Catherine II, an enlightened tsarina but above all a despot

In Odessa, its silhouette continues to overlook the superb Ukrainian waterfront. But, after five months of war, the statue of Catherine II no longer projects the same serenity, surrounded by hastily piled up sandbags. Today, Russian bombs are threatening the monument, erected in honor of the founder of this majestic Black Sea port. Tomorrow, it is the inhabitants of Odessa themselves who will bring down this symbol of eternal Russia: the Ukrainian municipality has drawn up a list of buildings and streets to be renamed, or to be destroyed, once the war is over. Including Catherine II.

For the West, she embodies a powerful woman, capable of reigning for thirty-four years over an empire while leading a romantic life, made up of betrayals, adventures and romances. Of The Red Empress with Marlene Dietrich in 1934, on the crazy HBO series The Great in 2020, the Tsarina has been fantasizing about the West for more than two centuries. But for Ukrainians, Catherine II personifies the worst of Russia: invasion, submission and then Russification, both religious and linguistic.

During his reign, from 1762 to 1796, his country, already the largest in the world, acquired nearly 520,000 square kilometers. Kherson, Mariupol, Simferopol, Sevastopol and, therefore, Odessa: most of the metropolises that find themselves in turmoil today were founded by this “empress of cities”. At the end of the 18th century, it succeeded where all its predecessors had failed: its troops annexed the Crimean peninsula, then the whole of Ukraine, after carving up Poland.

“The greatest conqueror in the history of Russia”

“Catherine II is the greatest conqueror in the history of Russia, with Stalin, in terms of the number of territories and the area annexed,” poses Thierry Sarmant, general curator at the National Archives and author of the fascinating Catherine II of Russia. power sex (to be published in September by Calype editions). She is the one who has expanded the empire the most, especially in the currently disputed areas. And in the minds of Russians, what was once part of the empire is destined to join Russia.”

However, the tsarina remains a controversial figure in great Russian history. Already, the daughter of the Sovereign Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst was not born in Russia but in Szczecin, in the Kingdom of Prussia (now in Poland). Promised to Grand Duke Peter, the heir to the throne of the Russian Empire, she converted to the Orthodox religion, learned Russian and joined her future husband in Saint Petersburg at only 15 years old, in 1744, before marry the following year.

Her husband ascended the throne on the death of Empress Elisabeth in 1762. In his Memoirs, Catherine describes her husband as a complete imbecile and a drunkard, incapable of governing or of making him a successor. As his biographers point out, the acts of Pierre III in power do not, however, match this portrait against him produced by his wife, a follower of communication before the hour. Only six months after the start of his reign, the emperor was the victim of a coup d’etat, brilliantly orchestrated by Catherine, and died in prison in troubled circumstances. The Empress will evoke a “violent colic”.

“She was all the same more despotic than enlightened”

Catherine II seized power with great reforming ambitions for Russia, particularly social ones, which she would never carry out. “Her conquests compensate for the relative timidity of her internal reforms, explains Thierry Sarmant. As a usurper, her position on the throne was very fragile and she realized that carrying out major reforms would be both difficult and, above all, dangerous. If Catherine modestly modernized education or administration, tackling the issue of serfdom could turn into a social revolution or a coup d’etat led by the aristocracy.” Throughout her reign, the sovereign lived in fear of a reversal in favor of her son, Paul 1st, in particular after the insurrection – crushed – of the Russian peasants, between 1773 to 1775.

Yet the Empress continues to carry her reputation as an “enlightened despot” in the West. “She was all the same more despotic than enlightened,” smiles Thierry Sarmant. As Francine-Dominique Liechtenhan writes in Katherine II. Triumphant Courage (2021, Perrin), “Catherine II was undoubtedly the first ‘intellectual’ on the Russian throne. Cultivated, versatile, she possessed literary, philological, historical, philosophical and even scientific knowledge which exceeded that of the majority of crowned heads. ” Able to work sixteen hours a day, she devoted herself to all matters and issued 14,500 decrees during her reign.

Above all, the Empress went down in history as a letter writer: she is said to have written more than 10,000 letters to renowned correspondents, including Voltaire, Grimm, Diderot and d’Alembert. These philosophers, writers and other mathematicians provided him with ideas to govern, but also served his propaganda in Western Europe, especially during the many wars led by Catherine. Representative of the Europe of the Enlightenment, particularly close to the Empress, Voltaire wrote thus: “Do you even know where the earthly paradise is? It is wherever Catherine Second is.” As if to please her admirer, the Empress stretched her shadow further than any other Tsar before her.

At the end of the 18th century, after Russian military incursions and a civil war, it took advantage of the dismemberment of Poland to occupy huge swaths of its territory at the time, corresponding today to Western Ukraine, Lithuania and Belarus. “Following the first partition of Poland, Russia experienced exceptional demographic growth, its population rising from 22.4 million to 36.5 million inhabitants, points out Francine-Dominique Liechtenhan in her biography. This is thanks to territorial gains, to the arrival of settlers, but also to a high birth rate due to the sanitary measures imposed by the Tsarina, starting with vaccines.

In the South, Catherine conquered Crimea after several wars against the Ottoman Empire, from 1770, until the definitive annexation of the “pearl of the Crown” in 1783. “Her army and especially her fleet, inherited from Pierre the Great, turn out to be more modern than the Ottoman forces, describes Thierry Sarmant. The Russian fleet succeeds in making an extraordinary tour of Europe, crosses the Baltic, the North Sea, the Atlantic, returns to the Mediterranean and destroys the fleet on the Turkish coast. The Russians thus became dominant in the eastern Mediterranean for several years, and went so far as to occupy Beirut.”

Catherine made a triumphal journey to her new possessions in 1787: leaving Saint Petersburg, passing through kyiv, she went as far as Sevastopol, the port built by her lover Potemkin in the Crimea. This trip, the apogee of his reign, then presented New Russia to the world, with its opening to the Black Sea and southern Europe. All the tsars before her had dreamed of it, only she was able to do it. At the height of her fame, at the end of the 1780s, Catherine would have said, according to the poet Gavril Derzhavin: “If I lived two hundred years, it is obvious that Europe would be subject to the Russian scepter.”

In this summer of 2022, Vladimir Putin’s army is fighting to conquer all of southern Ukraine and full access to the Black Sea. That is exactly the territories of Catherine II’s New Russia.

_________________________Catherine II in 7 dates:

1729 Born in Szczecin, in the Kingdom of Prussia.

1745 Marriage to Grand Duke Peter, heir to the Russian Empire, in Saint Petersburg.

1762 Empress Elizabeth dies, leaving the throne to Peter III. Six months later, Catherine II orchestrated a coup against her husband and seized power.

1772 First partition of Poland. Russia obtains large parts of its territory, before the dismemberment of the country in 1793 then 1795.

1773-1775 Russian Peasants’ War, an insurrection of hundreds of thousands of serfs finally crushed by the Empire.

1783 Russia annexes Crimea, nine years after having obtained the independence of the peninsula thanks to its military victory against the Ottomans.

1796 Dies in St. Petersburg of a cerebral hemorrhage. Her son Paul 1er, whom she planned to disinherit, succeeded her.