She took power after a conspiracy deposed her husband, Peter III (1728–1762), and her reign saw the high point of the Russian nobility. Peter III, under pressure from the nobility, had already augmented the authority of the great landed proprietors over their muzhiks and serfs. In spite of the duties imposed on the nobles by the first "modernizer" of Russia, Tsar Peter I (1672–1725), and despite Catherine's friendships with the western European thinkers of the Enlightenment, Catherine found it impractical to improve the lot of her poorest subjects, who continued to suffer (for example) military conscription. The distinctions between peasant rights on votchina and pomestie estates virtually disappeared in law as well as in practise during her reign.