Catherine the Great

by Simon Dixon

  36. SIRIO, xxii: 77, Solms to Frederick II, 3 June 1763.

  37. KfZh (1763), 213.

  38. Poroshin, 305–6, 8 Oct. 1765; McGrew, 56.

  39. The following depends on G. N. Komelova, ‘Apartamenty Ekateriny II v Zimnem dvortse’, in Zimnii dvorets: Ocherki zhizni imperatorskoi rezidentsii, 1: XVIII-pervaia tret’ XIX veka (SPb, 2000), 44–73.

  40. Benois, Tsarskoe Selo, 125; Poroshin, 307, 10 Oct. 1765.

  41. AKV, xxxiv: 358, Panin to Anna Vorontsova, 11 Jan. 1767.

  42. Poroshin, 54–5, 15 and 16 Oct. 1764; 192, 20 Feb. 1765. The machine was probably an electrostatic generator donated by Paul’s new science tutor, Franz Aepinus, a first-class scientist from Rostock whose treatise on electricity and magnetism had been published in St Petersburg in 1759. See R. W. Home, Electricity and Experimental Physics in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Hampshire, 1992), chs. XIV and XV.

  43. The rooms formerly occupied by C. are now largely given over to the Hermitage Museum’s collection of French painting of the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries and German drawing of the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries.

  44. V. Shvarts, Leningrad: Art and Architecture (Leningrad, 1986), 54.

  45. SIRIO, xii: 257, Cathcart to Weymouth, 19 Aug. 1768.

  46. Wraxall, 241.

  47. Poroshin, 76, 2 Nov. 1764.

  48. SIRIO, i: 260, C. to Mme Geoffrin, 6 Nov. 1764.

  49. Poroshin, 240, 31 July 1765.

  50. Lettres au Prince de Ligne, 40, 9 Mar. 1781.

  51. S. Lovell, Summerfolk: A History of the Dacha, 1710–2000 (Ithaca, NY, 2003), 9 (piano keys), 11 (Derzhavin translation).

  52. KfZh (1766), 12; (1765), 92, 10 June; Poroshin, 230–1, 22 July 1765.

  53. KfZh (1766), 12, 36, 37.

  54. Pis’ma Saltykovu, 15, 7 July 1763.

  55. V. V. Shevtsov, Kartochnaia igra v Rossii (konets XVI—nachalo XX v.): Istoriia igry i istoriia obshchestva (Tomsk, 2005), 27–30, summarises C’s subsequent legislation.

  56. V. Maikov, ‘Igrok lombera’ (1763), in Izbrannye proizvedeniia, ed. A.V. Zapadov (Leningrad, 1966), 55–71.

  57. KfZh (1765), 18–21, 23–4; Poroshin, 169–70, 1 Feb. 1765.

  58. Poroshin, 365–6, 25 Dec. 1765.

  59. M. S. Konopleva, Teatral’nyi zhivopisets Dzhuseppe Valeriani: Materialy k biografii i istorii tvorchestva (Leningrad, 1948), 22–3.

  60. K. A. Pisarenko, ed., ‘Pis’ma Barona A.S. Stroganova ottsu iz-za granitsei’, Rossiiskii arkhiv: Istoriia Otechestva v svidetel’stvakh i dokumentakh XVIII—XX vv., New Series, 14 (M, 2005), 28 (Cambridge), and passim.

  61. R. P. Gray, Russian Genre Painting in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 2000), 23–4.

  62. ‘Pis’ma Barona A. S. Stroganova’, 13–14, 16, 17, (36).

  63. V. A. Somov, ‘Krug chteniia Peterburgskogo obshchestva v nachale 1760-kh godov (iz istorii biblioteki grafa A. S. Stroganova)’, XVIII vek, 22 (SPb, 2002), 200–34.

  64. Idem, ‘“Kabinet dlia chteniia grafa Stroganova” (inostrannyi fond)’, in Vek Prosveshcheniia, 1: Prostranstvo evropeiskoi kul’tury v epokhu Ekateriny II (M, 2006), 234–5.

