courts, neighborhood courts, church courts, the Main Magistrate court, social
estate courts, and the neighborhood council. Moscow neighborhoods maintained
order and stability without recourse to a single, unified urban administration or
identity.
Catherine II came to power in 1762 with a vision of urban governance far
different than this heady cocktail of neighborhood autonomies. With a 1768 Police
Statute she tried to enforce tighter supervision over neighborhoods and encoun-
tered significant resistance, sometimes violent, sometimes reasoned. Responses
from Moscow delegates to the Legislative Commission, for example, petitioned
to maintain neighborhood distinctness and privileges, even while they welcomed
initiatives for social services, public hygiene, and urban construction. Catherinian
reforms of the 1780s and 1790s, however, combined with economic and social
change, gradually created a more cohesive urban space. As we have seen, the 1775
reform and 1785 Charter to the Towns defined a single urban citizenry (divided
into groups generally according to wealth) and created governing institutions for
the entire city. Each capital and its Town Council was to be governed by an
appointedOberpolitsmeister.
Neighborhoods in Moscow became more amenable to the services of the
expanded and energized city government and policing from the 1770s on because
of other reforms and changes in the aftermath of the 1771–2 epidemic. As a result
of the 1775 reform, virtually all chanceries were abolished, putting neighborhoods
once proprietarily run by chanceries directly under city government. Furthermore,
the huge loss of population and subsequent influx of newcomers disrupted old
neighborhoods and traditions, making them more reliant on new institutions of
city government and policing. Finally, social and economic legislation, such as
1782 decrees allowing state peasants to enroll as merchants and gain social and
economic privileges, made more Muscovites more responsive to city government.
Administratively practices of neighborhood autonomy were being eroded and the
idea of city space and city identity as an autonomous status had been planted.
Spatially, Catherine II’s reforms also helped to promote the vision of Moscow as
a unified space. A key vision to reconstruct Moscow as an“enlightened metropolis”
was to break down its interior walls and unify urban space. Moats werefilled in,
streets widened and paved, and plans called for the wall surrounding Belyi gorod to
be razed to create a graceful boulevard (a long-enduring project launched under
Paul I). Alexander Martin identifies a“three-fold modernization”: Moscow was to
have the infrastructure of a modern European city (better policing, schools and
hospitals, paved streets with ample lighting); it was to have a culturally European-
ized middle class; it was to present a more modern image to the world. Indeed, by
the end of the century Moscow matched European capitals in some public works,
such as an aqueduct for fresh water inaugurated in 1779 (finished in 1804) and
street lights (powered by hempseed oil), whose number was mandated to double
from 3,500 to 7,000 by 1801. Public buildings and homes were constructed in
masonry in neoclassical style; street paving was improved.
Not as multi-ethnic perhaps as St. Petersburg, where foreign diplomats and
merchants clustered around the court and trading center, Moscow’s population by
Towns, Townsmen, and Urban Reform 387