Catherine the Great

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by Robert K. Massie


  Day before yesterday, on February ninth, it was fifty years since I arrived with my mother in Moscow. I doubt if there are ten people living today in St. Petersburg who remember. There is still Betskoy, blind, decrepit, gaga, asking young couples whether they remember Peter the Great.… There is one of my old maids, whom I still keep, though she forgets everything. These are proofs of old age and I am one of them. But in spite of this, I love as much as a five-year-old child to play blindman’s buff, and the young people, including my grandchildren, say that their games are never so merry as when I play with them. And I still love to laugh.

  It was a long and remarkable journey that no one, not even she, could have imagined when, at fourteen, she set off for Russia across the snow.

  * * *

  * Jones wrote this letter in a mixture of French and English, and it was he who chose the French word badiner. This can mean “played with,” “bantered with,” “joked with,” “toyed with,” or “trifled with.” In today’s vernacular, it could mean “fooled around with.” No one will ever know now how intimate this encounter became. Jones, however, was not denying that something had happened. He was insisting that he did not have sexual intercourse with a ten- or twelve-year-old girl.

  * Pitt had perhaps forgotten that in 1588, England had beheaded Mary Stuart, a former queen of France and, subsequently, of Scotland. And that in 1649, the English, after overthrowing their monarchy, had beheaded King Charles I.

  For Deborah

  And for Bob Loomis.

  Twenty-four years, four books.

  Thank you.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  In writing this book, I drew heavily from the rich collections of the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University. Thanks to the library’s Privileges Office, I was able to spend days in the stacks, gather the books I wanted to bring home, and withdraw them for a reasonable period. I am grateful to the library for this generous policy and for the members of its staff who were always helpful. I also used the New York Public Library extensively and I thank the staff of this crown jewel of New York’s cultural life.

  Among those who by word and deed gave me steady encouragement during the years of working on this book were Andre Bernard, Donald Bitsberger, Kenneth Burrows, Janet Byrne, Georgina Capel and Anthony Cheetham, Robert and Ina Caro, Patricia Civale, Robert and Aline Crumb, Donald Holden, Melanie Jackson and Thomas Pynchon, James Marlas and Marie Nugent-Head, Kim, Lorna, and Miranda Massie, Jack and Lynn May, Lawrence and Margaret McQuade, Gilbert Merritt, Eunice Meyer, David Michaelis and Nancy Steiner, Edmund and Sylvia Morris, Mary Mulligan, Sara Nelson, Sydney Offit, George Paine, Heather Previn, David Remnick and Esther B. Fein, Peter and Masha Sarandinaki, Richard Weiss, and Brenda Wineapple. Douglas Smith generously allowed me to use his translations of the Catherine-Potemkin correspondence. Doug Smith also permitted me to draw heavily on his book The Pearl and its descriptions of the institution of Russian serfdom, particularly in the areas of serf opera, ballet companies, theatrical companies, symphony orchestras, and other forms of the performing arts.

  I have again been fortunate to have Random House, a gathering of extraordinary talents, as my book’s publisher. The members of this family who have worked to help me this time are Avideh Bashirrad, Evan Camfield, Gina Centrello, Jonathan Jao, Susan Kamil, London King, Carole Lowenstein, Jynne Martin, Sally Marvin, Tom Perry, Robbin Schiff, Ben Steinberg, and Jessica Waters. I have also been helped by Dolores Karl, Lane Trippe, and Alex Remnick.

  For many years, my essential friend, counselor, and supporter at Random House has been Bob Loomis, who, in the summer of 2011, retired after fifty-four years of sustained effort and brilliant achievement at the same publishing house. I am one of hundreds of authors whose work has been guided and improved by his wisdom, enthusiasm, kindness, and firm but gentle admonitions, usually beginning, “Let’s see if we can find a way to make this even better.” There are no others like him.

  Manuscript in hand, Deborah Karl, my wife, literary agent, and the best-read person I know, made many suggestions; every one is now in the book. Three of my children, Bob, Jr., Elizabeth, and Christopher, also read the manuscript and asked good questions. My daughter Susanna keeps track from far away, and at home, my daughters Sophia and Nora have sustained me with their love, unfailing optimism, and soaring artistic talent.

  Finally, I must acknowledge the extraordinary pleasure I have had in the company of the remarkable woman who has been my subject. After eight years of having her a constant presence in my life, I shall miss her.

  SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Alexander, John T. Catherine the Great. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989

  Anderson, Fred. Crucible of War. New York: Vintage, 2001

  Anderson, M. S. Britain’s Discovery of Russia, 1553–1815. London: Macmillan, 1958

  Anthony, Katharine. Catherine the Great. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1925

  Asprey, Robert. Frederick the Great. New York: History Book Club, 1986

  Bain, R. Nisbet. Peter III, Emperor of Russia. Westminster: Constable, 1902

  ——. The Pupils of Peter the Great. Westminster: Constable, 1897

  Billington, James H. The Icon and the Axe. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966

  Catherine II. Memoirs. Translated by Alexander Herzen. New York: D. Appleton, 1859

  ——. Memoirs of Catherine the Great. Translated and with notes by Katharine Anthony. New York and London: Alfred A. Knopf, 1927

  ——. The Memoirs of Catherine the Great. Edited by Dominique Maroger and translated by Moura Budberg. New York: Macmillan, 1955

  ——. The Memoirs of Catherine the Great. Edited and translated by Mark Cruse and Hilde Hoogenboom. New York: Modern Library, 2005

  Coughlan, Robert. Elizabeth and Catherine: Empresses of All the Russias. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1974

  Crankshaw, Edward. Maria Theresa. New York: Viking Press, 1969

  Cranston, Maurice. Philosophers and Pamphleteers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986

  Cronin, Vincent. Catherine, Empress of All the Russias. New York: William Morrow, 1978

  Dashkova, Princess Catherine. Memoirs. Two volumes. London: Henry Colburn, 1840

  Descargues, Pierre. The Hermitage Museum, Leningrad. New York: Harry Abrams, 1961

  Dixon, Simon. Catherine the Great. London: Longman-Pearson, 2001

  Duffy, Christopher. Frederick the Great. London: Routledge, 1988

  ——. The Military Experience in the Age of Reason. New York: Atheneum, 1988

  ——. Russia’s Military Way to the West. London: Routledge, 1981

  Dukes, Paul. Catherine the Great and the Russian Nobility. Cambridge University Press, 1967

  Durant, Will, and Ariel Durant. The Story of Civilization. Vol. 9, The Age of Voltaire. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965

  ——. Vol. 10, Rousseau and Revolution. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967

  Figes, Orlando. Natasha’s Dance. New York: Metropolitan-Holt, 2002

  Fisher, Helen. Why We Love. New York: Henry Holt, 2004

  Gooch, G. P. Catherine the Great and Other Studies. Hamdon, Conn.: Archon Books, 1966

  Gorbatov, Inna. Catherine the Great and the French Philosphers of the Enlightenment. Bethesda, Md.: Academica Press, 2006

  Grey, Ian. Catherine the Great. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1962

  Haslip, Joan. Catherine the Great. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1977

  Hubatsch, Walther. Frederick the Great. London: Thames and Hudson, 1973

  Kaus, Gina. Catherine: The Portrait of an Empress. New York: The Literary Guild, 1935

  Kerensky, Alexander. The Crucifixion of Liberty. New York: Day, 1934

  Lariviere, Ch. Catherine II et la Revolution Francaise. Paris: Librairie H. Le Soudier, 1895

  Lincoln, W. Bruce. Between Heaven and Hell. New York: Viking-Penguin, 1998

  Longworth, Philip. The Three Empresses. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973

  Loomis, Stanley. Paris in the Terror.
London: Jonathan Cape, 1964

  Madariaga, Isabel de. Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981

  ——. Catherine the Great. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990

  Marsden, Christopher. Palmyra of the North: The First Days of St. Petersburg. London: Faber and Faber, 1942

  Masson, Charles. Secret Memoirs of the Court of Petersburg. New York: Arno Press and New York Times, 1970

  Montefiore, Sebag. Prince of Princes: The Life of Potemkin. New York. St. Martin’s Press, 2001

  Morison, Samuel Eliot. John Paul Jones. Boston: Little, Brown, 1959

  Oldenbourg, Zoe. Catherine the Great. New York: Pantheon, 1965

  Oliva, L. Jay, ed. Catherine the Great. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1971

  Pipes, Richard. Russia Under the Old Regime. New York: Scribners, 1974

  Plumb, J. H. The First Four Georges. London: Fontana-Collins, 1966

  Pomeau, Rene, ed. Voltaire Chez Lui. Yens sur Morges: Editions Cabedita, 1999

  Poniatowski, Stanley-August. Memoires du Roi. St. Petersburg: L’Academie Imperiale Des Sciences, 1914

