Catherine II of Russia

Early life

Catherine was born on 2 May 1729 as Princess Sophie Auguste Friederike von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg, in the city of Stettin (now known as Szczecin) within the Province of Pomerania in the Kingdom of Prussia. She was delivered in her family's residence in the neoclassical building at the current 1 Farna Street (then Große Domstraße 1), where she resided for the first few years of her life, before her family moved to the Ducal Castle in Stettin. Her mother was Joanna Elisabeth of Holstein-Gottorp. Her father, Christian August, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, belonged to the ruling German family of Anhalt. He failed to become the Duke of Courland and Semigallia and, at the time of his daughter's birth, he held the rank of a Prussian general in his capacity as governor of the city of Stettin. However, because her second cousin Charles Peter Ulrich converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity, her mother's brother, Adolf Frederick, became the heir to the Swedish throne and two of her first cousins, Gustav III and Charles XIII, became Kings of Sweden.

In accordance with the prevailing custom among the ruling dynasties of Germany, she received her education chiefly from a French governess and from tutors. According to her memoirs, Sophie was considered a tomboy and trained herself to master a sword.

Catherine found her childhood to be uneventful; she once wrote to her correspondent Baron Grimm, "I see nothing of interest in it". Although Sophie was born a princess, her family had little money; her rise to power was supported by her mother Joanna's wealthy relatives, who were both nobles and royal relations. The more than 300 sovereign entities of the Holy Roman Empire, many of them small and powerless, made for a highly competitive political system in which the various princely families competed for advantages over one another, often by way of political marriages.

For smaller German princely families, an advantageous marriage was one of the best means of advancing their interests. To improve the position of her house, Sophie was groomed throughout her childhood to become the wife of a powerful ruler. In addition to her native German, Sophie became fluent in French, the lingua franca of European elites in the 18th century. The young Sophie received the standard education for an 18th-century German princess, concentrating on etiquette, French, and Lutheran theology.

In 1739, when Sophie was 10, she met her second cousin who would later become her husband and Peter III of Russia. She later wrote that she immediately found Peter detestable and that she stayed at one end of the castle and Peter at the other. She disliked his pale complexion and his fondness for alcohol.

Marriage and succession

The choice of Sophie as wife of the future emperor was a result of the Lopukhina affair, in which Count Jean Armand de Lestocq and King Frederick the Great of Prussia took an active part. The objective was to strengthen the friendship between Prussia and Russia, to weaken the influence of Austria, and to overthrow the chancellor Alexey Bestuzhev-Ryumin, a known partisan of the Austrian alliance on whom the reigning Russian Empress Elizabeth relied. The diplomatic intrigue failed, largely due to the intervention of Sophie's mother, Joanna Elisabeth.

Contemporary and later accounts present Joanna as a figure of strong will and ambition, often involved in court affairs. Her efforts to secure her daughter’s advantageous marriage in Russia brought her into conflict with Empress Elizabeth, who ultimately expelled her from the country amid allegations of espionage on behalf of King Frederick. Elizabeth knew the family well and had intended to marry Joanna's brother, Charles Augustus (Karl August von Holstein). He died of smallpox in 1727 in Saint Petersburg, just before the wedding could take place. Despite Joanna's interference, Elizabeth took a strong liking to Sophie, and Sophie and Peter were eventually married in 1745.

When Sophie arrived in Russia in 1744 at age 15, she spared no effort to ingratiate herself not only with Elizabeth, but also with Elizabeth's lover Alexei Razumovsky and with the Russian people at large. She zealously applied herself to learning the Russian language, rising late at night to repeat her lessons in her bedroom. She became ill with pneumonia, but survived and recovered. In her memoirs, she wrote that she made the decision then to do whatever was necessary and to profess to believe whatever was required of her to become qualified to wear the crown. Although she was able to learn Russian, she spoke with a heavy accent, and made grammatical errors. In most circumstances Catherine II spoke French in her court. In fact the use of French as the main language of the Russian imperial court continued until 1812, when it became politically incorrect to speak French in court due to the French invasion of Russia.

Sophie recalled in her memoirs that as soon as she arrived in Russia, she fell ill with a pleuritis that almost killed her. She credited her survival to frequent bloodletting; in a single day, she received four phlebotomies. Her mother's opposition to this practice brought her the Empress's disfavour. When Sophie's situation looked desperate, her mother wanted her confessed by a Lutheran pastor. Awaking from her delirium, however, Sophie said, "I don't want any Lutheran; I want my Orthodox father [clergyman]". This increased her popularity with the Empress and her court as a whole. Elizabeth doted on Sophie and their relationship grew stronger after this.

