not care for the Greeks in their own right. In her opinion, they
displayed an "innate tendency toward slavery and the utter frivolity
of their character."^4 In any event, many of the Balkan Christians
would become subjects of Austria, not Russia, if the Turks were ex-
pelled from Europe. That may reveal something about what Catherine
meant by the project. It may well have been used by her to entice
Joseph II into agreeing to the Austro-Russian alliance she so earnest-
ly desired as a replacement for the discredited "Northern System."
The naming of one of her grandsons Constantine and the occasional
employment of Greek motifs do not in themselves prove anything.
Apart from the fact that this was a Grecophile age in Europe, Cath-
erine was a shrewd manipulator of public opinion, as her correspond-
ence with various philosophes showed. Therefore, she may have used
the pseudo-Greek panoply to keep people guessing about her inten-
tions regarding the Porte without formally committing herself to
anything. Whatever she really thought about the project, she never
tried to put it into operation, not even in her next war with the Porte
(1787-1792). Although international pressure toward the end of the
war forced Russia to make peace on very moderate terms, even at the
start of the war Russia's objectives had no direct relation to the ex-
pulsion of the Turks from Europe.^5
While the significance of the "Greek project" has been exaggerated,
there is a different sense in which Russian motives for expansion dur-
ing this period were unlike those of other European countries. The
distinctiveness lies in the ambition to acquire territory that would
serve as the equivalent of the overseas colonies of western Europe.
These colonies would enrich Russia and perhaps serve also as a badge
of Russia's membership in the circle of great civilized powers. Of all
the areas of Russian expansion during Catherine's reign, the one in
which these considerations played an especially important role was