  Radishchev, Alexander. A Journey from St Petersburg to Moscow. Translated by Leo Wiener. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958

  Raeff, Marc. Origins of the Russian Intelligentsia. New York: Harbinger, Harcourt Brace, 1966

  ——, ed. Catherine the Great: A Profile. New York: Hill and Wang, 1972

  Ransel, David L. The Politics of Catherinian Russia: The Panin Party. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975

  Reddaway, W. F. Documents of Catherine the Great: Correspondence with Voltaire and the Nakaz of 1767. Cambridge University Press, 1931

  Rice, Tamara Talbot. Elizabeth, Empress of Russia. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970

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  Rounding, Virginia. Catherine the Great. London: Hutchinson, 2006

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  Scott Thomson, Gladys. Catherine the Great and the Expansion of Russia. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1947

  Smith, Douglas. Love and Conquest: Personal Correspondence of Catherine the Great and Gregory Potemkin. DeKalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press, 2005

  ——. The Pearl. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008

  Soloveytchik, George. Potemkin: A Picture of Catherine’s Russia. London: Thornton Butterworth, 1938

  Thomas, Evan. John Paul Jones. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003

  Thompson, J. M. French Revolution Documents. Oxford University Press, 1933

  Troyat, Henri. Catherine the Great. New York: Meridian, 1994

  Williams, Basil. The Whig Supremacy, 1740–1760. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1962

  Winik, Jay. The Great Upheaval. New York: HarperCollins, 2007

  Waliszewski, Kasimierz. The Romance of an Empress. Archon Books, 1968

  Yarmolinsky, Avrahm, ed. The Poems, Prose, and Plays of Alexander Pushkin. New York: Modern Library, 1936

  Zweig, Stefan. Marie Antoinette. New York: Viking Press, 1933

  NOTES

  Catherine’s life divides into two halves almost equal in length. From 1729 to 1762, she was a German princess and a Russian grand duchess; from 1762 until her death in 1796, she was the empress of Russia. The primary source of information about the first half of her life is her own Memoirs, which begin with her earliest recollections and continue to 1758, when she was twenty-nine and under stress at the court of Empress Elizabeth. Naturally, her memoirs display the subjective perspective of any memoir writer; even so, they are invaluable.

  Catherine wrote her memoirs in French, and at least four translations have been published in English. The first of these was by Alexander Herzen, a celebrated Russian author and exile in London; this work appeared in 1859. An American, Katharine Anthony, retranslated and edited the memoirs and published them in London and New York in 1927. Catherine’s memoirs in the original French were edited and published by Dominique Maroger in Paris, then translated into English by Moura Budberg, appearing in New York in 1955. Modern Library brought out a new translation by Mark Cruse and Hilde Hoogenboom in 2005 that put Catherine’s reminiscences in correct chronological sequence, which Catherine herself and previous translators never achieved. I have used the first three of these translations. They are identified in the notes as follows: Maroger and Budberg’s version is denoted simply as Memoirs. Herzen’s translation is identified as Herzen. The Anthony translation is denoted by Memoirs (Anthony).

  1. SOPHIA’S CHILDHOOD

  1 “that idiot”: Haslip

  2 “It was told me”: Memoirs, 25–26

  3 “He lived to be only twelve”: Ibid., 41

  4 “Very early it was noticed”: Anthony, 27

  5 “circumcision”: Ibid., 31

  6 “every night at dusk”: Memoirs, 30

  7 “I am convinced”: Anthony, 27

  8 “All my life”: Memoirs, 30

  9 “He always brought with him”: Anthony, 27

  10 “Music to my ears”: Memoirs, 31

  11 “She had a noble soul”: Ibid., 26

  12 “the pupil”: Oldenbourg, 8

  13 “One cannot always know”: Kaus, 11

  14 “A large number of parrots”: Memoirs, 36

  15 “I don’t know whether”: Anthony, 13

  16 “agreeable and well-bred”: Memoirs, 33

  17 “I knew that one day”: Ibid., 34

  18 “Madame, you do not know”: Ibid., 49

  19 “Galloped until”: Ibid., 38

  20 “I was never caught”: Ibid.

