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Catherine’s Liberation of the Greeks: High-Minded Discourse and Everyday Realities
Emancipation of the Greeks became for Catherine an important, although not the only, aspect of her southern policy, along with questions about the Turkish threat, conquest of the Crimea, and Turkish penetration of the Mediterranean «concert of powers». During the first two decades of her reign, the Greek idea underwent a serious transformation in the Mediterranean policy of Catherine II. Between 1762 and the early 1770s Russia offered help to Greek co-religionists so that they could create their own independent state. The change in relations with the Greeks was not only the product of frustrated possibilities of cooperation. From 1771 the image of the «unenlightened» Greeks, in contrast to the image of the «Spartans,» became more significant, it became difficult to trust the Greeks to choose independently their «liberty,» their manner of rule or their ruler. By the early 1780s the Russian Empress decided to grant Greeks (with Austrian help) their emancipation from the Turks, almost without taking into account the Greeks themselves.
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