26 Russian Expansion under Catherine the Greatwas regarded with widespread loathing. By the second half of the
eighteenth century, the westernization of the elite was an accomplished
fact, whether it took the form of a superficial appropriation of status
symbols or a deeper understanding of the intellectual heritage. Even
those who yearned for the restoration of an idealized Muscovite past
were themselves schooled in Western ways. Prince Michael Shcherbatov,
the foremost reactionary of Catherine's reign, was fluent in French
and wrote his first political treatise in that language. Most of the Rus-
sian elite favored not a rejection of the West but the recognition that
their country had attained, or was capable of attaining in the near
future, a level of achievement in the marshaling of human resources
equal to that of the West. Russians were proud that St. Petersburg
was, in their eyes, as impressive a city as any other European capital,
that Russians produced artistic and scholarly works that met western
standards, and that the empire had grown in size and military strength.
One man who epitomized Russian intellectual accomplishments, the
scientist-poet-historian Michael Lomonosov, viewed Russia's interna-
tional achievements with pride and optimism. He determined that
there were three criteria for a state's prosperity: internal peace, the
defeat of enemies, and international commerce. He considered Rus-
sia to be extremely successful in the first two categories but behind
western Europe in the last because of its lack of a navy prior to the
reign of Peter the Great. Significantly, Lomonosov credited Peter's
military reforms with establishing Russia as a great power and in so
doing proving that Russia was not a colony of western Europe. The
remaining task was to develop Russia's trade with Asia and thereby
bring success in the third component of national well-being. His spe-
cific plan called for trade with China, Japan, India, and North Amer-
ica by a sea route across the Arctic and Pacific and the colonization
of parts of the north Asian coast. One indication of Lomonosov's
admiration for Western imperialism can be seen in his argument for
the feasibility of his plan on the grounds that the British coped with
similar difficulties in their trade with Hudson's Bay.^7
There was good reason for the Russian elite to be interested in
western Europe's overseas empires. Contemporary international de-
velopments and some of the most influential literature of the En-
lightenment focused attention on colonial affairs. In the second half
of the eighteenth century, Britain won victories in India over the
French and Dutch as well as several Indian princes and established
a dominant position in Bengal. The financial and administrative dif-
ficulties of the British East India Company and the loss of the thir-
teen North American colonies do not seem to have raised doubts in