City reform of Catherine II: plan, process of realization, and results (on materials of the central Russian provinces)

The article is devoted to the plan, realization, and results of city reform during the reign by Catherine II. Thanks to efforts of the empress and her high-level bureaucrats, the fortified city was replaced with the modern multifunctional type of the residential location. In the course of reform, the main functions of the city were defined and urban infrastructure was created to implement the reform. These structures substantially exist to this very day and still perform the tasks which were prescribed to them in the second half of the XVIII century. The author suggests that the city reform deserves special attention among all reforms of Catherine the Great, because the reform was directed not to ordering of estates, but to formation of the new type of city which still exists. The author pays special attention to foundation and development the permanent theater in Moscow, because it was connected with the Moscow's status of the capital city. He also addresses to such problems as personal influence of the head of the region on the course of reform; planning and results of reform, its program statements, and the main stages of their realization; administrative system and its qualities; creation of the regular city; evolution of urban planning and development; organization of main urban services (police, firefighters, hospitals, schools); reforming of penitentiary system; role of a city as a center of public leisure and culture, and to some other subjects.