Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman

I learned something I never knew: that before King George III hired 30,000 German Hessians to help fight his rebellious American colonists, he asked Catherine the Great to sell him the services of 20,000 Russian infantry and 1,000 Cossack cavalry. Catherine reluctantly declined given that she expected she’d need them to fight the Ottoman Turks. As Robert K. Massie dryly states, given how utterly the Americans learned to hate the king’s German mercenaries, we can only imagine what effect twenty thousand Russians would have had on 18th-century America.

Catherine’s story sounds unlikely: the daughter of a minor German prince is swept to the Russian court as the betrothed of Peter the Great’s grandson; endures an unspeakable show more marriage; overthrows her husband and sovereign within months of his accession with the full support of the Russian people, army, and church; and rules the Russian Empire as an absolute empress for over three decades.

Even that summary doesn’t do justice to her personality. She contained worlds within her: at once a progressive and humane daughter of the Enlightenment who tried to bring her adopted people closer to the mainstream of Western Europe, and also a thoroughly Russified autocrat convinced her realm was too backward, too vast, and too internally fractured to be ruled other than by an all-powerful monarch.

Massie writes well and easily, producing a 650-page biography that flies by. The first half is easily the best in terms of human drama. Massey follows Catherine’s lead in structuring a chronological narrative of her life, from her earliest days to the overthrow of her husband, along the lines of the memoirs she wrote and rewrote over the course of her life. The second half of the book is more conventionally biographical, devoting chapters to topics such as Catherine’s many lovers, her abortive attempt to rewrite Russia’s legal code, and the recoil of the French Revolution’s murderous excesses on Catherine’s thought and policies.

Massie won a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Peter the Great, and I’m not surprised given how enjoyable I found his account of the woman who defined Russia for a generation, who almost certainly ended the biological bloodline of Peter the Great, and who forged a new trajectory for the House of Romanov which lasted until its liquidation by the Bolsheviks in 1918. show less

Sophia Augusta Fredericka (later renamed Catherine) was born in 1729, the daughter of a minor noble in a minor German kingdom. She was chosen at age fourteen by Elizabeth, Empress of Russia, to be the bride of her son Peter and travelled to Russia with her determined and scheming mother. But in a Russian court full of ambition and jealousies, Sophia managed to maneuver herself onto the throne in 1762 through her charm and intelligence (and a generally bloodless coup). Once there, and inspired by the enlightenment philosophies of Voltaire, Diderot, and others, she sought to institute many changes in a society considered backward and primitive by other European countries and rulers. And while her sweeping and lofty reforms were rejected, show more she managed to leave her imprint on Russia in so many other ways throughout her 34 years as ruler – so much so that her people called her “Great.”

Mr. Massie writes an engaging and fascinating biography of Catherine II, and makes her intensely (and sometimes uncomfortably) human in the process. He brings her to life as a young woman in a foreign court faced with earning acceptance from the Empress, her future husband, power-hungry courtiers, and the Russian people. In her first few years on the throne she tried to gradually eliminate serfdom (slavery) but was opposed by the nobility (to which she owed in large degree her ascension to power). Interestingly, she also found that the serfs themselves were not progressive thinking enough to imagine such freedom – a rather rude awakening for her enlightenment beliefs – instead being more concerned about broken fences and small grievances like that. Later her views on emancipating the serfs turned completely around when she saw the violence and chaos of the French Revolution and the parallels to the Pugachev Rebellion she herself had faced. Another aspect of her life that was explained in a way that made her a sympathetic character was the different "favorites" (lovers) she had and her deep-seated desire just to be loved.

With excerpts from Catherine's own writings this bio offers a very insightful look into the politics and intrigue and the lives of European rulers and nobles during the latter half of the 1700s, and for being such a long book (nearly 600 pages before the index and bibliography) it's incredibly interesting. I thought pedigree charts explaining the relationships of the characters would have been helpful (mine was an advance copy from Amazon Vine, so perhaps the final book has them) and it would have been nice if a little more background had been given on nations outside Russia (only Poland and the French Revolution are explained in much detail, but little on Prussia, Germany, and Austria). Still, this was a remarkable book and didn't often show life as a princess or queen in a very charming manner. I'll definitely be looking to add Mr. Massie’s other books on the Romanovs and Russian history to my reading list.

(Modified from the original review posted on 11/5/11 on my blog: bookworm-dad.blogspot.com) show less

Though the heft of this book is daunting when you first pick it up, persevere. It only takes a few pages before you lose track of time and find yourself transported into the past. I read almost half the book in one sitting without even realizing it because the narrative was just so engaging. This is an excellently researched and well-drawn portrait of a truly fascinating woman who transformed herself from a pawn to the Empress of Russia. Massie's writing style is accessible and the characters he reveals through his prose create a deep well of interest and empathy. I knew very little about Catherine the Great before picking up this book, and was stunned by how she seized control of her own destiny to save herself and her adopted show more country.