Reign (1762–1796)

Coronation (1762)

Catherine was crowned at the Assumption Cathedral in Moscow on 22 September 1762. Her coronation marks the creation of one of the main treasures of the Romanov dynasty, the Great Imperial Crown of Russia, designed by Swiss-French court diamond jeweller Jérémie Pauzié. Inspired by Byzantine design, the crown was constructed of two half spheres, one gold and one silver, representing the Eastern and Western Roman Empires, divided by a foliate garland and fastened with a low hoop.

The crown contains 75 pearls and 4,936 Indian diamonds forming laurel and oak leaves, the symbols of power and strength, and is surmounted by a 398.62-carat ruby spinel and a diamond cross. The crown was produced in a record two months and weighed 2.3kg (5.1 lbs). From 1762, the Great Imperial Crown was the coronation crown of all Romanov emperors until the monarchy's abolition in 1917. It is now on display in the Moscow Kremlin Armoury Museum.

Foreign affairs

During her reign, Catherine extended the borders of the Russian Empire by some 520,000 square kilometres (200,000 sq mi), absorbing New Russia, Crimea, the North Caucasus, the Right-bank Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and Courland at the expense, mainly, of two powers—the Ottoman Empire and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Catherine's foreign minister, Nikita Panin (in office 1763–1781), exercised considerable influence from the beginning of Catherine's reign. A shrewd statesman, Panin dedicated much effort and millions of rubles to setting up a "Northern Accord" between Russia, Prussia, Poland, and Sweden to counter the power of the Bourbon–Habsburg League. When it became apparent that his plan could not succeed, Panin fell out of favour with Catherine and she had him replaced with Ivan Osterman (in office 1781–1797).

Catherine agreed to a commercial treaty with Great Britain in 1766, but stopped short of a full military alliance. Although she could see the benefits of friendship with Britain, Catherine was wary of Britain's increased power following its victory in the Seven Years' War, which threatened the European balance of power.

Peter the Great had gained a foothold in the south, on the edge of the Black Sea, during the Azov campaigns. Catherine completed the conquest of the south, making Russia the dominant power in the Balkans following the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774. Russia inflicted some of the heaviest defeats ever suffered by the Ottoman Empire, including at the Battle of Chesma (5–7 July 1770) and the Battle of Kagul (21 July 1770). In 1769, a last major Crimean–Nogai slave raid, which ravaged the Russian held territories in Ukraine, saw the capture of up to 20,000 slaves for the Crimean slave trade.

Russia's victory brought the Yedisan between the rivers Bug and Dnieper, and Crimea into the Russian sphere of influence. Though a series of victories accrued by the Russian Empire led to substantial territorial conquests, including direct conquest over much of the Pontic–Caspian steppe, less Ottoman territory was directly annexed than might otherwise be expected due to a complex struggle within the European diplomatic system to maintain a balance of power that was acceptable to other European states and avoided direct Russian hegemony over Eastern Europe. Nonetheless, Russia took advantage of the weakened Ottoman Empire, the end of the Seven Years' War, and the withdrawal of France from Polish affairs to assert itself as one of the continent's primary military powers. The war left the Russian Empire in a strengthened position to expand its territory and maintain hegemony over the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, eventually leading to the First Partition of Poland. Turkish losses included diplomatic defeats which led to its decline as a threat to Europe, the loss of its exclusive control over the Orthodox millet, and the beginning of European bickering over the Eastern Question that would feature in European diplomacy until the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of World War I.

Economics and finance

Russian economic development was well below the standards in western Europe. Historian François Cruzet writes that Russia under Catherine:

had neither a free peasantry, nor a significant middle class, nor legal norms hospitable to private enterprise. Still, there was a start of industry, mainly textiles around Moscow and ironworks in the Ural Mountains, with a labour force mainly of serfs, bound to the works.

Catherine imposed a comprehensive system of state regulation of merchants' activities. It was a failure because it narrowed and stifled entrepreneurship and did not reward economic development. She had more success when she strongly encouraged the migration of the Volga Germans, farmers from Germany who settled mostly in the Volga River Valley region. They indeed helped modernise the sector that totally dominated the Russian economy. They introduced numerous innovations regarding wheat production and flour milling, tobacco culture, sheep raising, and small-scale manufacturing.

