History of Russia deficit required borrowing, primarily from Amsterdam; five percent of the budget was allocated to debt payments. Paper money was issued to pay for expensive wars, thus causing inflation. For its spending, Russia obtained a large and glorious army, a very large and complex bureaucracy, and a splendid court that rivaled Paris and London. However, the government was living far beyond its means, and 18th-century Russia remained "a poor, backward, overwhelmingly agricultural, and illiterate country." Peter I was succeeded by his second wife, Catherine I (1725–1727), who was merely a figurehead for a powerful group of high officials, then by his
Catherine Alekseyevna of Russia him on the throne. Catherine Alekseyevna seems to have been supportive of Westernized reforms of Russia; while Russian princesses were expected to live in seclusion and screen completely from being seen by men, she was evidently seen in public in 1683, as a witness from that year reported how she did not wear the traditional clothes, but dressed in Polish costume and did not wear her hair in traditional braids. In 1698, Catherine was interrogated for potential involvement in the Streltsy Uprising on the tsar Peter the Great, but released after it had been established that she had nothing to