  65. Sochineniia, xii: 404.

  66. SIRIO, xii: 256–7, Macartney to Grafton 4/15 Apr. 1766.

  67. AKV, xxxi: 331–2, C. to M. L. Vorontsov, 2 Dec. 1765. Stroganov’s divorce petition, dated 2 July 1765, is at AKV, xxxiv: 351–2. On the Synod’s growing interest in such matters, see G. L. Freeze, ‘Bringing order to the Russian family: marriage and divorce in imperial Russia, 1760–1860’, Journal of Modern History, 62 (1990), 709–48.

  68. Poroshin, 167, 22 Feb. 1765; 177, 27 Feb.; SIRIO, xii: 257, 4/15 Apr. 1766.

  69. AKV, xxi: 48. Stroganov also attended C. at her coronation day banquets in 1764 and 1765: Poroshin, 14, 22 Sept. 1764; 288, 22 Sept. 1765.

  70. Proschwitz, 147, C. to Gustav III, 6 May 1780; Khrapovitskii, 11, 26 June 1786.

  71. Shcherbatov, 231.

  72. Correspondance, 85, Williams to C., 26 Aug. 1756; 8 Aug., C. to Williams.

  73. Sochineniia, xii: 305–6.

  74. Despatches, ii: 224 (Russian memoranda).

  75. Harris Diaries, i: 227, 20 Jan. 1779.

  76. Sochineniia, xii: 56.

  77. Ibid., 557, C. to Poniatowski, 9 Aug. 1762.

  78. SIRIO, xii: 126, Buckinghamshire to Halifax, 22 Aug. 1763 NS; ibid., i: 266, C. to Mme Geoffrin, 20 Feb. 1765; Sochineniia, xii: 5.

  79. See, for example, Despatches, ii: 221, Buckinghamshire to Halifax, 10 Feb. 1763 NS.

  80. Poroshin, 245–6, 5 Aug. 1765. For a similar observatory at the Winter Palace, ibid., 305–6, 9 Oct. 1765.

  81. R. P. Bartlett, Human Capital: The settlement of foreigners in Russia, 1762–1804 (Cambridge, 1979), 42–3 (C.’s initiative), 47, 66–8, 91–4, 99–102.

  82. Quoted in Alexander, 98.

  83. KfZh (1766), 17–18.

  84. Poroshin, 56, 16 Oct. 1764, passim.

  85. I. Petrovskaia, V. Somina, Teatral’nyi Peterburg: Nachalo XVIII veka-Oktiabr’ 1917 goda (SPb, 1994), 53–64.

  86. Poroshin, 56, 16 Oct. 1764 and passim.

  87. Poroshin, 102, 25 Nov. 1764.

  88. Shtelin, Muzyka, 222, para. 65; J. T. Alexander, ‘Catherine the Great and the Theatre’, in Russian Society and Culture and the Long Eighteenth Century: Essays in Honour of Anthony Cross, eds. R. Bartlett and L. Hughes (Münster, 2004), 121.

  89. Shtelin, Muzyka, 218–9, para. 63; MP, i: 228; Poroshin, 347, 26 Nov. 1765.

  90. On the proliferation of such spectacles, see H. Watanabe O’Kelly, Triumphall Shews: Tournaments at German-speaking Courts in their European Context, 1560–1730 (Berlin, 1992).

  91. Poroshin, 157, 12 Jan. 1765; 225, 11 July.

  92. E. S. Shchukina, Dva veka russkoi medali (M, 2000), 76; Alekseeva, Mikhailo Makhaev, 221–3.

  93. A. Cross, ‘Professor Thomas Newberry’s Letter from St Petersburg, 1766, on the Grand Carousel and Other Matters’, SEER, 76 (1998), 490–2. On the literary context of the carousel, V. Proskurina, Mify imperii: Literatura i vlast’ v epokhu Ekateriny II (M, 2006), 11–19.

