Basic Facts:
Life: 1729 to 1796
Reign: 1762 to 1796
Extremely Brief Summary: Catherine married into the Russian royal family, took a look at her husband, and decided she could do it better. When she personally led an army of 14,000 men against him, he abdicated before she even arrived. She subsequently ruled Russia as an Enlightened despot. She held many high principles but had mixed results on putting them into practice. She transformed Russia from a relative backwater to a major player on the European stage.
One of many quotes: “What I despair of overthrowing, I undermine.” (written to Diderot, quoted in Robert K. Massie’s Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman, p. 572)
Selected Sources and Images:
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.
Catherine as portrayed by her court painter Vigilius Eriksen.
Image by David Mark from Pixabay
Peter and Catherine together as Grand Duke and Grand Duchess. The white wigs are misleading. Catherine was only abotu 16 when this was painted and Peter was not much older.
Georg Cristoph Grooth, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Catherine as she may have looked when she set off to capture her offending husband, dressed in uniform and on a white horse.
By Vigilius Eriksen – Wikimedia Commons
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.
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Her Half of History 
[…] episode is a retrospective look at Cleopatra, Wu Zetian, Elizabeth I of Russia, Catherine the Great, and Ranavalona. I discuss a three-step strategy that all of them used to get to power. Along the […]
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There was a show about Catherine that is very memorable to me. It was violent and steamy, but it sounds from your episode that they got many of these characters just right. Particularly Peter and Catherine herself. Elizabeth was a bit harsher in the show. Anyway, I enjoyed hearing the real story from you! Entertaining as always! Here’s the link to info about that show: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekaterina_(TV_series)
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I will check it out! Thanks for the suggestion!
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Yours is the first podcast I have ever enjoyed. These episodes are smart, clever, with new info I’ve never heard before, but short enough that I can listen to a few installments in between dinner and bedtime. I also love that you have a world view here; it’s so refreshing to learn about Chinese– and soon South American–history.
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Thank you so much! I’m honored!
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[…] for years, but were seriously fueled by the fact that years later, after Elizabeth’s death, when Catherine the Great sent her chancellor to ask Razumovsky about the suspected marriage, he reportedly opened a locked […]
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