In 1768, the Assignation Bank was given the task of issuing the first government paper money. It opened in Saint Petersburg and Moscow in 1769. Several bank branches were afterwards established in other towns, called government towns. Paper notes were issued upon payment of similar sums in copper money, which were also refunded upon the presentation of those notes. The emergence of these assignation roubles was necessary due to large government spending on military needs, which led to a shortage of silver in the treasury (transactions, especially in foreign trade, were conducted almost exclusively in silver and gold coins). Assignation roubles circulated on equal footing with the silver rouble; a market exchange rate for these two currencies was ongoing. The use of these notes continued until 1849.

Catherine paid a great deal of attention to financial reform, and relied heavily on the advice of Prince A. A. Viazemski. She found that piecemeal reform worked poorly because there was no overall view of a comprehensive state budget. Money was needed for wars and necessitated the junking of the old financial institutions. A key principle was responsibilities defined by function. It was instituted by the Fundamental Law of 7 November 1775. Vaizemski's Office of State Revenue took centralised control and by 1781, the government possessed its first approximation of a state budget.

Public health

Catherine made public health a priority. She made use of the social theory ideas of German cameralism and French physiocracy, as well as Russian precedents and experiments such as foundling homes. In 1764, she launched the Moscow Foundling Home and lying-in hospital. In 1763, she opened Paul's Hospital, also known as Pavlovskaya Hospital. She had the government collect and publish vital statistics. In 1762, she called on the army to upgrade its medical services. She established a centralised medical administration charged with initiating vigorous health policies. Catherine decided to have herself inoculated against smallpox by English doctor Thomas Dimsdale. While this was considered a controversial method at the time, she succeeded. Her son Pavel later was inoculated as well.

Catherine then sought to have inoculations throughout her empire and stated: "My objective was, through my example, to save from death the multitude of my subjects who, not knowing the value of this technique, and frightened of it, were left in danger". By 1800, approximately 2 million inoculations (almost 6% of the population) were administered in the Russian Empire. Historians regard her efforts as a success and one of her most significant contributions to Russia.

Serfs

According to a census taken from 1754 to 1762, Catherine owned 500,000 serfs. A further 2.8 million belonged to the Russian state.

At the time of Catherine's reign, the landowning noble class owned the serfs, who were bound to the land they tilled. Children of serfs were born into serfdom and worked the same land their parents had. Even before the rule of Catherine, serfs had very limited rights, but they were not exactly slaves. While the state did not technically allow them to own possessions, some serfs were able to accumulate enough wealth to pay for their freedom. The understanding of law in Imperial Russia by all sections of society was often weak, confused, or nonexistent, particularly in the provinces where most serfs lived. This is why some serfs were able to do things such as to accumulate wealth. To become serfs, people conceded their freedoms to a landowner in exchange for their protection and support in times of hardship. In addition, they received land to till, but were taxed a certain percentage of their crops to give to their landowners. These were the privileges a serf was entitled to and that nobles were bound to carry out. All of this was true before Catherine's reign, and this is the system she inherited.

Catherine did initiate some changes to serfdom. If a noble did not live up to his side of the deal, the serfs could file complaints against him by following the proper channels of law. Catherine gave them this new right, but in exchange they could no longer appeal directly to her. She did this because she did not want to be bothered by the peasantry, but did not want to give them reason to revolt. In this act, she gave the serfs a legitimate bureaucratic status they had lacked before. Some serfs were able to use their new status to their advantage. For example, serfs could apply to be freed if they were under illegal ownership, and non-nobles were not allowed to own serfs. Some serfs did apply for freedom and were successful. In addition, some governors listened to the complaints of serfs and punished nobles, but this was by no means universal.

Other than these, the rights of a serf were very limited. A landowner could punish his serfs at his discretion, and under Catherine the Great gained the ability to sentence his serfs to hard labour in Siberia, a punishment normally reserved for convicted criminals. The only thing a noble could not do to his serfs was to kill them. The life of a serf belonged to the state. Historically, when the serfs faced problems they could not solve on their own (such as abusive masters), they often appealed to the autocrat, and continued doing so during Catherine's reign, but she signed legislation prohibiting it. Although she did not want to communicate directly with the serfs, she did create some measures to improve their conditions as a class and reduce the size of the institution of serfdom. For example, she took action to limit the number of new serfs; she eliminated many ways for people to become serfs, culminating in the manifesto of 17 March 1775, which prohibited a serf who had once been freed from becoming a serf again.

