The Memoirs of Catherine the Great (10 page)

Like other great memoirists, Catherine developed a unique language and structure. It took Catherine four decades and multiple memoirs, but in the final memoir, translated here, she succeeded in shaping the genre in an unusual way to suit her complex persona. The final memoir alone contains an important, unusual verbal self-portrait in which Catherine represents herself as exemplary, both as a woman and as a man. The memoir as a whole bears this out, for Catherine by her criticisms asserts that as a ruler she is superior to Elizabeth as well as Peter. Yet, the language of the self-portrait is unusual, with its universal Enlightenment terms for the self nevertheless delineated by gender. She writes: “If I may dare to use such terms, I take the liberty to assert on my own behalf that I was an honest and loyal knight, whose mind was infinitely more male than female. But for all that I was anything but mannish, and in me others found, joined to the mind and character of a man, the charms of a very attractive woman” (419). These tensions between masculine and feminine exist at the generic level too, as Catherine combined the classical biography of illustrious men with the general and individual histories of memoirs. Moreover, in this self-portrait Catherine for the first time calls her memoir a confession: “May I be pardoned this description in recognition of the truth of this confession, which my self-esteem makes without covering itself with false modesty” (419).
¹⁵⁹
In a letter to Grimm in 1791, Catherine mentions both Plutarch and Rousseau, and, arguably, both influenced her final memoir.
¹⁶⁰
Despite her dislike for Rousseau’s political theories, Catherine acknowledges his sentimental aesthetic when she concludes her self-portrait with a revealing description of her heart, sensibility, and nature. Like Rousseau in his
Confessions
(1782), Catherine notes that feelings do not always obey “the finest moral maxims.”

Catherine’s portrait of herself is substantially more complex and nuanced than the overly feminized picture her critics paint of her. Rulhière gives a detailed physical portrait, from which he extrapolates:

The softer characters of gentleness and goodness, which are likewise depicted there, appear, to a penetrating observer, only as the effect of an ardent desire to please; and those seductive expressions discover but too plainly an intention to seduce. A painter who was desirous of giving an allegorical representation of this great personage, proposed to exhibit her in the figure of a charming nymph, presenting with one hand, stretched forth, a wreath of flowers, and holding in the other, thrown behind her back, a flaming torch.
¹⁶¹

In Catherine’s verbal self-portrait she is a knight, the member of a royal order, not a naked nymph. Among the many painted portraits of herself that Catherine commissioned, only a handful lack the medals for the orders awarded her: St. Catherine, St. Andrei, St. George, and St. Vladimir. Empress first and foremost, Catherine sought forms and words to bring together and articulate an unorthodox personal life, a passion for ideas, and the ambition and talent to rule.

In a long writerly career, Catherine kept returning to the memoirs, writing, rewriting, and editing them. Of necessity and with real interest, Catherine studied language and languages throughout her life; moreover, she managed to make her idiomatic Russian, French, and German uniquely her own. Similarly, with the unusual opening structure of the final memoir, Catherine transformed her previous memoirs into something uniquely hers. As she wrote: “Besides, this writing itself should prove what I say about my mind, my heart, and my character” (419). To make this argument, Catherine, with her opening maxim and syllogism, forces the reader’s attention away from her body and onto her mind. As with Peter’s biography, the flow of her chronological narrative, which should begin with her physical birth, is interrupted. They present her intellect and her historical self where readers expect to find a more common opening, such as those of the early and middle memoirs: “I was born April 21 . . .” This final memoir manifests her continued search for other narratives to represent the different aspects of Catherine—human being, woman, intellectual, and, above all, Empress of Russia.

NOTES

A recent study of her reign argues “how much it mattered that Catherine the Great was committed to the ideals of the European Enlightenment,” a commitment she expressed primarily through her writings. Simon Dixon,
Catherine the Great
(New York: Longman, 2001), 17. In Russia, through her published writings and support for publishing, Catherine actively participated in an extensive public dialogue on the monarch that can be found in one fifth of all publications. Cynthia Hyla Whittaker, Russian Monarchy: Eighteenth-Century Rulers and Writers in Political Dialogue (DeKalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003), 5, 8–9.

