High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Russian Age of Enlightenment was a period in the eighteenth century in which the government began to actively encourage the proliferation of arts and sciences. This time gave birth to the first Russian university, library, theatre, public museum, and relatively independent press. Like other enlightened despots, Catherine the Great played a key role in fostering the arts, sciences, and education. The national Enlightenment differed from its Western European counterpart in that it promoted further Modernisation of all aspects of Russian life and was concerned with attacking the institution of serfdom in Russia. The Pugachev Rebellion and French Revolution may have shattered the illusions of rapid political change, but the intellectual climate in Russia was altered irrevocably. Russia`s place in the world was debated by Denis Fonvizin, Mikhail Shcherbatov, Andrey Bolotov, Ivan Boltin, and Alexander Radishchev; these discussions precipitated the divorce between the radical, Westernizing and conservative, Slavophile traditions of Russian thought.