  94. Pis’ma Saltykovu, 47, 1 July 1766; Tooke, ii: 79.

  95. Poroshin, 18, 27 Sept. 1764; Alexander, ‘Catherine the Great and the Theatre’, 121–2.

  96. PSZ, xvi: 11, 631, 3 Aug. 1762.

  97. N. D. Chechulin, Ocherki po istorii russkikh finansov v tsarstvovanie Ekateriny II (SPb, 1906), 281–3 (283).

  98. Beales, Joseph II, 157–8.

  99. For detailed references to this section, see my ‘Religious Ritual at the Eighteenth-Century Russian Court’, in Monarchy and Religion, ed. M. Schaich, 217–48.

  100. Poroshin, 6 Jan. 1765; 9, 12 Jan. (illness); 371, 6 Jan. 1766.

  101. P. Klimov, ed., Religioznyi Peterburg (SPb, 2004), 73–87; Dixon, ‘Religious Ritual’, 226–7.

  102. Poroshin, 336, 13 Nov. 1765; Shtelin, Muzyka, 55, 57–8, paras 6–7.

  103. Bil’basov, ii: 156–8; Wortman, Scenarios, 120–1; K. A. Papmehl, Metropolitan Platon of Moscow (Petr Levshin, 1737–1812) (Newtonville MA, 1983), 8–9.

  104. Bil’basov, ii: 165–7; KfZh (1763), 86–107, ‘Pokhodnyi zhurnal puteshestviia Eia Imperatorskago Velichestva v Rostov’.

  105. N. I. Zav’ialova, ‘Usad’ba Taininskoe: Istoriia Dvortsovaia ostrova i nekotorye problemy ego sokhraneniia’, Russkaia usad’ba, 7 (2001), 306–23, photo at p. 315.

  106. SIRIO, vii: 287, C. to Panin, 22 May 1763.

  107. Ibid., 288, same to same, May 1763; J. Hartley, ‘Philanthropy in the Reign of Catherine the Great’, in Bartlett and Hartley, eds., Russia in the Age of the Enlightenment, 176.

  108. SIRIO, vii: 288, C. to Panin, undated.

  109. KfZh (1763), 172–3; Klimov, ed., Religioznyi Peterburg, 74–5.

  110. Papmehl, Metropolitan Platon, 13, quoting Poroshin.

  111. P. Bushkovitch, ‘The Clergy at the Russian Court, 1689–1796’, in Monarchy and Religion, ed. Schaich, 124, quoting Poroshin.

  112. Papmehl, Metropolitan Platon,
10–11. The examination was on 12 Sept. following a private ‘rehearsal’ four days earlier.

  113. Richardson, 225.

  114. See E. Kimerling Wirtschafter, ‘20 September 1765: Tsesarevich Paul’s Eleventh Birthday and Father Platon’s “Sermon on Learning”’, in Days from the Reigns, ed. Cross, ii: 163–71.

  115. Best, D17844, 1 Aug. 1772 NS.

  116. Quoted in G. MacDonogh, Frederick the Great (London, 1999), 116.

  117. SIRIO, i: 272, C. to Mme Geoffrin, 17 May 1765.

  118. Best. D13032, C. to Voltaire, 28 Nov. 1765; Wilson, Diderot, 466–7.

  119. Best. D13433, C. to Voltaire, 9 July 1766; Madariaga, Politics and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Russia (London, 1998), 215–35.

  120. Quoted in W. Sunderland, Taming the Wild Field: Colonization and Empire on the Russian Steppe (Ithaca, NY, 2004), 79–80.

  121. R. Bartlett, ‘The Free Economic Society: The Foundation Years and the Prize Essay Competition of 1766 on Peasant Property’, in Russland zur Zeit Katharinas II: Absolutismus, Aufklärung, Pragmatismus, eds. E. Hübner, J. Kusber, P. Nitsche (Cologne, 1998), 181–3, 186, 197. The extent of Voltaire’s involvement is revealed by V. A. Somov, ‘Dva otveta Vol’tera na peterburgskom konkurse o krest’ianskoi sobstvennosti’, in Evropeiskoe Prosveshchenie i tsivilizatsiia Rossii, ed. S. Ia. Karp (M, 2004), 150–65.