Arts and culture

Catherine was a patron of the arts, literature, and education. The Hermitage Museum, which now occupies the whole Winter Palace, began as Catherine's personal collection. The empress was a great lover of art and books, and ordered the construction of the Hermitage in 1770 to house her expanding collection of paintings, sculpture, and books. By 1790, the Hermitage was home to 38,000 books, 10,000 gems, and 10,000 drawings. Two wings were devoted to her collections of "curiosities".

She ordered the planting of the first English landscape garden at Tsarskoye Selo in May 1770. In a letter to Voltaire in 1772, she wrote: "Right now I adore English gardens, curves, gentle slopes, ponds in the form of lakes, archipelagos on dry land, and I have a profound scorn for straight lines, symmetric avenues. I hate fountains that torture water in order to make it take a course contrary to its nature: Statues are relegated to galleries, vestibules etc.; in a word, Anglomania is the master of my plantomania".

Catherine shared in the general European craze for all things Chinese, and made a point of collecting Chinese art and buying porcelain in the popular Chinoiserie style. Between 1762 and 1766, she had built the "Chinese Palace" at Oranienbaum which reflected the chinoiserie style of architecture and gardening. The Chinese Palace was designed by the Italian architect Antonio Rinaldi who specialised in the chinoiserie style. In 1779, she hired the Scottish architect Charles Cameron to build the Chinese Village at Tsarskoye Selo. Catherine had at first attempted to hire a Chinese architect to build the Chinese Village, and on finding that was impossible, settled on Cameron, who likewise specialised in the chinoiserie style.

She made a special effort to bring leading intellectuals and scientists to Russia, and she wrote her own comedies, works of fiction, and memoirs. She worked with Voltaire, Diderot, and d'Alembert—all French encyclopedists who later cemented her reputation in their writings. The leading economists of her day, such as Arthur Young and Jacques Necker, became foreign members of the Free Economic Society, established on her suggestion in Saint Petersburg in 1765. She recruited the scientists Leonhard Euler and Peter Simon Pallas from Berlin and Anders Johan Lexell from Sweden to the Russian capital.

Catherine enlisted Voltaire to her cause, and corresponded with him for 15 years, from her accession to his death in 1778. He lauded her accomplishments, calling her "The Star of the North" and the "Semiramis of Russia" (in reference to the legendary Queen of Babylon, a subject on which he published a tragedy in 1768). Although she never met him face to face, she mourned him bitterly when he died. She acquired his collection of books from his heirs, and placed them in the National Library of Russia.

Education

Catherine held western European philosophies and culture close to her heart, and she wanted to surround herself with like-minded people within Russia. She believed a 'new kind of person' could be created by inculcating Russian children with European education. Catherine believed education could change the hearts and minds of the Russian people and turn them away from backwardness. This meant developing individuals both intellectually and morally, providing them knowledge and skills, and fostering a sense of civic responsibility. Her goal was to modernise education across Russia.

Catherine appointed Ivan Betskoy as her advisor on educational matters. Through him, she collected information from Russia and other countries about educational institutions. She also established a commission composed of T. N. Teplov, T. von Klingstedt, F. G. Dilthey, and the historian G. Muller. She consulted British pedagogical pioneers, particularly the Rev. Daniel Dumaresq and Dr. John Brown. In 1764, she sent for Dumaresq to come to Russia and then appointed him to the educational commission. The commission studied the reform projects previously installed by I. I. Shuvalov under Elizabeth and under Peter III. They submitted recommendations for the establishment of a general system of education for all Russian orthodox subjects from the age of 5 to 18, excluding serfs. However, no action was taken on any recommendations put forth by the commission due to the calling of the Legislative Commission. In July 1765, Dumaresq wrote to Dr. John Brown about the commission's problems and received a long reply containing very general and sweeping suggestions for education and social reforms in Russia. Dr. Brown argued, in a democratic country, education ought to be under the state's control and based on an education code. He also placed great emphasis on the "proper and effectual education of the female sex"; two years prior, Catherine had commissioned Ivan Betskoy to draw up the General Programme for the Education of Young People of Both Sexes. This work emphasised the fostering of the creation of a 'new kind of people' raised in isolation from the damaging influence of a backward Russian environment. The Establishment of the Moscow Foundling Home (Moscow Orphanage) was the first attempt at achieving that goal. It was charged with admitting destitute and extramarital children to educate them in any way the state deemed fit. Because the Moscow Foundling Home was not established as a state-funded institution, it represented an opportunity to experiment with new educational theories. However, the Moscow Foundling Home was unsuccessful, mainly due to extremely high mortality rates, which prevented many of the children from living long enough to develop into the enlightened subjects the state desired.

