Cleopatra, our first power-grabbing lady, seized power by freezing out her brothers. Wu Zetian did it by freezing out her husband and then her sons. Elizabeth of Russia did it by deposing her cousin. But what they all had in common was that they were actually citizens of the country they eventually ruled. They were born there, raised there, and everything.

Catherine the Great holds the distinction of having ruled as empress regnant of a country she wasn’t even native to. She was born in Anhalt-Zerbst, a much-partitioned principality in the northern part of what would later become Germany. Her name was Sophie.

A Not-So-Idyllic Childhood

Sophie’s father was a minor member of the ruling family, but he was poor. Her mother Johanna was young, self-centered, felt she had married beneath her, and wanted a boy. Let’s just say that Catherine didn’t have what you’d call an idyllic childhood.

Sophie was taught French, religion, geography, and history, but everyone knew that her mission in life was to make a good marriage. In modern times, we just love a good tale where the strong-willed princess rebels against a forced marriage, but that is not Catherine’s story. She was strong-willed and she knew full well that the only viable path to a life away from her mother was an advantageous marriage. Think of it as a career plan. She was more than willing.

One thing Johanna did have was correspondence with some of the more powerful members of European royalty, including with Empress Elizabeth of Russia. And here our story veers northeast.

As you heard last week, Elizabeth was officially unmarried and had no children. Her beloved sister Anne had married a German prince and died shortly after giving birth to a son. Though she had never met him, Elizabeth decided to name Anne’s son as her heir. He would obviously be overjoyed at his good luck, except that he wasn’t. Peter had been both abused and neglected. He loved the Prussian military, soldiers, dogs, and Lutheranism. He did not love Russia, the Russian people, the Russian language, or the Russian Orthodox religion, and he made all of that that abundantly clear to everyone who would listen.

Elizabeth was disappointed, but she’d already named him as heir and she didn’t have a better option, so the next best thing was to get him a wife, who would get him a child, who could be raised properly Russian. She looked around for a minor princess who would be delighted to come to a backward country like Russia. She lighted on Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst, who was indeed, delighted. Russian was not included in the list of her accomplishments, and it was far away and cold, but marrying the Grand Duke of Russia was a far, far better match than she expected. Her own delight was a bonus, but of course the more important point was that her mother Johanna was delighted. It was suddenly okay for Sophie was a girl after all.

Arrival in Russia

Elizabeth sent an ample gift of money to pay for the expenses of mother and daughter to come to Russia. Johanna spent it all . . . on herself. She had gorgeous clothes. Sophie did not. Her trousseau consisted of three old dresses, some underclothes, and some used sheets. She was 14 years old.

The Grand Duke Peter was 16 years old and had even less sensitivity than could be expected of his age. In their initial meeting Peter informed Catherine that he was in love with another girl. But, he sighed, his aunt wouldn’t allow him to marry that girl, so he guessed he would marry her, as instructed, to please his aunt. That’s a solid F on a marriage proposal, by the way, in case any of you are looking for tips in that department. Don’t try it that way.

Sophie was a pragmatist. Love in marriage would have been nice, but it was not essential. Besides, she didn’t need to please Peter, who had no power. She needed to please Elizabeth, and it was clear how to do that. She worked hard to learn Russian. She loved the people she met, endeavored to be charming even to Peter, and enthusiastically danced at Elizabeth’s nightly parties. She joined the Russian Orthodox Church after writing her devout and troubled father that it was practically the same as Lutheranism anyway. At the ceremony, she was rechristened as Ekaterina, or Catherine. Elizabeth was pleased.

Elizabeth wanted a quick marriage, but doctors said Peter was not mature enough to father a child. While they waited, Catherine and Peter played with the other young people at court like the kids they were. They even became friends, sort of. Peter loved to drill his toy soldiers, and Catherine obligingly ran through their exercises with him. He taught Catherine how to handle a rifle with precision. She later said she had drilled with it as much as any of the real soldiers.

So while it was hardly a fairy tale romance, it seemed that they might at least tolerate each other. Unfortunately, two things hindered this. The first was that Peter had no tact. Among other social blunders, he repeated to Catherine advice he had gotten from his servant, namely that only a donkey would allow his wife to have any of her own opinions and that if there was ever any disagreement between them, a few sharp blows to her head would resolve it. He had, in Catherine’s own words, “had about as much discretion as a cannon ball.”

The second thing to mar their relationship went the other direction. Catherine ordinarily had a great deal of tact, but it failed her at one crucial moment. Peter contracted smallpox during their engagement. He was quarantined for weeks, and when he finally reappeared, emaciated and pockmarked, Catherine took one glance at him, shrieked, and ran for her room. Peter was hurt. Afterwards he made excuses not to come out of his room, retreating further into his own world of toy soldiers and costumed servants performing military drills.

