Catherine
the Great – Portrait of a Woman 1729-1796. by Robert K. Massie. Random House,
NY, 1911. Read on Kindle.
This
review was written on August 10th 2012
Elizabeth,
Empress of Russia, was the eldest surviving daughter of
 |
| Peter the Great |
Peter I (Peter the
Great), Emperor of Russia. Whilst emperor, Peter undertook extensive reforms in
overcoming the opposition of the aristocracy, in creating a navy on the Baltic
and reorganising the army. He secularised the schools and administered greater
control over the Orthodox Church. He introduced new administrative and
territorial divisions of the country. Amongst many other reforms he
modernised the Russian alphabet, introduced the Julian calendar and established
the first Russian newspaper. Although, clearly a forward thinker, he could be
cruel and harsh in dealing with his
subjects. He died in 1725 without
nominating an heir.
 |
| Elizabeth, Empress of Russia |
Peter’s
daughter Elizabeth’s claim to the throne was disputed (her parents were
unmarried when she was born) so it took almost twenty years for her to become
the supreme ruler of Russia. She was elected Empress in 1743, after deposing
the infant Emperor Ivan the Fourth and his mother Anna Leopoldov who was acting
as Regent. Elizabeth never married nor had any children so in order to secure
the throne she invited Ekaterina Alekseyevn from the German State of Holstein
(who had close family ties), and her cousin Peter to Petrograd where they
married as young as 14 or 15 as Grand Duke and Duchess of Russia.
 |
| Peter III |
 |
| Catherine the Great |
Catherine
was noted for her liberal outlook, her interest in self-education and her warm
and informal personality. She added fluent Russian and French to her native
German. From the early years of her reign she kept in close touch with
Voltaire, Diderot, Grimm and other European authors connected with the 18th century Enlightenment.
During
Catherine’s early years as Empress she showed a liberal approach to her
subjects by abolishing torture and by reducing the number of executions to a
very low level. In her second year she founded a College School of Medicine.
She soon established hospitals in every province and medical facilities in
every county including an institution for unwanted babies. She was the first to
accept vaccination for smallpox from a doctor she invited from Scotland and
encouraged its widespread use among her subjects.
Her
very liberal approach was exemplified in the publication of the Nakaz which she
wrote embodying her liberal approach
towards government and towards the people.
But after the unexpected and serious rebellion by Pugachev, the Cossacks and
southern Russians ten years after her elevation, which threatened the stability
of government, she adopted a less liberal approach, stating that this would be
necessary until the population became more educated. At no time was she able to
overcome the resistance of the nobility and big landowners in an effort to
improve the lot of the 10 million serfs in the country.
The
Empress was averse to war in Europe although she managed to carve up Poland,
sharing it with Austria and with Fredric of Prussia. Poland was to wait 120
more years to the first great war of 1914-1918 before she became a separate
nation again. She also had two successful wars against the Turks. Grigory Potemkin was the leading administrator Catherine had during her later years as Empress.
He was her most trusted representative and the real power in the southern part
of the country. He was responsible for the success of the two Turkish wars and
for the extension of the Russian state in the south at the cost of the Turks,
and the opening up of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Potemkin was
ambitious, powerful, very efficient and fervent in his loyalty to the Empress.
Apart from ruling southern Russia for many years on her behalf, he also played
a major role in reforming the army, expanding and modernising the country’s
naval resources and in taking control of Russia’s foreign affairs. |
| Potemkin |
One
of the remarkable things about the Empress was her personal history. She had a
number of lovers, twelve in all. Her marriage to Peter, her cousin and Grand
Duke, was unsuccessful. They did sleep in the same bed during Empress Elizabeth’s
reign but the marriage was never consummated, almost certainly because of his
inability or lack of inclination. She had three children by three other men.
She was quite open in her sexual life and was always unhappy when she did not
have a sexual partner. The older she was the younger the lovers appeared to be.
She was clearly devoted to sex and to frequent sexual activity. Her lovers
tended to have a limited duration and when a relationship came to an end it was
generally amicable and the lover was invariably treated with every
consideration of honours and wealth. However, her lovers were not infrequently
jealous of her and often resented when she became tired of them.
Primogeniture
had been suspended in Russia sometime before Catherine the Great but after much
uncertainty she nominated her first illegitimate son Paul as the next Emperor.
This was in accordance with primogeniture and this existed as part of the
Romanoff family right up to 1917 when the revolution occurred. Paul was
accepted by the Russians as the son of Catherine’s husband Peter III but he was
in fact the son of one of her early lovers.
This
book on Catherine the Great extends to about 740 pages. The same history could
have been undertaken and much of her achievements could have been described in
a shorter biography if a lot of her own personal details and the many details
of her lovers had been reduced in extent or had been excluded. Many of her
relationships with lovers, foreign ambassadors, family and friends she
describes in very great detail. She does not speak about her actual
sexual life with her lovers but it was clearly obvious to her household and
extensive staff and acquaintances that her lovers were intimate friends of
hers, frequently attended her in her bedroom and no effort was made to conceal
the relationship between them.  |
| Catherine the Great |
The
foundation of the superb collection of art in St Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum
was laid by Catherine within a year of her reaching the throne.
Afterwards the Prince Dmitri Golitsyn became the Russian ambassador in Paris
and he was responsible for purchasing many other artefacts on her behalf,
including Diderot’s library in 1765. The latter, who was an outstanding and
well informed expert on paintings, continued to add to Catherine’s collection.
He bought several important collections including that of Augustus the 2nd King of Poland. She
paid 180,000.00 roubles to acquire his collection which added four more
Rembrandts, a Caravaggio and five works by Rubens. After Diderot, Grimm became
her agent in Paris and continued to supply her with more pictures. Amongst
other collections she bought the celebrated English collection of Lord Walpole,
sold by his grandson to pay for his gambling debts! Her purchases were not
because of her love of art, she admitted on one occasion. She simply stated “I
am a glutton’’. She became the greatest collector of art in the history of
Europe and by the time of her death she had collected four thousand paintings provided
by the most famous European painters. Many of these are still held in the
museums and galleries of St. Petersburg.
 |
| The bronze Horseman (Peter the Great), St. Petersburg |
The
book includes a wealth of material about the social and personal side of the
Empress and her household and her continuing dependence on sex right up to her
old age. The fragility of marriage at that time amongst the Russian community
was clearly evident as was the liberal approach to sexuality.
In
her time Russia had become an important part of greater Europe. My reading of
the end of the Romanovs in 1917 and the subsequent brutal and paranoid figure
of Stalin leaves a jolt in my mind about the latter-day role of Russia in
Europe as did the very much shorter Nazi period from 1933 to 1945
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