Religious affairs

Catherine's apparent embrace of all things Russian (including Russian Orthodoxy) may have prompted her personal indifference to religion. She nationalised all of the Church lands to help pay for her wars, largely emptied the monasteries, and forced most of the remaining clergymen to survive as farmers or from fees for baptisms and other services. Very few members of the nobility entered the Church, which became even less important than it had been. She did not allow dissenters to build chapels, and she suppressed religious dissent after the onset of the French Revolution.

However, in accord with her anti-Ottoman policy, Catherine promoted the protection and fostering of Christians under Turkish rule. She placed strictures on Catholics (ukaz of 23 February 1769), mainly Polish, and attempted to assert and extend state control over them in the wake of the partitions of Poland. For example, although Catholic parishes were allowed to retain their property and worship, papal oversight of parishes was restricted to only theology. In its stead, Catherine appointed a Catholic bishop (later raising the position to archbishop) of Mohylev to administer all Catholic churches in her territory. Nevertheless, Catherine's Russia provided an asylum and a base for regrouping to the Jesuits following the suppression of the Jesuits in most of Europe in 1773.

Catherine took many different approaches to Islam during her reign. She avoided force and tried persuasion (and money) to integrate Muslim areas into her empire. Between 1762 and 1773, Muslims were prohibited from owning any Orthodox serfs. They were pressured into Orthodoxy through monetary incentives. Catherine promised more serfs of all religions, as well as amnesty for convicts, if Muslims chose to convert to Orthodoxy. However, the Legislative Commission of 1767 offered several seats to people professing the Islamic faith. This commission promised to protect their religious rights, but did not do so. Many Orthodox peasants felt threatened by the sudden change, and burned mosques as a sign of their displeasure.

Catherine chose to assimilate Islam into the state rather than eliminate it when public outcry became too disruptive. After the "Toleration of All Faiths" Edict of 1773, Muslims were permitted to build mosques and practise all of their traditions, the most obvious of these being the pilgrimage to Mecca, which previously had been denied. Catherine created the Orenburg Muslim Spiritual Assembly to help regulate Muslim-populated regions as well as regulate the instruction and ideals of mullahs. The positions on the Assembly were appointed and paid for by Catherine and her government as a way of regulating religious affairs.

Personal life

Catherine, throughout her long reign, took many lovers, often elevating them to high positions for as long as they held her interest and then pensioning them off with gifts of serfs and large estates. The percentage of state money spent on the court increased from 10% in 1767 to 11% in 1781 to 14% in 1795. Catherine gave away 66,000 serfs from 1762 to 1772, 202,000 from 1773 to 1793, and 100,000 in one day: 18 August 1795. Catherine bought the support of the bureaucracy. In 1767, Catherine decreed that after seven years in one rank, civil servants automatically would be promoted regardless of office or merit.

After her affair with her lover and adviser Grigory Potemkin lost a lot of its passion in 1776, he allegedly selected a candidate-lover for her who had the physical beauty and mental faculties to hold her interest (such as Alexander Dmitriev-Mamonov and Nicholas Alexander Suk). She showed generosity towards her lovers, even after the affair ended. One of her lovers, Pyotr Zavadovsky, received 50,000 roubles, a pension of 5,000 roubles, and 4,000 peasants in Ukraine after she dismissed him in 1777. The last of her lovers, Platon Zubov, was 40 years her junior. Her sexual independence led to many of the legends about her.

Catherine kept her illegitimate son by Grigory Orlov (Alexis Bobrinsky, later elevated to Count Bobrinsky by Paul I) near Tula, away from her court.

The acceptance of a woman ruler was more of an issue among elites in Western Europe than in Russia. The British ambassador to Russia, James Harris, reported back to London that:

Her Majesty has a masculine force of mind, obstinacy in adhering to a plan, and intrepidity in the execution of it; but she wants the more manly virtues of deliberation, forbearance in prosperity and accuracy of judgment, while she possesses in a high degree the weaknesses vulgarly attributed to her sex—love of flattery, and its inseparable companion, vanity; an inattention to unpleasant but salutary advice; and a propensity to voluptuousness which leads to excesses that would debase a female character in any sphere of life.