Elizabeth, meanwhile, was getting impatient. Immature or not, repulsive or not, it was time for a royal wedding.

A Royal Wedding

On August 21, 1745, the couple were married in a lavish Russian orthodox ceremony. Catherine wore a silver brocade dress embroidered with silver roses and a cloak of silver lace. Her hair was black and gleaming. She wore bracelets, rings, drop earrings, and brooches, and on her head was the diamond crown of a Russian Grand Duchess.

Catherine found the wedding grueling, and soon found herself shoved into the bridal chamber to await marital bliss. She was ready and waiting. And waiting. Hours went by and she was still waiting. Finally, some time after midnight, Peter showed up. He reeked of alcohol and tobacco. He giggled nervously, collapsed on the bed, and slept through the night.

And, according to Catherine’s memoirs, nothing changed. For years.

Why did Peter behave the way he did? In the modern mind, the most obvious explanation is that he was homosexual, but that seems not to be the case, at least not exclusively. He later flaunted his mistresses in Catherine’s face.

The ultimate answer is that we don’t know, but there are a couple of theories:

• Theory Number 1 is physical. Peter may have suffered from phimosis, which is a condition in which the foreskin can’t be pulled back over the penis. This is fairly common in young boys, but time generally takes care of it. If not, a quick circumcision does the trick, and any rabbi in Russia could have done for him. But he wasn’t Jewish. It is possible that he did eventually have this done, but there is no record of it.
• Theory Number 2 is psychological. There is no doubt that Peter was abused as a child. He had not wanted to come to Russia, did not want to be emperor, and did not choose to marry Catherine. He was insecure, unhappy, and unstable. It may be that he was psychologically unable or unwilling to perform under the circumstances.

Whatever the reason, Elizabeth was watching anxiously for an heir that clearly wasn’t going to come. Meanwhile, Catherine was bored and lonely and read a lot of books, including the same French Enlightenment thinkers who so inspired the American founding fathers.

A Child at Last

As the years passed, Elizabeth, who had been so pleased with Catherine, became less pleased. Elizabeth gave Catherine a servant named Madame Chogloskova, who was there in part as jailer and in part as an example of proper marital behavior and a regular run of pregnancies. Eventually, this model married woman hatched an ingenious plan. She hired an experienced widow to seduce Peter, which apparently worked. She also took Catherine aside and pointed out to her that if seven years of marriage had not produced a child, there were other methods. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and all that. The court had no shortage of good-looking men. This part of the plan also worked.

The irony was that by the time Chogloskova made this suggestion, Catherine had already figured it out for herself.

In 1754, Catherine gave birth to a son, Paul. Catherine certainly indicates that his father was Sergei Saltykov, her first lover. Some historians think this was just part of Catherine’s own propaganda and that he was Peter’s son. It is true that much of our view of Peter comes from Catherine’s memoirs, and she definitely had an interest in proving why he deserved to be deposed, so maybe he wasn’t really as bad as she makes out, and at least one historian has gone on the poor, sensitive Peter was just seriously misunderstood tactic. But even so, I do not see why Catherine would lie in the direction of making her son illegitimate. Lying to make your child legitimate has plenty of historical precedent. Loads of women have done it. It makes perfect sense. Doing it the other way around seems highly risky. She wasn’t even a Russian, much less a Russian princess. Infidelity and illegitimacy seem just a bit of a risk. Absent a time machine and a paternity test, we’ll never know for sure.

Elizabeth either didn’t know or didn’t care who the father was. She swept the newborn babe up with joy and removed him to her own care. Catherine was sent a gift of money and informed that her responsibility for the boy was now done. The following day Elizabeth asked for the money back because Peter was mad he didn’t get a gift too. Not Elizabeth’s finest hour, I have to admit. Or Peter’s either.

As the mother of the new prince, Catherine’s position was strengthened. Saltykov left her, but a second lover soon appeared. Peter, who knew all about all of this, had a new mistress himself. He began talking openly of divorcing Catherine so he could remarry.

The Empress Is Dead, Long Live the Emperor

So it was with all this antagonism wafting through the air that Elizabeth died in 1761. Peter, free at last, king at last, was openly jubilant. He played games in the funeral procession. He banned the traditional Orthodox Easter processions. He cancelled Elizabeth’s war against Prussia, declaring that he loved peace. He volunteered to give up every gain the Russian army had fought, bled, and died for in recent years. He thus scandalized the people, alienated the church, and insulted the army. Not a wise choice, Peter, not a wise choice.

In contrast, Catherine dressed in black and knelt praying for hours beside Elizabeth’s coffin. She was generally known to be smart, competent, courageous, and pro-Russian, none of which could be said about Peter. She was also secretly pregnant at the time, by her third lover, Gregory Orlov, who just so happened to be a high-ranking member of the Guard.

