Catherine II of Russia

Catherine II (in Cyrillic: Екатерина II ) (April 21st 1729 with Stettin in Poméranie - November 6th 1796 with Saint-Pétersbourg), born Sophie Augusta Fredericka d' Anhalt-Zerbst (in Cyrillic: София-Фредерика-АвгустаЦербст-Ангальтская ), called Figchen, then the Large Catherine, is empress of Russia starting from June 28th, 1762.

The wife

In 1744, Elisabeth I {{Re}} of the Russian Empire chooses it as marries for its nephew Pierre III to which she wished to make her heir. Catherine, convert with orthodoxy, did not have a happy marriage the more so as it took the party the opposition and read Machiavel, Tacite, Voltaire and Montesquieu. Very with the listening of the events which proceeded in its new country, Catherine which had the affection of the Russian people succeeds in making to détroner her husband in 1762 with the complicity of officers of the guard (his/her lover Grigori Orlov, made a Coup d'etat and assassinated the Empereur probably strangled by Alexeï Orlov). She reigned then under the name of Catherine II in an exclusive and illegal way.

External businesses

The Foreign Minister Nikita Panine exerted a considerable influence. He spent of the considerable sums to create the agreement of north between Russia, the Prussia, the Poland, the Sweden and perhaps the the United Kingdom to counter the league of the Bourbon-Habsbourg. When it appeared that this plan could not succeed, Panine was dismissed in 1781.

In 1764 Catherine placed Stanislas Auguste Poniatowski which was his/her lover on the Polish throne. Then Russia annexed most of Poland in the partitions of 1772, 1793 and 1795. In 1772 it concludes with the Prussia and Austria a treaty which dismembered Poland and gave to Russia the governments Polotsket, from Moghilev, and the Traité of Kutchuk-Kaïnardji, concluded in 1774 with Turkey, ensured several southernmost provinces to him and the Black Sea to him opened.

Catherine made of Russia a capacity dominating with the the Middle East after the first war against the Ottoman Empire. She tried to subject to this last the same fate as in Poland but with less success. She removed with the Turks the the Crimea and the fortresses of Azov, of Taganrog, Kinburn and Ismaêl. She annexed the the Crimea, in 1783, nine years after she had obtained her independence. The Ottoman Empire started one second war in 1787 which finished in 1792 with the Traité of Iassy.

She acts like mediator during the Bavarian war of succession of 1778-79 between Prussia and Austria. In 1780 it assembled a group in order to defend the vessels independent of Great Britain during the war of independence of the United States.

Between 1788 and 1790, Russia was committed in the war against Sweden whose his/her cousin Gustave VIII tried to take again the territories lost in 1720. After the Battle of Svensksund (nowadays Ruotsinsalmi in Finland) of the July 9th and 10th 1790, a peace treaty was signed.

She had added 518 000 km ² with the territory of Russia.

Interior policy

At the same time as it thus moved back the limits of its empire, Catherine printed a new activity with agriculture and with industry, founded on the thoughts of the Lights, Catherine made establish a groundwork to reform the laws. A legislative commission representing all the classes except the serfs was established but it was dissolved before being effective, perhaps because it had become too preserving after the insurrection of Pougatchev in 1773 - 1774. Of this commission, it remains only little of traces. However, Catherine had written a work entitled " Instructions addressed by its majesty the empress of all Russies established to work with the implementation of a project of a new code of laws " , more known under the name of " Nakaz ", in which the guiding lines of coding are joined together.

Catherine reorganized the provincial administration, giving to the government more control on the rural areas because of the country revolts. In 1785, Catherine created a charter which made it possible noble to present petitions to the monarch and gave them much more capacities and rights. She encouraged the colonization of the Alaska, of the German of the Volga and the conquered territories.

Russia had become the first world copper and cast iron, iron producer. It counted more than 200 factories, workshops, manufactures. The industrial production had doubled; the value of the domestic trade and external, triplet. The Western States were from now on constrained to accommodate Russia in the “European concert”.

The will modernisatrice of Catherine II encountered however a situation of economic, political and cultural underdevelopment of imperial Russia. Per hour when England lived its industrial revolution and invented capitalism and where the United States opened the era of the democracy and of individual freedoms, Russia remained blocked in a feudal system, based on a true particularly unproductive country slavery and an ultra-authoritative political power controlled by assassinations. Catherine did not seem to want to admit the real situation of her empire. Thus, it is told that during his displacements, the governors made build false populated villages of false peasants along the roads where it passed, in order to prove to him that Russia was modern.

Arts and culture

It was presented in the form of a patron for arts, the literature and education basing itself on the encyclopedia of Diderot and D' Alembert. It succeeds in convincing the mathematician Leonhard Euler to return from Berlin.

When Alexandre Radichtchev had published his Voyage of Pétersbourg Saint in Moscow in 1790 presenting the deplorable living conditions of the serfs it was exiled in Siberia.

It was in correspondence with Voltaire, D' Alembert, Melchior Grimm and received Diderot at its court.

Personal life

To introduce vaccination, it showed the example while being the first to be made inoculate.

Catherine was known for her sexual appetite and her many lovers.

Catherine would have probably suffered from an heart attack whereas she had sat on convenient November 5th 1796, and she died in the bed without to have begun again knowledge.

The love of its life is the prince Grigori Potemkine, whom she secretly married after the assassination of her husband.

She had a son, Paul, whom she loved little, preferring its grandsons to him. It succeeded to him under the name of Paul Ier of Russia.

Publications

One has of it some writings, of the comedies, a drama of Oleg, and a Correspondance with Voltaire , Oimin, etc and of the Memories, (1859).
Antidote, or Examination of the Bad superbly printed Book entitled: Travel in Siberia, made by order of the King in 1761… . With Amsterdam at Marc-Michel Rey 1771 - 1772. The original edition was published in two printed volumes with Saint-Petersbourg in 1770 - 1771. Some pages unfavorable to Russia of Jean Cap in his " Voyage in Siberia " he attracted especially a sharp criticism in the form of a work written and published anonymously by Catherine II of Russia and the Count Chouvaloff, the young empress answering so that she regarded as an attack of her country by taking again chapter by chapter the book of the abbot to refute it. This attribution was fought by Anguis which “ gives for collaborator to the Comtesse Daschkof the sculptor Falconet ”
Russian Code or instructions addressed by its majesty the empress of all Russies to the commission established to work with the execution 'a project of a new code of laws 3rd edition, Amsterdam 1775

See too

the Palate of Catherine of summer.
the town of Krasnodar was in the named beginning Ekatorinodar.
Its biography " Catherine Grande" , by Henri Troyat, of the French Academy.

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