Poniatowski

Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, the British ambassador to Russia, offered Stanisław Poniatowski a place in the embassy in return for gaining Catherine as an ally. Poniatowski, through his mother's side, came from the Czartoryski family, prominent members of the pro-Russian faction in Poland; Poniatowski and Catherine were eighth cousins, twice removed, by their mutual ancestor King Christian I of Denmark, by virtue of Poniatowski's maternal descent from the Scottish House of Stuart. Catherine, 26 years old and already married to the then-Grand Duke Peter for some 10 years, met the 22-year-old Poniatowski in 1755, well before encountering the Orlov brothers. They had a daughter named Anna Petrovna in December 1757 (not to be confused with Grand Duchess Anna Petrovna of Russia, the daughter of Peter I's second marriage), although she was legally regarded as Grand Duke Peter's.

King Augustus III of Poland died in 1763, so Poland needed to elect a new ruler. Catherine supported Poniatowski as a candidate to become the next king. She sent the Russian army into Poland to avoid possible disputes. Russia invaded Poland on 26 August 1764, threatening to fight, and imposing Poniatowski as king. Poniatowski accepted the throne, and thereby put himself under Catherine's control. News of Catherine's plan spread, and Frederick II (others say the Ottoman sultan) warned her that if she tried to conquer Poland by marrying Poniatowski, all of Europe would oppose her. She had no intention of marrying him, having already given birth to Orlov's child and to the Grand Duke Paul by then.

Prussia (through the agency of Prince Henry), Russia (under Catherine), and Austria (under Maria Theresa) began preparing the ground for the partitions of Poland. In the first partition, 1772, the three powers split 52,000 km2 (20,000 sq mi) among them. Russia got territories east of the line connecting, more or less, Riga–Polotsk–Mogilev. In the second partition, in 1793, Russia received the most land, from west of Minsk almost to Kiev and down the river Dnieper, leaving some spaces of steppe down south in front of Ochakov, on the Black Sea. Later uprisings in Poland led to the third partition in 1795. Poland ceased to exist as an independent nation until its post-World War I reconstitution.

Orlov

Grigory Orlov, the grandson of a rebel in the Streltsy uprising (1698) against Peter the Great, distinguished himself in the Battle of Zorndorf (25 August 1758), receiving three wounds. He represented an opposite to Peter's pro-Prussian sentiment, with which Catherine disagreed. By 1759, he and Catherine had become lovers; no one told Catherine's husband, Peter. Catherine saw Orlov as very useful, and he became instrumental in the 28 June 1762 coup d'état against her husband, but she preferred to remain the dowager empress of Russia rather than marrying anyone.

Orlov and his other three brothers found themselves rewarded with titles, money, swords, and other gifts, but Catherine did not marry Grigory, who proved inept at politics and useless when asked for advice. He received a palace in Saint Petersburg when Catherine became empress.

Orlov died in 1783. Their son, Aleksey Grygoriovich Bobrinsky (1762–1813), had one daughter, Maria Alexeyeva Bobrinsky (Bobrinskaya) (1798–1835), who married in 1819 the 34-year-old Prince Nikolai Sergeevich Gagarin (London, England, 1784–1842) who took part in the Battle of Borodino (7 September 1812) against Napoleon, and later served as ambassador in Turin, the capital of the Kingdom of Sardinia.

Potemkin

Grigory Potemkin was involved in the palace coup of 1762. In 1772, Catherine's close friends informed her of Orlov's affairs with other women, and she dismissed him. By the winter of 1773, Pugachev's Rebellion was starting to take root and Catherine's son Paul had started gaining support; both of these trends threatened her power. She called Potemkin for help—mostly military—and he became devoted to her.

In 1772, Catherine wrote to Potemkin. Days earlier, she had found out about an uprising in the Volga region. She appointed General Aleksandr Bibikov to put down the uprising, but she needed Potemkin's advice on military strategy. Potemkin quickly gained positions and awards. Russian poets wrote about his virtues, the court praised him, foreign ambassadors fought for his favour, and his family moved into the palace. He later became the de facto absolute ruler of New Russia, governing its colonisation.

In 1780, Emperor Joseph II, the son of Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa, toyed with the idea of determining whether or not to enter an alliance with Russia, and asked to meet Catherine. Potemkin had the task of briefing him and travelling with him to Saint Petersburg. Potemkin also convinced Catherine to expand the universities in Russia to increase the number of scientists.