  122. Ransel, Mothers of Misery, 45.

  123. Shcherbatov, 251, 253.

  124. SIRIO i: 268, C. to Geoffrin, 28 Mar. 1765.

  Chapter 7

  1. SIRIO, clxi: 73, Bausset to Praslin, 9 May 1766; 73, Rossignol to Louis XV, 13 May; 83, Bausset to Choiseul, 27 May.

  2. Bentham, ii: 124, J. Bentham to S. Bentham, 3 June 1778.

  3. Quoted in Madariaga, 151.

  4. SIRIO, i: 268–9, C. to Mme Geoffrin, 28 Mar. 1765.

  5. Dimsdale, ‘20 October 1768’, in Days from the Reigns, ed. Cross, ii: 185–6.

  6. Documents of Catherine the Great: The Correspondence with Voltaire and the Instruction of 1767 in the English text of 1768, ed. W. F. Reddaway (Cambridge, 1931), 284, art. 457.

  7. On the elections, see Madariaga, 140–9.

  8. Best. D14091, C. to Voltaire, 26 Mar. 1767.

  9. Poroshin, 239, 29 July 1765; 251, 10 Aug.

  10. G. V. Ibneeva, Puteshestviia Ekateriny II: Opyt ‘osvoeniia’ imperskogo prostranstva (Kazan’, 2006), 80; Bessarabova, 58, 43; Kutepov, Tsarskaia okhota, 70–1.

  11. A. V. Gorbunova, ‘Triumfal’nye vorota Tverskoi gubernii vo II polovine XVIII v.’, in Russkaia kul’tura XVII–XX vv., 3 (Tver’, 2005), 30–2.

  12. [I. I. Stafengagen], Geograficheskoe opisanie reki Volgi ot Tveri do Dmitrevska dlia puteshestviia Eia Imperatorskago Velichestva po onoi reke (St Petersburg, n.d. [1767]), unpaginated, SK, 6847. The Academy also prepared more detailed maps.

  13. D. Ostrowski, ‘The Assembly of the Land (Zemskii sobor) as a representative institution’, in Modernizing Muscovy: Reform and social change in seventeenth-century Russia, eds. J. Kotilaine and M. Poe (London 2004), 117–42, suggests that these assemblies were adapted from the Tatar khanates’ quriltai.

  14. SIRIO, x: 180, C. to Bielke, 28 Apr. 1767; Falconet, 14, C. to Falconet, 27 Mar.

  15. Pis’ma Saltykovu, 47, 19 July 1766; 48, 6 Aug.

  16. Falconet, 5, C. to Falconet, 18 Feb. 1767.

  17. KfZh (1767), 42–87.

  18. Pis’ma Saltykovu, 56, 24 Apr. 1767.

  19. KfZh (1767), 83.

  20. Slovo o dushe zakonov v publichnom sobranii Imperatorskago Moskovskago Universiteta Aprelia 23. dnia, 1767. goda govorennoe Iogannom Matfiem Shadenom (M, 1767).

  21. KfZh (1767), 92; SIRIO, x: 183, C. to Panin, 30 Apr. 1767.

  22. Ibid., 186, C. to Panin, 3 May 1767; Orlov, ‘Dnevnik’, 26; KfZh (1767), 98–101.

  23. KfZh (1767), 103–6; SIRIO, xlii: 353, C. to Paul, 5 May 1767.

  24. Alexander, 105.

  25. Quoted in V. M Zhivov, Razyskaniia v oblasti istorii i predistorii russkoi kul’tury (M, 2002), 449.

  26. Sochineniia, v: 1–29; Ibneeva, Puteshestviia Ekateriny, 220–9; F.-X. Coquin, ‘Un inédit de Marmontel: épître à Sa Majesté Catherine II’, in La France et les français à Saint-Petersbourg XVIII—XIX siècles (SPb, 2005), 11–25.