Catherine to Hanbury-Williams, August 27, 1756.
Correspondance de Catherine
Alexéievna, Grande-Duchesse de Russie, et de Sir Charles H. Williams, Ambassadeur d’Angleterre, 1756 et 1757,
ed. Serge Goriaïnow (Moscow: 1909), 88. In English,
Correspondence of Catherine the Great with Sir Charles Hanbury-Williams and Letters from Count
Poniatowski,
trans. and ed. Earl of Ilchester and Mrs. Langford-Brooke (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1928).

Douglas Smith, ed.,
Love and Conquest: Personal Correspondence of Catherine the Great
and Prince Grigory Potemkin (DeKalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press, 2004). This English edition of 464 letters is drawn from the 1,162 letters in V. S. Lopatin, ed.,
Ekaterina II i G. A. Potemkin. Lichnaia perepiska, 1769–1791
(Moscow: Nauka, 1997). Simon Sebag Montefiore,
Prince of Princes: The Life of Potemkin
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, Thomas Dunne Books, 2001).

Catherine apparently first approached Paul’s wife and then his son with her proposal. John T. Alexander,
Catherine the Great: Life and Legend
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 322.

On the meaning of political power in the eighteenth century and Catherine’s approach to it, see Dixon,
Catherine the Great.

On efforts since 1742 to overthrow Bestuzhev-Riumin and on his foreign policy, see Evgenii Anisimov,
Empress Elizabeth: Her Reign and Her Russia, 1741–1761,
trans. and ed. John T. Alexander (Gulf Breeze, Fla: Academic International Press, 1995), 101–9.

This and further such unattributed quotations are from the translation of the memoir and her outline in this volume.

Sochineniia Imperatritsy Ekateriny II,
ed. A. N. Pypin, vol. 12 (St. Petersburg: Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1907). Volume 6 of this series, her
Great Instruction,
was never published. Please note that in the preface and notes to the translation, which is based on Pypin’s definitive edition, all further references to volume 12, which contains her collected autobiographical writings with an introduction by Ia. Barskov, are given as page numbers in the text.

Catherine’s other memoirs exist in one English translation, based on the German translation,
Memoiren der Kaiserin Katharina II,
trans. Erich Böhme, 2 vols. (Leipzig: 1913).
Memoirs of Catherine the Great,
trans. Katharine Anthony (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1927). See the translation note for a discussion of the three earlier translations and the original manuscript.

“Au reste cet écrit même doit prouver ce que je dis de mon esprit, de mon coeur et de mon caractère” (419).

Holstein-Gottorp was located in northern Germany and carved out of Schleswig-Holstein, with interests in Denmark, which were protected through two strategic marriages with Sweden in the seventeenth century.

Reversing a practice of not marrying off royal daughters, Peter the Great sought marriages for his two daughters to guard Russia’s interests in the Baltic against Sweden, Russia’s northern enemy, while Karl Friedrich wanted a powerful ally in order to regain territory his house had lost to Denmark. Karl Friedrich groomed his son, Peter III, as the potential heir not only to the Russian but also to the Swedish throne, because Peter’s grandfather, Friedrich IV (1671–1702), Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, had married Princess Hedwig Sophia (1681–1708), sister of King Charles XII (1660–97) of Sweden, whose mother was Hedwig Eleonora (1636–1715) of Holstein-Gottorp.

In 1717, Peter the Great visited Paris in an unsuccessful attempt to arrange a marriage for Elizabeth to the future Louis XV and pry loose French support for a weakened Sweden, trounced by Peter at Poltava (in 1709). Peter tried again unsuccessfully in 1721. Rumor had it that in 1742 Elizabeth secretly married Count Alexei Razumovsky (1709–71); she had no children.

In 1742, Catherine’s grandmother had one painting done by Balthasar Denner (1685–1749), who had painted many German royals, including Peter III (27). In 1743, according to the diary of Peter’s tutor, Jacob Stählin, a second portrait of Catherine by Antoine Pesne (1683–1757), a French painter of German aristocrats, was delivered to Elizabeth at her request (Anthony,
Memoirs,
77–78).

Catherine mentions 15,000 rubles in the early memoir (444), and 10,000 rubles in the middle memoir (30).

Princess Johanna was caught intriguing on behalf of Frederick the Great, and she was asked to leave after the wedding.

In the early memoir, she writes, “They forced the name I now bear on me solely because that which I had was horrible on account of the intrigues of Peter the Great’s sister, who bore the same one” (451). Tsarevna Sophia Alexeevna was regent from 1682 to 1689.