Meanwhile, Peter, having declared himself a pacifist, made plans to go to war. Denmark had taken a handful of very small villages that belonged to Holstein, his German duchy. In response, Peter decided to take them back using the Russian army for a cause that had nothing to do with Russia. He assembled his troops. . . He prepared to leave. . . And nothing happened because the army was no longer taking his orders.

Catherine Stages a Coup

On June 28,1762, Catherine made her move. She marched into the Guard barracks, where her lover Orlov proclaimed her sovereign. They all marched through the streets toward the Winter Palace, gathering crowds as they went. By evening she was in complete control of the city without shedding a drop of blood.

Peter remained at large, and Catherine would not delegate responsibility for that. She donned military attire, mounted a white stallion, and led 14,000 men in pursuit of her unsatisfactory husband. She had not even arrived when Peter volunteered to abdicate. He had ruled for all of 6 months. Frederick the Great of Prussia said, “he allowed himself to be dethroned like a child being sent to bed” (Massie, 266).

Catherine had herself crowned immediately. She cancelled the new alliance with Prussia. She called the Russian army home. She halted the confiscation of church lands. All the important people were pleased.

The question remained of what to do about Peter. Obviously, he would always be a threat as long as he was alive. There was simply no doubt that he had a much better claim to the throne than she did. Equally obviously, Catherine could not just order him killed. Everyone would have looked askance at that. You’re just not supposed to murder your spouse. Henry VIIIth got away with it. But he was the real sovereign. Just imagine if Anne Boleyn had had him beheaded instead. With all the Anne Boleyn novels around, I’m not sure why I haven’t seen an alternate history with that as the premise. . .

But back to Russia, Peter was taken into custody, and within a week he was dead. Officially, the cause of death was colic. In reality, he was strangled in a scuffle that may or may not have been a drunken accident. It seems that Catherine did not directly order this, so that leaves her in the clear. But everyone knew that she wouldn’t exactly grieve if he died. All it took was an enterprising servant, with a little personal initiative, a general desire to please, and there it was, the deed was done and her hands were clean. Cleanish, anyway. The world frowned . . . and moved on.

An Enlightened Empress

Having secured her position, Catherine could set about making the reforms she had read about for years. She knew that Russia’s legal code was haphazard, complicated, and unjust. It needed a complete overhaul. She spent two years writing what became known as the Nakaz, a document which set out the Enlightenment principles on which she wanted to base the new legal code. She described what Russia was and what it ought to be. She condemned torture. She claimed it was better to prevent crime than to punish it. When it was done, she submitted it to the Senate for review. They objected to half of it, so she erased it. The nobility objected to another half, so she erased that too. The final draft was only a quarter of what she had actually written, but undaunted, she published it and created a new assembly of elected delegates to read it and write the new legal code based on it. The delegations included peasants, which was radically inclusive at the time.

The assembly met off and on from 1767 to 1769. They gathered a huge body of documents on various conditions in Russia. But to her disappointment, they seemed not particularly interested in drafting a new code of laws. They were far more interested in airing petty grievances in the hopes of getting Catherine on their side. The new code of laws was never written. Even so, it was a stunning thing for a sitting monarch to write the Nakaz and call this assembly at all. When you think about the French and American revolutions, note that it was never the sitting monarch who was agitating for change. Not so in Catherine’s case.

In other areas, Catherine’s progressiveness was more successful. She set up courts where peasants could sue nobles. She had herself and her children vaccinated against smallpox at a time when it was considered very risky. She opened Russia’s first college of medicine. She founded the Smolny Institute for Noble Maidens, which is thought to be Europe’s first state-financed institution of higher education for women. She founded hospitals for orphans and for venereal disease. She bought 4,000 paintings and brought them to Russia, forming the basis of the Hermitage Museum’s collection. She corresponded with major thinkers of the day, including Voltaire.

So far, so good. Right? Good job, Catherine.

A Less Enlightened Empress

The great negative of Catherine’s rule is serfdom. Russia had millions of serfs, many of whom belonged to the crown. Meaning they belonged to Catherine. When I was in school, I was taught that the difference between a serf and a slave was that slaves are bought and sold, while serfs stick with the land. That may have been true at one point in Russia but not by Catherine’s time. Serfs were regularly sold, raped, overworked, and punished at will. Newspapers listed them in advertisements with prices attached. The only real difference between Russian serfdom and black slavery in the American south was that it was not racial.

