Catherine II

From Philosopedia

Catherine II, Catherine The Great (2 May 1729 6 November [O.S. 17 November] 1796)

Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, was a German princess chosen by Czarina Elizabeth partly on the recommendation of Frederick II of Prussia, to be the wife of the future Czar Peter III.

Accepting the Orthodox faith, she changed her original name, Sophie, to Catherine. Becoming “completely Russian” made her popular with important political elements who opposed her eccentric husband, whom many considered a drunken boor. When her husband ascended to the throne in 1762, a group of conspirators headed by her lover, Grigori Orlov, proclaimed Catherine the autocrat. Shortly afterward, Peter was murdered. Catherine then began great projects of reform, drawing upon the writings of Beccaria and Montesquieu to serve as guides.

An enthusiastic patron of the arts, she wrote memoirs, comedies, and stories. She corresponded with the French encyclopedists, including Voltaire, Diderot, and d’Alembert.

Although she had many lovers, only Orlov, Potemkin, and P. L. Zubov were said to have been influential in government affairs. She was succeeded by her son, Paul I.

Joseph McCabe notes that Catherine found it difficult being in a world where the Church was supreme and life was coarse and unrestricted. She particularly had little regard for the sex-part of the Christian code. (On Broadway in the 1940s, Mae West played the starring role in Catherine the Great, which detailed her many sexual escapades. In one scene, she asks her homosexual hairdresser what he wants for Christmas. He responds what he really wants is one of her discarded lovers.)

Because of her friendship with the French encyclopedists, who were largely responsible for her glorious contemporary reputation, she learned a humanitarianism which the Church ignored, and she began a great program of social reform in Russia (in education, sanitation, administration of justice).

The French Revolution and execution of the King caused a reaction in her mind and character and all reform was suspended. But, according to McCabe, she remained a Deist. Robertson also called her a deist, “a satirist of bigots in her comedies,” one who accomplished what Peter had planned, the secularization of Church property. J. M. Robertson lamented the fact that “her half-crazy son Paul II, whom she had given cause to hate her, undid her work wherever he could.”

{CE; JM; JMR; JMRH; RAT; RE; WWS}