Catherine was worried that Potemkin's poor health would delay his important work in colonising and developing the south as he had planned. He died at the age of 52 in 1791.

Final months and death

Catherine's life and reign included many personal successes, but they ended in two failures. Her Swedish cousin (once removed), King Gustav IV Adolf, visited her in September 1796, the empress's intention being that her granddaughter Alexandra should become queen of Sweden by marriage. A ball was given at the imperial court on 11 September when the engagement was supposed to be announced. Gustav Adolph felt pressured to accept that Alexandra would not convert to Lutheranism, and though he was delighted by the young lady, he refused to appear at the ball and left for Stockholm. The frustration affected Catherine's health. She recovered well enough to begin to plan a ceremony which would establish her favourite grandson Alexander as her heir, superseding her difficult son Paul, but she died before the announcement could be made, just over two months after the engagement ball.

On 16 November [O.S. 5 November] 1796, Catherine rose early in the morning and had her usual morning coffee, soon settling down to work on papers; she told her lady's maid, Maria Perekusikhina, that she had slept better than she had in a long time. Sometime after 9:00 she was found on the floor with her face purplish, her pulse weak, her breathing shallow and laboured. The court physician diagnosed a stroke and despite attempts to revive her, she fell into a coma. She was given the last rites and died the following evening around 9:45. An autopsy confirmed a stroke as the cause of death.

Later, several rumours circulated regarding the cause and manner of her death. The most famous of these rumors is that she died after committing bestiality with her horse. This rumor was widely circulated by satirical British and French publications at the time of her death. In his 1647 book Beschreibung der muscowitischen und persischen Reise (Description of the Muscovite and Persian journey), German scholar Adam Olearius alleged a supposed Russian tendency towards bestiality with horses. This was repeated in anti-Russian literature throughout the 17th and 18th centuries to illustrate the claimed barbarous Asian nature of Russia.

Catherine's undated will, discovered in early 1792 among her papers by her secretary Alexander Vasilievich Khrapovitsky, gave specific instructions should she die: "Lay out my corpse dressed in white, with a golden crown on my head, and on it inscribe my Christian name. Mourning dress is to be worn for six months, and no longer: the shorter the better." In the end, the empress was laid to rest with a gold crown on her head and clothed in a silver brocade dress. On 25 November, the coffin, richly decorated in gold fabric, was placed atop an elevated platform at the Grand Gallery's chamber of mourning, designed and decorated by Antonio Rinaldi.

Title

The Manifesto of 1763 begins with Catherine's full titulature:

By the expedient grace of God, we, Catherine the Second, Empress and Autocrat of all Russia: of Muscovy, of Kiev, of Vladimir, and of Novgorod; Tsaritsa of Kazan, Tsaritsa of Astrakhan, and Tsaritsa of Siberia; Lady of Pskov and Grand Duchess of Smolensk; Duchess of Estonia and Livonia, of Karelia, of Tver, of Yugra, of Perm, of Vyatka and Bolgharia and others; Lady and Grand Duchess of the lands of Nizhniy Novgorod, of Chernigov, of Ryazan, of Rostov, of Yaroslavl, of Beloozero, of Udoria, of Obdoria, of Kondia, and overlord of the northern territories and sovereign over the lands of Iveria, over the Kartlian and Gruzian tsars and over the land of the Kabardians, over the Circassian and mountain princes, and of others the hereditary sovereign and possessor.

Another of her titles was "Mother of the Fatherland". She was often simply addressed as "Mother" (Russian: Матушка, romanized: Matushka), sometimes even by the court nobles instead of as "Your Majesty".

Archives

Empress Catherine's correspondence with Frederick II Eugene, Duke of Württemberg, (the father of Catherine's daughter-in-law Maria Feodorovna) written between 1768 and 1795, is preserved in the State Archive of Stuttgart (Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart) in Stuttgart, Germany.

In popular culture

Literature

Empress Catherine appears as a character in Lord Byron's unfinished mock-heroic poem Don Juan.

She was a subject in The Royal Diaries series in the book Catherine: The Great Journey, Russia, 1743–1745 by Kristiana Gregory.

Film

N. Aleksandrova portrayed Catherine in the Russian short silent film Princess Tarakanova (1910).

Ellen Richter portrayed Catherine in German silent historical drama The Toy of the Tsarina (1919).

Lucie Höflich portrayed Catherine in German silent historical film Catherine the Great (1920).