Catherine did not create this system, but it was omnipresent in Russian life, and she was aware that it did not square well with the Enlightenment ideas she loved. Her initial draft of the Nakaz suggested abolition. That was the part the nobility objected to. They cut it. The final draft included only a vague plea for masters not to be overly harsh. Could she have done more? Perhaps. But both then and now, it’s much easier to notice social injustice than it is to fix it, and as with so many other politicians we could name, serfdom simply seemed too big a problem to tackle. So she didn’t tackle it.

She also eventually retreated from some of her other high principles, particularly after a major rebellion led by a peasant pretending to be Peter, not dead after all. The rebellion was put down, and the pretender executed, but Catherine was shaken. After all her work to help peasants and serfs, what did she get in return? It was the church and the nobility who supported her. She stopped talking about abolition. And when the French revolution broke out, she instituted widespread censorship to keep those immoral French revolutionaries from infecting Russia with their ideas.

Not so good job, Catherine. Not so good.

In foreign policy, Catherine was determined to secure a warm water port for Russia. During the war with Turkey, Catherine sent her fledgling navy all the way around Europe to attack from the Mediterranean, which was a stunning success. The resultant treaty gave Catherine her port.

One interesting historical might-have-been is that George III of England begged Catherine to allow him to hire 20,000 Russian troops to help put down a little spot of trouble he was having with his misguided North American subjects. She said no. She wanted those troops to field against Turkey. But in an alternate universe where she said yes? Who knows what might happened to those misguided subjects?

The Potemkin Affair

Somewhere in all of that, Catherine also found her most famous lover, Gregori Potemkin. He quickly became the most powerful man in Russia and stayed that way for 17 years. He became her adviser, her military leader, a governor and viceroy of huge swaths of land in her kingdom. He was witty, charming, and capable. He was also irascible, dramatic, and power hungry. They had a stormy relationship, punctuated by frequent outbursts. Officially, Catherine never remarried, but it is likely that she secretly married Potemkin. She refers to him as “my husband” in her letters to him, which she never did to any of her other lovers. Even after they had agreed that their relationship was stormier than it was satisfying, he remained in power. In fact, he hand-picked many of her later lovers himself.

After Potemkin, Catherine was more cautious. She never let any of her later lovers hold any political power whatsoever. They were all much younger than her. They were there to be ornamental, and when she tired of them, she moved on. Her contemporaries found this shocking. Not because the lovers existed (that was completely expected). But because of their age. While it is refreshing not to have the traditional double standard about sexual fidelity held against her, the age comment definitely is a double standard. Many, and perhaps even most male monarchs in Europe had no problem at all in taking young teenage girls into their beds. Hers were not so young as that.

Meanwhile, she was having Potemkin build whole cities and towns in Southern Russia. He reformed the military, and he organized Catherine’s famously grand procession down the Dnieper river in 1787, a trip which was extravagant, sumptuous, and in every way conspicuous. Later criticism of this trip suggested that crisp, clean villages were made of cardboard and the happy, cheering villagers were hired and cleaned up for the purpose. But many sources believe that was an unfair accusation, and that the reality of Potemkin’s work was much more true than not.

When Potemkin died in 1791, Catherine was devastated. Five years later she died herself after a stroke. She was 67 and had spent 34 years on the throne. While there is room to criticize some of her decisions, the fact that she became Empress at all was a major achievement, and her longevity was impressive. At the beginning of her rule, Russia was a backward country on the fringe of Europe. By the end, she had made it a major player on the world stage.

We’ll close this episode with the epitaph she wrote herself in the last few years of her life:

“Here lies Catherine II, born in Stettin on 21 April 1729. In the year 1744, she arrived in Russia to marry Peter III. At the age of 14, she made the threefold resolution to please her husband, Elizabeth and the people. She neglected nothing in trying to achieve this. Eighteen years of boredom and loneliness gave her the opportunity to read many books. When she came to the throne of Russia, she wished to do what was good for her country and tried to bring happiness, liberty, and prosperity to her subjects. She forgave easily and hated no one. She was good natured, easy-going, tolerant, understanding, and of a happy disposition. She had a republican spirit and a kind heart. She was sociable by nature. She made many friends. She took pleasure in her work. She loved the arts.”

Catherine the Great (quoted in Robert K. Massie’s biography, Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman, p. 573)

Selected Sources

Catherine is a well-documented figure, and the list of possible resources is long. There are plenty of biographies to choose from, but my biggest source for this episode was Robert K. Massie’s entertaining biography Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman.

Also interesting is Catherine’s own memoirs, which you can read for free on Project Gutenberg. The BBC has an interesting interview with various scholars about Catherine.

Historical Fiction

And finally, Catherine appears as a secondary character in one of my favorite historical novels of all time. For a rollicking feminist adventure story across several centuries and several continents, check out Katherine Neville’s The Eight. As one reviewer put it, this is the feminist answer to Indiana Jones.