  27. SIRIO, x: 187, C. to Marmontel, 7 May 1767.

  28. Pis’ma Saltykovu, 59, 8 May 1767.

  29. KfZh (1767), 123–5; Orlov, ‘Dnevnik’, 30–3; W. Daniel, ‘Conflict between Economic Vision and Economic Reality: The Case of M. M. Shcherbatov’, SEER, 67 (1989), 60–4.

  30. KfZh (1767), 129–30.

  31. SIRIO, x: 190, C. to Panin, 13 May 1767. The 51 nobles presented on 10 May are listed at KfZh (1767), 394–6.

  32. I. Syrtsov, Arkhipastyri kostromskoi eparkhii za 150 let eia sushchestvovaniia (1745–1898 gg.) (Kostroma, 1898), 16–19, 21–2; KfZh (1767), 137, 147; Orlov, ‘Dnevnik’, 35.

  33. KfZh (1767), 137–47; Orlov, ‘Dnevnik’, 35.

  34. G. V. Lukomskii, Kostroma: Istoricheskii ocherk (SPb, 1913), 171–2. KfZh (1767), 139, says that a new tsar’s place was built.

  35. L. I. Zoziula and E. G. Shcheboleva, ‘Ekaterina v usad’be Kniazei Kozlovskikh’, in Mir russkoi usad’by, ed. L. V. Ivanova (M, 1995), 141–2; KfZh (1767), 148–51, Orlov, ‘Dnevnik’, 37; SIRIO, xlii: 354, C. to Paul, 18 May 1767.

  36. Alexander, 108.

  37. See AKV, xxxiv: 32–5, for the case of the Pyskorskii monastery in the 1750s.

  38. Orlov, ‘Dnevnik’, 38.

  39. SIRIO, x: 199–200, C. to Dimtrii, 22 May 1767; KfZh (1767), 155–6; [Arkhimandrit Feodosii], Istoricheskoe opisanie Feodorovskago monastyria (Nizhnii Novgorod, 1890), 20–1, 33–4.

  40. SIRIO, x: 199–200, C. to Dimtrii, 22 May 1767.

  41. D. Mackenzie Wallace, Russia (London, 1912 edn.), 304. Ibneeva, Puteshestvie Ekateriny, 87–110, has significant new material on the schism.

  42. SIRIO, x: 201, C. to Panin, 22 May 1767. cf. Chappe d’Auteroche, Voyage en Sibérie, ed. Mervaud, ii: 275: ‘La ville est aussi désagréable par la façon dont elle est batie, qu’agréable par sa situation.’

  43. Orlov, ‘Dnevnik’, 39–40.

  44. KfZh (1767), 158–68.

  45. SIRIO, x: 192–3; Cross, 74–9 (77).

  46. V. N. Pinunirov, N. M. Raskin, Ivan Petrovich Kulibin 1735–1818 (Leningrad, 1986), 30–45.

  47. KfZh (1767), 145.

  48. P. W. Werth, ‘Armed Defiance and Biblical Appropriation: Assimilation and the Transformation of Mordvin Resistance, 1740–1814’, Nationalities Papers, 27 (1999), 249–55; idem, At the Margins of Orthodoxy: Mission, Governance and Confessional Politics in Russia’s Volga-Kama Region, 1827–1905 (Ithaca, NY, 2002), 22–35.

  49. KfZh (1767), 170–2; SIRIO, x: 202, 207, C. to Panin, 25 May and 3 June 1767.

  50. RA (1870), nos. 4–5, 758–63, C. to I. I. Melissino, 24 May and 4 June 1767.

  51. Pis’ma Ekateriny II k Adamu Vasil’evichu Olsuf’evu, 1762–1783 (M, 1863), 81, 30 May 1767.

  52. R. P. Bartlett, ‘Julius von Canitz and the Kazan’ Gimnazii in the Eighteenth Century’, CASS, 14 (1980), 343–4, 358–9; Orlov, ‘Dnevnik’, 44.