Rumor had it that Peter had to be circumcised to enable him to have intercourse; although he had several mistresses, he appears to have fathered no children.

Saltykov was her lover from 1752 to 1755. As Empress, Catherine appointed him envoy to France in 1762, and then to Saxony in 1764; little is known about his fate. Alexander,
Catherine the Great,
63.

She most likely had epileptic seizures.

Catherine to Hanbury-Williams, August 18, 1756,
Correspondance de Catherine,
45.

In her middle memoir, it is 657,000 rubles (475–76).

See John P. LeDonne, Absolutism and Ruling Class: The Formation of the Russian Political
Order, 1700–1825
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).

Quoted in Lindsey Hughes,
Russia in the Age of Peter the Great
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998), 411. Original in
Polnoe Sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii,
1649–1913,
vol. 6 (St. Petersburg, 1830), 496–97. As a result of the ensuing dynastic instability, “four signs conferred legitimacy: designation, dynastic inheritance, worthiness, and election.” Whittaker,
Russian Monarchy,
63.

On Catherine’s reputation in France at the time of her coup, see Voltaire’s letters, and in Germany and England, see Ruth Dawson, “Perilous Royal Biography: Representations of Catherine II Immediately After Her Seizure of the Throne,”
Biography
27.3 (Summer 2004): 517–34. Whittaker argues that through her manifestos, Catherine inaugurated a new image of legitimacy, the legal sovereign, which she added to the existing images of the reforming czar and the elected monarch.
Russian Monarchy,
9, 99–102.

The role of favorite was an unofficial position of a close friend or lover (though not necessarily) with direct access to the ruler. The ruler bestowed positions, titles, and great wealth on the favorite to legitimize the favorite’s access and official duties; the favorite’s family benefited enormously. Once she came to power, Catherine had ten successive favorites, but even after Potemkin was no longer her lover, he remained the most powerful favorite and vetted nearly every successor. For a recent informative discussion of favoritism under Catherine, see Smith,
Love and Conquest,
xxxii–xliii. Catherine’s twelve lovers were: Sergei Saltykov (1752–55), Count Poniatowski (1755–58), Prince Grigory Orlov (1760–72), Alexander Vasilchikov (1772–74), Prince Grigory Potemkin (1774–76), Count Peter Zavadovsky (1776–77), Simon Zorich (1777–78), Ivan Rimsky-Korsakov (1778), Alexander Lanskoi (1778–84), Alexander Ermolov (1785–86), Count Alexander Dmitriev-Mamonov (1786–89), and Prince Platon Zubov (1789–96).
The Memoirs of Princess Dashkova,
trans. and ed. Kyril Fitzlyon (London: John Calder, 1956; reprint, with an introduction by Jehanne M. Gheith, Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1995), 301–2.

Peter the Great had originally trained Alexei, his son from his first marriage, to succeed him, but then had him tried as unfit to rule, which led to his death during torture. Peter had his first wife, Evdokia Lopukhina (1669–1731), forcibly exiled to a convent.

To complicate matters only slightly, the daughters were illegitimate, as Peter and Catherine only married in 1712. On the history of Russian female rule, see Isolde Thyrêt,
Between God and Tsar: Religious Symbolism and the Royal Women of Muscovite Rus
sia (DeKalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press, 2001).

Bühren became Duke of Courland in 1737. He Russified his name to Biren, and then Frenchified it to Biron when the French Dukes of Biron adopted him at the urging of Cardinal Fleury. The term for his unofficial reign was “Bironovshchina,” indicating his excessive influence.

Isabel de Madariaga, “Catherine and the
philosophes,
” in
Politics and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Russia
(New York: Longman, 1998), 231, 234. The eighteenth-century
philosophes
included Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Diderot, Grimm, and d’Alembert, popular intellectuals and social philosophers who argued for the systematic critique of society according to principles of reason and tolerance, pitting science against religious dogma.

On Elizabeth, see Anisimov,
Empress Elizabeth,
167–81.

Eidel’man suggests that in the memoirs, Catherine implicitly condemns this aspect of Elizabeth’s reign, and she established a more respectful working relationship with her courtiers. N. Ia. Eidel’man, “Memuary Ekateriny II—odna iz raskrytykh tain samoderzhaviia,”
Voprosy istorii
1 (1968): 156.