  21 “I knew nothing about love”: Ibid., 46

  22 “My parents will not wish it”: Memoirs (Anthony), 28

  23 “He was very good looking”: Memoirs, 46

  2. SUMMONED TO RUSSIA

  1 “The empress is charmed”: Kaus, 19

  2 “At the explicit command”: Ibid., 25

  3 “I will no longer conceal”: Ibid., 26

  4 “She lacked only wings”: Ibid., 27

  5 “Next to the empress”: Ibid., 28

  6 “The prince, my husband”: Ibid.

  7 “She told me”: Memoirs, 50

  3. FREDERICK II AND THE JOURNEY TO RUSSIA

  1 “ambition, the opportunity for gain”: Ritter, 7

  2 “opera, comedy, poetry, dancing”: Memoirs, 54

  3 “the entire company”: Oldenbourg, 21

  4 “Accept this gift”: Memoirs, 54

  5 “The little princess of Zerbst”: Haslip, 24

  6 “My Lord: I beg you”: Oldenbourg, 59

  7 “The bedchambers were unheated”: Waliszewski, 23

  8 “I had never seen anything”: Memoirs, 54

  9 “In these last days”: Anthony, 69

  10 “I found ready to wrap us”: Ibid., 71

  11 “Here everything goes on”: Ibid.

  12 “It is the bride”: Kaus, 42

  4. EMPRESS ELIZABETH

  1 “loved both his girls”: Rice, 15

  2 “My father often repeated”: Bain, Peter III, 13

  3 “She is a beauty”: Massie, Peter the Great, 806

  4 “I was too young then”: Rice, 48

  5 “knew of no other family”: Ibid.

  6 “Your Majesty may create me”: Ibid., 61

  7 “In public”: Longworth, 162

  8 “exceedingly obliging and affable”: Rice, 47

  9 “Madame, you must choose”: Ibid., 57

  5. THE MAKING OF A GRAND DUKE

  1 “I don’t belive there is a princess”: Massie, 806

  2 “I am Russian, remember”: Bain, Pupils of Peter the Great, 125

  3 “the happiest day of my life”: Oldenbourg, 48

  4 “I see that Your Highness”: Bain, Peter III, 11
<
br />   5 “utterly frivolous”: Ibid., 14

  6 “extremely weak”: Ibid., 15

  7 “This will be your last”: Oldenbourg, 52

  8 “I cannot express”: Bain, Peter III, 13

  9 “One promised”: Oldenbourg, 53

  10 “as he spoke”: Ibid.

  6. MEETING ELIZABETH AND PETER

  1 “I could wait no longer”: Kaus, 43

  2 “All I have done for you”: Ibid.

  3 “It was quite impossible”: Memoirs, 60

  4 “one of the most handsome men”: Ibid., 61

  5 “We are living like queens”: Kaus, 53

  6 “for the first ten days”: Memoirs, 62

  7 “because his aunt wished it”: Ibid.

  8 “I blushed to hear”: Ibid.

  7. PNEUMONIA

  1 “the external forms”: Madariaga, Russia in the Age, 6

  2 “Search yourself with care”: Anthony, 82

  3 “The change of religion”: Ibid., 81

  4 “There I lay with a high fever”: Memoirs, 63

  5 “the devil would take her”: Oldenbourg, 68

  6 “Call Simon Todorsky”: Anthony, 83

  7 “the ladies would speak”: Herzen, 28,

  8 “my mother’s behavior”: Memoirs, 64

  9 “I had become as thin as a skeleton”: Memoirs, 65

  10 “My Lord, I make so bold”: Oldenbourg, 68

  11 “Our good prince”: Kaus, 58

  12 “I have had more trouble”: Ibid., 59

  8. INTERCEPTED LETTERS

  1 “If the empress would give”: Kaus, 50

  2 “frivolous, indolent, running to fat”: Haslip, 34

  3 “This horseplay will stop”: Herzen, 29

  4 “If your mother has done something wrong”: Memoirs, 66

  9. CONVERSION AND BETROTHAL

  1 “She slept soundly”: Oldenbourg, 74

  2 “I thought she was lovely”: Ibid., 75

  3 “The forehead, eyes, neck, throat”: Ibid., 76

  4 “I had learned it by heart”: Anthony, 84

  5 “Her bearing … through the entire ceremony”: Ibid.

  6 “real little monsters, both of them”: Oldenbourg, 77

 

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