Ernst Lubitsch's silent film Forbidden Paradise (1924) told the story of Catherine's romance with an officer.

Marcelle Charles-Dullin portrayed Catherine in French silent film The Chess Player (1927).

Suzanne Bianchetti portrayed Catherine in French historical drama film The Loves of Casanova (1927).

Salka Stenermann portrayed Catherine in American sound (All-Talking) pre-Code drama film with fantasy elements Seven Faces (1929).

Paule Andral portrayed Catherine in French historical drama film Tarakanova (1930).

Marlene Dietrich portrayed Catherine the Great in the film The Scarlet Empress (1934).

The Rise of Catherine the Great (1934) is a British historical film starring Elisabeth Bergner as Catherine and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. as Peter III.

Suzy Prim portrayed Catherine in French-Italian historical film Princess Tarakanova (1938).

Françoise Rosay portrayed Catherine in French historical drama film The Chess Player (1938).

Television

In live television broadcast by NBC of Shaw's play Great Catherine (1948) Catherine was portrayed by Gertrude Lawrence.

In British live TV exhibition of Shaw's play Great Catherine (1953) Catherine was portrayed by Mary Ellis.

In live UK presentation of Shaw's play Great Catherine (1958) Catherine was portrayed by Sydney Sturgess.

In American series Meeting of Minds (1977-1981) Catherine is played by Jayne Meadows.

In Soviet series Mikhaylo Lomonosov (1986) Catherine is played by Katrin Kohv.

The British/Canadian/American TV miniseries Young Catherine (1991), starring Julia Ormond as Catherine and Vanessa Redgrave as Empress Elizabeth, is based on Catherine's early life.

The television film Catherine the Great (1995) stars Catherine Zeta-Jones as Catherine and Jeanne Moreau as Empress Elizabeth.

A teenage clone of Catherine the Great appears a recurring character in the American animated series Clone High (2002–2003), voiced by Murray Miller from "Escape to Beer Mountain: A Rope of Sand" until "Changes: The Big Prom: The Sex Romp: The Season Finale", and depicted as dating a clone of Julius Caesar. In the series' 2023 revival, Miller was recast with Dannah Phirman, and depicted as now dating a clone of Genghis Khan.

In Russian historical drama series The Favorite (2005) Catherine is played by Natalya Surkova.

In British sketch comedy show Psychobitches (2012-2014) Catherine is played by Frances Barber.

Her rise to power and reign are portrayed in the Russia-1 television series Ekaterina (2014-2023). Catherine is portrayed by Marina Aleksandrova.

Documentaries

Russian historical documentary film Catherine the Great (2025); the third film in the Rus' franchise. The role of Catherine II was played by three actresses: Anna Mikhalkova, Olga Lerman and Nina Kucheruk.

Theatre and music

Catherine appears in Le congrès des rois (The Congress of the Kings), French Revolutionary opera of the genre comédie mêlée d'ariettes with a libretto by Antoine-François Ève, and music by a collaborative of twelve composers. It was first performed in 1794.

The Empress is parodied in Offenbach's operetta La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein (1867).

Catherine appears in The Captain's Daughter, an opera in four acts (eight tableaux) by César Cui, composed during 1907–1909. The libretto was adapted by the composer from Alexander Pushkin's 1836 novel of the same name.

Catherine is the subject of Great Catherine: Whom Glory Still Adores, a 1913 one-act play by Irish dramatist George Bernard Shaw.

Mae West published the play Catherine Was Great in 1944, starring in it then and in subsequent productions.

Catherine appears in Être Dieu: opéra-poème, audiovisuel et cathare en six parties (French for "Being God: a Cathar Audiovisual Opera-Poem in Six Parts"), an "opera-poem" written by Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dalí, based on a libretto by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, with music by French avant-garde musician Igor Wakhévitch. It was originally published in 1985.

Catherine is one of the main characters in the ballet Russian Hamlet (1999) by Boris Eifman

The Yugoslav new-wave band EKV (Ekaterina Velika) was named after Catherine.

The song "Catherine the Great" from the album Foreverland by The Divine Comedy was released as a single on 24 June 2016.

Other

Catherine (portrayed by Meghan Tonjes) is featured in the web series Epic Rap Battles of History, in the episode "Alexander the Great vs. Ivan the Terrible" (12 July 2016), pitted against the titular characters, as well as Frederick the Great and Pompey the Great.

She appears as a leader of the Russian civilization in Civilization games II, III, Revolution, IV, V, and VII.