Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
More than just a court coquette, Catherine possessed keen political instincts and a
strong appetite for power, attributes that had adverse effects on the men in her life.
Her husband Tsar Peter III, as it turned out, was a bit of a flake and not terribly inter-
ested in ruling. In a plot hatched by her lover, Prince Orlov, Catherine was complicit
in a coup that landed her on the throne, lifted Orlov to general-in-chief, and left her
helpless husband under guard at a remote estate where he was assassinated shortly af-
terwards. She followed Peter I's example of paranoid parenting. Indeed, she made her
successor son, Grand Duke Paul, so insecure that when he finally took the throne he
and locked himself in. Of course, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're
not after you: Paul's reign was cut short when some disgruntled drunken officers
strangled him to death with his bedroom curtains.
Catherine, by contrast, prospered. Despite the details of her unsavoury ascension,
she reigned for a satisfying 34 years and presided over a golden age for St Petersburg.
Relations between crown and aristocracy were never better. High society strolled
through handsome parks, gabbed in smoky salons and waltzed across glittering ball-
rooms. The city benefited from her literary leanings, acquiring a splendid public lib-
fair maidens. The Russian Empire, meanwhile, expanded to ever greater distances.
Catherine the Great adopted the Russian language, and, some suggest,
not always entirely successfully. One story runs that the German princess
spelled the word ' ещё ' (more) as истчо (sounding phonetically quite sim-
ilar) - giving rise to the joke at court: 'How can five spelling mistakes oc-
cur in a word of three letters?'
Empress Catherine was a charter member of a club of 18th-century monarchs
known as the 'enlightened despots' - dictators who could hum Haydn. On the 'en-
lightened' side, Catherine corresponded with French philosophers, patronised the arts
and sciences, promoted public education and introduced potatoes to the national
cuisine. On the 'despotic' side, Catherine connived with fellow enlightened friends to
carve up Poland, censored bad news and imprisoned the messengers, tightened serfs'
bonds of servitude to their lords, and introduced potatoes to the national cuisine.