  53. N. D. Chechulin, Russkoe provintsial’noe obshchestvo (SPb, 1889), 27–34, 60–2, remains the only general study.

  54. Orlov, ‘Dnevnik’, 43.

  55. KfZh (1767), 185, 191, 193.

  56. Best. D14219, C. to Voltaire, 29 May 1767.

  57. Geograficheskoe opisanie, n.p.

  58. Quoted in Bartlett, Human Capital, 94.

  59. KfZh (1767), 231.

  60. Ibid., 231–2.

  61. Maikov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 292–5; SIRIO, x: 221–34.

  62. Pis’ma Saltykovu, 47, 1 July 1766; 49, 10 Aug., 1 Sept.; (54), 29 Dec.; 59–60, 30 May 1767; KfZh (1767), 259.

  63. KfZh (1767), 233–4, 262.

  64. Ibid., 234–5, 266; E. N. Savinova, ‘Dvortsovaia votchina Pakhrino XVII—seredina XIX v.’, Russkaia usad’ba, 7 (2001), 296, 301.

&nb
sp; 65. V. O. Vitt, Iz istorii russkogo konnozavodtsva: Sozdanie novykh porod loshadei na rubezhe XVIII—XIX stoletii (M, 1952), 16.

  66. Kutepov, Tsarskaia okhota, 71, 94–5.

  67. KfZh (1767), 247–55, esp. 253.

  68. Ibid., 273–6; Alexander, 112–3; Omel’chenko, 114–5.

  69. Falconet, 25, C. to Falconet, 12 Oct. 1767.

  70. W. G. Jones, ‘The Spirit of the Nakaz: Catherine II’s Literary Debt to Montesquieu’, SEER, 76 (1998), 662.

  71. P. Dukes, Catherine the Great and the Russian Nobility (Cambridge, 1967), 80.

  72. Dixon, ‘Posthumous Reputation’, 673; Diderot, ‘Observations sur le Nakaz’, in Oeuvres, ed. L. Versini (Paris, 1995), iii: 537, para. 57.

  73. Madariaga, Politics and Culture, 231, 235–61; Ransel, Politics, 178–84.

  74. Madariaga, 156, 158–9, 554.

  75. This point was echoed in Maikov’s ‘Ode on the occasion of the election of deputies to compose a new Code of Laws in 1767’, Izbrannye sochineniia, 201, stanza 12.

  76. Documents of Catherine the Great, ed. Reddaway, arts. 156, 123, 222, 240, 245, 265.

  77. SIRIO, xii: 304–5, Shirley to Conway, 13/24 Aug. 1767.

  78. Ibid., 307.

  79. Madariaga, 161–2, 166.

  80. Omel’chenko, 134.

  81. Madariaga, 165. Phil Withington generously discussed this point with me.

  82. Best. D14611, C. to Voltaire, c. 22 Dec. 1767.

  83. SIRIO, x: 216; Madariaga, Politics and Culture, 137–43; D. Beales, ‘Joseph II, petitions and the public sphere’, in Cultures of Power in Europe during the Long Eighteenth Century, eds. H. Scott and B. Simms (Cambridge, 2007), 257.

  84. O. A. Ivanov, Graf Aleksei Grigor’evich Orlov-Chesmenskii v Moskve (M, 2002), 33–40; SIRIO, xii: 302, Shirley to Conway, 28 May 1767; KfZh (1767), 375–6.

  85. KfZh (1767), 367–8.

  86. Falconet, 25, C. to Falconet, 12 Oct. 1767.

  87. Omel’chenko, 118–24.

  88. KfZh (1768), 20–2, 32; SIRIO, x: 277, 279, C. to Panin, 24, 27, 28 Jan. 1768.

  89. C. Burney, A General History of Music from the Earliest Ages to the Present Period, 4 vols. (London, 1789), iv: 540.

  90. KfZh (1768), 74–8; Shtelin, Muzyka, 57–9, 234. MP, i: 231–2, has the date wrong.

  91. KfZh (1768), 80–1. Betskoy was also promoted: see N. N. Bantysh-Kamenskii, Spiski kavalerov Rossiiskikh Imperatorskikh ordenov (M, 2006 edn.), 90.