Catherine the Great

by Read Listen Learn


Catherine the Great

Catherine the Great is one of the most important and influential queens in world history. Although she ruled the huge Russian empire for more than thirty years – and ruled it like no-one had ever ruled it before – she was born a poor princess of a tiny German state that nobody had really heard of. (In 1729, when she was born, Germany was not a country but a group of small lands governed by different princes.) Her name was not even Catherine then – it was Sophie. She spoke no Russian and had no reason to think she would ever visit the country. Nowadays, we call Catherine’s time as Empress ‘The Golden Age of Russia’. This is her story.

Catherine’s childhood was quite normal. She learnt French at home and, like all girls at that time, did not go to school. We can imagine that she studied painting, dancing and other skills that poor young princesses needed to get a good husband. Catherine herself said of her childhood, “I see nothing of interest in it”. But Catherine’s mother had powerful royal friends and Elizabeth, Empress of Russia, had no husband or children. She was also originally from Germany and chose her nephew, Peter, to follow her as Tsar. Catherine was to change her religion and name (from Sophie) to marry him. In 1744, she arrived in the Russian capital, St. Petersburg, and, a year later, became Peter’s wife and the future Tsarina of Russia. Both she and her husband started to learn Russian at once and Catherine was so keen to learn it quickly and well that she got up in the middle of the night to practise and became very ill. Her interest in the Russian Orthodox religion and the language of her new home made her popular with Empress Elizabeth (although she spoke Russian with a foreign accent all her life).

Things did not go so well with Peter, her husband. He caught chicken pox and the scars this illness left on his face made Catherine feel sick. Peter was also mainly interested in military things: he loved the army and even toy soldiers and played war games all the time. He had imagination but could not stay interested in anything for very long. The couple did not meet often and, after several years of marriage, they had no child. Catherine took a lover, maybe more than one, and in 1754, she at last had a baby son, Paul. She later wrote that the child was not her husband’s but Peter made no trouble about it. Catherine was not allowed to bring Paul up. He was taken away by Empress Elizabeth, who made all the decisions about his education. Even the name, Paul, was chosen by the Empress. A second child, a daughter called Anna, died after only four months.

When the Empress Elizabeth died in 1761, Peter became the Tsar, but he was quickly arrested and, after a few months locked in a castle, he died. In fact, we know he was killed by the younger brother of another of Catherine’s lovers. Everybody thought that she had managed her husband’s death but we cannot know for sure if this was true. Catherine then became Empress of Russia.

Catherine’s empire was vast. It started at the border with Poland in the west and continued to the Pacific Ocean in the east and from the Baltic Sea in the north to the border with Turkey in the south. During Catherine’s time as Empress, it became even bigger. She sent her army into Poland and made another lover, Stanislaw August Poniatowski, the king. When he died, she annexed most of Poland to Russia. She also fought a war with the Turkish Ottoman Empire in 1770 and added more land to her own Empire. Finally, she colonised much of Alaska, so that parts of modern America were also Russian in her day.

Although Catherine’s Empire was large and strong, it was not peaceful. There were many revolts. The most famous one was in 1774-5, when a retired Army officer, Yemelyan Pugachev, started calling himself the Tsar in the name of Catherine’s murdered husband. The Cossacks from northern Russia joined him and so did many serfs, as Pugachev announced an end to serfdom. The story of Pugachev’s life and execution is famously told in a long story called ‘The Captain’s Daughter’ by Alexander Pushkin, one of the first and greatest writers in Russian.

Half the population in Catherine’s Empire were serfs. They were the property of aristocrats and could be moved from one part of Russia to another, as their owner liked. He could sell families or individuals when he liked. In fact, the only thing he could not do was kill them. In practice, this was not so very different from many countries in Europe, like France, where the poor in the countryside had very few rights, but in Russia, about half the people were ‘unfree’ and had no rights at all. We know that Catherine wanted to change this situation but that it was too dangerous for her to do so. In one case, she even made the serfs’ situation worse by making a law that their owners could send them to Siberia, the coldest and most uncomfortable area of Russia, if they made them angry, just like criminals.

However, Catherine did many, many surprisingly liberal things too. She started the first schools which were free of charge. Both boys and girls could study there. In fact, these were open to everyone, even serfs. The problem was that most serfs lived in the countryside and the schools were in the cities. Another thing was that very few serfs wanted to send their children to school when they could work on the land. What was the point? They were going to be serfs anyway. Who needed an educated serf?

Catherine also started collecting art. The world-famous Hermitage Museum, one of the largest and best in Europe, was her idea. This was not only an example of Catherine’s taste but a sign of Russia’s growing power. She also had long friendships (by writing letters) with some of the most famous intellectuals and artists of her time – including the French free thinker, Voltaire, the greatest philosopher of the eighteenth century. She was the first monarch to inoculate herself and her children against smallpox, something that made Catholic France very angry as the king there had forbidden this because it was trying to change God’s plan for people.

Catherine also tried to govern her country by principles. She banned torture and forbade teachers to hit children at school. She said she wanted a gentle government and justice for all. Although some of her laws did not make much difference to the lives of her people because they lived in small villages thousands of miles from the capital, this was the first time that a Russian monarch had ever tried to write down principles of modern and tolerant government. Before Catherine, tsars ruled by force.

When Catherine became Empress, Russia was an important but still second-class power in Europe. When she died, she left one of the strongest empires. However, it is sad but true that we often remember Catherine more for her young lovers than for her clever decisions.

There are myths about her huge appetite for sex. Catherine had many lovers and was always kind to them when the relationship ended. Many of these young men loved her, like King Stanislaw August Poniatowski, who refused to marry another woman and died single. But the most important thing is that Catherine was an independent woman and made her own decisions. Nobody ever said that her lovers were the real power in the Empire.