Catherine the Great

Previous to reading Robert K. Massie's biography of Catherine the Great, the only thing I knew about her was some sort of scandal involving a horse. There is no mention of that in Massie's book, other than an unwinking statement that she was a good horsewoman; instead is a lucid, often fascinating tale of how a minor German princess became the most powerful woman in Europe.

Catherine was born with the name Sophia in 1729. She was matched, as was custom in those days, with the heir to the Russian empire, Peter III, the grandson of Peter the Great: "Beneath her title and her diamonds, she was only a little German girl brought to Russia for the sole purpose of providing the son of the house with an heir."

Catherine and Peter were under the thumb of the Empress Elizabeth. Peter was something of a simpleton and was pro-Prussian, which wasn't popular. He and Catherine were wed for nine years without producing a pregnancy, and Massie conjectures it was because Peter was either asexual or had a penile condition that made sex painful. He was very fond of military matters, but in a childish way. "The situation was farcical: a newly married couple constantly on guard lest they be caught playing with toys. Behind this farce lay the greater absurdity of a young husband playing with toys in the marital bed, leaving his young wife with nothing to do but watch."

Much of the first third of the book deals with the intrigue of Catherine maneuvering to get her way. There were those assigned to watch over her that she liked and did not like, and people in court who she lobbied for favors. She grew into a savvy politician, and when Elizabeth died and Peter took the throne, many thought she should be the Empress. Peter was a complete disaster, and when he led an military expedition to Denmark that had nothing to do with Russia she took the opportunity to stage a coup. She got the palace guards on her side, and when Peter returned he was forced to abdicate and was imprisoned. He died shortly thereafter under suspicious circumstances. Frederick the Great of Prussia termed it, "He allowed himself to be dethroned like a child being sent to bed."

Catherine believed in a benevolent monarchy. She was personally against serfdom, but something like Jefferson in the United States, realized it couldn't be dismantled: "Catherine, familiar with Enlightenment belief in the Rights of Man, was intellectually opposed to serfdom. While still a grand duchess, she had suggested a way to reform and eventually abolish the institution, although it might take a hundred years to accomplish." Catherine was fascinated with the Enlightenment, became friendly with Voltaire and Diderot, and was a devotee of Montesquieu. However, when the revolution in France took place she was aghast, and Voltaire ended up being censored in Russia.

"In the middle of the eighteenth century, most Europeans still regarded Russia as a culturally backward, semi-Asiatic state. Catherine was determined to change this." Massie notes her success in making Russia an arts center, as she founded the Hermitage and became a major collector of art. She was also a key player on the world scene, manipulating one of her lovers into being the King of Poland, and then, much later, took part in the elimination of Poland from the map, as it was divided between Russia, Prussia, and Austria, not to return as a nation until the 1910's. She waged war with Turkey, which successfully opened up the Black Sea to Russia, giving them a southern port.

For those seeking scandal, Catherine did, according to Massie, have twelve lovers, not exactly shocking by today's standards. Her three children (one who died in infancy) were fathered by three different men, none of them Peter III. In her later years, she took "favorites," who were both her immediate adviser and her lover. "The outstanding figure of Catherine's reign, other than Catherine herself, was Gregory Potemkin. For seventeen years, from 1774 to 1791, he was the most powerful man in Russia. No one else during her life was closer to Catherine; he was her lover, her adviser, her military commander in chief, the creator of her new cities, seaports, palaces, armies, and fleets. He was also, perhaps, her husband." Ironically, one of the cities Potemkin created was Odessa, which figures so prominently in Sergei Eisenstein's film masterpiece which bears his name, which was the name of the ship in the film.

Massie's prose was very easy to grasp; at many points he repeatsd information lest the reader be confused. At times he goes off on tangents that are too far from the main thread--in one chapter he basically summarizes the French revolution. But I found it all interesting and enlightening. As he summed up, "She was a majestic figure in the age of monarchy; the only woman to equal her on a European throne was Elizabeth I of England. In the history of Russia, she and Peter the Great tower in ability and achievement over the other fourteen tsars and empresses of the three-hundred-year Romanov dynasty. Catherine carried Peter's legacy forward."

Perhaps most telling, Catherine's son, Paul, who worried that his mother would name his eldest son, Alexander, to replace her, bypassing him, changed the law of succession after he became Tsar. He changed it to primogeniture, which meant that no woman would ever rule Russia again.