Highly recommended. show less

This hefty biography of Catherine the Great reads, at times, like a novel and makes a good effort at exploring the many facets of this Russian monarch. Born a minor German princess, Catherine found herself married to the heir to the Russian throne through the machinations of family connections and the influence of Empress Elizabeth of Russia. After years of struggle as a wife and mother and then the disastrous reign of her husband Peter III, Catherine seized the throne and ruled Russia for more than thirty years. She wrestled with Enlightment ideals and how they could be implemented - the discussion of Russian serfdom and Catherine's desire and inability to end the institution is particularly notable. I also found the story behind show more Potemkin villages to be fascinating and appreciated the author's attempts to puncture this myth. Overall, this is approachable read on Catherine the Great that portrays the drama of her life and reign. show less

This is an excellent biography of one of the greatest of Russian rulers, by an author who has already written major biographies of Peter the Great, the last tsar Nicholas and his wife Alexandra, and a book about the post-revolutionary Romanovs in exile. It is rich and colourful and, the title notwithstanding, covers all aspects of Catherine's life and rule, the personal, political, military and social. Catherine was an unlikely ruler of the biggest empire in the world, being a princess of a minor German state with no Russian blood. Called to Russia at the age of 14 to marry the heir to the throne, Peter, Empress Elizabeth's nephew, she quickly, unlike her husband, adopted Russian customs and language and joined the Orthodox church, show more renouncing her Lutheranism against her father's protests. She quickly eclipsed Peter in all areas. He was unstable and unfit to rule, and Elizabeth worried for the succession, so much so that, after nine years of unconsummated marriage, the way was cleared for Catherine to have a child by another man, with the result that Grand Duke Paul was very probably not Peter's son.

After Elizabeth's death, Peter became emperor Peter III, but Catherine overthrew him six months later and assumed the imperial title (Peter died suddenly a week later, very probably bumped off by Catherine's supporters, the Orlovs). Catherine was a ruler of contrasts. A follower of Voltaire and Diderot, she was genuinely liberal by the standards of rulers of the time, and made some attempts at constitutional and other political and economic reform, which however she could not progress in the face of opposition from the nobility, on whose support she depended. For an autocrat she was sparing in the use of force and consistently opposed the use of torture, even against her bitterest opponents. However, her liberal instincts weakened in the face of the Pugachev rebellion, whose leader the Cossack Yemelyan Pugachev claimed to be Peter III; and withered almost entirely after the French Revolution, when the fear of a bloody upheaval against established authority caused her to become suspicious of reformers, including the first true Russian reformer Alexander Radischchev. It also led her to what was surely the most outrageous and longest-lasting injustice of her reign, that of the dismemberment and destruction of the Polish state, after its legislature had tried to assert some independence against Russian domination; Poland did not emerge again until after the First World War.

The book also of course charts Catherine's colourful love life and her many favourites, including most prominently Grigory Potemkin, the love of her life, to whom she may have been secretly married; and the other significant relationships (with each of whom she had a child) Stanislaus Poniatowski, whom she later made her puppet king of Poland, and Grigory Orlov, one of the brothers who helped her win the throne. Ironically, history repeated itself and Catherine regarded her son Paul as largely unfit to rule and may have planned to name her eldest grandson, Paul's son Alexander, her successor in his place. She died at the age of 67 in 1796, one of the longest lived rulers of Russia, not a breed known for their longevity. Always a fascinating character, one of the genuine greats of European history. show less

Not entirely satisfied with how much of this revolved around her love life. I would have preferred a more vivid sense of place and accomplishment. Relegating the repeated conquering of Poland to a few paragraphs, while incidental lovers got whole pages, is irksome at best. Granted, the military and colonial history is available in other sources, and the personal history is clearly the focus of this book, but still. Toward the end, we lose the sense of her agency, and the politics of being empress were at least as much a part of her life as who was entertaining her while she was off the clock.

Catherine the Great is indisputably one of the greatest women Europe has ever produced. She ruled Russia as an enlightened monarch and spread the philosophy of its prior pro-European monarch Peter the Great. She created an intellectual culture in Russia that blossomed with talent like Dostoyevski, Tolstoy, and Tchaikovsky.

Ironically, she was not born a Russian but a German. Her marriage to a future king was a failure, but not due to her lack of trying. She spent years subjugated to another Russian monarch – Queen Elizabeth. Instead of being frustrated, Catherine spent her time reading books during the European Enlightenment from figures like Voltaire and Diderot. When time and chance converged and offered her a chance to rule, she show more seized the opportunity.

Despite these beneficial qualities, Catherine’s character presents itself not as an ideal figure but as a pragmatist. Although she was aware of their suffering (more than many monarchs could say), she did not free Russia’s serfs. She saw that serfs needed more than the Russian state could offer them at the time, in terms of education and economic opportunity. She also weathered the craziness of the French Revolution and held onto power like any good autocrat does. She joined in partitioning Poland in two and thus made a nation disappear. Nonetheless, she provided a culture for the arts and a movement towards integration with European intellectual and political life.

This cultural renewal is Catherine’s legacy. Massie, as a good biographer, gets out of the way and lets Catherine’s personality shine – even in her turbulent personal relationships. He provides much detail from personal letters of those around Catherine. He also does a good job of integrating her personal narrative in with world events. Overall, this is a nice portrait of a great lady. show less